Bold as Love

by Gwyneth Jones

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Fine. Could you stop asking me that? The fast would be no trouble, it’s not meant to be penitential. It would be good, if I could share it with people doing the same thing.’

  ‘Then why don’t you?’ said Fiorinda. Without rancour, but clearly not for the first time.

  ‘I can’t because that’s not my situation. I can’t disappear into the Islamic community, totally the wrong message. I have to face it, I’m on my own and I always will be, things like this.’

  The two of them rolled their eyes and sighed. Ax set his teeth, and changed the subject. ‘So, did you get your shirt back?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Sage, ‘I think I’ve given up. Every time I ask her she has some new excuse. I bet the kids have sold it.’ This was the black iridescent shirt Sage had lent to Silver Wing when he rescued her, a favourite of his; which had never come back.

  ‘Either that,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Or AM’s been using it as a fertility charm. She looked very worried, I noticed, when you told her you don’t make babies.’

  At Blue Gate there was a mill of wannabe guests trying to finesse themselves into the party. Someone came up to Ax and said, ‘Hey, Ax, you got a moment to get me past your fuckin’ private police force?’

  ‘Yeah, okay,’ said Ax.

  Ax talked to site security; and they passed on.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Sage, without much interest.

  ‘Does he come from Taunton?’ wondered Fiorinda. ‘Sounded like it.’

  ‘No, he’s from Bridgwater. A much hipper burg. You didn’t recognise him?’

  They shook their heads.

  ‘Fuck, another nail in my coffin. That was Faz Hassim.’

  ‘Oh yeah, now you mention it, I vaguely did recognise him—‘

  ‘Who’s Faz Hassim?’ asked Fiorinda.

  ‘Fronts a no-talent guitar band called the Assassins. Woolly-anarchist Counterculturals, useter get some media attention, before your time babe.’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ said Ax gloomily. ‘I wonder why he’s here. He hates the Few. Oh well, it’s a free country. Whatever that stupid expression is supposed to mean—’

  The Assassins had been hard to miss in the West Country, when the Chosen Few were starting out. At first there’d been a bond, both bands being basically non-white, rare enough in the West; and because of Ax’s politics. But the Chosen had got successful, in their modest way, while Islam’s original Countercultural rockers had stayed hungry. It was the usual thing. Any kind of success means you’ve sold out, and people who claim they’ve no fucking interest in being commercial still manage to hate you for it. Sad, but inevitable.

  ‘Assassins means the crusties are in town,’ mused Sage. ‘Could mean trouble with our lot.’

  ‘Not necessarily. There’s plenty of crusty-tendencies among the Reading staybehinds.’

  A hippie is a Countercultural with political rationale. A crusty is an aggressively or else helplessly unhygienic ditto: with extra righteousness or extra nuisance value, depending on your point of view. Fiorinda thought her own thoughts while they went a few rounds on crusty versus hippie rock bands, behaviour of, relative derangement and combustibility, swopped sides a couple of times. A pleasant background noise, amazing how many factoids men store.

  In the Blue Lagoon a group of distinguished staybehinds were supervising the inauguration of a huge chunk of quartz; before the partygoers were let in. It was being hoist into the apex of the marquee, roped like a calf.

  ‘It’s gonna soak up all the negative ions and protons and stuff,’ explained Smelly Hugh, proudly. ‘We brought it down in the bus.’

  ‘Vibes, Hugh,’ said Sage, ‘The scientific term is vibes.’

  ‘Oh, right. It give us some weird dreams, I’m telling you. Like visions. No fuckin word of a lie. And the dogs wouldn’t shut up.’

  ‘I have a vision in which I see that bastard dropping on someone’s head,’ said Ax.

  ‘What is a bastard?’ asked Silver Wing, toying idly with a stanley knife she’d lifted from a hoister’s gadget belt. ‘Exactly, in this context?’

  ‘Useter mean, someone whose parents weren’t married,’ Sage explained, ‘That’s become obsolete. Nowadays, means any shit you don’t like. Give the guy his knife back.’

  ‘I see. Like fucker doesn’t mean sex. No, I need this knife.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ said Fiorinda, apparently referring to the quartz getting hoisted; and walked away before anyone could ask her to explain.

