The Whispering Swarm (46 page)

‘What year might it be in the Alsacia?' I asked him.

He hesitated as if he were chewing over a riddle. ‘The same. Oh, I know that you and your familiars travel the moonbeam roads. I hardly know how that's done. Be assured of this certainty—everywhere in Earth, Heaven and Hell, it is yet the twelfth day in the month of October in the year of our Lord 1648. Cromwell rules England. Parliament and justice have prevailed!'

‘You sound like a Parliament's man,' I said

‘I am indeed, though a thoughtful one since the king is so ill used. Fool that he is, like all Stuarts, possessing more arrogance than sense, he persists in betraying his word and making war on his own subjects. He honestly believes he's God's chosen. And I choose not to question God. Yet there's still some hope of his finding nobility and sanity within that sea of hard-headedness, self-doubt and boyish need he calls a mind, but I fear it will not be. A hardhead he'll remain until the conversion of the Jews!'

‘A great speech for a Parliamenter,' I said. ‘You did say you were
for
Cromwell?'

‘To my bootstraps. I respect the right of sanctuary, however, and let God alone judge those who seek it. But I'm not for imprisoning nor murdering the king. Or commoners. I fear the wretched anarchy such deeds will bring.' Using a scabbarded sword he felt ahead of us, leading me with one hand until he struck wood with an encouraging thump. ‘Alsacia,' he said. He opened the gate and brought us into the Sanctuary. Captain St Claire was a godly soldier. Could I ever learn from him what kind of illusion the Alsacia was and how it was created? Could I learn whether God existed? And could I get someone from this world to take pity on me, explain what was happening? Prince Rupert had spoken a little of the logic by which the many worlds of his universe made their way through the heavens, but not enough to help me understand it and follow, somehow, the logic of its existence. Today I intended to find out more, even if what I learned killed me or turned me mad! I looked to Captain St Claire. I owed him a favour. I could not do him the discourtesy of not offering him a drink.

‘Let me buy you a shant,' I insisted, ‘since you saved my life.'

‘Your life is worth a shant of ale, eh?' He was amused. ‘Well, I've known several who value their souls at less! But,' he somehow intuited, ‘your business is with the abbey, no?' His dark, intelligent eyes looked firmly into mine as if he reminded me of my purpose. ‘Perhaps we'll meet for a drink another time.'

I smiled and thanked him. As before, he strolled with me up to the abbey doors and then turned to leave. ‘I'll wish you good evening, Master Moorcock, and trust we'll meet again soon.'

We shook hands. After he had disappeared back into the fog I turned to knock on the heavy oak door of the abbey. All I heard was echoing silence.

I knocked again but there was still no answer. I looked back towards the Swan but saw little activity there, either. Was the entire place deserted? Again, I resisted an impulse to get a drink at the tavern. I knew it would be a mistake. There was a peculiar sinister, sentient quality to the fog. It curled like a snake, thicker mist against lighter. Sparks of silver fire flickered within it. I found it impossible to distinguish the nature of the shapes or the sparks. Unarmed as I was, I thought it was time I got out of the Sanctuary.

Disappointed and nervous, I headed for the gate again and eventually found it. I was frightened. The whole place was dead and seemed filled with the dead. By the time I eventually found Carmelite Inn Square and almost fell through the gate into it, stumbling and running up towards Fleet Street, I had just managed to recover myself, but I didn't look back.

I boarded a late bus to Ladbroke Grove. Nobody was on the top deck until we got to Charing Cross. After that I shared the ride with two Irish drunks singing a chaotic medley of sentimental music hall ditties about Killarney or hard Republican songs about Kevin Barry. I knew many of them. I had learned them when busking in Irish pubs from Notting Hill to Kilburn. I didn't mind the distraction a bit. I joined in where I could.

When I stumbled into the flat at about ten thirty that evening, I found it fuller than I had expected.

Helena had been worried sick, she said, fearing that I'd been in a fight or worse. No real harm done. Except all the harm in the world. The beginning of the end. Mrs Melody was there. She had come, she said, to apologise.

