At the arrival of this new troop, the grinning man rises from his knees. The lead rider asks him a question but he turns away and follows the other troop, the one lit up with stars and scored with stripes. Follows them wherever they go. The Beast watches him do this and then shakes his head in what seems to Ronnie to be disgust or shame or despair or a mixture of all three.
They ride on. The distance they travel is a short one but it appears to encompass great tracts of the country, villages disparate but made similar by their shared air of abandonment and desolation. All pubs shut, all shops closed down, all private houses barri-caded tightly and securely against the world outside them. Ronnie sees net curtains twitch, glimpses faces curiously afraid at cracks in curtains and shutters and doors. Signs in driveways reading just two things; either For Sale or No Turning. Sees a huge troop behind him, following himself and the Beast, which has caught up with them by the time they dismount at the foot of the long mountain and amongst which there arises a terrible din, a clanging racket, discordant music to accompany the swirling of the crowd, the men moving randomly it seems, breaking against each other like waves or as if some whirlpool at their centre is spinning them out to the edges then pulling them back in again. Chaos it is. And there’s a rider, another rider, separate from the main crowd, unhelmeted so that Ronnie can see his smirk atop the erect board of his back and discern the colours of his tabard, a red cross on a background of white.
– What’s going on, Beast? Is the host running? Are they scared of something?
– Scared? Christ, man, these people are scared of nothing except being undistracted. They’ll never shy away from a fight but are terrified of being left on their own with nothing to do but think. No, all it is, they’re fighting to get a glimpse of that rider, there. They’re desperate to see him. Touch him if they can.
– Why?
– Because he’s famous. He once sang a song about angels. These people have been told over and over again that he’s brilliant so they believe that’s just what he is and they want to bask in the glow they think he gives off.
The smug man trots around the thrashing crowd, not once looking at them but obviously relishing their desperation to be near him. Ronnie notices that some in the crowd are attacking others who they believe might be enjoying a better view of the rider than themselves; he sees one man kick the calves of another man then use his fallen body as a viewing platform; sees another grab at the collar of a man in front of him and drag him down to be trampled and crushed in the mud. Watches another try to yank out the tall spiky hair of the man in front of him; he grabs a handful and pulls, straining, and the other man screams as his scalp begins to rip above his right ear and come away from the skull bone. And meanwhile the smirking rider circles, circles, back upright, eyes fixed on some distant ideal that only he can see, gulping himself and finding every last morsel absolutely delicious.
Then there is a summoning, a chanting of a two-syllable name, taken up by the entire host so that its volume and its double-beat seem to send a shock-wave through the air and at the entrance to a white tent a figure appears and the crowd roars in hysteria and the figure removes his helmet and the crowd surges forwards as one to see in what new style the figure is wearing his hair today: a Mohawk! Oooooh! Scores of men in the crowd instantly draw their swords and begin to hack at their own hair, sawing great clumps of it away, often attached to dripping hunks of scalp which they do not notice nor heed such is their frenzy to emulate the man in the doorway to the white tent. One man succeeds in cutting his hair down to just a central stripe from fringe to nape but in his eagerness to do this he has also removed both of his ears; still, the spurting holes on either side of his head do not in any way diminish the delighted grin he gives his reflection in the blade of his sword that he holds up flat before his face. The man in the tent doorway calmly surveys the frenzy his mere appearance has sparked off, then he removes his tabard and turns to re-enter the tent and in doing so he reveals a crucifix tattooed across his back and the host screams yet again and many amongst it dip their sword-tips in dark mud and attempt to tattoo their own backs, their elbows and shoulders twisting, neck-sinews straining and bulging and faces twisted into grotesque pink masks with the muscular effort. Then the figure raises his arms to wave and reveals some Sanskrit lettering drilled into the inside of his forearm and the crowd howls and dagger-tips are applied to arms, the mud underfoot becoming a maroon quag as flesh is opened and etched. The man re-enters the tent and the flap closes to reveal three stacked heraldic lions, one on top of the other, in blue, on white. The crowed roars again. More skin is willingly split, willingly ripped.
Ronnie looks at the Beast. – Who was that man, Beast? Who was that man that put such a madness in the crowd?
