Modem Times 2.0 (2 page)

Shakey Mo Collier grinned through his scrubby beard. “I got another for myself at the same time. Joe’s Guns had a two-for-one.”

Using a Mackintosh chair she’d found, Miss Brunner had built a blaze in the ornamental grate. Smoke and cinders were blowing everywhere. “There’s nothing like a fire on Christmas morning.” She drew back the heavy Morris curtains. There was a touch of grey in the black sky. Somewhere a motor grunted and shuffled. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I think it’s dead.”

Carefully, Jerry peeled the scotch tape from the box. The number in big letters was beside a picture of the gun itself: BM-152A. He reached in and drew out a ziplock full of heavy clips. “Oh, God! Ammo included.” His eyes were touched with silver. “I don’t deserve friends like you.”

“Shall we get started?” Miss Brunner smoothed the skirt of her tweed two-piece, indicating the three identical Gent’s Royal Albert bicycles she’d brought up from the basement. “We’re running out of time.”

“Back to good old sixty-two.” Mo smacked his lips. “Even earlier, if we pedal fast enough. OK, me old mucker. Strap that thing on and let’s go go go!”

They wheeled their bikes out through the side door of the V&A into Exhibition Road. White flakes settled on the shoulders of Jerry’s black car coat. He knew yet another thrill of delight. “Snow!”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Ash.”

With a certain sadness Jerry swung the Banning on his back then threw his leg over the saddle. He was happy to be leaving the future.

T
HE HOLIDAYS OVER
, Jerry Cornelius stepped off the Darfur jet and set his watch for 1962. Time to go home. At least this wouldn’t be as hairy as last time. He’d had a close shave on the plane. His head was altogether smoother now.

Shakey Mo and Major Nye met him at the checkout. Shakey rattled his new keys. “Where to, chief?” He was already getting into character.

Major Nye wasn’t comfortable with the Hummer. It was ostentatious and far too strange for the times. He might as well be driving a Model T, he got so much attention.

“I hate it,” said Jerry. “And not in a good way.”

Resignedly, Major Nye let Mo take the Westway exit. “A military vehicle should be just that. A civilian vehicle should besuitable for civilian roads. This is a kind of jeep, what?” He had never liked jeeps for some reason. Even Land Rovers weren’t his cup of tea. He had enjoyed the old Duesenberg or the green Lagonda. To disguise his disapproval he sang fragments of his favourite music hall songs.
“A little of what you fancy does you good … My old man said follow the van … Don’t you think my dress is a little bit, just a little bit, not too much of it … With a pair of opera glasses, you could see to Hackney Marshes, if it wasn’t for the houses in between
… “

“So how was the genocide, boss?” Mo was well pleased, as if the years of isolation had never been. He patted his big Mark 8 on the seat beside him and rearranged the ammo pods. “Going well?”

“A bit disappointing.” Jerry looked out at grey London roofs. He smiled, remembering his mum. All he needed was a touch of drizzle.

“Heaven, I’m in heaven
…” began Major Nye, shifting into Fred Astaire. “Oh Bugger!” Mo started inching into the new Shepherds Bush turn-off. The major would be glad to see this American heap returned to the garage so he could start dusting off the yellow Commer as soon as Mr. Trux came back from his holidays. Thank god it was only rented. Mo, of course, had wanted to buy one. Over in the next century Karl Lagerfeld was selling his. A sure sign the vehicles were out of fashion. They drove between the dull brick piles of the Notting Dale housing estates whose architecture was designed to soak up all the city’s misery and reflect it. Major Nye glanced at Jerry. With his ‘60s car coat and knitted white scarf, his shaven head, Jerry resembled a released French convict, some Vautrin back from the past to claim his revenge. Actually, of course, he was returning to the past to pay what remained of his dues. He’d had enough of revenge. He had appeared, it was said, in West London in 1960, the offspring of a Notting Hill Gate greengrocer and a South London music hall performer. But who really knew? He had spent almost his whole existence as a self-invented myth.

Major Nye knew for certain that Mrs. Cornelius had died at a ripe age in a Blenheim Crescent basement in 1976. At least,it might have been 1976. Possibly ‘77. Her “boyfriend,” as she called him, Pyat, the old Polish second-hand clothes dealer, had died in the same year. A heart attack. It had been a bit of a tragic time, all in all. Four years later, Jerry had left, been killed and resurrected countless times, went missing. After that, Nye had stopped visiting London. He was glad he had spent most of his life in the country. The climate was much healthier.

As Mo steered into the mews the major approvingly noted that the cobbles were back. Half the little cul-de-sac was still stables with Dutch doors. Mo got out to undo the lockup where they had arranged to leave the car. Nye could tell from the general condition of the place, with its flaking nondescript paint and stink of mould and manure, that they were already as good as home. From somewhere in the back of the totters yard came the rasp of old cockney, the stink of drunkard’s sweat. It had to be Jerry’s Uncle Edmund. That cawing might be the distant
kar-har-kaa
of crows or an old man’s familiar cough.

Major Nye could not be sure he was actually home but it was clear that the others were certain. This was their natural environment. From somewhere came the aroma of vinegar-soaked newspaper, limp chips.

“U
P TO YOUR
old tricks, eh, Mr. Cornelius?” Miss Brunner adjusted her costume. “Well, they won’t work here.”

“They never did work. You just had the illusion of effect. But you said it yourself, Miss B—
-follow the money
. You can’tchange the economics. You can just arrange the window dressing a bit.”

“Sez you!” Shakey Mo fingered his gun’s elaborate instrumentation. “There’s a bullet in here with your address on it.”

Birmingham had started to burn. The reflected flames gave a certain liveliness to Miss Brunner’s features. “Now look what you’ve done!”

