Nirvana Bites (14 page)

Pete tugged at his chain. Pat turned to face him. He raised his eyebrows a millimetre and tilted his head back, fluttering his eyelashes. Shit, this guy was subtle.

‘Good thinking, Pete,' Pat beamed. ‘Della's the one you should ask, Jen. She's closer to Stan than anyone. Have you got her address?'

I shook my head and held my breath.

‘Easy peasy lemon squeezy.' Pat positively glowed with satisfaction at being able to help. She gave me an address in Stockwell. Mission accomplished. The evening hadn't been a total loss after all. And all it took was one terrifying near-death experience.

Pat and Pete helped me to my feet. A bit rocky, but not too bad, all things considered. They pushed open a fire door at the back of the store-room. As I climbed the stone steps, they waved goodbye and Pat wished me luck. At the top of the stairs, another door opened out into the hallway, opposite the goods lift. A chill wind raced up the cul-de-sac to greet me as I hit the night. I tottered to the nearest minicab office. This time I was blessed with a taciturn driver, who delivered me safely and silently back to Nirvana.

Stan's presence still permeated my home – even when he wasn't physically in it. I felt oppressed. Stan's crisis had invaded my life and threatened to engulf it, forcing me to confront issues that I'd had good reason to bury deep. Not to mention fucking with my physical and mental health. At the same time, the business with my father was jostling for head space. All these fucked-up men trying to fuck me up. Testosterone galloping full-pelt through my karma. So what's new?

I chose to sleep in the front room rather than lie on the futon between Stan's stale sheets. As I gazed through the window, a pale light permeated the sky's edge where it met the rail tracks. I watched as an enormous full moon nudged its way over the horizon. It glided upwards, eclipsing the stars, close enough to touch. A small figure trotted along the track into the light until it was silhouetted dead centre of the rising moon. Ears pointed, brush tail erect, the fox turned her head and appeared to look straight into my eyes before moving along the track and out of my vision. If she saw any dodgy characters hiding out on the embankment, she didn't tell me about them.

14

I SURFACED ABOUT
midday, dry-mouthed and shaky. I was relieved to see Stan hadn't returned from Gaia's – or whoever else had taken on the task of Stan-sitting. I had breakfast (black coffee and a fag – I was getting into bad habits) standing in my kitchen. My box of high-fibre cereal glared at me accusingly from the shelf. ‘Fuck you,' I said aloud, as the smoke and caffeine hit my gut. ‘Who needs fibre?'

I popped next door and found Robin hunched over Nick's laptop at the kitchen table. I accepted a cup of peppermint tea in an effort to assuage the forces of darkness at work in my intestines. Robin told me he had heard from the guy in the lab, who had analysed the transit gore.

‘Pig,' he said. ‘It's pigs' blood.'

I wasn't quite sure how to react to that. On the one hand, we knew it had come from something previously alive – and better pig than person, let's be honest. I also thought it might be positive that it was a large animal. I mean, if it had been cats' blood say, or rabbits', it would have taken an inordinate
quantity
of small furry animals to provide that much gore. Pigs are bigger and also, I have to say, less well endowed in the cuteness department. On the other hand, how much blood does the average pig have? Enough to cover a transit? Or just a Fiat Uno? How
many
pigs might we be talking about?

The next obvious question was, who would have access to pigs' blood? Farmers? Butchers? Satanists? Slaughterers? What if it was infected with foot-and-mouth?

‘Robin,' I asked, ‘I don't suppose you know of any–'

I didn't get a chance to finish. ‘As a matter of fact,' he interrupted, ‘I do.'

‘How do you know what I was going to ask?'

‘Because I thought of it first.'

‘Thought of what?'

‘OK. You tell me what you were going to ask.'

‘Fuck it, Robin. I'm not in the mood for mind games,' I snapped. ‘I was thinking about abattoirs.'

I know,' he said, with a self-satisfied smirk. ‘I know that's what you were thinking. And I also know where the nearest one is. It's in Kent. It's called Meacham's Meat Products. They provide for the bottom end of the market. Economy sausages, cheap pies, pork scratchings, that kind of thing.' Robin grimaced and retched. He wiped his mouth with the end of his plait, forcing me to suppress the urge to do a bit of retching myself.

‘How do you know about them?'

