Bold as Love

by Gwyneth Jones

  It ended, before Dora felt impelled to call the cops, with both lying on their backs, laughing and gasping. ‘Who won?’ asked Fiorinda, bending over them.

  ‘He did,’ said Sage, coming effortlessly to his feet and reaching a hand for his brother Head, ‘Always does, unless I can punch him out.’

  ‘You gotta plan ahead boss. I’ve told you a fuckin’ million times—’

  ‘Shit,’ said Ax, looking at his watch. ‘I have to go. Lissen, folks, I’m sorry.’

  ‘For what?’ said Sage. ‘For yelling at us? That was nothing.’

  ‘For everything. For being a shit, for dragging you into this.’

  ‘As I remember,’ said Fiorinda, ‘We were volunteers. Don’t worry Ax. Everything’s going to be fine. Nobody will disgrace you.’ She grinned with sweet malice. ‘If we can just get through this part—’

  Chip and Verlaine had handed everyone a cup or a bottle. Silently, they toasted him. Ax tried to laugh, choked up, and had to walk away.

  DARK came down to Reading, where they were booked in at the Holiday Inn, (for old sakes’ sake). Fiorinda went and stayed with them. They rehearsed, sober by unspoken agreement; a guy from one of the Few associate bands as temporary bassist. It would be a while before they could think about replacing Tom. Charm and Fiorinda didn’t have a single fight.

  Sage disappeared for two days just before it, and refused to say where he’d gone or why. The civil ceremony otherwise passed off without incident.

  How typical of their career, how fitting, that they would spend most of their own celebration waiting to go on or else up there. ‘Like my mum, washing the kitchen floor last thing on Christmas Eve,’ said Kevin Hanlon, aka Verlaine. And yes, it was a lot like like Christmas, or Divali or something, one of those hybrid traditional events, half party, half excruciating familial obligation (much like life in Ax’s idea of the Good State, indeed); because everyone’s mum had a backstage pass. Including Sayyid Muhammad Zayid and his entourage, Ax’s family, Sage’s family; Marlon Williams (Mary had decided to stay away, thank God). Plus assorted VIPs, celebs and illustrious Counterculturals from Westminster, the Celtic nations and the continent. Exhausting stuff.

  Fiorinda stared at herself in the mirror. No dresser tonight. She really didn’t need anyone like that; except possibly on tour. She’d just escaped from Alain de Corlay, the political artist formerly known as Alain Jupette, who was here with Tamagotchi, musclebound kooky-girl from Alain’s band Movie Sucré. Alain in white tie and tails, Tam in fishscale silver from head to toe: like a big scary Joan of Arc, with her Dauphin on her arm. Both of them talking like suits. God, is this where we’re at? Are we doomed to become suits?

  She had a moment’s vertigo: saw Allie Marlowe coming towards her, in the arena at twilight, a world’s end ago. Is politics really the new rock and roll?

  ‘Alain’s getting very grown up,’ she complained. ‘Have you seen him in his white tie? If he gets any older, I’m not going to like him anymore.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Sage, reaching over to take the spliff she held out. ‘I have a plan, for after this. I’ll have old Smash-The-State Alain dressing up in girl’s clothes and acting like a six year old again in no time.’

  They were alone in the dressing room, a welcome interlude of calm. Sage was basically ready, in slick black trousers and a white singlet. Fiorinda wore the silver and white lace cowgirl dress. She would change, after DARK’s set, for the athletic part of the show.

  ‘You never used to wear make up on stage.’

  ‘I was sure I’d mess it up. Didn’t want to end up looking like Courtney Love.’ She applied eyeliner, and grinned at the skull in her mirror. ‘Go on, tell me I look better without. I dare you.’

  ‘To me you look wonderful either way, baby. As you well know.’

  She wondered where remarks of that kind were leading. Not to anything that would hurt Ax, she was certain. ‘At least I’m trying to look wonderful, rather than scaring people. I’m sure poor Chip has nightmares about you, after those rehearsals. Verlaine too.’

  ‘Hahaha—’ said the skull, acting tough but looking worried. ‘Nah, I wasn’t that bad?’

  ‘Hideous wake up sweating nightmares about were-skulled giants biting their throats out. You were horrible to those poor kids. Bill was winding them up too.’

  ‘Fuck off. Chip is five years older than you, Fee. And Ver is twenty one.’

