One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel (19 page)

Over in the corner of the bar, Hertzog was not now looking nearly so judicial. Downcast and glowering to himself though he was, however, the watch spring of the Barry Hertzog frame remained so taut that I felt obliged to keep an eye out for Breakfast for the rest of the evening.

Something to think about for the future? The infuriated Hertzog had in front of everyone declared to Leander that his one-up-manship would be the death of him. Why was Leander’s comment – directed very much at me alone – something to think about for the future? I hung between time suspended in some kind of wispy pale grey BSF (
breathable stabilising fluid
) of the kind they used in the 2097 Paralympics at Turkish Mt Olympus when I realised the implications. Future travel? But only one time had I ever journeyed into the Future
and
remembered it. It was right around the Millennium, soon after Mick’s first stab at a solo career. He phoned me just as I’d returned, so I was still too immersed to hide anything. Had it been face-to-face forget about it. Mick’s far too agnostic to hear such weirdness without a filter. Down the phone, I could be anyone. Anonymous. But that night I returned from a very brief trip into the Future, Mick phoned about two hours after my landing – and briefly he was interested.

I’d lost him, had him briefly but the drawbridge slammed shut. In all the years I knew M. Goodby, that ‘You Went’ was his heftiest salute of approval I ever enjoyed. But now, I heard a rabble at the drawbridge, a furious mob wielding clubs and knives. Around me the clouds dispersed too quickly and I fell/sank hundreds of feet into the safety net of my lush double bed. What’s going on? The legions at my bedroom door were deafening me. But when I rushed to open it, a towel around my waist, into my room tumbled a very desperate Anna. She threw her arms around me. Now I was hugging a fat woman. Why? Anna, however, had already set up camp upon my bed, and she
appeared to be wearing pretty much every item of clothing in her suitcase, topped off with Giampaolo’s sheepskin car coat. She reached into her father’s pocket and took out a battered paperback.

Holy shit! It was the book of the film poster I’d seen pinned up in the Judge’s jail cell! Blessèd Anna had only nicked
Soldier of Orange,
one of Judge Barry Hertzog’s favourite fucking books, that’s all! She’d been sitting there in Florinas Penitentiary drinking coffee in the warder’s office, when suddenly she’d spied her own Ural 750 cc motorbike-and-sidecar depicted on the front cover of the book that Lame Warder Klötz had been reading. Never considering any possible implications – it was just a scruffy mass-market paperback – Anna had quickly allowed her obsessive side to override everything. I must have that book! And it was not until early the next morning – back at her parents’ house in Cágliari – when she had viewed for the first time the paperback’s inky, messy inscription in Hertzog’s own hand. Now Anna was inconsolable. This beautiful woman so independent and wild of spirit seemed cosmically pole-axed. Everywhere Hertzog. In her nightmares, she saw no longer the dashing male cover hero of
Soldier of Orange
saving the adventuresome heroine with the aid of Anna’s own trusty wheels. Instead, she saw only herself bound into the passenger sidecar of her pride-and-joy, as onwards through the night ploughed her Ural 750 cc, but now under the new demented management of the X-faced figure of Judge Barry Hertzog.

I needed to act quickly. Apparently, Anna had visited my room earlier but had dared not disturb me. Since then, Hertzogian nightmares pervaded her every instant. And despite being swathed in all of those clothes, the poor dear was shivering, her teeth were chattering. She was in a shocking state. She needed my room and my presence, I concluded, but not
my
mess. Besides, I’d been farting all night and I’m a tall chap – when I’m spacing I’m jet propelled. So I lit some of the beeswax candles made with genuine Iloi Agriturismo beeswax. And I burned some gratis Iloi incense, gathered from Lake Omodeo’s beaches. And we had a bathtub here no less, a rarity. So I ran a bath to plonk myself in, to steep myself in while I kept out of Blessèd Anna’s way. And I set up my iBeam to 89.9 FM San Gavino Monreale, where Jesu Crussu was playing epic cave music by ’70s megaband Neon Sardinia – perfect for Anna to space to. Crussu mentioned how this controversial piece of music had got Neon Sardinia leader Fabrizio Arra kidnapped by F.C. Mamoiada hooligans back in 1976! It trod on too many partisan toes, apparently. But we were in luck. In two days’ time, the villagers of Fonni and Mamoiada would be celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Arra’s release with Neon Sardinia’s re-enactment of the two villages’ legendary shamanic feud. As Anna’s driving schedule that day involved ferrying what she called ‘an American classic’ down to Lanusei, she commented that we’d be able to get over to see their performance.

