Modem Times 2.0 Read online

  —E. W. Hornung, New Statesman, June 30, 1917

  The buying power of the proletariat’s gone down Our money’s getting shallow and weak.

  —Bob Dylan, Modern Times, 2006

  JERRY’S HEAD TURNED on the massive white pillow and he saw something new in his sister’s trust even as she slipped into his arms, her soft comfort warming him. “You’ll be leaving, then?” she asked.

  “I catch the evening packet from Canterbury. By tonight I’ll be in Paris. There’s still time to think again.”

  “I must stay here.” Her breathing became more rapid. “But I promise I’ll join you if the cryogenics …” Her voice broke. “By Christmas. Oh, Jesus, Jerry. It’s tragic. I love you.”

  His expression puzzled her, he knew. He had dreamed of her lying in her coffin while an elaborate funeral went on around her. He remembered her in both centuries. Image after image came back to him, confusing in their intensity and clarity. It was almost unbearable. Why had he always loved her with such passion? Such complete commitment? That old feeling. Of course, she had not been the only woman he had loved sounselfconsciously, so deeply, but she was the only one to reciprocate with the same depth and commitment. The only one to last his lifetime. The texture of her short, brown hair reminded him of Jenny. Of Jenny’s friend, Eve. Of the pleasures the three of them had shared through much of the ‘70s when Catherine was away with Una Persson …

  Looking over Eve’s head through copper hot eyes as her friend moved her beautiful full lips over his penis, Jenny’s face bore that expression of strong affection which was the nearest she came to love. His fingers clung deep in Eve’s long dark hair, his mouth on Jenny’s as she frigged herself. The subtle differences of skin shades; their eye colours. The graceful movements. That extraordinary passion. Jenny’s lips parted and small delicious grunts came from her mouth. This was almost the last of what the ‘60s had brought them and which most other generations could never enjoy: pleasure without conflict or fear of serious consequences; the most exquisite form of lust. Meanwhile, taking such deep humane pleasure in the love of the moment, Jerry could not know (though he had begun to guess) what the future would bring. And were his actions, which felt so innocent, the cause of the horror, which would within two decades begin to fill the whole world?

  “Was it my fault?” he asked her.

  She sat up, smiling. “Look at the time!”

  12. HOME ALONE FIVE

  I learned from Taguba that the first wave of materials included descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees. Several of these images, including one of an Iraqi woman detainee baring her breasts, have since surfaced; others have not. (Taguba’s report noted that photographs and videos were being held by the C.I.D. because of ongoing criminal investigations and their “extremely sensitive nature.”) Taguba said that he saw “a videoof a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.” The video was not made public in any of the subsequent court proceedings, nor has there been any public government mention of it. Such images would have added an even more inflammatory element to the outcry over Abu Ghraib. “It’s bad enough that there were photographs of Arab men wearing women’s panties,” Taguba said.

  —Seymour M. Hersh, “The General’s Report,” New Yorker, June 25, 2007.

  PORTOBELLO ROAD, DESERTED except for a few stall-holders setting up before dawn, had kept its familiar Friday morning atmosphere. As Jerry approached the Westway, one hand deep in the pocket of his black car coat, the other still in its black glove resting on the handlebars of his Gent’s Royal Albert bicycle, he glanced at the big neon NEW WORLDS Millennium clock, in vivid red and blue, erected to celebrate the magazine’s fifty-fifth birthday. Two doors closer to the bridge, and not yet open, were the FRENDZ offices, and nearby were Time Out, Rough Trade, Stiff Records International, Riviera Management, Mac’s Music, Trux Transportation, Stone’s Antiquarian Books, Pash’s Instruments, The Mountain Grill, Brock and Turner, The Mandrake, Smilin’ Mike’s Club; all the great names which had made the Grove famous and given the area its enduring character.

  “I remember when I used to be a denizen round here. Glad to see the old neighbourhood has kept going.” Jerry spoke to his friend, Professor Hira, who had remained behind when the others had gone away.

  “Only by a whisker,” said the plump Brahmin, shaking his head. “By a lot of hard work and visionary thinking on the part of those of us who didn’t leave.”

