Bold as Love (41 page)

‘Shit. Have to go.’

It seemed as if Fiorinda was angry enough to let him zoom off unforgiven. But no, she got up with him, biting her lip, saucer-shadowed eyes brimming with tears, and hugged him fiercely. They stood, locked tight, Sage stooping so the skull’s grin was buried in her red curls, while their friends compassionately looked elsewhere.

Sage left. Rupert took Fiorinda’s spoon, and divided the rice and peas into two portions. ‘Now you eat your food, girl. You eat up that part.’

‘I can leave the rest?’

‘We’ll see.’

Felice came up with a glass of warm milk.

‘
Rupert
,’ she said, contemptuously. ‘You don’ know the first thing. She can’t eat rice, her stomach is all closed up. Here you are, baby. Sip this, I put honey in it. Then I’m gonna sponge you down and put you to bed. No argument.’

Gateshead Festival kicked off the next day, daytrippers and weekenders streaming in to join the small, hardy contingent of Tyne and Wear staybehinds. An atmosphere of beleagured triumph prevailed, and a certain northeastern smugness. Southerner Festival-goers were celebrating Rock the Boat in contemptible comfort, nowhere near the action; and
they
didn’t have the Few. And it wasn’t even raining. The Western tour arrived; Aoxomoxoa turned up again. The only name missing was Ax himself, and he was due any time.

About six in the evening Sage was called to the main entrance, where he found a tall, thirty something, upmarket Mrs Leisurewear waiting for him: firmly outside of the gates. It was Kay, the younger of his two older sisters.

‘Hello Stephen. Don’t panic, no one’s dead. I’m here because I brought someone—’

An eleven year old boy stepped out from behind her: not very tall, glossy black hair combed from a centre parting into two short, silver-bound braids behind his ears; intricate celtic embroidery blue-inked around his left eye.

‘I thought he ought to see you making history. I convinced Mary you’d have a platoon of heavies to keep off the terrorists: so you’ll back me up on that, if she asks. I’ll collect him tomorrow evening. No piercings, no more tattoos, and you’d better be around when I turn up, and both of you reasonably sober.’

‘I don’t take drugs!’ said the child.

‘I—’

‘You know I won’t talk to that fucking mask. You owe me. See you tomorrow.’

Kay walked off. Marlon came through the gate, offering his wristie to be tugged with a worldly air. They looked each other over.

The skull grinned sheepishly.

Marlon jumped into his dad’s arms.

Gateshead Festival, Saltwell Park, Still Rocking the Boat, stardate 23rd July
text, Joe Muldur; photography, Jeff Scully

The weird thing about the far north is it doesn’t get dark. The other weird thing is that apparently and somewhat eccentrically none of the most famous native rock musicians at this festival is going up on stage, they’re all too tired or some pathetic excuse, and can think of nothing better to do than wander around aimlessly, rubbernecking the crowd like a bunch of poncey journalists. Well, we’re tired too, but that’s not going to stop us waylaying England’s darlings, asking them stupid questions and namedropping about it. We are not fucking quitters. Encountering Aoxomoxoa in the backstage carpark, we took him severely to task over the lack of any Few input: but (levitating about three metres into the air and gently settling, cross-legged, on the shining bonnet of our rival organ’s arctic safari jeep) he would do nothing but kvetch about the price of some item of personal decor that a certain Marlon Williams has been trying to chisel out of his unspeakably stingy and puritanical dad. Fully expecting to be killed, skinned and eaten, in no particular order, by big-biceped dikey DARK fans tanked up on newkie brown and that bad old cannabis resin, we ventured into the arena, where we signally failed to score any of the legendary solids, but ran into Ax, and very politely asked him when we could expect the Chosen to perform. ‘I’m not talking to you fuckers,’ sez the great man. ‘You think I’ve forgotten the way you wankers always took the part of that shite Aoxomoxoa and printed his bastard disgusting puerile letters well I have not and you can go and fuck yourselves,’ We pointed out, taking editorial responsibility, that ‘we’ would have been happy to print Mr Preston’s disgusting letters, were he not above such things. ‘Didn’t you hear me,’ he replied, ‘I said fuck off and fuck yourselves. Oh, and have you seen Sage anywhere. I need him to hold Fiorinda down, so I can brush her hair. She hasn’t let anyone touch it for a week and it is a disgrace.’ Holding the nation’s glamour puss down while her boyfriend makes her scream and bite sounded like a good gig to us, but we’re a bit scared of Fiorinda, so we directed him to the carpark and off he wended, clutching his little black Denman* (*a kind of hairbrush). About ten pm the sun was still coyly refusing to go down on the horizon. Netherlander ladies Dalkon Shield (or something?) offered matronising congratulations from the stage, in embarrassingly good English, on us not having massacred too many Boat People, and got soundly canned for their insolence. We gave up on the lineup and repaired to the dance tent, where we discovered Fiorinda, lying around doing nothing in the company of some strange Bavarians, and asked her does she think Ax will ever, *ever* forgive us for calling him Captain Sensible that time. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’ was her callous response. ‘You could try giving him a whole lot of money. That sometimes works.’

