A Jerry Cornelius story
By Michael Moorcock
THE GOLDEN AGE
MINIATURE phones you carry in your pocket and that use satellite tracking technology to pinpoint your location to just a few centimeters; itty-bitty tags that supermarkets use to track their products; bus passes that simultaneously monitor your body temperature to find out how often you are having sex…
-James Harkin, New Statesman,
15 January 2007
WASHINGTON, April 24-President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney aggressively challenged the motives of Congressional Democrats on Tuesday, as the House and Senate prepared to consider a war spending bill that would order troops to be withdrawn from Iraq beginning later this year.
-New York Times,
25 April 2007
1. A MYSTERY IN MOTLEY
Madness has been the instigator of so much suffering and destruction in the world throughout the ages that it is vitally important to uncover its mechanisms.
-Publisher’s advertisement Schizophrenia:
The Bearded Lady Disease
The smell of pine and blood and sweet mincemeat, cakes and pies and printing ink, a touch of ice in the air, a golden aura from shops and stalls. Apples and oranges: fresh fruit, chipolata sausages. “Come on girls, get another turkey for a neighbour. Buy a ten pounder, get another ten pounder with it. Give me a fiver. Twenty five pounds - give us a fiver, love. Come on, ladies, buy a pound and I’ll throw in another pound with it. Absolutely free.” Flash business as the hour comes round. No space in the cold room for all that meat. No cold room at all for that fruit and veg. The decorations and fancies have to be gone before the season changes. “Two boxes of crackers, love, look at these fancy paper plates. I’ll tell you what, I’ll throw in a tablecloth. Give us a quid for the lot. Give us a quid thank you, sir. Thanks, love. That lady there, Alf. Thank you, love. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.”
“I hate the way they commercialise everything these days.”
“That’s right, love. A couple of chickens, there you go, love - and I’ll tell you what - here’s a pound of chipos for nothing. Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Seven pound sacks. Two bob. No. Two sacks for half a dollar. Half a dollar for two, love. Last you the rest of the year. Stand up, darling. Here, Bob, hold the fort, I’m dying for a slash. Dolly mixtures, two bags for a shilling. Two for a shilling, love. That’s it, darling! Genuine Airfix they are, sir. All the same price. Those little boys are going to wake up laughing when they see what Santa’s brought them. Go on, sir, try it out. I’ll throw in the batteries. Give it a go, sir. No, it’s all right, son. Not your fault. It went off the kerb. I saw it happen. Go on, no damage. I’ll tell you what, give me ten bob for the two. Tanner each, missis. You’ll pay three and six for one in Woolworths. I’ll tell you what. Go in and have a look. If I’m wrong I’ll give you both of ‘em free. Hot doughnuts! Hot doughnuts. Watch out, young lady, that fat’s boiling. How many do you want? Don’t do that, lad, if you’re not buying it. Get some cocoa. Over here, Jack. This lady wants some cocoa, don’t you, darling? Brussels. Brussels. Five pounds a shilling. Come on, darling-keep ‘em out on the step. You don’t need a fridge in this weather.”
Now as the sky darkens over the uneven roofs of the road, there’s a touch of silver in the air. It’s rain at first, then sleet, then snow. It is snow. Softly falling snow. They lift their heads, warm under hoods and hats, their faces framed by scarves and turned up collars. (Harlequin goes flitting past, dark blue cloak over chequered suit, heading for the panto and late, dark footprints left behind before they fill up again.) A new murmur. Snow. It’s snow. “Merry Christmas, my love! Merry Christmas.” Deep-chested laughter. Sounds like Santa’s about. The students stop to watch the snow. The men with their children point up into the drawing night. Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! It’s a miracle. Proof that all the disappointments of the past year are disappearing and all the promises are really going to be kept. “Happy Christmas, darling. Happy Christmas!” The Salvation Army stops on the corner of Latimer Road. The tuba player takes out his vacuum of tea, sips, blows an experimental blast. Glowing gold flows from the pub and onto the cracked and littered pavement. A sudden roar before the door closes again. “Merry Christmas!”
A boy of about seven holds his younger sister’s hand, laughing at the flakes falling on their upturned faces. His cheeks are bright from cold and warm grease. His thin face frowns in happy concentration.
“Here you go, darling. Shove it in your oven. Of course it’ll go. Have it for a quid.” All the canny last minute shoppers picking up their bargains, choosing what they can from what’s too big or too small or too much, what’s left over or can’t be sold tomorrow or next week. It has to be sold tonight. “I’ll tell you what, love. Give us a monkey for the lot.” Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas - sparking toys - little windmills, tanks, and miniature artillery - glittering foil, tinsel, and trinkets. Clattering, clicking, nattering, chattering, clanking, whizzing, hissing, swishing, splashing the street with cascades of tiny lights. Multicolored bulbs winking and shivering, red, white, blue, green, and silver.
Stacks of tightly bound trees, already shedding ripples of needles, some rootless, freshly sawn, some still with their roots. The smell of fresh sawdust, of earth. The smell of a distant forest. The boy knows he has to get a big one and it has to have roots. “Five bob, son. That’s bigger than you, that is. Give us four. Six foot if it’s an inch. Beautiful roots. What you going to do with it after? Plant it in the garden? That’ll grow nicely for next year. Never buy another tree. That’ll last you a lifetime, that will.”
Jerry holds his money tight in his fist, shoved down between his woollen glove and his hot flesh. He has his list. He knows what his mum has to have. Some brussels. Some potatoes. Parsnips. Onions. Chipolatas. The biggest turkey they’ll let him have for two quid. Looks like he’ll get a huge one for that. And in his other glove is the tree money. He must buy some more candle-holders if he sees them. And a few decorations if he has anything left over. And some sweets. He knows how to get the bargains. She trusts him, mum does. She knows what Cathy’s like. Cathy, his sister, would hold out the money for the first first turkey offered, but Jerry goes up to Portwine’s, to the chuckling ruby-faced giant who fancies his mum. Nothing makes a fat old-fashioned butcher happier than being kind to a kid at Christmas. He looks down over his swollen belly, his bloodied apron. (“Wotcher, young Jerry. What can I do you for?) Turkeys! Turkeys! Come on love. Best in the market. Go on, have two. (Ten bob to you, Jerry.)” There’s a row of huge unclaimed turkeys hanging like felons on hooks in the window. Blood red prices slashed. Jerry knows he can come back. Cathy smiles at Mr. Portwine. The little flirt. She’s learning. That smile’s worth a bird all by itself. Down towards Blenheim Crescent. Dewhurst’s doing a good few, too. Down further, on both sides of the road. Plenty of turkeys, chickens, geese, pheasants. “Fowl a-plenty,” he says to himself with relish. Down all the way to Oxford Gardens, to the cheap end where already every vegetable is half the price it is at the top. The snow settles on their heads and shoulders and through the busy, joyful business of the noisy market comes the syncopated clatter of a barrel organ. God rest ye, merry gentlemen, The First Noel, The Holly and the Ivy cycled out at the same manic pace as the organ-grinder turns his handle and holds out his black velvet bag.
“Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!” His hat is covered in melting snow but his arm moves the crank with the same disciplined regularity it’s turned for forty years or more. Away in a Manger. Good King Wenscleslas. O, Tannenbaum. O, Tannenbaum. Silent Night. Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Cathy puts a halfpenny in his hat for luck, but Jerry’s never known his luck to change one way or another from giving anything to the barrel organ man. He pulls Cathy’s hand on for fear her generosity will beggar them. “Come on. We’ll do that butcher right at the top. Then we’ll work our way down.” There’s no such thing as a frozen turkey here. Not in any Portobello butcher’s worth the name, And all the veg is fresh from Covent Garden. And all the fruit is there for the handling, though the stall-holders affect shocked disgust when the middle-class women, copying French models, reach to feel. “No need for that, love. It’s all fresh. Don’t worry, darling, it won’t get any harder if you squeeze it.” Dirty laughter does the trick. “Ha, ha, ha!” Gin and best bitter add nuance to the innuendo. Panatella smoke drifts from the warm pubs. Chestnuts roast and pop on red hot oil-drum braziers. The ladies smile back nervously, leaving it to their working class sisters to tell the stall holders off for the filth in their voices. “Come on love. Two bob a pound to you.” And Jerry looks behind him. “It was all true,” he says. “It really was. Every Christmas.”
“Well, possibly.” Miss Brunner’s attention was on the present. The thing was big enough at any rate, in red, gold, and green shining paper and a spotted black and white bow. You don’t beat Christmas for horrible color combinations.
“Of course, it couldn’t last.” He contemplated the best way of opening the present without messing up the wrapping. “The snow, I mean. Turned to sleet almost immediately. By the time we got home with the turkey it was pelting down rain. I had to go back for the tree. At least I could hold it over my head on the way.” He’d opened it. The brown cardboard box was revealed, covered in black and blue printed legends and specifications. Automatically he neatly folded the wrapping. He couldn’t have been more appreciative. There was the familiar sans serif brand name in bars of red, white, and blue. “Oh, blimey! A new Banning.”
Shakey Mo Collier beamed 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 gray in the black. 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 ziploc 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?” She 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 four.” 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.
* * * *
2. WHEN DID SUNNIS START FIGHTING SHIITES?
GALKAYO, Somalia-Beyond clan rivalry and Islamic fervor, an entirely different motive is helping fuel the chaos in Somalia: profit. A whole class of opportunists-from squatter landlords to teenage gunmen for hire to vendors of out-of-date baby formula-have been feeding off the anarchy in Somalia for so long that they refuse to let go.
-New York Times, 25 April 2007
The holidays over, Jerry Cornelius stepped off the Darfur jet and set his watch for 1962. Time to go home. At least it wouldn’t be as hairy as last time. He’d had his head shaved on the plane. It was altogether smoother now.
Shakey Mo and Major Nye met him at the check out. 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. Resignedly, he let Mo take the Westway exit. “A military vehicle should be just that. A civilian vehicle should be suitable for civilian roads. This is some 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 Phantom Seven. 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…” They knew what he was on about.
“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 gray 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 the back of this American heap in the garage so he could start dusting off the old Commer. 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. As they drove between the dull brick piles of the Notting Dale housing estates whose architecture had been designed to soak up all the city’s misery and reflect it, Major Nye glanced at Jerry. In his 60’s car coat and knitted white scarf, his shaven head, he looked like some released French convict, 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 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. After that, Nye had stopped visiting London. He was glad he spent most of his life in the country. The climate was much healthier.
