Band of Gypsys (11 page)

Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering…

And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,

And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

They touched fingertips: Sage grinning fit to split his beautiful face. Fiorinda looked down at her skirts, surprised that the silver and blue and green costume she’d been wearing for
The World
had disappeared, and the smoky-opal party dress her avatar had been wearing gone too. Dammit, I swore I’d never do costume changes.

‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Sage. ‘It’s a psychedelic drug. Tell me, did we execute our stage coup? I’ve forgotten.’

‘Me too. Short term memory waits for no one. Oh, wait, I think we decided it would be more fun to play it straight, the way we were told. And
pre-emptively
drown it, with a howling rock and roll set right before…’

‘Yeah, yeah, you’re true, now I remember.’

B-loc is a drug. You don’t notice the effect with a phone call, but significant activity and it’s a riot. I suppose people will get used to it, if we ever develop those industrial applications. Or there will be a lite version, for everyday.

‘Tastes and smells, Fiorinda?’

Roxane was watching her with acute, forensic interest…

‘Huh?’

‘Is ethereal b-loc communal-stardom going to be enough?’

‘It’s better than feeding on human flesh, Rox.’

The party broke up. The Few headed off in their different directions, the techs took their leave. Rox, who didn’t leave a comfortable chair lightly, lingered, waiting for hir taxi to be announced. Ax and Sage sat on either side the babe, plying her with buffet tidbits in distinctly sexual foreplay. If you hang out with rockstars, you get used to being bathed in post-performance pheromones.

‘I hate to interupt,’ said Rox. ‘But congratulations on another triumph… Yet some might say you delivered a dangerous snub to the Second Chamber today, Ax. Mr Preston comes to Reading, but he won’t touch his guitar,
and
he forces an Ultra Green Neo-Feudalist government to accept his futuristic tech.’

‘We’ve done b-loc on stage before. We did it in California.’

‘Ax, don’t be obtuse. That was the Chosen Few, bi-locating briefly to the Hollywood Bowl, run by I-Systems US. A very different kettle of fx.’

Ax ate a forkful of chicken. ‘What are you getting at, Rox?’

‘I know the cover story, but many observers who analyse Mayday won’t be dwelling on a contractual dispute. They assume you are above such things. Some will say today was your Presidency in a nutshell. You’re determined to make trouble, but you have no hands-on power. Literally, no muscle. Is that really what you want?’

‘Am I supposed to practice the answer I’d give in public? Okay, I’d say…damn right. I want to be insubstantial. It’s my intention to leave government to the government, encourage good practice in social welfare by gentle persuasion, and put my influence behind techno-green lifestyle choices—’

‘Very good. And the trouble-making?’

Ax looked up: a gleam of grim amusement. ‘I hadn’t finished. That’s my agenda, which I mean to follow. But not straight off… Ooh, there goes the entry phone. It must be your taxi.’

Marlon had dropped out of b-loc during
The World
, felled by slumber, and had stumbled off to bed as soon as the show was over. When Rox finally condescended to leave, that was the lot of them, thank God.

‘It went well,’ said Ax. ‘Do you think?’

‘Oh, yeah. Weird being so old, and how I still love it.’

‘Me too.’

Fiorinda reappeared, having shown their last guest to the door. The men were sitting quietly, hands clasped, enjoying the silence. Sage knew she would make straight for Ax, and she did: her whole body alive with single-minded hunger. Ah, female choice. It’s a fabulous thing to watch. Even better when you know you’re next.

The stately home was quite a pile. It stretched interminable, crusted with artistic fortifications, along the base of a low green hill; a red-brick Gormenghast. From the South Terrace formal lawns extended to a drop like a tank trap, a tree-scattered park and woodland beyond. The turrets of a gatehouse could be glimpsed in the distance; through fresh young foliage. The village, Wallingham Camp, was a mile or so off to the west. A drive, or private road, crossed the park, before sweeping around to join the main approach: bounded by deer fences so tall they were an eyesore. Must be some well-hard three-day-eventer stags around these parts.