‘Hi rockstar.’

‘Hi, other rockstar. Where’s Marlon?’

‘Asleep in the van. Where’s Fio?’

‘Asleep… They’ve got no stamina, the youth of today.’

It was about three am. The arena was still gently hopping, the cool northern darkness laced with music and light, smoke and flame, colour and moving bodies. They fell into step together. ‘How was the Western Front?’

‘Oooh, quiet. Dunno why you’re asking me. I was hardly there, I spent the whole time schmoozing with the generals. You’ll have to ask my shadow.’

‘Where are you heading now?’

‘Nowhere special. You?’

‘Somewhere where I don’t have to talk fucking Desperanto no more.’

‘They all speak English, Ax. It is
de rigeur
.’

‘I know, but I am too proud to let ’em. I have to give them my useless rock tour German, and worse Dutch, and have them be embarrassingly polite about it. Let’s see if the backstage bar’s still open.’

The next day the weather cut up rough again. Two ancient car transporters failed to make the mouth of the Tyne, and spent the day wallowing out at sea. Attempts to helicopter-lift the most vulnerable passengers had to be abandoned. The ships were foundering. It was decided (they’d given up their radio silence) that they would try to beach themselves at South Shields.

Ax got a call from Tyne and Wear police. They believed that the British Resistance Movement was planning some last-ditch violent protest against the Boat People. So Ax went with the cops to a house in Gateshead, a brick terraced house painted all over with Union Jacks, arriving casually and unnanounced for a chat with a bunch of suspected terrorists. He didn’t suppose this would achieve anything, but it’s always good to do the police a favour. The terrorists were a couple of defeated middle-aged blokes and three male teenagers, likewise. He sat with them in an upstairs room, a boy’s bedroom full of football posters, instant food cartons, model kits; smelling of socks and damp. They were thrilled, in their
but I’m as good as you, mind
Northern way, to meet Ax Preston. But he could hardly understand their accent, and getting them to talk would take a fuck of a lot more than one surprise celebrity visit. He knew afterwards he’d seen something in the room that bothered him, but he didn’t know what.

Gateshead Festival fought bravely to its conclusion, through the foul weather. The circus took off south, leaving Ax and the Chosen, Fiorinda and DARK behind. They’d meet again on Humberside, where the big final Rock the Boat event was due to be held in a few days’ time. The car transporters had managed to beach, with the help of the coastguard and the navy. DARK were booked to go down in the morning with governement aid workers, and greet the refugees for the media folk.

Everyone was staying in the Copthorne in Newcastle, clogging up the bathtub drains with Gateshead mud and a month’s accumulated general filth. The band ate breakfast together in the restaurant at an early hour: Fiorinda back in DARK mode, having left Ax warm, sleepy and just-fucked in that big soft bed. It had been very odd over the weekend, being with Ax and having DARK around at the same time.

Tom Okopie the bassist, inveterately rounded, was getting teased because he had managed to put on weight over the last weeks. Anxiety, said Tom. Nah, Tom, said the band. Admit it, you
like
fetid ancient butties and coagulated pizza. You are a tour-food perv. Cafren Free, rhythm guitar, with the limp blonde hair and milky skin, our English rose. Gauri the keyboards queen, Filomena the drummer. Tom and Cafren, Gauri and Fil, (this raw, rebel band is ludicrously domestic); Fiorinda and Charm…the odd couple. Cafren had confessed, over the weekend, that she thought she was pregnant. Charm was determined that Cafren simply had an upset stomach, Fiorinda said why don’t you do a test?

‘I don’t want to,’ said Cafren. ‘I want to be pregnant but I don’t want to know.’

Well, this makes perfect sense.