And for the next half-hour, as I drifted comatose in the hot bath, Anna lay submerged in my vast double bed under a heavy rug of her dad’s clothes and my own assorted bits, plus various requisitioned Iloi Agriturismo counterpanes – while through the speakers of my iBeam chuntered the grumbling shamen of Fonni and Mamoiada, or rather Neon Sardinia’s spectacular interpretation. Amazing music. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz …

But when, just thirty minutes later, I grabbed a large towel and crept out of the bathroom still dripping wet, Anna was already sitting bolt upright in my bed, sipping tea and smiling. The covers were off, the men’s clothes far flung, the blinds were open and everyone was home. In fact this woman looked delightful, quite back to her own lovely self. Who squeezes the time together at those random nodal points – and who says? What Gift Divine enables some sacred thirty minutes to deal out the powers of a whole night’s sleep? I sat down next to her on the bed and raised my right fist in salute. I call
this
a Powernap! Then, Anna all feline and yawny stretched her arms out to me and held my head firmly. She looked into my eyes, deep into my eyes.

Pursued in her nightmares by Judge Barry Hertzog, run off the highway by articulated 22-wheeler maniacs and fighting to stop capitalists from ruining Sardinia’s most famous national shrine, the beleaguered Anna had now turned inevitably, inexorably to the central protagonist of my story, to the eye of the hurricane as it were, to the hub around which every evil had attached itself, to the missing piece of the puzzle: ye Bard himself, M. Goodby.

Anna and I grabbed some coffee and wandered down to that same Iloi tomb on whose capstone I had watched her gyrating just hours before. But before I commenced my epic tale, I made a pact with Blessèd Anna, at least I tried – she hit the roof. I’d had this smart idea that, once I’d finished telling her the history of Mick, we could split the research in an effort to use our time better – me visiting the Doorways alone and her chasing The Reaper’s movements up around the Sássari City area, perhaps with her father Giampaolo in tow. I knew from Anna’s clamorous announcement that they had a fucking ace Viet Vet machine to deliver today, a purple flake 1970 Plymouth Barracuda – the perfect Reaper Pursuit Vehicle.

Okay, so I hadn’t made a pact exactly, not yet anyway. But I was still working on her, and I was fairly convinced that our dual multi-tasking was an idea worth pursuing, especially as I was fast running out of Sardu time. I needed to corral Anna’s inflamed spirit, her sense of injustice and her wild Hertzogian nightmares in order to bring these proceedings to their swiftest
conclusion. But although Anna was totally doubtful of my ability to fend for myself at the great Doorways, she had already shown me her itinerary for our proposed next visit. Come on, these directions to the Doorway at nearby Bidil ’e Pira looked so very highly detailed that I knew, I just knew I could do it alone. Besides, as Blessèd Anna had already experienced so many of my own desperate straits, I really wished to save her from anymore unnecessary worry – especially after these Hertzog nightmares. So I couldn’t back off on the Go-It-Alone Plan, because I felt so sure that it was by far the best manoeuvre. Anyway, while Anna agreed for us to make our final decision at midday – when we would exchange wheels with Giampaolo at Santa Cristina – for now we snuggled down together against the hot healing sandstone façade of the Iloi tomb, Lake Omodeo stretched out azure blue before us, as Anna started the proceedings.

