See you there.
Yours,
Roberta
6: CHRISTMAS TOP OF THE POPS
I will hand the first half of this chapter over to Winnie. It should be her words and not mine.
This is not how I envisaged it.
Not in a trillion years.
Not how any mother-to-be could have ever dreamt it should be.
But here I am, lying on a bed strewn with the detritus of the second most highly regarded living artist in the world today. A bed on the main stage of the Top of the Pops studio. Yes, Top of the Pops is back and being broadcast live to the nation in the early hours of Christmas Day 2023.
‘Just one more push, Winnie.’
At one side of me sits my best friend, Yoko Ono the Younger. She is holding my left hand and mopping my brow.
‘Take deep breaths.’
And at the other side is a woman with dyed blonde hair, sporting a pink cat-suit. She calls herself Lady Penelope but I am sure that cannot be her real name.
‘Deep breaths, Winnie. Deep breaths.’
Her accent keeps slipping from affected posh English to some distant type of East European. And from where I’m lying, I can see her roots. There is some grey in there. She is not as young as she’d have us believe.
‘Another big push.’
The pain is like no other pain I have ever experienced, but it is also a pain that feels right, as it should be. I try not to scream. I will not scream.
‘Just let it out, Winnie, as loud as you want.’
Above me, perched on the overhead studio cables, sits a crow, staring down at me. Who let a crow in? And at the bottom of the bed is a fox. He is staring straight into my eyes. It’s as if we are staring right into each other’s souls. I guess at times like these you see all sorts of things. I wonder what my Mother would have seen. My Mother! My Mother should be here now. At least my Mother should know I am giving birth.
Maybe I should close my eyes.
I close my eyes.
And in my mind I watch a beautiful killer whale leap through the surf. A killer whale I saw once, when I was only eight. My father took me on a holiday to the Scottish Islands. We were on a boat between Skye and the Isle of Rona.
But there is another memory, an ugly memory. One night when stepping out of the Vortex Jazz Club in Gillett Square, Dalston, I saw a squirrel dash across the car park. It never saw the car reversing. It was too late. It was squashed. But it was not dead. Its tail flicked. Its head twitched. And then it was dead. One moment alive, and the next dead. And then a crow flew down and started to peck out its eye. I wanted to shoo the crow away. But why? What was the point? Isn’t this what life is about?
‘One more push, Winnie. One big push.’
I’m sure she will want to get those roots done as soon as she can. And who wears a pink cat-suit anyway?
My dad loved Nina Simone. He said she was better than all the rest. She was the real soul and beating heart of the civil rights movement. My father would be pleased Nina Simone is here playing Johann Sebastian Bach on the grand piano beside me. Maybe Bach was made for moments like these, but Bach channelled through the soul fingers of the great-great-granddaughter of a plantation slave.
While Bach imagined this music, Nina Simone’s foremother was on a slave ship bound for an unknown land.
Father, wherever you are, I love you.
‘Winnie, I can almost see the head.’
Everything goes black for a while and then Extreme Noise Terror are playing. I used to hate it when the boys in the sixth-form common room insisted on playing Extreme Noise Terror. It was just noise and shouting. Some of the girls said they liked it, but they were just pretending.
I once brought in a CD of the Birth of Cool by The Miles Davis Quartet. But after ten seconds they took it off, said it was boring. I wish The Miles Davis Quartet were here now, playing live for me and my baby. I’m going to have a baby! Me!
‘Push! Push! Push just a bit harder.’
I scream the loudest scream I have ever screamed, then all the girls and boys on the dance floor scream. Is it right to be on a bed on a stage in the Top of the Pops studio? I mean, when did Top of the Pops come back? Is this the Christmas Top of the Pops? I wonder who will be number one? Has Paul McCartney died? Did Ziggy Stardust make a comeback? I am glad The American Medical Association will never make a comeback. I always hated them. So fuckin’ smug.
‘I can see the head. Nearly there. Nearly time.’
