Jago (12 page)

Then he saw it. The wire was almost spiderweb thin, stretched across space from the corner of his framed British Empire map to the overburdened coat rack, back again to the front-room door, then to the thermostat. He bent under the wire, which would have been about neck height, and went to the staircase. He lay full-length on the steps.

Upstairs. The Irgun assassins were upstairs.

Clocks ticked in the house. He had a silent digital on his bedside table and an ordinary mechanical clock in the front room. Otherwise, there was only his wristwatch. There were more tickings in the house than he could account for. Some of the bombs must be on time fuses. He had to deal with his human enemies quickly, then devote his energies to rooting out and disarming the devices.

He crawled up his staircase, eyes up, expecting another taut wire to appear in front of his face. He wanted to piss again, or maybe just to touch his cock. In his peril, he was aroused. It had been a long time. Perhaps the enemy would have sent one of their killer whores for him, like the murderess who’d come to the barracks in ’47, a fat-titted slut with a switchblade taped inside her thigh. Or like the parachutist in her tight black suit, a swastika around her throat. He’d be well within his rights to give her a shafting before he snapped her spine. It wouldn’t be rape; it’d be an example to the others, a symbol of his contempt for the enemy.

The tickings were louder. He heard his own pulses and the master pulse of his heart. His mouth was dry. There was sand on the stair carpet. Lower down, it was a fine dusting, like the prints of someone barefoot from the beach. Towards the landing, it became an inches-thick layer that shifted and cascaded as he climbed. Sand got everywhere: in your clothes, your eyes, your food, your foreskin. You had to be careful. Sometimes there were scorpions. And it retained the heat of the desert sun. You could burn your hands in it as easily as in scalding water.

On the landing, his broken-necked cat waited for him. She miaowed askew but couldn’t do him any harm.

He was expected in the bathroom or bedroom. They liked to take their victims while helpless—naked in the tub, hunched over a bowel movement, asleep in a guiltless bed. Bathroom or bedroom. One or the other.

Bedroom, of course. In his bed, in fact. That was where his killer would be waiting.

Danny crashed through his bedroom door, lurching into a net of sticky wires that cut him. He dropped his knife, which slithered down the net, where his fingers couldn’t reach. His digital clock alarm sounded, and the killer under his blankets stirred, stretching out a serpentine, perfumed arm. She shut off the alarm. Red jewels glinted on her rings. She pushed a mass of glossy black hair up, clearing her ancient, smooth face. Her eyes were darkest brown, with cat-slit pupils.

‘Hello, Danny boy,’ she purred.

Bedclothes fell from ballooning brown breasts. An eye-jewel shone in her navel like a button in the cushion of her stomach. She was naked but for her jewels. She had a necklace of cartridge cases, and silver snake armlets. The hair on her arms and legs was oiled flat against her skin.

The wires around him were getting tighter. A pair across his chest were cutting through his clothes, drawing lines of blood on his skin. Lower down also, he could feel sharp threads drawing tight. His ruined trousers fell away in sections. He was still erect. Strangely, in his pain, he felt younger.

She spoke again, Hebrew gibberish this time, and came for him. Her right forefinger was a lacquered gun barrel, and a revolving cartridge chamber stood out in her wrist, balanced on bone.

They had him.

The killer whore took his underpants down and squeezed his balls. Gently, at first. Not-quite-pain flooded him. He was drowsy, and dying. She stroked the length of his cock with her cold gunfinger. It stood to attention and she forced it down, jamming the head into herself. She slid smoothly over his erection, burying him. The whore ground against him. He opened his mouth for a death kiss, but her gritted teeth held back. Still thrusting with her wide hips, she reached up with one hand and held him by the back of his neck. The wires didn’t get in her way. Her gunfinger crooked as she touched it to his lips, then straightened stiff again. The metal tube forced its way into his mouth, displacing his dentures. His breath came in gargles as the first flashes of orgasm made him shake. The chamber in her wrist began to roll. Inside his head, something exploded.