Their drivers arrived. They crossed the estuary; reached the Boat People welfare circus on the seafront at South Shields, and did some talking there for camera. The storm had blown itself out. The sun was bright, the sea glittering under a clear sky. The white strand looked magically empty, only missing the coconut palms, hohoho. But for a change it was genuinely warm. Cafren and Fiorinda got in the front of their vehicle, the coats and a heap of medical supplies in the back. Tom was in the next jeep with a couple of reporters, Charm and Gauri and Fil coming along behind. They bounced along track laid over the sand to the car transporters: lying there like dead whales, tethered by taut cable.

The regular army driver, ethnic Asian with a Midlands accent, wasn’t very sympathetic towards Boat People. He said he didn’t mind protecting them and he didn’t think they should have been turned away, but ‘they’re not immigrants, Fiorinda. Immigrants are different. These muckers don’t want to be here, they have no ties here, no plans, they’re just after—’

‘Any port in a storm,’ said Cafren, peeling windblown hair out of her mouth. It was warm, but breezy for an open-topped jeep ride.

‘Yeah, I hear you. They reckoned they got no choice. But—’

The Chosen and their manager, the crews, media folk, ate a later breakfast in the Copthorne restaurant, a majestic view of the Tyne through the big windows (which, being at the back of the building, had escaped street-fighting damage). Ax, sitting with manager Kit Minnitt and the lovely Dian Buckley, noticed that he had a definite
entourage
going on. Should make Jordan happy he thought, without rancour. The brothers were getting on much better since Ax had been forced to depend on Jordan to get the Chosen through this tour, scratch up a guitarist when Ax was called away; generally run the band.

‘What’s your proudest achievement of the Rock the Boat tour?’

Ax did not approve of media folk at mealtimes, but it couldn’t be helped—

‘I’m very proud I haven’t had my drummer vomit on me—’

‘That’s unjustified, Ax,’ shouted Milly, from the next table. ‘I haven’t thrown up for weeks. It’s your fucking nephew’s fault anyway, not mine—’

What had they achieved? Disaster had seemed hideously likely. Militarised Islam on one side: Recalcitrant British Resistance on the other, in evil alliance with the Counterculture’s nihilists. The whole north country awash with leftover armaments from the Islamic campaign, and a mass of have-nots, genuinely threatened by the invasion, right on the spot. Had the country been about to collapse into civil war, until the situation was saved by rock and roll? We’ll never know, he thought. Like all of this, we’ll never know. Maybe we made a difference, maybe we didn’t.

It didn’t hurt for the future of the project, however, that a heavy proportion of the forty million seemed convinced that the so-called Rock and Roll Reich had saved everyone’s necks. Again.

But who was financing the British Resistance? Ax and Mohammad Zayid were near to proving that certain Islamic Yorkshire businessmen were involved, men who had access to those left over armaments, and no desire for a massive influx of destitute co-religionists. What to do about that investigation? Pursue it? Drop it? Sometimes the truth is going to do no one any good.

He poured himself another cup of coffee, and glanced at the tv screen showing DARK on the beach. Thinking about those defeated blokes in their back bedroom, pawns in the game… Suddenly he saw, the image jumping at him like a shape in a nightmare, that room again, and the thing that had worried him. A cracked plastic sports bag under the bed, glimpse of camo-cased hardware inside, one of the blokes pokes the bag out of sight with his foot, hopeless little tidying-up gesture… Mouth dry, heart thumping, he tried to convince himself he was mistaken. Okay, they’re idiots and they didn’t know the police were coming but how could they be so insane as to have that gear in plain sight?

But he knew
—

‘Oh my God,’ he whispered. Dropped the cup, coffee everywhere. Grabbed his phone from his pocket—

‘Ax!’ cried Kit, ‘What’s the matter??’

‘They’ve mined the beach.’

Fuck’s sake,
Fiorinda, answer me
—

The rest of the circus was at Easton Friars, the derelict country house near Harrogate that had been barmy army HQ since the Islamic campaign. They were eating breakfast too, in a shabby salon overlooking the deer park. Rugrats all over the place. The Western tour had been infested with them. Roxane was by hirself in a corner, talking copy down the line:
the insistent “you” in Sparrow Child…“your city”; “your wind”, “your walls”, clearly stands for her father, Rufus O’Niall as the man who owns the world, but also for the sick world, the world we’ve left behind…
Boat People prefabs formed a vista with the fake gothic ruins, the beach at South Shields on the tv; Fiorinda getting into a jeep, smiling, tired and hollow eyed—