Bold as Love (16 page)

President Pigsty decided there was a Countercultural issue. He was outraged over the honor-killings, dress codes, all that oppressive stuff. He ordered the toughest nuts of the barmy army up there, to liase with the police and sort the bastards. When his Cabinet demured he told them to mind their own business, they were a bunch of fucking wankers and he was the President. But there was no change in Yorkshire, and the Pig’s pride was touched. One day in September he announced that he’d fixed up for Ax and Sage to go north. They were leaving tomorrow, no argument. Let them solve the Islamic problem. If they were so fucking clever.

The others gave Ax and Sage space, after the meeting was dismissed. No one knew what to say. They were still hostages, still at the Pig’s mercy. The two of them went back to the Snake Eyes house and up to the room Ax had shared with Fiorinda. It was twilight and there was a brown-out. Ax fussed with candles, which to Sage was nostalgic. At Reading they had ATP lighting, a limited system, but beyond futuristic: a glimpse of a world that challenged Head Ideology in ways he didn’t know if he could tolerate.

‘Well? I suppose we have to go?’

‘Yeah,’ said Ax. ‘I suppose we do.’

Without withdrawing his support, or causing trouble with the Pig, Sage had been quietly going out of his way to annoy Ax, and Ax had accepted the situation. He knew it was his own fault, for impugning the guy’s honour (to get suitably mediaeval about it) that time, over Fiorinda. He shouldn’t have done it, and he’d wished often he could apologise, but some things are better left unsaid. He was surprised and relieved at Sage’s attitude.

‘And we can take it that our secret rulers are happy for the barmy army to be involved?’

Ax was sitting next to Sage on the bed, the room didn’t have much furniture. He leaned back, head against the wall, thinking about Benny Preminder, sitting there so demurely, making his notes. Bastard. ‘No secret. The PM’s clearly decided that using the barmy army is better than sending in the regulars, which is the next step.’

‘So what are you planning to do when you get there?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘No brilliant solution to the Islamic Question, on that chip of yours?’

‘I keep telling people, it’s a datastack, not a wishing well. I’m only fucking sure that street fighting is not the solution. This is a problem of emotional identity, it feeds on that stuff.’

‘Fine. Let them be the Islamic Republic of whatever.’

‘Right. Then would you evacuate the non-Islamic population of Yorkshire? Or let them stay, sit back and watch the ethnic cleansing? Come to think of it, where would you set the borders of that Republic? What about London, Birmingham, Leicester, Manchester? You know of any major cities that
don’t
have a significant Islamic population? No, there has to be some way to convince the Islamics they want to be part of the new England. Maybe we have to find it…and without offending the Pig. Last thing I want is to challenge that fucker’s authority.’

The streets of Taunton, running with blood—

They sat in silence, watching the candlelight, and the shadows that played on the red Gibson, on some sheet music lying on a table; a saucer of dry catfood with which Ax had been trying to lure one of the Eyes’ cat’s pretty kittens into his life, a scarf that Fiorinda had left behind.

‘Pig’s goons aren’t going to be very impressed,’ Ax remarked gloomily. ‘I’ve never touched a firearm. I managed to avoid them on the Tour. What about you?’

‘I can use a shotgun.’ Sage took off the masks, and flexed his crippled hands. The right was worse off: that was the one with only half a thumb, the surviving fourth and fifth fingers lumpy and crooked from long ago efforts at repair. ‘My left hand’s more or less functional.’

‘I thought you was right handed.’

‘Yeah. Converted to ambidextrous by years of vicious bullying. Ah, it won’t be hard. Things like that never are.’

‘Easy enough for you to say. You’re the guy who juggles chain saws.’

‘First time I’ve heard you admit you’ve seen our stage act.’

‘Must’ve read about it somewhere.’

‘Hahaha. So we go up there, and what, we shoot people? My God.’

‘I hope it doesn’t come to that.’

