One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel (17 page)

Affable English tourists trot off to the free weed of Amsterdam and that’s Holland for you. Never venturing further into ‘The Netherlands’, they’re unaware that the country’s more rural burghers are low-church judgementalists with a grudge. Calling them ‘Dutch’ is far too close to ‘Deutsch’ for their liking. And boy, how they hate the Germans! Nice bit of England you say to a Welshman in Colwyn Bay, you expect the garden fork up the arse. But even the description ‘England versus Holland’ drives other Netherlanders up the wall because it sounds like referring to all of Germany just as Prussia. Exclusive it is, a bit. So when, in late spring of 1990, the long-notorious but only newly-famous Mick Goodby – as the guest of Judge Barry Hertzog – entered the infamous DJ’s mobile Rave club Slag Van Blowdriver that night, with Gary Have-a-laugh, Stu, Full English Breakfast and myself in tow, ye Bard knew he was making enemies.

From his five-foot-nine frame, which was now barring the way, Hertzog looked up at Mick. Then he stood there for several seconds pouting and looking at his fingernails, which were clean for a plumber. But Mick was already deep in conversation with Full English Breakfast, both of them staring over the Judge’s head at the spiky sheaves of Zulu spears all sitting in close arrangement atop their rain canopy, itself fashioned remarkably from a breath-taking cluster of Zulu shields. Mick rolled up his left sleeve and looked at his non-existent watch.

A queue of people was now forming behind us, but the Judge was in no hurry to clear a path. Indeed, he simply pulled a vicious-looking rubber rope across the entrance and disappeared into the club. Stu studied the hot food list, while the rest of us – all very big fellows – scratched about and clucked confinèdly. Inside, we heard the galumphing rhythms of Brits Abroad’s ‘100 Watt the Funk’ being torn off the P.A. The mentalist romping of those Sardu garage mechanics Spackhouse Tottu replaced it instantly. ‘The Daemon! The Daemon! The Daemon!’ Then the bulldog frame of DJ Hertzog tore around the corner, big grin on his face, right hand nursing an icy sugar brew, nice as pie, opens the rubber rope. Welcome. Rock, go to see Exterveen for your DJ fee. Hands the fizz to Mick and we’re in. Nothing more is said. Nor ever will it be.

I opened my eyes, suddenly wide awake in my Iloi bedroom, the adrenalin coursing through me, and the silver-blue moonlight bubbling my skin. I’d remembered something, but what was it? Down in the direction of the cliffs that overlooked Lake Omodeo, the apparition of a great spectral pentacle manifested over the broken roof of an ancient tomba – manifested then dissembled, manifested then dissembled. And all the while there was a shimmering frosted glaze across the sky that I couldn’t account for. Naked, I slipped on my black kecks and boots and headed off downhill to get a better look. But as I approached nearer to those old monuments at the cliff’s edge, I was hit suddenly in the chest by a veritable blast of wind and there confronted by a sensational sight! Atop the granite capstone of the dwarfish Iloi tomba danced Blessèd Anna, her dress riding up in the wind, pushed up by the wind in a formidably erotic display. Not wishing to intrude upon this scene – this being no Anna that I had yet encountered – I was nevertheless compelled to goggle in amazement as she pulled her summer dress up over her head and flung it upon the ground. Then I saw the wind blowing wildly through her hair, summoning up a great energy of tiny stars that fizzed and sparked around her head. Now, as Anna – standing gracefully upon one leg – assumed a perfect star shape, I watched intoxicated as the wind entered her belly button then exited through the crown of her head, casting her essence all across Lake Omodeo in a monochrome rainbow of silver-grey stars. This display was not nearly over, I believed. Perhaps it had barely started. But my sense of duty towards this dear lady now obliged me to halt this intrusion, and to return quickly to my bedroom to consider these things.

