Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! (29 page)

“I never thought it would come to this.”

“Distance makes the bank grow fonder.”

“Do what?”

“Everyone else is going. You can bet your life on it.”

“This job involves a lot of travelling, doesn't it? And very little money.”

“Don't start whining.” He was in an unusually brisk mood. It probably meant that she was keen to go to America for her own reasons.

“I can't afford it.”

“I can get us a lift.”

“I could do with a lift,” Mo said feelingly.

“We'll have to hurry.”

“Where to?”

“Brighton,” she said.

Mo offered her an enquiring scowl.

Mitzi shrugged. “It's where the plane leaves from.”

“Americans always think British bands are setting out to shock, when half the time the band is just behaving with its habitual rudeness.” Frank had his new denim suit on.

Miss Brunner pursed her lips. “We have so many complaints from abroad.”

“They were right about Captain M,” said Bishop Beesley. “If not the band itself. But then the Captain must be easily shocked himself.”

“He had his finger on the pulse of the public for a moment or two, I'll give him that.”

“He had his hands in their pockets, too,” said Frank. “That's what I'm complaining about.”

“Times are hard,” she said. “Everyone's got their hands in everyone else's pockets. Groping about for the pennies they're sure someone must have.”

“Disgusting,” said Bishop Beesley.

“Hurry up, Bishop. Are you packed?”

He was trying to close the lid on a large suitcase of Toffee Crunch.

“I have every admiration for American Management.” Frank became pious. “They handle things so well over there.”

“They have nicer musicians, that's why.”

“Even the cowboys?”

“Hearts of gold, underneath.”

“Rough diamonds,” said Bishop Beesley sentimentally.

“Any kind would do me, right now.” Frank looked at his ticket. “This had better work.”

“They love me,” she said. “It's my accent.”

“Half the time you think you're flying.” Jerry fiddled with his controls, “and when you get out you discover you've been in a Link trainer the whole time.”

“Try and keep quiet and concentrate,” said Mitzi. They were all fed up with him. “Are you sure you know this type of plane?”

“I love it,” he said. “Therefore I know it.”

“A classic romantic delusion.” Mr Bug's representative wriggled in the navigator's chair.

“Get on with it, you stinking old hasbeen.” Mo sat with the rest of the group in the passenger seats. He lifted a bottle of Wild Turkey to his lips.

“Will we get to meet Bugs Bunny?” asked Flash. He was well out of things.

“I'm having a hard time,” said the Assassin with characteristic self-pity.

“Getting them good times.” Only Mitzi was really looking forward to the trip.

The old Boeing Clipper lumbered through the water, its Wright Double Cyclone engines screaming and burping as they gave all they had left.

“You ought to be running a bloody transport museum,” said Mo without disapproval. “You're living in the past.”

“I think he simply wants the whole 20th century at once,” said Mr Bug's representative. “It's greed, really. And romance, of course.”

Jerry pulled down his goggles. “I'm just heavily into technology,” he said.

“Well, I suppose I can't complain about that.” Mr Bug's representative crossed his legs, if they were legs. “It's been my problem for years.”

The ancient Boeing heaved itself into the wild, blue yonder. Mitzi clapped her little hands. “Look out, Land of Opportunity, here we come!”

“If we're lucky,” said Mo enthusiastically

The Assassin had a strange grin on his lips. “Manifest Destiny. We'll be fine.”

“I think I'd feel safer in a bleedin' covered wagon,” said Jimi, waking up for a moment and not enjoying the experience.

“Yanks,” said Mrs Cornelius reminiscently. “I saws lot of 'em durin' ther War.”

“War?” said Alvarez rolling a hot dog between his hands.

“Ther last one. Ther last big one, that is. Thaes wot I liked. Mrs Minniver, innit? Well, you wouldn't know abart any o' that. Yore too fuckin' young.”

“Who?”

“You?”

“Killed?”

“You, if ya don't fuckin' shut up. I'll tell yer one fing. I'm gettin' bleedin' bored wiv this picture, ain't you? I could do wiv a nice bit o' John Wayne.”

