Bold as Love (21 page)

Only person here of any significance who hadn’t known was coming up now to join him, mask inscrutable. Please, Sage, don’t give me a hard time.

At least the news seemed favourably received, on the whole.

And now, Sage’s physical presence at his side, what a relief, a babble of conversation rising in waves. Sayyid Mohammad, having seated Ax at his right hand, tactfully, blessedly left him alone, and got stuck into some neutral but important topic to keep the brothers and the son in law occupied. Ax stared at the handsome platters of food, wondering if he’d ever want to eat again. What the fuck have I done?

‘Well, you’re going to be interesting to live with come next August.’

‘Huh?’

‘Ramadan. Good idea not telling me,’ added Sage—dealing stoically with the double irritation of conventional eating irons, and having to eat with his right hand. ‘I might have felt obliged to do something weird and drastic myself.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I fucking hope it works, that’s all.’

‘It’ll work.’

Ax decided to blow out the settlement talks, after the first day. He found the way Sayyid Muhammad talked to the government people, his air of condescending to the bureaucrats, already having dealt with their
shaykh,
alarming. He and Sage spent a month meeting with imams, mullahs, Christian ministers and non-aligned community leaders: while the Internationals were given notice to quit, the Muslim Army (hopefully) was demobbed, and the barmy army guerillas were moved back to Doncaster; where they were (more or less) disarmed. The English government made concessions. Muslim and Hindu leaders agreed to an equal rights for women agenda; and a structure for dealing with recalcitrant offenders, religious or otherwise. Ax had not pressed for this element, no paper signatures would turn back the fundamentalists, only time would tell; but he was glad it went through.

In that month of public relations, one of the deputations they received was different. The soldiers wanted Sage and Ax to do a gig. Just the two of them. It was great that the Few were coming to tour the North, with a Big Name line up of guests, but it wouldn’t be the same. Peace Tour later, now the Ax and Aoxomoxoa. One night, something rare, for both the armies. Sayyid Mohammad would like it. He’d never been to a rock concert before.

‘You don’t know what you’re asking,’ Sage told them.

It was a challenge, they worked something out. Right until the actual night, they didn’t know what it was going to be like. It didn’t sound promising: Ax Preston on guitar, Aoxomoxoa on scary visuals, horrible noises and violent athleticism. They had no idea, until they were in the middle of it, that they had produced something stunning: and what a feeling then, eyes meeting across the stage, the huge civic centre hall packed, glittering sea of enraptured faces swirling out there in the void… Ax grinned at the skull, and looked away from this zing of glances to segue into ‘Dark Star’, a surprise for him, something they hadn’t planned. Now that is true love, Sage. I hate the fucking Grateful Dead, and I’m going to start hating them again the moment I get off this stage, but just for tonight, here you are, here’s a nightfall of diamonds for you to play with, yes I thought you’d know what to do—

In the second set there was more stuff that had not been planned. Ax kept up, not really surprised at the mayhem, Sage was known for it. He was amused to find himself playing the man’s part in this extended
pas de deux
: his role to be there, rock steady under the pyrotechnics, anticipating, taking the weight, so that Sage could not lose the beat, could not falter, could not fall. He was effacing himself but he didn’t mind. The Jerusalem solo would have been a touch tactless. But more than that: he’d had Sage supporting him, through this gruelling campaign. Taking the weight, always there. Time Ax gave something back.

They’d agreed that they would do no encores. Sage wanted to finish with ‘Who Knocks’, a track from the Heads’ new album,
Bleeding Heart.

Ax had not been sure that they should do this. ‘Who Knocks’ was a little too appropriate, if you accepted, as many did, in their hearts, that
sex
was a huge issue in this conflict. Plus the immersion (even diluted to mere visuals for a concert hall) was fearsome. He’d let himself be persuaded, and here it was, the final number. The faces, the whole hall drenched in red, and slippery intestinal silver: distorted, excorciated images, that teased the eye with the promise of shuddering horrors, mutilated openings in flesh, never giving you a straight answer… The sound that goes with them compounds the fascination, stirs up reactions that you can’t control, and at last here’s Sage, menacing and graceful, just
standing
right at the front of the stage, singing:

Who knocks?

singing about the beauty of women, their terrifying subtleties, and the things of which we know we are capable, any one of us… Yeah, tactless as hell, but a different, justified order of tactless from
Jerusalem
. He is a brilliant performer, thought Ax, watching from the shadows. Dunno why anyone would want to buy this stuff and take it home. (Fucking bizarre lives they must lead, Heads fans). But in performance he is superb. Great voice too, the bastard. Crying shame he hardly ever uses it. God, what are they making of this?

