Castles Made of Sand Read online

  on ‘Ripple’ and ‘Atlantic Highway’ and also (uncredited) playing guitar on ‘Scarlet Begonias’. The antiques are unspeakably predictable (Psychokiller); need (ahem) no explanation (Son Of A Preacher Man; Mighty Real), and guess what, there’s far too much Grateful Dead. George Merrick rules the sound with aplomb, Bill Trevor turns in a cool tenor solo or two, and my, Peter Stannen, you handsome devil, all the girls will be swooning now! Since you’re going to buy it anyway, we’ll unashamedly leap onto the bandwagon. The lads can sing after all, the dancing is a treat, and at least there are fewer opportunites for irritating Cornish bits. Don’t forget to download a copy for your gran.

  The Triumvirate returned from Cornwall with a new body language, a new collection of private jokes, and Sage was staying at the Brixton flat. In no time at all the story featured on Weal’s “Apokryfa”: the same strip cartoon venue as had hosted the Fascist Junta skit that so annoyed Rob.

  It’s the night before the Reich gets on the road for the Festival Season. They’re all in that pub near Vauxhall Bridge, which for Apokryfa’s purposes is eternally hopping with leaders of the glorious revolution, plus colourful entourage. Chip Desmond and Kevin Verlaine, daftly garbed fashion-victims, have their heads together; mulling over the latest plot development. They think they have a handle on the sheep. Sage’s Barbie Doll collection is a concept. Wild strawberries they can get their heads around. But what about those bacon sandwiches?’

  Fiorinda breezes by (Apokryfa’s perennial Fiorinda-The-Unwashed, a bundle of garments with an absurdly tiny waist, a cloud of dirt and smells fizzing around her uncontrollable hair. Like Pig-Pen in Charles Schultz’s Peanuts, she cannot stay clean). A speech-balloon bounces back over her shoulder. ‘It’s like a Mars Bar party,’ She’s grinning ear to ear. ‘Only different.’

  Mr Dictator and the Minister for Gigs, drinking at the bar with Doug Hutton, the Reich’s security chief, simultaneously choke on their beer.

  How does Apokryfa get hold of these quirky details? Are they genuine?

  Early in July the gruelling Festival circuit brought them back to London for a gala National Gallery opening called ‘Stairway To Heaven: The Virtual Counterculture’. Immaterial works of genius filled Trafalgar Square, glittering with colour and causing consternation to the pigeons. A-lister guests stood about nattering and snacking, the PA played a medley of the Few’s greatest hits. Ax, guitar over his shoulder because he’d been busking for the cameras, stopped by the maquette of Rivermead Palace—multicoloured and crinkly, like a kind of lo-rise Barcelona Cathedral. Ax liked the plan because it was genuinely cheap, unlike some recycling projects: being constructed out of scrunched car bodies and plastic waste. He was sure he’d get used to the way it looked, (you have to be patient with architecture). He was not happy to see that the ridiculous flood-proofing scheme, which involved pumping a layer of CO2 under the whole Rivermead site, had resurfaced; so to speak. Tempting though it might be to have the Rock and Roll Reich afloat on a sea of dry ice, the expense was ludicrous.

  ‘But Ax, Rivermead’s yer showcase,’ insisted the leader of the hippy barefoot-architects, a rotund lunatic with a beard like a bramble bush, known to his pals as Topsy. ‘We’re a flood country, we need to testbed way out ideas—’

  ‘Fuck. I’m just a vapid materialistic rockstar, you’re the eco-warriors. If you can’t live with the river, move away. What happened to listening to Gaia?’

  ‘What if we can get funding from Westminster?’ asked a female barefoot-architect, at which Topsy glared at her furiously.

  ‘What if I pretend you didn’t say that, Janey? Do you really want Rivermead mortgaged to the suits? I don’t care what they told you, they have no money: but if they had, I wouldn’t let you take it. I said no, and I mean no.’

  Silver Wing and her sister Pearl, wearing their butterfly dresses and looking adorable (from a distance), were fighting over the button that made the model heave up and down in its cellulose case.

  ‘Stop that,’ warned Silver, ‘you’re breaking it.’

  ‘You stop. I was touching the button first.’

  ‘STOP IT or I’ll tear your fucking head off.’

  Time to move on. Anne-Marie had a charming habit of simply letting her savage rugrats loose on public occasions, blithely assuming that someone she knew would be forced to pick up the childcare. Let the hippies handle it.

