A reward, he thought. A celebration.
Chapter Twenty
TEENAGE RAMPAGE
For once the sun was shining in beautiful London. Janus Jeeves took one more deep inhalation of the free free air, then stepped inside to check on his crew. He found Sam and Benson at the kitchen with bowls of curry in front of them, Benson scanning his ever-present tablet and Sam eating his meal with a gold-plated spoon.
“What’s the word, hummingbird?” asked Jeeves.
“It’s all over the news,” Benson said, activating his tablet’s larger holo display to show him. “People are panicking. There’s riots and mayhem outside of every Tesco right now.”
Jeeves was over the moon. “Excellent! A bit of mayhem gets things back in order before the dust settles. First things first—we have to move. Then, we will celebrate our victory. Have you found a place?”
“Here,” Benson said, waving his hand to switch to another screen. “More than a stone’s throw away, but records say it’s been occupied by the same couple for decades, and I have it on good authority that it isn’t.”
Jeeves grinned, rubbing his hands together. “Sounds like the place has style. Our guys and gals will be over in a tick to help move everything. Foxy, you coming?”
“Yeah,” Sam answered around a spoonful of curry. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“That curry’s about eleven times too hot for most people,” Jeeves said. “You’d better be careful.”
Sam raised his eyebrows, defiantly sticking another spoonful in his mouth. “S’good,” he said, as his face grew red and his eyes watered.
The scavenger army, led by James and Jack-of-all-Trades, arrived and immediately got down to the business of relocating. There was much to be done. In addition to Jeeves’ books and garish furnishings, there were loads of emergency rations strewn about that ranged from the essential to the ridiculous. Litres of water, cans of baked beans, jars of Marmite, tins of curry, boxes filled with cups, silverware, vinyl records, jewelry, cloth napkins, sheets, soap, shampoo, garlic presses, paintings by the ringleader himself, rubbish bags, ciggies, boxes of PG Tips, Twinings, Tetley. Egg cups, trousers, Wellingtons. Scarves, hats, understuffed teddy bears. Jump ropes, playing cards, a lightshow disc copy of Mr. Bean’s Holiday.
All of these items had been found, discarded and practically brand new, most of them in the Chelsea district of London. James and Jack-of-all-Trades led a determined army of young Arcana, the first kids on board when Saint Fox and The Independence broke onto the scene, misfit and luminous in their winter scarves and hemp bracelets. They collected, tore down, and built up Jeeves’ new circus in a matter of hours.
The Arcana’s new headquarters was situated above a footwear shop in Morden that had been empty for ages.
Jeeves clasped his hands together with childlike glee, practically somersaulting.
“This is it,” he kept saying. “This is it. I love this place. It has even more character than the last one.”
In truth, the flat above the shop had decidedly less character than the collapsed flat that had formerly belonged to Jeeves’ deceased brother. In its bare bones state it was just white walls and wooden beams, a wide and narrow space. Still, the windows, which were soon decorated in sheer and beaded curtains, let in a good amount of light. With furnishings both new and old, plastic and wood, digital and analog, it began to feel like home again.
Janus Jeeves was perched in an old blue velvet chair he had positioned along the center of the back wall like a throne when Saint Fox and The Independence arrived, the remaining three of four—Kit, Muzzy, and Seth, carrying bongos and acoustic guitars.
“Children!” Jeeves welcomed them. “Come in, come in! Have you come to play us some celebration tunes?”
“Of course,” Kit said. Jeeves detected a note of false enthusiasm in her voice. “Where’s Sam?”
“I’m’ere,” the frontman said, raising his face slightly from where it had been buried in a pile of mismatched cushions on Jeeves’ bright green couch. He gave a weak wave before spotting Kit out of the corner of his eye. “What’s up, little Miss rock n’ roll?” he said with a lazy grin.
She sat down beside him. “Look at you all lying about. Shouldn’t you be jumping up and down like your leader here? We just started a revolution.”
Sam leaned against her shoulder and sniffed her hair as she put her arm around him.