The crow is still up there. Yoko the Younger is still holding my hand, the fox is also still staring at me. These foxes get everywhere, even into the Top of the Pops studio. And I can see those two men with the black top hats and black coats from The Scream. They are there with their large canvas on an easel as if painting the whole scene.
I can hear music now. Better music than I have ever heard before. It’s as if all of Creation is making this music – the killer whale I saw leaping through the wave, the crow on the wire, the dead squirrel in Gillett Square, even Yoko’s dead boyfriend, whose back I wanted to drag my fingernails down. All of them singing, all of them dancing. A thousand instruments playing the same tune. Every instrument ever made by the hands of wo/man. And the wind blowing across Ayers Rock and past the pyramids in Mexico and through the polar night. The singing of the Aurora Borealis. The tingling sound the pylons make in the mist. The sound of The Miles Davis Quartet playing and Nina Simone singing.
‘It’s a girl. A baby girl. A beautiful baby girl. Winnie, you have a wonderful healthy baby girl. Do you want to hold Her?’
And I hold Her and I stare into Her almost-open eyes. She is beautiful and She is mine. And I stare into Her eyes. She has the eyes of the fox and stare of the crow, and She is beautiful and She is mine. And I am Hers.
And I look up and there is Yoko the Younger smiling back at me, and behind her is my Mother. My Mother! ‘Mummy, Mummy, don’t go, don’t leave me.’
And then it all goes black again. And in the blackness I can hear a silver band play. They are playing ‘Everyone’s Gone to the Moon’. And all the girls and boys in the audience are singing along and dancing and waving their arms in the air.
And then I open my eyes. My Mother is no longer there. But instead there are three faces, three dark faces. Faces I have not seen before. But they are smiling faces. Weary faces. Loving faces. Faces that have seen trouble. Warm faces.
A Baby Girl! A BABY GIRL! I will not leave this Baby Girl. Never! Ever!
The three faces belong to three young women. Each in turn holds out her hand and touches my Girl on the head.
And a voice asks, ‘And what shall we call Her?’
‘I will call Her Ishmael.’
‘Ishmael? Why Ishmael?’
‘Because my father’s favourite book was Moby Dick. He was reading it on the holiday when we saw the killer whale. He told me then, if he ever had a son, he would call him Ishmael. So I say, call Her Ishmael.’
Lady Penelope lifts the Baby Girl from my arms. She lifts Her so all the dancing and singing girls and boys can see Her beauty and she says, ‘Her name is Ishmael. You can call Her Ishmael.’
And then there is a bang.
And now we leave the mind of Winifred Lucie Atwell Smith.
We travel to the other side of the packed studio, where the kids of London are gathered, the generation down from those now boring post-hipsters with their distressed this and that and their love of everything analogue.
These are the FUUK Kids, whose minds have not been destroyed by the madness, starving, hysterical naked. They are the butterflies before the wheel was invented. And there, standing in the far corner of the Top of the Pops studio, is King Francisco Malabo Beosá XXIII. But not the one who stuck his needle into the five dolls. Or any of the other three who we have not met in this book, but who still lay claim to the crown of Fernando Pó. Although, as it happens, these other three are here down on the dance floor, dancing with the FUUK Kids.
No, this is the Kin
g Francisco Malabo Beosá XXIII who is seeking revenge. He is here to assassinate Aloysius Parker. But the sight of this Baby, this Heir to all of Creation and not just the island of Fernando Pó, shifts the focus of his anger.
He takes aim.
He pulls the trigger.
The hammer hits the cap.
The cap lights the powder in the shell.
The powder in the shell explodes.
The bullet is set free.
Set free to do what it was born to do.
To find living flesh and rip through it.
The bullet is travelling down the barrel.
Moses Tabick, Henry Pedders and Chodak have just entered the studio next to where King Francisco Malabo Beosá XXIII is standing.
Everything is in slow motion. Very, very, very slow motion. It is the way BANKSY directed it must be.
Yes, BANKSY is here. Somewhere up above, directing it all. Unseen. There are four cameras filming everything. One from each point of the compass. But there is one other camera filming what BANKSY does not see. This is the Super 8 camera belonging to Tracey Tracey.