  Allie wasn’t coming, nor was Roxane. Everyone else was in the backstage bar. Shane and Jordan and Milly had heard that the Assassins planned on being here, and were full of this bad news. Jordan was very unhappy indeed when he found out what Ax had done. He wanted Faz and his compadres chucked off the site.

  ‘For crimes they might commit?’ said Ax. ‘Oh fuck off. They’d have got in anyway, they’re not exactly outsiders around here. He did that door-police number to wind me up.’

  ‘It’s the fasting month, though,’ said Chip wisely. ‘So they won’t make trouble.’

  ‘Not so,’ Ax told him. ‘If you fight in a good cause, it’s fine. Better the day, better the deed, is the Islamic attitude. Not that Faz was ever conventionally devout. But I don’t think it’ll come to anything.’

  Party night at the Blue Lagoon. The traditional shake-down for weapons slowing the queue to get in, as outside guests got argumentative: brisk traffic at the drugs-testing. There were about a hundred licensed brands of mild hallucinogens, serotonin-boosters, cannabis cigarettes and rolling grass available at any off-licence. Not to mention the doom-warning, sultry-packaged hard stuffs. Naturally the Counterculturals preferred dodgy contraband: but they loved getting their gear checked. Made them feel all sensible.

  George was setting up in the DJs’ box. The Few had moved onto the stage.

  ‘Hey, Silver, wanna mind Sage’s boards for me?’

  ‘Oh yay!’ squealed the little girl, leaping to her feet.

  ‘George!’ yelled Anne-Marie, ‘Don’t you DARE! She’s eight years old, what the fuck do you think you’re doing, she can’t handle Sage’s stuff!’

  ‘Yeah,’ sez George, malignly. ‘Kid ought to be in bed, couldn’t agree more. Since she’s not, she may as well make ’erself useful.’

  Heads fans staking claim to space at the front were regaled by the sight of a little girl wearing a patchwork smock and butterfly wings perched up behind Aoxomoxoa’s desk, a wrap around her head and every appearence of being in charge: until Sage came along from his shift on former-Class A testing.

  ‘Hard drugs are the kind that make you hard hearted,’ remarked the child.

  ‘You should be in bed. Go away.’

  ‘You never take any of those sort of drugs anymore, do you Sage?’

  ‘Maybe not. What’s it to you?’ Her black, Chinese eyes gazed up at him: dead inscrutable. ‘Hmm. No need go shouting about that to my public, Silver.’

  ‘Your secret is safe with me,’ said the imp, and darted away.

  Leaving him to consider, until the set began and performance took over, his personal situation: hard fun indeed, maybe never going to get any easier, and yet he would stay with this thing, wherever it might lead. That was certain.

  Fiorinda was right next to the trouble when it began. She’d been talking to a big leather-clad woman with a tattooed face, a staybehind poet: hoping to fill in some gaps on the Assassins thing. She was unimpressed by factoids, but she found the expression before your time, babe, annoying. She’d had an earful about Glastonbury versus Reading, and the merits of the openly meaningless populist rock vibe, like your stuff Fiorinda; as opposed to the crypto-corporate hippies… It was not an easy conversation to follow, in the midst of Aoxomoxoa and George. She’d suggested they dance, then suddenly there was a stumbling wave, barging into them. Another surge and they could see the fight, lurching through Sage’s visuals, spreading fast. The big staybehind was bui
lt like a truck. She grabbed Fiorinda, without a word, and barged her way through to the stage: planted a kiss on Fio’s lips, boosted her up into safety; and plunged into the affray.

  Fiorinda put on her dark glasses, losing the huge sound and wild illusions too abruptly for comfort. ‘Shit, what’s got into them? I wanted to dance. What’s the use in coming to a party and not dancing?’

  Everyone was wearing IMMix blocking glasses up here, and looking like vampires’ night out. But the fight on the floor was rapidly turning not funny.

  ‘It’s the wind,’ said Anne-Marie. ‘It always makes my kids crazy—’

  Finally the demon DJs noticed something, put on a relatively soothing loop and left the desks, to examine the situation.

  It shouldn’t have been the Few’s business, but from their vantage point they could see that the resident peacekeepers were not doing much peacekeeping. Many site security persons, in their lilac and yellow flashed teeshirts, were getting very unprofessionally involved. The lights came up, the IMMix system cut out. The Lagoon’s current manager, a skinny thirty-something from Brighton with ginger dreadlocks, appeared; and stood there looking depressed.

