Pantheon 00 - Age of Godpunk

by James Lovegrove

  “Let’s not think about that, eh?”

  “I can’t help thinking about it, my darling. Your father tried so hard – so hard – to keep things from escalating. I know he wasn’t supposed to. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office never approved. But he insisted on trying to reason with the enemy. He feared the spread of communism as much as anyone, but his approach was always to engage in diplomacy rather than aggression. Like Churchill said, ‘jaw-jaw not war-war.’”

  “Please, Mum, don’t get in a state,” said Guy. “Fretting about it isn’t going to help. How about I fix us something to eat? I don’t know about you, but I’m famished.”

  “He shouldn’t have gone. Maurice should never have gone. Into North Vietnam. He had such a sense of duty, though. Such a strong moral compass.”

  Guy’s father had been killed on his way to a meeting with a high-ranking Viet Cong warlord. He had been travelling overland from Laos via the Mu Gia Pass when his car was ambushed by armed guerrillas from another VC faction. He, his driver and his translator were dragged from the vehicle and lined up by the roadside. They were defenceless. It was a firing squad, an execution.

  Publicly, the Wilson government’s line was that it disapproved of the White House’s strategy in Vietnam. That played well with the Labour Party rank and file and the wider electorate. Privately, however, Wilson had pledged support for Johnson and his military operations in the region. Maurice Lucas’s death therefore put the government in a quandary. He had been doing the right thing, but not the officially sanctioned thing. His superiors in the FCO chose to paint him as a rogue and a maverick, describing his venture into hostile territory as well-intentioned but wrongheaded. The incident was swept under the carpet. He became just another regrettable casualty of war, a minor British martyr.

  Nonetheless a whiff of disgrace hung about the whole affair, and still clung to his wife. She always used to drink, but never as much as she did nowadays.

  “A good man and a fool,” she said to her son. “Why are the two so hard to separate?”

  Guy couldn’t answer the question and didn’t think he was meant to. He went to the small galley kitchen and made two cheese and tomato sandwiches using slices of a slightly stale Sunblest loaf. When he returned to the living room, his mother was sound asleep. He rescued the tumbler from her hand before it could slip from her fingers onto the floor. He sniffed the clear dregs inside the glass, then gulped them down. Bitter. Usually she added more tonic.

  He ate both sandwiches, thinking.

  The idea, when it came, seemed fantastically obvious, as a good idea should.

  In next to no time Guy was on the King’s Road, heading for World’s End Wines, the local off-licence. He was still dressed in his school uniform – tweed sports jacket and tie – so that when a hippie couple passed him coming the other way, the man turned to the woman and said, “That’s way too young to be so square.” She, in return, chided him, saying, “Give the kid time. He’ll turn on and get hip when he’s good and ready.” Guy ignored them both. They were walking clichés: tinted round spectacles, fur-trimmed suede coats, Afghan hound trotting beside them. Guy had no idea what the future held in store for him, but he had no ambitions to grow up to become a shambling longhair freak. Life was far too serious for that.

  The proprietor of World’s End Wines, Mr Norrington, greeted Guy with a smile.

  “What is it today, young man? The usual? Beefeater Extra Dry is a shilling off at the moment, if I can tempt your mother away from Gordon’s for a change.”

  “No, I’ll stick with Gordon’s. Three pint bottles, please.”

  “Three?” An eyebrow curved.

  “We’re entertaining this evening.”

  “Fair enough.” Mr Norrington bagged the gin in a paper sack printed with his shop’s name. “On the account?”

  “Of course.”

  “I should mention, Mrs Lucas hasn’t actually settled last month’s bill yet. A lady like her, I’m always willing to extend the repayment period, but if you wouldn’t mind having a word with her about it...?”

  “I’m sure it just slipped her mind.”

  “I’m sure it did. Just like I’m sure you’re eighteen years old. If you catch my drift.”

  “I’ll remind her. Thank you, Mr Norrington.”

  “Pleasure, young man.”

