Bold as Love

by Gwyneth Jones

  ‘Those that haven’t quit Europe already. Along with our US ambassador.’

  ‘This isn’t anti-virus hygiene,’ said Rob, ‘It’s punitive.’

  ‘Yeah. And well fucking deserved.’

  ‘Sage,’ said Ax, tired of this. ‘Can’t you think of anything positive to say?’

  ‘No.’

  No one was going to say it, but could it be that the reason Aoxomoxoa is so gutted is because he’s the global megabuck earner? A grossly unfair comment, which was why nobody was saying it: but it hung in the air.

  ‘What really fucks me off,’ Sage said now, ‘is how many hippie idiots are triumphant tonight.’

  ‘You’re exaggerating. It was an accident, or not an accident, a helpless consequence of monoculture and system overload. Nobody wanted this.’

  ‘No? Then Gaia is some fucking ace virus author.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Sage. Grow up. Conspiracy theory is the last thing we need.’

  ‘Oh, please tell me what I’m supposed to think, Ax. What’s the spin? What’s your fucking happy little fantasy this time?’

  ‘I’m not going to pursue this conversation. If you haven’t the brains to know when you’re burned out, I can’t fucking help you. Go away and get some sleep.’

  The skull and Ax glared at each other. Everyone else kept quiet.

  ‘Hmm.’ said Sage. ‘George.’

  ‘Yeah?’ said George, unhappily.

  ‘You remember, few years ago, we discussed having a manager?’

  ‘Uh, yeah.’

  ‘We talked it around, an’ we decided we don’t need any no-talent parasite scum telling us what to do. We can run our own lives.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Bill, looking hard at the floor.

  ‘Then let’s go.’

  Up on his feet in one lithe movement. Aoxomoxoa stalked out of the room, the band following, glancing at Ax apologetically.

  ‘Shit,’ said Ax, after a shocked pause.

  ‘Don’t go after him,’ said Fiorinda. ‘It won’t do any good.’

  ‘I’m not going to chase after him, I just want to—’

  He stood up. They all followed him, in a flurried procession, upstairs and to the East Wing, to windows that looked down on the Victoria Monument. Then they saw what Ax had wanted to know. The Heads were cutting down their banner. George stripped it from its pole, rolled it up and stuffed it under his arm. There was no one else about, no sign of the nightwatchmen. Four skull-headed idiots walked off, crossing Buckingham Palace Road.

  ‘I hoped he wouldn’t do that,’ said Ax. ‘Fucking childish. Well, I suppose he means it.’

  The netheads of England decided to hold a rock concert wake. They hired the McAlpine Stadium in Huddersfield, and naturally invited the Heads to do a set. They came on stage. Their frontman lasted ten minutes, walked off and did not come back. Aoxomoxoa, in various altered states, had subjected his band to many kinds of mayhem, had totalled expensive equipment, their own and other people’s (never on purpose): knocked himself out, broken a wrist, a foot; cracked ribs, dislocated his shoulder, temporarily blinded himself, sliced open his scalp and played on with the skull mask bathed in blood. This was a first, an appalling breach of the Ideology. The Wake was not a Crisis Management gig, but Sage’s behaviour was taken by many to mean that the split was permanent.

  The Heads returned to Reading campground. Stayed there, incommunicado.

  The Chosen stayed in London. Ax took his brother Jordan out, to see if they could resolve their difficulties. The problem was the same as always. The band wanted Ax back, and life to be like before. The way it expressed itself was hard to take in the present situation: You’re our brother, why aren’t we more important? They ate together and went to a bar. By eleven Ax was heading back to Brixton, drained and miserable, Sage’s absence walking beside him like a horrible ghost.

  Fiorinda had been on at the Academy with Snake Eyes. They’d been running free concerts there with nightly guests, through Ivan/Lara. She came in at two, heard the guitar as she plodded upstairs, and knew from the way he was playing that he was alone. She wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t expected the alcohol therapy to work. He put the guitar aside when she walked in.

  ‘Oh well,’ he said. ‘I hope your show was better than mine.’

  Fiorinda shrugged. ‘I turned in a performance. Nothing special.’

