“I don’t think I could, could I?” said Jerry.
“It’s a waste of time,” she agreed.
“Then I wouldn’t dream of it.”
He felt fresh and relaxed and he wondered why he should, considering his recent activities. He’d probably have plenty of time in which to work it out. He knew he’d be fighting trauma on all fronts, and the long coma had equipped him to fight well.
As best he could, he began putting his mind in order. During the weeks in the hospital, all he asked for was a tape recorder, tape, and cans so that there would be no trouble when he turned up the sound in moments of heavy concentration.
PHASE
2
6
Better equipped for the world than before he’d arrived at the hospital, Jerry offered a grateful hand to the doctors who had saved him; gave the rest of the staff a graceful bow; got into his Duesenberg, which had been delivered from town; and drove through the weary streets of London’s southernmost suburbs, heading for the important centre: the hot, bubbling core of the city.
He parked the car in the Shaftesbury Avenue garage he used and, stepping light, sallied out into his natural habitat.
It was a world ruled by the gun, the guitar and the needle, sexier than sex, where the good right hand had become the male’s primary sexual organ, which was just as well considering that the world population had been due to double before the year 2000.
This wasn’t the world Jerry had always known, but he could only vaguely remember a different one, so similar to this that it was immaterial which was which. The dates checked roughly, that was all he cared about, and the mood was much the same.
Recently converted from a cinema, jangling on thirteen fun-packed floors, Emmett’s Coin Casino was the place to go, Jerry decided. He turned a corner and there it was.
Its three visible sides were entirely covered with neon of every possible colour: neon words and neon pictures with six or even ten different movements. And the music didn’t blare out; it came out faint and flattened—soft, muted tones that really only suggested music.
An early-twentieth-century mystic might have thought he’d had a vision of heaven if he’d seen it, thought Jerry as he made his way slowly towards it.
It sparked and flashed, rolled and smoked, and high above everything else, seemingly suspended in the dark sky, was the single golden word EMMETTS.
At the coruscating entrance foyer, attended by young girls in military uniforms with imitation rifles with which they jokingly pretended to bar his way, Jerry changed a bundle of notes into a bag of counters for use in the fun machines. He went through the tall, shining red-and-blue turnstile and trod the thick, jazzy carpet into the first gallery, which was at ground level.
Beams of soft pastel light roamed through the semi-darkness of the hall, and money-operated machines clattered, spoke and sang. Jerry began to descend the short flight of steps, listening to the laughter of the young men and women who wandered among the machines, or lingered by them, or danced to the free music from the giant jukebox that filled the best part of one wall.
Jerry spent a few tokens on the Ray Range, operating a simulated laser beam that spat light at targets. If the ray of light struck a specified zone, you won a prize. But his score was low; he was out of practice. This spoiled his state of mind, and he began to think that if he hadn’t worried so little about marksmanship, he wouldn’t be in this mental limbo now. Catherine—or rather the lack of Catherine—had given his life the only dynamism it was likely to have. Now he lacked her for good. It was over.
Aimlessly, he wandered among the pin tables and fruit machines, bent over by happy young men who worked them excitedly, hand in hand. Jerry sighed and thought that the true aristocracy who would rule the seventies were out in force: the queers and the lesbians and the bisexuals, already half-aware of their great destiny which would be realised when the central ambivalence of sex would be totally recognised and the terms male and female would become all but meaningless. Here they were. As he wandered, he was surrounded by all the possible replacements for sex, one or several of which would become the main driving force for the humanity of circa 2000—light, colour, music, the pin tables, the pill dispensers, the gun ranges—scarcely substitutes for sex any more, but natural replacements.
The birth rate, which if it had continued at the speed predicted in the early sixties would have produced by 4000 a planet consisting, core and crust, of nothing but human beings, was a dead pigeon to modern statisticians in Europe. Europe as usual was ahead of the world.