“Okay, lovebirds. Let’s get this party on the road,” Jeeves announced as more bodies began streaming into the main room. Kids and adults, some of them colleagues from his professor days, some of them with spots and crayon-coloured hair, some he recognised and some he didn’t. But all of them he loved.
“Hey, Sam,” Muzzy nudged him with a guitar. “Let’s play ‘Action Man’, the first song we played that night at the Lindseys. You remember?”
“Yeah, I remember,” said Sam. He reached for the guitar. “Give it here.”
He placed his fingers against the strings, people once again gathering round to hear what he had to say. Jeeves looked on with a bizarre expression on his face, both fond and pensive. Sam, Kit, and Muzzy strummed the opening chords. The sound melted into the room, rich and warm.
Rally your troops and test your weapons
For you, my friends, are the enemy
Laughing the night away, wanting for nothing
While millions struggle to make ends meet
Come closer now, my darlings and hear me
I am the face of what you ignore
No more protests, and the songs will be few
I’ll be your action man, you can be sure
So rally your weapons and test your troops
First, remove the ones who need handling
We come like death, like a thief in the night
And we won’t leave a’ one of you standing…
With percussion made of anything—ottomans, tabletops, spoons and one another—and a mixed chorus of those who could carry a tune and those who couldn’t, the Arcana sang a chorus of Saint Fox songs, of old folk songs about sailors lost at sea, of families with no money and too many mouths to feed. They sang late into the night and the music was pure and sweet, to Jeeves’ jubilant ears more so than anyone’s.
As the night bled into day, Janus Jeeves surveyed his domain with pride. A few diehards remained awake, including of course, Saint Fox himself. The lad had indeed proved himself useful.
“A toast,” Jeeves announced to those who had managed to stay up alongside him until dawn. He lifted his glass, a teal-green goblet filled with gin and grapefruit juice. “To Saint Fox and The Independence. To our Foxy little saviour here, whose delicate charm gathered thousands of bodies to our cause. To the new paradigm. To the future!”
“Hear, hear!” they echoed, as Sam and Jeeves’ looked at each other with smiles on their faces.
The Arcana raised their glasses to father and son, and to the dawn of a new morning.
They were not the only ones celebrating that night. The fans, the foes, the children of mayhem ran through the streets, setting off smoke bombs and throwing bottles at windows. They were happy and free, because whatever happened to the middle and upper classes affected them not at all. They would go on living, drinking beer pinched from their dad’s fridge in the den, sucking up helium at the party shops where they worked and floating on cloud negative nine. They didn’t care that international phone lines were jumbled together in wireless disaster as cabinet ministers and CEOs dialed one another in fits of panic, didn’t care that stocks at the Exchange would plummet to their lowest point in decades. They went on with their lives as usual, with only a bit more arson and petty vandalism.
Others however, cared very much. Enough to pack up immediately and head to the train station, enough to put a gun to their heads. Enough to decide that enough was enough, and that terrorism must be stopped, once and for all.
Asda on Whitechapel Road burned like a plastic sun, the night air thick with smoke and f
og. Rows of bodies lined the streets behind lines of tape reading Do Not Cross. Some preached doomsday, others held signs, Viva the Independence!
Cops with their billysticks and their modern electric weapons did their best to keep folks in line, a swat or a volt of lightning to anyone who wouldn’t jump to the beat. People who were just watching, people who didn’t fit into their narrow profile of nice, middle-class white folk, even those who came to the store thinking they’d just pop in and grab a 24-pack of toilet roll were quickly swept into the chaos. Two long-haired young men with tattoos reading TAKEBACK underneath an X’d out pound symbol slung a rubbish bin over the head of a dull-faced cop as they seized his plastic club and threw it into the bushes.
Shouts of protest or hallelujah could not be discerned amongst the din, and as many coppers that showed up there were twice as many rioters, men and women yelling that the pigs would never steal from them again. There were too many of them, and the Metropolitan Police were ill-equipped to handle it—there was no specialised riot force to call upon. The people were more organised than the police, united by a common drive—to withdraw every ounce of faith from a dollar and a system they had lost belief in decades ago.