  Jerry began to smile; clearly Hira was overpraising himself and being slightly judgmental at the same time. But Hira was serious: “Believe me, old boy, I’m not blaming you for going. You had a different destiny. But you don’t know what it’s like out there any more. North Kensington is all that remains of thefree world. Roughly east of Queensway, north of Harrow Road, south of Holland Park Avenue, west of Wood Lane, a new kind of tyranny triumphs.”

  “It can’t be much worse than it was!”

  “Oh, that’s what we all thought in 1975 or so. We hadn’t, even then, begun to realize what Fate—or anyway The City— had in store for us. Ladbroke Grove is the only part of Britain which managed to resist the march of the Whiteshirts from out of the suburbs. We keep the night alive with our signs. That’s a battle we’re constantly fighting. Thank god we still have a few people with money and conscience. All the work we did in the ‘60s and ‘70s, to maintain the freeholds and rents successfully kept the Grove in the hands of the original inhabitants, so that, at worst, we are a living museum of the Golden Age. At our best, we have slowed time long enough for people to take stock, not to be panicked or threatened by the Whiteshirts. Here, the wealth is still evenly distributed, continuing the progress made between 1920 and 1970. And through the insistence of our ancient charters, the Grove, along with Brookgate in the east, like London’s ancient Alsacia, has managed to keep her status as an independent state, a sanctuary.”

  “Ruritania, eh? I thought the air smelled a bit stale.”

  “Well, we’ve developed recycling to a bit of a fine art. Out there in the rest of the country, as in the USA, where the majority of the wealth was encouraged by Thatcher and her colleagues to flow back to Capital, things of course are considerably worse for the greater middle class. Thatcher and her kind used all the power put into their hands by short-sighted unions and their far-sighted opponents. Every threat. Every technique. Those who resisted made themselves helpless by refusing to change their rhetoric and so were also unable to change their strategies. It’s true, old boy. For thirty years the outside world has collapsed into cynicism as the international conglomerates became big enough to challenge, then control and finally replace elected governments. You’re lucky you were brought back here, Mr. C. Outside, it’s pretty unpleasant, I can tell you. Most Londoners can’t afford to live where they were born. Colons from the suburbs or worse, the country, have flooded in, taking over our houses, our businesses, our restaurants and shops. Of course, it was starting in your time: George Melly and stripped pine shops. But now the working class is strictly confined to its ghet-toes, distracted by drugs, lifestyle magazines and reality TV. The middle class has been trained to compete tooth and nail for the advantages they once took for granted, and the rich do whatever they like, including murder, thanks to their obscene amounts of moolah.” Even Hira’s language appeared to have been frozen in the period of his dog years. “At least the middle class learned to value what they had taken for granted, even if it’s too late to do anything about it now!”

  “Bloody hell,” said Jerry. “It looks like I was better off in that other future, after all. And now I’ve burned my bridges. Who’s Thatcher?”

  “We call her The Goddess Miggea. Most of them worship her today, though she was the one who formulated the language used to place the middle class in its present unhappy position. She was a sort of quisling for the Whiteshirts. She’s the main symbol of middle class downfall, yet they still think she saved them, the way the Yanks think Reagan got them o
ut of trouble. Amazing, isn’t it. You said yourself that the secret of successful feudalism is to make the peasants believe it’s the best of all possible worlds. Blair and Bush thought they could reproduce those successes with a brief war against a weak nation, but they miscalculated rather badly. Too late now. The personalities have changed. Remember the old scenario for nuclear war which put Pakistan at the centre of the picture? Well, it’s not far off. Religion’s back with a vengeance. I’d return to India, only things aren’t much better there. You probably haven’t heard of Hindu Nationalism, either. Or the Mombai Tiger. The rich are so much richer and the poor are so much poorer. The rich have no sense of charity or gravitas. They enjoy the power and the extravagance of 18th century French aristocrats. They distract themselves with all kinds of speculative adventures, including wars, which make Vietnam seem idealistic. How the people of Eastern Europe mourn the fall of the old Soviet empire, nostalgic for the return of the certainties of tyranny! Am I boring you, Mr. Cornelius?”

