The Condition of Muzak (13 page)

Jerry was still shivering as he waded out of the dirty Cornish shallows onto Tintagel’s ungenerous beach. A careful search of all the caves in that half-eaten bay, of the ruins of the castle, of the deserted town beyond, had turned up nothing but débris, seaweed and dead fish. Now his cold feet struck something white and mushy lying on the shingle and, glancing hopefully down, he discovered only a bundle of quarto paper, secured by green admiralty tags, typewritten. He went to turn the pages but they disintegrated at once, like the flesh of a rotten sole. He folded his arms for warmth, his ancient oilskins creaking and cracking at armpits and shoulders. He rid himself of his stiff sou’wester, throwing it behind him, into the Atlantic.

As he looked above the looming cliffs at the petulant sky grey rain fell on his face. He tramped for the dangerous steps leading up the south face of the cove, beginning to regret overreacting and giving in to the impulse to smash all his equipment, to rely entirely on metaphysical methods for a final solution to his sister’s malaise. Now his foot slipped on a piece of rotten granite. He paused. A darkness had entered the bay. His upward climb became hastier. There was no use crying over diffused plasma (or ectoplasm, for that matter): the world was splitting up, like so many dividing cells, and the energy was unlikely to be concentrated in any one place for much longer. He had been foolish to believe that his remedy had been any better than the others.

He reached the top of the cliff and made his way to the old wooden café shack where he had left his camouflaged jeep. It was still there, parked at an angle of forty degrees on the rutted path. He climbed in, thinking of Captain Brunner and wondering if the noble old anachronism’s sacrifice had been worth anything in the long run. He took a yellowing packet of Black Cat cigarettes from the map compartment and lit one with the brass Dunhill he had found there; the lighter’s flame was very low. He put the Black Cats in his pocket and abandoned the Dunhill. He turned the ignition key. The starting motor rolled sluggishly a few times but the engine failed to fire. Jerry had expected this. Even the American equipment wasn’t what it had been; the mainland had sent no new supplies for months. In the back seats of the jeep he found his fur hat and mittens, his heavy P&O Norfolk jacket. He stripped off the oilskins and dressed himself more warmly, buckling the jacket’s belt tightly around his waist.

He left the jeep behind, walking up the steep path towards the town. His search was proving entirely fruitless and he was tempted to give it up altogether, retiring from any kind of involvement, and yet his instincts had to be satisfied; he was resigned to continuing his quest. After all, most of his old enemies had themselves retired to safer zones. On the surface it seemed that the field was completely open.

The town had never been anything more than ramshackle, built primarily in response to the late-nineteenth-century tourist boom which had owed far less to Coleridge than to Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites. Even ruin could not make it picturesque. The streets were awash with weather-stained postcards, bedraggled and muddy King Arthur tea-towels, broken plastic Holy Grails, Excaliburs carved from chalk, tiny Round Tables to hang on the wall, and polystyrene crowns. In the reign of one Elizabeth the ideal had reached perfection and, in the reign of another, it had achieved its ultimate degradation. Jerry sniffed to himself. It had to happen sometime. Perhaps that was what he had failed to understand before.

He began to check the few parked cars, but all were in poor condition. The exodus had been made in less than a day, when the area had been, like so many, declared a non-civilian zone. Something to do with the Cornish Nationalist Movement. But the military had lost interest in the site almost immediately and had never established anything more than a few yards of barbed wire here and there.

Personally, Jerry thought the Americans had been a trifle naïve in thinking they had scored significant points in recruiting the CNM, a notoriously unreliable outfit whose members remained loyal only until they were trained and re-equipped when they deserted, returning to their rented farms and tied-cottages to await the calling of their traditional landlord leaders. A few of them still worked freelance for the Americans but, Jerry had heard, the military advisors were reconsidering the system of paying scalp-bounty, since the scalps in question were always difficult to identify and, on more than one occasion, had proved to originate with their own personnel stationed in the remoter parts of West Penrith. Scalp-hunters had been reported in the area only a few days ago, so Jerry kept a wary hand on his vibragun and gave close attention to the shadows, though it was unlikely that any hunter would bother with Tintagel which was known to be abandoned.

Eventually Jerry gave up inspecting the cars and stepped through the smashed plate-glass window of a tea shop. From the counter a curious rat looked up and, for an instant, Jerry mistook him for the proprietor. Casting a prudent glance over its shoulder the rat beat a leisurely retreat. Jerry found himself a Coke in the powerless icebox and took it to a grimy table to consider his transport problems. The Coke tasted peculiar, having undergone some sort of transmutation, but he swallowed it anyway. It could always be that his own metabolism had changed, there had been so many fluctuations recently. At least the temporal shifts had become less crude, flowing smoothly one into the other, layer passing almost imperceptibly through layer so that it was not always possible to tell exactly what one’s bearings were. Although it made his job harder, he couldn’t complain. After all, much of it was his own fault. It was only demonstrating his theories.

He was awakened from this somewhat tranquil mood by the distant sound of an ageing engine.

It was a broken-down Bedford two-tonner with a tattered canvas canopy; definitely a pre-war job. It moved slowly up the street as if searching for something. Jerry couldn’t recognise the driver but, since this was his only chance of a lift, he decided to expose himself.