As Mo steered into the mews, the major was glad to see the cobbles 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 non-descript paint and stink of mould and manure, that they were already as good as home. From the back of the totters yard came the rasp of old cockney, the stink of human sweat. It had to be Jerry’s Uncle Edmund. Major Nye could not be sure he was entirely glad to be home; but it was clear the others were. This was their natural environment. From somewhere came the aroma of vinegar-soaked newspaper, limp chips.
* * * *
3. CAPTAIN MARVEL BATTLES HIS OWN CONSCIENCE!!!!!
Knowing that we are slaves of our virtual histories, the soldiers play dice beneath the cross. A bloody spear leans against the base. A goblet and a piece of good cloth are to be won. “What’s that?” says a soldier, hearing a groan overhead. “Nothing.” His companion rattles the dice in his cupped hands. “Something about his father.”
-Michel LeBriard, Les Nihilists
“Up 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-cherchez I’argent. You can’t change the economics. You can just arrange the window dressing a bit.”
“Sez you!” Shakey Mo fingers 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 her 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 a lot.”
She wobbled a little on her ultra-high heels as she got back into his chopper. “Where to next?”
* * * *
4. ECCE RUMPO
So where is he, the Yellow Star?
Whose card you find upon the bar.
Who laughs at Nazis, near and far.
Escaping in his powerful car.
So where is he, the Yellow Star?
-Lafarge and Taylor, THE ADVENTURES OF
THE YELLOW STAR, 1941
Jerry was surprised to see his dad’s faux Le Corbusier chateau in such good shape, considering the beating it had taken over the years. Someone had obviously been keeping it up. In spite of the driving rain and the mud, the place looked almost welcoming. Mo took a proprietorial 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 metal casings of his Browning, fingering the ammo clips and running the flat of his hand over the long, tapering barrel. “He understood machinery, your dad. He existed for it. The Leo IV was his love. He built that house for it.”
“And these days all he’d need for the same thing would be a spec 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 on her thick wellies.
High above them, against the dark beauty of the night, a rocket streaked, its red tail burning with the intensity of 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 like melting chocolate
“Bloody global warming,” said Jerry.
“You should have concentrated harder, Mr. C.”
* * * *
5. THE WANTON OF ARGOS
People claim that Portugal is an island. They say that you can’t get there without wetting your feet. They say all those tales concerning dusty border roads into Spain are mere fables.”
-Geert Mak, In Europe, 2004
Up at the far end of the hall Miss Brunner was enjoying an Abu Ghraib moment. The screams were getting on their nerves. Jerry turned up Pidgin English by Elvis Costello but nothing worked 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 sixties were all about?”
“Oh, God,” said Frank. “Oh, bloody hell.” He’d never looked very good naked. Too pale. Too skinny. Ahead of or behind his time.
“You think you’re going to find the secret of the sixties in a fake French modernist villa built by a barmy lapsed papist romantic Jew who went through World War Two in a trenchcoat and wincyette pyjamas fucking every sixty-a-day bereaved or would-be bereaved middle-class Englishwoman who ever got a first at Cambridge and claimed that deddy had never wanted her to be heppy? Not exactly rock and roll, is it, Jerry. You’d be better off talking to your old mum. The Spirit of the bloody Blitz. Is that Bar-B-Q.”
“They all had the jazz habit.” Jerry was defensive. “They all knew the blues.”
“Oh, quite.” She was disgusted. “Jack Parnell and his Gentleman Jazzers at the Cafe de Paris. Or was it Chris Barber and his Skiff ling 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, if you’re not careful.”
“It’s not cool to be careful,” he said. “Remember, this is the sixties. You haven’t won yet. Careful is the eighties. 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.
* * * *
6. WILLIAM’S CROWDED HOUR
“…and does anyone know what ‘the flip side’ was? It was from the days when gramophone records were double-sided. You played your 78rpm or your 45 or your LP and then you turned it over and played the other side. Only nostalgia dealers and vinyl freaks remember that stuff now.”
-Maurice Little, Down The Portobello, 2007
Christmas 1962, snow still falling. Reports said there was no end in sight. Someone on the Third Programme 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 almost like sacrilege. Above him, crows circled. He told himself they were calling to him. He knew them all by name. They seemed reluctant to land, but then he saw their clawprints as he got closer to the Serpentine. The prints were already filling up. He wondered if they would follow him. 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 humor her, he pretended to be surprised as she approached him.
“Good luck, dear,” she said. “You’ve got almost seven years left. And seven’s a lucky number, isn’t it?”
Jerry turned up the collar of his black car coat.
* * * *
7. WILLIAM AND THE NASTIES
With the Manchester International Festival lunching this month, and Liverpool becoming European Capital of Culture next year, the north is buzzing. But where is the region’s true artistic capital?
-New Statesman, 25 June 2007
“Belonging, Jerry, is very important to me.” Colonel Pyat glanced up and down the deserted Portobello. Old newspapers, scraps of lettuce, squashed tomatoes, ruined apples. Even the scavengers, their ragged forms moving methodically up and down the street, rejected them.
Jerry looked over at the cinema. The Essoldo was showing three pictures for l/6d. Mrs. Miniver, The Winslow Boy, and Brief Encounter.
“Heppy deddy?” he asked no one in particular.
“There you are!” The colonel was triumphant. “You can talk perfectly properly if you want to!”
Jerry was disappointed. He had expected a different triple feature. He had been told it would be Epic Hero and the Beast, First Spaceship on Venus, and Forbidden Planet. “Rets!” he said.
* * * *
8. A GAME OF PATIENCE
Art, which should be the unique preoccupation of the privileged few, has become a general rule… A fashion… A furor… artism!”
-Felix Pyat
“There’s always a bridge somewhere.” Mo paced up and down the levy like a neurotic dog. Every few minutes he licked his lips with his long red tongue. At other times he stood stock still, staring inland, upriver. From somewhere in the gloom came the sound of a riverboat’s groaning wail, an exchange between pilots over their bullhorns. Heavy sheets of invisible water splashed against hulls. The words were impossible to make out, like cops ordering traffic, but nobody cared what they were saying. Further downriver, from what remained of the city, came the mock-carousel music inviting visitors to a showboat whose paddles, turning like the vanes of a ruined windmill, stuck high out of filthy brown water full of empty Evian and Ozarka bottles.
Jerry called up from below. He had found a raft and was poling it slowly to the gently curving concrete. “Mo. Throw down a rope!”
“The Pope? We haven’t got a pope.” Mo was confused.
“A rope!”
“We going to hang him?”
Jerry gave up and let the raft drift back into midstream. He sat down in the center of it, his gun stuck up between his spread legs.
“You going to town?” Mo wanted to know.
When Jerry didn’t answer, he began to paddle slowly along the levy, following the sound of his pole in the water, the shadow which he guessed to be his friend’s. From somewhere in the region of Jackson Square vivid red, white, and blue neon flickered on and off before it was again extinguished. Then the sun set, turning the water a beautiful, bloody crimson. The broken towers along St Charles Street appeared in deep silhouette for a few moments and disappeared in the general darkness. The voices of the pilots stopped suddenly and all Mo could hear was the heavy lapping of the river.
“Jerry?”
Later Mo was relieved at the familiar razz-a kazoo playing a version of Alexander’s Ragtime Band. He looked up and down. “Is that you?”
Jerry had always been fond of Berlin.
* * * *
9. PAKISTAN-THE TALIBAN TAKEOVER
A mysterious young man met at luncheon Said “My jaws are so big I can munch on A horse and a pig and ship in full rig And my member’s the size of a truncheon.”
Maurice LeB, 1907
Monstrous battle cruisers cast black shadows over half a mile in all directions when Jerry finally reached the field, his armored Lotus HMV VII’s batteries all but exhausted. He would have to abandon the vehicle and hope to get back to Exeter with the cavalry, assuming there was still a chance to make peace and assuming there still was an Exeter. He leapt from the vehicle and all but ran towards the tent where the Cornish commander had set up his headquarters.
The cool air moaned with the soft noise of idling motors. Cornish forces, including Breton and Basque allies, covered the moors on four sides of the Doone valley, the sound of their vast camp all but silenced by its understanding of the force brought against it. Imperial Germany, Burgundy, and Catalonia had joined Hannover to crush this final attempt to restore Tudor power and return the British capital to Cardiff.
Even as Jerry reached the royal tent, Queen Jennifer stepped out of it, a vision in mirrored steel, acknowledging his deep bow. Her captains crowded behind her, anxious for information.
“Do you bring news from Poole?” She was pale, straightbacked, as beautiful as ever. He cared as much for her extraordinary posture as any of her other qualities. Were they still lovers?
“Poole has fallen, your majesty, and the Isle of Wight lies smouldering and extinguished. Even Barnstaple’s great shipyards are destroyed. We reckoned, my lady, without the unsentimental severity of Hannover’s fleet. We have only cavalry and infantry remaining.”
“Your own family?”
“Your majesty, I sent them to sanctuary in the Scillies.”
She turned away, hiding her expression from him.
Her voice was steady when it addressed her commanders. “Gentlemen, you may return to your homes. The day is already lost and I would not see you die in vain.” She turned to Jerry, murmuring: “And what of Gloucester?”
“The same, my lady.”
A tear showed now in her calm, beautiful eyes. Yet her voice remained steady. “Then we are all defeated. I’ll spill no more senseless blood. Tell Hannover I will come to London by July’s end. Take this to him.” Slowly, with firm hands, she unbuckled her sword.
* * * *
10. THE EPIC SEARCH FOR A TECH HERO
Music now blares through every public space-but sound art reminds us how precious our hearing really is.
-New Statesman, 25 June 2007
Maria Amis, Julia Barnes, and Iona MacEwan, the greatest lady novelists of their day, were taking tea in Liberty one afternoon of the summer of 2005. They had all been close friends at Girton in the same year and had shared many adventures. As time passed their fortunes prospered and their interests changed, to such a degree, in fact, that on occasion they had “had words” and spent almost a decade out of direct communication; but now, in middle years, they were reconciled. Love’s Arrow had won the Netta Musket Award, The Lime Sofa the Ouida Prize, and Under Alum Chine the Barbara Cartland Memorial Prize. All regularly topped the bestseller lists.
In their expensive but not showy summer frocks and hats they were a vision of civilized feminity.
