Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! (27 page)

“This is pointless. Let's give it up.”

“I want my wages.”

“He hasn't got them, though has he? Or if he has, we're not going to get them now. What are you really after, Mo?”

“I need some answers, I told you.”

“Don't we all? But you never got them, did you?”

Miss Brunner settled herself in the first class compartment. “We're going to have to deal with them.”

“I tried to get into the next carriage,” said Frank, “but it seems to have been locked. I think there's some trouble going on.”

“It's locked at the other end as well.” Bishop Beesley wiped the sweet sweat from his cheeks. “I think it could be part of the emergency regulations.”

He relished the phrase. It was like coming home.

The regular rhythm of the train was soothing them all.

“What are you going to offer him?” Frank asked her. “I mean, what have we actually got?”

“Experience” she said. “Ambition. A sense of right and wrong. Everything you need to put things into proper order. Sooner or later the balloon will burst.”

“It seems to have burst already.”

“A pinprick. It'll be patched in no time.”

“I admire your resilience, Miss Brunner.” Bishop Beesley was feeling in his pockets for the remains of his chocolate digestives. “I suppose you didn't notice if there was a buffet?”

“Not in this carriage,” Frank told him.

“They always come back to us.” Miss Brunner looked out at the windows. “Cows,” she said.

The last of the Musician-Assassins put his vibra-gun into its holster. “They'll be wanting a martyr,” he told Mo. “A proper martyr to the seventies.”

“Well it isn't going to be poor old me. All I'm after is my wages and maybe a chance to do the odd gig. I should never have got mixed up with you, Mr C.”

“You summoned me, remember?”

Mo shrugged. He sat hunched over his Bacon Burger in the Peckham Wimpy, watching the dirty rain on the windows. “I've got a feeling I'm being used. Has it after all come down to Peckham?”

“You keep saying that. I'm only doing what you said you wanted me to do.”

“There's always a snag about making deals. Particularly with old hippy demons.”

“Do you mind? I was around long before that.”

“Maybe that's your trouble. Are you trying to recapture your lost youth?”

Jerry dipped into his Tastee-Freeze. His whole attitude was self-pitying. “Maybe. But probably I'm trying to recapture those few moments when I felt grown-up. Know what I mean? In charge of myself.”

“How did you lose it?”

“Equating action with inspiration, maybe. Or ‘energy,' whatever that is.”

“You've done quite a lot. You're just feeling tired, probably.” Mo wondered how he came to be comforting his old boss.

The Assassin gave a deep sigh. “Bands begin breaking up when they're faced with the implications of what they've started. When it threatens to turn into art, or something like it. Look at the problems the Dadaists had. Successful revolutions bring their own problems.”

Mo's attention was wavering. “You really can be a boring old fart sometimes, can't you? Hippy or not.”

Jerry seemed chastened. “It comes with analysing too much. But what else can I do these days? Imposition hasn't worked very well, has it? Analysis is all you're left with. Am I right or am I wrong?”

“Suit yourself.” Mo swivelled his red plastic seat round. “You should do what you feel like doing.”

The Assassin toyed with his Tastee-Freeze.

“Look where that's got me.” He cast a miserable eye around him. “The bloody Peckham Wimpy.”

“Isn't the train ever going to stop?” Miss Brunner couldn't recognise the countryside. “Whose idea was this, anyway?”

“Yours,” said Frank. “Or mine. I forget.” He was beginning to fugue a bit. “Tra la la. Hi diddle de de. Ta ra a boom de ay.”

Bishop Beesley was of no use at all. He desperately needed a fix. His fat was turning a funny colour and the flesh was loosening even as she watched.

“We're out of control,” she said, “and I don't like it.”

“I thought you said we knew what we were doing?” Frank wiped drool from his lips. “Hic.”

“We do. But I didn't expect the corridors to be blocked. That little bastard has outmanoeuvred us.”