  “Sorry.” Jerry was admiring a massive plasma TV in an electrical shop’s display window. “Wow! The future’s got everything we hoped it would have! The Soviet Union’s fallen?”

  “I forget. I suppose that in your day so much of this seemed impossible, or at least unlikely. Thirty-five years ago you were talking about zero population growth and the problem of leisure. Here we are at the new Smaller Business Bureau. Lovely, isn’t it? Yes, I know, it smells like Amsterdam. I work here now.” Carefully, he opened the doors of Reception.

  13. OFFSHORE OPERATIONS

  “Carbon neutral” sounds pretty straightforward—simply remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as you put in. The trouble is civilization began emitting CO2 when humans burned the first lump of coal about 4,000 years ago.

  —Popular Science, July 2010

  “I THOUGHT YOU were an ally.” Jerry tucked his shirt into his chinos and swung down from the examination couch. No?”

  Dr. Didi Dee looked up from beneath furious brows. “Why should I be now?” She assumed a frozen defence. “Now I’m a missionary? A Christian?”

  Jerry’s mum heard this. She had forced him to keep this appointment and almost forced him to come. She was looking tired, even for her age. “But you were a Christian before, weren’t you, dear? Before poor old Obarmy, I mean.”

  “Don’t refer to our President like that.”

  “Sorry, love. I forgot what gods yer always puttin’ up, you Yanks. No offence. Personally I don’t know wot yer see in ‘im, long streak a piss.”

  “It’s all right, mum.” Jerry didn’t like her timing. “It’s justauthority. They love it. They’re even pre-Biblical sometimes. Poor old Moses. Talk about idolatory.”

  “Now you’re being spiteful.” Dr. Didi Dee was grim again. “I’m the one with the prescription pad. Are you going to do as I tell you or not?”

  “It’s the German influence, I think.” Mrs. Cornelius was trying out the umbrella she had brought with her from Sri Lanka. “It’s not because you’re black, dearie, is it? I had a friend like you. Well, not as pretty, admittedly. But not in this day and age, surely?”

  “Get her out of here.” Didi Dee folded her arms under her breasts. “And I’d get out of town, if I were you.”

  “Oh, bugger.” Jerry rubbed at a small scab on his wrist. “I thought this was too good to be true. So what’s it about?”

  “It’s about Obarmy, dear, isn’t it? We’re all disappointed. It’s not just you.”

  Mrs. Cornelius had become a little spiteful since her recent resurrection, thought Jerry. There were subtleties to American society mysterious to most Europeans. They thought they knew what was going on, but really they had absolutely no idea. They mocked Americans for not knowing where Prague was and didn’t know how to pronounce Houston. Jerry wondered if the country would be any better if the French had beaten the British. Or if Tom Paine’s Parliament had been permitted. Well, there was no point in going to Mississippi now: now that he knew Cathy/Colinda wasn’t there. Maybe Louisiana? And then Texas? He’d like to see the Gulf again, if only to take a gamble on the boats, risk his all at The Terminal Café. La mer d’huile Mes jolies, mes corazoa, deux pieds assayez langue du gringo, meyenherren. How can we stop all this?

  He began to laugh at last.

  14. CHASING A CURE

  When it comes to internal rules for the U.S. military, the Obama administration is not going to be wishy-washy. The armed forces will be given, well, marching orders.

  —Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal: A Locally Owned Newspaper Dedicated to the Service of God and Mankind, June 15, 2010

  IT WON’T BE LONG, Major Nye thought of telling his captors, before the public become confused and bewildered and that’s when they got to be radical activists. So which came first, the golden egg or Mother Goose? But he saw no point in voicing this question. The kidnappers had been courteous to a fault and he had no wish to trouble them with his own problems. Nonetheless, he was beginning to wonder if he shouldn’t have taken them to a French farce first.

  The orchestra grew louder, anticipating the coming scenes. Clown crept comically across the stage, a long string of sausages trailing from his pocket, the huge golden egg clutched to his splendid chest. Alerted by the music, he stared nervously around him, trying to stuff the egg into his pocket, to hide the sausages.