The tea rooms had recently been redecorated in William Morris “Willow Pattern” and brought a refreshing lightness to their surroundings. The lady novelists enjoyed a sense of secure content which they had not known since their Cambridge days.
The satisfaction of this cosy moment was only a little spoiled by the presence of a young man with bright shoulder length black hair, dark blue eyes, long, regular features, and a rather athletic physique, wearing a white shirt, black car coat, and narrow, dark gray trousers, with pointed “Cuban” elastic-sided boots, who sat in the corner nearest to the door. Occasionally, he would look up from his teacakes and Darjeeling and offer them a friendly, knowing wink.
* * * *
11. LES FAUX MONNAYEURS
Things were happening as we motored into Ypres. When were they not? A cannonade of sorts behind the roofless ruins, perhaps outside of town; nobody seems to know or care; only an air-fight for our benefit. We crane our necks and train our glasses. Nothing whatever to be seen.
-E.W. Hornung, New Statesman,
30 June 1917
Jerry’s head turned in the massive white pillow and he saw something new in his sister’s trust even as she slipped into his arms, her soft comfort warming him. “You’ll be leaving, then?”
“I catch the evening packet from Canterbury. By tonight I’ll be in Paris. There’s still time to think again.”
“I must stay here.” Her breathing became more rapid. “But I promise I’ll join you if the cryogenics…” Her voice broke. “By Christmas. Oh, Jesus, Jerry. It’s tragic. I love you.”
His expression puzzled her, he knew. He had dreamed of her lying in her coffin while an elaborate funeral went on around her. He remembered her in both centuries. Image after image came back to him, confusing in their intensity and clarity. It was almost unbearable. Why had he always loved her with such passion? Such complete commitment? That old feeling. Of course, she had not been the only woman he had loved so unselfconsciously, so deeply, but she was the only one to reciprocate with the same depth and commitment. The only one to last his lifetime. The texture of her short, brown hair reminded him of Jenny. Of Jenny’s friend Eve. He and they were together through much of the 70s when Catherine was away with Una Persson.
Looking over Eve’s head through copper hot eyes as her friend moved her beautiful full lips on his penis, Jenny’s face bore that expression of strong affection which was the nearest she came to love. His fingers clung deep in Eve’s long dark hair, his mouth on Jenny’s as she frigged herself. The subtle differences of skin shades; their eye colors. The graceful movements. That extraordinary passion. Jenny’s lips parted and small delicious grunts came from her mouth. This was almost the last of what the 60’s had brought them and which most other generations could never enjoy: pleasure without conflict or fear of serious consequences; the most exquisite form of lust. Meanwhile, taking such deep humane pleasure in the love of the moment, Jerry could not know (though he had begun to guess) what the future would bring. And were his actions, which felt so innocent, the cause of the horror which would within two decades begin to fill the whole world?
“Was it my fault?” he asked her.
She sat up, smiling. “Look at the time!”
* * * *
12. HOME ALONE FIVE
I learned from Taguba that the first wave of materials included descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees. Several of these images, including one of an Iraqi woman detainee baring her breasts, have since surfaced; others have not. (Taguba’s report noted that photographs and videos were being held by the CID because of ongoing criminal investigations and their “extremely sensitive nature.”) Taguba said that he saw “a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.” The video was not made public in any of the subsequent court proceedings, nor has there been any public government mention of it. Such images would have added an even more inflammatory element to the outcry over Abu Ghraib. “It’s bad enough that there were photographs of Arab men wearing women’s panties,” Taguba said.
-Seymour M. Hersh, The General’s Report,
New Yorker, 25 June 2007
Portobello Road, deserted except for a few stall-holders setting up before dawn, had kept its familiar Friday morning atmosphere. As Jerry approached the Westway, one hand deep in the pocket of his black car coat, the other, still in its black glove, resting on the handlebars of his Gent’s Royal Albert bicycle, he glanced at the big neon New Worlds Millennium clock, in vivid red and blue, erected to celebrate the magazine’s fifty-fifth birthday. Two doors closer to the bridge, and not yet open, were the Frendz offices and nearby were Time Out, Rough Trade, Stiff Records International, Riviera Management, Mac’s Music, Trux Transportation, Stone’s Antiquarian Books, Pash’s Instruments, The Mountain Grill, Brock and Turner, The Mandrake, Smilin’ Mike’s Club; all the great names which had made the Grove famous and given the area its enduring character.
“I remember when I used to be a denizen round here. Glad to see the neighborhood has kept going.” Jerry spoke to his old friend, Professor Hira, who had remained behind when the others had gone away.
“Only by a whisker,” said the plump Brahmin, shaking his head. “By a lot of hardwork and visionary thinking on the part of those of us who didn’t leave.”
Jerry began to smile, clearly thinking Hira was overpraising himself and being slightly judgemental at the same time. But Hira was serious. “Believe me, old boy, I’m not blaming you for going. You had a different destiny. But you don’t know what it’s like out there any more. North Kensington is all that remains of the free world. Roughly east of Queensway, north of Harrow Road, south of Holland Park Avenue, west of Wood Lane, a new kind of tyranny triumphs.”
“It can’t be much worse than it was!”
“Oh, that’s what we all thought in 1975 or so. We hadn’t, even then, begun to realize what fate - or anyway The City - had in store for us… Ladbroke Grove is the only part of Britain which managed to resist the march of the Whiteshirts from out of the suburbs. We keep the night alive with our signs. That’s a battle we’re constantly fighting. Thank god we still have a few people with money and conscience. All the work we did in the 60s and 70s, to maintain the freeholds and rents, successfully kept the Grove in the hands of the original inhabitants so that, at worst, we are a living museum of the Golden Age. At our best, we have slowed time long enough for people to take stock, not to be panicked or threatened by the Whiteshirts. Here, the wealth is still evenly distributed, continuing the progress made between 1920 and 1970, and, through the insistence of our ancient charters, the Grove, along with Brookgate in the east, like London’s ancient Alsatia, has managed to keep her status as an independent state, a sanctuary.”
“Ruritania, eh? I thought the air smelled a bit stale.”
“Well, we’ve developed recycling to something of a fine art. Out there in the rest of the country, as in the USA, where the majority of the wealth was incouraged by Thatcher and her colleagues to flow back to Capital, things of course are considerably worse for the greater middle class. Thatcher and her kind used all the power put into their hands by short-sighted unions and their far-sighted opponents. Every threat. Every technique. Those who resisted made themselves helpless by refusing to change their rhetoric and so were also unable to change their strategies. It’s true, old boy. For thirty years the outside world has collapsed into cynicism as the international conglomerates became big enough to challenge, then control, and finally replace elected governments. You’re lucky you were brought back here, Mr. C. Outside, it’s pretty unpleasant, I can tell you. Most Londoners can’t afford to live where they were born. Colons from the suburbs or worse the country have flooded in, taking over our houses, our businesses, our restaurants and shops. Of course, it was starting in your time: George Melly and stripped pine shops. But now the working class is strictly confined to its ghettoes, distracted by drugs, lifestyle magazines, and reality TV. The middle class has been trained to compete tooth and nail for the advantages they once took for granted and the rich do whatever they like, including murder, thanks to their obscene amounts of moolah.” Even Hira’s language appeared to have been frozen in his dog years. “At least the middle class learned to value what they had taken for granted, even if it’s too late to do anything about it now!”
“Bloody hell,” said Jerry. “It looks like I was better off in that other future, after all. And now I’ve burned my bridges. Who’s Thatcher?”
“We call her The Goddess Miggea. Most of them worship her today, though she was the one who formulated the language used to place the middle class in its present unhappy position. She was a sort of quisling for the Whiteshirts. She’s the main symbol of middle class downfall, yet they still think she saved them, the way the yanks think Reagan got them out of trouble. Amazing, isn’t it. You said yourself that the secret of successful feudalism is to make the peasants believe it’s the best of all possible worlds. Blair and Bush thought they could reproduce those successes with a brief war against a weak nation, but they miscalculated rather badly. Too late now. Remember the old scenario for nuclear war which put Pakistan at the center of the picture? Well, it’s not far off. Religion’s back with a vengeance. I’d return to India, only things aren’t much better there. You probably haven’t heard of Hindu Nationalism, either. Or the Mombai Tiger. The rich are so much richer and the poor are so much poorer. The rich have no sense of charity or gravitas. They enjoy the power and the extravagance of Eighteenth Century French aristocrats. They distract themselves with all kinds of speculative adventures, including wars which make Vietnam seem idealistic. How the people of Eastern Europe mourn the fall of the old Soviet empire, nostalgic for the return of the certainties of tyranny! Am I boring you, Mr. Cornelius?”
“Sorry.” Jerry was admiring a massive plasma TV in an electrical shop’s display window. “Wow! The future’s got everything we hoped it would have! The Soviet Union’s fallen?”
“I forget. I suppose that in your day so much of this seemed impossible, or at least unlikely. Thirty five years ago you were talking about zero population growth and the problem of leisure. Here we are at the new Smaller Business Bureau. Lovely, isn’t it? Yes, I know, it smells like Amsterdam. I work here now.” Carefully, he opened the doors of Reception.
* * * *
KATRINA, KATRINA!
It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was the faith that was abused? They were among the most noble instincts of the human heart - the love of peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamor.
-Winston Churchill to Parliament,
November 12 1940
1. WHY YOU SHOULD FEAR PRESIDENT GIULIANI
Parts of rural China are seeing a burgeoning market for female corpses, the result of the reappearance of a strange custom called “ghost marriages”. Chinese tradition demands that husbands and wives always share a grave. Sometimes when a man died umarried, his parents would procure the body of a woman, hold a “wedding”, and bury the couple together.
-The Economist, 28 July 2007
“There are no more sanctuaries, m’sieur. You are probably too young even to dream of such things. But I grew up with the idea that, I don’t know, you could retire to a little cottage in the country or find a deserted beach somewhere or a cabin in the mountains. Now we’re lucky if we can get an apartment in Nice, enough equity in it to pay for the extra healthcare we’ll need.” Monsieur Pardon stood upright in the barge as it emerged from under the bridge on Canal St Martin. “And we French are increasingly having to find jobs overseas. Who knows? Am I destined for a condo in Florida? This is my stop. I live in rue Oberkampf. And you?”
“This will do for me, too.” Jerry got ready to disembark. “How long have you lived in Paris?”
“Only for a couple of years. Before that I was a professional autoharp player in Nantes. But the work dried up. I’m currently looking for a job.”