  They sat up in the bedroom, talking. Fiorinda in her midnight blue taffeta, with the emerald sparkles (Sue Ryder shop in Belgravia, long ago), curled on the bed; Ax on the floor by her feet. There was no other furniture. Not much else in the flat, besides a newly-delivered piano, Ax’s guitars, and some partly unpacked boxes. They’d had neither the time nor the heart to think about interior decor.

  ‘I hated my childhood,’ said Ax. ‘My dad’s not violent, have to give him that, but he battens on people. We’d be penniless, literally: and he’d be down the pub spending the child benefit. I wanted not to be like him, the way other aspiring rockstars want the private jet. As blind desperately, probably as stupidly. From when I was about six years old. The idea of being the man with the guitar: someone with pride, dignity, a code, righteous standards—’

  ‘The Chosen One,’ said Fiorinda.

  After that Ballroom parley with the bad guys, she’d had him crying in her arms, I can’t help what’s happening to me, I know you hate this, please don’t leave me. And she’d promised him she’d always be there. She lay back, thinking how trapped they both were, how miserable her future—

  ‘Yeah, right. That’s where the megalomania comes from. Getting away from my slimeball of a father, being that guitar man, taking Jordan and Shane with me, that’s where it all started. Now, I look at Jordan, and I see my dad. He looks at me, he sees a celebrity, he wants a bigger share of the perks. Where’s his limo fleet…? Did I tell you Milly’s pregnant?’

  Oooh. ‘How pregnant?’

  ‘Bout four months.’

  Ax had never talked about his ex, or how he felt about being traded-in for his hunky no-brain brother. But this was bound to sting. ‘Well, it’s no use whining to me,’ she said, bracingly. ‘I think you’re mad to expect anything different.’

  ‘All blood-relationships being poisoned and rotten to the core. Can’t blame you. Your next of kin would frighten the Borgias.’ He leaned back and kissed her bare foot. ‘I’m not expecting sympathy, I just feel like whining. You wait til I get onto racism in the school playgrounds of the rural South West. Another spliff?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  No use whining to Sage, either, thought Ax. Fucker used to slide away from the topic: we drop the subject. Ax had treated his band like kids, so they behaved like kids. They saw Ax as big daddy the meal-ticket, and it was Ax’s fault, Ax’s choice. Sage knew it, but he would never say it. But thinking about Sage’s forbearance brought him back to that night in the Bow Room. Aoxomoxoa baffled, defeated, up against the wall.

  God. I could have given him one kind word.

  ‘That’s something I admired about Sage,’ he said. ‘Even when he was plaguing the life out of me, the bastard. The way he refused to behave like a celebrity. Something Chrissie Hynde said in an interview once, if you can’t sit on a doorstep in a crowded street eating a slice of pizza, you have lost the game of life. Sage won’t let anyone kick him off that doorstep. Does his circus act, an’ drops right back into the crowd: and I know he doesn’t find it as easy as he makes out.’

  ‘He says he loves being famous,’ said Fiorinda. ‘But he wears a mask.’

  ‘Yeah. I spotted that… Ah, shit. How the fuck could he walk out on me, Fio?’

  ‘He didn’t mean to hurt you. He’d just had enough. He gets like that. Did you know, when he went to Cwm Gared, after Yorkshire, Mary threatened to ban him from ever coming back? She said he’s made Marlon into a terrorist target, getting involved with you.’

  ‘God… Why didn’t he tell me?’

  ‘I suppose because he didn’t want you to know. I’ll be in t
rouble if he finds out I told. If he ever speaks to me again, that is.’

  ‘Well, at least he’s got Olwen.’

  She went on staring at the ceiling. ‘That day we were moping around at the Insanitude, George told me he thinks the fling is over. Very good friends, better friends than ever, but it wasn’t going to be long term, was it. She and Ellis are very married, in their peculiar way. And Sage is no breaker-up of happy homes.’

  ‘But if he isn’t with Olwen, why’s he at Reading?’

  ‘I don’t suppose he cares where he is.’

  It was nearly daylight. The naked bulb overhead had faded to sickly yellow. In the unpacking litter on the floor lay a fancy American magazine a month old, Fiorinda on the cover: Cool Britannia? They don’t come cooler, but please don’t use the ‘B’ word! Ax stared at it with eyes too tired to look away. Cinders and ashes. There’d be no more covers like that. The internet was over, he told himself. Permanent gridlock. A couple of years’ down the line, we’ll have something new and better. Look on this as an opportunity… Cinders and ashes.

