Another event occurred during the battle which further increased her reputation. The vast Persian fleet, being outfought and outmanoeuvred by the superior Greek navy, was in full retreat. Artemisia’s ship was fleeing along with the rest and she found herself hemmed in between a Greek pursuer and a ship of her own fleet which was blocking her retreat. Without hesitation Artemisia rammed this ship even though it was on her side. It sank with all hands. Her Greek pursuer, seeing this, presumed that Artemisia’s ship must in fact be on his side and ceased the pursuit, allowing Artemisia to escape.
Xerxes was watching the battle from a hill near the shore.
“Do you see how well Artemisia is fighting?” said one of his advisers. “She has just sunk an enemy ship.”
Xerxes, distressed about the destruction of his fleet, at least had one thing to be glad about, and made a comment which was to become well known. “What has happened to my army? The men have turned into women and the women have turned into men.”
He later entrusted Queen Artemisia with the safe conduct of his children back to their home, which was a task of great importance and some danger.
Artemisia’s immediate descendants built the Mausoleum, a famous building in Antiquity, parts of which can still be seen in the British Museum. “It’s my favourite story from Herodotus,” said Aran. “Would you like to hear my favourite story from Thucydides?”
“No,” replied Elfish. “You know I can only listen to one story at a time.”
“Very well,” said Aran. “I’m going to put Artemisia into my video game. Would you like to play my video game?”
“Absolutely not. I detest your video game. Help me with the speech.”
forty-four
ELFISH’S TWO REMAINING friends and pool partners, Tula and Lizzy, were also friends of May’s. Not as close friends as they were of Elfish, but they had visited May during a trip to Ireland last year and she had received them very hospitably.
They were therefore pleased to learn from May that Elfish was finally providing her with a secure home in England.
“Secure for a while anyway,” said Lizzy, as they sat waiting their turn on the pool table. “Although I see the government is bringing in a law making it illegal to squat.”
This was to happen soon. In Brixton, a council flat would be just about affordable to rent but these were no longer given to single people, only to families, if they were fortunate. A private flat was so far out of the reach of most people it was not worth thinking about. Even an unpleasant bedsit was beyond the range of many people unless they could manage to have the rent paid by the social security, but this was hard to organise, and anyway landlords always wanted a deposit and a month’s rent in advance so this was more or less out of the question as well.
This left squatting, and as the council had many unused flats it seemed like a sensible solution. The government, however, had now resolved to make squatting, the one remaining safety valve, illegal, and turn even more people out on to the streets.
A strong article by Chevon in her prospective newspaper had pointed out that this was very bad timing. The streets of London were already fully occupied. Homeless people were everywhere, as were beggars.
Distressingly, in recent years, these people had become far more lost and hopeless-looking than before, due to the government’s triumphant new policy of emptying and closing mental institutions, moving the occupants from these institutions out into the community. Whether or not the actual intention of this “Care in the Community” policy was that the mentally ill should now be slumped in hopeless and degraded poverty in shop doorways everywhere was not clear, but this was certainly the effect. Many of the beggars who now held out their hands in Brixton were people who were clearly unwell and obviously unable to look after themselves. Some of them were not even able to hold out their hands. They just sat in silence on the pavements, and might sit there till they died. A few would shout and run about wildly. Who was now meant to be looking after these people, nobody knew.
Those who, despite being poor, displayed strong mental health by finding an empty place and squatting in it were now to be turned out to join in the throng.
Already there were fewer squats in Brixton; soon there would be none, and a small epoch would have ended. As the people involved were not very important the question of where they were actually meant to live was not one that anyone had bothered answering.
May, however, would be secure in Elfish’s house, at least for a while.
“Where is Chevon moving to?” asked Lizzy.
“She isn’t moving,” Elfish told her frankly, but in this she made a bad misjudgement. She presumed that Tula and Lizzy would see immediately that it was a worthwhile deception in order to get May playing guitar on Saturday. They did not. They were outraged that Elfish was building up May’s hopes falsely.
“May is in a really bad way,” protested Lizzy. “When she finds out you’ve lied to her and there is no place for her to live she’ll collapse completely.”
Elfish, too obsessed to see the danger, merely shrugged. Tula and Lizzy were upset. They gathered up their leather jackets and left after lecturing Elfish briefly on what they saw as appalling behaviour.
Thus Elfish’s last remaining friends walked out of her life, leaving her with only a depressed brother and a band of people she had lied to for her own purposes.
“Well, fuck them,” muttered Elfish, and proceeded to wipe out her next opponent on the pool table, putting five balls down from her first break and finishing the game off on her next visit to the table.
In the pub people looked surreptitiously at her as she played.
“That is Elfish,” whispered one person to another. “The woman who is so obsessed with naming her band Queen Mab that she is going to recite forty-three lines of Shakespeare on stage before Mo’s gig on Saturday.”