They had reached the bank and stood together beside a newspaper kiosk. Jerry took down a copy of The Herald Tribune and paid with a three-euro piece. “You seem lost, m’sieu. Can I help?”
“Thank you. I’m just trying to follow a story. I wonder. May I ask? What makes you cry, M. Pardon?”
The neatly dressed rather serious young man fingered his waxed moustache. He looked down at his pale gray suit, patting his pockets. “Eh?”
“Well, for instance, I cry at almost any example of empathy I encounter. Pretty much any observation of sympathetic imagination. And music. I cry in response to music. Or a generous act. Or a sentimental movie.”
M. Pardon smiled. “Well, yes. I am a terrible sentimentalist. I cry, I suppose, when I hear of some evil deed. Or an innocent soul suffering some terrible misfortune.”
Jerry nodded, almost to himself. “I understand.”
Together, they turned the corner in Rue Oberkampf.
“So it is imagination that moves you to tears?”
“Not exactly. Some forms of imagination merely bore me.”
* * * *
2. SOUTH RAMPART STREET PARADE
Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani recently fumbled one of the dumbest questions asked since “boxers or briefs?” Campaigning in Alabama, he was asked, “What is the price of a gallon of milk?” He was off by a buck or two, thus failing a tiresome common-citizen test. But far more important questions need to be posed. Let’s start with asking our future leaders about how affordable PCs, broadband internet connectivity, and other information technologies are transforming the lives of every American.
-Dan Costa, PC Magazine,
7 August 2007
“Angry, Mr Cornelius?” Miss Brunner unpacked her case. Reluctantly, he had brought her from St. Pancras. Mist was still lifting from St. James’s Park. He stood by the window, trying to identify a duck. From this height, it was difficult.
“I’m never angry.” He turned as she was hanging a piece of complicated lingerie on a hanger. “You know me.”
“A man of action.”
“If nothing else.” He grew aware of a smell he didn’t like. Anaesthetic? Some sort of spray? Was it coming from her case?
“When did you arrive?”
“You met me at Eurostar.”
“I meant in Paris. From New Orleans?” That was it. The perfume used to disguise the smell of mold. Her clothes had that specific iridescence. They’d been looted.
“Saks,” he said.
“You can’t see the label from there, can you? You wouldn’t believe how cheap they were.”
“Laissez les bon temps rollez.” Jerry had begun to cheer up.
“I’m so tired of the English.”
* * * *
3. POMPIER PARIS
Defenses are tough to predict in fantasy football.
-Fantasy Sports, September 2007
“Hot enough for you? Everyone’s leaving for the country.” Jerry and Bishop Beesley disembarked from the taxi at the corner of Elgin Crescent and Portobello Road. All the old familiar shops were gone. The pubs had become wine bars and restaurants. Tables and chairs stood outside fake bistros stretching into the middle distance. The fruit and veg on the market stalls had the look of mock organics. Heritage tomatoes. The air was filled with braying aggression. If the heat got any worse there could be a Whiteshirt riot. Jerry could imagine nothing worse than watching the nouveaux riches taking it out on what remained of the anciens pauvres. The people in the council flats must be getting nervous.
“Apres moi, le frisson nouveau.”
“Do what?” Bishop Beesley was distracted. He had spotted one of his former parishioners stumbling dazedly out of Finch’s. The poor bugger had tripped into a timewarp but brightened when he saw the bishop. Sidling up, he mumbled a familiar mantra and forced a handful of old fivers into Beesley’s sweating fist. Reluctantly, the bishop took something from under his surplice in exchange. Watching the decrepit speed freak stumble away, he said apologetically. “They’re still my flock. But of course there’s been a massive falling off compared to the numbers I used to serve. Once, you could rely on an active congregation west of Portobello, but these days everything left is mostly in Kilburn. Not my parish, you see.”
Jerry whistled sympathetically.
Beesley stopped to admire one of the newly decorated stalls. The owner, wearing a fresh white overall and a pearly cap, recognized him. “You lost weight, your worship?”
“Sadly…” The bishop fingered the stock. “I’ve never seen Brussels as big.”
“Bugger me.” Jerry stared in astonishment at a fawn bottom rolling towards Colville Terrace. Who needed jodhpurs and green wellies to drive a Range Rover to the Ladbroke Grove Sainsbury’s? “Trixie?” Wasn’t it Miss Brunner’s little girl, all grown up? Distracted, Jerry looked for a hand of long branches which used to hide a sign he remembered on the other side of the Midland Bank. The bank was now an HSBC. Who on earth would want to erase his childhood? He remembered how he used to have a thing against the past. Maybe it was generational.
“Are you okay?” His hand moving restlessly in his pocket, Bishop Beesley looked yearningly across the road at a new sweet and tobacconists called Yummy Puffs. “Would you mind?”
Jerry watched him cross the road and emerge shortly afterwards with his arms full of bags of M&Ms. Where, he wondered absently, were the chocolate bars of yesterday? The Five Boys? He could taste the Fry’s peppermint cream on his tongue. Dairy Milk. Those Quakers had known how to make chocolate. As a lad he had wondered why the old Underground vending machines, the Terry’s, the Rowntree’s, the Cadbury’s, were always empty, painted up, like poorly made props meant only to be glimpsed as the backgrounds of Ealing comedies. The heavy cast-iron machines had been sprayed post office red or municipal green and there was nothing behind the glass panels, no way of opening the sliding dispensers. They had slots for pennies. Signs calling for 2d. They had been empty since the war, he learned from his mum. When chocolate had been rationed and prices had risen. Yet the machines had remained on tube train platforms well into the late 1950s, serving to make the Underground mysterious, a tunnel into the past, a labyrinth of memory, where people had once sought sanctuary from bombs. Escalators to heaven and hell. The trains, the ticket machines, the vast escalators, the massive lift cages had all functioned as well as they ever had, but the chocolate machines had become museum pieces, offering a clue to a certain state of mind, a stoicism which perceived them as mere self-indulgence, at odds with the serious business of survival. Not even the most beautiful, desireable machines survived such Puritanism. How many times as a little boy had he hoped that one sharp kick would reward him with an Aero bar, or even a couple of overlooked pennies? And then one day, in the name of modernization, they were carried off, never to be replaced. It was just as well. They had vanished before they could be turned into nostalgic features.
Brands meant familiarity and familiarity meant repeated experience and repetition meant security. Once. Now they had achieved the semblance of security, at the very moment when real protection from the fruits of their greed was needed. The Underground had been a false shelter, too, of course. They had poured down there to avoid the bombs, to be drowned and buried. Yet he had loved the atmosphere, the friendship, as he had played with his toy AA gun, his little battery-powered searchlight hunting the dusty arches for a miniature enemy. Portobello began to fill with the yap of colons settling their laptops and unfolding their Independents, pushing up their sweater sleeves as they sauntered into the pubs, familiar with their favourite spots as any Germans who had so affectionately occupied Paris.
“They defeated the Underground,” he said. “Captured our most potent memories and converted them to cashpoints. They’re blowing up everything they don’t like. And anything they don’t understand, they don’t like.”
Beesley was looking at him with a certain concern, his lower face pasted with chocolate so that he resembled some Afghan commando. With a plump, dainty finger he dabbed at the corner of his mouth. “Ready?”
Mournfully, Jerry whistled the Marseillaise.
* * * *
4. LES BOUDINS NOIRS
Blood-spurting martyrs, biblical parables, ascendant doves-most church windows feature the same preachy images that have awed parishioners for centuries. But a new stained-glass window in Germany’s Cologne Cathedral, to be completed in August, evokes technology and science, not religion and the divine.
-Wired, August 2007
“Are you familiar with torture, Herr Cornelius?” Karen von Krupp hitched up her black leather miniskirt and adjusted his blindfold, but he could still see her square, pink face, surrounded by its thick blonde perm over the top, her peachy neck ascending above her swollen breasts. When she reached to pull the mask down he was grateful for the sudden blindness.
“How do you mean ‘familiar?’”
“Have you done much of it?”
“It depends a bit on how you define it.” He giggled as he heard her crack her little whip. “I used to be able to get into it. Between consenting adults. In more innocent days, you know. You?”
“Oh!” She seemed impatient. Frustrated. “Consent? You mean obedience? Obedient girls?”
He was beginning to understand why he was back in her dentist chair after so many years and wearing a tart’s costume. “It’s Poland all over again, isn’t it?”
He heard her light a cigarette, smelled the smoke. A Sullivan’s.
She added: “I believe I ask the questions.”
“And I respect your beliefs. Did you know that the largest number of immigrants to the US were German? That’s why they love Christmas and why they have Easter bunnies, marching bands, and think black cats are unlucky.” He settled into his bonds. It was going to be a long night.
“Of course. But now I want you to tell me something I don’t know.”
“I can still see some light.”
“We’ll soon put a stop to that.”
Again, she cracked the whip.
“Are we on TV?”
“Should we be?”
“These days, everything’s on TV. Don’t you watch Guantanamo Dailies? Or is it too boring?”
“We don’t have cable. Just remember this, Mr. Cornelius. There’s more than one way of cooking a canary.”
* * * *
5. LES BOUDINS BLANCS
The railway from Nairobi to Mombasa is a Victorian relic. But it’s the best way to see Kenya.
-New Statesman, 25 June 2007
“I GOT these rules, see.” Shakey Mo looked carefully into the mirror. “That’s how I keep on top of things. You can’t survive, these days, without rules. Set yourself goals, yeah? Draw up a flow chart. A yearly planner. And then you stick to it. OK? Religiously. Rules is rules. It’s survival. It’s Mo’s survival, anyway.” He had begun talking about himself in the third person again. Jerry guessed he was in a bad way.
“Fun?” Jerry stared at the cabinets on Mo’s walls. He kept a neat ship, he had to admit. Each cabinet held a different gun, with its clips, its ammunition, its instruction manual; the date it was acquired, whom it had shot, and when.
“Clubbing,” Mo told him. “Whenever you get the chance. Blimey, Jerry, where have you been?”
“Rules.” Jerry wiped his lovely lips. “The jugged hare seemed a bit bland today. Out of season, maybe?”
“There aren’t any seasons these days, Jerry. Just seasoning. Man, you’re so retro!” Mo rearranged his hair again. He guffawed. “That’s the nineties for you. You want au naturelle, you gotta pay for it.”
“It wasn’t always like this.”
