‘Don’t give me NDogs again,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I don’t want to be asleep, being asleep is like being awake only worse. Ax, don’t let him do that to me.’
‘Ha. You think you’re sorted now, don’t you, brat. You can go whining to Ax, any time you think I’m pushing you around. Anytime he pisses you off you’re going to come whining to me. It will probably work too… C’mon, if you don’t like being asleep. Back to the kitchen. Drink some wine, smoke some spliff.’
‘You won’t send me to the whitecoats?’
‘We will not send you to the whitecoats.’
‘I’m so sorry, I know I’m being a horrible nuisance.’
‘Leave that out, stupid brat. You are not a nuisance.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘I know you are. You have Ax, you have me, we’re in the van. Everything real is good.’
They went back to the kitchen: and in some ways things were better after that. But she was not all right. She couldn’t or wouldn’t tell them what was going on, they had to give up asking, it upset her too much. She couldn’t keep still. She had to pace up and down, bite her lips, dig her nails into her palms. She had to talk, incessantly, but could not complete a sentence. She needed to shit, they both had to go with her and hold her hands. Sage coaxed her into drinking a pint of dioralyte, because dehydration was obviously one of her problems: matched her gulp for gulp with the filthy tasting stuff, assuring her he really didn’t mind if she threw up all over him. Then she did throw up; and afterwards refused even plain water. Ax began to feel sure, deadly certainty, absolutely immutable, that this wasn’t a temporary breakdown. Fiorinda would never come back. No, worse, this was the real Fiorinda. This thick, bloody spring of desperation was welling up from the core of of where Fiorinda had always lived. She had fallen into herself, she would never get out again—
They’d promised they would not to give her any more NDogs. But she was so distressed, so exhausted they changed their minds and dosed her again, put her to bed again. Stayed with her this time, talking softly about neutral things.
‘That was a very low key set you did.’
‘It was meant to be.’ Ax wanted a cigarette. His were in his jacket, he had to make do with one of Sage’s Anandas, because she couldn’t be left.
‘An’ you didn’t play your Jerusalem. You haven’t made some kind of sacrifical vow about renouncing that solo, have you? Because of Pigsty and all that?’
‘Nah,’ said Ax. ‘I wasn’t in the mood. They would’ve sung along, and I really thought, this afternoon, if they started a singalong, with that or with fucking ‘Oats and Beans’, I was going to have to trash my gear.’
‘That I would have liked to see.’
Fiorinda stirred and murmured. Sage reached up and touched the wall. The dim light brightened; she was still sleeping.
‘What’s that feel like? The ATP?’
‘Tiring,’ said Sage. ‘If you’re using it heavily. Very tiring, if you forget what you’re doing. And hungry. But this—’ he touched the wall again. ‘Feels like nothing, feels like flipping a switch. The light-propagating gel is doing most of the work.’
‘I’ve been talking to people about a pilot scheme in housing, in London. But I’ve never actually… How d’you turn it off?’
‘Vary the pressure.’ Sage touched the wall, darkness: another touch, light.
‘And there’s no power-source but your cell metabolism, and we can set this up anywhere. Beats any other microgeneration I’ve looked into… How bright can you get the light? Could you cook with ATP?’
‘Bright as day: I’ll show you when she’s awake. You can slow cook, haybox things; same as keep a well-insulated room warm. Piss poor energy audit on grilling a steak. New housing, or conversion? Conversion wouldn’t be hard, it’s what I did in here. Move out the furniture, spray on the gel, move back in. The catch is, anyone who wants to use it has to take the treatment. A tricky concept to sell to the science-hating CCM.’
‘Or to the general public, who are unfortunately getting that way. Collateral damage… I’m thinking about it.’
She slept for twenty minutes: woke crying, accusing them of breach of trust.
They returned to the kitchen and stayed there, fighting Fiorinda’s demons. Sage had to do most of the talking: for Ax, the nightmare was too real. He felt that they’d agreed on this division of labour. Ax would go down with her, into the dark, and Sage would keep watch, ride shotgun for them both. Towards dawn they were together on one of the astronaut berths, Fiorinda wrapped in the sailor jacket, her head on Ax’s shoulder, Sage beside them: bhangra playing softly, the bass mixed out to a filmy, miles-deep oceanic murmur.