  ‘I know. How do they do it? I don’t think I was ever that young. Another spliff?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Fiorinda looked for her smokes tin. Sage was occupying several palsied plastic chairs, (backstage not very palatial in these regions) long legs stretched out over three of them, leaning on the back of another, the skull’s cheekbone propped on a skeletal hand. The mask’s blank gaze passed idly over the dressing room clutter.

  ‘What d’you think of Ax’s Dad? D’you like him?’

  ‘Since you ask—’ Fiorinda pulled a guilty face at the mirror. ‘Sort of yes.’

  ‘Funny you should say that. So do I.’

  Ax’s father was a disgrace. Untrustworthy and shiftless, and a dead weight on Ax’s gentle mother. But alas, he had that flashing smile, that gleam in his eye—

  ‘Ax must never know,’ said Fiorinda solemnly: and they laughed together.

  ‘I’m fucking glad Ramadan is over,’ she went on, sparking up the new spliff. ‘I see why fasting is such a popular sport in many hardnosed traditional cultures. It concentrated his ideas wonderful. I tell you, if he does that again next year, he’s going to invade Poland—’

  ‘We should do it with him. So he doesn’t feel so alone and misunderstood.’

  ‘Huh. I practically have been… But you could be right. Only we’d have to get equally as narky, or we’d just make things worse.’

  He wanted to ask her about the magic. Fiorinda’s saltbox that never needs to be refilled. Fiorinda’s tinderbox, that never fails. Fiorinda invaded by demons. Maybe he should warn her that Anne Marie was onto her. Salt and fire. Well, the world is getting stranger. But why are you so terrified, Fee?

  He wanted to tell her she needn’t be afraid. That the Zen Self quest, height of technoscience, was rewriting a few crucial rules, suggesting some very bizarre possibilities. You’re not alone. But the fear in the back of her eyes went too deep.

  Wait until there’s a good time. Wait until you can deliver some protection, before you ask her to trust you.

  And what, Sage wondered, watching her paint her lovely face, would be the mentality of someone who could decide, at this point, I’ve had enough… It’s crazy and it hurts. I’m gonna jump ship and go and live in Alaska. So much mystery, so much danger and promise. The adventure has only just begun.

  Someone knocked on the door. Peter Stannen put his skull-head around it, gave them the thumbs up. ‘Right,’ said Fiorinda, ‘Just a minute.’

  The others, including Ax, were waiting in a bar upstairs, normally the sanctum of off-duty site security, a dartsboard and gruesome calendar haven, which no one had prettified for the celebrations. In the home straight now, and everyone at last beginning to get excited. As Fiorinda came in, Verlaine was saying, ‘We can mint our own money, with Ax’s head on it!’

  ‘Bring back sacred measure, pounds shillings and pence.’

  ‘And get hated forever,’ said Ax, ‘by anyone who has to make change—’

  Fiorinda went to Ax and hugged him. ‘No one makes change anymore,’ she said. ‘They press buttons. Only an esoteric minor clan of Counterculturals can count. Shouldn’t you be out there collecting autographs, Mr Dictator, Sir?’

  ‘Oh God, I suppose you’re right—’

  Obediently, Ax made for the door, but he found Sage in his way.

  ‘Not so fast. Go and sit down again. We’ve got something to say to you.’

  Ax went and sat down, on a palsied plastic chair. He looked worried.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Ssh. Just sit quietly.’

/>   They gathered in a semicircle: DK the DJ, Roxane Smith, Chip and Verlaine, Rob and the Babes; Allie, Fiorinda and three skull headed idiots; Anne-Marie and Smelly Hugh. Jordan and Shane and Milly hanging back a little. All dressed in their best, a rainbow of silks and velvets, lace and leather, tech-infused polymers. Sage came through the arc they made, holding something wrapped in peat-brown homespun. He went down on one knee, and put this parcel in Ax’s hands.

  ‘Open it,’ said Fiorinda. ‘It’s a present. From us.’

  Ax unfolded the cloth and found a perfect, slender, unpolished blade of greenish stone, the length of a man’s hand; the cutting edge unblemished, as if it had never been used—

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s an axe, Ax.’

  ‘I know what it is. This is the Sweet Track Jade. There aren’t two ceremonial stone axes like this in the country. What, is it a replica?’

  ‘No, it’s the original. I had to go to Cambridge to find it. It belongs, belonged, to the university because they funded the dig that turned it up.’