“Self-conscious, self-involved, chauvinistic and just downright bloody terrified.” Miss Brunner dragged Frank off the plane at LAX. “Where's your sense of the International Brotherhood of Man, Mr Cornelius?”

“I've been here before.” Bishop Beesley wiped his brown lips.

“I never did like it.” Frank was miserable. “It's hardly ever the way it is in the pictures.”

“A fact of life which your family has always failed to accept.” They moved towards the Immigration desks, “And take that silly Stetson off.”

“Will they give us the money?” asked Bishop Beesley, in the rear as usual. “In Los Angeles? Sunset Boulevard?”

“Sunset something,” she said. “This could be the end of the line.”

Frank cheered up a little. “You getting cold feet?”

“My feet are never hot, Mr Cornelius.”

She was sensitive about her inability to sweat.

They pushed Sid out first. He went down over the Bay, rolling and twisting in the air before his parachute opened.

“Go,” shouted the Assassin, circling the Golden Gate Bridge. “Go!”

One by one they jumped.

“At least it's sunny,” said Mitzi, passing Mo on the way down. “It's amazing what a difference a bit of sunshine makes.”

“Have a nice day.” The Wild Turkey and Crème de Menthe hadn't mixed well. He began to vomit in the general direction of Haight-Ashbury.

They drifted over the city.

Mr Bug's representative hung limp in his harness. Stuff was oozing from his suit. “Can this be a propaganda drop?”

“I've never tried them,” Jimi tugged at one of his ropes. “This is all right, though, isn't it?”

One by one they hit the ocean.

The Boeing Clipper circled over the spreading blobs of silk.

Jerry was beginning to revive a trifle. He swung the plane out to sea and flipped a toggle. His vibra-cannons were now At Go.

He turned and headed back towards the city as fast as he could go. The tapes rolled, straight into the cannons' ammo storage.

“Time for a little earthquake.”

He gave them “Anarchy in the UK.” It seemed appropriate.

He whistled to himself as the buildings began to bounce.

Mitzi Beesley stood dripping on the wharf while the cutters continued their search.

“Americans take everything so
seriously.
They're worse than the French.”

Mr Bug's representative was incapable of standing. Someone had tried to remove his suit but had stopped when they had seen what was inside. “They're too polite. And when politeness fails, they're too violent.”

“There were at least four more went in.” The policewoman was staring wonderingly at the blasted city. “What did they have to do that for?”

“Jealousy,” said Mitzi. “Also revenge.”

“What for?”

“Oh, they're all looking for the Captain. We thought he was here.”

“And Tennille?”

“If you like.”

The Boeing Clipper had disappeared out to sea, pursued by helicopters and coastguard planes.

“Who's the pilot?” asked the policewoman. It was obvious that she still didn't believe what had happened. She looked suspiciously at Jimi and Sid.

“Just an old fart.”

Three familiar figures were picking their way over the tattered wood and concrete. “Are we too late?” Miss Brunner wanted to know.

“Too late?” asked Frank and Bishop Beesley in unison.

“Too late,” agreed Mitz.

“Poor lads.” Miss Brunner grinned like an ape.

“Will the Captain be at the funeral?”

“There's got to be an inquest first,” said Mitzi.

“Questions are going to be asked, eh?” Frank prodded at the shoulder of Mr Bug's representative. It hissed back at him, a dying snake. “Phew! He must have been gone for months.”

“It's what we're all beginning to realize.” Mitzi wandered off in the direction of Fisherman's Wharf. She was hoping she could still buy a postcard.

Said Lydon in his statement: “McLaren hoped that our record sales would be enhanced if the public were under the impression that we were banned from playing. That was certainly untrue. Some halls wouldn't have us, but others applied to Glitterbest for gigs during 1977 and were either refused or else received no replies.” In the end, he claimed, the Pistols resorted to doing three gigs under assumed names.