Everyone who knew Elfish informed everyone who did not that it seemed very unlikely that she could manage it, and interest in the whole proceedings continued to grow at an alarming rate. Complete strangers would stop Elfish to ask her about it. Unable to think quite what to say, Elfish would merely grunt at them. If they persisted with their questioning she would tell them brusquely to mind their own business. This was enough to silence most people but Elfish’s aggressive manner made no impression on Mo and his friends. They laughed at her quite openly. Elfish no longer felt entirely comfortable in this pub although she had been coming here for some years. There were too many people whom she suspected of mocking her and looking forward to her downfall.
She would not stop coming though, even though it might mean standing by herself now that Tula and Lizzy would no longer come drinking with her. To abandon her usual haunts would mean accepting a defeat, which she would not do.
It was not pleasant drinking on her own, however. Even Aran would be some company but he would not come with her to this bar. As well as being too depressed to leave the house, he was worried that he might run into his old girlfriend, an event which he said would be too much for him to cope with.
forty-five
JOHN MACKIE SAT alone in his shop. There were no customers. He was watching a small television which rested on a chair behind the counter. Business was still bad but he was rather more cheerful than he had been.
This was due to Elfish. In the past few days she and May had been calling in constantly for leads, plectrums, a tuner, two fuzz-boxes, a microphone, a sustain pedal and various other bits and pieces they needed for their band. Everything they bought was the cheapest there was and even then part of the cost had to be put on to Elfish’s bill but John Mackie found that he did not mind. He had become infected with Elfish’s enthusiasm. It felt good that a woman who reminded him of his sister was coming into his shop, talking about her plans and generally being positive. Her visits gave him something to look forward to. Extending her credit was undoubtedly poor business practice, but as things were so bad it made little difference and it brought him pleasure.
W
hen she called in they would talk about what she required for the gig at the weekend and though he was not fully conversant with Elfish’s overwhelming need to call her band Queen Mab, John Mackie was aware of the gig’s importance to Elfish. He was willing to do what he could to help. The enthusiasm that this generated inside him was the first that he could remember for many years. Arriving at his shop that morning he had felt positively cheerful as he gave a little money to the homeless beggar who huddled in his doorway. The pavement outside John Mackie’s shop was a popular place for homeless beggars. John Mackie took his Christian charity seriously, and was sorry for them, and gave them money.
The television news switched to a report from Sudan.
“Here the famine is becoming more serious every day,” said a reporter, as the screen showed bodies thin beyond belief stumbling hopelessly in search of nourishment.
These pictures troubled him, and he resolved to donate money tomorrow to the famine relief fund at his church.
Aisha was watching the same programme while she painted the backdrop. “How terrible,” she said, but what she really thought was, they could all die if only my boyfriend Mory would come back, and she carried on painting to block it out of her memory.
Aran too was watching the news.
“How terrible,” he muttered, but what he really thought was much the same as Aisha. He switched off the TV and studied his cigarette cards to take his mind off his ex-girlfriend.
He frowned. Despite buying and smoking an immense amount of cigarettes he had not yet collected all twenty cards. He was stuck on eighteen. He had more than one of each of these. Of some of them he had as many as four. Yet his collection contained not a single example of either number three or number twenty.
“There is definitely something funny going on here,” he mumbled. “I don’t believe the company is distributing the cards fairly.”
Various schemes whereby the cigarette company could cheat its customers and deny them their five pounds’ reward floated through his head. There might not be any cards numbered three and twenty. This was a diabolical thought and brought Aran close to despair.
Musing further on this, though, he rejected it eventually as too risky for the company. If they did not print up any of one card then someone might notice. A disgruntled employee might talk to the newspapers. Word would leak out and the Serious Fraud Office would investigate. Altogether too dangerous for the board of directors.
They might, of course, only print up a tiny number of certain cards. It could be that there was only one number three in the whole country and it had been sent to Glasgow. That seemed quite likely, and Aran again felt desolate. Even more fiendishly, the company might be printing up an equal number of each card but ensuring the cigarette packets containing certain cards were sent only to carefully controlled locations. Every single card number twenty might at this minute be in a warehouse on the Orkney Islands, awaiting distribution to only one local tobacconist. Orkney Islanders, smoking away keenly to claim their reward, might find that every card in their collection was number twenty. And what legal redress would a person in London have against the company? None whatsoever. They did not say anywhere in their advertising that the cards were sent evenly around the country. Aran could now see clearly that the whole thing was a plot, fixed from start to finish.
“It’s no use,” he sighed. “These companies are too powerful. There is no way of winning against them.”
Elfish appeared, looking extremely dirty and demanding a poem. To her surprise, Aran had one ready.
“From Milton’s ‘L’Allegro,’” he told her. “Have I ever told you the story of Milton’s life? He was—”
“Shut up and give me the poem,” ordered Elfish, and held out her hand.
Till the livelong daylight fail,
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat;
How fairy Mab the junkets eat;
“What’s a junket?” asked Elfish. “Never mind, don’t tell me. This is fine. It will do to counter the painting of Ben Jonson’s Mab. I’ll go and put it through Mo’s door right away.”
forty-six
THE STORM ABATED but there was no respite for the exhausted occupants of the raft. The edge of the world was now in clear sight and the noise of the ocean falling away into the void rolled over them like thunder. With their situation growing ever more hopeless they began to bicker.
