Rainbow Bridge (13 page)

No mistletoe, because that’s definitely Pagan.

The crew had departed to the pub. Dave Wright and Mrs Brown sat on the sanctuary step, in the lull before the storm. Dave had a new skit in his head, Caro Letwynd and the Churchwarden… Mr Shaun Hammerpot, self-important fat lad from another age, busting the buttons of his yellow waistcoat. The
Saxon quoining!
Caro looks at the long and short work, looks at Hammerpot. She becomes possessed, suddenly she’s two metres plus, thin as a rail an solemn as an owl, big baby blues and yellow curly wurlys good enough to eat: an’ she says, in that voice, you know:
Tha’s all right, moi dear, we’ll make fuck-sure we don’ go an fuckin’ hurt yer pet rocks.
They’re all a clone, you know. ’Cept Bill, of course. The boss buds them. Ooh, we need a new roadie? I’ve seen it happen, like a carbuncle, which is a giant inflamed pimple, if you haven’t met the word before: squirt, squirt, an’ out the bugger comes, like a blob of pus, only partly formed. My arse in butter!, picture what it looked like when
George
came squeezing out—

There’s a way of being funny where you do nothing at all, except treasure the trivial things and play them back with a little nob on them. This was the art that Dave aspired to perfect. You start with a small world like this one,
the Reich in Hiding
, that loves the smell of its own in-jokes (Cept Bill of course had them all FOF by now, failsafe, instantly); then you take your method to the big time. He could dream.

‘I love Norman churches,’ he said. ‘I’d go looking for the ancient village church, with me little assault rifle in me mitts in case, when we were in Yorkshire.’ True, not a tall story. Dave had been a barmy army squaddie, before he took to life in the woods. ‘But there was none of these. They’re nowhere in the world but here on the Downs, and they’re a Human Treasure First Class, as the tourists would say.’

‘I never knew you were religious Dave.’

‘I’m not. I just like Norman churches. The quiet. Maybe it’s some kind of place where suffering is over.’

‘I like the atmosphere,’ agreed Mrs Brown. ‘It’s the peace that time forgot.’

‘
That’s
gonna change. Who’ve we got on the door? It might get rough.’

‘The snow’ll keep troublemakers at home.’

‘We hope. Is Alison coming?’

‘She might.’

‘D’you ever think about getting her out, I mean, out of England?’

Maybe he shouldn’t have asked. He’d had the daughter just once, one night stand; he preferred older women. Now he could feel that he was getting his marching orders from the mother. Ah, well. Maybe she was doing a pre-emptive, suspecting Dave was about to move on to greater things. Shelley Brown went on gazing calmly down the nave, a dark haired woman, fearlessly going grey, in good trim for the far side of fifty. She sighed.

‘Me, I love the little birds. The garden birds, they mean a lot to me: sparrows and robins, chaffinches, great tits and blue tits. And wrens; I like wrens. I’ve always fed them. But they’ll be feeding us, we’ll be eating them next winter, at this rate. I hate the thought of that… I think about getting Alison out all the time, Dave, thanks for asking. Her dad’s family’s Spanish, he was over here on his Gap year. But we’re not in touch.’

‘They call tits “chickadees” in the US. It’s a prettier name.’

‘I’ll stick with the English.’

The north wind sobbed. The immemorial stillness was illusion, the peace of exhaustion, there was blood on these stones. The Reich in Hiding was a whirlwind that had swept them both up and was about to blow away again.

‘One day the king of England came to my pub’s kitchen door like a beggar, and ever since it’s been like a magic carpet ride. I’m scared for Alison. I’m sitting here thinking, what if Ax never comes back from where he’s gone today? What if we’re all rounded up and tortured to death? But it’s been the peak of my existence.’

‘He’ll be okay,’ said Dave. ‘He always comes back.’

They decided they’d better go and haul old Hammerpot out of the Yew Tree. The boiler still had to be fired up, and the fat tit was bound to make a jobsworth of it.

Sage and Fiorinda arrived and retired at once, megastars that they were, to a closet which held shelves of dusty vases, a defunct harmonium and a white enamel sink. An antique CCTV screen gave them views of the nave; and of the churchyard, where the fans on the whisper network of this rave were gathering. She smudged out the violet shadows under his eyes, added blusher and wiped most of it off again. He was dressed for the stage, in clean black jeans and a white teeshirt, and running a high fever, but mentioning that would only piss him off.