He ran to the fractured window and climbed carefully out to the pavement. The lorry stopped. Through the wound-down window a tired military face was presented to him. “Colonel Cornelius?”

“Well—” said Jerry doubtfully. “I think he’s… Can you give me a ride?”

The man had kindly but confused pale blue eyes. He was in his fifties or sixties, wearing a shiny blazer, a frayed shirt with washed-out pink stripes, a regimental tie. He had a small grey moustache and thinning grey hair. “I’m Major Nye.” He took a small photograph from above the driving mirror and looked from it to Jerry. “I’m to take you to Grasmere, I believe?”

Jerry, trusting the major’s identification better than his own memory, walked round the lorry and opened the door on the passenger’s side. He put a foot on the step as Major Nye cleared various maps and documents from the worn leatherette upholstery. He climbed in and sat down, shutting the door with a slam. The Bedford’s engine was still running. Major Nye put it into gear and began to back slowly up the street. “You came ashore here, did you?”

“In a manner of speaking,” said Jerry.

“You knew about Grasmere?”

“I know
about
Grasmere, certainly.”

“You’ll be briefed there. Sorry we couldn’t give you something more sophisticated, but the Americans took their best stuff with them or else they destroyed it.”

“The Americans have gone?”

“Didn’t you know, old chap? Certainly. Pulled out altogether. Given Europe up as a bad job. Can’t say I blame ’em. It means chaos now, of course. But, still…” He stopped reversing and moved forward up the B road for Camelford. “It’s going to be a struggle to get through. As you can imagine, communications are breaking down left, right and centre.” He turned on the windscreen wipers as the rain grew heavier. “But so far no one group has displayed any sort of significant gain.”

“Do you mean it’s Civil War?” said Jerry in astonishment.

“It hasn’t come to that yet.”

Jerry smiled to himself. “It was always a game of Roundheads and Cavaliers for years, wasn’t it? If you look at it one way.”

“Oh, I quite agree with you.” Major Nye was concentrating on his driving. “Come on, old girl. Come along then, beauty.”

The Bedford responded with a little extra speed. Major Nye smiled. “The last lot of bombing didn’t improve matters for us. There’s scarcely a stretch of road left that hasn’t been—” The lorry began to bump over potholes. “That’s nothing compared to the destruction closer to London. Still, we’ll be able to skirt London, that’s one consolation.” The rain crackled on the roof. In spite of the major’s words, Jerry felt considerably safer in his company than he had felt for a very long time, particularly when he began to hum ‘The Ballad of Sexual Dependency’ from
The Threepenny Opera
. The smell of petrol in the cab gradually became less noticeable and Jerry reached into his Norfolk for the ancient packet of Black Cats. He offered one to Major Nye. “No thanks, old chap. Roll my own. I say, you wouldn’t mind rolling one for me, would you?” He reached for a Rizla tin on the ledge above the dashboard and handed it to Jerry who tried to remember how to use the rolling machine, balancing it on his knees, putting paper, tobacco and filter into the rubber pad, licking the sticky edge of the paper, closing the lid and producing a fairly reasonable-looking cigarette. With some pride he gave the result to the major who looked at it a little critically. “Thanks, old chap. Thicker than my usuals, but still… Want one?”

“I’ll stick to these,” said Jerry. With his steel Dunhill, almost a match to the one he had left in the jeep, he lit the major’s and then his own.

“Bloody rain,” said the major. “You mustn’t mind me. I’ve got awful habits. My wife says so. Swear all the time. India, I suppose.”

There was silence for a while until they had gone through Camelford, witnessed by the suspicious eyes of the residents, and were on a road heading for Taunton and the M. Whereupon, Major Nye, to Jerry’s amazement, suddenly began to sing in a slight mellow voice: “Moonlight becomes you. It goes with your hair. Did anyone ever tell you how pom-pom ta-tee.” He seemed unaware of his audience, peering placidly through the sheets of rain as the lorry bravely bucked along. “I’ll see you again, whenever spring comes through again—through again? Something like that. Da da da dee-dee da-dum. In those old familiar places, with those old familiar traaaaa-taaaa…” He went through a dozen song fragments in less than four minutes, like a malfunctioning jukebox. “You’re the cream in my coffee, I’m the milk in your tea.” He finished his cigarette and wound down the window sufficiently to throw the butt away. “If you knew Peggy Sue…” Then he seemed to remember Jerry. He opened the glove compartment to take out a large newspaper-wrapped packet. “Sandwich, old boy? Cheese and tomato probably, worst luck. Help yourself. There’s far too many for me. The old ulcer. I can’t eat much at a sitting. Little but often, that’s the motto. Tuck in.”

Jerry pulled away the paper and removed a sandwich. He relaxed in his seat, scarcely paying any attention even when three or four bright explosions lit the evening skyline to the east.

Major Nye did not seem particularly troubled, either, but regarded the explosions rather as confirmation of his earlier forebodings. “There you are,” he said. “That’s what the Americans have left us to handle.”

“A bastard,” said Jerry.