Castles Made of Sand (6 page)

The room was cold, despite the fire. The rain had stopped. There was a black frost out there beyond the thick walls, the deep-set mullioned windows where the night looked in, the icy dark stretching out forever.

About an hour later the stairs creaked. Ax felt a surge of movement rousing from beside him, like something much bigger than Sage.
My God
, he thought,
what have I unleashed?
The door opened. Fiorinda came into the room, her fiery hair tumbled on the shoulders of a brown and gold shawl, a candle in a china holder in her hand. She sat on the edge of the bed and stared at them, pale as the candleflame. The shawl fell back. She was wearing a nightdress, a long slip of cream satin with narrow shoulder straps.

‘Our friends are convinced you two are having a secret affair. Are you?’

‘No!’

‘We were waiting for you,’ said Ax.

She nodded. ‘Well, okay… Okay, I knew this was coming. Of course I did. I’ve known for a long time. Fact is, from the night you did the oxytocin, I knew it had gone too far. No more pissing around, I just had to have you both.’ She saw them startle. Ha! Nice to give them a different view of the situation. But she wished she could stop shivering, all gooseflesh; she felt such a kid. ‘Only… I don’t know how it works. I w-want to, but I don’t know how? Who do I turn to? W-which of you two am I with? Which of you—?’

Ax got out from under the covers and put himself behind her, a wall at her back, hugging her close.

Sage took her hands. ‘Don’t worry about it. Anything you do is right.’

‘If
anything
feels wrong,’ said Ax, kissing her hair, ‘at
any point
, you say the word, and you and me go back upstairs.’

‘Everything will be like before,’ said Sage. ‘No damage. We promise.’

‘And
don’t
, fuck’s sake, worry about the secret affair. It won’t happen, ever. Will it, Sage?’

‘Of course not.’

Fiorinda shrugged. ‘Fine. W-why all the fuss, anyway? It’s just sex. It’s not a big deal.’

‘Yes it is,’ said Sage.

‘Yes it is,’ said Ax.

She sat for a moment, her heart beating hard against Ax’s arm. Then she freed herself, picked up the skirts of the satin slip, tugged it over her head and tossed it. Instantly Sage pushed back the quilt, so they were naked together. All three of them sighed then, involuntarily: a sigh of profound relief, we’re over the edge, we’ve done it. Fiorinda leaned back against Ax, how warm he feels, and held Sage’s maimed hand to her breast, ah, what a rush. ‘This’ll never work,’ she said, her whole body sweetly burning. ‘We’ll fall out, and it will be awful.’

‘It’s worth a try,’ said Sage, trying to sound level-headed.

‘It’ll work,’ said Ax. ‘As long as we’re careful, at the start, and make an effort.’

She moved her head gently from side to side, so her hair caressed Ax’s throat, the way he loved. ‘Uh-uh. Nothing’s supposed to be an effort in the Good State. Or it won’t last.’

‘But we’re allowed to concentrate on one another,’ said Sage. ‘I remember that.’

They were quoting from Ax’s manifesto, the one he’d pitched at his friends three years ago: a plan worth living for, on the other side of the end of the world. In the Good State we will only take time off from having fun, from making art, from
being ourselves
, to concentrate on each other, like the social animals—

She’s flying, into Sage’s arms, Ax falling after her—

Well.

That was very good. What a rush, how overwhelming, how frightening, tell the truth, to lie naked between them, these two big fierce male animals. But from the moment they both had their arms around her, kissing her, nuzzling, whispering,
sweetheart, is this really okay? Are you okay Fee?
it had been nothing but good and wonderful. Oh, there are problems, I know there are problems. But we truly love each other, and the sex is brilliant. Surely we can sort out the rest. Someone was walking around: Sage. She opened her eyes to the icy grey morning and saw him dressed in biker leathers, sitting down to pull on his boots. There wasn’t anyone in the bed with her.

‘Where’s Ax?’

‘Gone for a walk. He’ll be back soon.’ Second boot on. Snap the closures.

‘Where are you going?’

He came and sat on the bed. ‘Back to Reading.’

‘Why? What’s wrong?’