‘How do I look?’

‘Like an archangel with a
bad
hangover.’

‘Tha’s appropriate. We should do your carol again.’

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, I hate that fucking carol, oh all right.’

Sage built them a sound cone, as the closet was not soundproofed. So here we are, back to where it all began. Crisis Management gigs for a government we don’t trust in a country that’s fallen apart. Free concerts to keep the peace—

‘And once more,’ said boss, inexorable. ‘Up, keep it up, sweetheart.’

‘I wish you’d speak English. I don’t
get
this music.’

‘You’re coming in flat on the descant.’

Fiorinda glowered. ‘That’s better.’

Collection buckets were going round outdoors, for sentimental reasons: shaken by crew persons in Santa hats. No gallant Norway spruce had been slaughtered, or shackled in fairy-lights, perish the thought, but Caro had lit the yew trees. Every red fruit, in the darkness of the foliage, had a star in its heart; drops of ruby quivered on the snow. If we see olive green uniforms erupting into that pretty scene, will we have time to get out by the back way?

The lesson of the invasion: All we know is that they will give no warning.

CCTV was everywhere, a reminder that the sacred twentieth century hadn’t been as good-natured as all that. The stars and crew in the communal dressing room had the gratifying sight of a standing crush in the nave. VIP seats in the tiny chancel—for those with small children, and ravers who’d been young when the Beatles were playing the Cavern—were packed too. Big screens in the churchyard for the masses. (Big Screens were officially banned, but Lü Xiaobao often sent a helicopter to fly by their venues, and he’d never complained). Snatches of Dave’s warm-up routine reached them; waves of laughter.
Don’t worry, they won’t rip your ears off but they might take the piss seeing it’s a
chamber
concert… Now don’t start…… My arse in butter, imagine when George came squeezing out…?

‘Story of my life,’ Sage propped his head on his hand, stacking coin; ‘fifty, sixty, are the Swedish euros any good at all?’ They called all the micro-currencies ‘Swedish euros’ for the good reason that the Swedish Euro isn’t money. ‘—fuck, I lost count. Everyone picks on the way I look, an’ I know they are jus’ jealous.’

The bucket collections were almost worthless, but a coin in the beggar’s cup signifies acceptance of the beggar, and it cuts both ways, we like to touch their money, it’s an intimacy.

‘If he does the Cornish Meths Revival riff agen,’ growled big George, ‘I’m goin’ out there to kick the fucker’s head in. That ought to be good for a chuckle.’

‘Now, now. The jester has licence. It’s true, though,’ mused Fiorinda, as she rolled old 500 notes, and cinched them with one of her precious hair bands. ‘It’s always you and Sage, the rest of us get off lightly. ’Cept Bill, of course.’

Sage, George, Fiorinda herself, the sulky teenagers and the stage crew, instantly leapt up and fell about. Leaned helplessly on ecclesiastical panelling, wiped tears, imitated dying ants; propped themselves, shaking, against a moth-eaten banner of St Pancras; rolled in ecstasy thumping the floor; all in voiceless, scuffling dumb show. Bill Trevor looked down his aquiline nose at them.

‘Fuck off. It’s not my fucking fault.’

Peter Stannen had been searching chill, frankincense-scented crannies for a pen that worked, he found one and wrote a note to Fiorinda,
did you rehearse the carol?
Sage’s immix collaborator, known as ‘Cack’ for ancient laddish reasons, had Asperger’s and had not joined the silent laughter because he believed, quite simply, that you weren’t allowed to talk in a church.

‘Yeah, it’s okay,’ she wrote. ‘We did it in the flower hole.’

The Reich, Unplugged

No satellite link, no tv cameras or radio pick-up. No media pack other than the reporter for the Long Man Villages intranet. A guest list of local heroes, an audience of around three hundred, all told. The Heads, bereft of immix, were trying a different sound every show. This time it was the West Coast seventies: Bill and George romping on guitar, Cack pasting the drums, the sick archangel energised, bouncing around in a knees-spread heel crouch,
me and you, nothing to do, what am I going to do with you? Good old romance, no pants dance
—The crowd loved it: aged VIP hands clapping, aged feet stamping, two swinging eighty-somethings getting up to cut the rug; a rocking riot going on in the nave.

