‘Have you ever voted?’
‘Ah… No.’
‘Thought not. I better tell George. You’ll never handle an electoral roll all by yourself.’
The skull got on its dignity, gave her a mean glare. ‘I will sort it, okay. What about you, brat? Where are you registered huh? No fixed abode brat.’
‘Actually I hate the idea,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I don’t want to vote for anything, ever. This is not my world. But with luck I don’t have to worry about it this time. The most likely date is March the twentyninth. I won’t be eighteen.’
Not eighteen yet. My God.
Fiorinda was tired out. She went back to Lambeth Road with the Eyes and Rob. Sage went looking for Ax, and found him alone in the Fire Room, over in the North Wing: so called because it was one of the few rooms of the six hundred with a chimney that worked, and small enough to be heated by a fire in the grate. The room was lit by one meagre electric lamp, with a parchment, tasseled shade from the nineteen fifties, on a table by the hearth. Ax looked round and smiled wanly. Sage pulled up a chair.
‘You knew about Pigsty’s kiddie porn habit, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So did I.’ Sage took out a pack of the government-licenced Anandas he perversely favoured, offered them.
‘No thanks. I don’t know how you can stand those things.’
‘So denounce me to the Campaign for Real Cannabis. I can’t be fucked to roll my own, it takes me too long. Anyway, I like the advertising… Ax, arguably we made a shit choice on Massacre Night. We stayed alive. Arguably we made a shit choice when you came back from the Tour. We could have fled the country or something. But you are not responsible for what happened to those children.’
‘I knew enough,’ said Ax. ‘I should’ve known he was a psychopath.’
The skull looked at him in silence for a moment, then turned away and stared into the flames. ‘Where’s the line between? Ever been near it? You know about me and Mary Williams? Of course you do.’
‘I remember some of what got into the papers,’ said Ax, diplomatically.
‘Yeah. Well, it was all true. All true. I used to beat her up. Me hitting her was basically our relationship, that and the smack. I hurt her badly enough to put her in hospital a few times, including once when she was pregnant.’ Sage looked down at his masked hands and closed them into fists, the virtual ghosts that replaced the missing fingers moving with uncanny realism. ‘Not so great for needlepoint, but they work fine as weapons.’
This Ax knew. He’d seen those weapons used, up in Yorkshire. Sage in a fist fight was a thoroughly horrible proposition.
‘No wonder you hate heroin.’
‘Oh no. No, no no, never blame the drug. It was me. And I am sane, I think. What I mean is…well, I’m not sure what I mean, except you’re not to blame.’
‘How tall were you when you were sixteen?’
‘Same as I am now.’
‘God.’
‘Yeah. Fucking ridiculous.’
Ax thought about the sixteen year old giant junkie, prowling the chichi little streets of Padstow, seeking for meat. ‘If it was so bad, how come you had a kid?’
‘I didn’t know Mary had decided to get pregnant. Never crossed my mind. Girl’s stuff, contraception and all that.’ The skull grinned in self-contempt. ‘I was horrified. Got the injection, soon as I found out. I’d’ve had it done permanent if I’d been old enough.’
‘But you made her do a DNA test.’
‘That was when she set the lawyers on me. I was being nasty, I never had any doubt he was mine. I had him with me a lot, first few years. But her lifestyle changed, she got bored of trying to show me up, I don’t know… There’s a court order giving me access but that was also me being nasty. I don’t pursue it. I’m not sure if it runs any more, now Wales is a foreign country. I’ve seen him once since Dissolution. Don’t know when I’ll see him again. He’s eleven this year. I have an eleven year old son, isn’t that weird.’
‘You love him?’
‘I try not to think about it.’
‘Sorry.’
‘What can I do? She hates me. I hate her too. Nothing personal, just the whole fucking idea. Ah, horrible. She doesn’t want me around, she doesn’t want her kid to be with me, and I can’t blame her.’
‘Have you hit any other women, since?’
‘Haven’t hit anybody since, except for Yorkshire. Not seriously.’ Ax smiled. This would exclude some crowd-pleasing showmanship on the tv and other public occasions. And fair enough.
‘Oh, and George. I hit George occasionally. He doesn’t mind.’