This hall full of men—

Sage walked off, the stage went dark. There was an accolade of stunned silence, and then the roar.

In the dressing room, Sage drenched in sweat, ebullient. Ax yelled at him, because of the second set, Sage unrepentant, says I knew you were okay. I can’t never keep those stupid lists in my head, too bad… Back in the hall the house lights were so far only producing a stubborn, thunderous clapping and stomping resistance. In time they’d realise no one was coming back. A knock on the door. Both of them were used to being surrounded by a protective blur of people in this situation, they were off their guard, they let the person in. It was a starry eyed Aoxomoxoa fan, who wanted to tell them he had got the whole thing, the whole Aoxomoxoa and Ax command performance for the soldiers at the end of the Islamic War. He would love to send them a copy.

Well, fuck. It had not occured to either of them that this whacking great new civic hall might not be proofed, so it hadn’t occured to them to announce that recording devices were unwelcome. Sage was up against his own Ideology anyway. At a normal Heads gig the rule was go ahead, try. The performers displayed self control, thanked starry-eyes nicely, sent him on his way.

‘Fuck,’ said Sage. ‘I didn’t want that recorded. Did you want that recorded?’

‘No I did not.’

He’d realised half way through that this brilliant thing would be gone forever when it was done, nothing left but disparate fragments, the working records in Sage’s boxes, nothing you could put together again. The feeling that this was
once, once only
, had added considerably—

‘Ah, the fans,’ The skull grimaced in resigned contempt. ‘Who can figure’em? No taste, no manners. Let’s get out of here, before anything worse turns up.’

They went back to the hotel suite, both of them dazed, ears ringing, thoroughly spaced. They’d been on stage for three hours, one short break. They opened a bottle of vodka, some stupid generic brand and barely chilled but never mind. Sat collapsed opposite each other, across a glass topped coffee table, an impressively ugly thing. Big windows full of gleaming, impenetrable dark (the suite was on the top floor). How strange and disorienting still, to be indoors, to be unarmed, to be clean, to have no lads around.

‘That was good,’ said Sage mildly, at last.

‘Yeah.’

‘And the war’s over. You did it, Ax. Not too painful, being a Muslim, is it?’

Ax’s conversion had yet to make serious inroads on his dissolute way of life. He’d declared his Islam, genuinely. He didn’t know, and wouldn’t speculate, on how much traditional practice he would come to follow. He would need time. This was the way he’d decided to play it, fuck of a sight better than getting caught out with a bacon sandwich. It satisfied everyone so far. The Islamists understood that they’d
got Ax,
Ax Preston of the Tour, and that this was a major acquisition. They weren’t making difficulties. They were saying, well, being a Muslim is a practical spirituality. Ritual is important, practice is important, deeds and intentions matter more. With luck, they wouldn’t notice for a generation what they’d done to the ringfence.

‘I’ll keep them happy.’ He swallowed vodka, and stared at the top of the coffee table, ‘But I’ll tell you one thing I won’t do. I won’t do this again.’ He looked up, wide-open, passionately earnest. ‘Never. Anyone ever asks me again to play a game of soldiers, I will die first.’

‘Hey—’ Sage reached out and grasped Ax’s hand (from Sage, a gesture of most unusual intimacy). ‘It’s okay, Ax. It’s
over
. You stopped it. You don’t have to do that no more.’

He got up, quickly, and loped across the room. ‘I’m starving, what d’you think’s the chances of getting anything to eat?’

It was after midnight. ‘Zero. I think there’s a chocolate bar in the fridge, or maybe some peanuts.’

