Strip the Willow (3 page)

The second iceberg had a double set of stencils forking up, the left hand-prints small and red, diverging, the right footprints vertical, big and black. Some leftie perhaps, in mourning for socialism, or love poet who had kicked ass with Death.

She wished there were more. There were plenty more bergs and Lucy wished the other blanks had been chiselled or inscribed or daubed; customised with people’s meanings. But meaning was something you bought into now, not something you did.

Squeezing between abusive boozers was bad enough. She sidled now between squeaky, clean, artificial bergs. They
scraiched,
when you frotted them, like electrocuted winter hares.

Lucy entered the granite building behind, went up the carpeted stair, and through the ante-room declining canapés –
Dzienkuje bardzo, Thanks very much.
She came out on the hospitality balcony behind where Ten Bells of Fuck stood with his arms folded, and where a couple of acolytes, with cream gloves on the parapet, fawned over the scene. There were more than a hundred
polystyrene
bergs in all, a hundred and eleven, the whole length of the pavementette on their side of the street, their faintly-greenish sheen melding to barely-tinted white, like the mint spectrum of a fold-out Dulux paint catalogue. The bergscape creaked in the south-easterly that slid in off the North Sea, and sought to draft a haar into proceedings.

Guy must have heard her arriving, but Guy was too stiff, with pride
probably, to swivel. His bold maleness, male baldness, glistened under the lights.

–
Sea of green, sea of green,
chanted Lucy, just above her breath,
in a ye-ellow submarine.

–
As we live a life of ease,
said Guy, still not swivelling,
every one of us has all we need.

Did he believe that? He wasn’t daft, Ten Bells of Fuck. Just that the times made him shrink, accept the envelope; that was common enough. Guy was an events manager, who accepted events.

She wondered about the seat of honour.

She wondered aloud.

– Why is the Leopard not with us? Lucy said. If I may be so bold?

Perched in the centre of the balcony was a gold throne, gifted to the Leopard formally by the city.

The throne, it’s no real, it’s just a replicant, William Swink II had whispered to Lucy moments before the presentation, skirting her radical views.

Replicant
?
Much like its recipient for all we know, she had replied, spurning his clumsy sop.

This gilded throne was raised on a dais so that the occupant might see the bulk of Spectacle pass, and so that, from down below, any slack or weakened participant might see the Leopard’s dismissive thumb move, should verdict be required. Guy laid a hand on its arm, as though, in his master’s absence, he were more than mere retainer.

– We are under his auspices, said Guy. He thought of temptation on the revolving couch, then Luna’s tangled offer on the stairs. Guy had been in the business long enough to know there was no such thing as a free offer. Or was it instead, from Luna, a wild cry for help?

– Under? said Lucy. You may be.

A smirr of rain was pimping across his dome.

– Mr Marr, said Guy. Mr Marr is no doubt observing it all from North Turret.

Lucy glanced to the east end of the street where LeopCorp Towers, the former Salvation Army Citadel, reared, like a poor man’s Balmoral. The Salvation Army, in a variation on tradition, had been forcefed brass the previous year, by LeopCorp’s moneymen, in order to scram. When they had thrashed out a new mission and business plan, the Army might devote themselves to a less
baronial
central soup kitchen. A revamped Army HQ might send Band Aid and a feeding programme out in turn to the city’s provinces: Mastrick, Northfield, Middlefield, Summerfield, Heatheryfold, Garthdee, Kaimhill and Kincorth. And, though they were wall-
to-wall
Catholics, to the new Polish quarter in Torry. Lucy agreed with the core Salvationers that there was nothing more fundamentally Christian than a square plate of broth.

As part of her own outreach work with ReCSoc, the Council’s ReCreation and Social Engineering Department, she had worked briefly alongside the Salvation Army, in a scheme to incentivise the unemployed to keep goats on unshorn grass. This plan,
essentially
a milking scheme, was still being evaluated, although the large number of al fresco roasting pits, and a new fashion for drilling the bricks above a front door to take a set of horns, were not seen as overly healthy signs.