A few sheep, rare breed pet animals, were grazing.

Make a list

Identify somewhere the folks would like to live. Forget Bridge House, it’s too late to move them back there, it has a blue plaque and a carpark. (NB. That car park has to go. Okay, it’s
reserved for essential private transport
, but what that means is, one law for the elite, one for the rest. The people don’t know I had no control over what happened to my childhood home, so it makes me look like a right hypocrite
.)

‘I always thought of Kent as flat,’ he remarked.

‘It’s flatter by the sea,’ said his companion, a fleshy man, in Islamic dress but bareheaded, about Ax’s own age: his red mouth like a fruit in the middle of a full set beard, waves of thick dark hair crowding round his face. This was Faud Hassim, once the front man of an Islamic guitar band from Bridgwater called
The Assassins
.

The Assassins had been very encouraging company for a mixed race outfit from Taunton called The Chosen Few—a year or so behind them on the trail. It had all gone sour in the days of Dissolution, after Ax converted, and Faud found himself in the stinging position of being the
other
Radical Islamic Rockstar, not the famous one. There had been nasty scenes, dirty acts of sabotage: a night at Reading, hard to forget, that had ended in a planned and ugly free-for-all. Yet it was Ax Preston who’d paved the way for Faud’s present success, ironically enough. He’d left the music and gone into politics. Currently he was a leading “Rebel” MP, who also filled the post of the Government’s Adviser on Countercultural Affairs: vacated after the fall of the Green Nazis by the unlamented Benny Preminder.

He wasn’t a big fan of Ax Preston; still carried a rancorous loser’s attitude around, with absolutely bugger all justification. But Ax had more tolerance for the resentment these days. He could see that from Faz’s point of view, fate had just been damned unfair.

They were on the terrace together because it was Ramadan, and the rest of the party was eating lunch. Ax’s minders—barmy squaddies from the Insanitude—sat placid on the low wall a few yards away, modestly armed. They were a compromise. Ax liked to drive his car alone, walk down the street alone, and in England who had ever been able to stop him? But these days he was forced to provide his own security, just to keep an eye on the inevitable government spooks.

The barmies had a Shakespearian look: sitting there patiently idle.

‘When are you three planning to move in here?’

‘Not immediately.’ Ax left the balustrade and strolled.

Faud kept pace beside the President, maintaining a slightly surly air. ‘This place isn’t big enough?,’ he inquired. ‘You’re holding out for a private castle?’

‘Nah. We’re urbanites. Don’t want to leave London.’

The terrace was a lengthy stroll. It was the kind of house that you might never leave, thought Ax, as he kept up his side of a stilted conversation. The women, naturally, would rarely get further than that tank-trap. Indoors there would be long expeditions for little serving girls with coals. Well, scratch the coals… He glanced at his watch, an equally fogeyish replacement for his moon phase Seiko, the one the kidnappers had nicked: old friend that he still missed. He never felt hunger pangs in Ramadan, he just started to get the
running on empty feeling
, that Sage found so addictive. Sharp set, as the old phrase goes. The fasting gives you an edge.

‘We should be praying, loudly, outside the dining room windows.’

‘Testifying our witness,’ agreed Faz, gloomily.

They were alone in their observance, as they’d been alone for midday prayer. The shock of having no oil in the bank had cooled a lot of modern Muslim ardour in the Diaspora. Attendance at Friday prayer had plunged, across the former UK. As much as you wish it could, no organised religion can thrive on spirituality alone—

Faz Hassim, far from conventionally devout in the old days, had the air of sticking to his ethnic garb in defiant mourning.

‘We’ll soon be as dickless as the Christians. Can it be God’s will?’

They laughed together: because it was the fasting month; because as different as their allegiance to Islam seemed, they both cared about such things.