‘I think it will.’

They contemplated the future. The sheer monstrous impossibility of what had happened to them, the hopelessness of Ax’s project.

‘Maybe now you grasp,’ said Sage at last, ‘why Fio was so fucked up.’

Ax flinched. ‘Please, could we not talk about Fiorinda.’

He hadn’t been too concerned when she moved back to Reading. It was just a spat, he’d known they would be together again. But now… She was living in that house, her mother still dying: refusing to let him visit, refusing all help. The last time they’d spoken on the phone she’d looked so bleakly unhappy. He was terrified. The only comfort he could offer himself, in those grey hours when Ax never slept, was that she was too down to get it together to slit her wrists or swallow enough paracetamol.

‘Sorry.’

Sage restored the masks and got to his feet: unfolding, as always, to unexpected heights. The skull’s stark grimace was irrationally cheering. ‘Okay, we’re off to the wars. Now lets find some company and get stinking drunk.’

Ax did not get drunk. Talking with Sage had made him realise that being treated like that by the Pig didn’t matter. The Islamic question was something he had to tackle: a hill to climb. Looking at it concentrated him so he forgot to drink; or if he remembered, the drug had no effect. Maybe the calories from the alcohol went straight into bit-minding, who knows. In the morning Sage was found in the Mugs Room, curled up peacefully beside a savory pool of vomit and urine. They woke him up and hosed him down, Ax and Sage went off to talk to media folk about their expedition, and it was time to set off. Ax went on thinking about his hill on the train: while Sage slept, folded in an impossible-looking pose on the opposite seat in their ancient first class compartment. Sage could sleep anywhere.

In Doncaster they were taken to a disused office block on Chequer Road, that the barmy army was using as a base. They were received on an upper floor by someone called Gervase: who sat behind a desk, in an open plan office that bore traces of its previous occupants, and explained that the barmy army in Yorkshire had no use for their presence.

‘I’d like to see you two dudes do your free concert or whatever it is, and get on the next train back to London. We’re running a war here, not a pissant rock gig.’

Gervase wore his new piercings and his custom-tattered camouflage with an air of self-satisfied irony. His accent was more offensive than Fiorinda’s, though not so perfect. You had to feel a certain sympathy with the pleasure he took in being rude to pop celebs: but he was frightening. Ax had met others of this chilling type. The kind of guy whose response to Massacre Night had been to realise that joining the hardline CCM was a smart career move.

‘A war?’

The Pig wannabe stared at him. ‘What else would you call it? Now, if you rockstars will bear with me, we’ll take care of your gear, and I’ll get someone to drive you to your hotel.’

He picked up a sheaf of papers and pretended to read. The goons at the doors of the office suite stared ahead of them. Either ex-regulars or they’d soon got the idea. Ax got up and went to the windows above the street. He thought about the rivers, the Don and the Trent, the line of the Great North Road: the old Roman road to London. Strip out the confusion of modern civilisation and you could easily see why this place had once been a guarded gateway to the south. And here we are again. How long does it take to complete the fall back to the Dark Ages? Not long. Not when the stumble and slide is being helped along by so many venal
idiots
.

It was late evening and there was a police curfew, but there was a crowd on the pavement for Ax and Aoxomoxoa. Gervase’s soldiers were shoving them back. Sage had got up too. He was prowling the deserted desks, turning over the spoor of the accounting firm that had died here, suddenly, some months ago. But the skull’s eye sockets appeared to be watching Ax with lively interest, to see how he would jump.

It was one of those moments when you have to take one path or another. Am I a visiting celebrity, or am I something else? Maybe, ignobly, it was a pure rockstar reflex that swung it. That’s
my
crowd, you smug bastard. ‘Sage, let’s go meet the public. Take care of the gear, Gervase. We’ll call you later.’

The lifts were non-functional. They went leaping down the stairs, passing the occasional startled militarised hippie. ‘Hey,’ said Sage, ‘What happened to not challenging the Pig’s authority?’