  As Guy walked back up the road with his purchases, he passed the hippies again. They were standing outside a record shop admiring the cover of the new Beatles album displayed in the window. Their elegant, silky-furred dog sat at their feet, thoughtfully licking its privates.

  “That’s, like, so nothing,” the man said of the blank white record sleeve. “So nothing it’s everything. Genius.”

  “Hey,” said the woman, noticing Guy and the bag he was carrying. “Look. Kid’s just bought some booze.”

  Her partner chuckled. “Wow. I had him pegged wrong. Not so square after all, huh?” He gave Guy the peace sign. “Be cool, brother.”

  I will be, Guy thought. I will be very fucking cool.

  HE SMUGGLED THE gin back to school inside his going-away suitcase. He doubted his mother would ever notice that three extra bottles of Gordon’s had been charged to her account, and even if she did, he could surely convince her that she had asked him to buy them for her. Anyway, it didn’t matter. Sorting out Mayflower, Bartlett and Thompson was all that mattered.

  Stashing one bottle in each boy’s bedside chest of drawers was easy enough. So was quietly tipping off Mr Hemingway the headmaster. “I’m sorry, sir, this may just be a rumour, but I’m pretty sure I overheard someone saying that some of the boys have brought alcohol to school.” Dormitories were searched, the gin was discovered, and Mayflower, Bartlett and Thompson were summoned to Mr Hemingway’s study. They came out half an hour later, limping, their backsides having been soundly thrashed. Mr Hemingway then phoned each boy’s parents, inviting them to come and collect their son at the first available opportunity and to consider enrolling him in some other educational establishment. Expulsion was not specifically mentioned, but that was to all intents and purposes what this was.

  Before they left, the three bullies had just enough time to find Guy and give him the beating of his life. They knew he had framed them. It couldn’t have been anyone else. And even if they were wrong and he was innocent, it wouldn’t do any harm to give the choccie one last bashing. They stripped him to his underpants and kicked and punched him until he was sore all over and bleeding freely from mouth and nose.

  For Guy it was worth it, every moment of it. The pain and humiliation were victory.

  THE NEXT TIME he saw Milward, he told him what he had done.

  “Don’t mean to swank,” he said, “but really, Satan didn’t come through for us, did he? So I took matters into my own hands.”

  Milward was torn between admiration and indignation. “You’ve interfered with his plans, Lucas. That’s unwise.”

  “What plans?” Guy shot back testily. “Assuming there even were any, we could have died of old age waiting for him to put them into action.”

  “Honestly, there’ll be repercussions. Serious ones. You’ll see.”

  “Well, perhaps. But in the meantime, Mayflower and his cronies are someone else’s problem now. That’ll do for me.”

  THE TWO OF them never spoke again. The very next afternoon there was a fire in one of the school attics. It was a place where boys regularly went to smoke. The floorboards were littered with cigarette butts, spent matches and discarded empty Pall Mall and Capstan cartons.

  One of the first-years spotted flames pouring from the roof. The alarm was raised and the fire brigade came. Within an hour the blaze was brought under control. Mr Hemingway conducted a roll call of the entire school in the clock tower quad. There was only one absentee: Clive Milward. Mr Hemingway called out the name three times. No reply.

  The firemen found the body later that day. Milward was scorched almost beyond recognition, but just enough of his face remained, to
enable identification.

  It was assumed, not unreasonably, that the fire had been caused by a stray cigarette ash falling onto the insulation lagging and setting it alight. Mr Hemingway called an assembly and delivered a long lecture on the perils and pitfalls of smoking. “Filthy habit and, as we’re now all too well aware, deadly dangerous too.” He expressed relief that the fire had been contained and the disaster had not been significantly worse. Then the chaplain led everyone in a prayer in memory of Clive Milward, taken before his time. “We commend his soul unto God. Amen.”

  Guy wondered if it was God who had taken receipt of Milward’s soul, or some other supernatural being. Either way, Milward had had a brief taste of the fires of Hell while still on earth.

  Would Satan visit a similar fate on Milward’s partner-in-crime, the boy who had collaborated with him in the black mass in the cricket pavilion? Would he destroy Guy too?

  Guy guessed he would have to wait and find out.

