Shonen had filled in every one of her funding forms and made a start on combing through her large directory of organisations who might give them some sponsorship. Her renewed enthusiasm had apparently brought her ossified theatre group back to life. In various parts of South London the young men and women of the group were deciding that no, they would not try and get a part in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, but stick to the task they believed in. They were now trying harder than ever to impersonate buildings, crows, aeroplanes and DNA molecules. (Think of the immense spirit contained within a DNA molecule!) Already discussions about a new production were under way. Shonen's bulimia was too deep-seated to be shifted by an improvement of her mood but she was bingeing
and vomiting far less. When Aisha had phoned her at Elfish's suggestion to share their troubles, Shonen had taken seriously for the first time ever a suggestion that she should seek some sort of help.
Equally as remarkable was the transformation Elfish had wrought on her own household. Just two days before, the only communication between Elfish and her flatmates had been in the form of mutual abuse. Elfish had been banished to her room, a pariah, hated by all. Meanwhile, the four young women sat downstairs, unhappily pondering the ruins of their dream of starting a magazine. Now they were busy getting articles together, planning layouts and phoning up printers for quotes, confident that it would happen one day, and possibly soon. Gail was actually playing bass for Elfish and in between magazine work the women were tirelessly publicising the gig. They were telling all their friends, and there were many of them, to come along, making sure they brought fliers for Elfish's band. The point of this was that not only was admission cheaper with a leaflet but the more of them that were handed in the larger Elfish's split of the takings would be.
So the house was suddenly a place of cheerful activity, and if Elfish was no more friendly herself than before, no one minded. They put it down to the quite understandable stress of getting a band ready for a gig at such short notice, and excused her.
When Aran heard later that day that Cary and Lilac had gained employment in a music shop entirely because they knew Elfish it seemed to him that his sister must now be spreading a benevolent magic over the very ground on which she walked.
Musing on all these changes Aran realised that he himself had not been unaffected. Whereas before he had sat for weeks on end in his darkened room, too depressed to move, now he was out and about picking up things for Elfish, taking messages, checking equipment,
and so on. On the night of the gig he was to act as roadie and help set up the equipment. He was looking forward to this. It was a long time since he had looked forward to anything. And just a few moments ago he had positively leapt at the challenge of finding a new poem for his sister, something he would have strenuously avoided doing only a few days before.
He gazed at Elfish and marvelled. Because of her a host of shattered and defeated people seemed to have come back to life. That Elfish, enemy of humanity, should be responsible for all this was almost beyond belief. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps his sister might actually be some sort of latter-day saint. With her filthy skin, rancid hair, ragged clothes and wild eyes, she was even beginning to look the part.
He remembered, though, that everything Elfish was doing was entirely towards her own ends, each action pushing her along till she could fulfil her passionate desire to claim the name of Queen Mab for her own. And each action had started off with a lie, possibly a serious and damaging lie, the effects of which would surely soon make themselves felt in the most painful way possible. Aran frowned. As far as he could see, Elfish was doomed. He could only hope that her doom did not arrive until after the gig.
fifty-nine
MO WAS PLANNING a more comprehensive doom for Elfish than Aran could possibly imagine. Through his many friends in Brixton he was aware of all the varied promises that Elfish had made to people and he knew them all to be untrue. He intended to use this knowledge to crush Elfish.
He now realised that he might have acted too hastily in trying to turn Shonen against Elfish. Elfish had had time to convince Shonen of her sincerity and she was a supremely convincing liar. Mo would not make the same mistake again.
All in all, Mo was confident of defeating his enemy and his life felt good, especially with Amnesia around. As a couple they got on very well. The only small blemish on his existence was the occasional presence of Cary and Lilac in his flat. Mo was no more enthusiastic about them than anyone else. Each time they waltzed in holding hands and looking lovingly at each other he wished mournfully that Cody could have picked someone else to model for him.