‘Nick and I targeted them a couple of years back.'

‘Oh, I remember that. Was that them?'

‘Yeah, MMP. Murdered Mammal Products. We tried to organise a picket.'

‘And got beaten up, as I recall.'

Robin shuddered at the memory. ‘The bastards had these hoses that sprayed all this shit out at us. Literally shit. Pigshit and offal and stuff. We couldn't get the stench off our skins for days.'

So we knew of a source for pigs' blood not a million miles away, with some dodgy dealings to their name. A clue. Maybe. Worth pursuing anyway, given the dearth of anything remotely resembling a clue so far.

We sat and drank our tea in silence for a while.

‘I'm really worried, Jen,' Robin murmured, gazing into his South Park mug. ‘We still haven't heard anything from Nick.'

‘Look, Robin,' I said in a soothing voice, ‘Nick's a big boy. He can look after himself.'

Robin looked sceptical.

‘Maybe he's met someone. He's probably ensconced with some woman even as we speak, shagging his brains out.'

Robin shook his head. ‘He's got no clothes or anything with him. And anyway, there's no way he would miss tomorrow.'

I was mystified. ‘Tomorrow?'

‘Fuck me, Jen. Where's your head at? I think our stapled friend has stolen your psyche. Tomorrow's Mayday, right?'

Shit! I often have trouble knowing which day of the week it is. But I am usually aware of which month we're in. I tried to cover myself.

‘Oh yes. Of course. I know that. And you're right. Nick wouldn't miss it and I bet we bump into him there. Just remind me of the plans again?'

Robin was unconvinced by my fumbled attempt to save face, but was kind enough to play along, saving his contempt for Stan's corrupting influence rather than my appalling lapse of memory. I made a mental resolution to withdraw every now and then from Stanworld and Deadfatherworld and check out Realworld, in case there was anything going on I should know about.

We agreed to meet at some unearthly hour the following morning. I'd have to try to get an early night. Coming over all unnecessary at the Triple X had been a warning: my sleeping patterns were fucked, and my eating habits weren't too hot either. I'd need my strength if I was to have any chance of success at dealing with this Life stuff. Robin showed unexpected sensitivity and offered to let the others know the coup. Or maybe he could see how out of it I was and was just being pragmatic.

I came home and rang Mags at work. She said she'd be willing to Stan-sit while the rest of us were out ‘peopling the barricades', as Gaia would say.

‘I would have taken the day off anyway,' Mags sighed. ‘But I wouldn't have joined you guys on the streets. It's not my scene, know what I mean?'

I did know what she meant. The Mayday posse would be an eclectic assortment of anarchists, eco-warriors, squatters, animal-rights activists, Wombles, punks and pagans. With a small smattering of SWP hacks desperately trying to ride the anti-capitalist bandwagon while simultaneously pretending they were leading it – and fooling no one in the process. The rest of us Nirvanans would fit in fine. As a black lesbian, Mags felt her struggle was elsewhere. I respected her stance. I often wondered why she chose to stay on in Nirvana. Often wondered, but was always grateful.

I spent the rest of the day in the garden, working up a sweat and working out the demons. Stan lay on a blanket and watched me as I worked in silence around him. Along the left-hand side I planted tomatoes, lettuces and courgettes, on the right, what I hoped would turn into a riot of flowers with a herb garden in the plot next to Mrs V's fence. Maybe their soothing aroma would have a calming effect on Tyson, who spent the entire time I was working head-butting the fence. I used the best seedlings Stan's money could buy, delivered in a van from Dulwich Garden Centre. Never thought I'd see the day. I left the middle area bare, where the lawn had been. Maybe I'd order turf another day. I dotted the garden with paper cups buried up to their rims in the earth and filled them with beer to catch the slugs and snails. A nasty business, but I was fucked if I was going to all this trouble to provide a varied diet for our slimy friends. I hoped it wasn't too bad a way to die. Stan helped by drinking some of the beer.

15

MAYDAY DAWNED BRIGHT
and early. Actually, that's not true. Mayday dawned early, but it sure as hell wasn't bright. Rain spilled from leaden skies that held no promise of improvement. We met at Gaia's and studied our
Mayday Monopoly Game Guide
. This was a glossy forty-page A5 booklet listing the anti-capitalist actions across London. Impressive. New technology had a lot going for it if it enabled the good guys to produce something that looked this professional.