Lucy was caught between dovetailing with the Salvationers and landing up, wittingly or unwittingly, servicing LeopCorp.

Getting the Sally Army out of the centre, according to Rookie Marr, was
win-win
. Outdated competitors in the street spectacle market they needed
like a hole in the head,
he’d said graciously, in his civic throne acceptance speech.

– Observing? said Lucy.

– Like I said, said Guy.

– Or taking it in on screen, said Lucy. He’ll never catch his death.

An acolyte pointed to an umbrella in the corner. She patted her
hair; it was fine and damp. She shook her head.

– No thanks. I was only remarking.

– What do you ever do else? said Guy.

– LeopCorp, said Lucy. Every time I hear the word, I chill inside.

Guy said nothing.

When you read it on a page, it put you in mind of a big fat spotty cat.
LeopCorp.
When you heard it, though—

Rookie Marr. To be fair, Lucy had only ever met him once, at the phoney throne presentation. Immaculate in black. Except for the tie.

Pleased to meet you, Lucy had said. I like your tie.

The tie was orange.

Rookie thought it was a come-on. Vast wealth – though well within the dreams of avarice – had sheltered him from the rough and tumble of the street.

Thank you, Ms—

Legge, repeated Guy, who was responsible for the intros.

Thank you, Ms Legge. I understand our paths may cross soon. What is your role in the current set-up?

Outreach Officer, she said. Chief.

He smiled at the compliment and passed down the line.

That which is uttered, and that which is heard, do not always inhabit the same planet.

Afterwards, Guy had told her that the colour scheme was a kind of livery. Rookie Marr liked to be known as, but not addressed as,
Leopard.

He could get help for that, she’d said.

She learned he wanted the town’s name altered too, as though he were Lenin or somebody.
Marrdom
he was keen on,
Rookton
wasn’t ruled out.

Why be shy? Lucy said. Call it
Leopardeen
and be done with it.

Hmm, Guy had said. Just occasionally it’s good to know why we keep you on.

So, Leopard. In the scheme of things, he was a cloud that blotched the moon. He was a juggler with borrowed balls. But what could a city do, thought Lucy, waiting, attending, for cloud to pass or balls to drop? It took the whole of the Spanish people thirty-odd years to get rid of Franco. Franco had to die peacefully first – they didn’t even get round to helping him do it.

– Where’s Alison for any’s sake? said Guy, jumpy now, peering down over the balcony. You Council people, really—

– Alison’s been spending time with her daughter, said Lucy.

– Quality time no doubt, said Guy.

– Helping her prepare. Gwen’s got an interview on Monday in LeopCorp Towers.

– Really? said Guy.

– But you knew that, Guy, said Lucy. Don’t come the innocent with me. You’re probably on the panel.

– It would help if Alison was here, said Guy. We need someone we can rely on, to monitor.

– You lot have CCTV coming out your eyeballs, said Lucy.

– No, but to evaluate, from your side, the Council side.

– The Council can look after its side, said Lucy.

She knew that wasn’t true. The Provost and his cash-strapped Council were desperate for LeopCorp, and would do anything.

The City Council’s Chief Executive, for example, was chairing the City Bypass Group, and had done so for the past dozen years. The Bypass was
his baby
and, because the baby had not emerged yet, from any of its many tubes of planning paper, it needed so much of his pre-natal attention that he chose not to be locked up in
nitty-gritty
committees with LeopCorp, or indeed its offshoot, UbSpec Total. He could thus avoid dirt, and abstain from controversy.

Instead Lucy and her deputy, Alison, were landed with the
representative
Council role, as
front officers.

What kind of
front
shall we put on today? she’d said to Alison before one meeting. Foo aboot
black-affrontit
? Alison had replied; she was seldom short of a breezy answer.

Lucy had been instrumental in fighting a LeopCorp plan for a citywide spaghetti of flumes. Swink had suddenly broadcast his enthusiasm for
The Flummery Option,
as he called it, on Echo TV, before it was even heard of by committee. The plan seemed as follows.