“We were young and stupid. We almost lost it. Went too far. That costs, if you’re lucky enough to survive. AIDS and the abolition of controlled rents. A high price to pay.”
Jerry regarded his shaking hands. “If this is the price of a misspent youth, I’ll take a dozen.”
Mo wasn’t listening. “I think I need a new stylist.”
* * * *
6. HOW TO DEAL WITH A SHRINKING POPULATION
There’s a lot of hot air wafting around the Venice Biennale. But one thing is for sure: the art world can party.
-New Statesman, 25 June 2007
“Hi, hi, American pie chart.” Jerry sniffed. A miasma was creeping across the world. He’d read about it, heard about it, been warned about it. A cloud born of the dreadful dust of conflict, greed, and power addiction, according to old Major Nye. It rose from Auschwitz, London, Hiroshima, Seoul, Jerusalem, Rwanda, New York, and Baghdad. But Jerry wasn’t sure. He remarked on it. Max Pardon buttoned his elegant gray overcoat, nodding emphatically:
“J’accord.” He resorted to his own language. “We inhale the dust of the dead with every breath. The deeper the breath, the greater the number of others’ memories we take into ourselves. Those wind-borne lives bring horror into our hearts and every dream we have, every anxiety we feel, is a result of all those fires, all those explosions, all those devastations. Out of that miasma shapes are formed. Those shapes achieve substance resembling bone, blood, flesh and skin, creating monsters, some of them in human form.”
That was how monsters procreated in the heat and destruction of Dachau, the Blitz, and the Gaza strip; from massive bombs dropped on the innocent; from massacre and the thick, oily smoke of burning flesh. The miasma accumulated mass the more bombs that were dropped or bodies burned. The monsters created from this mass, born of shed blood and human fright, bestrode the ruins of our sanctuaries and savoured our fear like connoisseurs. “Here is the Belsen ‘44; taste the subtle flavours of a Kent State ‘68 or the nutty sweetness of an Abu Ghraib ‘05, the amusing lightness of a Madrid ‘04, a London ‘06. What good years they were! Perfect conditions. These New York ‘01s are so much more full-bodied than the Belfast ‘98s. The monsters sit at table, relishing their feast. They stink of satiation. Their farts expel the sucked-dry husks of human souls: Judge Dread, Lord Horror, Stuporman. Praise the great miasma wherever it creeps. Into TV sets, computer games, the language of sport, of advertising. The language of politics, infected by the lexicon of war. The language of war wrapped up in the vocabularies of candy-salesmen, toilet sanitisers, room sprays. That filth on our feet isn’t dog shit. That city film on our skins is the physical manifestation of human greed. You feel it as soon as you smell New Orleans.”
That whimpering you heard was the sound of cowards finding it harder and harder to discover sanctuary.
“Where can you hide? The Bahamas? Grand Cayman? The BVAs? The Isle of Man or Monaco? Not now you’ve melted the icebergs, called up the tsunamis and made the oceans rise. All that’s left is Switzerland with her melting glaciers and strengthened boundaries. The monsters respond by playing dead. This is their moment of weakness when they can be slain, but it takes a special hero to cut off their heads and dispose of their bodies so that they can’t rise again. Some Charlemagne, perhaps? Some doomed champion? There can be no sequels. Only remakes. Only remakes. But, because we have exhausted a few of the monsters, that doesn’t mean they no longer move amongst us, sampling our souls, watching us scamper in fear at the first signs of their return. We are thoroughly poisoned. We have inhaled the despairing dust of Burundi and Baghdad.”
“Well, that was a mouthful.” The three of them had crossed the Seine from the Isle St. Louis. It was getting chilly. Jerry pulled on his old car coat and checked his heat. His resurrected needle-gun, primed and charged, was ready to start stitching up the enemy. “Shall we go?”
“What’s he saying?” asked Mo, staring with some curiosity at Max Pardon who had exhausted himself and stood with his back to a gilded statue, a small, neatly-wrapped figure wearing an English tweed cap. “You know what my French is like.”
“His taxes are too high,” said Jerry.
* * * *
7. PUMP UP YOUR NETWORK
“Daran habe ich gar nicht gedacht!”
-Albert Einstein
“Now look here, Mr. Cornelius, you can’t come in here with your insults and your threats. What will happen to the poor beggars who depend on their corps for their healthcare and their massive mortgages? Would you care to have negative equity and be unemployed?” Rupert Fox spread his gnarled antipodean hands, and then mournfully fingered the folds of his face, leaning into the mirror-cam. His new facelift had not taken as well as he had hoped. He looked like a partially rehydrated peach. “Platitudes are news, old boy.” He exposed his expensive teeth to the view overlooking Green Park. In the distance, the six flags of Texas waved all the way up the Mall to Buckingham Palace. “We give them reality in other ways. The reality the public wants. Swelp me. I should know. I’ve got God. What do you have? A bunch of idols.”
“I thought idolatory was your stock in trade.”
“Trade makes the world go round.”
“The great idolator, eh? All those beads swapped with the natives.”
“I don’t have to listen to this crap.” Rupert Fox made a show of good humor. “You enjoy yourself with your fantasies while I get on with my realities, sport. You can’t live in the past forever. The Empire has to grow and change.” He motioned towards his office’s outer door. “William will show you to the elevator.”
* * * *
8. IS HE THE GREATEST FANTASY PLAYER OF ALL TIME?
One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief… My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade… if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it…
-George W. Bush to Mickey Herskowitz, 1999
Banning never really changed. Jerry parked the Corniche in the disabled parking space and got out. A block to the east, I-10 roared and shook like a disturbed beast. A block to the west, and the town spread out to merge with the scrub of semi-desert, its single-storey houses decaying before his eyes. But here, outside Grandma’s Kitchen, he knew he was home and dry. He was going to get some of the best country cooking between Santa Monica and Palm Springs. The restaurant was alone amongst the concessions and chains of Main Street. It might change owners now and again, but never its cooks or waitresses. Never its well-advertised politics, patriotism and faith. Grandma’s was the only place worth eating in a thousand miles. He took off his wide-brimmed Panama and wiped his neck and forehead. It had to be a hundred and ten. The rain, roaring down from Canada and up from the Gulf of Mexico had not yet reached California. When it did, it would not stop. Somewhere out there, in the heavily irrigated fields, wetbacks were desperately working to bring in the crops before they were swamped. From now on, they would probably be growing rice, like the rest of the country.
He pushed open the door and walked past the display of flags, crosses, fish, and Support Our Troops signs. There was a Christmas theme, too. Every sign and ikon had fake snow sprayed over it. Santa and his sleigh and reindeers swung from every available part of the roof. There was an artificial tree in the middle of the main dining room. Christmas songs were playing over the speakers. A few rednecks looked up at him and nodded a greeting. A woman in a red felt elf hat, who might have been Grandma herself, led him through the wealth of red and white checkered tablecloths and wheel-backed chairs to a table in a corner. “Can I get you a nice glass of iced tea, son?”
“Unsweetened. Thanks, ma’am. I’m waiting for a friend.”
“I can recommend the Turkey Special,” she said.
Twenty minutes went by before Max Pardon came in, removing his own hat and looking around him in delight. “Jerry! This is perfect. A cultural miracle.” The natty Frenchman had shaved his moustache. He had been stationed out here for a couple of months. Banning had once owed a certain prosperity, or at least her existence, to oil. Now she was a dormitory extension for the casinos. You could have bought the whole place for the price of a mid-sized Pasadena apartment. M. Pardon had actually been thinking of doing just that. He ordered his food and gave the waitress one of his charming, sad smiles. She responded by calling him “Darling”.
When their meals arrived, he picked up his knife and fork and shrugged. “Don’t feel too sorry for me, Jerry. It’s healthy enough, once you get back from the interstate aways.” He spoke idiomatic American. He leaned forward over his turkey dinner to murmur. “I think I’ve found the guns.”
Jerry grinned.
As if in response to M. Pardon’s information, from somewhere out in the scrubland came the sound of rapid shooting. “That’s not the Indians,” he said. “The locals do that about this time every day.”
“You’ll manage to get them to the Dine on schedule?”
“Sure.” Max raised his eyebrows as he tasted the fowl. “You bet.”
Grandma brought them condiments. She turned up her hearing aid, cocking her head. “This’ll put Banning on the map.” She spoke with cheerful satisfaction. “Just in time to celebrate the season.”
Jerry sipped his tea.
Max Pardon always knew how to make the most of Christmas. By the time the Dine arrived, Banning would be a serious bargain.
* * * *
9. THEY WANT TO MAKE FIREARMS OWNERSHIP A BURDEN-NOT A FREEDOM!
In August most upscale Parisians head north for Deauville for the polo and the racing or to the cool woods of their country estates in the Loire or Bordeaux… Paris’s most prestigious hotel at that time of the year is crawling with camera-toting tourists and rubberneckers.
-Tina Brown, The Diana Chronicles, 2007
“Welcome to the Hotel California,” Jerry sang into his Bluetooth. The beautiful violet light winked in time in his long, dark hair as the ruins sped past on either side of I-10 - wounded houses, shops, shacks, filling stations, churches, all covered in Day-Glo blue PVC, stacks of fallen trunks, piles of reclaimed planks, leaning firehouses, collapsed trees lying where the hurricane had thrown them, overturned cars and trucks, collapsed barns, flattened billboards, flooded strip malls, mountains of torn foliage, state and federal direction signs twisted into tattered scrap, smashed motels and roadside restaurants, mile upon mile of detritus growing more plentiful the closer they got to New Orleans.
In the identical midnight blue Corniche beside him, connected by her own Bluetooth, Cathy joined in the chorus. The twin cars headed over cypress swamps, bayous, and swollen rivers on the way to where the Mississippi met the city.
Standing in the still, swollen ponds on either side of the long bridges, egrets and storks regarded them with cool, incurious eyes. Crows hopped along the roadside, pecking at miscellaneous corpses; buzzards cruised overhead. It looked like rain again.
Here and there massive cracks and gaps in the concrete had been filled in with tar-like black holes in a flat gray vacuum. Hand-made signs offered the services of motel chains or burger concessions and every few miles they were told how much closer they were to Prejean’s or Michaux’s where the music was still good and the gumbo even tastier. The fish had been enjoying a more varied diet. Zydeco and cajun, crawfish and boudin. Oo-oo. Oo-oo. Still having fon on the bayou… Everything still for sale. The Louisiana heritage.
