‘I see,’ said Jonny.
‘Because no one ever tells one that they appreciate one’s work.’
“One” is something of a dickhead,’ observed Mr Giggles.
‘So tell me,’ said Andi, ‘this band of yours, Dry Rise—’
‘Dry Rot,’ said Jonny.
‘Most humorous, yes. It’s booga-booga music, is it?’
‘Pure Kleenex,’ said Mr Giggles.
‘No one can hear you but me,’ whispered Jonny, behind his hand. ‘And I’m not listening.’
‘Well,’ said Andi, ‘if you’d all like to chip in and bring in the gear from the limo …’
‘Did anyone bring in our gear from our van?’ Jonny asked.
‘While you were in the bog,’ O’Fagin chipped in, ‘most of the women in the bar helped to bring it in.’
‘Cool,’ said Jonny.
‘And they set it up and did a sound check,’ said O’ Fagin.
‘While I was in the bog?’
‘Time goes fast when—’ Paul began.
‘I’m sure it does and time is money,’ said Andi Evans. ‘So if you’ll all chip in, it will all be chipper. Togetherness is the new singularity, you know. Pip pip.’
‘No one really talks like that,’ said Mr Giggles. ‘He’s faking it.’
‘Don’t you love the way he talks?’ Paul whispered behind his hand to Jonny. ‘He’s always at the cutting edge. Apparently posh is the new common. Cool, eh?’
‘Cool,’ said Jonny. ‘I’ll help unload the gear.’
Loading and unloading. A lot of warfare consists of this. And marching, of course. And waiting for something to happen, or waiting to be ordered to make something happen. Then there’s the actual fighting. Then you take a stray round in the head, probably from friendly fire, and then you’re dead.
Which is, pretty much, warfare.
But there’s a lot of loading and unloading.
And in peacetime, when you’re in a militaryish situation, a security situation, which might involve terrorists, there is going to be a lot of loading and unloading.
There just is.
In the great munition stores beneath Mornington Crescent Underground Station, where vast quantities of ordnance stand ready when required, there was a great deal of loading going on.
Constable Cartwright had been put in charge of this.
Because, when asked for a volunteer, he had put his hand up.
‘You’d think there’d be other ranks involved in this operation, wouldn’t you?’ he asked Constable Cassidy, as Constable Cassidy helped to load a crate of anti-matter grenades onto a canvas-covered lorry.
‘It’s egalitarian,’ said Constable Cassidy, who had found the word in a dictionary and been meaning to find a use for it. ‘We are all constables together, bonded as one against a common enemy, receiving our orders from a single source.’
‘I never did get a straight answer to my question,’ said Constable Cartwright. ‘We’re guarding a museum, as far as I can make out, but why and from whom – these are somewhat grey areas.’
‘Ours is not to reason why,’ said Constable Tennyson.
‘You’re not in our team,’ said Constable Rogers. ‘You’re supposed to be in that team over there, with Constable Byron, Constable Keats and Constable Wordsworth.’*
Constable Tennyson sauntered away.
‘Where are the invisibility suits?’ asked Constable Cartwright.
‘I’ve got mine on,’ said Constable Deputy Dawg.
‘Who said that?’
‘It’s me, I’m here.’
‘Isn’t that brilliant,’ said Constable Cartwright. ‘You can’t see him – he’s completely invisible.’
‘No, I’m just tying my shoelace,’ said Constable Deputy Dawg, and he stood up.
‘Whoa,’ said Constable Cartwright. ‘That’s a great-looking suit – it’s got, like, little solar panels all over it.’
‘Shall I switch it on?’
Constable Deputy Dawg switched on his suit. There was a sort of humming sound and then sort of a popping sound. These were followed by a very definite screaming sound. Then the sound and sight of an explosion.
‘Well, he’s certainly vanished,’ said Constable Cassidy.
‘The bits of him that I’ve got all over me haven’t,’ said Constable Passing Cloud. ‘Anyone know which truck my tribe is travelling in?’
*
‘I travelled in tobaccos for a while,’ Andi Evans told Paul as he tinkered about with the mobile sound-recording console.
