Oh, it was all such a shill, a sell, a sham; while we ripped ourselves apart searching for the pure, beating heart of things, believing we could, by telling the truth, by tearing the old lies apart at the seams, set ourselves and all our tribe free, London rolled on, a tottering juggernaut of blind and desperate delusion, all the little mannequins trying to find the tailor who made the emperor’s bee-yoo-ti-ful new clothes, so they could ape the great cockalorum and maybe, maybe grab a tiny bit of reflected glory. It was a nonstop dance macabre and we didn’t realize how bone-tired we were becoming.
Then, for us, it all came down in twenty-four hours.
First, we woke up and knew that yet again we wouldn’t be able to see the sky. Might not sound like much but it finally got to us, hemmed in and overshadowed as we were by the ugly gray buildings crouching over us, the exhalations of air-cons and extractor fans panting rancid fast-food farts into the starving air, choking us. In Bradford, you see, the skies constantly scroll above us in a massive cloudscape, as free and ever-changing as the wild pulse of nature — the sandstone of the city is buttery amber, lit from within by a million prisms when the light hits it at sunset. We live in a flame, in a painting by Turner, in Gaia’s Lamp. In London, we were dying for lack of light.
That morning, well, we knew it would be another London day, and lo! It was. And that night it was my thirtieth birthday, and I wasn’t a kid anymore. I had decided to have a party. It was to be at the Embassy Club, private, just for the tribe, and it would be a suitable send-off to my disheveled youth. I spent hours with the crimpers and the kohl pot and I looked like the priestess at Knossos, but I covered up my breasts out of modesty. The snakes, well, I had them tattooed on; easier that way.
How long did my birthday party last in that tatty mold-smelling red-velvet cellar before the scavenging liggers arrived, cawing over the booze they stole, screeching and cackling at us, the barbarians? How long was it before one of them abused the wrong soldier in our little army, and bang-bang it went? Not long, believe me. Then there were cracked noses, plum-black eyes, split lips swelling fat in an instant over sharp-chipped teeth, and the shrill screams of speed-skinny harridans egging on their leathery men-folk to try and “fuck that bitch up.” That bitch stood as the maelstrom rolled around her in a sparkle of broken glass and the red stitch of blood, and thought, ah, enough. So that bitch — which was me, of course, naturally — picked up a tall bar stool and, raising it overhead, smashed the great mirror by the bar into a blossom of shards so I wouldn’t have to see my reflection backdropped by that screeching mess.
Then it went quiet, and all you could hear was breathing and a fella coughing where he’d been whacked in the gut. And the mangy jackals slunk off as the bouncers — late as ever — bulked into the room and tried to get lairy and failed, no one having the energy left to take them seriously.
And I went to the bar manager and said I was sorry for breaking his expensive-looking glass, and he said I hadn’t.
So I said, no, it was me, I’ll pay for it, fair’s fair, somewhat nervous though, as I was mortally skint as usual.
And he said, no, it wasn’t you.
But it was, I said. It was.
No, he said, it wasn’t, you didn’t do it, it’s nothing; you’re famous, we all know you, people like you don’t have to pay for what you do.
And an abyss opened up in front of me that reeked sulphurous of what I could become, of what was in me that rubbed its corrupted hands together and murmured about fame, power, and hubris, which would be the end of freedom and the death of my spirit, and I knew too that a million wannabes would think me the biggest fool living for not pricking my thumb pronto and signing on the dotted line. So I threw some money on the bar — without doubt not enough — and walked out of that shabby shithole, my pretty golden boot-clogs crunching the broken mirror-glass, and I felt a great disgust at the sorry, sordid smallness of the sellout offered me. For if I was going to trade my immortal soul, brothers and sisters, would it be for the entrée to crap clubs and pathetic parties in a slutty run-down frazzle of a city in a small island off the coast of Europe? Oh, I think not, I really think not, as it goes. Only the universe would be enough to satisfy my desire, and I’m still working on that.
So we left London and returned to Bradford double-quick before we had time to think too hard. We rented another stone house terraced on the slopes of our crazy secret city’s hills and breathed the good air with profound relief and paid Mr. Suleiman what we owed, and more, and he said he knew we’d come back one day and we all shook hands, straight up. Then we set ourselves to write our own histories in songs and stories, make our own testaments in paintings and books, which we have done and are still doing and will do forever and ever, amen; stronger and stronger, brighter and brighter. And I’m grateful I saw what I saw when I did, before I was blinded by habit and despair, like so many I know who are lost now, beyond recall.
Twenty years have passed since that night, and I ask myself what it really was we all hated most about our sojourn in the Great Wen. What was the grit in the pearl in the oyster, the time-bomb ticking heart of it? I’ve heard all the stories of loneliness and fear, of self-harm and suicide, of madness and addiction, from others who finally limped home to lick their wounds — but it wasn’t any of that for us. No. What finally, finally finished us with London wasn’t the corruption or the scandals, nothing so interesting, nothing so bold, nothing so grand.
Sic transit gloria mundi — so passes away the glory of the world.
London, that braggart capital, passes away without glory, you see. Without greatness, without any kind of joy, without passion or fire or beauty. In the end, you see, London was such a pathetic bloody disappointment.
And you know what? It still is.
That’s all.
New Rose
by John Williams
New Cross
Years ago Mac had read this interview with a British soul singer whose career had had its share of ups and downs. The guy was asked whether he felt he’d been a success. “Well,” he said, “I’ve never had to go back to mini-cabbing.” It was a line that came into Mac’s head quite regularly these days as he delivered a fare to the Academy or hung around the office playing cards with Kemal, the night controller.
Not that Mac minded cabbing particularly. There were a lot worse things to do, he was well aware. And it fit pretty well with his lifestyle. Not just the working at night but the fact that you could drop it just like that when something better came along. Though it was a bit of a while since something better had come along. It had been three months since he’d finished a stint road managing for the Lords — a bunch of re-formed Aussie punks he’d known from back in the day. And it had been a good six months since anyone had asked Mac to get his own band back on the road. Mac had been in one of the original class-of-’76 punk bands but one that had somehow missed out on becoming legendary. They had a bit of a following in Italy, and most of the places that used to be Yugoslavia, but that was about it.