“Them Houston gals done got ma soul!” crooned Cathy. “Nearly home.”
* * * *
10. PIRATES OF THE UNDERSEAS
At places where two road networks cross, a vertical interchange of bridges and tunnels will separate the traffic systems, and Palestinians from Israelis.
-Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s
Architecture of Occupation, 2007
“Christmas won’t be Christmas without presents,” grumbled Mo, lying on the rug. He got up to sit down again at his keyboard. “Sorry, but that’s my experience.” He was writing about the authenticity of rules in the game of Risk. “I mean you have to give it a chance, don’t you? Or you’ll never know who you are.” He cast an absent-minded glance about the lab. He was in a world of his own.
Miss Brunner came in wearing a white coat. “The kids called. They won’t be here until Boxing Day.”
“Bugger,” said Mo. “Don’t they want to finish this bloody game?” He was suspicious. Had her snobbery motivated her to dissuade them, perhaps subtly, from coming? He already had her down as a social climber. Still, a climber was a climber. “Why didn’t you let them talk to me?”
“You were out of it,” she said. “Or cycling or something. They thought you might be dead.”
He shook his head. “There’s days I wonder about you.”
Catherine Cornelius decided to step in. He was clearly at the end of his rope. “Can I ask a question, Mo?”
He took a breath and began to comb his hair. “Be my guest.”
“What’s this word?” She had been looking at Jerry’s notes. “Is this holes, hoes or holds?”
“I think it’s ladies,” said Mo.
“Oh, of course.” She brightened. “Little women. Concord, yes? The dangers of the unexamined life?”
* * * *
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
1. GUNS IS GUNS
Everyone will be wealthy, living like a lord, Getting plenty of things today they can’t afford But when’s it going to happen? When? just by and by!
Oh, everything will be lovely, when the pigs begin to fly!
-Charles Lambourne, Everything Will be
Lovely c. 1860
“I admire a man who can look cool on a camel.” Bessy Burroughs presented Jerry with her perfectly rounded vowels. Born in Kansas, she had been educated in Sussex. Regular vowels, her dad had always said, were the key to success, no matter what your calling. “God! Is it always this hot in Cairo?”
“It used to be lovely in the winter.” Jerry jumped down from his kneeling beast and came to help Bessy dismount. Only Karen von Krupp preferred to remain in her saddle. Shielding her eyes against the rising sun, she peered disdainfully at a distant clump of palms.
Bessy had none of her father’s lean, lunatic wit. Her full name was Timobeth, a combination of those her parents had chosen for a girl or a boy. Bunny believed that old-fashioned names were an insult to the future. They pandered to history. Her parents still hated history. A sense of the past was but a step on the road to nostalgia and nostalgia, as Bunny was fond of saying, was a vice which corrupts and distorts.
Jerry remembered his lazy lunches at Rules. Bunny had loved Rules. But he had come to hate the heritage industry as ‘a brothel disguised as a church’. Jerry wasn’t sure what he meant and had never had a chance to find out. If he turned up, as promised, by the Sphinx, perhaps this would be a good time to ask him.
“Dad loves it out here.” Pulling her veil down from her hat, Bessy began to follow him across the hard sand towards the big pyramid. “Apart from the old stuff. He hates the old stuff. But he loves the beach. The old stuff can crumble to dust for all he cares.” She paused to wipe her massive cheeks and forehead. That last box of Turkish Delight was beginning to tell on her. She had been raised, by some trick of fate, by Bishop Beesley as his own daughter until Mitzi had finally objected and Bunny had been recalled from Tangier to perform his paternal duties.
“You don’t like to be connected to the past?” asked Karen von Krupp, bringing up a lascivious lear and thwacking her “Charlie” on its rump with a curious-looking whip. “I love history. So romantic.”
“Hate it. Loathe it. History disgusts me. Hello! Who’s this type, I wonder?”
“Good god!” Suddenly fully awake, Jerry pushed back his hat. “Talk about history! It’s Major Nye.”
Major Nye, in the full uniform of Skinner’s Horse, rode up at a clip and brought his gray to a skidding stop in the sand.
“Morning, major.”
“Morning, Cornelius. Where’s that hotel gone?”
“I gather it had its day, major. Demolished. I can’t imagine what’s going up in its place.” His knees were crumping.
“I can.” With a complacent hand Bessy patted a brochure she produced from a saddle bag. “It’s going to be like The Pyramid. That’s why I asked you all here. Only three times bigger. And in two buildings. You’ll be able to get up in the morning and look down on all that.” She waved vaguely in the direction of the pyramids. “It’ll be a knockout. It will knock you unconscious! Really!” She nodded vigorously, inviting them, by her example, to smile.
“Gosh,” said Jerry. Major Nye peered gravely down at his horse’s mane.
“We are born unconscious and we die unconscious.” Karen von Krupp gestured with her whip. “In between we suffer precisely because we are conscious, whereas the other creatures with whom we share this unhappy planet are unconscious forever, no? I was not. I am. I shall not be. Is this the past, present, and future? Is this what we desire from Time?”
“I must apologize, dear lady. I’m not following you, I fear.”
“This hotel I’m talking about. Two big pyramids. Sheraton are interested already.”
“Ah, but the security.” Karen von Krupp laid her whip against her beautiful leg and arranged her pleated skirt. “These days. What can you guarantee?”
“No problem. Saudis.”
“I prefer Nubians,” said Jerry.
“These will be Saudis. That’s non-negotiable.”
Jerry looked up. From the far horizon came the steady thump of helicopter engines, then the sharper thwacking of their blades. He had a feeling about this. “Nubians or nothing,” he said. And began to run back towards his camel.
* * * *
2. THE BRANDY AND SELTZER BOYS
According to quantum theory, a card perfectly balanced on its edge will fall down in what is known as a “superposition” - the card really is in two places at once. If a gambler bets money on the queen landing face up, the gambler’s own state changes to become a superposition of two possible outcomes - winning or losing the bet in either of these parallel worlds, the gambler is unaware of the other outcome and feels as if the card fell randomly.
-Nature, 5 July 2007
“We need rituals, Jerry. We need repetition. We need music and mythology and the constant reassurance that at certain times of the day we can visit the waterhole in safety. Without ritual, we are worthless. That’s what the torturer knows when he takes away even the consistent repetition of our torment.” Bunny Burroughs ordered another beer. There were still a few minutes to Curtain Up. This was to be the first time Gloria Cornish and Una Persson had appeared on the same stage. A revival. The Arcadians.
“These are on me.” Jerry signed for the bill. “Repetition is a kind of death. It’s what hopeless people do - what loonies do - sitting and rocking and muttering the same meaningless mantras over and over again. That’s not conscious life.”
“We don’t want conscious life.” Miss Brunner, coming in late, gave her coat to Bishop Beesley to take to the cloakroom. “Have I got time for a quick G&T? We don’t want real variety. From the catch-phrase of the comedian to the reiteration of familiar opinions, they’re the beating of a mother’s heart, the breathing of a sleeping father.”
“Maybe we’ve at last dispossessed ourselves of the past. We name our children after bathroom products, fantasy characters, drugs, diseases, and candy bars. We used to name them after saints or popular politicians…” Jerry finished his beer. A bell began to ring.
“That’s just a different kind of continuity. The trusted brand has taken over from the trusted saint.” Miss B. picked up her programme. “We’re still desperate for the familiar. We try to discard it in favor of novelty, but it isn’t really novelty, it’s just another kind of familiarity. We tell ourselves of our self-expression and self-assertion. When I was a girl, my days were counted in terms of food. Sunday was a hot joint. Tuesday was cold sliced meat, potatoes, and a vegetable. Wednesday was shepherd’s pie. Thursday was cauliflower cheese. Friday was fish. Saturday, we had a mixed grill. Just as lessons came and went at school, we attended the Saturday matinee, Sunday at a museum. Something uplifting, anyway, on Sunday. We move forward by means of rituals. We just try to find the means of keeping the carousel turning. We sing worksongs as we build roads. Music allows a semblance of progression, but it isn’t real progression. Real progress leads where? To the grave, if we’re lucky? Our stories are the same, with minor variations. We’re comfortable, with minor variations, in the same clothes. The sun comes up and sets at the same time and we welcome the rise and fall of the workman’s hammer, the beat of the drum. If we really wanted to cut our ties with the past we would do the only logical thing. We would kill ourselves.”
“Isn’t that just as boring?”
“Oh, I guess so, Mr. Cornelius.” Bunny petted at his face and put down his empty glass.
As they walked towards their box, the overture was striking up.
* * * *
3. FROM CLUE TO CLUE
The theme of the Wandering Jew has a history of centuries behind it, and many are the romances which that sinister and melancholy figure has flitted through. In this story you will see how the coming of the mythical Wanderer was a direct threat to the existence of our Empire, and how, when he, as the figurehead of revolt faded out of the picture, Sexton Blake tackled the real causes behind it.
-The Case of the Wandering Jew,
Sexton Blake Annual, 1940
“I’m running out of memory.” Jerry put his head on one side, like a parrot. “Or at best storage. I’m forgetting things. I think I might have something.”
“Oh, god, don’t give it to us.” Miss Brunner became contemplative. “Is it catching? Like Alzheimer’s?”
“I don’t remember.” Jerry took an A to Z from the pocket of his black car coat. “It depends if it’s the past or the present. Or the future. I remember where Berwick Street is in Soho and I could locate Decatur Street. I’m not losing my bearings any worse than usual. Why is everyone trying to forget?”
“It wasn’t part of the plan. I’m a bit new to this.” Bunny Burroughs glanced hopefully at Miss Brunner. “I think.”
Now Jerry really was baffled. “Plan?”
“The plan for America. Remember Reagan?”
“Vaguely,” said Jerry. He pointed ahead of him. “If that’s not a mirage, we’ve found an oasis.”
* * * *
4. THE NEW XJ-LUXURY TRANSFORMED BY DESIGN
Freighter captains avoid them as potential catastrophes; climate scientists see them as a bellwether of global warming. But now marine biologists have a more positive take on the thousands of icebergs that have broken free from Antarctica in recent years. These frigid, starkly beautiful mountains of floating ice turn out to be bubbling hot spots of biological activity. And in theory at least they could help counteract the buildup of greenhouse gases that are heating the planet.