  Fiorinda was with her gran. The old lady had zero interest in any kind of music, less than that in Utopian revolution: but something had inspired her to make a rare sortie from that cold house in the London burbs; the place Fiorinda had left behind when her baby died. Gran had expected a limousine, and probably a motorcyle escort. She’d refused the modest, green alternative of Fiorinda fetching her in a taxi, and come along with some neighbours: who were now mingling, mildly fascinated to be inside the most VIP enclosure in the land.

  Gran claimed she wanted to see a much-hyped portrait of her granddaughter. Fiorinda suspected she knew the real motive, and had therefore launched a pre-emptive counter-attack on Gran’s little hobby—

  ‘You’re behind the times, Frances dear,’ said Gran. ‘Everyone believes. You could buy magic at Tescos now, if your boyfriend had left us any Tescos. Why shouldn’t I use my little powers?’

  Gran was a witch, a Wiccan. She’d been plying her trade for years, out of the backdoor of the cold house,, but in the present climate it wasn’t so funny. ‘Just stick to the herbal remedies. Please. No hexing, promise me that.’

  She ignored the irritating reappearance of her original name. She hadn’t called herself ‘Frances’ since she was eleven, as Gran knew perfectly well.

  ‘You shouldn’t listen to tell-tales,’ said the old lady, and stopped in front of a voluptuous, virtual purple female with fuschia-pink parted lips, crouched upon a gravestone in a midnight churchyard.

  Clever Ax, getting into Education had proved a highly successful hook. The country liked it, the Media&Arts A-list no longer felt excluded. So much better than just ranting against the crypto-fascist Ancient Brits—a hopeless ploy as the Great and Good genuinely couldn’t tell the two “rival gangs” apart. Sadly, the big name, Counterculture-inspired art was about what you’d expect. Pickled sharks in dayglo. With huge tits.

  ‘I don’t have to listen, Gran. I know.’

  Gran had grown mcuh smaller, the way old people suddenly do; but her button eyes were bright and malicious as ever. ‘You’re the one who should be careful, dear. You can’t go on suppressing your nature this way. It isn’t right.’

  Fiorinda grinned, unabashed.

  ‘My nature is doing fine, trust me. Come on, I thought you wanted to see the famous portrait.’

  ‘Isn’t this it?’ Gran peered, affecting old-lady confusion, at the study in purple titled Metal Calendar Girl. ‘It’s very nice. Atmospheric, I would call it.’

  ‘No, Gran. You know I never wear pink lipstick.’

  Fiorinda and Allie took a break, sitting on the broad, black back of one of Landseer’s lions, sipping frosted sherbert. It was fortunate that this wasn’t a party where one would want to get drunk, because the sherbert was the only nice thing on offer. Above their heads a collar of shimmering perturbation (unoriginally titled ‘Untitled’) circled Nelson’s column, as if that massive limb of ribbed stone was sporting a lilac and silver ballet tutu. A party of Islamist elders strolled by, casting a tolerant eye on the infidel excesses, and bowed to Ax’s lady.

  ‘I like the tutu,’ said Allie. ‘They should keep it. And Whistlejacket is amazing. I haven’t seen a single other thing I can stand.’

  ‘New Arts and Crafts Movement scores zero for Art,’ agreed Fiorinda. ‘But the Craft part is pretty good, we must admit. I mean the coding.’

  The show featured masterpieces rendered in virtual 3-D for the first time (Stubbs, Constable, Turner: had to be English, of course). They were amazing.

  She sighed. ‘Bad news—’

  ‘Sage has punched someone from NME.’

&n
bsp; ‘Hahaha. The only problem with that review is that Peter now won’t go out without a mask, in case he gets mobbed, so they all have to carry on wearing their skulls in solidarity. Otherwise Sage is very happy, or so he says. The bad news is my gran. She’s fallen out with her lodgers again.’

  ‘She hasn’t hexed them?’

  ‘’Fraid so. Mrs Mohanjanee says she’s also acting confused: I bet she’s just putting it on because she knows she’s in trouble. But she’s nearly eighty—’

  ‘Is she a real witch? I mean, can she do things?’

  Fiorinda shrugged. ‘I hope your kidding. I’m not worried about her psychic powers, I’m just afraid she’ll get herself into trouble. But that’s not the issue.’ She stared into her glass. ‘The issue is that you escape, you grow up, and then your fucking family returns to haunt you.’

  ‘What about sheltered housing? You could find her a really nice place.’

