Bold as Love (6 page)

Rob was excited about this development with Paul Javert. And yeah, there was something in it. Pigsty the government stooge, recruited beforehand, the rest of them picked up as filler. For what? Didn’t matter really. Whatever was supposed to be going on, it could be useful to be involved. Ax was wondering if he could keep a low enough profile in a small working party, especially with that mouthy fucker Sage around. He wasn’t ready to make his move, not for a long time yet. In that regard, Pigsty would be useful. A good attention—attractor, nice and loud and ugly. The suits were in the mood to abase themselves before
ugly
, and you could understand why.

The Pig was right. The government
had to
make a deal with the so—called Counterculture. The current GM related crop failures, and home-wrecker floods in previously unaffected venues, hadn’t improved a situation that was getting rapidly out of hand. The UK’s share of the world’s weather and food disasters weren’t killers, (if you really want to be scared, look at the multi-drug-resistant TB and viral pneumonia deaths!), but they’d brought public morale to the tipping point. It was
I told you so
time, and the Extreme Greens, the Hardline Counterculturals, whatever they called themselves, were making the most of it, reaping the whirlwind. There were outlaw bands of eco-warriors roaming unchecked, ‘releasing’ farm animals, trashing science parks, sabotaging consumerism any way that occurred to them—and gaining more support, not less, from Middle England, as the violence increased. And at the back of it all, the great economic meltdown, inescapable anywhere in Europe.

Classic situation. Frightening situation.

Got to admire Paul Javert’s nerve. He must have known he’d get slaughtered. But it was pitiful. The fast-track government types thought they were razor-sharp, keen political minds. It went right by them that they’d been breathing the same shit atmosphere, feeding on the same poisons as their idiot voters. That’s how they ended up coming to the only people who might
handle
the CCM for them, scouting for advertising copy.

He paused in his pacing. What if he could actually do it, one day? Take control, turn the situation around? Then he could look forward to becoming as deluded and full-of-shit as one of those suits this afternoon; and then later there’d be the fun of watching everything he’d achieved trashed to fuck by the next new wave.

Unless he saved them the trouble by ruining it all himself.

Still be worth it, he decided. I understand the deal, and I accept.

Footsteps, that had failed to penetrate his reverie, suddenly sounded close and loud. A solitary armoured policeman was coming towards him.

‘Evening, Sir.’

‘Evening, officer.’

‘Or morning, I should say. It’s past two o’clock. Would you mind telling me what you’re doing down here, Sir?’

‘Thinking.’

The upper part of the man’s face was concealed: a chinguard reached almost to his nose. The mask of armour studied Ax impassibly.

‘It’s not very safe, at this hour. Any ID on you, Sir?’

Ax felt a white light dawning in his brain: the
certainty
of destiny. He produced the plastic card that identified him as one of the Home Secretary’s chosen. The policeman examined it thoroughly, running the biometrics and God knows what other information through the datalink in his visor.

‘Right you are, Sir. I suppose you know what you’re doing.’

‘I hope I do.’

They started to walk together, falling ino step. ‘Flag of St George,’ said the policeman, with a nod down the river to Westminster. ‘It’ll be funny to see it on its own. Like a football match. But it’s about time, in my opinion. About time we got back to basics.’

‘To the reality of the situation,’ agreed the Ax. ‘That’s what we need. Some reality.’

Pigsty didn’t get his sexy secretary, not yet, but when Paul Javert explained his proposal, two days later, it was in a Committee Room in Whitehall. The Home Secretary wanted to set up a Counter Cultural Think Tank (he was relying on them to suggest a catchier title), enlisting cultural icons sympathetic to both sides of the debate to advise the government and reassure the public. He’d decided that pop music was the key: universally accessible as no other art form, non-elitist, fun, and yet longtime associated by the punters with principled, non-violent protest against the Establishment…

