Bold as Love (32 page)

‘We were real enough when we put their lights out,’ said George.

‘I don’t like it,’ grumbled Bill Trevor. ‘This futuristic stuff is getting personal. I don’t want to end up transformed into some crackpot post-human elf.’

George and Cack laughed at him. ‘And you’re sittin’ there with a fuckin’ skull for a head,’ jeered Cack. ‘Lissen to yourself.’

‘Relax Bill,’ said the boss. ‘We won’t change. Doesn’t matter what we do to ourselves, we’ll be like Edwardians watching tv. It’ll be the next generation, the kids who never knew any different, who cross the borderline.’

Fiorinda lay in the grass, in tattered green silk over yellow underskirts, a donkey-eaten wheatstraw hat shading her face: a Countercultural Titania. Two weeks of sun had turned the skin of her arms and throat an amazing shade of deep fallow gold. ‘What’s it say on Luke’s stone?’

‘I rise from sleep,’ George translated, ‘And leave my dreams behind.’

‘But I don’t want to leave my dreams behind. Not even the bad ones.’

Sage laughed, hugging her shoulders as they stood up together. ‘Hear that? Fiorinda wants to live forever. Get onto it, someone.’

They began to walk back to the arena, Sage falling into step beside Fiorinda with his slow, deliberate stride:
deliberate
, she thought, because he takes it for granted he’s going to be walking down, so to speak, to anyone he’s with. Hands in his pockets. Even masked they must be hidden if possible: tucked in pockets, into belt-loops, curled into fists.

‘I don’t want to live forever,’ she said. ‘I meant, I’ll be very pissed off if it turns out, after all the hassle, that this was only rehearsal, a daydream. Do you believe in life after death?’

‘Not sure.’

‘I never did, until my mother died. I wasn’t there. She wasn’t supposed to die that night, I’d gone off to lie down. The nurse fetched me but it was too late. I knew then that…she had not stopped being. It was obvious, can’t explain why. I don’t exactly believe in another life after this one. Doesn’t make sense. But there’s something. Something about time not being what we imagine it is, maybe? That means death is not what we think, either.’

‘It’s a topic I’d rather not dwell on. I have killed people, Fiorinda.’

‘I know. Let’s go down to the river.’

They dropped behind the others, crossed a stile in the hedge and found a place to sit at the water’s edge, by the footpath to Banbury. It was a weekday afternoon. There were boats on the river, people strolling; small children. She took a painted smokes tin out of her backpack—same shabby, tapestry compendium she’d been using since before Dissolution—lit a spliff and handed it to him.

‘You want to talk about it?’ Neither of them had said anything about that aspect of the Islamic campaign. Walked out of the soldier-business and shut the door behind: she’d supposed it was the best way.

‘Didn’t bother me. Not as much as it should have done. There was one occasion, when I had to fight my way.’ The skull grimaced. ‘Well, one occasion was seriously unpleasant. Otherwise, it was contact sport. You or me, brother, nothing personal intended. We couldn’t stay back at HQ keeping our hands clean, so—’ He shrugged. ‘I’m not a pacifist by nature—’

‘No!’ Fiorinda gasped and stretched her eyes. ‘Gosh, really not?’

‘Fuck off. Ax bloody is, though. He has no objection to taking insane risks with his life, or commiting awesome damage to property. But he hated the killing.
Hated it.
Don’t know how he hacked it. Went on hacking it, day after day… It was horrible to watch.’

‘Well,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I know about one of his brilliant coping strategies.’

‘The smack? He told you, or you just knew?’

‘He told me. And he told me how you harrassed him into seeing the error of his ways. Thank you.’

‘De nada.’

Fiorinda had found a cache of downy swan feathers, in the shining grass beside her. She lined them up and started setting them on the water, one by one. Would the swans belong to Ax, she wondered, when he was President? Or did they still belong to the ci-devant Royals, absentee swan-lords. But Ax wasn’t going to be President. He preferred a different title, and was holding out for it.

‘Is he still saying they have to call him dictator?’

She nodded. ‘The suits think he’s joking, but he isn’t. He’s a jumped-up outsider who can somehow control a dangerous, violent mass-movement… He knows what they see in him. I think he sees insisting they say it out loud as making up for the shame of getting democratically elected.’

‘Hahaha…
That
didn’t feature on any of the lists.’

‘Absolutely not. Ax doesn’t think much of democracy.’