 

35

ANOTHER FINE CHRISTMAS

For a couple of weeks after I had moved out of the family flat, I recorded a few new tracks with the band. It helped distract me, but my heart wasn't really in it. I tried to talk to Pete about what had happened with Moll but since he had just split up with a girlfriend of some years, he had other problems. So I kept it all to myself and talked instead about whether miracles could happen without the existence of God. Was there a school of philosophy which proposed such a thing? Everyone apart from Pete was either totally sceptical or so far gone into Sufism that I couldn't understand them. If it hadn't been for the Swarm constantly reminding me of its presence, I might have put Alsacia out of my head altogether.

I had sublet a room across the road in a big flat rented by
New Worlds
' advertising manager, Lizzy Mitchum, and her husband, Mick, who did light shows. Lizzy was fond of the girls and didn't mind them visiting or even staying occasionally. Every day I got up, went across the road, encountered a monosyllabic Helena, and walked Sally and Kitty to school. Every day, whenever I could, I picked them up from school and took them home.

Helena had hardly spoken to me since Mrs Melody had visited to ‘apologise' for taking the girls out to see her daughter. She hadn't realised, she insisted, that I had yet to tell Helena about Molly. Her daughter understood I was getting a divorce. I had been totally pissed off by Mrs Melody's aggression. How did she think she was helping her daughter? By forcing my hand? I really meant it. I was never going to see Molly again. Pretending to be placatory, she talked about her poor daughter being in tears with a broken heart. Not the Moll Midnight I knew!

She was clearly acting. I now knew Mrs Melody had left the Alsacia shortly after I arrived and while I was distracted by Clitch and Love. I even suspected her of paying the pair to keep me busy while she went to Ladbroke Grove. I had recognised her perfume as she slipped past me. I, of course, was impotently furious. She had deliberately destroyed the equilibrium of my life. Somehow, she had known I was visiting the Alsacia, and while I was busy had taken her chance to blow the whistle! Though I had warned her to stay away from my family, she had deliberately thrown a spanner in the emotional works. Presumably she had intended to force me back together with Molly. I was having none of it. In front of Helena I had told Mrs Melody unequivocally that I was never returning to the Alsacia. I had no intention of seeing her or her daughter again.

It was off my chest, in the open, and at least I didn't have to lie anymore. Not, of course, that this had stopped Helena from telling me to pack my bags. We hadn't talked much since and she was pretty grim. At least she wasn't keeping the children away from me, even if she shut me up every time I tried to explain everything to her. In the end there wasn't an awful lot to say. I didn't have a moral leg to stand on. She said I only made myself sound more feeble.

I stopped after a while. There was no point in beginning with a story she refused to believe. On the other hand, if the Alsacia didn't exist, how had I managed to have an affair there? Helena wouldn't talk about that, either.

The children needed a lot of my attention just then. They were slightly puzzled by my moving across the street but, since their own lives weren't changed, accepted it as one of those inexplicable things adults did. They had developed distinct personalities and preferences. Sally was a natural vegetarian. Kitty loved meat. Sally was a confronter. Kitty did her best to negotiate. There was no serious rivalry between them and they bonded on almost every occasion. I loved seeing their complex personalities growing. I was very proud of them. They were a pleasure to be with because they were so curious. I got a lot of consolation out of their general joy in living, their excitement of discovery. Sometimes they wouldn't be all that enthusiastic about going to a museum or an exhibition, but usually when we got there they would be drawn in, whether by a new painter or an old bit of natural history. And they loved visiting working artists.

My sculptor friend Eduardo Paolozzi was always welcoming when we visited his studio. Some of his big metal pieces were exhibited at his Mayfair gallery where he encouraged the girls to drop by and climb all over them. Even when one was installed at the Tate he told the guards to let the kids alone. He was a sweet man in those days. They particularly liked visiting his screen printer where all that pure, vivid colour was splashed everywhere, the prints coming to life under the rollers. As little girls Sally and Kitty saw a lot of the pop artists as well as those Beat writers, like Bill Burroughs, whom I still knew and, of course, the
New Worlds
contributors. They met Angus Wilson, Doris Lessing, Arthur C. Clarke. They went to a lot of exhibitions, openings, launches. They were extremely well socialised. People said they were like Victorian children. True, they did a few things Victorian children were allowed to do, such as drink small amounts of beer and wine with meals, and a few things that were unheard of by Victorians. You really could take them anywhere. We did pretty much everything together when they were small. They were never what my mum would condemn as ‘precocious'. They were used to going to theatres and restaurants and always behaved well. They knew backstage etiquette. They had pets, went out with their friends from school, most of whom had interesting parents, enjoyed sleepovers and other fun and quarrelled about what TV to watch, though all agreed on
Doctor Who
. We played elaborate games for which we prepared costumes, made pictures or wrote proclamations. We also played games out of the big Victorian toy box I had picked up in Portobello Road. A lot of our projects were developed from what we discovered there. Like me they had grown up enjoying the pleasures of several generations.