‘Ecch. I hate chocolate and the peanuts will be salted. I’ll have a cigarette.’

Ax’s phone lay on a hotel dresser, quivering patiently. Sage picked it up, checked the fridge, (nothing); tossed the phone. ‘Call for you.’

‘Who is it?’

Sage had walked into his own room. ‘Dunno. Didn’t look.’

It would be Fiorinda. Sage flopped onto the bed. Will I kneel to you, he wondered. Will I call you boss? Yeah, why not. As long as you can provide this level of entertainment… And if you ever give me the chance, I will
try
to protect you from the horrible things you feel compelled to do to yourself. Lit a cigarette, couldn’t hear the conversation if he wanted to, Ax was speaking so low. His body flooded with sweet exhaustion. Is it really over, can we go home?

‘Sage—’

So he got up again. Ax was standing, strange expression on his face. ‘That was Fio. We have to go back to London. At once. Pigsty’s killed a little girl.’

‘What?’ said Sage, stupidly. ‘An accident?’

‘No. Sounds like…not an accident.’

They looked at each other, caught out: not surprised, not shocked enough. A confession of fugitive, guilty knowledge, for the first time shared.

Fiorinda was on the platform at St Pancras, alone: coming into focus out of the crowd, in a winter coat they didn’t know, her face pale and bright, hair glowing like a beacon fire as it tumbled out from under a dark knitted tamoshanter. It was mid morning, the station was busy. She kissed them both: reaching up on tiptoe to touch her lips to the grim reaper’s grin. They retired to a café in the Eurostar terminal and found a table.

‘Are you really okay? No hideous injuries you’ve been keeping from me?’

‘Not a scratch.’

‘I dislocated my shoulder once,’ boasted Sage.

‘He fell out of a tree.’

‘How thin you both are.’ She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup, real
English
coffee again, after so long in the wilderness of that scary aromatic stuff—as some ungrateful wag of a journalist had pointed out. At least it was hot.

‘Nah, we are blooming. You should have seen us after Yap Moss.’

‘There’s nothing fit to eat up there,’ complained Sage. ‘Only evil northern ethnic muck. Fried mars bars, chip butties, black pudding bhaji, dog pie, all disgusting, they can keep it.’

‘It is
amazing
the amount of perfectly normal foodstuffs he either cannot or will not eat—’

‘Ah, come on. I ate the worm omelet—’

‘Only because our hippies had you convinced they’d found some unusual, but of course not threatened in numbers, species of earthworm packed with weird alkaloids—’

‘I don’t believe in the worm omelet,’ said Fiorinda, laughing. ‘If you had an omelet to put the worms in, you could have eaten the eggs.’

‘What ignorance. You don’t make a worm omelet with
eggs
, Fio. You skin the worms, beat them into a kind of patty, and fry it like a burger—’

‘Takes fucking hours.’

‘Piss poor energy audit—’

The traditional blank wall, she thought: this cute, evasive double act is all I’m ever going to hear. Will they babble about dugouts in their sleep?

‘Well,’ she sighed. ‘The good news is, no nuclear power stations blew up.’

‘And the bad news?’ said Ax. ‘Where is Pigsty now?’

The people in the café must have noticed it was Fiorinda, Aoxomoxoa and the Ax sitting there, but no one was letting on. At Ax’s question there was a guilty quickening of attention at nearby tables: but not a head turned. They knew Ax didn’t like being stared at, they respected his privacy. This is fame indeed, thought Fiorinda. Stone Age fame.

When she’d told the media people to stay away from the station, their response (relayed back to her, through the San’s press office), had been hurt astonishment: what do you take us for? How could you doubt our tact in this sensitive situation? Where will it end, she wondered. For my Ax, for us all. If it has any further to go, that is. If it isn’t finished.

It was a week since the night she’d called Ax in Bradford. It hadn’t been possible for them to leave straight away: they had to handle the story up there, before the Islamic negotiators heard about it on the news. Tact and sensitivity hadn’t stopped the media from leaping on a devastating Presidential scandal, first chance they got. Ax was sacred. The fact that the funky green Pres was helping the police with their inquiries was all over the shop.