Bloody hell, nice way of putting it. Mixed doubts. You could say that – just a bit. How do I explain this one? Born in England, in 1958, Michael Buenaventura Durruti Goodby was a typical product of Anglo-Foreign parentage. His mother Gabriella Goodby was a yoga guru from Catalan Alghero on the northwest coast, whence fled so many Catalan anarchists after Dictator Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War. Thereafter, Alghero’s soaring population became so very fiercely non-Sardu/non-Italian that they regularly paid top salaries to imported Catalan scholars and lecturers from Barcelona and the Spanish east coast simply
to maintain their strident cultural differences. Forced by the privations of war, however, Gabriella had slummed it briefly in the south of the island, fetching up as a cook at the new R.A.F. Decimomannu Airbase, where she’d fallen in love with six-foot-four Flight Lieutenant Alec Goodby in 1950. The couple got married almost immediately, Mick’s older brother Steve arriving in 1953, followed by his sister Sharon a year later. Mick alone had been born after the family’s move to England, a fact he loved to wind-up his brother with at any opportunity. But it was only on returning ‘home’ to barren Lincolnshire’s R.A.F. Wainfleet that Gabriella Goodby had – to her chagrin – discovered that her Flight Lieutenant husband was a flyer no longer, having been grounded and demoted to sergeant for crashing a target tug whilst drunk. In turn, Sgt Goodby had been disappointed to learn that Gabriella was not three years older than him as she’d always claimed, but thirteen. Moreover, Gabriella had previously given birth to twins in 1949, both immediately being put up for adoption on the island. Still depressed by this loss, and never having anticipated bearing such Aryan offspring, the compromised Gabriella – now far from her Alghero enclave – had dived into Motherhood with gusto, becoming fiercely protective of her ‘three little blondies’. I explained all these salient points as best I could to Anna, who – as a mixed-up Sardukid herself – relished the details and loved the ins-and-outs of Gabriella Goodby’s Talibanesque worldview.

I took another swig of the now tepid black coffee and continued my tale of Rave Goodby and his Great Leap Forward. Until that spring of ’89, Mick’s biggest claim to cutting-edge fame was having once performed ‘Last Tango in Paris’ to a pub full of Walsall fans by mistake. Oo-er missus! But wouldn’t all of this Lad Culture be just too confusing for Anna to understand? How can I give any of it context? After mucho consideration, I decided that a little scene-setting would first be in order. Thereafter, I’d be able to proceed with the same verve and aplomb that I’d deploy were I relating ‘The Ancient Mariner’ or somesuch. And if I spoke too fast for Anna to understand? Well, might that not be better for all of us?

Wow, I knew I couldn’t go into too much detail for Blessèd Anna, but that didn’t stop me remembering it all! What a gift Mr Tadgell had bequeathed me. All washed up and adrift from my own Post-Punk generation, I’d been utterly rebooted by his faith in me. Even better, Arthur Tadgell’s gifts of listening had unlocked my own world. For whereas most of the other Dehydrated DJs – myself included – kept their sessions austere and unembellished, Mr Tadgell’s own sessions were always brutal mega extended soul excursions that swung through everything from James Brown instrumentals to the Persuasions’ gorgeous a cappellas, from Fred Wesley’s epic trombone workouts to the Meters’ perfection of the Wild Tchoupitoulas’ ‘Hey Pocky
A-way’. He always preferred the messy overload of Funkadelic as opposed to the pertness of Parliament, and even showcased beastly soul-informed Krautrock wipe-outs like Xhol Caravan. Hell, I’ve even known Mr Tadgell to hit his Dehydrated audience with Eddie Floyd’s ‘Big Bird’ played at 33 rpm, mixing in a ramped-up football crowd at all the most rampant moments. But I digress.

Abruptly, my monologue to Anna floundered then halted as I remembered my searing arguments with ye Bard caused by his ‘discovery’ of Shaun Ryder. To Mick’s newly ecstasied-up mind, Ryder had – by the sheer cu. ft. per sq. inch water-weight of his drooling deliveries – instantly eclipsed all the genius and collected writhings of John Cooper Clarke, Ed Banger, John the Postman, Ted Chippington, the lot. Year Zero’d by the Peak Experiences of Dehydrated and his sudden remove from Anfield pub culture, even Pol Pot Goodby himself had planned – albeit
briefly – to Sell Out and become the next rhymeless wurzel. I was aghast, ballistic, even pugilistic. M. Goodby MC? Whatever has happened to our belovèd wordsmith? You’re a poet. How can some cunt that can hardly speak suddenly become ye Bard’s rival? But Mick was having none of it.

