Marcus leapt. ‘I’ll break that fucking stick over your fucking-’
The sentence dying as he was pushed back against a streetlamp and the breath seemed to congeal in his chest. He sank down the lamp standard, down to his knees, as if a great force beyond gravity was pulling him into the pavement.
He thought, Broad bastard daylight on the edge of a respectable English spa town.
His glasses had gone. He heard them click and rattle on the pavement, the world a grey haze of hostility. He scrabbled around, encountering dust, a pebble … glass … yes. The first thing he saw as he fumbled the glasses back on was a bloody advertisement, outside a newsagent’s, for the National bastard Lottery, and he heard what he thought was Lewis yelling, ‘Marcus! Marcus!’ before his senses were savaged by the enormous pain which spread through his chest like a jagged lightning tree with many hard, bright branches and his vision closed down on the Lottery sign.
Maybe … it wheedled.
Just maybe …
Part Six
From Bang to Wrongs: A Bad Boy’s Book,
by GARY SEWARD
Religion, eh?
No doubt, the way I was going on before, about trashing that church and everything, you all probably reckoned Gary Seward was dead against the very idea.
Not so. The only word I have a problem with is ‘faith’. It don’t wash with me, never has. You go through life, everybody’s telling you you got to ‘Stand on your own two feet’, ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down’, ‘Get a life.’ Everybody except the Church. The Church is bleating, ‘Put your trust in the Lord’, ‘Let the bastards kick sand in your face and turn the other cheek’ and ‘Forget life … Get a death instead.’ Leastways, that’s my understanding of theology: if you don’t go through life as a total mug, you can expect to get the shit kicked out of you in a big way after you turn belly-up.
I had many an argument with prison chaplains about this. I say, Listen, mate, you give us all this old toffee about the sinner what done a U-turn being guaranteed a special place at the top table, but HOW DO YOU KNOW? And he’ll say, I got faith, Gary, and I say, But suppose you’re WRONG … suppose you got it all COMPLETELY TO COCK … you’ve wasted your life, ain’tcha? He says, That’s very narrow thinking, Gary, if you don’t mind me saying so … on account he knows he ain’t got an answer.
And all the time I’m thinking, I bet I could get a bleedin’ answer …
XLII
‘Is he harmless?’ Kurt Campbell caught the question with both hands. ‘Well, of course he is, Alice. How anyone could think otherwise is entirely beyond me.’
White-suited Kurt leaning back in the leather chair, dropping his left ankle on to his right knee, throwing his arms out and his head back as though it was surrendering to the pull of his lion’s mane of golden hair. Bobby Maiden went down on the soft pile carpet of Kurt’s hotel suite and took a picture of him like that, like he was intended to, with arms out, expansive St Kurt.
‘Look … Yes … all right … on one level he’s this absurd anachronism, an old-fashioned mumbo-jumbo man. Do you know anything about Shamanism, Alice?’
‘A little,’ Grayle said, her tape machine spinning on the low yew table between them. She’d told Kurt she was doing a major article for The Vision and filing a shorter piece to the New York Courier.
‘The shaman used to “contact the spirits” on behalf of his tribe,’ Kurt said. ‘Shaking bones and banging drums and all that rubbish.’
‘You think it’s rubbish?’
‘It was for effect, it was to overwhelm people, it was saying, “Hey look at me, I’m a big magic man and you’d better be scared of me, you’d better be in awe, because I’m different.” So, what you had was this funny, unbalanced, psychologically screwed-up guy who, instead of skulking on the fringes of his society, was projecting his skewed sexuality and his strange fetishes upon an ignorant and superstitious public only too ready to-’
‘So you think this is what Cindy Mars-Lewis is doing, with the cross-dressing and stuff?’
‘Oh, hey,’ Kurt said good-humouredly, ‘I was talking about the primitive old tribal shamans. Cindy’s a modern-day entertainer, a comedian, this is part of his act. For many people, he’s just a very funny guy, and when I was on the Lottery Show with him I was expected to play along with that, play the straight man, and I was happy to do that and pretend to hypnotize him …’
‘Yeah, but aren’t you-?’
‘Alice …’ Kurt raised a forefinger, fixed Grayle with that relaxed, pellucid blue gaze. ‘I really don’t want to talk about this guy any more, if that’s all right with you. He’s having a hard time and I don’t want to compound that. I think it’s ridiculous to suggest that he’s been using some kind of black magic to darken the image of the National Lottery.’
‘I don’t think anyone’s actually …’
‘The only point I’m interested in making is that the so-called Way of the Shaman was a primitive way, in that it was a smokescreen designed to prevent ordinary people discovering the truth about life and death and what may lie beyond. The shaman was saying, “Listen, ordinary people, this is my secret world and you’d better stay out of it for your own good.” Now I’m a mesmerist, a hypnotist, and what I do is scientifically proven, and I’m anxious to sweep aside all this mystic nonsense in favour of a more scientific approach … and that’s really what the Festival of the Spirit is about.’
‘But you know you’re gonna attract the New Age crowd.’
‘Absolutely. And maybe they’ll learn something. Yes, sure we’re going to have a few fortune tellers and alternative healers and people selling crystals. But I’m interested in finding the scientific truths behind all this. Which is how it all began at Overcross, with Barnaby Crole, who rebuilt the castle, and Anthony Abblow. The whole point about Victorian spirituality is that it was science-based.’
‘So perhaps you could explain how hypnotism ties in with spiritualism?’
‘Yeah. Right. Absolutely. That’s a very good question, Alice. You know, it’s really great to be interviewed by someone who knows enough about these things to ask the right questions.’
‘Well, thank you,’ Grayle said and Bobby Maiden, down on the floor with the Nikon, decided his initial dislike of Kurt had been far from misplaced.
Kurt dropped his ankle from his knee, leaned forward. ‘Hey, Alice, you are coming to the festival, aren’t you?’
‘Well, I hadn’t…’
‘Alice, you’ve just got to. You’d find it so enlightening. You’d be able to see for yourself that… You’ve got press tickets, yeah?’
‘Well, not yet, but-’
‘And you’d like to come to the first Victorian seance tomorrow night?’
‘Oh, gee,’ Grayle said.
‘You would. You would like to come.’
Kurt’s head very still. Like he had her in a trance, Maiden thought, quietly impressing his enormous will on her. Kurt was young and confident of his powers.
Grayle said, ‘Well, uh … I’m not sure The Vision is gonna be able to run to five hundred pounds.’
Kurt waved a boyish hand. ‘Hey, that’s not what I meant. You can come as my guest,’ he smiled, ‘Alice.’
Which was when Bobby Maiden realized there was more to this than spreading the charm like soft honey.
Kurt Campbell actively fancied Grayle.
Which was … understandable. Grayle was extremely fanciable. In her little red dress. With her hair up, fastened by one of those Indian-type things with a stick through it. With her small face and the sparkle in her eyes and that loose, easy smile, the quick, nervous gestures, the animation of her.