Bold as Love (27 page)

‘Better than being one of the lickle serving wenches. You
are
in a brilliant mood this evening. Election nerves getting to you?’

‘Ax is worse. He’s pretending he doesn’t give a shit, but the pretending is painful to be near. He’s not here, by the way. He’s off playing with the band.’

‘Okay, leave that. Let’s go find Roxane. Nothing s/he likes better than a good rousing political circus night. S/he’ll cheer you up.’

For six weeks Ax had been working the crowd. Roxane and Dilip had been his best allies, Chip and Verlaine surprisingly reliable filler. They’d been careful not to do too much, they hoped they’d done enough. The Counterculture was believed to be split between those who would vote for Ax and those (the majority) who would not vote at all. The country…well, no matter what they thought about judicial murder, after they’d heard the arguments, they’d vote for the hero of the Tour and of the Islamic Campaign; and for keeping the CCM in a safe pair of hands. Unless of course they didn’t. Could go either way.

An overwrought party mood developed in the Insanitude. In the smaller venues there was trance-drumming and other semi-magical rituals going on. Tv, radio and webcast people wandered, licensed but confused. Dance music started up early, in the club venue in the State Apartments. On the fly-eye wall screen in the Office, and on big and little screens set up here and there, the coverage rolled. Political figures from the neighbour states of the former UK offered their comments. Counterculturals of the campgrounds came on camera to explain that Ax was selling his soul to the straights with this referendum, tv was just a shite-spreader for the socio-industrial-military complex; and hello Mum. As the evening progressed, channel hopping converged on mTm, (many-To-many, the nearest the world came to a global Countercultural telecoms company); and the trashy-intellectual English terrestrial channel 7, (popularly known as CultTV). CultTV had gone straight for the jugular. They were treating this as a general election night with all the trimmings: the talking heads, the coloured maps, the swingometer, the dancing pie charts, the video-booth clips and email from soi-disant ordinary citizens. The big gig in Birmingham, where Snake Eyes were headlined.

‘It’ll be close,’ said Rox, uneasily. ‘There’s been a massive turnout. That could be good: but it could be bad. They’ve never been asked to vote on this issue before. And they
will
vote on the issue, just because we don’t expect them to.’

Ax finally came in around one am, looking calm and distant. The Chosen had been playing the campground at Taplow (former Neolithic theme park), in Buckinghamshire. He sat with Rox, Fiorinda and Sage, and talked a little with a nice polite tv woman. Chip and Verlaine were insufferably chirpy. The fly-eye was set to default to Channel 7 and the results, whenever there was nothing more interesting to be found. Its cells began to switch to the map of England, until the whole wall was maps of England, filling with cute little guitars.

By two thirty they knew it wasn’t going to be close at all. Ax had a landslide.

‘Looks like we’re on,’ he said to Fiorinda, wrecked by unacknowledged tension, grinning with relief. They hugged for the media folk, and everybody cheered.

Fiorinda and Dilip did another club night, in the IMMix box together: Dilip pumping up the springtime, breeding lilacs, sending the sap shooting, breaking open the seedcase bodies of the dancers with a near-lethal dose of phototropism. ‘Ah, Islam, Islam,’ he sighed. ‘The English are fools for it, always were, the disastrous spoor of this infatuation is all over the former Empire. Did I say disastrous, shame on me. But why did they not prefer Hinduism? Because we poor Babus, with our taste for fussy office work and teatimes, we are are are too confused, too colourful, too cheerful, too fuzzy, too like the English, in a word. So are you smashed enough to tell me truthful nonsense, what do you think of Ax now, Fiorinda?’

‘You want to know what I think. What I really, really think?’

‘Go on, go on, tell me tell me tell me—’

‘I think he’s the Lord’s anointed. I think he has the mandate of heaven. I think he is rightwise king born over all England. But still—’

‘But still you are the cat who walks by herself, green-eyed Fiorinda—’

‘But still nothing’s changed.’

