“Do you feel your life has been wasted?” she asked.
Jerry snorted.
June 1959: The Pretenders, Live in London
The riffs were familiar now.
“Not dead yet?” His father’s tone was one of amusement, mixed with what Jerry could only take for resentment. Old Professor Cornelius was baffled by, what he called, the chaotic mathematics of the new popular music. For him, Mozart remained the great unifier.
Jerry lowered the volume and sat down in the single pew provided for petitioners.
“Is this the first time you’ve visited me here?” His father reached for a box at his side and picked out a long, brown Sherman’s. “You were all supposed to convene at my deathbed.”
“It would have helped to have had an address.” Jerry had rather liked his father in life, but in death, he had become unstable and petty. Not to mention, in his choice of vestments, vulgar.
“I’d imagine it’s a pretty well known location.”
“Well, it didn’t occur to me. Didn’t they throw you out?”
“They wanted to.” The old man drew for several seconds on his Sherman’s. “They wanted to. I didn’t leave you very much. I’m sorry about it, of course.”
“That’s the spirit.” Jerry took a swift glance at the plump woman who entered through the curtain. Her long, bright white hair framed her ancient face so that in that light, it had the appearance of redeemed youth. She gave him the creeps.
“You still don’t have to call me mother,” she said firmly.
Jerry held his breath.
“You can’t imagine how disappointed I am in this.” Professor Cornelius made a weak gesture. “You know.”
Jerry pushed his hair back from his forehead. Then he grinned, holstering the needle gun, a present for his 19th birthday. “Grow up, you foolish old bastard. I’m not killing anyone for you. Not today.”
He turned to point at the old woman. “And I don’t care how much you care. Stay in your crypt.”
She was still trying to smile when he left. Sometimes she wished she’d never heard of Mars.
1975: Rolling in the Ruins
“Pulp leads innovation, not only in language and subject, but in social vision, too. The first multi-racial democracy I ever saw was in Dan Dare, in THE EAGLE.” Professor Hira spread bland hands, but made his point no less obscure. “You don’t remember the U.N. cavalry force landing on Venus in gliders, do you? That would have been about 1953.”
“If it has wheels, it can roll backward, as well as forward.” Bishop Beesley used his most reassuring tone. “We have little to fear over the course of the centuries, Mr. Cornelius.”
“You thought history only went one way, didn’t you?” Miss Brunner’s normally sharp tones were mellowed by a mild triumphalism. “Your way. Well, you knew all about radiant time, dark matter, string theory, all the latest crackpot stuff, didn’t you? Refraction, distraction, attraction, reflection, repulsion. Always desire with you, wasn’t it? The weaving, and the wearing. The weaving in, and the weaving out. Back and forth, those shuttles of the Norns, Mr. Cornelius. We knew that, didn’t we? Nothing stops. That’s not part of God’s grand design, old chum.”
“I fear the Man Upstairs has different plans for us,” Bishop Beesley winked heavenward.
“What?” Mo Collier looked up from his Remington. “The Lodger, was he? Even I’ve seen that.”
“Let’s keep it clean, shall we?” Miss Brunner reached behind her neck, obsessively tightening her bun. Her lips were pursed, seemingly drawn back by the same force. She brought a faint smell of disinfectant, which reminded Jerry how ill he had been. Visions of Mary and memories of Pine. He was at the point of throwing up.
Outside Island Studios, he found Major Nye smoking a Sullivan’s. Jerry ran down a silent Basing Street. The sound of his vomiting echoed around the abandoned houses. Ladbroke Grove had gone from middle-class suburb to shabby genteel to slum, and back to middle class enclave. Once, Notting Hill had meant race riots and whores. Now, it meant TV presenters and politicians, making Bishop Beesley’s point. Religions rose and fell on economic tides.
“The bees have all deserted their hives.” Didi Dee lowered herself to the opposite curb and put on her high heels. Without them, she had to be under four feet. Jerry looked carefully at the dark thigh she showed him. Was this some sort of mating ritual? Since he felt no response in his penis, he had to assume he was wrong or it wasn’t working. Would they send someone to marry him? They’d have to wake him first. Dream or delusion? Did it ever really matter?
They looked up at a sound from Portobello Road. Of late, the phantom Fifteen bus had changed its route. Where was it carrying the damned these days? Once, it had turned at Elgin Crescent, frequently clipping his old Nash and leaving a smear of faintly glowing red paint behind. His old mum’s disembodied voice sounded from the phantom stop. “Full up? How can you be full up at five o’clock, on a Friday, when you don’t even fuckin’ exist?”
With some pleasure, Jerry remembered his mum’s skepticism when confronted by the supernatural. Were they all dead at last? He had been dreaming of oblivion again. Something which could only be enjoyed while not experienced.
“Good old Heidegger.” Miss Brunner left the Mangrove Cafe and headed up the street towards what, in those shoes, could only be Holland Park.
“I think we’re losing her.” Major Nye enjoyed another drag on his gasper. “She’s breaking up.” He frowned, dropping the butt onto a cracking flagstone. “Or is it me?”
2020: Late Morning Lullaby
The great hydraulic towers of Storyville rose in the pink gold morning, sweet water streaming from their glorious steel curves and planes. The wheel chairs were lined in a precise row along the North Placomine Causeway, so their occupants could enjoy and applaud this daily ritual. This was only the fifth time the towers had risen. Soon, the whole city would be surrounded and protected.
“From our ruins, came all this promise.” Monsieur Pardon bent to straighten Jerry’s plaid over his healing legs. “We have dodged the missile again, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Cornelius?”
In the next chair, Miss Brunner yawned ostentatiously. “My dear bishop! My dear bishop!”
Shaky Mo frowned. He had his feet tangled in the chair’s rests. “Is it me or has the quality of Colombian gone off since Valparaiso?” He had Skyped Karen von Krupp, the New Age dentist, who waved back at him from her favourite Starbucks table, looking out at the streets of Laredo.
“I think you’ll find it’s Java, these days,” she said.
2013: Pierrot on the Moon
“Multitudes of universes bring us closer to an understanding of God’s complexity.”
Catherine patted her poor brother’s hand. How bad could things have been, for them to go this far?
“’Will you not do me the courtesy to let me die alone?’ That was what he said to me. As I left, I thought I saw him smile. ‘I have lived for this,’ he said. No more narratives! No more! I would never know now, if all the stories were true. How can you tell, Cathy?”
“All stories are true, Jerry. Mum told us that…”
“More stories? More pain? Who knew? Why would they be so desperate for escape? They don’t want narratives. They want lies. Lullabies. Fantasies. Fucking fantasies.”
“This isn’t the Balkans, my love. The tears are already cold.”
“Did you ever read Wheldrake’s The Willing Boy?”