‘Take back your life as you pass go,' it trumpeted. Then it gave a short radical history and summary of targets for each of the areas on the Monopoly board.

We drank coffee and ate croissants while plotting our part in the downfall of capitalism. We saw no contradiction in using Stan's money to pay for bourgeois luxuries to give us strength in our purpose. Anyway, it was Fair Trade coffee, and the croissants – well, they were bloody nice anyway.

Robin stood and issued a call to arms by reading the last paragraph of the booklet in a theatrical voice. I could tell he was imagining himself taking his place in revolutionary history.

‘“On Mayday the Dionysian Underground (the post-situ anarcho-surrealist network) intend to reclaim the dice and roll it on the streets of London. Join us, if you will, or better still reclaim the dice for yourself and subvert the game.” Come on, guys. Let's go!'

We had decided to split up, and meet later at Oxford Circus for the mass ‘shopathon'. Frank and Robin went off to join the Critical Mass bike ride, intended to snarl up King's Cross. Gaia headed for Mayfair, where she was meeting up with some animal-rights activists targeting a butcher's which, according to the booklet, was a ‘purveyor of bourgeois delicacies like foie gras', and the Connaught Hotel, where a portion of caviar costs £120. Ali and I made our way by bus and foot to Pall Mall, intending to lay siege to the World Bank.

We were cold and wet by the time we arrived, to be greeted by the sight of a triple row of helmeted cops with visors down and truncheons drawn. Over their heads I could just make out the group of dangerous renegades responsible for their presence: five bedraggled comrades tried to look angry and defiant, but only succeeded in looking damp. The incessant rain drenched a single banner printed with the immortal words
SMASH CAPITALISM AND REPLACE IT WITH SOMETHING NICER
.

We decided to make our way over to Oxford Street, even though it was early. We sat under a bus shelter in Regent Street and munched on sandwiches washed down with a flask of coffee that Ali had packed earlier. We chatted with the other people milling around. Most of the shops were boarded up but there were a few bemused tourists wandering the streets, huddled under umbrellas.

There were already a couple of hundred people round Oxford Circus, and it wasn't long before we were joined by a posse from the White Overalls Movement Building Libertarian Effective Struggle, a.k.a. the Wombles. It was hard to see how a paranoid media had managed to create an image of these guys as psychotic anarchist maniacs – the real hard nuts. In reality, they looked more cuddly than threatening, with their foam-rubber ‘armour' under white boiler suits and wearing dust masks. One had a teddy strapped to his shoulder. If he hit someone with it, would it constitute assault with a deadly weapon? You could just imagine the scene in court:

‘Yes, Your Honour. The weapon had straw stuffing that could have resulted in a very nasty scratch, as well as a vicious pin-like device securing the eyes…'

Ali was deep in conversation with a small guy with green hair and swimming goggles. He introduced me. The guy's name was Buzz. He had stuffed penguins strapped to his forearms. I bet the riot cops really quaked in their steel toecaps when they saw him.

Things moved so fast, none of us knew what was happening before it was too late. One moment we were plotting our part in the downfall of capitalism and the next we were surrounded by a wall of cops three deep and backed up by horses. They pinned us in so tightly we were jammed up against each other with no way out. We started angry, went through defiant and unbelieving and ended up in numbed exhaustion. Eight hours. Eight sodden, cold, frustrated, tired and hungry hours. The men pissing through the railings into the station. The women forming protective barriers round those of us forced to squat when the pressure on our bladders proved intolerable. As Buzz said, maybe the rain wasn't all bad – at least it washed away the flow of piss.

I watched in fury as the cops ignored a woman who begged to be allowed through to pick her child up from school. The ‘good' ones were impassive. The bastard ones laughed and taunted her. A guy I'd seen earlier who had half his head shaved and half a beard hurled abuse at them and was felled by a vicious truncheon blow to the head. Two others climbed on to the canopy over John Lewis. Amid cheers from the crowd, they tore a CCTV camera from its mooring and threw it to the ground. One tiny victory.

It was dark, still raining, still cold by the time the cops allowed us to trickle out a few at a time. Some people were moving on to Regent Street to wreak a bit of revenge and head off the feelings of powerlessness. I admired their energy. I had none left.