Fiorinda walked onto the blue carpet feeling intimidated, and took her mellow Stephen Hill electro-acoustic to the waiting stool: a donation, she’d lost all her own guitars. Why make me follow Sage? Not fair, I am not in good voice and I feel boring. On her left, a canopied fourteenth century piscina, on her right the Norman lady chapel. It was four in the afternoon, deep dusk outdoors. The church ales are a smart move, Ax. I don’t
like
these places but they’re beautiful, and a palimpsest of national history. Also, bleeding heart goodwill sold here, which suits us. She gave them back catalogue: ‘Stonecold’ and ‘Sparrow Child’, ‘Wholesale’, ‘Rest Harrow,’ ‘The Lady With A Braid’ ‘Love Is Like Water’ And this is ‘Hard’, with its soft, deceptive intro:

Commonsense for the comprehensively trashed, and something she’d been wanting to put into music since the Green Nazi time. Ground into the dirt and the world rolls over you, but you’re part of it. Mouth full of shit and you’re part of it. When I was a pushy kid I used to think the value was in the words and the notes, now I know it’s in the
shape
you give a lyric line, the
exact
weight and speed laid on these strings. I suppose now you think I’m telling you to accept the Chinese invasion, three hundred of you at a time, not v. efficient, but I’m not. I’m chasing perfection; elusive in this song; that I made up and will still be learning twenty years from now—

When the applause burst she caught Sage with an expression in his eyes that frightened her. Too much.

The Chichester and Arundel group parish priest read a lesson, and spoke movingly of how the Chinese word for good,
hao,
is written
nü zi,
signifying a woman and a child. On this night, of all nights, let us remember our humanity, the symbols that we share. Rock music and the Christian message aren’t so far apart, all we need is love…etc. Stained glass windows black as midnight.
In the bleak midwinter
, sang Fiorinda, guest soloist with the Long Man parishes choir,
frosty wind made moan.
A sheepskin gilet over her green knitted dress (Heart Foundation, Lewes), hid the slight round of her belly. George Merrick at the onstage sound desk, ready to catch her should she fall (she didn’t), found himself thinking, there’s one secret we can’t keep much longer.

Curfew was nine pm. It couldn’t be enforced beyond the 18
^th
October Line, but
they will give no warning
. The show ended at six thirty, with Sage’s ‘Winter Song’, that he’d written after Ashdown; it had become their regular finale. Cross-legged on the chancel steps, he chanted the lyric into a hand mic, the way he used to chant Aoxomoxoa lyrics on the live stage. Behind him, under the transparent flow of words, the Reich Chorus harmonised mouth-music, a dark, earthy beat—

The detail varied, mysteriously. Some nights he led the people downstream to the sea, some nights it was over moorland or through lichened, crouching oak woods. There might be red mice, foxes, badgers; even human interest. There was always some clue, for those who knew, that he was singing about the south-west, the lost heartland, and the end was always the same, Antares like a beacon fire in a summer evening sky. Tonight, as the singers held their last chord, there was a murmur of delight. Flowers had sprung into existence: rose and gold and violet, painted in light on the air; over the ancient walls.

We expect no return on our investment, what happened to us just happened. Down in the information, the ocean of 0s and 1s, there is no cruelty, no courage, no justice, only silence. But you have to give the punters
something.

‘It’s a promise,’ whispered Sage.

The lightshow vanished, the entertainers joined the crowd. Sage propped himself against a pillar and made as if he wasn’t falling over. Fiorinda sipped homemade sherry (augh) and chatted to the priest and family, while her ersatz teenage family (augh) hung around moping. Dave Wright reverted to his other persona: a dour woodland creature, seeking the shadows. Suddenly Pearl let out an ear-piercing shriek:
it’s Dad! It’s my Daddy!
, and there was Smelly Hugh Raven, in a damp parka with bulging pockets. He had vanished after Ashdown, letting the Few take Safire to London, accepting his outcast fate. ‘I won’t stay,’ said the old hippy, shamefaced; while Pearl plundered his coat, radiant with greed, and Silver hugged a parcel of bright, trashy paper; that she never wanted to open because then it would be gone. ‘I just thought, since I was in the district, I’d drop by an’ see the girls—’