Bold as Love (37 page)

‘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 thought 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.

‘What’s this?’

‘Beethoven, cello and piano. Okay?’

It was a very old jigsaw, a three masted ship under a lot of complex canvas, the subtle difference between the sails and a faded, cream and golden, rack of sunset clouds going to be a challenge. They worked on it together, drinking the wine, Sage and Ax continuing to snipe at each other gently: softly-barbed play-fighting. Fiorinda sat back to get a better look at the pieces, and suddenly, in the lamplight and the fireglow, she saw them as two animals—as if she’d taken one of those jungle drugs from South America. Sage stretched out at lazy length, uttering harmless threats. That growling sound is really the big guy purring. Ax crouched on one knee, the other leg folded under him, eyes fixed in alert, relaxed calculation on the prey. This pasteboard world, which he will patiently subdue into order: sort it, sieze it, run it to the ground…

My tiger and my wolf. I wonder what I am to them. Not an animal I think. More like some vital element, like water or fire.

Or meat.

The next day was still cold, as if the May heatwave had never been. They spent it as they’d spent their time in March, bickering pleasantly over the chores, playing computer games in Sage’s studio, watching the birds in the garden. They ventured outdoors once, late in the day, to walk up and down the little river Chy from the waterfall pool to the stepping stones, but did not leave the twelve acres of Tyller Pystri, the magic place. Came back to the house to cook together in that inconvenient little kitchen: smoking grass, drinking wine, Fiorinda making chapatti dough, Ax chopping vegetables (not from Sage’s garden: Mrs Maynor, his housekeeper, had brought them from her husband’s allotment); Sage rooting out a tin of chickpeas. ‘Fuck, an actual tin, no ring pull… Oh, Ax, reminds me. Remember the bottle of wine we drank in the van, that night with Fiorinda?’

‘No.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Fiorinda. ‘You were severely out of it, Ax.’

‘Look who’s talking. Well, it turns out that was a bottle of wildly expensive irreplaceable Montrachet, given to George by Laurel last Christmas. (Laurel was George’s wife, the potter). He thought it was safe from me because I hate trying to use a corkscrew. I told him it was nectar of the gods, and he’s happy with that, so you will back me up? Hey, isn’t anyone going to open this for me?’

‘Nectar of the gods. Sage, last time we were here I recall trying to take an antideluvian tin-opener task away from you, and you were at my throat. Said you
fucking come here to get away from being treated like a fucking toddler
.’

‘Yeah. Sometimes I feel like that… Sometimes I don’t.’

‘And we have to guess,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Like Russian roulette.’

‘Thas’ right.’

They ate and settled to a round of Risk, the world domination game. The usual pattern swiftly emerged, Ax and Fiorinda stockpiling their plastic soldiers and plotting: Sage playing
go for it until you got no armies left.
To Ax’s annoyance, this idiotic strategy swept the board as often as any other plan. Honours in the tournament were even.

‘Do you wear the masks when no one else is around?’ asked Ax. ‘Often wondered.’

‘Yeah, we do.’

‘Can you tell whether it’s on or not? Are you conscious of it?’

‘If I think about it. Not usually.’

‘So when
do
you take it off? Are there Head Ideology rules about that? I’m gonna seize China. Two dice.’

‘I have to take it off to sleep: but otherwise, lessee, what else? To shave—’

‘Right. Brings us up to about twice a year—’

‘Fuck off. As a gesture of respect or to make a point, sometimes; and to fuck. But even then,’ The mask switched, grinning evilly, to the freshly rotted version, with tiny crawling maggots, ‘—not always.’

‘You don’t scare me,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Do the sicking-up worms. See how Ax likes it.’

‘Ha, the Red Army stands firm. Another throw?’

‘Yeah. Why d’you have to take it off to sleep?’

‘If I don’t, it gives me nightmares.’

‘Really?’ said Ax, ‘That’s interesting. My implant gave me horrible nightmares when I had it done. Literally indescribable. It’s a very unpleasant feeling, waking up terrified from an experience for which you have no words, no images. Went on for weeks. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Again… And once more.’

‘The things you do to yourselves,’ said Fiorinda. ‘You’re both insane. You must be dead clever, Sage, if you can make a mask that will lift your expressions and copy them in the avatar in realtime. Which we always assume is what it does, at least, when you want it to.’