‘Because I can’t do this threesome thing. I’m sorry, baby. I can’t.’

She sat up, pulling the covers around her, suddenly very young, suddenly a shamed and frightened child. ‘W-was I no good?’

‘Oh God. Fee, it will be all right. I’m still your Sage. I
love
you. I will be your best friend, forever and ever. But I can’t do this.’ He didn’t touch her. She didn’t dare reach out to him. ‘So I’m going. The keys are on the kitchen table. Leave them at Ruthie Maynor’s. You can push them through the letterbox.’

Ax had walked towards the sea, on the unfenced track that crossed the clifftop grassland above Sage’s house, and then taken a turn along a field line, beside a hedge. Before the Crash he’d had a data chip implanted in his brain, holding a huge stack of information about this country: he’d thought it would come in useful. He could review Sage’s estate in several scales of detail, twelve acres of dry granite pasture, a portion of the Chy. Not much cover except for the gorge, which would be a trap… A standing stone. A patch of crooked dwarf oak trees. Odd set-up for megastar seclusion, but there you go, that’s Sage. He was now outside the domain, on National Trust land from here to the South-West Path; the cliff’s edge, the Atlantic.

God, it was cold. He took shelter under the thorn hedge, the wind fingering his spine. He was thinking of the strained conversation he and Sage had had, the day after they took the oxytocin, in the Fire Room at the Insanitude—an old retreat of theirs in the North Wing; an island of Few territory now, in the wastes of Boat People accommodation.

What they were asking of Fiorinda wasn’t easy.

When she was twelve, this amazing girl had been pregnant in horrible circumstances. When she was thirteen years and three months old, she saw her baby die. She was only eighteen now, still a damaged child. How could they risk hurting her? Risk adding to that damage in any way? They’d agreed that they were sure enough of their love to ask the question. If she said yes then they’d take it carefully, be ready to back off at any moment. They’d agreed that the three of them must be lovers together, equals, not two rockstars sharing the girl. Fuck that! On the oxytocin showing, Ax and Sage should have no problem getting physical. To some extent, see how it goes.

Are you
really
okay for that? Ax had asked.

Oh yeah, he says, the mask almost as blank as Hallowe’en. I took the drug with you, didn’t I? And then he stalks off without once touching me. Weird.

So far so good on that aspect.
Sage!
What a storm of soft ferocity. Like being assaulted by a giant albino tiger cub. A giant tiger cub that loves you very much, but still—

Sage’s size and strength must never become an issue, have to watch that.

His brave girl, leaping into Sage’s arms as if into deep water.

But why was it with Sage, that conversation? He saw himself walking with her: a beach, a street, doesn’t matter, holding her hand, shall we do it? We love him so much, we must make Sage our lover. They would have been very happy and very sad, saying goodbye to what they’d had:
why didn’t I do that?

He hadn’t had the courage to face what he might see in her eyes—

The sky was ironbound. The branches of the thorn were covered in half-furled fists of green, ice crystals hanging from them, sometimes a bud encased in a complete crystal sphere. Every time he took his hands out of his pockets to wipe his eyes and mop his nose, the wind burned them. He had to stop crying so he could go back to Tyller Pystri before they started to worry, but the tears kept coming. She’d never leave me, but she loved him first, only she was a kid and she didn’t realise… I’ve known it for I don’t know how long, and
this is the solution
. She loves me. But she won’t be my little cat anymore. She’ll be Sage’s baby now.

He knew he had found the only way to save himself from unimaginable pain, but he just
couldn’t stand it
.

He heard the bike and thought nothing of it, not attuned to the rarity of such a sound out in the Cornwall countryside, three years after the end of the world.

At last Ax realised he’d have to go back anyway. He let himself in, went to the bathroom and splashed his face. It was the wind. It made my eyes water, fucking cold out there…

Very quiet in here.

Fiorinda was sitting on the bed, wearing her orange cardie over the red and blue chiffon dress and skinny faded denims, same as she’d been wearing last night. Her hair was a mess. She looked half-asleep, almost dazed.

‘Where’s Sage?’

‘He’s gone. Back to Reading.’

‘What? Did something happen? Did Allie call?’

‘No. He’s just gone.’