‘I hate the idea that evil is essential and complementary,’ she said. ‘That’s what my gran believes, like a good Pagan. I despise that way of looking at things. I believe that suffering, passion is the other side of reality, the stuff we have to respect. Evil is just what sad bastards do.’
‘Not important at all,’ agreed Sage.
‘Important, but contemptible.’
‘Okay.’
‘But pain is valid. You can tell because when you are inside it, you can live there. You can get to the place, level, state, don’t know what to call it, where it’s breathable. Usually I can do that, but sometimes, like tonight, I daren’t. Sometimes you can’t go there, because of horrible things that are lying in wait on the way. Do you want some more of this, Ax?’
‘Thanks,’ He took the spliff from her cold, shaking hand.
She stroked the sleeve of her jacket. ‘Oh, I meant to tell you. It’s not the Titanic, it’s the Battleship Potemkin. This is Tom’s stage coat. He likes to be a deserter from the Potemkin on stage, you know, from the Russian Revolution. In solidarity with the revolting masses of the fucked-up. We wouldn’t let him, last night. He’d have steamed to death like a pudding. It’s written on the hat. Look.’
‘If you say so.’
He couldn’t read the lettering. But an attack of dyslexia wasn’t much to worry about, after the past few aeons (amazingly, according to his watch, less than four hours since they left the Leisure Centre), during which he had been utterly convinced that his darling was going to live the rest of her life insane, in a state of unreachable terror: and it was all his fault. The Heads’ cocktail was bottoming out, paranoia fading. He wondered what it would have been like, untainted by mood and circumstance, but he didn’t think he’d be trying the same mix again.
The post-Massacre-Night world outside was a hard vacuum. Open space inside the van was not so bad, but Sage seemed in real danger when he left them: which he did, occasionally, to fetch essential supplies or whack himself in the throat with another popper. But he always insisted he would be okay, and he always came back safe.
At ten in the morning Ax was sound asleep. Sage lay awake on the opposite couch, unmasked, smoking a cigarette, staring at the ceiling.
Where am I?
In Northern Europe, early in Dissolution Year. An Arts Festival with a ‘strange rock music’ component, DARK on the line-up with the Heads, and they are all in the same hotel. I am prowling the Northern Europe Breakfast Buffet, staring, through the protection of the mask, at the pickled herrings and the smoked peppers, the cucumber surprise and the chopped beetroot, the heaving platters of boiled eggs, baked meats, glistening cheeses, my God. At least it’s colourful. George comes up beside me—
‘Well, did you fuck her?’
‘No.’
‘Does she even know you want to?’
‘Hope not. She’s not supposed to know.’
The mask his brother Head is wearing doesn’t do natural expressions, or it would be looking between bemused and exasperated. George has no idea what kind of night that was, and he isn’t going to find out from Sage. He can’t make out what is going on.
‘Now lissen up, Sage. Some day soon she is going to take a fancy to one of those other blokes, the ones she does fuck because she’s afraid to say no. And then where will
you be?’
I will be here.
Didn’t think it could happen. If some other guy takes her away, before she is ready to say yes to me, I will take her back. How could that be a problem? I’m Aoxomoxoa, and she belongs to me. How was I to know that the unscrupulous bastard who would take my baby down, knowing that he did not have her free consent, and make her happy…would be Ax?
‘Hallo?’
She was standing in the doorway, barefoot, still wearing that grey rag of a cowgirl dress, and the sailor jacket.
‘Ah, Fiorinda.’ He sat up, stubbed out the cigarette. ‘C’me here.’
‘I’m better.’
‘I am glad to hear it.’ He examined her face. She looked wretched, tallow-pale and huge shadows under her eyes: but herself again. ‘That was a fun-packed few hours you gave us. What’s the name of the Prime Minister?’
‘Huh? What’s he got to do with it? I’m really sorry, Sage.’
‘Don’t start that again.’