‘That must have been dull,’ said Paul. ‘I thought you’d feed all the tracks onto a laptop – surely that’s a very big console.’
‘Dull as dishwater,’ said Andi. ‘Don’t know why I mentioned it now. And as to the laptop, I can’t be having with them. I bought this big console from BIG CONSOLES ‘’ US. Big is the new small, you know.’
O’Fagin waggled a finger at Paul. ‘It’s about time you got started,’ he said as he waggled. ‘I’ll want you done and dusted in less than an hour, then Ghandi’s Hairdryer go on. You may be good. But they used to be famous.’
‘Ghandi’s Hairdryer?’ said Paul. ‘I thought they went dirt in about nineteen eighty-four.’
‘Apparently not,’ said O’Fagin. ‘Been playing reunion gigs at Butlins every season ever since. And they’ve volunteered to play tonight to raise money for the rebuilding fund.’
‘But we were headlining tonight.’
‘Only because you were the only band playing tonight.’
‘Ghandi’s Hairdryer,’ said Andi, in an approving tone. ‘They used to be a favourite of mine, back in my early days of rock journalism. Is Cardinal Cox still the lead singer?’
‘The fat bloke over there with the baldy head.’
Andi glanced over. ‘He hasn’t changed a bit.’
‘Hold on here,’ said Paul to O’Fagin. ‘This isn’t fair.’
‘Don’t be uncharitable,’ said O’Fagin. ‘It’s all for a good cause. I need a holiday and I could hardly afford the kind of holiday I booked this afternoon on my wages alone.’
‘Leave it,’ said Jonny to Paul. ‘We’re better than Ghandi’s Hairdryer ever were. We’ll make this a gig that no one will ever forget.’
‘Yeah,’ said Desmond. ‘A gig to remember. To a gig to remember.’ He raised his pint glass.
‘To Dry Rot,’ said Jonny, raising his.
‘To the future,’ said Molly. ‘Does anyone have a Kleenex? I think I’m coming down with a cold.’
36
O’Fagin the publican took the stage.
‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen,’ went O’Fagin. And then he went, ‘One-two, one-two, can you hear me?’ But as the microphone wasn’t switched on, he was ignored to a man.
Paul had his bass guitar out of its case and was strapping the blighter on.
‘Make the bloody mic work, if you please,’ said O’Fagin.
Paul reached over and switched on the mic.
And oh that glorious feedback.
It drew the attention of the crowd and O’Fagin called for order.
‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen,’ he began once more, ‘I would like to say that it is with deep joy that I gaze down from this raft of a stage across this sea of smiling faces. But, alas, I am a man cast adrift by fate. Doomed like the Flying Dutchman to sail on for ever without ever reaching port.’
‘He’s going for a nautical feel,’ said Jonny to Paul.
Jonny had the Gibson out of its case. And he was strapping it on.
‘He claims to have once been a lone yachtsman,’ said Paul.
‘He’s a bloody pirate,’ said Mr Giggles.
‘But by the yo-ho-hos,’ O’Fagin went on, ‘and the cruel, stormy waters that have battered this landlocked galleon, threatening to drag it down to Davy Jones’s locker—’
‘Get on with it,’ cried a sportswear wearer.
‘I’ll drink to that,’ cried a lady in a straw hat.
‘Migh
ty flood tides,’ continued O’Fagin. ‘But here, before me, a lighthouse, shining its blessed light through the fog, leading me safely into port through the largesse, oh, the generosity … ’ Words failed O’Fagin, so he wrung his hands and danced a little hornpipe. ‘Pieces of eight,’ he sang.
‘I do believe he’s lost it altogether,’ said Paul. ‘It’s been a few years coming, but I knew it would get here eventually.’
‘This pub,’ cried O’Fagin, tears in his eyes and fire in his belly, ‘would go under if it were not for you. You, my patrons, whose generosity tonight, on this benefit night, will save this dry-docked beer galleon.’
The crowd were growing somewhat restless.
And this restlessness took on a new and urgent form as Jonny Hooker plugged Robert Johnson’s guitar into the amp and strummed out a random chord.