There were six suits. Paul Javert, Mr Weekend the notetaker (whose name was Benny Preminder), another man from the LSE; and three women who hadn’t been at that gig. Paul Javert was in slinky black, like a fantasy thriller hero. The others were in hopeless leisurewear, it must be giving Allie serious pain to sit beside them. It was very clear this time that they had a special relationship with Pigsty, who sat flanked by equally well—hard
Organs
, putting his feet up, scratching, farting, and looking insufferably smug. Fiorinda wondered if the suits genuinely believed that Pigsty Liver was a leading social satirist. Maybe they did. The Pig, with his ageing raver ironmongery, was regarded as a talent-free idiot by anyone Fio knew: but he was a household name, and might look convincing to the unwary, sitting there bravely outlawed from suit-wearing, as one who has nailed his colours to the mast.

Mr Javert’s other recruits (most of whom had been at the LSE; a few who hadn’t) were something else again. Besides Aoxomoxoa and the Heads, and Ax Preston (rest of the
Chosen
weren’t here), he had Rob Nelson of
Snake Eyes
, Ken Batty from
Direct Action
, Martina Rage from
Krool
, the heavy metal feminists. DK the DJ (Dilip Krishnachandran), the Perfect Master of IMMix, Roxane Smith the veteran critic; and that new techno boy-duo (reckoned interesting by the Heads, though Fiorinda didn’t get it) who called themselves
The Adjuvants
. Plus an Islamic ghazal singer from Leicester, who wore a burqa and was supposed to be the Next Big Thing. All in all, a well-filled shopping trolley. Realism prevented her from including herself (probably thrown in to improve the girl quotient), but if you’d given someone who knew the score free rein to collect the tastiest people on the English Indie scene, this was what you might get. Everyone clocked everyone else, covertly. Nobody explained to Mr Javert that he hadn’t enlisted any
pop
musicians, unless you counted Pigsty and the Organs.

Fiorinda had come back against her better judgement because the Heads were coming. She amused herself pondering the fate of dead metaphors, while the others played the wish-list game. What colours? ‘Mast’ could be a word for penis, and ‘nail’ means a piercing, but what are these colours Pig’s nailed to his willy? Something to do with nail varnish? Pigsty has stuck his ampallang thingy to his willy with puce nail varnish, which shows he is incredibly brave and determined. But what is this grist that the suits say we must give to their mill?, and if we’re talking about eco—warriors lying to the media, what has that to do with pots calling kettles black? When do cows come home, and what have roosting chickens to do with bad guys getting their come-uppance? What does ‘roost’ mean, anyhow…?

We need a caring hospice for figures of speech, she decided. We should treasure our cliches and use them tenderly because
soon nobody will know
. Dead metaphors, dead words, words that are themselves layers of played out metaphor: the shells of dead sea creatures, sinking down and losing their shapes, getting embedded, turning into rock. Maybe cultural deracination is when no one remembers
deracination
means pulling something up by the roots. Or that if you do that, whatever it is will die—

Whenever Fiorinda spoke—which she did, occasionally, to break the monotony—everybody stared. It was annoying. Martina the militant feminist never shut up, and nobody stared at her. Fiorinda was unimpressed by feminism. Experience told her that women who tried to buck the age old system were either defeated and futile, such as her mother, or easily as nasty as any man, such as Carly. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll make my own terms.

When Ax spoke everyone laughed, including the suits, although they looked a trifle shifty as they chuckled. Presumably because his ‘provocative suggestions’ (the poor should eat shit, the unemployed should be sold as slaves) bore some
passing
resemblance to current government policy. It lasted a couple of hours. Fereshteh the ghazal singer sat in her black bag, like a running joke in an ironic tv cartoon, and never said a word. After the show they were bussed (nice bus, no expense spared) to a tv studio near the river, where they had a big joint interview for a current affairs programme. Sage’s loud insistence that Cornish Brythonic should be made the official language of the new English Parliament earned him cheers from the studio audience, and a good time was had by all. At the end, Allie handed out plastic
per diems
and told them when to come back.