  But he wasn’t holding his breath.

  1971-1972

  HER NAME WAS Molly and she was a free spirit. She was naturally busty and unnaturally blonde. She came from America – Wisconsin, originally, but more recently Washington, DC – and she was into Woody Allen movies, horoscopes, strong coffee, and the music of Carole King and Van Morrison. Her favourite books were The Catcher In The Rye and Slaughterhouse-Five, and she said she would find it hard to love anyone who didn’t love both of those. She looked great in hip-hugging bell-bottoms and a tight paisley shirt, braless. She smelled of lilies and clean laundry.

  Guy was besotted.

  They first met during Freshers’ Week, at the bar in Oxford’s tiniest, most tucked-away pub, the Turf Tavern. Molly broached the conversation: something about liking Guy’s sideburns. Guy liked Guy’s sideburns, so as ice-breaking lines went, it was a winner.

  His reply was fumbling, a gauche statement of the obvious: “So you’re American.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Molly drawled. “How’d you guess?”

  He redeemed himself somewhat with his comeback. “Wild stab in the dark. It was either that or Hungarian.”

  She smiled. She laughed. Her nose wrinkled, making the freckles on it bunch together. “You’re funny. And kooky. I like funny and kooky.”

  Guy could have sworn he was onto a sure thing with her. They chatted for a good ten minutes, both seeming to have forgotten why they had come to the bar in the first place. Molly’s father worked at the US Embassy. “You know, the place that looks like a prison on Grosvenor Square in London.” He was a minister-counsellor, which meant –

  But Guy knew what it meant. Assistant to the ambassador, an administrative role.

  Wide-eyed, Molly exclaimed, “How in heck did you know that? You’re the first person I’ve met here who does. Everyone assumes he’s a priest or something.”

  “I’m the child of a diplomat too.”

  “It’s kismet, then,” Molly said. “You and I were destined to meet.”

  But it went no further that night. Molly was with friends, a table full of them, all men. She said Guy could go over with her and join them. He’d be welcome. “They’re all guys from my college. They’re cool.”

  They were rough and hearty, though. Rowing types, to judge by the broadness of their shoulders. Gales of raucous laughter burst from their table, chasing after coarse jokes. Testosterone city. Guy didn’t feel like dealing with them. It would be too much effort. He didn’t want to compete with them for Molly’s attention. He wanted her all to himself, or nothing.

  So he chose nothing. He made his excuses. “Actually, sorry, I’ve got my own bunch of friends. They’re outside.”

  Her disappointment was fleeting but, he believed, sincere. “Oh. Okay. Another time, huh?”

  He took beers out to Terry and Phil, both first-year PPE undergrads like him. Terry was from Wales and into prog rock and fantasy novels, especially Tolkien and Moorcock. Phil was from Humberside and wouldn’t stop going on about his girlfriend back home, Julie, who worked in a clothing boutique but had ambitions to be a dancer on Top Of The Pops. They were pleasant but dull, but their real problem that night was that neither of them was Molly-From-Wisconsin-Then-Washington. Guy, as he chatted with them, could think only of her. He cursed his own pusillanimity. Leave that lot. Let’s go somewhere else, just you and me. That was what he should have said to her. Coward.

  Eventually, having stewed in remorse for long enough, he went back inside the pub, determined.

  Molly and her retinue of oarsmen were gone.

  THEIR PATHS DIDN’T cross for the rest of that Michaelmas Term. Guy looked out for her in every pub he visited, every Junior Common Room, on the street, in the quads, in the lecture halls, even down by the river. He didn’t know which college she was at, what course she was doing, anything other than her nationality and her first name. It was a fruitless search. There were other girls interested in him – he slept with one or two of them – but he kept biding his time, waiting for a second chance with Molly. If he got it, he wouldn’t bungle it this time. He promised himself that.

  Hilary Term came, bitter cold, with mist hanging perpetually over the spires and meadows. Guy was strolling back to his college early one morning after a drunken hook-up with a girl from St Hilda’s. He was crossing Magdalen Bridge when who should he see coming the opposite way but Molly. She was on a bicycle, pedalling serenely down the High, lost in her thoughts, a million miles away.