  ‘Shit is right,’ said Felice, senior powerbabe: disgusted. ‘They’re anarchists, aren’t they? This is their idea of fun, we should just leave.’

  ‘But if there’s women and kids, guys too, that don’t want to be fighting—’ protested Dora, the tender-hearted responsible citizen.

  ‘It’s pissing with rain,’ Dilip pointed out. ‘Roll up the walls. That’ll do it.’

  ‘Try rolling up the walls in this wind, the whole fucking thing probly’ go,’ said the manager. ‘Anyway, how’re you gonna? There’s no button you can press, we’re lo-tech, got to crank them up mechanically. We have difficult situation, Ax. Don’t know where this is coming from. We don’t have fights!’

  ‘I do,’ growled Jordan. ‘I told you Ax, but you wouldn’t fucking listen.’

  ‘So much for tame punters,’ sighed Roxane.

  ‘Why not blast them with some really heavy IMMix. Blow their fuses?’

  George and Bill’s grinning masks managed to look alarmed. ‘Better not, Fio.’

  ‘The effect of that could be unpredictable,’ said Peter.

  The rain drummed and the wind howled, the sounds of battle rose in violence. Could they possibly have run into trouble, on a dance night in their own Blue Lagoon? But the Blue Lagoon was not their own. This was their weak spot, always had been. They did not belong here, they had no natural authority. Bunch of rockstars, media creations…‘We should leave,’ repeated Felice, urgently. th ‘We shouldn’t be here, it looks like we’re powerless—‘

  The frenzied mass parted, four bearded, wild-haired figures emerged from of it. One of them was the guy Ax had spoken to at Blue Gate, wearing a bloodstained white scarf as a dishevelled turban, his eyes huge and crazy.

  An uneasy quiet spread.

  ‘I’m Faud Hassim,’ he bellowed. ‘I’m here for you, Ax. You’re gonna fight me, barre-knuckled. You son of a pig, you uncut blashempous faker. Show us who’s the boss. Like you did in Yorkshire.’

  His companions started a slow hand-clap.

  The crowd waited to see what would happen, nearly all of it quieted now.

  Ax just shook his head, and turned away.

  Faz Hassim roared with laughter, launched himself at the nearest staybehind: grabbed the guy’s shoulders, nutted him savagely, and kicked him in the balls as he recoiled. The Assassins leapt back into the crowd, the melee recommenced, more rabid than ever

  Jordan glared at his brother. ‘I’m getting Milly out of this.’

  Milly, who was now visibly pregnant, said, ‘You’re not getting me anywhere, Jor. We’ll do what’s best.’ But she looked worried.

  ‘Call Thames Valley,’ said Dora, ‘We need the cops.’

  ‘She could right,’ said the manager. ‘This never happens, this is out of order. We could rack up casualties.’

  ‘Those wankers!’ snapped Ax. ‘They’ll either not turn up, or they’ll arrive with a fleet of Apaches and strafe the site. Shit, I suppose they do their best. But the police won’t want to mess with us, and I don’t blame them.’

  ‘Who’s us?’ muttered Verlaine. ‘That’s the trouble, isn’t it?’

  Aoxomoxoa was saying nothing, leaning against a partition, hands in his pockets, the skull gazing mildly into space. Ax glanced at him with annoyance, took a turn up and down the stage; looked at Fiorinda. Apparently these three were in conference.

  Fiorinda shrugged. ‘I think it’s just that kind of night, Ax.’

  Sage went on silently looking as if he was waiting for someone to press the switch. ‘Oh, okay,’ said Ax. ‘Go on, my recovering gunslinger. Sort ’em.’

  The skull produced a rabid and beautiful grin. ‘DK. Give us a happy beat—’

  The manager gave them some power back, Dilip took over the sound. The Heads and their chief came off the stage in one predatory rush, and went into the ruck like tigers, irresistible and glorious. Dora and Milly stayed well back. Fiorinda, Felice and Cherry stood up front, dodging missiles, and cheered.

  ‘You going down there?’ Rob asked Ax, his tone making it clear Rob was not.

  ‘Not unless it’s a matter of life and death,’ said Ax firmly. ‘Which it won’t be.’