– A footballer. Captain of the England national team. That grinning galoot has told everyone that the man represents the best of Britain and everyone believes that he is just that so they want to be like him. They’re desperate to be like him. They hate themselves because they’re not like him. Not as rich as him, not as famous as him, not even as talented as him, modest though that talent is. If they give themselves the same tattoos as him or the same haircuts as him then they think that they’ll be like him just a weeny bit. Which they will. Because he’s empty and rapacious too.
Then the Beast starts to sing a song called ‘Three Lions on My Shirt’. The crowd joins in instantly and ecstatically.
Another summoning is made, a voice calling for a servant, and a young man detaches himself from the crowd and Ronnie sees that beneath his shiny shell suit he is skinny, with white training shoes below the elasticated leg cuffs of his trousers and a gold rope around his neck and a Burberry baseball cap on top of his shaven head. His face is pale and sports some pustules and on his top lip some thin, long hairs waft and wave like weed underwater. He is riding a bicycle which he dismounts from before the grinning man and takes from his jacket a knife and a folded flag which he carefully spreads out on the ground and the flag is coloured red and white and blue and is made up of crosses of these colours and all who look on know that the name of the flag is Jack, and that its value was great because all knew that if the grinning man were to wrap them in it and they were to kill someone whilst wearing it then they would be immune from any responsibility for that crime. Accountability was dispelled by Jack: guilt, too. Jack is a magic flag. Self-analysis was absolved by the nurturing mantle called Jack whose colours could never be changed and before which the people in the crowd put their right hands on their hearts and set their faces determinedly and some even start to cry.
– Ned, says the grinning man to the shell-suited man, – will you play a game with me?
– What kind of game? You some kind of peedo, yeah? Dirty pervert. Pee-do! Pee-do!
A servant brings a games console and a TV screen and places these things on the banner and the grinner and Ned sit and take up a handset each and begin to play Killzone 2. The crowd watch agog. The grinner takes the role of Helghast, Ned of the ISA soldier Sev, and noises come from the screen; winds howl and lightning crackles and guns boom and darting shadows scream as they attack or die. The noises are very loud. At one point the Ned screams: – Die! Die die die ya fuckah die! and the grinner nods at him approvingly, and when the game is at its most intense with a new wave of the Helghast army surging forwards screaming and Ned screaming too they are disturbed by someone emerging from another tent, a tent coloured like Jack and looking like that banner’s bigger sibling but with an image on top of it of a dog, a bulldog coming at the viewer and wearing a collar with thick sharp spikes and with its teeth prognathously protruding from its lower jaw. And this figure, a man, is clad only in block-like white trainers and too-small white shorts and sun-glasses and his head is shorn of hair and every inch of his exposed skin is pink shading into red and his belly bags down over his shorts and he has the words ‘Made In’ tattooed into the stretched skin above his navel and the word ‘Britain’ below it and he has a crucifix on his le
ft shoulder and Jack’s smaller brother on his calf and various other motifs and images drilled into flesh that wobbles as he walks and jiggles as he claps his hands together, collision of two links of raw sausage. He has pointed breasts with nipples bequiffed and his neck and flanks fall in folds like sliced white loaves of bread and his teeth are yellowed and chipped and his shorts cling to his knees baggy but are a size too tight at the bum and are being drawn into the deep and dark cleft between his hanging buttocks as if in the act of being devoured. He is making a noise, this man, halfway between a mocking laugh and a shout and he keeps clapping his fat hands twice and then holding his arms outstretched and slightly anterior to his body for a couple of seconds and then he claps twice again and out come the arms and from that throat, hidden somewhere in the column of pale pink flesh that joins his chin to his chest, comes again that noise, that laugh/shout of something like mockery. And he was approaching the flag called Jack on which Ned and the grinner were playing Killzone 2 but he stops to speak in the ear of Winston who then approaches the grinner and says in response to his eyebrow-raised look of surprised inquiry: – Don’t be surprised that I was spoken to first by that man, that knight. He recognised me and felt some kinship with me so it was me that he spoke to first. Plus I was closer to him than you were, physically I mean, so he didn’t have as far to walk. He wants me to ask you something.