  ‘And throw away the key,’ agreed Fiorinda, with feeling. ‘It’s a plan. Nah, I couldn’t do that. What she needs is someone to live in that house, not obviously a nurse or a warden, who’ll get on with her and keep her under control. What she wants is me. She wants me to move back there, the way I did when my mother was dying.’

  ‘Has she asked you?’

  ‘I don’t let her, I sneak out of it. But I know what’s on her mind. Fuck. What would I do? Have Sage and Ax visit me at weekends, huh?’

  ‘No one expects you to do that,’ said Allie quickly (making a mental note to warn Ax about this bright idea. Fiorinda must not go back to the scene of her hideous childhood. Not even part time). ‘Don’t even think about it!’

  ‘Trust me, I’m not tempted. But I don’t know what to do. It’s not going to be easy to find a keeper she’ll tolerate.’ She prepared to slide down from the lion’s back. ‘I’m going to look at my portrait again, and congratulate the artist-bloke. I didn’t dare speak to him when I had Gran in tow. And that will be my last mingle, okay?’

  The artist, who was standing beside his much-hyped picture, talking to Chip and Verlaine, met Fiorinda’s compliments with a stare of horrified fascination; and fled. She was left looking at the portrait while a small crush of people, held back behind an invisible line by her presence, looked at Fiorinda.

  She Feeds And Clothes Her Demons. It was a 3-D image of a picture in a frame, oils on canvas, photorealist. The figure nearly life-sized, the frame antique. The material version was destined for the City Art Gallery in Toby Starborn’s native Birmingham. A gaunt, weary young woman with red hair, wearing a tattered green dress, crouches among the roots of a fallen oak. Livid little Hieronymous Bosch nightmare creatures are crawling from cracks in the bark, from holes in the ground, buzzing in the air. She’s feeding them cupcakes, sweets, chocolates; and giving them clothes out of a tapestry bag.

  Starborn hadn’t wanted Fiorinda to sit for him, he worked from photographs, but he’d asked to borrow the green silk dress, the iconic Fiorinda dress from Dissolution Summer. It had fallen into rags and been buried, like a pet hamster (only way Fiorinda’s friends could stop her from wearing it) in Reading site boneyard. The artist, weirdly, had wanted it exhumed; but they’d said no. Fiorinda reached out to see her fingers go through the image: something everyone was doing to the virtual art—

  ‘Do you like it?’ asked Chip, looking over her shoulder.

  ‘I think it’s good, but creepy,’ said Fiorinda softly. ‘They’re not demons, if he means the Drop-Out Hordes. There’s no need to feel too sorry for most of them, they’ve made their own luck. But they’re not demons.’

  ‘You’re not meant to think of art like that. You’re too literal.’

  ‘Okay, I’m literal. Shoot me.’ She rubbed her bare arms, wondering about the shape of things to come. Is this us? Are we doomed to be sacred icons, public property, for the rest of our lives…?

  The radio bead in her ear—routine security—was letting her eavesdrop on several conversations. She could hear Anne-Marie, on the other side of the square, giving some media folk the benefit of her Countercultural Feminism. (All men are scum. Any woman who doesn’t live in a bender with sixteen kids is denying her true self…)

  Suddenly, AM’s manifesto was cut off, and Doug was saying the Triumvirate were wanted urgently at Blue Gate:

  They met in the crowd, Sage in his beautiful suit but skull-masked; Ax looking tired: he’d been the one chatting with the Prime Ministers and so on. ‘Maybe this is it,’ said Fiorinda, only half-joking, thinking of Massacre Night.

  ‘Nah,’ said Ax. ‘I don’t smell trouble.’

  ‘It’ll be nothing.’ Sage pressed his fingertips, virtual and real, together, and pulled them apart, drawing out a skein of vivid blue sparks. Nice trick.

  ‘Where’d’you get that?’ asked Ax.

  ‘In the kids’ workshop. Want some?’

  At Blue Gate (‘Blue Gate’ at a public event, meant wherever the Few’s own security had their command post), outside the iridescent screens that closed off the VIP area, they found no signs of alarm: just Doug and his crew entertaining a raw-boned ginger-haired bloke in grimy jeans, silver rings in his ears, a blanket round his shoulders. So, a normal Countercultural citizen, one of thousands, but something familiar about his seamed, alcohol-ruined face—

  ‘Hi folks,’ said Doug, grinning. ‘Got someone here wants to thump Sage.’

  ‘Hey, Sage,’ said the ginger-haired bloke, ‘told yez I’d be back.’

  ‘Fergal!’

  Ax laughed. ‘What are you doing here, you crazy Irishman?’

