The audience cheer like a football crowd, singing along with the chorus. Democracy they understand. Rubicon, as well. Free, they comprehend free. There is a guitar solo with Elliot, all teeth, long hair and ragged beard, playing his instrument as though it’s a girl’s body laid out across his hips.
Ellie is dancing, smoking and dancing, her arms above her head, her hair loose, eyes glazed, mouth pulled into some kind of smile. From the small stage Elliot points her out and ejects new words into the microphone:
People circle Ellie, clapping in time with the beat, while James watches from the sidelines, nursing a beer. He feels trapped, by circumstance, by language, by the girl even now gyrating in the midst of her little circuit of admirers. The temperature of the place rises. Jitka is there – they persuaded her to come, although, thank God, her husband refused the invitation. She is spiky and angular and strangely awkward with the tempo, but at least she is enjoying the gig, laughing with Ellie, circling round her while beyond them the music thunders on.
James goes over to the bar, where the beer is cheap and if you like you can chase it down with hard, white plum brandy. He finishes a beer and rejoins the crowd, feeling detached as he always does in this kind of setting, wondering where the ecstasy lies. Ellie grins at him out of her mop of unruly hair but barely seems to recognise him. They’re playing an Animals number now – ‘We gotta get outta this place,’ John screams into the mike – followed by something slow, a piece of blues with the guitarist, Elliot, wringing pain out of his guitar and John bemoaning the fact that she, whoever she is, has been gone fourteen long days and he’s praying to the Lord not to take his love away.
Later, James is out in the cool night, wandering along the water’s edge. The sound of the concert comes to him dulled by heavy walls – a drumbeat from the bowels of the earth. Beside him the river flows past, a great dark weight of water shining like obsidian. Lights from the other side reflect off the surface, but the impression is that they are immersed deep within the liquid, gleaming from the depths, shimmering with the passage of waves overhead.
Someone, a mere silhouette, approaches and says something in Czech. ‘Prominyte,’ James replies helplessly. ‘Anglitzky.’ I’m sorry. English. That’s almost all he knows, along with a few other stock phrases that Lenka has taught him. He’s sure the pronunciation is wrong but he doesn’t really care. And anyway, why the fuck is he apologising for being English and not being able to get his tongue round this impossible language?
The figure – a male of indeterminate age – stands looking out across the river. There’s the glow of a cigarette. ‘Where you from?’ he asks.
‘You speak English?’
‘Little.’
‘Sheffield.’
‘Ah.’ The man smokes, one can imagine thoughtfully. Perhaps he’s trying to marshal his knowledge of English geography. ‘Student?’
‘Yes.’
‘I work three years in London.’
‘Really?’
‘Czechoslovak embassy. Kensington Palace Gardens. You know Kensington Palace Gardens?’
‘Not really.’
‘Is very beautiful. Very private.’
‘And now what do you do?’
The man pauses and takes another drag on his cigarette. ‘I watch people. You perhaps.’
At first James feels only bewilderment. ‘You what?’
‘And your girl. And these Americans, what are they called? Ides of March. And all these kids.’
‘You watch us? Are you some sort of pervert?’
The man laughs. A faint gleam of teeth. ‘Maybe you could say perversion, but it is my job. To watch people.’
‘Your job?’
‘In London it was important people. Cabinet ministers, members of your parliament, civil servants. But now? Students like you.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about? Are you police?’
‘Police, yes. Something like that.’
‘Why should I believe you?’
‘No need to believe. Not at all.’
‘So why are you telling me this?’
The man pauses. The dull beat of music comes from the building behind them. Light leaks out across the grass as a door is opened, letting out a sudden flood of sound. There’s a shriek of laughter and two shadows running. ‘Perhaps I am warning you. You’re having fun. It’s an adventure, isn’t it? Lots of good kids, lots of cheap beer and laughter. Music, all that kind of stuff. Girls. But don’t make mistake. Here can be, will be, very dangerous.’ He flicks his lit cigarette end into the darkness, so that it spins over and over, a small, angry fire, and vanishes into the river. And then the shadow, like its cigarette, has gone.
Bewilderment is overtaken by a kind of nausea. James walks back to the lights and the noise. Inside the sweltering space, recorded music is being played. The Ides’ instruments lie around the stage like the debris after a fight. Some of the audience are dancing but most are just waiting for the next set. There’s Jitka talking with some people.
‘Have you seen Ellie?’
She grins. ‘You wanna meet my friends?’ Wanna. Her American intonation is exaggerated. There’s an exchange of greetings, smiles, nodding, the fumbling of language. Hi. Ahoj. Nazdar.
‘I want to find Ellie,’ he insists.
‘She’s around some place. I saw her going out.’
He excuses himself and pushes on through the crowd towards the far door. Archer, the drummer, is there with his arm round the waist of a whey-faced girl, his free hand clutching a bottle of beer.
‘Where’s Ellie?’
The drummer’s eyes are clouded. ‘Who’s Ellie?’
‘You know. The English girl. You gave us a lift in France, remember?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ A vague gesture, a grin. ‘Saw her with Elliot, man. Out back. The van.’ He squeezes the girl and she emits a little shriek of delight, like a doll that cries out when tipped over.
The van.
James pushes through the door. Beyond there’s a courtyard where people stand in groups smoking, talking, drinking. Parked against the far wall is the van. The Ides of March, it says on the side panel. Childlike flowers – daisies, buttercups – are painted across the corrugations. There’s something of the cash box about the vehicle. Riveted panels, doors closed and sealed, the sum inside unknown.
Ellie and Elliot. An assonance of names. James can imagine an assonance of bodies. Possibilities crowd in on him. He wants to know and he doesn’t want to know. He wants to see and yet he doesn’t want to see. He crosses the courtyard and goes round the back of the van and peers in through the single rear window. Within are variegated shadows and a chaos of stuff – boxes, blankets, sleeping bags, clothes – in the midst of which an octopoid creature writhes, tentacles spread, in the throes of ecstasy or death.
He looks away. If he looks away maybe nothing has happened. If he looks away, maybe everything will be as it was before. Behind him guitars clash and drums sound like thunder. Feedback screeches through the building and out into the night and a voice calls over the sound system, ‘Elliot? Hey, can you hear me? Where the fuck is Elliot?’ The name booms out into the night. ‘Calling Elliot! Come in Elliot!’