“But only for the moment, eh?” said Frank. He was being dutiful. “What do you want me to say?”

“You're bloody useless!”

He winced.

“I have to do everything myself.”

Bishop Beesley mewled. “A Milky Way would be all right.”

It became dark. The train had entered a tunnel. It stopped.

Miss Brunner thought she saw a white face press itself against the window for a second, but she was losing faith in her own judgement.

This realization made her very angry.

She kicked Frank in the shin.

Frank began to giggle.

Mrs Cornelius had her sleeves rolled up. She was doling out soup from the specially erected canteen in Trafalgar Square.

“Hello, mum.” Jerry held his tin cup to be filled.

“Oxtail” she said, “or Mulligatawny?”

“Oxtail, please.”

“You've done it this time,” she said. “There's a lot of people pissed off wiv you. I told 'em it was just your way of celebratin'. But look wot you've caused. Pore ole Nelson's got 'alf 'is bleedin' body missin'. It's gonna take ages ter clear up ther mess.”

“Sorry, mum.”

“No use bein' sorry now. You'd better keep yer 'ead down for a while. I thought you'd bloody learned yer lesson.”

“Lesson?”

“You ‘eard me.”

“Can I have the key to the flat?”

“Oh, so ya fuckin' wanna come 'ome ter mum now, do yer? Littel sod.” She softened. “'Ere y'are. Now move on. There's a lot more people waitin'.”

She watched him shuffle off, sipping at his soup. “They just fuckin' use yer when they need yer. An' then they're fuckin' off again.”

But the crowd had recognised him. They were beginning to converge.

With a yelp of terror, Jerry scuttled towards the National Gallery.

Mrs Cornelius watched impassively. “E'll be okay,” she said to herself. “Unless they actually tear 'im ter pieces.”

She ladled Mulligatawny into the next outstretched cup.

When she looked again, the crowd was rushing through the doors of the Gallery.

Ten minutes later they were all coming out again, like spectators whose team had lost.

She grinned to herself. “Shifty littel bastard,” she said. “At least 'e knows when ter scarper.”

The train had begun to move again, but by now Bishop Beesley was catatonic and Frank Cornelius was completely ga-ga, dribbling and whistling to himself. Miss Brunner went into the corridor and tugged at the door. It wouldn't open. All the windows were jammed.

She ran along the corridor, looking for help. All the other compartments were filled with old rubber suits, as if Mr Bug's representatives had dematerialised.

“What's going on?” she cried. “What's going on?”

The train groaned and clattered in unison with her voice.

She clawed at the connecting door. It wouldn't budge.

“Somebody's going to pay for it.” She was livid. “I'm not used to treatment of this kind. Who's in charge? Who's in charge?”

The train grunted.

“Who's in charge?” Now her voice became pathetic. A tear appeared in her right eye. She adjusted her blouse. She whimpered.

The train was moving faster. It swayed wildly from side to side.

Miss Brunner began to scream.

JULIAN TEMPLE (DIRECTOR): Went to Cambridge University “For the same reasons as one applies for an American Express Card”. Attended National Film School “so that I didn't have to wait 20 years to be able to do something”.
The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle
was his graduation film. Since then he has made
Punk Can Take It,
featuring the UK Subs and narrated by John Snagge, who once declared the end of World War II on BBC Radio and ghosted for Churchill's speeches while it was still on.

—Virgin Publicity, 1980

The last of the Musician-Assassins was crawling along rooftops overlooking Portobello Road.

He was looking for his airship. He was certain he'd left it in the vicinity of Vernon's Yard.

“Bugger,” he muttered. “Oh, bugger.”

He was not feeling at one with himself.

Every so often a demonic grin, a memory, crossed his poor, ravaged face.

“Why am I always getting mixed up with bloody bands? What's happened to my complicated vocabulary of ideas? Why do I prefer rock and roll?”

It was familiar stuff to him.