The workforce of Asda on Whitechapel Road had fled out the back way as rioters used cigarettes and lighter fluid to set outrageously low-priced goods aflame. Motor oil from one department spread fire to all others—the electronics department, toy department, grocery department, home department. Cheaply-made jumpers and mass-manufactured boxes of cereal and 800-thread count bed sheets for half price and vacuum cleaners and scratchy bow ties and undersized yoga mats and oversized pantyhose and scrunched polyester hair ties and giant stuffed teddy bears burned, burned, burned, till they were ash upon the shiny, scuffed white floor.
“You’re all fucking sacked!” Tim Easton’s manager, a Mister Gerald Batts, had shouted at his employees when he’d noticed the altered display flashing on the P.O.S. terminals—a question mark, warning and red—at the same moment the smell of smoke entered his nostrils.
Tim Easton had only smiled secretly to himself with his hands behind his back, covering the cleverband on his wrist with his palm. Mister Batts never paid him any mind. To him, Tim Easton was invisible. He was completely clueless to the fact that it was Tim who had played a key part in sabotaging his store.
Tim Easton stepped outside the flaming superstore into the smoky night to sweet sweet sounds, the shouting in the streets like so many rally cries in Saint Fox’s songs—the screech of tires like the squeals of the electric guitar, the sound of glass shattering like a chorus of wind chimes. Tim was not a violent young man, but he knew the violence was necessary and he knew the violence would pass—he’d seen enough films and even read enough books to know this was what revolution looked like. He walked home towards his tiny flat on the South side where he could barely afford the rent, his hands in his pockets and a skip in his step, whistling a tune to himself that now, everyone was singing.
Chapter Twenty-One
FOR PENCE ON THE POUND
Charlotte Piebald was a skeptic, a narcissist, and a mother of two—two ‘best in show’ Corgis, that is. A thoroughbred herself, with tight alabaster skin and small bright hazel eyes that were a bit too far apart, a figure kept in good shape by smart eating and a custom-designed exercise regimen of cardio and Pilates. Her doctor once told her she had the body of a twenty-five-year-old, a fact she took much pride in being that she had just recently passed the dreaded forty-year milestone.
She kept quite busy with spa appointments and entrepreneurial pursuits—her father had helped her start up a handbag line of her very own, and now Charlotte P. was a high-end brand name found in every major retail shop worldwide. The bags were all either ridiculously small or as large as a suitcase, made of Italian leather in white or apricot, with tiny bronze embellishments spaced evenly across diagonally quilted patterns.
Charlotte Piebald rarely cooked. She had a personal chef who came on weekends and three out of five weekdays to her fourth generation estate in Holland Park. On the occasion she did prepare food for herself, it was simple meals with fresh, organic ingredients—mixed field greens, smoked Coho salmon, herbed goat cheese.
It was a Tuesday afternoon. Charlotte’s personal chef Elise would be off tomorrow, so she needed to do a bit of shopping, for tomorrow’s two-and-a-half meals of two 500-calorie and one 200-calorie portions, no more, no less.
She’d seen the adverts—some skinny maniac decked out in more chiffon than she owned and a junkie rock star claiming doomsday. Trying to stir up panic with their absurd announcement. A scare tactic. A joke. A performance art piece. Whatever it was, she’d brushed it off as something that simply didn’t concern her.
“Left-wing to the very edge,” she’d said, turning off the television set as she headed out the door.
Her white patent leather heels click-clacked against the hardwood floors as she entered Cherry Pickers Green Grocer. The shop was rather less crowded than usual. The manager, a Mr. McKenzie, wore a strained look on his face.
“Mr. McKenzie,” Charlotte greeted him, “how’s business?”
“Lousy,” he answered, picking at his teeth. “Those radicals seem to have caused quite a stir. Frightened away a good number of my customers. People trying to pay in whatever cash they have left. We don’t take cash here! Haven’t in years.”
“Well, at least there aren’t any riots out front like they’re having at some of the major shops. Anyhow, I’m not afraid,” Charlotte said, her head held high. “What they’re claiming sounds impossible anyway—creating a virus that can be transferred through the Dot. People aren’t machines.”
Charlotte ran a perfectly manicured index finger around the edges of the P.O.S. terminal at Mr. McKenzie’s register.