  The stranger gave them a gap-toothed, blackened, charming grin. ‘What would I be doing? I’ve defected, comrades. I’ve come to serve the cause. If ye’ll have me.’

  So this was Fergal Kearney of the Playboys, the Belfast band who’d been over for the Rock The Boat tour last summer. Fiorinda hadn’t met him, she’d been on a different line-up, but she’d heard the stories. Fergal was a living legend. A fine musician, destroyed himself with drink and drugs, always spoken of with huge affection and respect, despite a totally fucked-up career… Oh great, thought Fiorinda, stranded on the edge of the conversation. Another of those music biz guy-relationships, that I don’t understand because the world ended before I could be trained in how to react, and now I’ll never get it. She was prejudiced against the Irish.

  Then Fergal turned to her. ‘This is Fiorinda?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘this is Fiorinda.’

  ‘Jaysus,’ said the Irishman, staring at her intently but not offensively. His eyes were blue-green, in cruel contrast to his pocked, scarlet complexion. ‘Y’er even lovelier than yer videos…’ He gulped. ‘It’s a great pleasure. No, it’s an honour.’

  He groped under the blanket, which she saw was really some kind of Celtic mantle. A couple of police liaison officers, not quite as happy as Doug with this situation, made a half-move. Fergal brought out an Irish harp, most of the gilding gone but all the strings in place. ‘I saw yez first on the tv, Dissolution Summer. I’ve never missed a chance since. Ye’re the bravest girl I ever saw, an’ a queen of the music. Ye’r worth ten of Ax Preston, which I hope he knows, and ten hundred of this bastard Aoxomoxoa: and now I’ve told ye, which was half me plan in coming to England. Here’s me harp. I’d lay it at yer feet. But I’d only look a feckin’ eedjit and embarrass ye, so I won’t do that.’

  She couldn’t think of a response.

  Fergal’s complexion grew even more scarlet. He cleared his throat. ‘Uh, well, that’s the business done. Now, Sage, me favourite fallen angel, is there anywhere here a man could get a drink?’

  Sage detested being called a fallen angel—a media term for former global stars, trapped and impoverished by the data quarantine. But the living skull merely beamed affectionately. ‘Ooh, I think we could arrange that.’

  They crossed the square, Fergal staring in frank curiosity at the A-listers, the armed police side by side with hippy guards; the slick and gaudy revolutionary art. ‘Fock, this is amaz
in’. I niver thought, this time last year, ye’d still be keeping it all going. An’ how’s the band, Ax? Shane and Jordan, and yer girlfriend. Sorry, I shouldn’t say that. Yer ex-girlfriend. Lovely woman, I forget her name, yer drummer. I don’t see them. Are they here?’

  ‘They’re not in London at the moment.’

  ‘Oh, right so. You know, there’s been rumours, it’s a shame. I’d hate to think that the Chosen—’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong with the band.’

  ‘That’s grand, because I can see how it must be tough, havin’ yer frontman into focking government politics—’

  ‘I’m not into government politics. I’m into Community Service, state ceremonies and putting on a free concerts. Everything’s fine, Fergal.’

  The Few were delighted with their visitor. Federal Ireland was outside data quarantine (judged innocent of the Ivan/Lara disaster by the Commissioners); which made Fergal even more welcome. They took him back to the Insanitude, gave him a tour of the old pile—as much of it as wasn’t Boat People accommodation—and then out to eat at their favourite Mexican. The Few were hungry for news, the Irishman insistent that the Rock and Roll Reich was famous out there, in the world they could no longer reach. They were the coolest thing going in the wreck of Europe—

  ‘Fock,’ he kept saying, ‘here am I among the legends!’; and repeating with flattering pride stories of the Playboys’ part in the mad panic tour last summer, when the Few and friends were racing around the Refugee-struck regions, through the worst storms of a century, staving off anarchy with rock concerts.

  ‘Jaysus, that was the best hard fun I iver had on a tour, barring none. Dez ye recall that night in Manchester, or was it Preston, Sage?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said George Merrick. ‘You bet we do. We’re playing about our fifth Altamont in a week, the Manchester Irish are in the mosh, screaming kill the Latvians, and you fuckers start heckling from the side of the stage—’

  ‘Aye, well, we’re traditional musicians. We took offence, and rightly so, at the shite you were laying down. An then yer man Sage, ten foot tall in that fockin’ spaceman outfit, dives thirty feet an’ comes over and sez to me, “Will we give you bastards what you are asking for now or later?”’