Most of those who hadn’t been able to stand the pace had emigrated off to America, Africa, Russia, Australia, and elsewhere where they could wallow in the nostalgia produced by American fashions and television shows and mass opinion, African rural life, Russian moral attitudes, and Australian cold mutton. The flow had been two-way, of course, with the passengers for 1950 going one way and the passengers for 2000 coming the other. Only France, Switzerland and Sweden, temporal and temporary bastions, hung back and stood soon to be shaken to pieces in the imminent pre-entropic wash of crisis. It was not a change of mood, Jerry thought, but a change of mind.
Jerry no longer had any idea whether the world he inhabited was “real” or “false”; he had long since given up worrying about it.
By the spinning Racette, where you could back a model horse named after your favourite winner of the season, Jerry met Shades, an acquaintance.
Shades was a killer from California who had once told Jerry that he could prove he’d assassinated both Kennedys. When Jerry, who had believed him, had asked why, Shades had replied rather self-consciously, “The thrill of big game, you know. I’d considered having a go at your Queen, but it wouldn’t have been the same. I got the biggest. The world cried for Jack Kennedy, you know.”
“And Valentino. You could have led up to him.”
“No, if I’d done that the trauma wouldn’t have been so great—people would have been half-ready. I got me the Sun King. What a charge. Oh, boy!”
“What did you do it with? Mistletoe?”
“An Italian Mauser,” Shades had told him, offended by his levity.
Shades had two girls with him: a redhead of about sixteen and a brunette of about twenty-five. Shades’s lamp-tanned face turned to grin at Jerry. He was naked apart from a pair of shorts and a bolero. His real clothing, his essential clothing, was his dark glasses. He looked out of place. The girls both wore tweed trouser suits. Their hair was short, and their green-highlighted make-up glinted under the coloured beams.
The older girl had a newssheet in her hand. Jerry looked at her. “You’re Swedish?”
She didn’t seem surprised at his guess. “Ja—and you?”
“No. I’m English.”
“Ja so!”
Jerry leaned forward and took the sheet from the Swedish girl’s hand. “Anything new lately?” He’d been wondering if the raid on the house had reached the sheets. It was unlikely.
“Britain’s in some sort of debt,” said the young girl. “It’s something to do with the crime-rate doubling.”
Jerry glanced over the sheet, then reversed it to look at the comics. Instead there was a photo covering the whole side: a mass car smash with mangled corpses everywhere. Jerry supposed that the picture sold sheets.
“Well, Shades,” he said, handing the sheet back to the girl, “what are you up to these days?”
“Pianotron at the Friendly Bum. Why don’t you come along and sit in?”
“Good idea.”
“I’m not due till the third set around three. What do we do in the meantime?”
“Help me get rid of these tokens, then we’ll talk about it.”
The Swedish girl attached herself to Jerry, and they made a happy circuit of the tables. The girl chewed gum steadily, and Jerry was slightly put out by this, but was mollified as her little hand tentatively touched him up. It was a nice thought, he felt, as he restrained her.
A stooped old man passed
between the tables. He had long white hair almost to his waist; a long white beard to match; a pink, soft skin; and a small briefcase under his arm. He was stooped almost horizontally, and his little pale blue eyes seemed as bright as the bulbs on the pin tables. He nodded at Jerry and stopped politely.
“Good evening, Mr Cornelius. We haven’t seen much of you lately, or is it me who’s been out of touch?” His voice was breathy.
“You’re never out of touch, Derek. How’s the astrology business?”
“Can’t complain. Want a chart done?”
“I’ve had too many, Derek. You’ll never work it out.”
“There’s something very odd there, you know. I’ve been doing charts for sixty years and never come up against one like yours. It’s as if you didn’t exist.” His laugh was breathy, too.
“Come off it, Derek—you’re only forty-six.”
“Oh, you know that, do you? Well, thirty years, anyway.”
“And you only took up astrology ten years ago. Just before you gave up your job in the Foreign Office.”
“Who’ve you been talking to?”
“You.”
