Caroline was the woman with the nose stud who had talked of being lost. She was very lean, usually carrying some kind of vegetable. Ishmael might once have thought that she had grown it herself organically, but now he assumed it must have been bought at the nearest hypermarket.
‘Are you still lost?’ he asked her.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if I know anything anymore.’
Mary was the artist. Every commune has to have at least one. She was interested in what you might call natural imagery. Her paintings usually featured the sea and the moon, mountains and suns and deserts, not that they looked like any deserts or mountains or seas that you’d ever actually come across, so Ishmael assumed they had to be symbolic.
He could see there would be a role for her in The Plan.
Harold was sixty. He looked like a derelict bank manager who had dropped out, and that was exactly what he was. He’d taken early retirement and decided to become a hippy. He wasn’t all that much of a hippy. In fact he was another tie-wearer. Sometimes he even wore a suit, but if he did he was sure to subvert the effect by also wearing sandals or hiking boots.
Despite or because of his banking background Harold thought The Plan was a real winner.
There were others who came and went — a white-haired woman who cut everybody’s hair, a pair of teenage punkettes, a Rastafarian in jogging gear who played the harmonica, a couple of used-car salesmen, a female plumber with hair to her waist. They were a chequered crew, but they all saw the good sense of The Plan, and they all loved Ishmael and would follow him anywhere.
♦
Dawn breaks on the morning of 12 September 1974. It is New Year’s Day according to the Ethiopian calendar and in the abandoned Imperial Palace Haile Selassie I listens to the throb of truck engines and the rumble of tank tracks as these vehicles pull into the palace grounds.
It has been a long time coming, this revolution, this deposal by the Provisional Government.
The Emperor receives three battle-dressed soldiers in one of the palace’s less opulent chambers. One of the soldiers reads the act of dethronement, citing despotism, corruption and old age. The soldiers are calm. Their charges are restrained. The ceremony is bloodless.
Haile Selassie is led from the palace and assured that he will be conveyed to a safe place. He is accustomed to being driven in limousines, at the sight of which loyal subjects throw themselves to the ground, but today there is to be no such pomp.
In the driveway is a green Volkswagen Beetle, its engine running, an officer at the wheel. The officer leans over, shoves open the passenger door and tilts the front passenger seat forward so that the Emperor can get in the back.
Until now Haile Selassie has behaved with quiet resignation but this is too much.
‘So it has come to this,’ he protests. ‘Is this really how I am to make my exit? Can you be serious?’ The final indignity.
♦
Money is the problem. Haile Selassiedied leaving perhaps a hundred million dollars locked in Swiss bank accounts. It is there still. Sometimes money can be come by very easily, all you need do is find a wallet or shit on a glass table. There is money for nothing. There is money for which you work your balls off. Ishmael worked hard at the library. Of course he knew it wasn’t hard work like mining, or labouring on a building site, but to get up every morning and go to a job he hated — that was hard. And the money was nothing. The Plan required money. It had to be stolen.
♦
When the war ends Nina still considers herself a young woman, and a few years’ deprivation has whipped her body to an erotic leanness it never had in the thirties. She even has high cheekbones these days; and dark eyes, and lips and nails the colour of blood. Dressed in tight black lace she sits at a scratched Steinway and sings ‘These Foolish Things’.
♦
A lonely, one-man-operated, twenty-four-hour self-service petrol station. A Volkswagen camper pulled into the forecourt and Ishmael got out. He filled the petrol tank. The camper was from the commune and full of people. They looked as though they were on their way back from a party. There was a festive atmosphere and fancy dress and party hats were in evidence. Ishmael went into the office to pay and to engage the cashier in friendly conversation.
Ishmael knew that the people who work as petrol station cashiers these days are either teenage boys or ageing men who have seen better days. In another economic climate they would have respected, steady jobs. They would have futures. But now there’s a recession and they settle for what they can get. Sometimes they even have to pretend to like it.
This time there was a solid family man behind the counter. In another life he might have been a cheery milkman, but tonight he wasn’t cheery and it probably wasn’t just tonight.
‘How are you?’ Ishmael asked.
‘So-so.’
‘Nice night, eh?’
‘Depends what you’re doing.’
‘What would you rather be doing?’
‘Sleeping. At home. With the wife.’
‘Night shifts must be hard.’
‘You should try it.’
Ishmael looked around the office as if he were about to compliment the man on what a nice place he had here, but he didn’t. He said, ‘Do you know what the French word for petrol is?’
‘Is this a quiz?’
‘Essence. Pretty essential if you see what I mean.’
He didn’t see what Ishmael meant. Ishmael laughed. The cashier didn’t.
Ishmael said, ‘Do you ever look into your heart and ask what’s most essential to you?’
‘No.’
‘You should. Try to work out what things are worth living for, and what things are worth dying for.’
This produced a smile on the face of the cashier. People do sometimes smile when they start to get frightened.
‘I’ll bet you get some crazy people in here,’ Ishmael said.
‘Not until tonight.’
‘Not until tonight,’ Ishmael smiled. ‘So how much do I owe you?’
The cashier smiled, this time with relief, thinking that Ishmael was getting down to paying, getting down to business, and in a sense he was right. Ishmael was getting down to business.
‘Eighteen pounds,’ he said.
‘Did you say eighteen?
He repeated, ‘Eighteen.’
‘Anyone would think I’d got money to burn.’
Ishmael laughed again.
He said, ‘How long would a man like yourself have to work before he earned eighteen pounds?’
‘About six hours, on a night shift.’
‘That’s a long time.’
‘You’re making it seem longer all the time.’
Fat Les and Davey and Marilyn and Eric and Tina then entered the office. Davey had shaved his head and was bare-chested except for some chains and a few streaks of oil. He looked dangerous. They all started examining the motor accessories, the key rings, the tins of oil and de-icer. Eric helped himself to a Mars Bar and handed out packets of cashew nuts and chewing gum.
‘Have you ever been robbed?’ Tina asked.
‘Not until tonight,’ the cashier replied.
‘I could see you were an intelligent man,’ said Ishmael.
Davey stood over the cashier, Fat Les emptied the till and Ishmael made a short speech.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and he did sound genuinely sorry. ‘We’re only stealing this money because we need it and because it’s in a good cause. We mean no harm, but we’ll smash your brains out if you get in the way of The Plan. I’m sorry you’ve got such a rotten job and I’m sure you’ve got enough problems without my adding to them, but these are hard times for all of us. Personally, I don’t see any political solution to human misery, all that seems a bit simplistic — I mean when you didn’t have a job you probably thought a job would solve all your problems, but now you’ve got a job and you know it hasn’t. Still, that’s just a personal view. However, I do know that there are ways out. There are some roads that give smoother rides than others, and take you nearer to where you want to go. I found my road and I believe that it’s within all of us to find it. And remember that a pocketful of truth is worth all the bulging cash registers on earth.’