‘Bizarre lives you Heads lead.’
‘I suppose we do.’ Sage finally lit the cigarette he’d been holding. ‘Ax, I—’
The sentence stalled. They stared into the red caves between the coals.
Nothing’s really changed, thought Ax. The administration is the same dodgy team that Paul Javert was playing for, same bunch of amoral chancers. The peace in Yorkshire may not hold up. We’re still deep in shit. But Fiorinda calls the police, the hippie-goon regime collapses like a house of cards; and suddenly it feels as if we have a chance to make something of this disaster. To pull ourselves out of that swamp where murder is law… Astonishing girl. He had asked DCI Holland what the fuck (expletive deleted) did she think she was doing, having a seventeen year old kid interview a murdering paedophile, alone in a room with him? She’d answered: ordinarily you would be right, but this is Fiorinda.
The girl who told me, the first time we were alone together, the first night I took her to my bed: Pigsty is a childfucker.
In just about that many words. How did she know?
Maybe that was a stupid question.
He’d had a terrible struggle, but tonight his mind quiet in a way it hadn’t been for a long time. A stillness inside. Insh’allah. Whichever way things went, it would be okay. Shit, what do I really want? If I come out of the game with nothing except Fiorinda and Aoxomoxoa, I’ll be well up on the deal.
He just unfolds, this guy—
‘Listen, Sage. Would you do some oxy with me?’
Sage looked up, startled out of deep abstraction. The skull went blank, and stayed blank long enough—measurable seconds—for Ax to get alarmed. It was something he’d been thinking about, doing the intimacy drug, but maybe this really wasn’t the moment. No, it was okay: the mask came back to life and he was getting the you, beyond belief grin that he considered his personal property.
‘Yeah,’ said Sage. ‘Yes, I would.’
‘Not now, but if we are ever through this. Next time there’s a good time.’
‘Done.’
‘Good. You were saying—?’
‘Was I?’ Sage shook his head. ‘I’ve forgotten. I was probably going to say, that’s enough about Mary and Marlon. I just wanted to tell you—’
‘Yeah.’
‘C’mon. I came to stop you from moping. Let’s go find some company.’
Sage had been living, in so far as he needed a place to sleep, at the Heads’ studio in Battersea. That weekend he took Fiorinda and Ax to his cottage in Cornwall, a retreat that even the band rarely visited. It was on the north coast, in about twelve acres, up an execrable washed-out track. The Atlantic was on the other side of the hill, a tumultuous small river ran through the land; there was a tiny village two miles away. He had done almost nothing to the cottage since he’d bought it, except to get decent crystal cable laid, set up the parlour as a studio (where he’d written most of the Arbeit Macht Frei and Stonefish immersions: place should be hideously haunted); and move a big, low bed into the living room. He slept down there, couldn’t be fucked, drunk or sober, to negotiate the narrow, crooked staircase at night. The place was otherwise a miracle of inconvenience, especially for someone with Sage’s hands. Most of the domestic appliances were left over from when it had been a failed holiday let.
The weather was terrible. Sage and Ax did old jigsaws, Ax having discovered a
stack of them in a cupboard. Fiorinda read the children’s classics she found in a bookcase upstairs. At twilight, when the rain eased off, they walked to the pub: down the track, the river rushing in spate over its granite boulders beside them, hazel catkins unfurled, shaking under the bare oak branches; primroses shining like milky stars in the high banks along the lane.
On the night they didn’t get astonishingly drunk at what was known (though who was locked out was unclear: it wasn’t the local police) as ‘a lock-in’ at The Powdermill, Fiorinda sat dreaming by the hearth. Ax and Sage had fallen asleep, on the couch and on the bed. There was no sound but the whisper of the flames.
Sage’s property was called The Magic Place. The name was on a stone marker at the turn-off, in Cornish: he’d shown it to her when they arrived. Nothing to do with Sage, it had always been called that. It wasn’t the cottage that was supposed to be magic but a stone, he thought. Or a tree, or a pool in the river.
She had asked him, do you know which word is which?
Don’t get smart with me, brat. Certainly I do. That one’s magic, that one is place.
How do you say it?