Flies clustered around a faded chimney stack, rising as he groped.

“Monica?” His mind cast about for any anchor. “Mum? Colonel? David M?”

His cuban heels scraped slate. Something fell away from him and smashed in the street. The sun was rising.

He drew a scratched single from the pocket of his black car coat and put it close to his eyes, studying it as if it were a map.

He was crying.

The flies hissed rhythmically. A stuck needle. He held on to the chimney, pulling himself up, his feet slipping.

There had to be something better than this.

“Passion feeds passion and then we are left with a small death.” Mr Bug's representative was trying to comfort Miss Brunner.

She stared at the strangled corpse.

A young man in a trenchcoat and a trilby stepped backwards.

“Is anyone really dying?” she asked. “Or are we all just very tired?”

“Some of you are really dying, I'm afraid.” Mr Bug's representative plucked at his mouth-tube. “Time is Time, no matter how much you struggle against it.”

“Then we're done for.”

“I haven't come to any conclusions about that.” He was apologetic. “I'm honestly only an observer.”

“You've interfered.”

“I've taken an interest. It's the best I can offer.”

Miss Brunner shrugged him away.

A whistle blew.

“I'm getting off this train,” she said.

Mr Bug's representative made a peculiar gesture with his right glove.

“There'll be another one along in a minute.”

Very sluggishly, the airship was lifting.

The last of the Musician-Assassins lay spreadeagled on the floor of the gondola. A faint tape was playing “Silly Thing.”

“It's what the public wanted,” murmured Jerry. “Or at least some of them. I did my best. It was good while it lasted.”

The ship gently bumped against a church steeple. He pulled himself to a window. He recognised Powys Square. There was a bonfire.

Something bit at his groin.

He scratched.

Framed against the flames, a tartan-clad figure and a dwarf were dancing.

“I think I'm missing all the fun again.” The Assassin switched on his engine.

It faltered. It was apologetic.

He tried again.

Something clicked.

“We're going to have to split up,” said Miss Brunner firmly. Her colleagues had revived enough to get off the train and sit, shaking, on the platform seat.

“I think I have already,” said Frank.

“You mean diversify, don't you?” Bishop Beesley wrenched a wrapper off a Mars.

“Disintegrate?” Frank was thinking of himself as usual.

Miss Brunner had recovered a bit of her composure.

“Captain Maxwell is the only one who will know how to deal with all this. So much of it is his fault.”

“Oh, come on,” said Frank. “We were partners. Maxwell's as decent as the rest of us underneath. He pretends to be a revolutionary but he's really just an ordinary businessman.”

Miss Brunner shook her head. “In different ways, Mr Cornelius, you're as gullible as your brother. We're facing a genuine attempt to take power.”

“The Pistols.”

“Of course not, you idiot. You very rarely get that sort of trouble from the musicians. They want different things, most of them. Subtler things.”

“The Pistols want subtler things.” Bishop Beesley appeared to be trying to recondition his mind.

“That's hard to believe,” said Frank.

Miss Brunner yawned and glanced away. “At least they're all good looking.”

“I haven't been well,” said Frank. “What's this about breaking up?”

“Diversifying,” said Bishop Beesley.

There was a peculiar lack of noise around the station. The train had long-since pulled away.

“Splitting up” she said. “To find them.”

“Who?” said Frank. He watched a butterfly settle on the track.

“Anyone,” she said.

“Divide and Rule,” said Bishop Beesley. “Where in hell are we, anyway?”

He began to snore.

Miss Brunner peered into the countryside. “Is that real, do you think? It's such a long time since I've been anywhere.”

“There must have been something in the marketing,” said Mo. He stood in the deserted office complex holding a phone without a lead. “Badges and that. T-shirts.”

“There's a lot to be made from marketing,” agreed Mitzi. “Posters. Programmes. People get a good profit off all that. Special books.”

“Masks. Sweets.”