Pigsty would stay in Lloyd Park until his trial came up. On one of her visits Fiorinda found out that Lola Burnet was coming down from her mother’s in Norfolk, for a conjugal weekend. For some reason this gave her a bad feeling. Well, there were plenty of reasons, but this particular
for some reason
was the fact that Lola had given the Insanitude as her contact address. Who was she staying with? Probably Fereshteh. Feresh and Allie were living in the San, while they looked for a flat together. Why didn’t I know? Perhaps her friends thought loopy Fiorinda was not safe with Lola. Would grow fangs and try to tear the woman apart if they should meet. Not far wrong. But she had decided to keep silent about
what she knew
—without proof, without evidence. Leave it to the professionals. She didn’t say anything about her bad feeling, because could not explain her antipathy.

One April dusk Sage, coming up to the Insanitude from Battersea, met Chip and Verlaine and Rox just leaving for the Easter Vigil at St Martin’s in the Fields. They tried to convince him to join them. The new fire, the blessing of the water and the holy oils. The chanting and the candles, it was so great, so primitive, like the mysteries of Eleusis insisted Chip. You have come and weep for Adonis, it’s such a turn on, the whole thing. When the priest goes, like,
lumen Christi,
or even in English: I just die!

‘Sorry,’ he says, the skull doing bemused distaste. ‘Got to meet Ax and do some tv. Er, thanks.’

Fereshteh went to Lloyd Park with Lola that evening. The staff searched Lola and her weekend case. They did not search the veiled Islamic woman, Ax’s close associate, with any officious thoroughness. In the rooms where Lola would spend the night with her husband the women embraced in tears, and parted in silence.

At the Lambeth Road house the Few and friends gathered to eat together; and to watch Ax and Sage being dead genial and relaxed on a late night rock programme, getting teased about cronyism as they both insisted, laughing their socks off, that
Snake Eyes
was reaching new heights, best sound this year. Well okay, says the show’s presenter. Let’s hear some of this fabulous PoMo—

Newsflash—

The Few and friends didn’t like newsflashes. They all sat up. At least nothing horrible could have happened to Ax or Sage; or Rob or the Babes. What does that leave? A wide field. It was Pigsty. He was dead. His wife had smuggled a plastic shooter into the conjugal quarters, someone having disabled the surveillance in there for her; or previously taught her how. She shot him dead and then shot herself. Lola was still alive, but seriously injured. It had just happened, all this, but a group called the Daughters of Islam had already claimed responsibility—

Fiorinda, electrified, pounced on Allie before the newswoman had finished her autocue. ‘I’m going out there. Will you come?’

‘What do you want to be there for? What can you do?’

‘Lola’s dying. I want her to tell me something, if she can, before she goes—’

Lola Burnet was in the prison hospital operating theatre when they reached Lloyd Park, her situation had been too desperate for her to be moved anywhere else. Fiorinda and Allie had been waiting an hour, to know the outcome of the emergency surgery, when Fereshteh appeared. With her were two other women, all three in fiercely modest paramilitary uniform: heavy scarves, brown tunics over trousers, Sam Browne belts, epaulets. Fereshteh was looking shocked and distraught: but proud of herself, big eyes glowing, patches of bold scarlet in her honey cheeks—

Fiorinda jumped to her feet. ‘How did she convince you to do this, Feresh?’

‘She asked for help,’ said Fereshteh simply. ‘We helped her. I’m not ashamed of that, I’m just terribly sorry… I didn’t know she would turn the gun on herself!’

‘What did you
think
? You thought she’d live happily ever after?’

‘He had to die!’ cried Fereshteh. ‘She had a right. We had a right. Ax wanted this. He couldn’t say so, but we know he did. You’re the one who should be ashamed, not me. The way you protected that monster—’

‘Ax did not want this. You fool, she should have been in here herself!’

‘We know what she did, when she was helpless and terrified of him—’

The Daughters of Islam stood solemnly, looking on.

‘My God,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I don’t know what the police will do, but I will not forgive you for your part in this. Ever. You better stay out of my way—’

‘You never liked me. To you any woman is just competition. You only like men, don’t you Fiorinda. Any dominant male with a big dick. Maybe Ax should ask himself how close you used to get to the President, while he was away—’

Sage had arrived with Ax, who had been waylaid by the prison governor. He’d come into the waiting room at the start of this verbal cat-fight, and stopped at the door. At this point he was forced to wade in, grab Fiorinda and move her out, before she floored the Daughter of Islam.