-Michael D. Lemonick, Time Magazine,
6 August 2007
“They’ve been in Trinity churchyard digging up the famous. I can’t tell you how much they got for Audubon.” Jerry sipped his chicory and coffee. The Cafe du Monde wasn’t what it had been but they’d taken the worst of the rust off the chairs and the joss sticks helped. From somewhere down by the river came the broken sound of a riverboat bell. Then he began to smile at his friend across the table. “That was you, wasn’t it?”
Max Pardon shrugged. “We were downsized. What can I say? We have to make a living as best we can. The bottom dropped out of real estate. I’m a bone broker these days, Mr. Cornelius. It’s an honest job. Some of us still have an interest in our heritage. Monsieur Audubon was a very great man. He made his living, you could say, as a resurrectionist. Mostly. He killed that poor, mad golden eagle. Do I do anything worse?”
Jerry took a deep breath and regretted it.
* * * *
5. THE FLOODS THAT REALLY MATTER ARE COMPOSED OF MIGRANT LABOUR
Intimate talk about loving your age, finding true joy, and the three words that can change your life.
-Good Housekeeping, June 2005
In Islamabad, Jerry traded his Banning for an antique Lee-Enfield .303 with a telescopic sight. He had come all the way by aerial cruiser, the guest of Major Nye, with the intention of seeing, if he could do it secretly, his natural son Hussein, who was almost ten. Slipping the beautifully embellished rifle into his cricket bag, he made for an address on Kabul Street, ridding himself of two sets of “shadows”. The most recent Islamic government were highly suspicious of all Europeans, even though Jerry’s Turkish passport gave his religion as Moslem. He wore a beautifully cut coat in two shades of light blue silk, with a set of silver buttons and a turban in darker blue. To the casual eye he resembled a prosperous young stockbroker, perhaps from Singapore.
Arriving at Number Eight, Jerry made his way through a beautiful courtyard to a shaded staircase which he climbed rapidly after a glance behind him to see if he was followed. On the third floor at the door furthest along the landing he stopped and knocked. Almost immediately the recently painted door was opened and Bunny Burroughs let him in, his thin lips twisting as he recognized the cricket bag.
“Your fifth attempt, I understand, Jerry. Did you have a safe trip? And will you be playing your usual game this Sunday?”
“If I can find some whites.” Jerry set the bag down and removed his rifle. With his silk handkerchief he dabbed at his sleeve. “Oil. Virgin. Is the boy over there?”
“With his nanny. The mother, as I told you, is visiting her uncle.”
Jerry peered through the slats of a blind. Across the courtyard, at a tall window, a young woman in a sari was mixing a glass of diluted lemon juice and sugar. Behind her the blue screen of a TV was showing an old Humphrey Bogart movie.
“Casablanca,” murmured Bunny.
“The Big Sleep.” Jerry lifted the rifle to his shoulder and put his eye close to the sight.
He would never know another sound like that which followed his pulling the trigger and the bang the gun made.
He had done the best he could. That at least he understood.
* * * *
6. THE PHANTOM OF THE TOWERS
International trade in great white sharks now will be regulated, which is especially important for fish that range far beyond the shelter of regional protection. The humphead or Napoleon wrasse-worth tens of thousands of dollars on the market-also received protections, in turn saving coral reefs from the cyanide used to capture them.
-Animal Update, Winter 2005
Hubert Lane and Violet Elizabeth Bott were waiting on the corner for Jerry as soon as he reached the outskirts of the village. He had driven over from Hadley to see old Mr. Brown. Hubert smirked when he saw Jerry’s Phantom IV. “You’ve done a lot better for yourself than anyone would have guessed a few years ago.”
Jerry ignored him.
“Hewwo, Jewwy,” lisped Violet Elizabeth, rather grotesquely coy for her age. “Wovely to see you.”
Jerry scowled. He was already regretting his decision but he opened the gate and began to walk up the surprisingly overgrown path. The Browns clearly hadn’t kept their gardener on. Things had deteriorated rather a lot since 1978. The front door of the double fronted Tudor-style detached house could do with a lick of paint. The brass needed a polish, too. He lifted the knocker.
The door was opened by a woman in uniform.
“Mr. ‘Cornelius?’”
“That’s right.”
“Mr. Brown said you were coming. He’s upstairs. I’m the District Nurse. I hung on specially. This way.”
She moved her full lips in a thin, professional smile and took him straight upstairs. The house smelled familiar and the wallpaper hadn’t changed since his last visit. Mrs. Brown had been alive then. The older children, Ethel and Robert, had been home from America and Australia respectively.
“They’re expected any time,” said the nurse when he asked. She opened the bedroom door. Now the medicinal smell overwhelmed everything else. Old Mr. Brown was completely bald. His face was much thinner. Jerry no longer had any idea of his age. He looked a hundred.
“Hello, boy.” Mr. Brown’s voice was surprisingly vibrant. “Nice of you to drop in.” His smile broadened. “Hoping for a tip were you?”
“Crumbs!” said Jerry.
* * * *
7. A GAME OF PATIENCE
For ten years South Park has tackled America’s idiocies through violence, swearing, and song. But two academic studies miss the joke.
-New Statesman, 25 June 2007
Banning behind him, Mo put the Humvee in gear and set off across a desert which reminded him of Marilyn Monroe, Charles Manson, and Clark Gable. Tumbleweed, red dust, the occasional cactus, yucca, jasper trees. He was heading west and south, trying to avoid the highways. Eventually he saw mountains.
A couple of days later, he woke Jerry, who had been asleep in the back since Banning.
“Here we are, Mr. C.”
Jerry stretched out on the old rug covering the floor of the vehicle. “Christmas should be Christmas now we’ve presents,” he blinked out of the window at a butte. There were faces in every rock. This was the South West as he preferred it. Mo was dragging his gun behind him as he squeezed into a narrow fissure, one of several in the massive rock-face. According to legend, some hunted Indian army had made this their last retreat. Somewhere within, there was water, grass, even corn. The countless variegated shades of red and brown offered some hint of logic, at least symmetry, swirling across the outcrops and natural walls as if painted by a New York expressionist. They reminded Jerry of the Martian dead sea bottoms he had loved in his youth. He had been born in London, but he had been raised on Mars. He could imagine the steady movement of waves overhead. He looked up.
Zuni knifewings had been carved at intervals around the entrance of the canyon; between each one was a swastika.
“I wonder what they had against the Jews,” said Mo. He paused to take a swig from his canteen.
Jerry shrugged. “You’d have thought there was a lot in common.”
Now Mo disappeared into the fissure. His voice echoed. “It’s huge in here. Amazing. I’ll start placing the charges, shall I?”
Jerry began to have second thoughts. “This doesn’t feel like Christmas any more.”
Behind them, on the horizon, a Dine or Apache warband sat on ponies so still they might have been carved from the same ancient rock.
Jerry sighed. “Or bloody Kansas!” He started to set up his Banning.
* * * *
8. A CITY SLICKER EMAILED IN THE STICKS
Tony Blair claims that one of his many achievements in office was not to repeal the employment laws passed by Margaret Thatcher’s government to weaken trade union power. But Blair, as a young and politically ambitious barrister, was a staunch supporter of trade union rights.
-New Statesman, 25 June 2007
“I know where you’re coming from, Jerry.” Bunny Burroughs closed his laptop. Of course he didn’t. He had only the vaguest idea. Jerry didn’t even bother to tell him about The Magnet, Sexton Blake, or George Formby. They certainly had some memories in common, but even those were filtered through such a mix of singular cultural references they changed the simplest meaning. Bunny’s baseball and Cornelius’s cricket: the list was endless. Yet somehow exile brought out the best in them. They would always have Paris.
Jerry sniffed. “Are you still selling that stuff?”
“Virtual vapour? It’s very popular. While thousands die in Rwanda, millions watch TV and concern themselves with the fate of the mountain gorilla whose time in the world is actually less limited. Assuming zoos continue to do their stuff.” He held up a can. “Want a sniff?” He peered round at the others. “Anybody?”
“If I had a shilling for every year I’ve thought about the future, I’d be a rich man today.” Bishop Beesley hesitated before slipping a Heath Bar between his lips and breathing in the soft scent of chocolate and burned sugar. “Sweet!” He let a sentimental smile drift across his lips. “I know it’s a weakness, but which of us isn’t weak somewhere? I live to forget. I mean forgive. I’ve a parish in South London now. Did you know?”
“I think you told me.”
“No,” said Bill.
“No? It’s only across the river. We could.”
“No.” Jerry continued to look for a channel. “I don’t cross running water if I can help it. And I don’t do snow.”
“It’s really not as cold as people say it is. Even Norbury’s warmer than you’d guess. Kingsley Amis grew up there. And Edwy Searles Brooks. Brooks was the most famous person to come from Nor-bury. St. Franks? Waldo the Wonderman?”
Jerry shuddered. He’d be hearing about the wonders of Wimbledon next. Tactfully he asked if Beesley knew a second-hand tyre shop easily reached.
“There’s even a beach of sorts.” The bishop breathed impatience. “Where Tooting Common used to be. Though they haven’t axed the chestnut trees.”
“They must be borders,” suggested Bill.
“Still plenty for the little ‘uns.”
“Plenty?”
“Conkers.” The bishop put a knowing hand on Jerry’s arm. “Don’t worry. No ward of mine has ever come to harm.”
“Conkers? No, you’re barmy. Bonkers.” Jerry shook him off, swiftly walking to the outside door.
“Pop in. Any time. You’ve not forgotten how to pray?”
The bishop’s voice was muffled, full of half-masticated Mars.
Jerry paused, trying to think of a retort.
Bunny Burroughs stood up, his thin body awkward beneath the cloth of his loose, charcoal gray suit. “I am a gloomy man, Mr. Cornelius. I have a vision. Follow me. Of the appalling filth of this world, I am frequently unobservant. Once I revelled in it, you could fairly say. Now it disgusts me. I am no longer a lover of shit. I came on the streetcar. That’s what I like about Europe. Are the streetcars. Environment friendly and everything. They have a narrative value you don’t run into much any more. Certainly not in America. My mother was German. Studied eugenics, I think. On the evidence. But I’m English on my father’s side. I fought on my father’s side.”
He turned to look out of the window. “The slave-ships threw over the dead and dying. Typhoon coming on.” He picked up the laptop. “Trained octopi drove those trams, they say.”
Jerry said. “OK. I give up. When can you get me connected?”