I’ve forgotten. Have to ask George.
They’d been alone because Ax, who had driven them down in his precious classic Volvo coupe, had kicked up a big fuss when he saw the track. He was walking up the hill, fuming, to make sure it didn’t get any worse. Fucking perverse, why do I have to put up with this—
I’m glad you’re here, Sage had said, the mask doing enigmatic smile. Always meant to bring you here.
I’m here, she thought, reaching out to the fire. My friend, my brother, I’m here. A handful of flame lay quivering in her palm, and she had that Escher feeling, the two planes sliding into one. She looked round and found Sage, unmasked by sleep, blue eyes wide open. ‘So you can still do that,’ he said.
‘Please don’t tell anyone,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Not anyone.’
‘I won’t.’ He turned over, and as far as she knew slept again at once.
Sayyid Muhammad Zayid had come to London and taken a suite at the Savoy (never backward with the panoply, Muhammad). He did not try to influence Ax on the question of Pigsty and the death penalty. Perhaps he even agreed that the perpetrator of such crimes should live out his guilty life. But he’d come down because he was sure Ax would be the next President, and what was on his mind was Shari’a. They had discussions—the Islamic entourage in attendance, Ax alone—which were good and friendly, in which neither of them shifted their position in the slightest. One day Ax arrived at the suite and found to his horror that Fiorinda was there, alone with the Sayyid and his brothers-in-law. Fiorinda, straight backed on the hotel sofa, hands in her lap like a princess in a fairytale, wearing a grey voile shift over glistening cream satin; her hair burning through a grey cobweb scarf. When Ax came in she smiled at him, made her excuses, took her coat and left.
‘So that is your wife,’ said Sayyid Muhammad.
‘Ah—’
‘She’s a charming young woman, intelligent too. You did well there, lad.’
‘Muhammad, could you do me a really big favour. Could you…not use that term, when Fiorinda is around.’
‘She seems like your wife to me. I think I must call her your wife.’
‘Big favour. Please.’
Sayyid Muhammad smiled at the young man’s anxiety. ‘You are under that little lady’s thumb: well, it’s natural for a while. But you be careful. You know, the difference between Islam and Christian, on the matter of women—and it’s a real difference, though I’ve never argued with you on the civil rights issue, I’m all for that kind of equality—comes down to the danger of idolatry. We recognise it, we guard against it, the Christians don’t. We’re so weak, where they are concerned, every man is the same. We would put them next to God, and that is not allowed.’
‘How can you talk about the people of God,’ said Ax, ‘and say we, when you’re leaving out half of them? What is Fiorinda then, a djinn?’
She is a fine lass, thought Sayyid Muhammad. She dresses extravagently, but a sight more modestly than most Christian girls: and she has something very strange in the back of her eyes. ‘There are such beings, in some sense. This is a matter of revelation.’
Ax had been going into djinn, and the whole ingenious project of making modern science line up with the magical and supernatural hierarchies of the Qur’anic cosmos. It was interesting stuff.
‘As long as we stick to in some sense, and it’s an Islamicized term for autonomic software agents, or mysterious big number behaviour. I can go with that.’
‘Well, mysticism is not for you. But government is, so let us return to that problem.’
Ax sometimes wished his prophet of choice had had the tact to get crucified and bow out of it, instead of sticking around to set up a religio—political state. He sat down, frowning.
‘Muhammad, to me Islam means accepting the will of God, and accepting that the task of the human community is to become the presence of God’s mercy and compassion on earth. I’m not interested in the jurisprudence. If you can miraculously square Shari’a with abandoning the death penalty, leaving out the headscarves, and dropping the discussion of how much you have to nick before you get your hand chopped off, good luck to you: but I’m not going to be your ally, even if I was ever in a position to influence the lawgivers.’
‘As long as we’re talking,’ said Sayyid Muhammad, ‘I’m in with a chance.’