Ax woke and sat up, combing back strands of fine dark hair with his fingers. Fiorinda tugged Sage to his feet and pulled him to the other couch, settled herself between them, smiled at them angelically. ‘It’s over and I don’t want to talk about it. Except, thank you very much, both of you, and I think you ought to go and get yourselves some breakfast. You must be sick of the sight of me. I’m going to have a shower, if the van will let me. I want you to call Allie. Tell her I’m ill in bed, and she’s to please come and read me a storybook. She’ll understand. We used to read to each other in Park Lane, when we were prisoners of the Pig.’
Sage didn’t have Allie’s direct line stored on his wrist, and none of them could remember the number. They had to hunt down a phone, the night ravelling up: parents, Prime Minister and his lovely wife, Fiorinda on stage…and then what? Where exactly did we leave things? Sage tracked down Ax’s phone in the cab, came back into the kitchen talking to Allie.
‘What do you mean, ill in bed,’ she demanded. ‘She was all right last night.’
‘I’m only saying what I was told to say. Girlcode, I assumed.’…‘Now the horrible woman thinks we’ve been beating you.’
‘I heard that, Sage. I don’t suppose you keep any books in that overgrown Tardis?’
‘Oooh, shouldn’t think so,’ he said, looking straight at a clear fronted locker stacked with ancient hardbacks and paperbacks.
‘So there’s no point in asking what you have. Shit. Those kids have been building suspension bridges with my entire library…oh, I’ll find something.’
Fiorinda had switched the back of the door to the outside world to mirror, and was staring at herself. ‘What a disgusting object. Tell her I’ve got Tom’s jacket. And his hat.’ She headed for the shower. ‘And tell her to bring me some clothes.’
‘Right. You get all that Allie? Bring the princess some clothes.’
Shortly Allie turned up, exquisitely dressed in a slim cocoa brown sleeveless shift over matching narrow silk trousers, bearing a smart overnight bag: Allie with her dislike of Aoxomoxoa well on display, prickly as a cat stepping into a dog’s kennel, and not too pleased with Ax, either… Very difficult. Fiorinda emerged from the shower, wrapped in a bathrobe that belonged to George Merrick, and rescued them: told them again to go, go.
‘You’ll want the mask, Sage,’ said Ax, stopping him as they were about to walk out the door. ‘You look terrible.’
‘Oh yeah, forgot.’ He peered at his reflection: deathly-pale, bloodless lips, suffused eyes, lines of fatigue deep as ditches. ‘Adrenalin will do that. Thanks.’
Out into the heat and glare. It was shattering.
‘Well,’ said Ax. ‘Another night to remember.’
They stared for a while at the crumpled water butt, and began to walk to the arena. Green grass, blue sky, colourful campers, noise. It felt like an illusion, a paper world. Nothing meant anything, except the sense, already acutely nostalgic, of the immense peril (yet again) that they’d come through together.
‘What?’ said Sage, ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Nothing’s wrong. I’m just very, very glad you were there. You were amazing.’
‘Don’t be nice to me Ax. Anyone’s nice to me this morning, I’m gonna burst into tears.’
‘Let’s go down the Oz Bar. I’ll buy you a steak.’
They went down the Oz Bar, but Sage wasn’t happy. He was edgy, fidgeting, he seemed to have had enough of Ax’s company. They’d been there for a few minutes, steak breakfast hardly touched, when George and Bill came into the tent. ‘Oh, my band!’ says Sage, jumps up and makes his escape.
Yeah, thought Ax, watching him go and understanding why. I cut you out, brother… Didn’t even know I was doing it, though I did kind of doubt the brotherly affection story. But it was her choice, and you can’t ask me to regret the way it went. I’ll just have to hope you can forgive me, for knowing what I can’t help knowing, after last night. But nothing could be a problem, between Sage and Ax and Fiorinda. The night they’d just spent had been a voyage such as the legends of friendship are made of. This morning it that Fiorinda had been fighting demons for all of them: a rite of purification that had finally put the horrors to rest. The future rushed in on him, (long gone the days when you could pin down the prospects in a couple of lists). He met the onslaught, exhausted but positive. Thirty thousand staybehinds on this site alone, insisting on living like Bangladeshi slumdwellers, and more and more of them all over the country; where is this going to end? I’ll sort it somehow. The project is real now. It’s happening. Better engage with that.