  ‘A jadeite axe of uncommon perfection and provenance.’ said Roxane, ‘Found by an archaeology student beside the causewayed road called The Sweet Track that leads from Taunton to Glastonbury. Where someone dropped it, or possibly placed it as a sacrifice, five thousand odd years ago.’

  ‘We asked Jordan,’ said Fiorinda, ‘What we could get for you. He said the stone axe that’s the Chosen’s logo was because of the Sweet Track Jade: and you loved it, you used to take him to see the replica in Taunton museum, and drool over it—’

  Tough guy Jordan shrugged, grimaced, and tried to look as if he couldn’t remember this conversation. Ax stared in amazement at his brother, and then in wonder at the ancient treasure, this beautiful, precious thing—

  ‘Wait a minute. How did you get hold of this?’

  Everyone laughed.

  ‘I asked,’ said Sage. ‘How could you doubt me? I told them who it was for, and they reckoned that was okay. There’s a letter goes with it, I’ll give it to you later, which you may want to frame.’

  DARK and Fiorinda were on first, with some of their already-legendary Rock The Boat set: and the crowd went crazy. In ‘Stonecold’, that rageous, paradoxical anthem, (singalong and we’ll kill you—) Fiorinda felt the huge response coming back at her, caught Charm’s eye and saw her on the edge of panic. Oh no, she thought. You don’t run scared on me now, we’re for the Big Time: and then the vertigo as she remembered, that world is gone. Then it was the end of the set, and they were singing ‘Dark Eyed Sailor’, but differently tonight: holding down the jangly guitars, pulling out the melody and the lyrics, unashamed tears on their faces, sometimes a cloudy morning, a cloudy morning, brings on a sunshine day—

  Traditional music, immemorial loss: but we go on.

  DARK were joined by Snake Eyes, the whole big band: a short set of this unlikely fusion, next the Heads come on, Aoxomoxoa duetting with Rob, singing Bob Marley, the way they did at Gateshead, this honeyed interlude segueing into a STRICTLY NO HORROR sound and vision set from the techno-wizards. Thence to the Adjuvants with DK guesting, lending his turbodrive to the kids’ fragile, clever ideas; Anne-Marie and Smelly Hugh’s Rover joins them. PoMo thrash techno-IMMix-funk folk-punk; and last but not least, a classic little guitar band. Sage had said he was looking for positive interference: amazingly, or not so amazingly, they did have a fairly sympathetic crowd, it all seemed to work. At the end of the Chosen’s set they took a break. Nearly at the end of it, Fiorinda had to scoot off in a panic to change.

  She scurried back in time to knock back another glass of vintage champagne, flowing in industrial quantities and damn the crisis (Ax better never find out what George and Sage spent on this lot). Allie Marlowe rushed up to plonk a wreath of silky traveller’s joy on her head, pinned it down, grinned at her sweetly, muttering shit, what a lot of hair; gave her a hug and a kiss. Then they’re on stage together, Fiorinda and her bodyguards. She in a green tunic and footless dance tights, missing her skirts terribly, flowers of the wayside for her crown: meeting their glances full of love and pride, her tiger and her wolf; and isn’t this great? Isn’t this our life’s blood? They faced the roaring ocean and launched into ‘Wonderwall’, close harmony, a capella.

  The secret of the Battle of the Sexes masque had been kept so well, most of us delirious masses really genuinely didn’t know what was going on at the end of that storming set by the three rulers of the Rock and Roll Reich, when Ax and Sage apparently unilaterally decided to do Under My Thumb, and Fiorinda went ballistic. Could have been a nasty stage invasion by Barmy Army commandos in defence of our queen, but luckily the firehoses and the foam made things clear: and who’d have thought the big bruiser had such a hidden talent for family entertainment? Well, he always was a crowd pleaser.