Item: Long bendy translucent flumes, to carry Spectators steeply from Cairncry and the like, more sedately from the likes of Cults, in a rush and whoosh of coloured water
to fairly get them into a mood,
according to the Lord Provost.

Item: Spectators unable to access flumes with a favourable slope to be pumped up in capsules from nearby suburbs,
to arrive gushing
.

Item: Those dwelling in distant Torry, principally Polish workers, however,
would not be pondered
to, he said,
and would have to arrive under their own steam.

It would be a merde and an abandonment to allow this rubbish, Lucy decided. At the next meeting, she had confronted Guy.

What are these flumes supposed to be for, when we get down to it? she’d asked him.

Simple, said Guy. Firstly, to stimulate the customer base.

Yes, they should stimulate a few bases, she said.

Secondly, to integrate the surface transportion and
entertainment
agendas.

There was no answer to that. Guy didn’t get where he was by an inability to jam abstract nouns together.

But, centrally, Guy said, to multiply value for all Spectacle, and, crucially, the inaugural Spectacle we’re sponsoring,
Calving Glaciers.

Thanks, she’d answered.

Apparently the water in the flumes was to be quite warm, a little below elbow. And, of course, similar warm water in the globe’s plumbing was deemed to have precipitated the current rash of glaciorum praecox and glacier-wilt, the rather damp results of which threatened to overwhelm the dunes at Balmedie and drive to their few hills the folk of Bangladesh.

The proposed flumes, therefore, Guy had proclaimed, will
maximise
Spectacle through heightened client awareness—

Yes, Cairncry is a bit above sea level, said Lucy.

In supersomatic modes of virtual realism— said Guy.

Yeah, she’d said. Wet T-shirts: empathy for a drowning planet.

Guy had put on a show of fuming. Then he’d let her deploy her small moral thunders and, on this occasion, win.

She spoke against
throttling the whole city for the sake of Spectacle.
It would be
like a Salvationer strangled in his own euphonium.
Some councillors’ eyes lit up at this. She moved smartly on. The flumes would
grip and drape the city
, she said,
like garish octopi, long after the glaciers are gone.

Ye played a stormer, Alison said afterwards.

Yes, I was afraid I’d come out with
drip and grape the city,
said Lucy. Like Swinky might have.

Or
trip an rape,
said Alison.

Indeed, said Lucy.

Lucy had known that, by a quirk of rhetoric, it is always tough for your opponents to put the case
for garish octopi.

But she suspected none of the LeopCorp UbSpec Total people were serious anyway. On grounds of expense alone. They had just lashed out on pavementette. Most of them abstained. They had probably just been playing a dummy, flushing out oppositionists to lull them with a meaningless victory.

What was the pavementette really for, though? When pressed, all Guy said was that it was the coming thing. It had a thrilling top speed, apparently, still awaiting trial.

Alison arrived on the balcony briskly, shaking her hair like a retriever fresh from a bog, and knocking moisture off her sweater.

– Hi, aa. Hi, Luce, she said, nae coat me, wish that rain wid pack it in. I micht as weel hae come by flume.

– Right, said Guy, I’m messaging the Fastness now. And, by the way, ladies, inaugural Spectacle or not, this had better be good.

– Weel, laddie, said Alison. It’s nae jist us, it’s ye as weel. It’s aabody’s show.

– Canton, can do, said Lucy, deliberately glib, to Guy’s face. But can they? she thought. Can the cantons do?

In fact there was quite a history to them, as Lucy was in prime position to know. The city’s natives, in so far as
natives
still had meaning, she had divided, from the electoral roll, into a dozen cantons. A bright informative card to that effect was sent to every door. She should have known her people. Most seemed built for durance, being on the stocky side of slender, the dark side of light, and the hornyhanded side of delicate and effete. The natives were not to be confused with Athenians, Venetians, or Ancient Egyptians, and seldom were. Only precocious recent arrivals fell for the canton trick.