SEVEN
Big In Brazil
In mid-May it was Luke Moys’ birthday, Luke being the Head who had died of pneumonia the summer after Dissolution. The Heads held a service in Reading campground’s boneyard: a staybehinds’ affair, no outsiders; unless you counted Chip and Verlaine. Fiorinda was there, ZenSelfers, the Sun Temples (Sage’s long suffering neighbours were a forgiving bunch of hippie tribals); an assortment of random campers. This was when Sage was fucking Olwen Devi—two weeks and going strong, record-breaking stuff for Aoxomoxoa (must be the dead clever Sage, the one who wrote the immersions and built the avatar mask, who was getting it on with the guru). But Olwen wasn’t at the service.
Luke would have been twenty three. He was the only one of the Few and friends to lie here: Martina Wyatt and Ken Batty, who had died on Massacre Night, were represented by memorial plaques. The boneyard décor was still raw: a henge of car body panels, weird camper memorials. No plantings allowed but native flowers, lovely enough right now; no marble angels as yet. They laid the stone, (a slice of polished serpentine, about half a metre square) and sat around it talking. Some grass was smoked, but no alcohol was taken and no other drugs: the Heads had decided it would not be seemly. At last they sang a few hymns. Luke had liked hymn tunes. The ZenSelfers were usually reticent about their musical talent amidst the crap-at-it English, but if Aoxomoxoa was singing with them that was different. Which he was, because of all the utter balderdash Sage had laid upon the media folk over the years, the one about his grandad and the Methodist choir was perfectly true. The effect was beautiful, so seductive the whole crowd was trying to join in by the end. Only Fiorinda held out. She didn’t know the words or the tunes, and had no desire to learn.
The Last Days Of Disco song, ‘Dear lord and father of mankind…’ sank to rest. Luke’s cousins and his gran (he had no closer family) left to catch their train. The close friends of the deceased waited a while in the afternoon sun, to let the congregation thin out.
‘It’s getting to be like two complete worlds,’ said Verlaine. ‘Occupying the same space.’ He pointed with a chewed stalk of grass at the hedge that divided this raw garden from the Thames. ‘Do they know we’re real? Are we still real?’
‘We were real enough when we put their lights out,’ said George.
‘I don’t like it,’ grumbled Bill Trevor. ‘This futuristic stuff is getting personal. I don’t want to end
up transformed into some crackpot post-human elf.’
George and Cack laughed at him. ‘And you’re sittin’ there with a fuckin’ skull for a head,’ jeered Cack. ‘Lissen to yourself.’
‘Relax Bill,’ said the boss. ‘We won’t change. Doesn’t matter what we do to ourselves, we’ll be like Edwardians watching tv. It’ll be the next generation, the kids who never knew any different, who cross the borderline.’
Fiorinda lay in the grass, in tattered green silk over yellow underskirts, a donkey-eaten wheatstraw hat shading her face: a Countercultural Titania. Two weeks of sun had turned the skin of her arms and throat an amazing shade of deep fallow gold. ‘What’s it say on Luke’s stone?’
‘I rise from sleep,’ George translated, ‘And leave my dreams behind.’
‘But I don’t want to leave my dreams behind. Not even the bad ones.’
Sage laughed, hugging her shoulders as they stood up together. ‘Hear that? Fiorinda wants to live forever. Get onto it, someone.’
They began to walk back to the arena, Sage falling into step beside Fiorinda with his slow, deliberate stride: deliberate, she thought, because he takes it for granted he’s going to be walking down, so to speak, to anyone he’s with. Hands in his pockets. Even masked they must be hidden if possible: tucked in pockets, into belt-loops, curled into fists.
‘I don’t want to live forever,’ she said. ‘I meant, I’ll be very pissed off if it turns out, after all the hassle, that this was only rehearsal, a daydream. Do you believe in life after death?’
‘Not sure.’
‘I never did, until my mother died. I wasn’t there. She wasn’t supposed to die that night, I’d gone off to lie down. The nurse fetched me but it was too late. I knew then that…she had not stopped being. It was obvious, can’t explain why. I don’t exactly believe in another life after this one. Doesn’t make sense. But there’s something. Something about time not being what we imagine it is, maybe? That means death is not what we think, either.’
‘It’s a topic I’d rather not dwell on. I have killed people, Fiorinda.’
Bold as Love Page 24