‘Nah. Building an avatar mask is simple, just obsessive. I could teach you. Either of you.’

Teach,
Ax heard. Now there’s an idea. ‘China is mine. I’m stopping there, give me a card.’

‘It was my hands that I wanted to hide,’ said Sage, unexpectedly. ‘Call it childish if you like, Ax, but I don’t enjoy looking at them. The skull was a natural extension, then we all had to have one, and it became a game, an addiction. We couldn’t give it up now, for business, the punters would never forgive us. But I won’t wear mine any more when I’m with you two, if you don’t want.’ And his natural face was there with them: eyes lowered, smiling faintly, white skin wheat coloured from heatwave doses of NDog sunscreen.

‘Oh, but I
love
the mask,’ said Fiorinda.

‘Hm.’ He grinned. ‘Well, I always thought it was an improvement, myself.’

‘I know it’s not a mask, I know it’s you.’

‘I don’t mind either way,’ said Ax, ‘It’s all Sage’s face to me.’

‘I’ll quit the mask. Fiorinda, I’m attacking Iceland.’

‘Hey, I thought we had a pact of non-aggression.’

‘We do, we do. I just have to recover my continent. Look at you two, divvying up the world between you. C’mon, let me have one miserable continent.’

About midnight, Fiorinda said, ‘Are we going back tomorrow?’

When she spoke they all looked at the landline phone, on the table by Sage’s bed. Allie had that number, and permission to call if she needed to. It had kept quiet. They’d had two days of escape. Couldn’t really ask for more.

‘I suppose we’d better,’ said Ax. ‘You okay for that, Sage?’

‘Oh yeah, since we must.’ He sounded surprised. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Er…you were having a nervous breakdown two days ago.’

‘His tantrums are vile,’ said Fiorinda. ‘But they vanish without trace. You’ll get used to it.’

Sage went to change the record, giving her topnotes of withering scorn and dire warning, mixed with tender affection: remembered that he was unmasked and started to laugh. No remote controls, only about four tracks to a side, listening to black vinyl entailed a lot of getting up and down, kind of like a religious ceremony. He came back and lay on the couch. Fiorinda and Ax kept on working at the sailing ship jigsaw, although they weren’t going to finish it. Fiorinda in her venerable green dress, her hair aglow. Ax’s guitar-man hands problem-solving as if with their own inbuilt intelligence… Suppose this is it, Sage thought, watching them. She’s mortally afraid of things she can’t tell. Ax is in despair at what’s happening to him, but he can’t quit. I’m no better off, in my trivial personal way. The world out there is fucked to scary shit. What if there’s no way out, and things only get worse? What if this, now, is the best we’ll ever have? After a while Fiorinda looked up, and then Ax. Nothing was spoken.

Fiorinda returned to the jigsaw, Ax went to look at the vinyl. The lamplit room was filled with a strange and painful tranquillity. Very bitter, very sweet.

Strange how much remains unchanged, although the world ended (again) ten days ago. The tv studio, late night and live: very simple, no fx being layered over what you see here. The comfy chairs, the presenter: Fiorinda, Aoxomoxoa and the Heads, and Roxane Smith. Quite a line up. This was a date scheduled before Ivan/Lara, and postponed. More than half the country still had no tv reception, but they’d decided to go ahead: it might be a while before the proverbial normal service was resumed.

The presenter is a rising star called Dian Buckley. Thrilled at having the Heads—who so rarely did this sort of thing—on her programme, she’s unwisely decided to kick off with questions about the big break. Did you have any idea that
Morpho
was going to be so successful?

‘No,’ says Aoxomoxoa, unhelpfully.

‘So, how did you feel. Suddenly, you were eighteen and world famous?’

‘Surprised.’

‘What about the rest of you, were you surprised?’

‘Nah, we knew,’ says George Merrick, ‘We kept tellin’ ‘im, but he wouldn’t believe us. He thought the record company would dump us in six months.’

‘Whereas what happened was that you decided to dump them…and it turned out to be hard work. Do you now think that was a mistake?’

‘We’re a live band,’ said Sage, ignoring this, ‘For what we do, do it best, you need a volume of space you can saturate and manipulate, and a couple of hundred sweaty punters. I can’t never really see taking our stuff home and sitting there with a wrap round your head.’