‘Oooh’ and ‘Aaaah’ went the crowd.
O’Fagin opened his mouth to speak further nonsense, thought better of it and closed it again. He’d take the hat round later, he thought, that would be for the best.
Gazz the lead singer, Molly to his mum, grasped the available mic. ‘Hello, Ealing,’ he bawled into it. ‘We’re Dry Rot and we’ve come for your daughters. Those we can’t f*ck, we eat.’
‘He nicked that line,’ said the lady in the straw hat. ‘From a police constable, I think.’
‘First song,’ bawled Gazz, ‘is “Johnny B. Goode”.’
And so should the first song always be.
There are certain great rock ’n’ roll songs in this world. Great rock ’n’ roll songs. ‘Johnny B. Goode’ ranks amongst the very greatest. And when it comes to rock, then you can’t best Motörhead’s, ‘Ace of Spades’.
Jonny Hooker had played rhythm and lead on Dry Rot’s opening number at least fifty times. But never before had Jonny played it quite like this. Jonny found his fingers finding notes between the notes, forming figures and chords that transcended anything Chuck Berry could ever have imagined, even in his most lavatorial dreams.
Jonny would be good tonight, and tomorrow would be another day.
‘Mount up, gentlemen.’ Constable Cartwright stood on the roof of what was to be the lead truck. He was clad in his invisibility suit but had not, as yet, switched it on. Within the truck, in the company of much advanced ordnance, sat three other constables. They were wearing their suits. They hadn’t switched them on yet, either.
‘I want this done by the numbers.’ Constable Cartwright was giving a good account of himself. Cometh the hour then cometh the man and all that kind of business. He had acquired an electric megaphone to shout through and he was shouting through it with spirit. ‘Let’s do what we’re paid for, people,’ he shouted.
In the control room sat Thompson, before many monitor screens, each displaying the view as seen through a helmet-mounted camera. At least a third of them were fully functional, which Thompson considered a good average. His microphone was clearly working properly, as it conveyed his words directly into the earpiece worn by Constable Cartwright. Who repeated these words, as he had been ordered to do, through his electric megaphone.
Thompson leaned back in his chair and nodded in satisfaction. So far so good, he thought.
‘There’s no cause for worry here,’ he said, his hand suddenly over his microphone, his head turned to the figure who sat in a darkened corner of the room. ‘I’ve double the men I need for this type of operation. It will be fine, I promise you.’
The face of Inspector Westlake moved out from the darkness and into the light. It was a somewhat ashen face with dark half-circles under the eyes. The inspector’s normally ruddy countenance had undergone a radical and unfetching change in the space of a few short hours.
‘You look done in, old chap,’ said Thompson. ‘What say you get some shuteye? I’ll take care of things.’
Inspector Westlake shook his head. ‘This is bad,’ said he. ‘This is very, very bad.’
‘Listen, old chap, you showed me those papers that you say were found in the pocket of a man who somehow turned into a mummy. I have read these papers, and I agree that if what is written there were to come to pass, then doom and gloom all round and woe unto the House of Windsor and let’s all hunker down for the nuclear winter. But there is no reason to believe that the madness in those papers should ever become reality.’
‘But it’s them,’ said the inspector. ‘Them.’
‘The Secret Order of the Golden Sprout?’
‘Not them.’ Inspector Westlake buried his face in his hands. ‘I, like yourself, am of the Brotherhood. We understand how the world really works, who pulls the strings. We know that matters of world importance are far too important to be left in the hands of career politicians.’
‘Hush with such words,’ said Thompson. ‘Walls have ears and all that kind of thing.’
‘Even here?’
‘There’s no telling. Wait, I will engage the anti-bug.’ Thompson reached towards his control panel and thumbed switches. ‘The Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy’ welled from a speaker system. Thompson removed his microphone, switched it off and laid it aside. ‘Brother Westlake,’ he said, ‘I know as well as you, as do all within the craft who have obtained to a certain degree, that the Secret Brotherhood or the Parliament of Five, as we more rightly know them, control the controllers. Wise and learned men order our existence, a hereditary chain whose links have remained forged together for over two hundred years. Wars that are waged are waged because it is economically expedient that they should be waged. This world of ours is a closed system; the books must always balance; there is no help to come from outside. It is business. Taking care of business. And, although I hate to use the terrible phase, at the end of the day, all is well. Always has been well, always will be well.’