T
here was a plaque up in the church to mark the time when the village was the capital of Wessex, which was all there was of England in those days. In 877, King Alfred made his winter court in Alder, and, in the church that stood upon this site, King Gudrun of the Danes, lately defeated in battle by the armies of Wessex, was baptized into the Christian faith.’ In 1944, Jenny’s granddad, an American soldier who had come over for the war, had scratched, ‘and damn all has happened here since’ just under the plaque. When he told the story, Granddad always chuckled in a coughy way like an old cowboy on television and finished by saying, ‘Only, I didn’t exactly write the word “damn”.’ Actually, Jenny thought, something had happened to Granddad Steyning in Alder during the war, or why else would he stay? It wasn’t a subject her parents brought up at all, and she had one of her feelings that there was something they didn’t want to talk about tied up in it. Granddad Steyning had gone to Heaven when Jenny was small, but she could remember him well.

On the day they heard on the radio about John Lennon being shot, the Lord God came to live in Alder. It was the Christmas holidays, and Jenny didn’t want to be in the house with Mum while she was crying over the dead Beatle. In all the years their house had had advent calendars, this was the first time no one remembered to open a window on the day it was supposed to be opened. When Jenny was only little, Mum had taught her the words to ‘Yesterday’ and ‘She Loves You’, playing along on the guitar which was in the loft now. Jenny bet Mum must have known John Lennon before she met Dad, and that was why she was so sad about him.

Jenny played with her toy cars on the forecourt of Dad’s Shell station until Terry and Teddy Gilpin told her the Lord God was coming. She knew all about the Lord God, whose real name was Anthony Jago. He called himself ‘Reverend’, just like the vicar. He had bought the Manor House for himself and his disciples to live in. All the other people who had lived at the big old place had called it the Manor House, but Jago had put signs up changing its name to the Agapemone. She had tried unsuccessfully to put the syllables together in her mouth. Mum said that it sounded like a kind of fruit, but Dad, who had read about it in the paper, said
agapemone
was Greek for ‘abode of love’. Dad said Jago was not the Lord God at all, but a dangerous weirdo. Jenny decided she would make up her own mind.

Her parents didn’t much like the Gilpin brothers either, but none of Jenny’s school friends lived in Alder and there were only two buses a week to town, so she had to play with them during the holidays or watch boring television. Terry, the older, kept saying horrible things to her and trying to take her knickers down when there were no grown-ups around. She had called him a git once, and hit him with a biggish stick. She knew he hadn’t forgotten that. Terry was going to grow up to be like a baddie in a cowboy film, the kind who rustle cattle and try to shoot the goodie in the back. One day, he’d probably try to shoot her in the back. She was practising her hearing, so he would give himself away by stepping on a twig and she would get him first.

Terry wanted to go and watch the Lord God and his disciples, ‘thick bunch of townie loonies’, move into the Aga-thingie. With Doug, the Gilpin dog, sloping along, they took the short cut across the soggy fields, getting over the ditches on planks although Terry wanted to jump, but staying away from cows. They found a place near the Manor Gate House and waited. It was not too cold, but the sky was cloudy and dull. Terry and Teddy threw stones in the ditch, making holes in the duckweed and watching them fill in. Teddy found a wedge of concrete he could barely lift, and heaved it into the water. There was a big splash, and Jenny got little green spots on her skirt. The Gilpin brothers thought that was funny, which just showed how stupid they were.

When he had stopped laughing, Terry took his stubby thing out and piddled in the water. Jenny thought he was disgusting, and said so. She had learned the word ‘grotesque’ from a comic last week, and was tempted to use it. But God’s Volkswagen bus turned up.

Actually, it was the disciples who arrived in the minibus. Dad said the disciples were stupid people who had given all their money to Jago. The men mostly had long hair and beards, which made them look like the real disciples in her Scripture book.

A lady in a long skirt with an armful of red flowers came up to them.

‘Have a flower, it’s as pretty as you are,’ she said, handing her one. The lady also gave flowers to Terry and Teddy. ‘And as handsome as you, and you.’

The lady had long hair, a headband and lots of beads. She was floppily fat. Jenny got the idea she was the same age as her parents but wanted to pretend she was younger. She didn’t know whether that was stupid or not.

Jenny said thank you. Terry and Teddy didn’t want their poofy flowers but had to take them anyway. Jenny thought that funny but didn’t laugh out loud. When the lady went away, Teddy started pulling the petals off his flower and Terry said something rude about her teats. Terry was stronger than Jenny and thought he could boss her about even though he was thick.