The camera to the West is filming The Three Weyward Sisters dancing on their podium. They have been choreographed by Flick Colby. Yoko Ono the Older is in remarkable form. And M’Lady GaGa is no longer arsed about having the Christmas Number One because even she sees the bigger picture. Especially as her and her Sisters are pointing with their left arm outstretched to the One newly born. Born again for another age.
The camera in the South is filming The Three Wise Men as they make their entrance bearing gifts.
The camera in the East is filming The Three Shepherdesses as they each in turn anoint the Baby Girl’s head.
The camera in the North is filming the FUUK Kids dancing and singing as Nina Simone, The Miles Davis Quartet, The Grimethorpe Colliery Band, Drums of Death, The American Medical Association, Extreme Noise Terror and the Utah Saints are all playing ‘What Time Is Love?’ – the Tony ‘FUUK’ Thorpe 2023 remix version.
‘And the Christmas Number One …’
‘And the Christmas Number One for …’
‘And the Christmas Number One for 20 …’
‘And the Christmas Number One for 2023 …’
And out on the dance floor among the FUUK Kids are Alex and His Droogs, Arthur Scargill, Beethoven with his Ninth, Jonathan King, three of the five Kings of Fernando Pó, the three former Popes, The Tiger Who Came To Tea, Upsy Daisy, Makka Pakka, Abney & Teal, Alice & Her Wonderlands, Swamp Thing, Guy Fawkes, the whole cast from the Mermaid, The Great Fire Of London, The Golden Bow, Queens Kate and Kate, Pete from The Libertines and Thirteen Eels that never got jellied and, of course, the Little Perch.
BANKSY sees it all.
He sees Crow, Mister Fox, Dead Squirrel, John Lennon the Younger, Killer Queen.
What he doesn’t see is what Dead Perch sees. Dead Perch sees the bigger picture. And we know nothing about Dead Perch, other than that he was caught by someone fishing in the Lee Navigation and then left on the bank to die. But Dead Perch knows you. As in, you reading this now.
Then there is the camera that Tracey Tracey is holding. Without her knowledge it is filming the bullet leaving the barrel, heading over the heads of the dancing and singing FUUK Kids and the complete cast of the times we have been living through.
Winnie has sat up and she is holding Ishmael, like you have only ever seen in the best Renaissance Madonna and Child paintings.
And the bullet is halfway across the studio, above all those waving their hands in the air while writhing on the dance floor.
Like that meteorite hurtling through darkest space, many millions of light years away but with only one target in mind – our fair and lovely blue planet – the bullet knows its job. Its destination is preordained.
There is only one pair of eyes that sees the bullet as it gets closer to its target – the heart of a newborn Baby Girl, the rebirth of our last hope.
Yoko Ono the Younger knows it is time to make her greatest work of art. The greatest work of art since those cave paintings.
And it should not go unnoted that E. H. Gombrich is sitting on her solo podium, taking note of every passing pose being pulled on the dance floor.
‘And the Christmas Number One for 2023 is …’
‘And the Christmas Number One for 2023 is …’
‘And the Christmas Number One for 2023 is …’
‘And the Christmas Number One for 2023 is …’
And the bullet is getting closer.
And closer.
And closer.
And only feet away.
And only inches away.
And Yoko Ono the Younger makes her move, her lunge. She throws her body between the bullet and the Baby.
Yoko Ono the Younger takes the bullet in the heart.
And then we are back in real time.
And the music is over.
And the screaming begins.
Yoko Ono the Younger is dead.
Long live Yoko Ono the Older.
The Grapefruit has landed.
There are no words left to describe the scene.
The Tebay Service Station
The M6
Westmorland
Dear Diary,
Throughout writing the last chapter it has been difficult for me to hold myself in check. The stiff upper lip has been trembling. I cannot say I am drawing from personal experience. As you may know, plenty of tired and cynical flesh has entered my cunt, but no young and innocent flesh has ever left it for the big, bad, beautiful world that lies in wait for it.