‘It’ll be okay, I can fix him.’

The guards on the ground floor seemed to have other orders, but Ax made it clear that he was going through. Faced with the hero of the Tour and your actual Aoxomoxoa, paragon and nonpareil of glorious English louthood, what could they do but give way? Minutes later Ax and Sage were working the front row, accepting eager, thrilled invitations to come along to the barmy army’s favourite club: marching away, the lads forming up behind them, roaring out the Deconstruction Tour song:

At least they were clearing the street, police should like that.

The club was a dank basement arena, given over to drinking and male bonding, the sound of yakking voices louder than the generic dancetrack. The moment they walked in they were surrounded all over again. Ax knew he’d made a risky move, but he didn’t think it was too dangerous. He could handle the Pig, at least this far. He put the problem out of his head and got into Tour mode. It wasn’t hard. These lads were nothing like as bad as the merciless hordes at the post—Deconstruction Tour concerts. They just wanted to get near, grinning all over their faces, laughing stupidly, bursting with pride.

Sage went off with some local connections of his napalming pals. Ax stayed with the first bunch: managed to get them past the gobsmacked stage, get them talking. One particular kid was intensely up on the Chosen, eager to discuss what had been going on in the making of
Dirigiste
(which album he kept calling
Dirigible,
but never mind); picking up the references to past greats with heart-warming accuracy. It was a shame he couldn’t have the attention he deserved.

Maybe another time.

‘You know what it was like for me?’ said one of them—young black man in a Deconstruction Tour teeshirt, shaken voice and shining eyes of someone who has seen the light—‘It was like, the world was in shades of grey, fuckin’ shades of grey. Suddenly it went into colour. Everything was green and alive, I was doing
something worthwhile
, the first time in my life. Fuckin’ magic, Ax!’

‘Not only green,’ said Ax. ‘That would be monotonous. If you’re going to have only green, you might as well have only grey. Extremists are all alike, we want variety.’ If he’d learned one thing on the Tour, it was how to talk pleasantly to drunken louts who had got idealism. How to understand that what for him was the aftermath of a hideous trainwreck was the major event of their lives, their righteous time, the moment when they had become real.

‘But what about this Islamic situation. What do you guys think of it?’

The barmies and their Doncaster mates looked at each other.

‘They say we’re protecting the pimps,’ burst out the
Dirigiste
boy, ‘it’s not fuckin’ true, Ax.’

‘There’s plenty of Islamics that run girls,’ added a civilian, a bulky white youth with premature Rapster Hulk tendencies. ‘Fucks’ sake… It’s them, fuckin’ minicab drivers with big guns, they won’t fucking give up—’

‘That’s why we gotta get military: go for the nests, burn them out.’

‘The way it is now, it’s horrible. Most of what happens never gets on the news, I bet
you
don’t even know some of it, Ax. Nail bombs, car bombs, shootings, and all these dead girls.’

‘We knew this Paki, we knew he’d killed this girl, his cousin or something, for walking down the street. So we took one of his girls and we cut her, not badly you know, but enough so he’d understand, and we sent her—’

‘It’s no good, they won’t learn. There’s only one way, got to finish them off.’

The barmy army lads were happy to explain what Gervase was planning, they knew no reason why not. The police were useless. All they wanted to do was play with their fuckin’ helicopters. No, the barmy army was going into the Islamic towns, in strength, with artillery, and… Shock and Awe, right? It was bloodcurdling. To these young men the idea of turning Leeds—Bradford into smoking rubble was not monstrous. Many of them had done time in the regulars, had seen active service: they were used to that culture. Or they were from the south, or from the other side of the Pennines, which made more difference than you’d think. Ax kept a straight face, listened, asked questions, and set about turning their feeling on the scorched earth plan around. It would need more than one conversation in a bar, but nothing like making a start.