– Okay, says the grinner. – Fuh fuh fire away.
– Actually, he wants me to tell you something, Winston says. – Wants you to know that he’s carrying on the great tradition of the British warrior spirit that he sees me as representing. And he’s eager for you to know that he’s happily following your example and fixing any problems he might encounter with his fists and feet and sometimes bottles and plastic chairs on pavements outside pubs. You’ve shown him how to do things the right way, he told me; if a face tells you something you don’t want to hear, then punch it. Put glass in it. And when you’ve punched that face to the ground then step on it again and again until it won’t be able to tell you anything any more. That’s what him and the millions like him have been doing, he told me. Cos they’ve been following your example. Do you approve? Are you pleased?
The grinner looks from Winston to the fat red man who stands there beaming at him, his hands twitching at his sides like twin chubby squids. The grinner says to Winston: – By my actions have I answered questions. The time has come for an end to talking. The time has come to be tough. There can be no negotiations with tyrants.
The fat red man, overhearing this, throws his arms above his head and cries – YEEESSS! and then wobbles off into the crowd, his arms away from his sides as if he carries a big invisible box beneath each one. The crowd parts and the man walks through it and then the dream-Ronnie sees an airliner taking off from somewhere behind the crowd and he knows that the fat man is on it and that it is heading for Spain. As it flies overhead Ronnie sees identical round red faces wearing sun-glasses at the windows, each one with its mouth open in a roar, but he can’t make out what they’re saying, if anything at all beyond that half-laugh/half-shout with which the fat pink knight announced himself to the throng.
Ned and the grinner finish their game in an explosion of pixellated blood on the screen. The Ned screeches: – Yaaah! Fuckin mashed you, innit? and then they start another. Wind-whistle and thunder-rumble and boom and boom and bang and crash and lights flashing. Ronnie watches the lights flash, is slightly mesmerised by them, hears the loud noises, the very loud noises, sees the Ned scream – YAH! every time he makes a kill. Watches the grinner grin. Halfway through that game they are approached by a couple, a young man and a young woman, dressed completely in black with very white faces and purple lips and black rings around their eyes and pieces of metal through their lips and eyebrows and ears. The woman is wearing an ankle-length skirt and boots with very thick soles and the man is wearing trousers of black and shiny leather and they have chunky rings on their fingers of skulls and spiked amulets. They approach the grinner and the Ned and greet them in quiet voices and the Ned is put out at being greeted and he hurls his handset down onto Jack and stands and shouts: – Goths! Fuckin Goths! Interrupting me when I’m winning, innit? Just fuck off, yeah? Just fuck off or me and my boys’ll fuckin mash you, innit?
But the grinner is no more troubled than before and he asks the two newcomers what they want and the young man says to him: – No, what do you want, sir? Do you want people like us who look a little different from the norm to be beaten to death in parks across the country? Do you want your subjects to be shown that violence solves problems and that the easiest way to deal with difficulties is to destroy them? Why, even, must people settle for what is easy? Do you want people to not think, to gleefully jettison dignity, to always see others as the cause of their problems and to utterly lack any sense of accountability or responsibility? I beg you, sir, call off your hawks. No more bloodshed, please.
The Ned spits at this man and the sputum lands on one of his leather knees and hangs there viscid like a tumour. The grinner looks up at the sky and his wide and toothsome grin never falters as he repeats himself yet again: – By my actions have I answered questions. The time has come for an end to talking. The time has come to be tough. There can be no negotiations with tyrants.
– YAH! screams the Ned, and cackles. – Now stop your chattin and fuck off, yeah? You heard the man. End of the day, I see you here again and my boys’ll mash you up, yeah?
He makes a gun out of his right hand, the barrel of the index finger less than an inch from the girl Goth’s face.
– BRRAH! BRRAH! BRRAH! Now fuck off, yeah?
The Goths return to whence they came. The Ned and the grinner start yet another game.
– I’m worried about him.
– Why?
– Cos he won’t wake up, why’d you think? Look at him, man. Out for the count. Not healthy. What the fuck was in that pill?
– Ask Helen.
– HELEN! Rhys roars. – HELEEEEN!