“It doesn’t matter.” Jerry rubbed at his itching skull. “They’ll never make anything out of it. I must be off.”

She sniffed. “Yes. That explains everything.”

She wobbled a little on her ultra-high heels as she reboard-ed the chopper. “Where to next?”

J
ERRY WAS SURPRISED
to see his dad’s faux Le Corbusier chateau in such good shape, considering the beating it had taken over the years. Obviously someone had kept it up. In spite of the driving rain and the mud, the place looked almost welcoming.

Mo took a proprietal pleasure in watching Jerry’s face. “Maintenance is what I’ve always been into. Everything that isn’t original is a perfect repro. Even those psychedelic towers your dad was so keen on. He was ahead of his time, your dad. He practically invented acid. Not to mention acid rain. And we all know how far ahead of his time he was with computers.” Mo sighed. “He was a baby badly waiting for the microchip. If he’d lived.” He blinked reflectively and studied the curved metalcasings of his Banning, fingering the ammo clips and running the flat of his hand over the long, tapering barrel. “He understood machinery, your dad. He lived for it. The Leo IV was his love. He built that house for machinery.”

“And these days all he’d need for the same thing would be a speck or two of dandruff.” Miss Brunner passed her hand through her tight perm and then looked suspiciously at her nails. “Can we go in?” She sat down on the chopper’s platform and started pulling her thick wellies up her leg.

High above them, against the dark beauty of the night, a rocket streaked, its intense red tail burning like a ruby.

Jerry laughed. “I thought all that was over.”

“Nothing’s over.” She sighed. “Nothing’s ever bloody over.”

Mo remembered why he disliked her.

They began to trudge through the clutching mud which oozed around them. Melting chocolate.

“Bloody global warming,” said Jerry.

“You should have concentrated harder, Mr. C.”

He didn’t hear her. In his mind he was eyeless in Gaza at the doors of perception.

U
P AT THE
far end of the hall Miss Brunner was enjoying an Abu Ghraib moment. The screams were getting on all their nerves. Jerry turned up
Pidgin English
by Elvis Costello but nothing worked the way it should any more. He had systematically searched his father’s house while Miss Brunner applied electrodes to his brother Frank’s tackle. “Was this really what the ‘60s were all about?” he mused.

“Oh, God,” said Frank. “Oh, bloody hell.” He’d never looked very good naked. Too pale. Too skinny. But ready to talk:

“You think you’re going to find the secret of the ‘60s in a fake French modernist villa built by a barmy lapsed papist romantic Jew who went through World War II in a trench coat and wincyette pajamas fucking every sixty-a-day bereaved or would-be bereaved middle-class Englishwoman who ever got a first at Cambridge, who was fucked by a communist and who claimed that deddy had never wanted her to be heppy? Not exactly rock and roll, is it, Jerry. You’d be better off questioning your old mum. The Spirit of the bloody Blitz.” He sniffed. “Is that Bar-B-Q?”

“They all had the jazz habit.” Jerry was defensive. “They all knew the blues.”

“Oh, quite.” Miss Brunner was disgusted. “Jack Parnell and his Gentleman Jazzers at the Café de Paris. Or was it Chris Barber and his Skiffling Sidemen?”

“Skiffle,” said Jerry, casting around for his washboard. “The Blue Men. The Square Men. The Quarry Men. The Green Horns. The Black Labels. The Red Barrels.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Mo. He was rifling through the debris, looking for some antique ammo clips. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to bring this place over, stone by stone, to Ladbroke Grove. Though, I agree, it’s a shame about the Hearst Castle.”

“It was always more suitable for Hastings.” Miss Brunner stared furiously at Jerry’s elastic-sided Cubans. “You’re going to ruin those shoes, if you’re not careful.”

“It’s not cool to be careful,” he said. “Remember, this is the ‘60s. You haven’t won yet. Careful is the ‘80s. Entirely different.”

“Is this the Gibson?” Mo had found the guitar behind a mould-grown library desk.

Miss Brunner went back to working on Frank.

“The Gibson?” Jerry spoke hopefully. But when he checked, it was the wrong number.

“Can I have it, then?” asked Mo.

Jerry shrugged.

C
HRISTMAS 1962, SNOW
still falling. Reports said there was no end in sight. Someone on the Third Program even suggested a new Ice Age had started. At dawn, Jerry left his flat in Lancaster Gate, awakened by the tolling of bells from the church tower almost directly in line with his window, and went out into Hyde Park. His were the first footprints in the snow. It felt like sacrilege. Above him, crows circled. He told himself they were calling to him. He knew them all by name. They were reluctant to land, but then he saw their black clawprints as he got closer to the Serpentine. The prints were beginning to fill up. He wondered if the birds would follow him again. He planned to go over to Ladbroke Grove and take the presents to his mum and the others. But first he had to visit Mrs. Pash and listen to the player piano for old time’s sake. They always got their Schoenberg rolls out for Christmas Day.

A crone appeared from behind a large chestnut. She wore a big red coat with a hood, trimmed in white, and she carried a basket. Jerry recognized her; but, to humour her, he pretended to be surprised as she approached.

“Good luck, dear,” she said. “You’ve got almost seven years left. And seven’s a lucky number, isn’t it?” She wrapped her lilac chiffon round her scrawny throat. Ersatz syrup. Somewhere drums and motorcycle engines began to beat. “Seven years!”

Jerry knew better. “Twenty-two years and some months according to the SS. Owning your misery is the quickest way of getting out from under. What will happen to individualism under the law?”

“Obama will change all that, darling. Great lawyers are coming. They will change corporations into individuals. Cross my palm with silver and I’ll tell you the future. Cross it with gold and I’ll explain the present.”