Bold as Love (20 page)

‘He’s a superb guitarist, that I know. But how is he your Prime Minister?’’

Sage chose one of the rotting chairs and sat in it, cautiously. Outside tall windows, Easton Friars deerpark stretched gloomily to the horizon. Bit of a doer-upper; plenty of room to sling a frisbee though. The chaperone smiled, and pretended to go on reading her book.

‘Countercultural Prime Minister. It’s a dual system. No idea. Because he wants to be.’

‘Quoi? What kind of reason is that?’

He shrugged, took out a packet of cigarettes and offered them. She shook her head. My friend, he thought, had the bizarre foresight—before the crash—to get a data wafer planted in his head, holding a phenomenal amount of information about this country. He knows where the sewers are laid, how the contour lines run, where the bodies are buried. I’m not going to tell
you
that. The fewer people know or realise it the better. Richard knows, I’m sure: but he’s okay. But it’s not the reason. Fucked if I know what makes him do what he does. He’s just the Ax.

In the operations room, the group of men Ax had met that night in Doncaster discussed the girl’s revelations and Ax’s idea; and how to negotiate the necessary arrangements. Richard Kent was concerned and puzzled that Sage had been left out of the loop, actually barred from this meeting by Ax himself.

‘It’s for the best,’ said Ax. ‘Trust me.’

‘But won’t he—?’

‘I’ll get some shit, but it’ll be okay. Head Ideology will see me through.’

‘I suppose you know what you’re talking about.’

The same helicopter carried them to Bradford, some days later: Ax and Sage and the girl. They were to deliver her personally, unharmed, to the leader of Muslim Yorkshire—and, by general reckoning, the paramount leader of English Islam—Sayyid Muhammad Zayid al-Barelewi. The Muslim leader and Ax had never met. The Sayyid didn’t negotiate, he didn’t do tv: he had steadfastly refused to have anything to do with the infidel. Yet he’d agreed to this proposal. The barmy chiefs had been incredulous of the idea. Ax had known it would be okay.

The machine landed them at a motorway junction north of town. From here they were taken, in a cavalcade of huge black 4X4s, into the city centre. Then they walked, surrounded by a hollow square of smartly turned out Yorkshire Muslim soldiers, in battledress and white turbans. The streets were calm. There were women around, with and without the veil; even children. In this community armed men did not have the profile of a nightmare aberration. They were in keeping, they belonged to the order of things. Ax’s heart weighed him down like lead in his chest. This calm was terrible, a reason for Fiorinda’s mourning, the end of a world, an unbearable loss: but he had to bear it. Accept.

‘Ever been here before?’

‘Nah. Leeds, Durham, Middlesborough, Newcastle, Halifax… Beverley. Weird place, Beverley. Never played Bradford, that I recall. You?’

‘Don’t remember. Take off the mask.’

The skull looked dubious. ‘Ax, I don’t think so.’

‘Take it off. Please. No rockstar fancy-dress here.’

They’d reached a street where the substantial Victorian houses on one side had been razed, replaced by a mosque and another building inside a walled courtyard: the Sayyid’s home. At an Arabian Nights gateway, candy pink with gilt cartouches of Arabic lettering, Ax and Sage surrendered their weapons. The escort dropped back. The crowd of hawk-faced young guardsmen inside the gateway started muttering. When Ax tried to pass through there was suddenly a wall of bodies in his way, rifles levelled.

‘What’s going on?’

‘No Anglo-Saxons!’ they shouted.

‘Let me pass. It was agreed, you have to let me pass.’

He was so keyed up he hardly realised he was facing a row of trigger—happy assassins. Some of the escort that had brought them from town hurried forward in a panic. They hustled Ax and Sage and the girl back, and got between. There was a heated exchange: something had gone terribly wrong.

‘It’s not you, Ax,’ called one of the guards, suddenly, in pure Estuary English. ‘
You’re
okay. It’s him. No one said you were going to bring fucking Hereward the Wake along.’

‘Told you,’ murmured Sage. ‘I’m no fucking Anglo Saxon,’ he yelled, ‘I’m Cornish. Emissary of Free Kernow.’ The mask reappeared. That or the fellow-subject-races appeal swung it. They were in.