  ‘Ah, sod it. This is ridiculous. Let’s go and dig him out.’

  Sage was lying on his bed in the back of the van, which was more or less what he’d been doing since the Huddersfield gig… Chewing on the humiliation of having walked off stage (please tell me I didn’t do that); thinking about stupid things. Why do I have crippled hands? Why do I have a kid whose existence ties me for life to the corpse of an evil destructive relationship? Why do I have to be in love with my best friend’s girl? Does Ax know about the Flowers for Algernon scenario? Round and round, down and down, getting nowhere, scraping bone, the tedium of it worse than failing to crack Ivan. I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life. I just don’t know. Thinking of Theo, and the millions who had really been fucked over by what had happened to the world, despising himself.

  He heard people arriving, voices, George saying, ‘Come to see the Creature From The Black Lagoon?’; and didn’t move. Fiorinda and Ax walked in.

  ‘Hallo,’ said Fiorinda, ‘Are you feeling any better?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Luckily you don’t have to do anything except sit in the car,’ said Ax. ‘Come on, get up. You’re taking us to Cornwall.’

  The avatar mask stayed blank. Sage’s long body sunken flat into the silver grey quilt; not a spark of interest. ‘You can’t go anywhere. You have to help the government sort the crisis.’

  ‘Fuck’em,’ said Ax. ‘They’ll have to get by. “είζ τσυσυ ’εγω κάθιζιμι τσυ θρονον ’ευ ωι πλεον ουδεν ’εξουζιν οι φιλοι παρ’εμοι των ’αλλοτριων”’

  ‘What?’ said the mask, barely moving.

  ‘It’s Ancient Greek,’ explained Ax, sitting on the end of the bed. ‘Means something like I didn’t get into this shit so I could let down my friends. It’s what Themistocles said to the Athenians, when they were accusing him of cronyism one time in the Persian wars.’

  ‘Themistocles?’ Sage sat up, abruptly, ‘What have you been doing, Ax?’

  ‘What’s the matter? I’ve been looking at the freebies that came with my data chip. I never bothered before, I naturally assumed it was a pile of junk. But it’s good. There’s a whole lot of the Greek and Roman stuff, God knows what else. I’ve hardly started.’

  ‘You’re completely mad,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Your head will explode.’

  ‘And when you’ve opened these files,’ said Sage, looking at Ax intently, ‘they stay instantly available, in your memory, yes? Have you tried closing them?’

  ‘Well, no, because the only way I know how to do it is with Delete, and I don’t know if Undelete works. I’d hate to lose something I might need. There’s stuff about it in the manual, but it’s in gibberish, and anyway who reads manuals?’

  ‘Some people do. You can download, can’t you. Would you download a copy of the manual for me?’

  Ax shook his head. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Sorry, but no. This is mine.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Sage, reckoning he could surely find what he wanted somewhere on the nets. Should have thought of it long ago—

  But not now—

  Ax laughed. It was wonderful to see the mask come alive, mobile and transparent as ever. ‘Better get him out of here. He’s just thought of something else that he can’t do.’

  ‘Well, I’ll have to talk to George.’

  ‘You don’t need to talk to George. Just get in the car.’

  ‘Let him talk to George,’ said Fiorinda, resignedly. ‘It’s quicker in the long run.’

  Ax and Fiorinda had started the day very early, but arranging their flight responsibly (Allie had not been pleased) had taken time, and the long drive was slower than it had been before the Tour. It was twilight when they reached Bodmin moor. Ax pulled up in the middle of nowhere. They got out of the car: the road at this point an unfenced single track, the rising land stretched out, vast and wild in its small compass, to every horizon. They listened again to what Ax had heard. A few sheep went on cropping the summer turf, unperturbed.

  ‘That is a wolf, isn’t it.’

  Sage nodded.

  ‘How many are there?’

  ‘Eleven. Used to be thirteen. One got killed, one decided she was a care in the community case and kept hustling for scraps round Bodmin. Had to go back to the reservation.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid they’ll kill the panthers, pumas or whatever they are?’ said Fiorinda.

  ‘All those pumas are labradors. The world can spare a few stupid labradors.’