No answer from upstairs because Red Helen can’t hear them over the noise of the hairdryer and the happy hardcore she’s blasting, getting ready to go out.
Rhys and Robert would go with her too but they’re still feeling somewhat fragile after their recent binge and anyway they need to keep an eye on their friend Ronnie, dreaming Ronnie, Ronnie asleep and twitching on the lucky moo-cow rug in the room that smells of fag smoke and cat piss. Deeply, deeply asleep Ronnie, this tranquilised, Iraq-bound boy on the moo-cow blanket.
– I’m worried about him, Rhys says again. – Think we should try and wake him?
Robert shakes his head. – Nah. Let him sleep, man. Jeez, I’d be doing the same if I could. Fucking knackered I am. But too wired right now.
– You worried, then?
– What should I be worried about?
– Going to war, man.
– Fuck no. Slot some fucking ragheads, innit.
Rhys gets up and goes into the kitchen and returns with beer and Doritos. From upstairs comes a thumping, a thumping and a thumping and a thumping. DUMPHA DUMPHA DUMPHA DUMPHA.
– Christ, that fucking music. Can’t stand that happy hardcore shit.
– She’ll be out soon. That mate of hers, y’know the one with the bright orange skin? Tango Woman? She’s coming to pick her up in half an hour. Bringing us some more beer ’n all.
They sit and sip at their cans and crunch Doritos and blankly watch the television. Teatime news. Item: are violent video games breeding violent youth?
– Can’t hear what he’s saying, says Robert. – Put the subtitles on.
Then something about a young couple beaten up in a park somewhere in the middle of England. Beaten up so badly that the girl died in hospital last night and the boy will have permanent brain-damage. Beaten up because they were Goths. Goths are a youth cult who favour black clothes and white make-up and despite their gloomy appearance tend to be non-violent, the newsreader says.
DUMPHA DUMPHA DUMPHA DUM
PHA.
Then something about British soccer hooligans abroad and the measures that the host country of the European Championship in a year’s time will be taking to prevent known troublemakers from crossing its borders. Scenes of flying plastic chairs and water cannon. Riot police wielding truncheons and topless men in long shorts with their arms outspread or in the air. Then the newsreader’s face again and then an image of tanks in a desert and then the face of Tony Blair behind a podium. By my actions. Have I.
And DUMPHA DUMPHA DUMPHA DUMPHA goes the soundtrack to Britain’s life, pounding and meaningless, to this stage in the growth of one of the oldest democracies on the planet. Apparently. Supposedly. Pounding and pulsing and unchangingly repetitive. Beating and battering, a cudgel. Sound of the cat-pissed house. Sound of the seemingly deserted village, shop gone, pub gone, chapel now a holiday home. Of the nearest town and of the highways that join the village to that town and that spoke out from the town to other towns and cities across hills and plains and imaginary borders and all the dead high streets in all the dying towns that point at the gleaming hypermarkets like giant landed spacecraft at all their edges which suck life and money towards them out of the centres of the towns that limp on lamely into the new millennium. Thumping soundtrack unchanging like a diseased heart to the parks in which young people are kicked to death, to the dark skins that are slashed open or punctured, to the back rooms or garages on estates or in suburbs in which figures hunch over chemicals that when mixed turn volatile, to bomb factory, to murder scene. To those that move, all of them alike, to those that trudge alone unheeded or those that band together to share hatreds and those that plead and those that sneer and those that beseech and those that disdain and those that thieve and those that lose and those that have their meagre belongings removed from them, to those that add another nugget of gold to the gleaming mountain range they already possess to those that bomb and those that are blown apart and those that are stabbed and all of them watched by a million mechanical eyes on lamp-posts and roofs, every twitch of every limb and every expression on every face monitored, every lost face that moves between giant signs that say nothing but DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T and tannoyed voices filling the airspace that say nothing but DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T DON’T and the millions of silent screams in the millions of heads that nod nod nod towards the grave and leave nothing but longing in the mud. The great grey wave that envelops the land. And, before he is sent to fight for this, to kill for this and be killed for this, Ronnie sleeps on on his lucky moo-cow blanket and Ronnie goes on dreaming.
The Dreams of Max & Ronnie Page 3