Inside, in a courtyard of combed, rose-pink gravel, a guy in white with a green sash and a turban came out to greet them—accompanied by a platoon of spruce-uniformed women soldiers, green scarves low over their brows. The women took possession of the French girl and marched her away: looking back over her shoulder, looking frightened. Poor kid. Hope they just send you home.

He would do what he had come to do, that was certain. But was there any way to do this without betraying Fiorinda? From the start and forever, make it something she would understand? Walking along these corridors, everything beautifully clean and serene compared to life with the barmy army: yes, it’s peaceful on the other side. At the entrance to the Sayyid’s diwan he almost couldn’t take another step, Sage caught his arm.

‘You okay, Ax?’

‘I’m fine.’ He pressed his hands to his temples, briefly. ‘Future shock.’

The diwan was a large, long room: plenty of space, plenty of people—that is, men—either in white or in suits. So much for the private meeting. Well, naturally. The Sayyid was in the position of strength. He could treat this as a coup, the English Countercultural Prime Minister, forced to come unarmed into his stronghold. They were led to a raised dais at the far end of the room, and introduced by Sayyid Muhammad’s son in law, their guide, to the Sayyid’s brothers, brothers in law, and finally to Sayyid Muhammad Zayid himself.

The leader of English Islam was a suit: a strongly built, thick shouldered businessman, very conventionally dressed, with a domed forehead and a badger-striped beard. He looked like his photographs. He was briefly polite, then asked Ax to wait: he had something very important to discuss with somebody else just now. Okay, a standard move. Ax didn’t mind. While the Islamic leader pretended to do this very important stuff with his brothers, he took time to
look
, because he must know this man. What is he? He chooses to wear English formal clothes, not the robes. He doesn’t wear a turban. What is in his eyes? Sayyid Muhammad noticed this attention and returned it, and eventually beckoned Ax to his side.

Sage stayed back with the onlookers. Ax and Sayyid Muhammad Zayid sat together on a dark blue couch, trimmed with gold cord, strange hybrid of the caliph’s palace and some nice, solid, Yorkshire living-room suite: and they talked. Of course they had to go over the ground of the failed negotiations. The inferiority and corruption of Anglo Saxon culture, the outrageous irregularity of the barmy army police action. Of course, the Islamist had to get preemptively stroppy about the way Infidels treat their poor degraded womenfolk.

Ax took it all, without pretending to be very impressed. It was verbiage. He knew he could do business with Sayyid Mohammad, if only he had the right key. In a sense they had already reached an understanding, a distant but real engagement, dating from the time Ax had come to Yorkshire and initiated the blockades. Someone had chosen to put a brake on the anti-civilian terror tactics. Someone had accepted Ax’s alternative to urban mayhem. It was this man. This man, who was surely no happier than Ax—no matter what he said to his own public—about the arrival of the International Brigade.

Time to lay the cards down. ‘I suppose you will send that girl soldier home,’ said Ax. ‘But what are we going to do about the rest of them: the foreigners on our soil, muscling in on our quarrel? It’s a problem, Sayyid Muhammad. I’m hoping you and I can find some answers.’

Sayyid Mohammad Zayid looked at his bold visitor in silence, for a few moments. ‘It is very interesting to meet you, Mr Preston. No, more than interesting. It is an honour to meet the hero of the Deconstruction.’

There you have it. The Tour. The more Ax himself found out, or realised, about things he’d done and instigated on the Deconstruction Tour, the more he was
appalled
. Must have been on drugs. Or temporarily completely out of his mind, after Massacre Night. Yet everywhere he went he found that the Tour had made him friends. He had struck a nerve. Somehow all that reckless burning of the boats (no going back) had been what people needed: a moral turning point. And now this descendant of the Prophet, revered Quranic scholar, him too, seduced by green violence.

Fucking bizarre.

‘It’s an honour to meet you too, and a crying shame if we can’t work together. I know that the Muslim community has a lot to offer, in this new England. What about that saying of the Prophet,
Salla—llahu alayhi wa salam
, ‘All the earth is a mosque’. In the Hadith, in the Chapter of the Prophet’s tradition, 3172 if I remember right. Muslims have always known that they should regard the living world as sacred.’

‘Ah, and a scholar too.’