  He walked away, into the landscape. After a while they realised they’d better follow. They found him sitting in a hut circle, stone-age debris half buried in green bracken. They sat on either side of him, leaning against the stones. Fiorinda looked at the nameless small flowers around her feet; a moss covered with tiny red-capped stalks; lichens on the boulders like thick, slow spiderwebs. She thought the moor was like Sage’s art: bare and stark on the wide scale, nit-pickingly complex in detail.

  ‘Ax,’ said Sage, at last, ‘You have to do something about Benny Prem.’

  ‘Problem with that,’ said Ax, ‘I don’t want to get involved in politics… All right, very funny, both of you: go on, laugh. I mean conventional politics.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Like assassination, that kind of conventional.’

  ‘It won’t come to that. I’d rather leave him alone, unless he forces me to act.’

  ‘I can’t stand him,’ said Fiorinda. ‘There’s a kind of bloke who, the first time they look at you, their only thought is she wouldn’t fuck me, and probably they are right, but where do they get off? And they instantly hate you for it, and will feel justified in doing you down, forever afterwards, any spiteful way they possibly can. Bastards. Huh. All men are scum.’ She noticed that they were staring at her. ‘What? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Except us?’ suggested Sage, anxiously.

  ‘Fiorinda, could we have a truce on the battle of the sexes? Just a temporary truce? It would be a kindness.’

  She sighed. ‘Ah, okay. Truce while the woods are burning. Or while Sage is having a nervous breakdown, whichever is shorter.’

  They stayed there, listening for wolves but failing to see or hear any further sign of them, until the stars began to show, in a chill sky of robin’s egg blue. Then they drove on.

  The cottage was cold. It had been empty since they were down in March. They’d eaten before they reached the moor (Ax had eaten: Sage and Fiorinda had stared at some food), so they didn’t have to worry about cooking. Fiorinda lit the fire left set in the living room by Sage’s housekeeper. The kindling was damp, but she used her tinderbox and it caught instantly. She sat back on her heels, the apple-shape of the box cupped in her palm. The last time they’d been here, the situation had been like a game in comparison. Relief at being friends with Sage again was intense, it turned everything around: and changed nothing. She stared at the young fire, fear crisping her nerves, a thou
ght coming to her unbidden, in the end, there will be nowhere I can hide. Ax had taken their bags upstairs. He came back, and headed for the jigsaw cupboard, touching her hair as he passed. Sage reviewed the archive of black vinyl and other dead media, that filled high-stacked cabinets against the back wall.

  ‘Any requests?’

  ‘Better be nice to him,’ said Ax. ‘He’s having a nervous breakdown, remember. How about a lovely four hour reel-to-reel Dead concert bootleg, circa 1972?’

  ‘Any more insolence, I’ll make you sit through From Anthem To Beauty again.’

  They’d been forced to watch From Anthem To Beauty, the video record of the Grateful Dead’s early years, a sacred scripture of the Ideology; in March. ‘That would be fine,’ said Ax. ‘I have no problem with the fiction. It’s the music I can’t stand.’ He brought the puzzle he’d selected over to the hearth, set it on the jigsaw board and began sorting out edges. ‘I can take the feedback. And even some of the songs. But that endless futile impro on over-sugared melody—’

  ‘Like yards and yards and yards of pink fondant icing,’ agreed Fiorinda, ‘The acid they had in those days must have been sickly stuff.’

  ‘Why don’t you put on Aoxomoxoa, Aoxomoxoa? Very Crappest Dead album, against some tough fucking competition. Did he ever play that for you, Fio?’

  ‘Yes he did. Well, he put it on.’

  ‘What’d’you do?’

  ‘I howled like a dog.’

  ‘You two are sleeping with the slugs.’

  ‘I’ve wondered, with the name: do you really admire that unbelievable shit?’

  ‘That’s it. You’re under the hedge, you are spider meat, both of you.’

  ‘I think it’s the first track of side one that counts,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Saint Stephen.’

  Stephen was Sage’s original name. He stalked out of the room, the skull giving them a blistering glare: returned with a bottle of red wine in each hand. ‘Can you get some glasses from the cupboard, Fee?’

  ‘Sainthood, what a touching aspiration. We all have our little fantasies.’

  ‘Don’t we, Oh Chosen One. You can stop being nice to me now, thanks. I feel much better.’ He set down the bottles, and returned to the dead media wall. Something warm and steely and classical began to play, the reproduction in stunning contrast to the age of the vinyl.