They sat on the lawn and watched the disciples. The man who had lived in the Manor last had chased them away once, but the God people didn’t know they weren’t allowed in the garden and let them stay. A big lorry came, and the disciples took lots of things out of it. Furniture, boxes of books and records, cooking stuff, gardening tools, bright-coloured clothes. The disciples were happy and nice to each other, which seemed sensible rather than stupid.

Terry got bored, and went away to let off some rook-scarers near Mr Keough’s cats, but Teddy stayed, with Doug. When Terry was there, Teddy was just as horrible as his brother, but on his own he was almost nice. She knew he’d sent her a valentine card this year. She didn’t fancy him, though, because he picked his nose and ate it.

After the big lorry had gone away and it was getting near lunchtime, a Saab came down the road. There were three men on motorbikes with the car. They wore leather and had Jesus slogans on their crash helmets. She knew who Jesus was. Jesus H. Christ. Granddad had said his name lots of times, usually when he banged his toe or something. ‘Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle.’ The people who drew the pictures in the Scripture books always left the bicycle out, and when she put it in with her blue biro the teacher told her off.

The motorbikers stood in a line when Mr Jago got out of the Saab. He didn’t look much like the God she’d heard about. He had no long white beard and wasn’t shining like the sun. He had a TV-star type face, and a collar like the vicar’s. He had on black jeans, a long purple coat, and a white hat that did look a bit like a halo. The lady with the headband gave the rest of her flowers to him, and he gave her a squelchy kiss. Teddy had run away with Doug, leaving the bits of his flower behind.

She watched God some more, but knew Mum would have cooked by now. She was hungry, and Mum would be mad if she was late for lunch. She hoped Mum had stopped crying. It made her tired when Mum cried. When she left the Agapemone, the disciples were gathered around Mr Jago and he was talking to them. They looked very happy. She wondered if they’d be having loaves and fishes for lunch. That sounded like an odd recipe, especially with no butter or chips or tomato sauce, but it was God’s favourite food.

Just down from the Gate House, she saw another girl, hiding in the bushes. It was Allison Conway, the dark-haired fright with big eyes who lived over the road. Jenny was afraid Allison would jump out and chase her, which she did sometimes, but the girl shrank back further into hiding. She must be spying on God, too, and be worried about being caught. Mum and Dad mightn’t like Terry and Teddy Gilpin, but they’d actually told her not to play with Allison. Mrs Yatman had told Mum about something Allison had done to her daughter Elizabeth at a fete, which Elizabeth wouldn’t talk about. It must have been very bad.

Jenny walked past Allison, pretending not to have seen her. On the way back to the garage, Jenny had to go down a path that was paved but too narrow for cars. It had high hedges on either side, and was scary at night. It was all right in the daylight, though. There was a sign prohibiting cyclists, but Jesus must not have seen it. He was riding a lovely bike. She bet angels polished the metal parts every day. They shone like the sun.

Jesus H. Christ stopped and talked to her for a bit. He was nice. He wanted her to follow him. Not follow like Mary’s little lamb, hanging around wherever He went, but follow like being kind to poor people and doing all the things He liked you to do. She said she would, and gave Him her flower. He was pleased.

S
yreeta was right: putting up tents in the dark wasn’t easy. It especially wasn’t easy when most of the workforce were wrecked.

They weren’t in any of the official sites. On Allison Conway’s advice, they’d driven up the hill and off the narrow road into the woods. There was a hard earth track, and Ferg had had to manoeuvre the Dormobile carefully to keep its wheels out of deep tractor ruts. In the pub, the local girl had given precise directions. According to her, there was a part of the woods that was common ground where anyone could set up a camp. He wasn’t sure he was convinced. He expected they’d wake up tomorrow to find the area full of
KEEP OUT
and
TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT
Placards, with dead animals nailed to trees as explicit warnings to the foolhardy.

It was a clear night, but the clearing, surrounded by tall trees, was thick with shadows. Ferg left the headlights on, which gave them a semicircle of visibility to work in. Dolar, who would be sleeping in the back of the van with Syreeta, wanted to crash out immediately, leaving the rest to it. She persuaded him with threats to help the others. The gesture would have meant more if he had been in a condition to be of actual use rather than just get in the way and trip over guy ropes.