“I don’t always tell the truth, you know.”
“No. Where’s Olaf?”
“Oh, he’s about.” Derek looked sharply up at Jerry. “It wasn’t you, was it?”
“What?”
“Olaf’s left me. I taught him the lot. I loved him. And it’s rare for a Sagittarian to love a Virgo, you know. Scorpios are all right. Olaf ran off with some crackpot star watcher I’ve never heard of. I just wondered. Do you know, when I first started up professionally there weren’t more than six what you might call real astrologers moving around the way I do. Know how many there are now?”
“Six hundred.”
“You’re almost right. I can’t count them all. On the other hand, custom’s gone up. But not really proportionately.”
“Don’t worry, Derek. You’re still the best.”
“Well, spread it around. No, you see, I’d heard Olaf was here. I’m sure once he sees me—in the flesh, as it were—he’ll realise his mistake.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“Good lad.” Derek patted Jerry’s arm and sloped off.
“Is he very wise?” asked the Swedish girl.
“He’s sharp,” said Jerry. “And that’s what matters.”
“Every time,” she said, taking his hand. He let her lead him back to where Shades was lying across a table with his nose pressed to the glass as little balls smacked against little coils and bounced about at random until they hit other little coils. Shades’s hands gripped the edges of the table, and when a bell rang the knuckles whitened.
“This is what I call conditioning, Jerry,” he said, not looking up. “Get a load of me. I’m Pavlov’s poodle!”
“Let’s see you dribble, you old-fashioned sweetie,” Jerry smiled, taking it easy. He was relaxing now, moving with the tide. He pinched Shades’s bottom, and Shades kicked backward with a low-heeled cowboy boot.
“You riding me?”
“Not tonight, honey.”
This was more like it, thought Jerry, taking a deep breath of smoke, scent and incense. He felt on top again. Just on top of himself.
Shades laughed. He had been concentrating on the little steel balls.
Looking about, Jerry recognised Derek’s Olaf having a go on the Killagal range. You had ten shots in which to knock down six out of ten life-size plastic nude girls with something made to look like a harpoon gun. He wasn’t doing too well. Olaf was a slight, pinch-faced lad who gave the impression that someone had had him filleted. He put down the gun and went over to the machine that read palms. He put his money in and laid his palm limply on the section made of pulsating rubber. As Jerry approached, the machine cut off and a little card appeared in a slot. Olaf removed it and studied it. He frowned, shaking his head.
“Hello, Olaf. Derek’s looking for you.”
“That’s none of your business.” Olaf’s voice was contentious and whining. It was his normal voice.
“No. Derek asked me to let him know if I saw you.”
“I suppose you want something from me. Well, I just spent my last guinea, and I don’t have anything to do with Arians.”
“You’re not a Jewish boy, are you?” Jerry said. “Don’t mind my asking, but you’re not, are you?”
“Shut up!” Olaf’s voice stayed at the same pitch and tone, but became more precise. “I’m sick and tired of people like you.”
“No offence, no offence, but…”
“Shut up!”
“I only thought, since you said…”
“You can’t take the mickey out of me, you know.” Olaf turned his back. Jerry skipped round and got in front of him again. “Now, look,” said Olaf.
“Did anyone ever tell you had a beautiful body, Olaf?”
“Don’t try to make up for it now,” said Olaf, his voice becoming slightly less precise and a trifle softer. “Anyway, you’re an Arian. I can’t have anything to do with Arians. It would be disastrous.”
“Got to keep pure, Olaf, eh?”
“Don’t start that again. People like you are scum from the lowest pits. You’ve got no understanding of what it’s like to be a real, spiritual human being, knowing the infinite—” Olaf gave a thin, superior smile. “Scum from the lowest pits.”
“That’s what I mean. You don’t sound like a Jewish boy.”
“Shut up.”
“All right—go and see Derek.”
“I want nothing to do with that pervert!”
“Pervert? Why pervert?”