We probably saw a few too many Disney movies, but we also went to the National Film Theatre and other places to see silent films. They sat rapt through two and a half hours of Douglas Fairbanks spectaculars like
The Black Pirate
or
The Gaucho
. He wasn't the acrobat his father was, but he was an excellent cloak-and-dagger performer in his own right, could flash a devilish smile, and was superb in
The Prisoner of Zenda
with Ronald Colman.

As a boy I enjoyed the old prewar story papers from the years before I was born. Now my children went to see black-and-white silent epics with title cards and piano accompaniment. In the cinema I would see other parents trying to control much older kids through
Robin Hood,
starring Fairbanks Sr. It did have some early longueurs, but my kids sat entranced, knowing how to watch. You grow greedy for such memories, for the experiences of earlier generations. I hoped I was teaching important lessons, widening their range of pleasure. Experience and a broad vocabulary always seemed worth cultivating.

After a month of exile I tried to open negotiations with Helena about coming back or at least talking. In spite of passionate denials, she was convinced I was still seeing Molly and she wouldn't allow me to raise the topic. How could I blame her? I still felt the pain of Molly's betrayal. I had trusted her, as Helena had trusted me, so I knew exactly how my wife was feeling. I was in a moral limbo, horribly frustrated by the situation, and with no intention of taking up with Molly again. I wanted my family life back and absolutely nothing more. I wrote Helena letters promising this. I did get a response eventually. ‘Don't waste your time,' said Helena. ‘I always knew you would do this.'

As Christmas came round I recalled an idea I had planned earlier to save everyone stress. It would not involve Helena having to cook for me if I wanted to spend the holiday with the children. The Christmas at the Caf
é
Royal idea originally occurred when I realised we
all
needed a break from preparing the season's rituals. Recent events aside, the idea was still a good one. I proposed to take us all out for Christmas lunch at the Caf
é
Royal. And I thought I'd invite Pete Pavli since he'd just split up with Fiona and we were a bit top-heavy with women. The girls were old enough to enjoy the change and I was pretty sure Helena's mother would love it. Mrs Denham would be frustrated from expressing her firm ideas about how, what, when and why her daughter was cooking. Mrs Denham took the rituals seriously, down to watching (and criticising) the Queen's Speech which Helena and I tried to avoid. My mum didn't actually get on with the others much but agreed. So I booked us a big table, decided the wines, agreed to the menu and looked forward to a good time, at least for a few hours, where everyone could sit back and relax without worrying about what was due to go in and come out of the oven when.

Even when Helena asked if Molly and her mother were coming I didn't rise to the bait. I hadn't contacted them, nor did I plan to contact them. Seeing a way of avoiding a lot of holiday awkwardness, Helena agreed. So early Christmas morning saw me climbing into a posh scarlet-and-white Santa suit and whiskers from Harrods, haring across Ladbroke Grove with a sackful of good stuff and ho-ho-hoing like buggery as I distributed presents to everyone. In the taxis I'd booked, we all bundled off to Regent Street late on Christmas morning. Dashing through the near-deserted streets, we arrived at the Café Royal in time for a lunch which, if not up to homemade, was pretty splendid, enjoyed by all, especially a bunch of carol-singing waiters. Champagne sparkled, claret gushed. The other diners were mainly rather sad American couples who were only too happy to join in a day with kids, confusion, carols, paper hats and plenty of high-class presents bursting from the crackers. I sat on one side of Mrs D and Pete sat on the other. Our job was to jolly the lady up and keep her from discovering fresh seasonal sins in her daughter. This gave me a good view of the man lunching alone across the aisle who was clearly trying to work out our relationships. I felt we should do our best to put on a good show for him.