‘But these papers. This music, these words.’ Inspector Westlake tore the ancient papers from his pocket and flung them at Thompson. ‘This is an overthrow of the system. This is a coup d’état.
‘It is fantasy,’ said Thompson, raking up the papers, which had fluttered down at his feet. ‘We know that our men, the Parliament of Five, control the controllers of this world. But these papers suggest that the controllers of the controllers are themselves subject to being controlled by another party: a Secret Secret Brotherhood, one that has existed for centuries, unimagined even by the Golden Sprouters. One that can orchestrate the actions of Mankind through what? This music? It is ludicrous, impossible. It is conspiracy theory taken to the point of madness.’
‘I have played the music,’ said Inspector Westlake.
‘You have?’
‘On my little banjolele. I always carry it with me when I am away from home.’
Ahem,’ went Thompson.
‘That music is not the work of man.’
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘I mean that it’s something more. Something evil. I was only able to play the first couple of bars before—’
Inspector Westlake brought his hands into the light.
They were bound with bandages.
And blood showed through these bindings.
And blood there was on Jonny Hooker’s fingers.
But Jonny didn’t care.
Dry Rot were done with ‘Johnny B. Goode’ now. Andi Evans had committed it to the big tape spools on his big tape deck. Andi Evans had the look of a penitent who has unexpectedly been brought into the presence of God. He did have that on tape, didn’t he? He had his headphones on. He wound back the tape and he played the last bit again. He did have it.
And in his long years as a music journo, as a record producer, as a man-who-would-be-Brian-Epstein, Andi had heard much music, much, much, much. And most of it God-awful crap. And many guitar solos had he heard. But nothing, nothing, nothing on the scale of the one that Jonny Hooker had just played. And that was only the warm-up number.
And it was an acoustic guitar!
What would be coming next?
‘Thank you. Thank you,’ went Gazz into the mic. ‘Than
k you very much indeed.’
For the crowd was applauding, wildly, madly. Cheering and whooping and such. And the young woman with the outstanding characteristics, who had earlier made Jonny’s year-so-far, had been joined in front of the stage by several other such women, all with similarly outstanding characteristics and all most enthusiastic.
‘We are rocking here.’ Paul nudged Jonny. ‘You’re doing really amazing, mate.’
Jonny Hooker nodded and did a guitar soloette. The crowd went wilder and the women did blowings of kisses.
‘I’d like to take the credit,’ said Jonny.
‘Then do,’ said Paul.
‘But,’ went Jonny.
‘What?’ went Paul.
‘Well, nothing, I suppose.’ And Jonny looked out at the crowd: the yelling, cheering, applauding crowd, the outstanding young women. He’d wanted this all his life – fame, adulation, recognition. He had wanted to do it by himself, though. Wanted it to be his talent, his skill, not some – what was it? – magical guitar? Possessed guitar? The guitar that the Devil had tuned that midnight in Clarksdale, sometime in the nineteen thirties, at the crossroads of Highways 49 and 61.
But then, of course.
Jonny’s head was swimming. But there was a ‘then, of course’. This ‘then of course’ was, then, of course, perhaps this wasn’t Robert Johnson’s guitar at all, just a really good guitar. The really good guitar that Jonny had always wanted but could never afford. The one he had always said he would be able to play on like a mad angel, if he’d ever been given the chance.
Perhaps this music was his music, born of his talent, finally being given its head. Finally set free of his troubled soul, as it were.
‘Daydreaming?’ Paul asked Jonny.
‘Sorry,’ Jonny said. ‘I was miles away.
‘Are you ready for the last number?’ Paul asked.
‘Last number?’ said Jonny. ‘We’ve only just started.’
Paul shook his head. ‘We’ve been playing solid for two hours, mate. I’m done. We’re all done – except for you. Andi Evans has almost run out of tape – he says only one more number.’