“It’s nothing to do with sex—you see what I mean about having no understanding?—it’s to do with his ideas. He’s perverted the whole science of astrology. Have you seen the way he draws up his charts?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“His charts? Haven’t you seen his charts? He’ll do anything for money.”
“Oh, not anything, Olaf.”
“Where is he?”
“I last saw him over there.” Jerry pointed through the cloudy semi-darkness.
“He’s lucky I’ll still speak to him.” Olaf squiggled off. Jerry leaned against the palm-reading machine, watching him. The Swedish girl came up.
“I don’t know how long we’ll be,” she said. “Shades still has many tokens left. He has been winning.”
“We could go and smoke something at a schwartzer club I know where we wouldn’t be unwelcome and the drumming is great. Only if I want to play tonight, it won’t help by the time I get to the Friendly Bum.”
“You mean marijuana, I think. I don’t want to do that. Are you a ‘junkie’?”
“Not generally speaking. I leave that up to my brother. We could just go there.”
“Where is it?”
“Ladbroke Grove.”
“That’s far.”
“Not that far—only just out of the Area. The other side of no man’s land.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.” He glanced over to where Shades was banging a machine. The TILT sign flashed on.
“Fixed!” wept Shades. “Fixed!”
A very cool negro attendant in a white suit glided into sight. He was smiling. “What’s the matter, sonny?”
“This table is fixed!”
“Don’t be childish. What else you expect?”
Shades appeared to be glowering behind his tired sunglasses. He shrugged rapidly several times. The negro put his head on one side and grinned, waiting.
“You put the odds pretty high in your favour,” snarled Shades.
“It’s what you got to do, man. Any man’s got to do something like that these days, you know. Eh?”
“This whole damned country’s crooked.”
“You just discovering that, my friend? Oh dear, oh dear.”
“It’s always been crooked. Sanctimonious crooks.”
“Oh, no. They’re pretty straightforward these days. They
can afford to be—or thought they could…”
Jerry looked on, amused, as the two ex-patriots talked their cheap philosophy.
Shades shrugged once and turned away. The negro strode off, proud of himself.
Shades’s little girl friend trotted across the floor and joined him. He put an arm around her and steered her towards Jerry and the Swedish girl.
“Let’s go, Jerry.”
“All right.”
They spent the last of Jerry’s tokens on coffee and pills and set off for the Friendly Bum in Villiers Street, which ran off Trafalgar Square alongside Charing Cross Station, elbowing through the gay night life of the city.
Dragsters, m & f, thronged the Friendly Bum, which was as packed with people as it was with beat, and it was filled to capacity with both. Behind the spotlights, which were turned on the audience, a group could just be made out. A vast amplifier formed the back of the low stage, and a beautiful blend of Hammond organ, pianotron, drums, bass, rhythm and lead guitar, and alto and baritone saxophones, swam out of it, playing “Symphony Sid” with a slow, fugal feeling.
On the low ceiling revolved an old-fashioned dancehall globe made of faceted glass. The lights caught the green, the red, the violet, the gold, the silver and the orange. Light struck it from all directions and was reflected back again so that the photons fairly flew in the Friendly Bum.
They squeezed through a crowd that was all one mass from which heads and limbs seemed to protrude at random. It was almost unbearably hot.
On the left of the stage was a bar. On the right was a coffee counter. Both were busy. Leaning against the bars were West Indians, elegant in Harlem styles like chorus boys from Porgy and Bess. They almost all had thin moustaches and contemptuous looks mainly reserved for the other, less well-dressed West Indians who clapped their hands to every beat but the one the drummer was using.
As they reached the coffee bar on their way to a door behind it marked PRIVATE, Jerry recognised one of the blacks as a musician he had once played with. It was ‘Uncle’ Willie Stevens, who played flute and tenor and had once done vocals with a since disbanded group called The Allcomers. The group had become popular when it was playing at the Friendly Bum, and the news had spread, until the place had been filled with nothing but groupies and journalists.