J.B.C MacBride had a secret.
"You mustn't tell anyone."
"Okay."
Richard had no problem with the idea of keeping secrets. In later years he realised that he was a walking repository of old secrets, secrets that his original confidants had probably long forgotten.
They were walking, with their arms over each other's shoulders, up to the woods at the back of the school.
Richard had, unasked, been gifted with another secret in these woods: it is here that three of Richard's school friends have meetings with girls from the village and where, he has been told, they display to each other their genitalla.
"I can't tell you who told me any of this."
"Okay," said Richard.
"I mean, it's true. And it's a deadly secret."
"Fine."
MacBride had been spending a lot of time recently with Mr Aliquid, the school chaplain.
"Well, everybody has two angels. God gives them one and Satan gives them one. So when you get hypnotized, Satan's angel takes control. And that's how Ouija boards work. It's Satan's angel. And you can implore your God's angel to talk through you. But real enlightenment only occurs when you can talk to your angel. He tells you secrets."
This was the first time that it had occurred to Grey that the Church of England might have its own esoterica, its own hidden cabala.
The other boy blinked owlishly. "You mustn't tell anyone that. I'd get into trouble if they knew I'd told you."
"Fine."
There was a pause.
"Have you ever wanked off a grown-up?" asked MacBride.
"No." Richard's own secret was that he had not yet begun to masturbate. All of his friends masturbated, continually, alone and in pairs or groups. He was a year younger than them and couldn't understand what the fuss was about; the whole idea made him uncomfortable.
"Spunk everywhere. It's thick and oozy. They try to get you to put their cocks in your mouth when they shoot off."
"Hugh."
"It's not that bad." There was a pause. "You know, Mr Aliquid thinks you're very clever. If you wanted to join his private religious discussion group, he might say yes."
The private discussion group met at Mr Aliquid's small bachelor house across the road from the school in the evenings, twice a week after prep.
"I'm not Christian."
"So? You still come top of the class in Divinity, Jewboy."
"No thanks. Hey, I got a new Moorcock. One you haven't read. It's an Elric book."
"You haven't. There isn't a new one."
"Is. It's called The Jade Man's Eyes. It's printed in green ink. I found it in a bookshop in Brighton."
"Can I borrow it after you?"
"Course."
It was getting chilly, and they walked back, arm in arm. Like Elric and Moonglum, thought Richard to himself, and it made as much sense as MacBride's angels.
Richard had daydreams in which he would kidnap Michael Moorcock and make him tell Richard the secret.
If pushed, Richard would be unable to tell you what kind of thing the secret was. It was something to do with writing; something to do with gods.
Richard wondered where Moorcock got his ideas from.
Probably from the ruined temple, he decided, in the end, although he could no longer remember what the temple looked like. He remembered a shadow, and stars, and the feeling of pain at returning to something he thought long finished.
He wondered if that was where all authors got their ideas from or just Michael Moorcock.
If you had told him that they just made it all up, out of their heads, he would never have believed you. There had to be a place the magic came from.
Didn't there?
This bloke phoned me up from America the other night, he said, "Listen, man, I have to talk to you about your religion." I said, "I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't got any fucking religion." Michael Moorcock, in conversation. Notting Hill, 1976
It was six months later. Richard had been bar mitzvahed and would be changing schools soon. He and J.B.C MacBride were sitting on the grass outside the school in the early evening, reading books. Richard's parents were late picking him up from school.
Richard was reading The English Assassin. MacBride was engrossed in The Devil Rides Out.
Richard found himself squinting at the page. It wasn't properly dark yet, but he couldn't read any more. Everything was turning into greys.
"Mac? What do you want to be when you grow up?"
The evening was warm, and the grass was dry and comfortable.
"I don't know. A writer, maybe. Like Michael Moorcock. Or T.H. White. How about you?"
Richard sat and thought. The sky was a violet-grey and a ghost moon hung high in it, like a sliver of a dream. He pulled up a blade of grass and slowly shredded it between his fingers, bit by bit. He couldn't say "A writer" as well now. It would seem like he was copying. And he didn't want to be a writer. Not really. There were other things to be.
"When I grow up," he said, pensively, eventually, "I want to be a wolf."
"It'll never happen," said MacBride.
"Maybe not," said Richard. "We'll see."
The lights went on in the school windows, one by one, making the violet sky seem darker than it was before, and the summer evening was gentle and quiet. At that time of year, the day lasts forever, and the night never really comes.
"I'd like to be a wolf. Not all the time. Just sometimes. In the dark. I would run through the forests as a wolf at night," said Richard, mostly to himself. "I'd never hurt anyone. Not that kind of wolf. I'd just run and run forever in the moonlight, through the trees, and never get tired or out of breath, and never have to stop. That's what I want to be when I grow up…"
He pulled up another long stalk of grass, expertly stripped the blades from it, and slowly began to chew the stem.
And the two children sat alone in the grey twilight, side by side, and waited for the future to start.
CHAPTER 21: Cold Colors
I.
Woken at nine o'clock by the postman,
who turns out not to be the postman but an itinerant seller of pigeons,
crying,
"Fat pigeons, pure pigeons, dove white, slate grey,
living, breathing pigeons,
none of your reanimated muck here, sir."
I have pigeons and to spare and I tell him so.
He tells me he's new in this business,
used to be part of a moderately successful
financial securities analysis company
but was laid off, replaced by a computer RS232'd to a quartz sphere.
"Still, mustn't grumble, one door opens, another one slams,
got to keep up with the times, sir, got to keep up with the times."
He thrusts me a free pigeon
(To attract new custom, sir,
once you've tried one of our pigeons, you'll never look at another)
and struts down the stairs, singing,
"Pigeons alive-oh, allve alive-oh."
Ten o'clock after I've bathed and shaved
(unguents of eternal youth and of certain sexual attraction applied from plastic vessels)
I take the pigeon into my study;
I refresh the chalk circle around my old Dell 310,
hang wards at each corner of the monitor,
and do what is needful with the pigeon.
Then I turn the computer to on: It chugs and hums,
inside it fans blow like storm winds on old oceans
ready to drown poor merchantmen.
Autoexec complete it bleeps:
I'll do, I'll do, I'll do…
II.
Two o'clock and walking through familiar London
–or what was familiar London before the cursor deleted certain certainties-
I watch a suit and tie man giving suck
to the Psion Organizer lodged in his breast pocket,
its serial interface like a cool mouth hunting his chest for sustenance,
familiar feeling, and I'm watching my breath steam in the air.