Oh, but how the star shapes of Anna persisted into my dreams. They had dislodged something very curious, very large from my distant memories; dislodged it and thrust it to the surface with extraordinary consequences. What was it? It was a … long, long forgotten memory of Slag Van Blowdriver that had happened soon after Hertzog had finally let us in the place. The Judge sent me to collect my fee from the manager’s office. ‘Ask for Exterveen.’ Of course, Slag Van Blowdriver being a mobile club, the offices, kitchens and toilets all tended to be erected wherever Hertzog & Co. could risk rigging them up, nicely out of sight of police and authorities. But this fine April evening, the club was pitched up in the private garden of Hertzog’s mate, a rich Groningen plumber and Underground synth star named Tiny, so the cops could say nothing at all about the 10,000-watt rig pumping out of the Judge’s DAF armoured car. I followed the handwritten signs saying ‘Management Office’ and ‘Kitchen’, which led me out into a summerhouse affair. Inside, smoking a pure grass one-skinner and drinking coffee was a very beautiful woman, about twenty-two years old with short hair and very high heels. She was obviously engaged in a conversation with someone inside the kitchenette, whence came the awful smell of something unholy burning, possibly with onions. Whoa. She looked up from her paperwork and winked at me.

Exterveen was standing over her desk, poring over a large tan leather ledger emblazoned with a Party Orange sticker. She looked up at me and winked again. Ex was tall, extremely sexy,
and extremely on ecstasy. She took a toke and winked again. Then she pushed me into the money corner, handed me my fee, already enveloped up, and got close up to me. She thrust the single-skinner into my mouth and – as I toked up a real storm – she nuzzled my left ear.

But the antagonising hiss of the unspecified frying fare and his constant hacking cough were obscuring Loon’s words, so he popped his head around the corner, his long arms still behind the swing door stirring away in the big frying pan. Hidden in Exterveen’s office, I now spied through her shelves this two-metre hedge of a man. What an unappealing varmint. And himself sporting the pan-abusable look of the Lümpenhippy, this chap Loon had a fuck of a nerve to put down the man from Soesterberg, however he might have been dressed. This was the cook? From his straggling blond mane of shoulder length to his bare and filthy feet, Loon repped hippy. But as this filthmonger was unable to see me in my obscure corner, he continued his rant to Ex, yelling louder now despite being closer to her than before.

And with that pronouncement, Loon dolloped the newly prepared hot food on to a tin plate, coughed over it, and zoomed out to the DJ booth where Hertzog was awaiting his tea. Both Ex and myself were now wedged into the tight management office corner, her feeding me another toke, but looking right past me. This was a lovely rock’n’roll moment. But what the fuck was going on? Exterveen sneezed twice. Then I sneezed twice. Then our eyes met again, and we smiled delightedly but said nothing. Then she sneezed three times. Then I sneezed three times. Then she sneezed four times. Then I sneezed four times. Had we known each other in some other incarnation? I was quite happy to stand utterly still next to this gorgeous woman. Which is good in light of what happened next. For Loon, without missing a beat, returned from delivering Hertzog’s hot scran in about thirty seconds then started to yell out random ideas and life stories, all of which Exterveen claimed to have heard umpteen times previously. Fucking hell. Two Harold Pinter plays. And a packet of crisps, please.

For the next twenty minutes, Exterveen and I smooched and smoked endless single-skinners together in the financial corner of Barry Hertzog’s empire, while Loon poured out his soul to her, all the while preparing hot food for the clientele.

All this time rip-roaring stoned, and me now unable to leave Ex’s office without drawing attention to myself, well at least Loon’s tales were choice in their Jobsworthian Stoopèdness.

As I ogled this chuntering giant from behind Ex’s shelves, even the Mickey Mouse logo on his filthy red t-shirt seemed to symbolise his removal from the adult world. But then, as he chopped up carrots on the draining board, I caught the faded arc of capital letters above Mickey, spelling out Loon’s former day job: BRANDWEERMAN. This loon had been a fireman, as he now was determined to tell Exterveen.

Oh, fuck off, you utter cunt! This twat was really starting to bore me, but Ex’s erotic attentions were sweet enough for me to have endured a whole side of an Andrew Ridgeley solo LP. Nevertheless, as Loon’s monologue descended into money-saving schemes for Slag Van Blowdriver, I did wonder just how cool could Hertzog really be if he was willing to put up with the blabber of this lanky cunt. Loon, however, had already taken off on another dazzling solo run. Make this one for Brother Branham, you village idiot!