‘It’s just a word the masters of the universe like us to use. But trust Ax. Fuck, why does he keep
doing these things
to himself?’ Sage considered, and rejected, an itemised list. Might contain some nasty anxieties Fiorinda hadn’t thought of.

The company that did Ax’s implant had gone bust while they were in Yorkshire. Ax had said, casually, there go my updates: Sage didn’t want to ask how much he knew about the unpleasant possibilities. He was tired of hearing about dislocated risk perception, and generally getting out-Aoxomoxoaed by a soft-spoken, introspective guitar-man. ‘I dunno how he gets away with this Mr Sensible tag. I think he’s the most perfectly reckless person I have ever met: and that’s counting me and you, brat.’

‘So naturally you adore him.’

The skull did a mix of its
you beyond belief
grin. ‘So naturally I adore him.’

Another feather down the stream, with a freight of silvered water drops. ‘Sage, what’ll I do with my money? Suddenly I have
money
. I don’t want to give all of it away, I am not that noble.’

‘Ah, now, this is the beauty of hyperinflation. You get a rush of cash, and suddenly all the vanished goodies reappear. Jet planes, diamonds, fresh fish. You could hand it over to me an’ George, let us play the markets for you.’

‘No.’

‘Then cash it. Buy something solid. Not gold: real estate.’

‘No thanks, I hate the idea. I am no fixed abode.
You
don’t have any property in your name except your hovel in Cornwall and the van.’

‘If ever you have an irate ex after your hide, come to me. I’ll tell you what to do.’

‘She’s not still after you, is she?’

‘Don’t think so. But I’ve found out that this is the way I like to live. I
like
my hovel. You could buy yourself a decent piano.’

‘Oh.’

‘Sounds good? Then you’d need somewhere to put it.’

‘I’m going to move in with Ax.’

‘Oh yeah. I knew that.’

Ax was buying a place in Brixton, having turned down all the suits’ preferred candidates for the Presidential Residence. They sat in silence for a while, listening to the plash of oars; birdsong from the trees on the other bank. Sage turned to her. ‘While you’re here,’ he said, skull doing something like
cautious speculation
. ‘Could I look at something?’ He picked up the tapestry bag, hefted it and shook his head sadly. ‘Still luggin’ your pet rock collection around?’

‘It’s my bag, do I ever ask you to carry it? What are you looking for?’

‘This.’ He held the birchwood saltbox in his masked hand. ‘I just wondered, do you ever need to refill it?’

The fallow gold was mantled in carmine: Fiorinda blushing, a rare and lovely sight. ‘Leave me alone, Sage. It’s none of your business.’

‘So that would be a
no
, I take it.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Of-of course I refill it, just not often, a little salt goes a long way, that’s all.’

‘Okay, different tack. Can we talk about the way you were the night after the May concert?’

The lovely blush had faded. She took the box from his hand, and stowed it away. ‘All right, but I can’t remember much. As far as I can tell you, it was like suddenly,
inside
, I was somewhere else, best described a tunnel full of monsters. I had to keep fighting them off, but they came thicker and faster, and I knew that in the end, if I got past them, there was just a big black hole. But I was in the van, the whole time. That was what scared me most, almost. Two worlds trying to occupy the same space, like Ver said—’

‘It’s dark ahead,’ said Sage. ‘I’m armed, but it’ll do me no good. The horrors keep leaping out at me, I keep on fighting, but I know that in the end my luck runs out and I die. Me too. I think everybody’s been having that dream—’

‘But I’m the one that crapped herself. Me, the Weakest Link.’

‘I don’t think so, Fiorinda. But I think you ought to tell Ax.’

‘About a nightmare?’ Fiorinda picked at the threadbare, unravelling hem of her green dress. ‘I have told him.’ She looked up, scowling. ‘Hey, I lost the plot. I had a panic attack. Is that such a crime?’

He’d pushed her far enough. ‘Okay, okay. We drop the subject.’

‘Some day soon, you’ll dive into one of
your b
lack holes, and Ax won’t like it at all. He doesn’t have the rockstar tantrum gene, and he won’t understand.’

‘What black holes? Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

The skull and Fiorinda pulled hideous faces at each other, and laughed: white water fishes, kindred spirits of extreme emotion. Fiorinda sighed. ‘Sage, how did we get into this? I do what Ax puts in front of me because I love him: but I don’t believe anyone can change the world, or save it.’