Elfish was still beset with problems, the main one being the speech. She just could not learn under such pressure. Line twenty-seven was her absolute limit and even that was shaky. Tonight she was visiting Shonen yet again and if she failed once more she would
have no other opportunity. Not surprisingly, although she had successfully contrived to get everyone she needed working for her, her mood did not lighten and her tension did not lift. Her lips became tighter, her eyes narrower, and her distress at the heat more acute.
To protect her eyes from the sun Elfish wore her new and impenetrable sunglasses. Over these her beaded fringes formed a second line of defence. The beads would chatter lightly on the lenses as she turned her head this way and that, as she was now prone to do in her nervousness. On her head she wore a black baseball cap with the peak angled sharply down so that her face was barely visible. With the fringes, sunglasses and angled hat, and her head tilted well forward when she walked, it was hard to see how she could even put one foot in front of the other without crashing into something.
When she was forced to emerge from these layers of protection, as for instance when reading the speech, she blinked and strained as if in pain, even in the gloom of Aran's flat.
“I can't remember it,” she said flatly.
“Tonight at Shonen's you'll succeed,” Aran told her. Unfortunately his voice was patently insincere. Elfish scowled at him.
“Damn right I will.”
sixty
ELFISH SUFFERED TOTAL failure at Shonen's. Not one line of Mercutio's speech would lodge in her mind although after so many repetitions Shonen now knew the speech herself. The actress had picked it up easily, without even trying.
Shonen, by now a very enthusiastic supporter of Elfish's efforts, encouraged, cajoled, bullied and pleaded with Elfish to remember her lines but Elfish just could not do it. The knowledge of Mo's animosity towards her, the strain of getting her band together, the continual appearance of poems and fragments of writing about Queen Mab and the constant gossiping and questioning of her acquaintances and enemies had affected her to too great an extent.
“I'm defeated,” said Elfish.
“You are never defeated,” said Shonen.
“This time I am. See you at the gig.”
Elfish's face was set in a grim frown. She picked up the speech and left. The night was humid and Elfish sweated inside her leather jacket as she walked through Shonen's estate. The moon shone down but it did not bring her comfort. Nor did the two men who crossed the road to follow her, forcing Elfish to accelerate, hurrying along till she reached the relative security of the main street. Elfish
reflected grimly that if she lived in some country where guns were freely available she would have no qualms about shooting anyone who followed her along a dark street.
Around one in the morning she was sitting alone with a beer in a bar full of late drinkers. She looked tired, dirty and defeated. She was thinking for the first time ever that she really was going to fail. This had not occurred to her before. When she had claimed previously that it was all too difficult she had not actually believed it. Now she did.
Melancholy overwhelmed her. She could feel her dreams slowly seeping their way out of her body and disappearing towards the moon.
Elfish sipped her beer and thought about her band, and thought about Mo. They used to have good times together, playing pool in the pub, drinking, playing guitar, going to gigs. They had good times in bed as well. Rather unwillingly she found herself thinking of a morning when she had woken up before him. She had risen from bed and dressed and was about to leave when she noticed that Mo, still asleep, was looking particularly attractive. So she leant over to kiss him and he opened his eyes and grinned at her, at which Elfish simply threw back the bedclothes, pulled down her leggings, sat on top of him and fucked him. Mo, still bleary-eyed, did little except lie there smiling. Elfish, aroused by being fully dressed in her heavy leather jacket and motorbike boots, on top of Mo who was naked, warm and unusually passive, came quickly and departed. Mo went back to sleep. Elfish remembered it fondly. Or bitterly, she was not sure which. At least she could remember it which was more than could be said for some of her more recent sexual encounters.
A young man sat down beside her, introducing himself as Joseph. Elfish rudely told him to disappear. He offered her a beer. Elfish accepted it and told him she still wanted him to disappear.
“I recognise you,” he said. “You used to know Mo. I know Mo. Only last week I was in bed with him.”
Elfish looked up in wonderment. She could barely imagine Mo being in bed with a man.