‘Not me. But I’ve been trying to learn, from Muslim friends. There’s the sixty seventh surah, also.
Live on what He provides, but always remember that you will all one day be answerable to Allah—
’

Sayyid Muhammad smiled. And shook his head. ‘Mr Preston, I appreciate your courtesy. I would like to help you. But there is nothing to be done. You and I both know it. There is nothing I can do and nothing you can offer, except territorial recognition. Discussion is pointless.’

‘I don’t think discussion of the Holy Qur’an can ever be pointless,’ said Ax.

Sayyid Mohammad Zayid gave Ax a long, measuring look, which Ax returned. Then he straightened, and his manner changed. He became something else than the guy in the position of strength giving Ax a polite brush—off; and they started to discuss the Holy Qur’an. Ax must have acquitted himself okay, (though he felt like an eight year old playing chess with the person who invented chess) because after a while the Islamist said, ‘We should continue this in private.’ He stood, Ax stood. He beckoned to one of his brothers.

They went to a room on the first floor of the house. Sayyid Muhammad’s brothers and son in law came in with them. It was furnished as a study, with a mihrab set in the eastern wall, and windows overlooking a courtyard where a fountain played. The Sayyid sat at his desk, gesturing to the chair on the other side. He was stern now, on his dignity. The brothers, brothers in law, son in law, settled in the background.

‘Now we are private. Let’s speak frankly. What do you want, Mr Preston?’

‘Ax… I want you to end this so-called war. I believe you can do it. I believe you want do it. I think it’s substantially by your choice that Muslims in the rest of England have not, at least not yet, been drawn into the conflict. I think you don’t want to see this country torn apart, any more than I do.’

‘Maybe you’re right, maybe not. Maybe I have different priorities. But I asked what do
you
want. You personally, Mr Preston. I have the impression that you are telling me something that wasn’t one of my expectations for this meeting.’

Ax nodded. ‘Ax, is fine. Yeah. I want to become a Muslim.’

‘Hmm.’ Sayyid Muhammad Zayid considered this young man. Obviously of mixed race, no telling exactly
what
went into the mix: North African? Caribbean? Saxon of course; some Chinese? God only knows. Taller than average, no more than average build. Almond shaped brown eyes. Dark hair drawn back from regular, clear-cut, clean-shaven features—

‘You think if you do this I will be able to give the English government peace, because of the effect of your conversion on my people? Is that your reasoning?’

‘I’m hoping for something on those lines.’

‘You’re very sure of yourself. You think you are so important?’

‘I’m not sure what effect this will have. I’m sure I want to do it.’

‘Why?’

‘I need some kind of bedrock. I think Islam can give me that.’

‘I see. And you don’t anticipate any difficulties? With your President, with your “barmy army”, with the dissolute way of life you’ve lead up until now?’

‘No problem with the President or the army. Plenty of difficulties with my way of life. I don’t know whether they can be reconciled. There’d have to be room to move on both sides.’

‘You’re a very arrogant young man!’

‘I’m trying to tell you the truth.’

Sayyid Muhammad, a warlord, a forthright Yorkshire businessman, a spiritual leader, stared intently. Maybe it was his turn to want to
know
who he was dealing with. Ax could see that the businessman and community leader was tempted by the prize of a celebrity conversion. The warlord needed a big inducement, or he wouldn’t even try to call off the fight. Was Ax in person enough for those two? But there was another Sayyid, the one who had allowed himself to respond to a fellow human being… It would take more than one conversation in the diwan to get to know
that
man. Another time.

‘If I thought this was some cynical ploy—’

‘If this is cynical, it’s cynical to know how many beans make five. I think it’s what has to be done, and I know it can’t be undone later without making things a hundred times worse. I also mean it, as far as I understand myself.’

‘Well, go on then lad. If you’ve made up your mind. We have witnesses.’

Shahadah
. The declaration. It has to be done. Accept. Sort the details later.

‘I testify that there is no god except
Allah
and that Muhammad is the messenger of
Allah.
’

They returned to the diwan: and from there to a hall where a banquet had been spread for the honoured guests. Still no women. Men came pouring in, excited by the obvious success of the meeting: everyone wondering what was going on. They didn’t have to wonder long. Sayyid Mohammad Zayid quickly made things official, with an announcement in English and in Urdu to the whole company. Ax had agreed to this. It would do no harm. Pigsty already knew, the barmy army already knew what he’d been planning. If it turned out to feel right, and depending on how he was received… Ax Preston has declared his Islam. How strange that sounded, very strange.