  Where was Columbine? Could she save him again?

  The limelight found Harlequin, following him as he danced across the stage, admired himself in the mirror, then dived through it, discovering with amazement the fantastic world of the future where mounted highwaymen held up trams on Hampstead Heath and were pursued by Bow Street Runners.

  15. A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

  Artificial clouds, flocks of jet packs, carbon emissions turned back into gasoline—it all sounds a little crazy, but the people behind these ideas are the bold thinkers who could save the planet. Plus: not everyone can be a visionary.

  —Popular Science, July 2010

  HOW SAD TO be back in Simla as the rainy season ended, and an ice age was yet to begin. Jerry looked for his old nanny, his governess, his uncle in his gorgeous uniform, but they appeared to have gone ahead. He watched a lazy flotilla of civil airships bringing holiday-makers back from Nepal and Ever Rest.

  “Goodbye.” He straightened his Panama on his raven waves. It would be strange to see the old place taken over by developers. Major Nye had been close to tears, but Jerry had nothing to feel nostalgia for, not really. Just race memory he supposed of Victorian novels, Sexton Blake stories, John Ford movies, and all that Jewel in the Skull romancery. He had never wanted it back but he had wanted to retain the fiction, the escape. Major Nye had been its finest creation. The visionary patriarch who saw Modern India rising from the ruins of religion and barbaric tradition. Thank god the major wasn’t in the position of the many poor devils stranded between India A&M missing the power and the swagger of it all.

  Didi looked glamorous in her scarlet and yellow sari, and she had mellowed a bit, gliding her long fingers between his arm and his torso, coupling. Jerry wasn’t too easy with this. He let her fingers curl onto his arm but his body withdrew somehow. “You must miss it,” she whispered.

  “Not this time,” he promised. “This time I’ll hit it.”

  A black oriental cat, tail erect, rubbed itself against his leg. He bent to pick it up.

  She was weeping. She felt around in her purse and found a handkerchief, a bottle of smelling salts, some Kleenex.

  “Bloody allergies.” It was a request. “I’d forgotten all about that.”

  He raised the cat in his arms, stroking it. “What?”

  She shuddered at his cruelty. “Obedient girls.”

  He winked.

  “You’re addicted to the dosh, aren’t you? Is that why you joined the Baptists?”

  16. BIGGLES: THE LIMITED EDITIONS

  Sixty years after the famous outdoor writer Nash Buckingham lost his beloved shotgun after a duck hunt in Arka
nsas, a highly-anticipated auction delivers the beautiful Fox 12-gauge to its final resting place.

  —Garden and Gun magazine, June/July 2010

  JERRY WAS BACK in Panto playing Clown to his brother Frank’s Harlequin. As usual, Cathy was Columbine. Jerry had Grimaldi’s vegetable monster routine pretty much perfected. The orchestra struck up, all drums, cymbals, and brass, as Harlequin drew his slapstick and chopped the monster to bits before Clown’s widening eyes.

  But Sadlers Wells wasn’t the place it had been, thought Major Nye, who hoped he was offering moral support by coming to this dress rehearsal. He had persuaded his captors to make the exchange here. He hated breaking promises and, as old school mobsmen, they respected that.

  The scenery was perhaps too familiar. The big trick numbers, the magic and transformation business, all had a bit of a tawdry look. Major Nye had an idea that the public recognized what that revealed but kept coming anyway, missing the richness of shades and forms still unrecognized by an academia preferring a macrocosm and simplicity rather than complexity. It won’t be long, he had told his captors, before the public became confused and bewildered and that’s when they produced radical activists. Of course, even the Cornelius family, as old as the Grimaldis, the Lupinos, and the Lanes, were hardly aware of the deep tradition they reflected.

  “We’re running late.” The big, old wrestler, a Greek, put gentle fingers on Major Nye’s arm. He had the ransom money in a brown paper carrier bag. “We’ll be on our way, major. You won’t mind us not standing on ceremony, will you? We were expected back in Bayswater half an hour ago.”

  “Not a bit, old boy. Mind how you drive.” The major tried to stand but he was numb all over.

  The Greek shook his head, gesturing for him to remain seated.