She didn’t struggle, she knew she’d be a fool to struggle, there was nothing she could do. But he didn’t think it was safe to let go until they’d run the gauntlet of the prison staff and were outdoors.

‘If you want to hit someone, hit me.’

‘No.’ She walked away from him, and sat on the kerb by the bus shelter. In the distance, partly blocked by buildings, the perimeter fence, with its brilliant lights and rolls of razor wire, stood up against the hollow, empty night.

‘A child murderer taken out of the equation and rendered harmless,’ she said, distinctly, ‘is worth something, even in this fucked-up disaster movie. It means the damage that was done to Pigsty stops here. That thread is broken, of all the thousands, the thousands. A child murderer, murdered, is worse than meaningless. It says the system just goes on.’

‘Most people are not as rational as you, Fee. They’ll take the solution that looks like a solution, without thinking it through the generations, see if it checks out.’

‘Lola was getting hold of the children for him. It had to be her, who else? She was doing it to keep her precious family life intact, she thought it was a price worth paying. Oh well, what does it matter. I don’t care… Ah, poor Feresh, she’s right, I never reckoned her. I didn’t look further than the veil. My fault. I’m still never going to forgive her. What a joke, eh? Paul Javert let a no-kidding Islamic Terrorist slip through his vetting, and we never spotted her either.’

‘Looks like it. Made fools of us all.’

‘You know, I start to wonder about Ax’s buddy Muhammad and this—’

He shook his head. Not meaning no, she understood: meaning forget it. You can investigate, dig deep, uncover the shocking truth. Where does it get you? Some place like this prison car park tonight. Fucking nowhere.

Allie came out of the hospital wing, Ax behind her. They stood with Sage.

‘Well, it’s over now,’ said Allie.

‘What? Is she dead?’

‘Yeah,’ said Ax. ‘Died about ten minutes ago.’

So here we are, thought Fiorinda. So this is where we are at. Doomed to play Stone Age royalty to forty-odd million post-civilised people, while our world falls apart; and we have failed at the first test. Fereshteh and Mrs Leisurewear have wiped the floor with us and our Good State. Poor Ax. But they were looking at her with such pity and concern she couldn’t stand it.

‘I am not a piece of broken china!’ she yelled. Jumped up and stormed away madly. Ax came after her, caught her and held her. The two of them walked slowly back, his arm around her, her face very pale but tearless, and calm again.

The resilence of this girl is amazing.

‘What are we going to do now?’ asked Fiorinda, after a long silence. ‘Ax said Pigsty had to live, and he is dead.’

‘Bury it,’ said Allie. ‘Do something to distract them. Look as if we don’t care and hope the Daughters of Islam story dies of not being fun. It’s all we can do.’

Yeah, bury it. Accept the defeat along with the victory. And go on.

It takes longer to organise a big splashy day-to-night rock concert than it does to pass an Act of Parliament; but not that much longer, if you have everything in place. Post-Deconstruction Tour and general Crisis Conditions had to be accomodated: but Allie’s team was used to that. A flattering number of VIPs from the former nations of the UK managed to accept short notice invitations. Public transport to the Rivermead site was organised, and Reading town agreed to accept a brown-out, except for the hospitals, police and emergency services. The Heads had decided to take Sage’s Ministerial appointment seriously, so they wrote the programme, mixing bands with glee, and they
could have fucking waited
for a less fraught occasion to assume responsibility; but it was okay.

It was the fourth of May, heavy and humid under low skies. The day-trippers started pouring in at dawn. Sanitation hell descended once more on the peaceful, post-futuristic grunge of the staybehinds. Hippies, actual hardline hippies were heard talking about getting a sewage pipe installed, to the site gates. There were twisters in Staffordshire, yet more homewrecker floods in East Anglia, and the anti-nucleaires in the Rhone Valley might be bringing the European branch of modern civilisation to a sudden close; but that last wasn’t a big topic of conversation, Green Apocalypse Boredom having set in many moons ago.