Castles Made of Sand (23 page)

Down-dressing Milly Kettle, no-nonsense haircut and gardeners’ hands, sits in the conservatory answering interview questions, while the baby clambers around. Sunlight falls on her. ‘I was Ax’s girlfriend for six years,’ she says. ‘I loved him, I didn’t understand him. We had great sex, we had some good conversations. I knew he wasn’t faithful to me. I put up with it: you know, rockstars. I thought that was it, I thought that was all he had to give. He was Captain Sensible. Then when it was all over I saw him with Fiorinda. He was a totally different person.’

How did you feel about that, asks the unseen interviewer, a barely-heard murmur.

‘Gutted,’ says Milly.

The wriggling baby suddenly seems too much for her. The interviewer’s hands come into shot. It’s Ax. He takes his nephew in his arms. He has no child. Fiorinda can’t have children. The man and woman look at each other in silence.

This is art, of course. But art is life. Life is performance.

In Dissolution England the Triumvirate and their friends are the Few we have Chosen. They are our Shaman. They take the hallucinatory poison, the wrecking-ball violence of these times and transform it for us.
Bridge House
is the algorithm of that transformation, a work of art, a set of instructions, a metaphysical packed lunch: survival rations for a journey into the dark.

The Glass Island video.
Cartoon figures: twentyone-year-old Ax pulls the sword from the stone, Shane, Jordan and Milly hauling on him like a tug of war team. It becomes his guitar. The granite block leaps into the air. The Chosen Few try to flee: it splats them. Ax is our champion, but he can’t die for us. Self-sacrifice is not an option for this messiah, he has to live. He has to keep his personal freedom, paradoxically intact, or his project is doomed and we all know it. Can our big brother have it all? Read the music, watch the movie, get your head into this immersion. Come, and see.

from the Introduction to Ax At The Bridge, Dian Buckley,
Orionbooks 20XX

The day began with a dreary hour or two of admin, getting nowhere because the world was still on fuel-starvation holiday. Moving on to a session in the Zen Self tent, wired up to the brain machines; which lasted until after dark. No joy there, either. He tramped across the site, through snow falling soft and insistent on the frozen slush that had been hanging around since Christmas. It was pretty, but immediately made him think of what the thaw would be like. Fucking insane neo-mediaeval crap, this Rivermead concept.

The van was cold and empty. He had to remind himself he’d warned his band, warned everyone, to leave him the fuck alone. Snow falling like death on the other side of the obsidian windows. He sat in the kitchen, staring at the mirror door, switching the mask on and off, thinking, what am I doing with my life? What do people see in that face? It has a weird symmetry. It has too much mouth. It has fine lines spraying from the corners of its eyes, and the pores are like cinder pits.

Shoulda stayed in purdah. I
liked
my purdah.

Fiorinda arrived about eight. He had to let her in, he’d locked the box. She pulled off her tam-o’-shanter and her coat, shaking snow from her hair. ‘About time. It’s
twelve degrees below
out there. What a winter. Is this because the Gulf Stream switched itself off, or turned upside down, whatever it did?’

‘It’s just snow.’ He headed for his bedroom.

She came after him, cheerfully. She was wearing the red and gold Elizabeth dress that he loved: which touched him, but couldn’t lift his mood. ‘Rupert gave me a card for you. Shall I open it?’ Rupert, the White Van Man of Reading Arena, was veteran caterer to the Few and friends: provider of many a corn pattie and cognac-soused breakfast, when Fiorinda and the Heads were Dissolution Summer staybehinds. She opened the envelope.

‘Oooh. I’m afraid it’s got a number on it.’

‘Bastard.’

He’d been tinkering with the
Unmasked
immersions, that were still not working because he never had the time. He closed it all down and lay on the bed.

‘There’s a present, too, I think it’s a buttered applecake. But you can’t have it, as you called him a bastard.’

They got under the quilt together, because it was
fucking
cold, and he couldn’t ATP-prime the heating, something wrong with it. Holding her sweet body, his cock wearily half-erect, he wanted to ask,
where’s Ax?
, but he was too proud. Another winter of Dissolution and nothing changes, my darling girl and I are among the preterite, with our ruined careers and our love that might have been, and the man we both adore who is too busy saving the world.

Bang, bang.

‘I wonder who that could be!’ Fiorinda darted out of the bed.

Ax came back with her, snow on his sleek hair and his old leather coat.

‘Glad you could make it.’

‘Yeah, well. I decided to pop down, birthday boy. I needn’t stay.’