‘Dunno.’ He drew up his knees, giant pixie style. ‘But I’ve been thinking, about it. I’ve decided I was looking for trouble. Some way to go into the desert, find out what I’m made of; and this glorious opportunity came along.’

‘Are you
serious
?’

‘Yeah, why not?’

‘Oh, please. One of you with a mystical mission is bad enough. Take it back. Tell me going to that fatal seminar was just Sage being wilfully bizarre as usual.’

‘Of course, now I remember. It was just Sage being wilfully bizarre. Fiorinda,
I really hate it
when you do that to me. Why the fuck do you do it?’

She was dismayed. ‘I’m sorry, it’s a silly game. I’ll stop. I just like to hear you tell me
everything’s going to be all right
. Especially when we both know it’s nonsense.’ She ducked her head, hiding under the donkey-eaten straw, not knowing how to say it without trespassing: I’m going to live with Ax, I’m not your brat anymore, but I can’t bear it if we’re not best friends—

‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

She risked a glance. The skull was looking at her very kindly. Fiorinda smiled. They got up and walked on, talking about the houses on the other side of the river, which were being squatted, ravaged, dismantled. Some cases, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bijou riverside residence. Others it was a real shame.

Well, I go this way
. She left Sage at the gate to the Travellers’ Meadow, and wandered (catching the occasional nudge and glance,
hey, there’s Fiorinda
: but not much of that, the campers were too cool). Thinking about Ax Preston and early days. When was it he read her the lecture on safe sex? Said lecture received by sixteen year old Fiorinda with indifference and dumb insolence, but she’d had to agree that if they gave up his precious condoms she’d always use protection with anyone else. Oh, all right. I’ll get some of the spray-on stuff Sage uses, that you don’t have to think about. One size fits all, hahaha…(But Ax would be a Durex man until his dying day: such a
fogey
). It had taken her weeks to realise that he’d finessed her into going steady.

He’s a sneaky bastard.

Oh, it’s never going to be easy. It’s a relationship full of dead ends and winding passages, some of them going right back to that twisty, blocked beginning when I thought he was someone else. Involved is a good word: I can feel it. I’m
involved
with him, something different from and more vital, more permanent than being in love. Even the sex wasn’t simple. It could be very frustrating, when she held him in her arms and knew he was off on another plane, making love to his china-fragile Fiorinda-of-the-mind. All the more wonderful though, when it worked right. Fiorinda in the front row, Ax Preston with the Chosen in some tiny West Country venue, the Crisis Management show goes on, grimly necessary crowd control: but he looks at her out of the complete
mastery
of his playing, such a flash of pure, besotted lust. I ought to yell at you, I’M NOT A GUITAR, but I can’t. Knees are too weak, know what you plan to be doing minutes, nay
seconds,
after you get off that stage, and I can’t wait—

She walked through the fair: Titania wearing a reminiscent grin of ravishing sweetness that turned the coolest heads, counting the changes and the survivals. The wildflowers that the staybehinds had sown, tough pretty weeds in clumps and skeins, right up to the beaten-earth in front of Red Stage.
Anansi’s Jamaica Kitchen,
the van where she and the Heads used to buy breakfast, gone from its pitch. Rupert the White Van Man must be on tour. A new climbing wall in Violet Alley, where the Megazone Circus lived but the karaoke and amateur-night tents (Bands of the Highly Improbable Future), had vanished. And my hut’s gone, she thought, the one where I lived when I was fighting with Ax last summer. When Luke was dying, and Sage was so miserable, and I got that letter from Carly—

Beyond Violet Alley rose the eau-de-nil geodesic of the ZenSelf tent.

She came to a halt, pretending to watch the kids on the climbing wall, but the beautiful smile had faded. She was twelve years’ old again, and there was something terrible growing inside her. Is it worse at the first shock, or is it worse when it seems as if nothing’s happening, but you know it’s still in there, still
growing
…? Would anything show on a brain scan? An inoperable tumour, perhaps? Olwen Devi had been trying to get hold of Fiorinda, ever since she dropped out of the gut-bacteria pilot scheme: but Fiorinda had ignored her approaches. Trust Olwen? Tell her, what? That I have very weird nightmares about my father, that I can coax a flame to creep into my hand? Oh, great. Go straight to rehab, Fiorinda, and don’t take your shoelaces—

And what if I could prove it, what then?