“Haven’t you fixed the rudder yet?” complained Cleopatra.
“I’m doing my best,” retorted Botticelli sharply.
“Well, it doesn’t seem to be having much effect.”
“I’m a painter, not an engineer.”
“I’m sure Leonardo could have done a better job,” said Cleopatra.
“So who are you to criticise?” demanded Botticelli. “All you do is strut around giving orders. I haven’t seen you actually working yet. And this from a woman who lost a whole empire just because she picked the wrong Roman.”
“Mark Antony was not the wrong Roman,” retorted Cleopatra. “We were just unfortunate to lose the battle of Actium.”
Bomber Harris, interested in this, started a conversation about wartime tactics through the ages but he was interrupted by Red Sonja.
“Shut up and keep working. It won’t be long till the gryphons come back.”
“Don’t you tell me to shut up, you ignorant barbarian. I didn’t notice you having any notable success when you tried to mend the sail.”
“Stop bickering,” said Ben Jonson, who was trying to nail the mast together. “We’ll only get out of this situation if we all work together.”
He looked pointedly at Mick Ronson, who still sat idly in the middle of the raft.
“I refuse to work any more,” said the musician. “There’s no point. We can’t win. I’m going over the edge of the world strumming my guitar.”
He launched into the solo from “Moonage Daydream,” a song he had recorded while playing with David Bowie in 1972. This solo was full of long, high, lingering notes, building upon each other to beautiful effect.
“Ship ahoy!” screamed Cleopatra, and everybody looked in alarm, assuming it was some new enemy come to torment them.
“I recognise that ship,” cried Pericles, great statesman of Athens. “It’s Queen Artemisia.”
He drew his sword, preparing to repel boarders, but it soon became clear that Artemisia was not going to attack. Her ship sailed on by, back towards the far distant shore.
Aran was programming the task for the next level. The raft had to somehow attach itself to Queen Artemisia’s trireme. If they could do this they would be towed all the way back to safety. When the occupants of the raft realised this they made frantic efforts to make ropes from whatever material they had available, fixing Red Sonja’s sword to the end as a grappling hook. They paddled frantically after the ship while Sonja prepared to cast the line.
Naturally it was hopeless. There was no way for the raft actually to come close enough to make the connection.
“You Failed,” said the caption on the screen, after Sonja’s repeated attempts to reach Artemisia’s ship with her grappling hook all fell short. “You are now plunged into the next level, right at the Edge of the World.”
forty-seven
MO’S LONG HAIR lay over his face and the carpet and Shonen sat over Mo, fucking him by the light of the television. She did this quite slowly. Her movements were noticeably more relaxed than normal.
Mo, who had been drinking, lay passively for a long time as Shonen rocked back and forth on top of him.
After a while he seemed to gather up his energy and reached up to take hold of her small breasts before dragging his body into a sitting position so that Shonen was kneeling on his lap and they kissed.
Mo had had no hesitation in asking Shonen to sleep with him towards the end of his first visit. Shonen had agreed because although she rarely had sex and thought about it seldom, there was something about Mo which she found attract
ive. Possibly it was the fact that he did not really care if she was alive or dead. More than one person had found that attractive about Mo, including Elfish. Another attraction was that he would leave immediately afterwards without bothering her for details of her personal life.
Shonen slid her hand between their bodies to grip Mo’s penis lightly between two fingers as it entered her. Mo wrapped his arms round Shonen and slid his finger up her anus. Locked together, they rocked gently backwards and forwards in the dim light of the television.
When Mo was close to orgasm he brusquely shoved Shonen off his lap and on to her back and fucked her as hard as he could till he came, then lay momentarily on top of her, dripping with sweat.
He left soon afterwards. Shonen had not come, which was frustrating. Then again, sex had taken up more than an hour during which time she had had no desire to eat or vomit.
Later, however, she felt anxious lest Elfish should find out she had been having sex with Mo. Shonen knew that Elfish would not like this and she did not want to offend her.
Elfish was in her thoughts because Mo had questioned her about Elfish’s progress with the speech. He had intimated that Shonen was unwise to help her. Shonen had explained to Mo that Elfish was doing her a favour in return although when she explained what it was Mo snorted and said that Elfish was certainly lying because no theatrical fund-raiser lived anywhere near her and anyway Elfish was a born liar.
Shonen did not believe Mo. She trusted in Elfish’s efforts to aid her. Her physical theatre group was too important for her not to believe in Elfish. Even as Mo’s semen was still trickling out of her body she was back at her sponsorship documents, and giving some thought to their next production.
For his part Mo had gained the impression that Elfish was close to success. He resolved to do something about it.
forty-eight
THE PROJECTED GIG was on Saturday and by Wednesday Elfish was an ugly sight. Unwashed for a long time, a time which included not enough sleep and too much to drink, her face was grimy, her body stank, her clothes stuck to her frame and her hair was dusty in front of her eyes.