… Sid Vicious rang Lydon one morning at 5:00 a.m. to inform him that McLaren had just visited him. McLaren had complained to Vicious about Lydon, and Vicious himself told Lydon that he had had enough of the Sex Pistols. “Vicious sounded incoherent,” said Lydon's statement. “I've since heard that he took an overdose of heroin shortly after McLaren's visit.” Subsequently, Wilmers claimed, Lydon and McLaren had a face-to-face showdown at which Lydon said he didn't like getting publicity out of a man who had left a train driver like a vegetable. The judge asked whether Rotten had changed in view of his refusal to become involved with Biggs. “The image projected is one in which violence is not opposed,” he commented.

Mr Wilmers said that Rotten did not approve of killing people.

—New Musical Express, 24th February 1979

“It was just another wank,” said Sid, picking at himself in the Café Hendrix.

“But a seminal wank, you must admit,” said Nancy. She had been allowed in on a visit. She had always been fond of bad jokes.

Nestor Makhno looked up from the next table, a spoonful of ruby-coloured borscht near his lips, his woolly hat slipping down over one eye. “It's the politically illiterate who start revolutions. And it's the politically literate who lose them. You mustn't blame yourself.”

“I blame the Chelsea Hotel,” said Dylan Thomas. “Have you ever stayed there? In the winter? Brrr. It brings you down, boyo.”

Since arriving at the Café Hendrix he had adopted an appalling Welsh jocularity.

“What would you do?” asked Nancy. “If they gave you the chance of a comeback?”

“Tell them to stuff it.”

“I know what I'd do,” said Nestor Makhno. “I'd go all the way. Nihilism. I would have in the first place, I think, but the wife didn't like it.”

“Blow 'em all up,” said Bakunin cheerfully.

“Now there speaks a true wanker,” said Jesus. He went up to the counter to get another espresso. “Who did you ever assassinate?”

“That's scarcely the point, is it?” Bakunin was hurt. But he knew he was talking to an ace.

Everyone was aware of it.

Sid winked at the pouting Russian. “You can't compete with him. He's sent millions and millions off.”

“It's a question of style.” Bakunin waved a gloved hand. “Not of numbers killed.”

“You've probably got a point there.” Keats and Chatterton went by arm in arm. “And Sid had a lot of style. A lot of potential.”

“Well, I might yet realise it,” said Sid. He was having a think.

“Maybe it's the Gulf Stream.” Flash and Mo were dragging themselves ashore at last. They had arrived on the beach at Rio.

“It's fate, lads!” Martin Bormann, wearing only red and black swimming trunks, a discreet swastika on his saluting arm, came marching up. “I was only thinking about you this morning.”

“Have you seen the Captain?” Mo asked.

“You've just missed him, I'm afraid. But Ronnie's about. He wants to join the group. I hear you're a couple of members short. I don't wish to push myself forward, but I used to be very fond of music … ”

“We'll think about it,” said Flash.

“Pistols, Pistols über alles,” sang Martin, striding along beside them. “You look defeated. I know a great deal about defeat. You mustn't let it get you down.”

‘‘You wouldn't happen to have seen an old Boeing Clipper, would you?” Mo cast an eye on the sky.

“Oh, you know about that, do you?”

“Has one been here?”

“It's the plane the Captain left on.”

“Betrayed!” said Mo.

“It's probably a coincidence,” said Flash.

“The entire German people betrayed me,” said Martin sympathetically. “They weren't worthy of us, you see. But what do we actually mean by this word ‘betrayal'? Don't we in some ways betray only ourselves … ?”

They hadn't time for his third rate Nazi metaphysic. They began to run up the beach.

“We've got to earn some money,” said Flash.

Mo stopped.

“We'll have to do a few gigs.” He turned. “Have you got any bookings, Martin?”

“Amazon, three nights starting from tomorrow. Then there's the Mardi Gras … ”

“We'll take 'em,” said Mo.

Miss Brunner set the crudely printed invitation on top of her cryptik and frowned at it.