“Aha, see? Not a scratch on me.”
“You’re a brave soul, Ms. Piebald. Now you just go ahead and grab whatever it is you need, I’ll make sure this little machine here don’t hurt ya. We’ve got some lovely local vine-ripened tomatoes just in.”
“Brilliant. Be back in a jiffy.”
Charlotte roamed through the green grocer’s, stocked to the brim with freshly baked wholegrain breads, grassfed beef, local and organic produce from the countryside. She gathered ingredients to make two large salads and a corn farfalle version of kasha varnishkes.
“Well, I’m all set, Mr. McKenzie. Ready to take the plunge.”
“That’ll be 128.57£. Go ahead and swipe, if you dare,” he chuckled.
The mint-coloured swipe box was now coloured red, and the text beneath it that used to read Pay Now had changed to Pay At Your Own Risk. These childish pranksters must think they’re clever, she thought. Still, she hesitated—an irrational fear, an imagined phantom crawling across one’s shoulder that was never even there. She squared her shoulders and pressed her finger to the screen.
“A girl’s gotta eat,” she said.
Sam woke up face down on Jeeves’ velour couch, his fingers trailing the shagpile carpet that had been laid down the night before. When he realised where he was, he grinned to himself, remembering Jeeves’ toast from last night. They’d had a proper celebration, and he now had the hangover to prove it. Turning his head to the side and squinting to block out the daylight, he saw Mister national orchestrator himself before him, seated cross-legged on the carpet.
“How we feelin’ today, Foxy?” Jeeves asked, a wry expression on his narrow face.
“A bit shyte,” Sam admitted. “Had quite a lot to drink last night. Hard to keep up with you.” He groaned, pressing his hand to his forehead. “So much has happened these past few months. It’s making my head spin.”
“Hmm...” Jeeves stroked his chin. “Pressures of being a messiah must be gettin’ to you. Don’t you worry, relief is at hand. You’re more than welcome to take a break, Foxy—your work for now is done. You got the bodies. Now the fox is free to scamper off back to his lair and nurse whatever wounds he feels he ma
y have incurred,” said the maestro with a quiet lilt in his voice.
Sam raised his eyebrows. “You sayin’ I should leave?” he asked.
Jeeves sucked his lips in between his mismatched teeth. “Just looking out for you—you must be tired. You did what you set out to do. Now it’s on to phase two. Might as well skittledeedo.”
“Last night I was a revolutionary hero,” Sam said, his jaw setting in a defensive live. “Besides, if I go back to my flat now, I’ll probably be arrested, or worse.”
“Oh, dear me, I didn’t mean for you to go off where anyone could find you,” Jeeves said. Sam found the concern on the maestro’s face disingenuous, a painted-on drama mask, but maybe that was just the hangover talking, a trick of the light.
Jeeves stretched his palms out in front of him and stared off into the distance, frozen in place as the wheels in his head turned. He lowered his hands and sighed. “When you’re right, you’re right, Sammy boy. Who knows what direction things will take! I may have use of you yet. You gotta hide out from all the King’s men, or Watermen’s men, rather. You must be kept safe, and we should be the ones to do it. From now on, you’ll stay with me. Hell, some people out there think that you’re my own son. Must be the good looks.” Jeeves grinned widely, clasping his hands together, the motion causing his long black sleeves to fly across Sam’s face.
Sam frowned and moved away from him, sitting up. “We don’t look anything alike,” he said.
“I’ve got to go check in with Bezza. Now you just rest up your pretty head, take some paracetamol or something. Oh, what in god given hellfire will happen now that we’ve flipped the switch? The show begins!” He left the room in his usual tornado of fabric.
What if I’m just another cog in a new machine? Sam thought. Jeeves had promised the rebirth of a nation and the start of a brave new world, chanting hallelujahs and other discordant hymns until they had all believed. Right now, Sam couldn’t picture what this perfect new world looked like. How much does a pint of bitter cost with GiveNGet? he wondered. He was glad he’d recently bought a bag of Black Jacks, his favourite candy, at Tesco. He would not be shopping there for a while.
The Rise of Saint Fox and The Independence Page 13