  We didn’t really like the masque, it wasn’t to our taste, and if you’re going to take-off Andrew Lloyd Webber you have to be slicker than that, Sage. But who that saw it will ever forget Aoxomoxoa as the Don, hitting on Fiorinda with that Mozart? Or Allie Marlowe, Queenpin of the Countercultural Administration, as Polly Peachum in the Beggar’s Opera riff? Or Mr Dictator Preston as the Pirate King? None too soon, however, Ax doffed the fake tache and donned a guitar, walked over to Sage and said something—exactly what, will be fuel for endless speculation. Then he started to play, and everything went quiet. We have to admit that we went quiet too, it’s not a new idea but we think a country’s national anthem has never been given such a spine-tingling epiphany of rock-redemption since Jimi Hendrix played. Maybe not then. We forgot to breathe, we hardened hacks in the media corral. And everybody on stage, by this time a cast of thousands: bands, crews, techies, hangers on, rock-muppets, infants in arms, listened as if they were hearing it for the first time too—

  I vow to thee my country all earthly things above

  Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love

  Whole arena teary-eyed, when he started over and it was time to sing. We were frankly sobbing into our organic recycled backstage serviettes. Forgive us if this sounds mawkish. It’s been a long, strange, three years on the winding road that led us here.

  Joe Muldur and Jeff Scully

  What Ax said was ‘I still resent this—’: and then into the solo, completely unplanned, that no one had ever heard before, which Sage thought he might actually be playing for the first time. He had that air of casual, intuitive grace, Ax improvising: maybe having given the chords a few moments’ thought, while he was pissing around being the Pirate King. Nice one, Ax.

  The cast of thousands, caught off balance, recovered and formed up, tall folks at the back, Sage next to Roxane Smith. ‘Makes me think of Tolstoy,’ s/he muttered. ‘Something he says in War and Peace. You may go to war like a duellist with a rapier. But when you’re massively outgunned and the situation’s desperate you throw away the rules, forget good taste and pick up any brutal blunt instrument. We’re going to regret this. We’re invoking demons here—’

  In the dawn of this day, Sage and George had flown to Helston to the Air Marine base, and been taken on a helicopter trip to Lizard Point, to light the first beacon. As they sailed over Goonhilly Down they’d seen the great dish aerials of the earth station, Arthur and Uther, Guinevere and Lancelot, Geraint and Merlin, staring up at them, mute and dead. Signs of that global consciousness, brief peak of civilisation which for us is in the past. They had looked at each other, unmasked in respect. The nav marks on the Lizard’s flank painted bright, after years of disuse. Hard times, hard times, and it’s going to get worse, no doubt of that. So that’s how we hepcats end up on stage, at what was formerly the site of a carefree, global consumerism, yoof culture annual knees-up, singing the fucking national anthem. Sorry Rox, this is an emergency—

  The love that asks no questions, the love that pays the price

  That lays upon the altar the final sacrifice—

  I’ve seen him do that. I’ve seen Ax lay down his life, no joke, un
reservedly, not once but over and over, to get us all out of a jam. Still don’t know what makes him do it. He’s just the Ax.

  ‘You talking to me? Do I look as if I read Tolstoy? Shut up and sing.’

  Some time after the show Ax and Sage came across each other in the melee. Later, they were holed up together in a disabled toilet in the Leisure Centre, for reasons already lost in the mists. Sage was sitting on the cistern, Ax was on the floor, propped against the wall, rolling spliff: both of them very relaxed. Running water, sanitation, dry underfoot, nice roomy cubicle. Light’s too bright, but by rock festival standards, an excellent gaff. Quite likely they were hiding from the barmy army. Who were milling around in large numbers, getting emotional, and having Ax and Sage in sight only encouraged them.

  ‘What are you going to do,’ sez Ax, ‘when your fans finally work out that the drug-addled drunken oaf they adore, is acutally a very fuckin’ clever bloke who works very fuckin’ hard?’

  ‘No problem. They all think that is what they are secretly like themselves.’

  ‘Modest, too.’

  Sage stared dreamily at the tiles on the wall, ‘Ax. I made, still making, absolute shitload of money out of Bleeding Heart. Me personally I mean, not talking of the band. Do you want it?’

  I’m happier than I have ever been in my life, thought Ax. God, this is perfect, this is paradise. There’s nothing else I could possibly want. ‘Ah, but can you get at it? In’t your financial empire tied up in knots since Ivan/Lara?’

  ‘I can get at plenty. I said, Do you want it.’

  Perhaps he’d been a tad ungracious. ‘Uh, yeah. Yes I want it. Thank you very much.’

  Sage laughed, but the skull’s blank sockets were considering Ax’s pinned pupils with disapproval. ‘Then it’s yours. An’ I’ll tell you what all else, my dear. You ever touch that stuff again, I’m going to beat the fuckin’ shit out of you.’

  The mask had vanished. It penetrated Ax’s happy world that Sage had a right to be angry, meant what he said; and Ax was going to get seriously hurt—