The only bits of practical information I can impart from the last scene, as the curtains were closing on it, are that Moses Tabick drew his Luger, the one that was a gift from his grandmother. The one she stole from the guard she murdered at Auschwitz. He took aim and fired.
Aloysius Parker removed his Thompson submachine gun from its violin case and the trigger was pulled.
Chodak drew his sword from the hidden sheath under his saffron robe, and was about to make the arc of instant death. King Francisco Malabo Beosá XXIII’s head would, in a fraction of a second, be removed from his shoulders.
But Moses’ aim was not true. Parker’s trigger jammed. And Chodak’s sword got caught in his robe.
And several thousand miles away Sam & Dave hit the ‘Hold On, We’re Coming’ button in their New York City ambulance.
Barney Muldoon and Saul Goodman appeared to make their arrest.
And as Yoko Ono the Younger fell to her death and into the arms of a waiting John Lennon the Younger to spend the rest of eternity in a love deeper than the ocean, his mother Siobhán Harrison dropped dead of a heart attack, only to find her son there in the afterlife with a bunch of gladioli to welcome her.
‘And the Christmas Number One for 2023 is …’
And it was announced that Henry Pedders had defeated William Hague in the leadership election for the New English Tory Party for Old England.
‘And the Christmas Number One for 2023 is …’
‘Arise, Dame Tracy Emin, and, while we are at it, can we knight you for real, Lady Penelope? The honour would be ours. We used to love you in the Wacky Races.’
But enough, and back to me here in the Tebay services. It may not have the memories of me meeting Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan in the Blue Boar at 3 a.m. on a Saturday night/Sunday morning back in ’66, but it does the job in these more mature years.
I won’t deny I am fucked. Totally knackered. But my plan is to stay in this service station for the next hour or so, plough on with getting the final chapter done and then head North.
At first light I will find a phone box and phone Francis. Tell him I’m on my way and he should set out an extra place for Christmas dinner. And then I will phone Dog Ledger, wish him a happy Christmas and tell him the job is done and I will have it all faxed through after Christmas has died down.
I’m also thinking that in January I may fly to Calcutta to meet up with some of
my old friends there. I wonder if the College Street Coffee House is still the place to hang out. Maybe I should give Satyajit Ray first option on turning this book into a film. I love his films and he was always telling me back in the early ’60s how I should write a story for him. I can see how the whole thing could be translated into Bengali and set in Calcutta.
One more coffee, then on to the closing chapter.
Love,
Roberta X
7: THE LOW ROAD
This is the end, beautiful friend …
I’ll never look into your eyes, again
How many affairs have you had that have ended well?
How many empires have not crumbled in good time for the history books to be written?
How many apples have fallen …?
You know the point I’m making. Most endings of books do not fulfil the promise of the premise.
And I’m shit-scared with this one. But before we get there, there are numerous loose threads to tidy up. So here goes:
The Three Shepherdesses, Arati, Camille and Divine, return to their respective cities (Kolkata, Port-au-Prince, Mbandaka) and open up homes for abused women. Each of these homes is financed by an adjacent ‘greasy spoon’ staffed by the formerly abused women. Their all-day breakfasts are a must.
Henry Pedders wins the general election for the New Tory Party for Old England. It is too soon to see what kind of job he is going to do.
Bob Hoskins died sometime before the events in this story take place, so his part will have to be played by an alternative actor. Maybe Ray Winstone?
Grapefruit Are Not the Only Bombs only ever existed in the initial edition of 23 copies and is never discussed again.
Moses Tabick throws the Luger away and actually starts to build the New Jerusalem near Todmorden up on the Pennines.
Tracey Tracey marries BANKSY, but they split up after three weeks over musical differences. She then goes on to … well, that will have to wait.
Will Gompertz writes a book – This Is Then. This book covers the cultural landscape of the first twelve months of the Post-Digital Age and those crucial moments leading up to it. No mention is made of Yoko & John, the FUUK movement or even what the Christmas Number One for 2023 was.
2023: a trilogy (Justified Ancients of Mu Mu) Page 28