Times and times he had crossed London, from Paddington to Battersea, coming up from the cottage—yes, using public transport. Always, why not? I like to see life—without hearing a single English voice, sometimes without hearing a word of English spoken. No chance of that this evening. The Eurostar invasion rolled back. No tourists. No oddly garbed munchkin Japanese girls, no vast middle—aged North American couples. Posters and video clips everywhere about the referendum. He joined the patient crowd on an Underground platform, thinking about the last six or seven years. On tour and gigging, plugged in at the cottage, working with the Heads in Battersea, plenty drugs to paper over the gaps. Could have gone on forever, sitting there in Limbo. On the Circle line he obstinately stayed by the doors, propping up the carriage roof, (you can move down, sunshine, you fit better); and played the game of desert island Londoners. The ones he liked the look of, the ones he’d have to feed to the sharks. There’s a clay-coloured soulful, sexless face from the Fertile Crescent. I’ll have hir. A face from West Africa, young but Traditionalist, scarified cheeks like a ripe fruit bursting. She’s okay. One from the Horn, very superior profile, but he looks sulky. Sharkmeat. A black haired, pale-eyed, white skinned Irish girl, chatting hard with her sparky hejabed girlfriend whose looks are from the Gulf somewhere, (keep those two). Red braces type, essentially Norman French, standing out still after a thousand years, that hard T junction nose and eyebrows, slab cheeks, keep him on trial: and they are all English. Gingery Scot in a cashmere overcoat, a senior suit of the first order. Don’t usually see those on the Tube, maybe he’s a devout Countercultural suit. Now there is a stunner. What went into that? Vietnamese-Irish-Nigerian? Wonder if she’d like to fuck Aoxomoxoa? And they’re all English. Presumably, pragmatically, since they’re still here. Wonder what they make of me.
Wonder are they feeling merciful.
Change at Baker Street, and here we wait and wait. People looking at each other, saying not a word but what a buzz in the air. Something had happened to London, jerked the whole gross, unspeakably huge mass of human parts into vivid alertness, the brain’s P300 response (the very same that Aoxomoxa used for his wicked immersive purposes) New York must have felt like this, he thought, after 9/11. But the Frankenstein here was not the shock of unprecedented injury, no, something far different, something rarely, rarely so powerful as this. Call it Ax Preston, call it hope, but don’t forget to be afraid.
At some point on Massacre Night, I decided I would stay with this. Not sticking around to get vengeance on the Pig. Perish the thought
. Simply because it would be a crime against the Ideology to walk away from something so fucking strange. When is it going to end? Trouble ahead, trouble behind. When will the state of affairs formerly known as normal resume? Never, he began to suspect. This isn’t nearly over, it has only just begun.
Green Park, and out into the pale, warm powdery twilight. The gates were open. The hippie guards were outside one of the sentry boxes, deeply involved in a crap game. ‘Hi, Sage.’
‘Hi, slackers. Maybe we should invest in a flock of trained geese. Ax here yet?’
‘Haven’t seen him. Try the North Wing.’
Instead he found Fiorinda, playing the piano alone in a dusty drawing room.
‘What’s that? Scarlatti?’
‘Yeah.’ There was a bottle of wine on the grand piano. He topped up the glass beside it, and took bottle and glass off to a row of chill-out assorted armchairs. Something Insanitude must have been going on in here.
‘Hey, don’t take my wine… Bring it back here.’
He came back and leant there watching, as the serene music spilled out from her hands. ‘You managed to find your way to the polling station?’
‘I did. Very sweet and old fashioned, the whole thing. I had no idea.’
‘Sage, tell me this stupid referendum is going to work out.’
‘This stupid referendum is going to work out.’
‘Are you just saying that because I asked you to?’
‘Aargh. Don’t do that, Fee. It pisses me off. Have you been out much today? I’ve come across London, looking at people. I think they’ve voted for him.’
‘Then I’m glad. Oh well, why not. The hero of the hour, with a battle-hardened army at his back, having embraced the religion of the coming age, asks the people to elect him king. Sure, of course. Since we are heading for the Dark Ages anyway. It’s romantic, but not what I would call progress.’
‘You been talking like that to Ax?’
‘No, but I’ve been thinking it. This is not my world. No matter what the result is, my world ended on Massacre Night. Look what happens to me. You and Ax go off to war, I stay behind to look after Ax’s baby project, and manage the household. Until you get back, and I’m required as a pet again.’
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