‘But how?’ said Ax, fixing on the practical impossibility. ‘The car’s still here.’

‘He took his bike.’

‘Oh, God.’ He looked at the windows, as if he might catch a glimpse of Sage’s Triumph careering away down narrow, ill-kept lanes. ‘I hate that fucking bike. There’s black ice everywhere—’

He came and sat beside her. ‘Fiorinda. What went wrong?’

She shook her head.

‘Okay,’ said Ax, with reserve, ‘if there’s stuff you don’t want to tell me, I understand.’

‘
No!
’ wailed Fiorinda. ‘He said, “I’m going back to Reading because I can’t do the threesome thing”, and then he left, and now you know as much as I do.’

‘Shit… Do you think that was really the first time he ever got sexual with another guy?’

‘Yes. But.’

There wasn’t a single thing she could say that would be true to both of them.

He put his arms round her and they clung to each other, heartbroken. ‘Sssh, ssh. Don’t cry. It’ll be nothing. I’ll talk to him.’

‘You can try,’ said Fiorinda. ‘It won’t do any good.’

They drove to Reading. Sage wasn’t there. He’d been and gone.

‘Sage?’

‘Hi Ax,’

‘Sage, can we talk?’

‘We’re talking.’

‘Fuck. Sage,
please
. This is horrible.’

‘It’s not horrible. I tried your idea, I can’t do it, that’s all. Everything’s fine, everything goes back to normal. Now leave me alone, I’m working.’

Silence. The big, impressively messy studio at the top of the converted warehouse, the Heads’ London stronghold, filling up with this pitiful silence—

‘Okay,’ said Ax’s voice at last, ‘I’ll call you later. Sage, I love you.’

Gone.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said Sage. ‘I love you too.’

He genuinely had been working. He pulled off the eyewrap and spun his chair away from the boards so he could stare out of the window that overlooked Battersea Reach. I was
all right
, Ax, I was good. I was living with my situation. I was even
happy
. Until you came along with your damned very generous offer, Sah, and now every thought of her is poisoned.

I don’t think you’d better tell me how many…
Her grey eyes flashing on him that glance of hurt reproach. Totally outrageous, totally unjust reproach, what was I supposed to do, brat? But oh how sweet. But he must not think of her, because he could still taste the scent of her skin, he could feel her teeth and tongue, the small, warm weight of her little breasts. Thinking of her, of the
details
of Fiorinda, which had been his consolation, would bring on the maddening, humiliating, adolescent problem of an erection he could not will down.

Damn you, Ax.

Testosterone’s a good drug if you have something hard and positive to do with it. If not, well, a no-brainer, blocked power surge, foul irritability. He could dose himself out of this state, easily, but he would not. Masking the symptoms is a fool’s game. It’ll pass.

He thought of putting his fist through the window.

But he’d only feel like an idiot, and then have to get it fixed.

What a crappy, adult way to think. Shame on you, Aoxomoxoa.

Probably couldn’t break the glass, anyway. It was supposed to be bulletproof.

This was the year that the fuel crisis hit rock bottom. European fossil reserves were in dire straits: foreign supplies, already beyond the country’s means, had been put utterly out of reach by the complications of data quarantine, and Renewables were not bridging the gap. Travel was a nightmare, powercuts lasted weeks. The proverbial Major Credit Cards had vanished along with foreign oil; ATMs, back online at last after Ivan/Lara, doled out new currency notes in huge denominations, with ever less spending power. Malaria, TB and other long-vanquished diseases, plus the frightening new bugs, defied public health measures. The British Resistance Movement pursued a nagging terrorist campaign in the rural hinterland; and there was a serious campaign to make witchcraft once more a criminal offence.

Yet Ax Preston’s Dictatorship still counted as a miraculous success. Violence and civil unrest burned throughout Continental Europe: the English, who had suffered the first, worst revolutionary violence, lived at peace with their Rock and Roll Reich. The party atmosphere, the glamour and the optimism maintained by Ax and his partners, and the Few, prevailed over hardship. The Counterculture happy, extremism defanged, the masses (the vast majority of whom were living like puritan Greens because they had no option) shared the buoyant mood.