That
did the trick all right, got him back on the John Donne trail. Next thing we all knew, Mick was rapping his wordiest poetry over the instrumental bits of Ken Heathcote’s legendary cassette work-out
Fatigues
, not a work particularly known for the originality of its soundtrack but ye Bard sounded great.

What a thorny question! There was no way in which to explain this to Anna. Going down the football, we got a chance to unleash on to random wankers, cunts and dickheads the same Mega-Neg Energies that we might otherwise have felt obliged
to unleash upon our relatives, loved ones or important locals with whom we needed to interface daily. Oops. Thus, we were pragmatists who kacked only in the others’ backyards, pragmatists who targeted only the Too Violent and the Culturally Unfit. We were sectarian only on levels of Intellect and Creed, and therefore
any
Stupid Idiot would be dealt with severely. What precise behaviour or mental state defined Stupid Idiocy? Why, anybody behaving outside our notions of the Law as worked out in our collective noggins. For example, because they were always so cluelessly loud about the Lord, Jehovah’s Witnesses were always prime targets for an S.I.A. (Stupid Idiot Attack). Even clonking a geriatric Jesuit priest, you’re still fearful he has residual IRA connections. The Jehovah’s, though, they have fuck all back-up. Monks were fair game too, mainly because of the stupid shaven tonsure. Besides, just from the ones I’d subdued, monks always felt far too well upholstered to have left the ways of the world behind completely, their Lard Arses of Jesus requiring a proper raging upon. Come back to the world, you cop-out Cult Cunts! It’s hard to imagine but Stupid Idiocy even afflicted Football Fans, too. Pele fans, mostly. What benign, pseudo-religious expressions they wore! Who but the proto-corpse chooses for his Football Muse so long inactive a volcano as Pele? That kind always got a good kicking. Later on, of course, it may have been that some of Full English Breakfast’s more destructive foreign café assaults could have been, would have been – had we not all sanctioned ‘The Work’ beforehand – interpreted as the work of a Stupid Idiot. Over time, I witnessed some horrible atrocities committed in the name of Hooliganism, true. And sometimes my own kind achieved with wooden stave what could have been just as easily accomplished with fists alone. But as it is in these precise trickster corners, in these cultural microfolds that the
Laws of Hooliganism dwell, then it was up to intelligent life forms such as ourselves to explore such mysterious chasms, such Spaces In-between.

There was a back room at The Decoffinated Café where the bad boys could hang around, skin up and drink mortuary fluid. Actually, the latter act was poetically named an Obligatory Oblation by M. Goodby, and unless you were under eight-and-a-half years old, two minutes nosing around was all you got in the back room without being obliged to unbolt the double-skinned metal outer door and neck half a cupful of ye Fluide in the adjoining muggers’ five-a-side car park. Aww, not really for the drinking that stuff. ’Struth, youth. Anyway, it was from this car park that the shadier side of our operation was enacted. The evildoings. All achieved from the back of two Vauxhall Astra vans, well quiet looking. Both painted a dark grail mung with an overwash of palest gruel, this pair of ‘Wash Me’ orphans got us every place in Europe with minimal problemos. No customs officer ever ever pulled us over. Weaponed-up every time, but nobody bothered once. Mick’s wearing cartoon donkey ears as he’s driving through Calais. They wave him on and big-old-grin it through their cubicles. Mick’s got a Ronald Reagan mask on at Ostend; through we go, no questions asked. Our parameters of Hooliganism? Unlike Millwall’s Treatment, West Ham’s Inter City Firm and R.O.C.C.M.’s Nous Voyageons, we didn’t kidnap and we certainly didn’t kill. Actions of extraordinary firmness, however, were condoned, and the deployment of weapons was considered essential. Stu and Gaz Have-a-laugh were weapons freaks. Hotel rooms at away games were always a total ’mare. Tripods, long-range sights, small mortars – will you please keep those curtains closed, gentlemen.