  Four Heads, plus another four skull-masked Heads crew-members, moved through the crowd, the peacekeepers rallying to them: breaking up fistfights, disarming bottle wielders, treating the home team and the aggressors (when these could be distinguished) with impartial ferocity. The obvious thing was to open the place up, give folks a chance to disperse. Sage reached the marquee wall. Another skull headed idiot, couldn’t tell who, had shinned up a scaffold pole to signal he was at the opposite side. They needed a through draught, or the tent would rip itself apart. He struggled with tackle, fending off a large and trolleyed black Assassin fan who wouldn’t give up—

  ‘I saw you on that tv without the mask!’ shrieked the overwrought black guy, pummelling wildly. ‘Hey, you an albino African, innit?’

  ‘Yeah, right, few million years back. Knock it off, huh, I’m trying to—’

  ‘Don’t mess with me. You’re a brother, or how come you got that flat nose? How come you got that yellow nappy hair?’

  ‘Lost tribes of Israel. Shit, KNOCK IT OFF—’

  A wall-section came free, the storm burst in. Overwrought black guy grabbed some scaffold. A mass of heavy marquee fabric slammed into them, with such violence both men went flying, black guy still hanging on his scaffold. Sage, crashing onto his back, drenched as if he’d fallen in the river, saw that lump of quartz, flailing up in the apex like a huge, blunt bolas weight: swinging, catching, hauling on the shifted frame, propelled by the force of the wind…ah, shit…

  ‘SHIT. FUCK. I am trying to give up doing stuff like this—’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself man,’ said the black guy, as everything around them went sideways, in wet, howling, roc-wing flapping chaos. ‘These things happen.’

  Ax left the wreckage of the Festival site in the morning. He had a gig he couldn’t miss. He took the train to London but drove to Hastings, storm damage having disrupted the railways. Got back late in the afternoon, and went straight to a tv studio to record for the Laylat al Qadr broadcast. The spiel more polished than it had been two years ago in the Garden Room at Pigsty’s hotel, but sounding to him even less convincing.

  Stick together, be good to each other. If we can just get through this part—

  Fiorinda was at Reading. That was okay, he’d always planned to spend this night alone. Laylat al Qadr, Night of Power, commemorates the night the Qur’an descended into the soul of the Prophet: an occasion for wakeful prayer and meditation. The scholars say no one can tell exactly when it should fall in Ramadan. Traditionally it was celebrated on the twenty seventh night, which was when Ax’s recorded spiel would be broadcast. But he’d decided to make his own private vigil also, and this seem
ed like the time. He cooked for himself and ate, sitting on the floor in the living room of the Brixton flat, watching tv: Elsie the cat in turn watching him attentively, ready to sneak onto his lap soon as she saw half a chance.

  He was thinking it was a pity he disliked dates, it took the romance out of breaking the fast on this desert-arab food; when his phone rang. It was the nursing home. Laura Preston, the old lady he’d visited faithfully—except when utterly prevented—since he came back from the Deconstruction Tour, had died about two hours after he’d left. Not unexpected. She still took an interest and had a smile for him, but she’d been saying she was very tired; and she’d kept getting these chest infections. She’d been just on a hundred years’ old.

  Yeah, he told himself, responding politely to the matron, It was time, she was ready. That was a good connection, and it’s over… But the loss shook him.

  The smell of a geriatric home was one of his early memories. Must have been somewhere his mother had been working. Shrunken creatures lying under knitted blankets, a little boy stares in through the half-open door. Maybe I learned compassion there. Or maybe I just learned about trying to hold back the tide. That some people instinctively do this, and you fail in the end, whatever you do: but somehow it seems worthwhile.

  Making the best of things, my mum would say.

  He switched off the tv. Cleared away his meal, put Op 130 on the sound system, took out his India stone and brought it to the rug which he seemed to have adopted as the locus for his meditations. Fingernails on the left, and on the thumb and index finger of the right hand, kept invisibly short. The nails on the other three fingers must be exactly square and buffed smooth to perfection. Thinking about the government’s plan to hand over the Upper House to the CCM, launched so long ago, in another world. Which was still moving along, and which he couldn’t openly resist, but he didn’t like it. Pack the former House of Lords with self-important, quarrelsome Green Nazis, and make Ax accountable to them. Oh, terrific… And Benny Prem wanted watching, though any conspiracy against Ax looked toothless just at the moment.