Faz unbent, allowing vulgar curiosity to unfurl. ‘How difficult is it, living with non-Muslim partners?’

‘It’s not a popular topic. I keep my observance to myself.’

‘Where are they today, Sage and Fiorinda? Don’t they respect your family?’

‘Sage may turn up later.’

‘None of the Few could make it, either?’

‘It wouldn’t be appropriate, Faz. This is not a rockstar occasion.’

Ax looked up at the house, the first storey laden with blue torrents of wisteria in flower. A south face. The red and white roses in the terrace beds were opening, undamaged by the long winter. It reminded him of Bridge House, his lost
heimat
. Bridge House inflated in a disquieting dream.

Nearly time to go in—

Faz was peering at him with earnest curiosity. Well, now what?

‘Do you ever feel left out? On the sidelines, watching Fiorinda and Sage do their fevered, romantic Cathy and Heathcliff thang?’

‘All the time,’ said the President, long resigned to tactless questioning about the Hot Couple. (He pined like a lost child for Sage’s presence at his side, in place of the bearded Assassin, but that was his own business.) ‘Feeling left out is the essential threesome experience. Our relationship is like democracy, you know: a terrible idea, except for the alternatives.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Faz, embarrassed.

‘That’s okay.’ Ax glanced at his watch again, and at last came the deferential summons in his ear. ‘Time to go in. C’mon, let’s get into character—’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Listen, Faz, could you do something for me?’

‘What is it?’

‘This afternoon, could you talk to my mum? I’ll be occupied, and I don’t like her to get ignored. Just stay by her, could you?’

‘Okay. I’ll do that.’

Wallingham, built in 1906 for a newspaper millionaire, in erudite, oversized imitation of an Elizabethan fortified house, was supposed to be a National Treasure. Ax didn’t see it. Outdoors the place was like secure hospital thinly disguised as Hampton Court. The indoors was undeniably beautiful, but not to his taste: Art Nouveau in full
grande horizontale
spate, obsessively restored (there were records: you don’t blow a fortune on a place this size and forget to keep a scrapbook). It was a sumptuous period stage-set they walked into, with black-and-white uniformed servants everywhere you looked. They were directed to the Clouded Yellow Drawing Room, the one with the Klimt wall-hangings, to join the infidel.

Back to that list—

Get Jor and Milly to approve the real estate. Let’s face it, it’s those two we need to please. Once approved, quietly aquire said property. No money? No problem. Our credit is good, and if not, Sage’s dad will stake us & won’t feel a thing

Meanwhile, poke around and turn up a face-saving excuse for the move

This all takes time…

Ax waved aside a flurry of respects (maliciously, he knew this set loved to play at courtiers), went over to Milly and sat on the arm of her clouded-yellow satin armchair. She’d lost weight again while he’d been in the US; she was looking very stylish. The last traces of old, down-dressing drummer Milly, with the don’t-care haircut and the gardener’s hands, had vanished. It was an obscure blow.

‘Okay, Mil?’

There was nothing sexual left between them, not a twinge. But there was something… When Ax was tense he hated to be touched, a legacy of the hostage experience. She had not touched him, as he endured the social greetings circus. She did not touch him now as she looked up, locked hands in her lap. The new baby, Milly and Jordan’s second child, wasn’t here. He was with his Kettle grandparents. Ax had discovered this only when he arrived, and he had not been pleased—

‘I’m okay. Ax, there’s something I meant tell you.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Don’t be pissed off with Jor. It was my idea to send Troy away.’

‘Well, congratulations. Listen, could I use that? You didn’t want me and the baby and Jordan together at the same public party, something on those lines?’

‘Use, use, use… You’re a bastard.’

‘Yeah, and I’m sorry. It’s your call. But may I?’

‘Anything that helps, Ax.’

He nodded, smiled briefly, and moved on to join his brothers, who were standing together in front of the summer fireplace, where a huge jardinière of cut flowers sprawled under elven swirls and swathes of beaten pewter.