“It depends.” Burroughs frowned, either making a calculation or pretending to make one. “It depends how much memory you want. Four to seven days?” His long, sad face contemplated some invisible chart. His thin fingers played air computer. “Any options?”
Jerry had become impatient. “Only connect,” he said. God, how he yearned for a taste of the real world. The world he had been sure he knew. Even Norbury.
* * * *
9. THE MOST FUEL EFFICIENT AUTO COMPANY IN AMERICA
Britain’s got talent, Simon Cowell has tried to prove over the past few weeks, but is it really in the stick-twirling, octogenerian tap-dancing toddler music hall turns, or transvestite singing acts we’ve seen on TV.
-New Statesman, 25 June 2007
“What I can’t understand about you, Mr. Cornelius,” Miss Brunner opened a cornflower blue sunshade only slightly wider than her royal blue Gainsborough hat, “is why so many of your mentors are gay. Or Catholic. Or both.”
“Or Jewish,” said Jerry. “You can’t forget the Jews. It’s probably the guilt.”
“You? Guilt? Have you ever felt guilt?”
“That’s not the point.” He found himself thinking again of Alexander, his unborn son. Invisibly, he collected himself. “I reflect it.”
“That’s gilt. Not guilt.”
“Oh, believe me. They’re often the same thing.”
From somewhere beyond the crowd a gun cracked.
She brightened, quickening her high-heeled trot. “They’re off!”
Jerry tripped behind her. There was something about Surrey he was never going to like.
* * * *
10. THE SLEEP YOU’VE BEEN DREAMING OF
Swaths of regulation on an industry of “feat entrepreneurs” have fuelled a climate of timidity about the dangers of every day life. If lawsuits replace the concept of a simple no-fault accident, this will damage not only our national resilience, but also the economy.
-New Statesman, 30 July 2007
Back in Islamabad, Jerry read the news from New Orleans. He wondered if the French were going to regret their decision to buy it back. Of course, it did give them the refineries and a means of getting their tankers up to Memphis, but how would the American public take to the reintroduction of the minstrels on the showboats?
“People who are free, who live in a real republic, are never offended, Jerry. At best they are a little irritated. They should be able to take a joke by now. In context.”
“Wait till they burn your bloody car.” Jerry was still upset about what had happened in Marseilles.
“They are citizens. They have the same rights and responsibilities as me.” Max Pardon swung his legs on his stool. He had rewaxed his moustache. Possibly with cocoa butter.
Jerry lit a long, black Sherman. “At least you’ve brought back smoking.”
“That’s the Republic, Jerry.”
Max Pardon raised his hat to a passing Bedouin. “God bless the man who discovered sand-power.” Overhead the last of the great aerial steamers made its stately way into the sunrise just as the muezzin began to call the faithful to prayer. Monsieur Pardon unrolled his mat and kneeled. “If you’ll forgive me.”
* * * *
11. WHY I LOVE METAL
It’s what you’ve been craving. Peaceful sleep without a struggle. That’s what LUNESTA© is all about: helping most people fall asleep quickly, and stay asleep all through the night. It’s not only nonnarcotic; it’s approved for long-term use.
-Ad for eszopiclone in Time Magazine,
6 August 2007
“I AM sick of people who can’t distinguish the taste of sugar from the taste of fruit, who can’t tell salt from cheese, who think watching CNN makes them into intellectuals and believe that Big Brother and The Batchelor is real life. The richest, most powerful country in the world is about as removed from reality as Oz is from Kansas or Kansas is from Kabul.” Major Nye was in a rare mood as he leaned over the rail of The Empress of India searching with his binoculars for his old station.
From somewhere among the bleak, rolling downs puffs of smoke showed the positions of the Pashtoon.
“I remember all the times the British tried to invade and hold Afghanistan. What surprises me is why these Yanks think they are somehow better at it, when they’ve never won a war by themselves since the Mexicans decided to let them have California. Every few years they start another bloody campaign and refuse to listen to their own military chaps and go swaggering in to get their bottoms kicked for the umpteenth time. They learned an unfortunate lesson from their successes against the Indians, such as they were. If you ask me they would have done better to have taken a leaf from Custer’s book.”
“Education’s never been their strength.” Holding her hat with her left hand, Miss Brunner waved and smiled at someone in the observation gallery. “It’s windy out here, don’t you think?”
“Better than that fug in there.” Major Nye indicated the Smoking Room. With a gesture close to impatience, he threw his cigarette over the side.
As if in answer, another rifle spoke from below.
Miss Brunner looked down disapprovingly. “There should be more school shootings, if you ask me. They should just be more selective.” She looked up, directing a frigid smile at Mitzi Beesley, who came out to join them. Mitzi was wearing a borrowed flying helmet, a short, pink divided skirt, a flounced white blouse, a knitted bolero jacket.
Jerry remembered her closing the gate of her Hampstead Garden Village bijou cottage, as she left him in charge for a week. That had been the last time they had met. She was no longer speaking to him. He went back into the bar and closed the door. It seemed almost silent here; just the soft hum of the giant electric motors. He accepted a pint of Black Velvet. He had a rat buttoned inside his coat. Its nose tickled his chest and he gave an involuntary twitch. Mitzi still didn’t know he had rescued “Sweety” from the fire. He had grown attached to the little animal and felt Mitzi was an imperfect owner. The Bengali barman polished a glass. “Life’s a bloody tragedy, isn’t it sir? Same again?”
Outside, the rain began to drum on the canopy. Major Nye and the women came running in. “I for one will be glad to get back to Casablanca,” said Miss Brunner.
* * * *
12. WILL BROWN BE BUSH’S NEW POODLE?
Until recently, criticisms of the BBC were helpful, and attacks upon it harmless; indeed it provided, among other blessings, a happy grumbling ground for the sedentary, where they could release their superfluous force… and if not much good was done there was anyhow no harm… Unfortunately, [the BBC’s] dignity is only superficial. It does yield to criticism, and to bad criticism, and it yields in advance-the most pernicious of surrenders.
-E.M. Forster New Statesman,
4 April 1931
Jerry had showered and was getting into his regular clothes when Professor Hira came into the changing rooms.
“You were superb today, Mr. Cornelius. Especially under the circumstances.
Jerry accepted his handshake. “Oh, you know, it’s not as if they got the whole of London.”
“Hampstead, Islington, Camden! The Heath is a pit of ash. We saw the cloud on TV. Red and black. The blood! The smoke. Of course, we know that our bombs, for instance, are much more powerful. But Hampstead Garden Village! My home was there for over four years. The Beesley’s, too. And so many other dear neighbours.”
“You think it was their target?”
“No doubt about it. And next time it will be Hyde Park or Wimbledon Common. Even Victoria Park. They are easy to home in on, you see.”
“Another park is where they’ll strike next?”
“Or, heaven forbid, Lords. Or the Oval.”
“Good god. They’ll keep the ashes forever!”
“Our fear exactly.” Professor Hira took Jerry’s other hand. “You plan, I hope, to stay in Mombai for a bit? We could do with a good all-rounder.”
Jerry considered this. It was quite a while since he’d been to the pictures. “It depends what’s on, I suppose.” He bent and picked up his cricket bag. “And I’m sure it’s still possible to get a game or two in before things become too hot.”
“Oh, at least. And, Mr. Cornelius, it will never be too hot for you in India. Pakistan has far too many distractions, what with the Americans and their own religeuses.”
Jerry scratched his head. Reluctant as he was to leave, he thought it was time he got back home again.
* * * *
13. BETRAYAL IN IRAQ
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December 2005
Christmas 1962, snow still falling just after dawn when Jerry sprung the gate into Ladbroke Grove/Elgin Gardens and walked onto the path leaving black pointed prints and tiny heel marks. He had never made a cooler trail. Slipping between the gaps in the netting, he crossed the tennis court and stopped to look back. The marks might have been those of an exotic animal. Nobody coming behind him would know a human had made them. Yet they were already filling up again.
He would never be sure he had deceived anyone. He darted into the nearest back garden. From the French windows came the sound of a Schoenberg piano roll. The snow was a foot deep on the brick wall, on the small lawn. Yellow light fell from the window above. He heard a woman’s voice not unlike his mother’s. “Go back to bed, love. It’s not time yet.” He recognized Mrs. Pash. Her grandchildren were up early, pedalling the piano. He caught a glimpse of the tree through the half-drawn curtains.
Jerry stepped softly out of the little garden. A blind moved on the first floor in the corner house. The colonel and his wife were looking at him. Another minute and they’d call the police. Their hangovers always made them doubly suspicious. He bowed and returned the way he had come, back into Ladbroke Grove, back across to Blenheim Crescent, past the Convent of the Poor Clares, on his left, to 51, where his mother still lived.
Humming to himself, Jerry went down the slippery area steps to let himself in with his key. Nobody was up. He unshipped the sack from his shoulder and checked out the row of stockings hanging over the black, greasy kitchen range from which a few whisps of smoke escaped. He opened the stove’s top and shovelled in more coke. His mum had put the turkey in to cook overnight. There wasn’t a tastier smell in the whole world. Then, carefully, he began to fill the stockings from his sack.
Upstairs, he thought he heard someone stirring. He could imagine what the tree looked like, how delighted Catherine and Frank would be when they came down to see their presents.
Outside, the snow still fell, softening the morning. He found the radio set and turned it on. Christmas carols began to sound. The noises upstairs grew louder.
Travel certainly made you appreciate the simple things of life, he thought. His eyes filled with happy tears. He went to the kitchen cupboard and took out the bottle of Heine he had put there the night before. Frank hadn’t found it. The seal was unbroken. Jerry helped himself to a little nip.
Mrs. Cornelius came thumping downstairs in her old carpet slippers. She wore a bright red and green dressing gown, her hair still in curlers, last night’s make-up still smeared across her face. She rubbed her eyes, staring with approval at the lumpy stockings hanging over the stove.
“Cor,” she said. “Merry Christmas, love.”
“Merry Christmas, mum.” He leaned to kiss her. “God bless us, every one.”
* * * *
Parts of this story originally appeared in Nature, Planet Stories, The New Statesman, Time Magazine, The Spectator, Fantasy Sports, PC World, Wired, Two Science Adventure Books, The Happy Mag, Boy’s Friend Library, Schoolboy’s Own Library, The Magnet, Nelson Lee Library, Sexton Blake Library, Union Jack Library, Good Housekeeping, Sports Illustrated, Texas Monthly, Harpers, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, Novae Terrae and others.