Sage turned his face to the wall. ‘You can laugh. You’ll be playing guitar when you’re ninety. I’ll be an arthritic ex-ballerina by the time I’m thirty-five.’

Ax sat on the bed. ‘Sage, I am not taking that. Fuck’s sake, try to hang on. I’ll be with you on the downhill slope to the grave in another six weeks. If I was to start recounting some of the charming things you used to say about me—’

‘
Don’t!
’ shouted Fiorinda. ‘Have some
sense
, both of you!’

‘Sorry,’ Sage rolled over. ‘Truly sorry. Rockstar tantrum. I’m despicable.’

Ax leaned down and kissed him. ‘Grow old along with me,’ he said, entirely without mockery. ‘There’ll still be good times.’ He looked at Fiorinda. ‘Does he get his present?’

‘He’s been really horrible.’

‘Yeah, but on the other hand he can’t help it, an’ I can’t be fucked to take it back to the shop. It’d be embarrassing. I’m supposed to have money to burn, and the woman’s a major artist. Brace yourself, big cat. You have to look in a mirror.’

They made him strip off his sweaters and stood him in front of the bathroom mirror in his slick black dungarees and shabby teeshirt. The present was a platinum and diamond torque. It lay at the base of his throat, warm from Ax’s body, stunningly beautiful.

‘I
love
it. My God, how much did this set us back?’

‘Dirt cheap,’ said Ax guiltily, ‘think of all those defunct catalytic convertors. Anyway, Fiorinda bought it.’

Fiorinda’s earnings were relatively unencumbered, apart from the tranche that went to the Volunteer Initiative. Ax and Sage were slowly being crushed, financially: an unexpected side-effect of power. Ax was chronically short of disposable income. Sage, still rich on paper, had to support a major share of the Heads’ sprawling feudal circus, besides his contribution to the Reich and Mary’s maintenance (Marlon’s trust fund was safely inaccessible).

‘Bend down,’ said Fiorinda. She unclasped the torque and wrapped it round his brow. ‘Mask.’ The living skull flickered into existence, adjusted itself and reappeared, its sombre beauty crowned by cold gleaming metal, diamond-fired.

‘Now
that
’s what a fallen angel ought to look like.’

The skull mugged, ‘Aw, shucks,’ and vanished again. He kissed them each in turn, and this became a complex, dynamic, three-person snog.

‘
I
know what we should do,’ cried Fiorinda, breaking out of it. ‘We should feed him half Rupert’s cake, to get his blood-sugar up, and play in the snow.’

‘Huh?’

‘C’mon Sage,’ said Ax. ‘We can fuck later. Snowball fight.’

They ate the apple cake, drank scalding real coffee with vodka chasers, and went outdoors. Not a staybehind was stirring under the dim, suffused blanket of the night sky. They found a bank and made angels, they fought with snowballs until their gloves were soaked and their hands hurt, and came to rest, Ax rolling spliff on his lap on the lid of his smokes tin, by the White Van. They’d been hoping to get something hot, but Rupert was not responding.

‘Hey, look,’ Fiorinda waved the spliff. ‘There are lights in the Blue Lagoon!’

‘That’s weird,’ said Ax, ‘on a night like this. Let’s go and check it out.’

He followed them, not suspecting a thing, while they examined the snow and remarked on the number of footprints, quite a crowd, what on earth’s going on? They went in round the back, through the bar known as Bartoli’s Hideout, through the curtains of marquee membrane, and
Shazzah!
The big tent was laid out for cabaret and full of people, colour, lights. He realised he’d been betrayed, spun round and found George and Bill and Peter, his brother Heads, his own
band
had appeared, barring the way, arms folded, grinning like idiots.

Practically everyone he knew in the world waited nervously.

‘Okay, okay. Thank you very much. Let’s party. Just don’t make a habit of it.’

The entertainment at Sage’s thirtieth birthday party, MC’d by Roxane Smith, hir old bones swathed in a fantastical fake-sable cloak, was a splendid sampler of Dissolution Music, featuring veterans of god-like status. The Few themselves didn’t play (leaving it to the professionals), but in one of the breaks Fergal Kearney, without leaving his place at a table of demi-gods, took up his harp. The techies quickly gave him a sound cone. The whole company fell into silence. The legendary Irishman, burnt-out as he was, commanded an audience. He played three beautiful instrumentals and then decided to embark on ‘Who Knocks’, Sage’s hideous, graphic domestic violence song from another lifetime. The ravaged voice was still compelling. Everyone held their breath.