“That's difficult to believe.”
The young man told her various personal details about Mo and it seemed that he had indeed been in bed with Mo.
Elfish looked at Joseph in a more interested manner. He seemed to have money to spare and bought more beer for them both. Elfish, close to defeat and in need of comfort, accepted one drink after another. She sucked down the alcohol as quickly as it was provided and was soon drunk. It did cross her mind that this was her very last chance to go home and attempt to learn the speech but she did not have the willpower to try again.
Joseph asked if he could accompany her home. Elfish examined him. He was not unattractive, with long messy hair like Mo's and a denim jacket that was rotting with age.
Elfish generally liked fucking Mo's lovers. They walked back to her house together, with Elfish leaning drunkenly on his shoulder for support. Joseph produced a flat half bottle of whisky from his inside pocket and Elfish was soon totally intoxicated. She had to be helped up the stairs to her bedroom. She was far too drunk actually to do anything with Joseph. Trying to undress was a seemingly impossible series of actions involving her arms getting stuck in the ripped lining of her jacket and her leggings becoming tangled somewhere between her thighs and her motorbike boots. This did not mean she was not enjoying the experience. Joseph was reasonably attractive and having sex with him would probably take her mind off her imminent defeat.
She was, however, unable to do anything demonstrative like put her arms around Joseph, or kiss him, or keep her eyes open. She fell asleep several times while taking her clothes off, waking each time
to a room that was spinning round her head. Elfish was too drunk to carry it through. Just at the point of intercourse she vomited in a powerful stream that splashed over Joseph's face and neck. Joseph, proving himself to be far less hardy than Aba had been, was utterly appalled, and angrily rose from the bed.
“You're disgusting,” he said, wiping his face with one of Elfish's T-shirts, a poor choice as far as cleanliness was concerned. He threw on his clothes. At the door he turned and looked contemptuously at the semi-conscious Elfish.
“I never slept with Mo. But Mo told me you'd fuck me if I said I had. He asked me to sleep with you tonight to prevent you getting on with your speech. I guess I've succeeded in that anyway, though I wouldn't even have tried if I'd known how filthy your body was.”
Joseph walked out of the room. Elfish lay still for a few moments. Using all her reserves of willpower she opened her eyes. She dragged herself on to her hands and knees and crawled downstairs. In the toilet she was sick again. Drink, tension and lack of sleep had severely weakened her constitution and she struggled to control her trembling limbs. She splashed water on to her face and tried to drive away her nausea by sheer willpower.
“Very clever, Mo,” muttered Elfish with venom. “Enough to defeat a lesser woman. Fortunately I am not a lesser woman.”
Furious and appalled at the dark treachery of his plotting she began to haul herself back up the stairs. Inside her small body her dreams and ambitions were welling up with renewed vigour.
sixty-one
THE RAFT CAME thundering out of the underground cavern and plunged over the huge roaring waterfall at the edge of the world. This was surely the end. Even Red Sonja, bravest of Barbarian warriors, screamed in fear. The ocean, slipping off the edge of the planet, cast a vast, violent spray of water far out into space. Each of the doomed souls clung on in terror as the huge volume of cascading water carried them down into the limitless void.
This is the end, thought Mick Ronson, miserably, his guitar now waterlogged and unplayable. And I still think I should have been more successful.
This is the end, thought Cleopatra, her fine Egyptian clothes and make-up ragged and smeared. And I should not have lost my kingdom.
This is the end, thought Bomber Harris. But I refuse to admit I was wrong to destroy an enemy city in wartime.
This is the end, thought Pericles, and was angry again with the Athenians who had exiled him.
This is the end, thought Ben Jonson, and prepared to meet his death in a very bad humour.
“Look!”
Botticelli, who would never paint again, was pointing through the thundering waters at a shadowy figure who flew alongside. As the figure approached they recognised her as the mysterious black-clad woman who had shared the last part of their journey.