The Heads were taking Ken to Whipsnade, where the animal rights people were running a feasibility study (read: another green riot) on the freeing of wolves and other large mammals. Fiorinda didn’t approve. Wouldn’t wolves decimate or starve out indigenous predators? Like minks did? ‘Nah,’ said Sage. ‘Ax is gonna organise a supply of small children, in depots round the country: it’ll help reduce the surplus population.’

‘In little red cloaks,’ said Fio. ‘And pigs in straw houses. Releasing zoo animals is as stupid as your jokes, Sage.’

‘The helix of time has brought one change,’ announced Verlaine, the Adjuvant with the cavalier ringlets; striking a pose. ‘If this was Paris 1789, we’d all be either lawyers or journalists.’

Chip Desmond clutched his red crest and made retching noises—

‘You’re out of your brains,’ Fiorinda told them. ‘More like Paris 1968. A street—party, a few burned out cars, and back to business as usual.’

‘That’s what I like about you, Fiorinda,’ said Ax. ‘You’re not easily impressed.’

‘What’s there to be impressed about? This dumb PR stunt? Please.’

The van took off north. Fiorinda went down the pub with most of the others. Eventually Rob Nelson’s three girlfriends, Dora and Felice and Cherry, came to pick him up in their battered pink Cadillac, and she went back in the car with them and Ax Preston to the Snake Eyes house. It was easier than deciding how to get back to Reading; and there was nowhere else that she wanted to be. Rob’s place was full of Dissolution Rocksters. The only bed he could offer her was in a coffin-like closet on the top floor. It was called the Mugs Room. Actual mugs crowded around the mattress on the floor, ranked on shelves, dangling from the ceiling, stacked on the floor. Mugs in all colours, mugs adorned with witty comments. Merchandizing mugs, novelty mugs, pretty mugs, arty mugs, obscene mugs.

‘No one ever wants to throw one out,’ explained Rob, ‘unless it breaks. They’re a hassle of modern life. Trouble is, I said that on the tv, on a rugrats’ programme? Tryin’ to think of something non-horny to say about my homelife? So, you can guess. They mount up.’

The closet had obviously had a long career as the doss of last resort. It looked clean but it smelt of stale vomit. Fio declined, which turned out to mean she was sharing the big living room in the basement with Ax Preston. She was surprised to find that this was where he was sleeping. She’d have thought he’d be in the penthouse suite.

‘It’s not so bad,’ said Ax, putting aside the guitar on which he’d been doodling quietly, in the background, all through the political discussion. (Like Jane Austen, Fiorinda had thought: scribbling a novel on the edge of the drawing room table).‘You can’t sleep until everyone else has gone, but I don’t mind. I never sleep much.’

‘Where do you usually live?’

‘In Taunton, with the band.’

‘Is that nice, living in the country?’

‘Taunton isn’t the country,’ he said, frowning at the end of the spliff he was lighting. ‘it’s much worse than that. But it’s where we were born. That’s important. I want us to stay there.’

The way everybody laughed at Ax and everybody stared at Fiorinda had created an alliance. In the Whitehall meeting and at the tv studio they’d kept catching each other’s eye, and smiling ironically.

‘What d’you think they want from us?’ she asked. ‘The suits, I mean.’

‘I don’t much care. I’m wondering what use I can make of this.’

There he goes, she thought. Everybody’s crazy about something.

‘Ax…do you watch a lot of television?’

He looked blank. ‘Never have time for it.’

‘Do a lot of stuff on the internet?’

‘Shane looks after all that. I can’t be bothered.’

‘Okay, do you like to eat in fancy restaurants?’

‘Fuck, no.’

‘Well, the normal people in this country do nothing else but watch tv and click around in cyberspace, whereas the ruling classes spend their whole time grovelling and scheming to get a table at this week’s top restaurant. Face it, you’ve got
nothing in common
with them. There’s no way you are going to get them to…to vote for you, or whatever it is you want.’

‘Maybe I know what’s good for them better than they do themselves.’