Sage had stalked through the crowd, to where Fergal was sitting. He listened to the end and then moved in: big, potent and scary even without the mask.

‘You’re an insolent bastard, Fergal.’

‘I was just thinking,’ Fergal grinned up at him, sure of his bardic rights. ‘Ye’ve come a long way since the lad that wrote that, Aoxomoxoa. A fine long way.’

‘You’re right,’ said Sage, grinning back, blue eyes bright as the diamonds: grabbed Fergal’s ginger head and planted a kiss.

For the finale, the Chosen Few took the stage with a set of the most trashy, sentimental buddy-songs ever recorded. Sage armed himself with canapés and bombarded them: the band ducking and diving, Mr Dictator looking absurdly young, playing up a storm, all of them laughing like maniacs.

Fiorinda cheered and stomped with the rest. He is made of crystal, she thought, everyone can see what’s going on inside. Yet no one knows him completely. Not even Ax, not even me.

The crime of witchcraft returned to the statute books that winter, which Ax didn’t like at all, however cautiously “criminal witchcraft” was defined. But he had to make concessions, after Spitall’s Farm, and this was one of them. Most of the other fall-out was positive. Ax’s reluctant coup was even, arguably, a great artistic success, since it led to the making of
Bridge House…
And the
Chosen
became Jordan’s band, as justice demanded: but Ax would be an associate, a collaborator, a guest star—the way Fiorinda worked with DARK.

Fiorinda saw a new culture taking form, distilled by Ax Preston’s personal alchemy from the slavery and excess of rock and roll. Children would grow up with Ax’s manifesto, schools would teach the message. Make music, have fun, tend the garden. Above all, be good to each other: because that’s the only way we’re going to get through. It would be fake, it would be flawed, it would be mostly lip-service, the way these things always are: but it would be a damn sight better than what might have been. She was very uneasy about the Witchcraft Bill, given her weird secret: but it couldn’t be helped. She was working on a new album (which would become
Yellow Girl
). She had her tiger and her wolf, her Drop-Out charges and the Few. She was busy and happy… Afraid and happy.

Alain de Corlay—leading French radical who’d found it intellectually amusing to front Europopsters
Movie Sucré,
when this new world was in its birth-throes—came over to talk to Ax. He was intrigued by the Zen Self project, despite Aoxomoxoa’s close involvement. The Triumvirate went out to eat with him at a restaurant they’d never heard of. Fiorinda wore the dove grey suit that she’d had made—by George Merrick’s tailor, the master craftsman responsible for the
Unmasked
outfits—for the ‘Miss Brown, Mister Blue and Mister Red,’ video: which her lovers found extremely sexy. But the look made Fiorinda uncomfortable. Maybe that was it. Or the interminable length of the meal; or Sage and Alain, winding each other up: babbling about the
dérèglement de tous les senses
, the final assault of futuristic,
magical
science on all certainties… She was allergic to the word magic. Something went wrong, anyway. The fear got the better of her happiness, it weighed on her like a nightmare beast.

In the middle of the night Sage woke to hear Fiorinda crying, reached out for her and
could not find her
. She was gone, vanished, only her voice left behind, a desolate and terrified ghost… Panic flooded through him, he put on the light and she was crouched on the pillows, in her slip of a cream satin nightdress.

‘Hey, sweeheart, what is it, what is it? Sssh, hush, it’s okay, I’m here—’

‘I lost my baby, my little baby. What did I do with him? Oh dear, oh dear—’ She stared at Sage, eyes wide open but blinded in terror and grief. ‘Oh
Sage
,
where is Ax
? He’s
gone
, and my baby’s gone too, and it’s my fault—’

‘Ax is right here beside me, where would he be? Hey, Ax,
wake up
.’

Between them they soothed her and coaxed her back under the covers. When she seemed to be sleeping quietly they found dressing gowns and went to the kitchen. Ax sat at the table and took out a cigarette. Sage looked for the Ndogs, chose a popper and pressed it to his neck. Each addict to his own.

‘What’s that?,’ said Ax.

‘Just potassium, tobacco-head. I’d forgotten to take it.’

‘Why don’t you eat a banana?’

Eating a banana would not address the rate at which the neural-aligner called ‘snapshot’ drained the system of vital elements. He was Olwen’s best labrat; he couldn’t make the gaps between rides wide enough, but he wasn’t going to get into explaining what went on. He knew he could convince Ax in five minutes, that what he was doing was okay. He was saving the calming, reasoned arguments for when Fiorinda needed to be pacified.