  Guy hailed her, but she didn’t hear. He darted across the road, narrowly avoiding getting run over by a Hillman Imp. The driver’s irate horn-tooting caught Molly’s attention; she spied Guy and braked.

  “You,” she said, sounding both mystified and delighted. “Sideburns boy. Hi.”

  “Hi yourself,” said Guy.

  “I haven’t seen you since, well, ever. Where have you been hiding?”

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “Want to get breakfast? There’s this café up Cowley Road serves great bacon and eggs and the thickest toast you’ve ever seen. Plus real coffee, not instant. I was just going myself.”

  “Kismet,” said Guy.

  THEY BECAME AN item. That was the word Molly used for them, so Guy used it too. Item. Not inseparable. Molly needed her space. She didn’t want to hang out with him all the time. She was a liberated female. She valued her independence. But two or three nights a week he would stay over at her digs, the tiny terraced house she shared with two other girls in Jericho, down near the canal. She was a second-year, living out of college, so there weren’t any restrictions about overnight guests for her as there were for him. On her narrow mattress on the floor, by the soft glow of a batik-draped lamp, with Moondance or Tapestry on the turntable, Guy had never been happier.

  It was Molly who suggested, late one evening, that the two of them hold a séance using a Ouija board. She’d done it with school friends back in Wisconsin. It had been spooky and a bit freaky but still fun. She wasn’t sure they had made actual contact with the Other Side, but some of the messages the board spelled out had been scarily close to the truth, stuff she and her friends hadn’t known they’d known, things about the other townsfolk, secrets and such.

  “C’mon,” she said, fetching the Ouija board out of her cupboard, “it’ll be a gas.”

  They sat opposite each other, cross-legged on the floor, the board between them. A candle wedged into the neck of a Mateus Rosé bottle was their only illumination. They had shared a joint earlier and Guy was still a little lightheaded from that, and from the couple of glasses of cheap plonk he had downed. Dimly he recalled his escapade in the cricket pavilion at Scarsworth Hall with Clive Milward, the so-called black mass. He felt less trepidation now than he had then. He and Milward had not managed to raise Satan, had they? It was all bollocks. Childish nonsense. Demons and spirits and séances... But he would indulge Molly. He could deny her nothing. Sometimes her unpredictability vexed him; sometimes her mood swings caught him on the hop. Nonetheless, he wa
s truly this woman’s lapdog.

  Molly placed the planchette in the centre of the board, rested her fingers on it and instructed Guy to do likewise.

  “You have to clear your mind,” she said. “Empty your thoughts. There’s no room for doubt or cynicism here. You must be open to what lies beyond. We both must. We must let the spirits enter us and speak through us.”

  Guy nodded. It was cold in Molly’s room. A single-bar electric fire was doing little to dispel the damp February chill.

  “Wait for it,” Molly said. “Wait...”

  Guy waited, wondering idly whether his tutor would grant him an extension on his essay on Keynesian Macroeconomics and the Relationship Between Aggregate Demand and Aggregate Supply. It was due in the day after tomorrow and he hadn’t done nearly enough of the background reading, let alone begun to plan his argument. He also thought of his mother. How was she doing? It had been a drab Christmas, just the two of them again, her still drinking too much. He kept encouraging her to find a new man, have some fun in her life, but she maintained that nobody could replace his father, and he had to admit she might be right.

  “Yes,” said Molly, almost a gasp. “Yes, they’re here. The spirits are here. Can you feel it?”

  To be honest, Guy could not. The air had grown a little colder – a draught sneaking in around the ill-fitting window sash – but nothing else seemed to have changed. If entities from beyond the veil were in the room, they weren’t making their presence perceptible to him.

  “Ask them something,” Molly said. “Go on. Something you’ve been burning to know.”

  “All right. Is Molly Rosenkrantz going to give me a blowjob tonight?”

  “Asshole!” She was surprisingly cross. “Don’t mess about. This is serious shit.”

  “I am serious. And the answer is...”