The Condition of Muzak (7 page)

Jerry began to worry about Catherine again. She was his ideal, his goddess, his queen; he loved her and she represented everything else he loved, no matter how she changed, whereas Frank represented everything Jerry hated: greedy hypocrisy. If Frank got hold of Catherine again Jerry knew that he would have to risk repercussions and kill his brother. It would be a shame, since events were just beginning to stabilise into a fixed pattern, like a clockwork train on its little oval track. After a while one got to know the dodgy bits of line. Any deaths at this stage would produce a whole new train set, with all kinds of bends and twists, moebius strips and dead ends: exactly what he was hoping to escape. He gave in to his instincts’ demands. He must check to see if Catherine were all right, no matter how irrational the impulse was.

He left the house, taking the Duesenberg to Westbourne Park Road and stopping outside the convent. There was no other traffic. The walls of the convent seemed higher than usual in the darkness.

Against every desire his mind had filled up with prescience, with a knowledge of the futures he refused to accept.

With a groan he went straight over the wall, using the hooked nylon ladder from the back of the car. He dropped amongst runner-bean poles, scraping his shin, trod as lightly as possible through the flower beds and vegetable patches, crossed the garden, hit his shoulder on the corner of the potting shed, and arrived at the main door. There was some sluggish movement from within, but not much. He got the door open and went inside; raced on tiptoe through the corridors until he came to the top of the flight of stairs leading under ground. So far he had not been spotted by a single nun. He went down the stairs and reached the cold corridor. There were stirrings, now, behind many of the doors; they were conclusive. As he approached, lights went off one by one in the cells until only the light in Catherine’s cell remained. Her door was open. He looked in on a discarded habit, an unmade bed, an empty lipstick case, an unread paperback with a cover reproducing an Adolphe Willette poster, the smell of Guerlain Mitsouko. He was too late. Frank had struck already. He would have reached the fake Le Corbusier château just after Jerry left. There would have been no time for John Gnatbeelson to activate the defences. Sister and house were now Frank’s.

Jerry howled. His eyes blazed red in the gloom of the convent cell. His lips snarled back from wolfish teeth. An era had ended for him and he was never to know such innocence again.

Jerry clambered out of his stockings and suspenders and threw them on top of his Courrèges suit. All he had left now was his perm; he wondered why he had ever thought red hair would suit him. He needed a complete change of identity. He searched through the heaps of clothes he had brought with him to the deserted convent but could find nothing he wanted to wear. He walked the length of the cool guest room, with its hard beds and green radiators, to the pine writing table where he had placed his little Sony cassette player. He pressed the play button. Slow, heavy sounds crept from the speaker; the batteries were exhausted.

He switched off. For a second he thought he had heard footsteps in the passage outside, but it was unlikely that anyone could have traced him here now that London was almost entirely depopulated. The exodus had been a huge success. He touched his forehead, glad to find that his temperature was dropping at last. Whistling, he stirred a skirt with his toe just as the door opened and Miss Brunner came in.

She glanced disapprovingly around at the mess. She wore some kind of standard Slavic peasant costume and had an MG42 tucked under her muscular right arm. Crossing to one of the beds she lowered the heavy machine gun onto the grey blanket which was as neat and clean as the last occupant had left it.

“There’s evidently been some confusion,” she said. She sat down beside her gun and began to stroke its stock. “What on earth are you doing?”

“I’d heard you were dead—or, at least, transferred.” He picked up the nearest pair of underpants—Dayglo yellow—and put them on.

“You more than anyone should know about temporal shifts, Mr Cornelius. Everything’s well and truly up the spout.” She drew in a sour breath. “I thought I had you under control this time. There’s a rumour about your black box, that you’ve got it back. If that’s true you haven’t really used it to your advantage, have you, eh?”

“I’ve been resting.” He began to sulk. He found two orange socks that almost matched. He sat opposite her and pulled them onto his grubby feet. “Anyway, if we’re being accusatory, what happened to you? I thought we were going to be together always.”

“It’s your sentimentality I can’t stand.” She rose like a disturbed wasp, leaving her gun where it was. “It’s your main drawback. You could have been a brilliant physicist. If you’d only had a better grip on the scientific method.”

“My black box…”

“Your father’s invention, and you know it. You developed it, certainly, but to ends that were completely irresponsible. Think how much better things could be if you hadn’t started experimenting for your own amusement rather than for the good of the world.”

“People get what they want out of my box.”

“What they think they want. And its power source is ludicrous. Utterly wasteful.”

“It’s not much different to yours.”

She clicked her tongue.

“What they think they want is usually what they do want,” he added. “Is there anything wrong—?”

“God almighty, you don’t know what morality is, do you?”

“I tried to find out. I became a Jesuit…”

She turned over his clothing with her pointed foot. “Is this junk all yours?”

“You can have it, if you like.”

“What would I do with it? You’ve no ambitions, have you, Mr Cornelius? No sense of purpose? No ideals?”

“Since Catherine was killed…”

“I don’t think necrophilia counts as an ideal.”

“Standards change.” Jerry was miserable. “And we’re proof enough of that, aren’t we? After all, we didn’t need to become divided…”

“We’ve discussed that already. The scheme didn’t work out. Too many regressive genes—put us straight back to square one.”

He shrugged and stooped to pick up a black T-shirt.

“Everything’s fluxed up, thanks to you,” she said. “I had this perfect programme all plotted and ready to go, then suddenly the co-ordinates are haywire. I didn’t need to make too many enquiries to find out where the interference was coming from. I had to abandon the whole programme because you were playing games with your silly little box.”

“Well, you needn’t worry. I haven’t got it any more.”

“It’s too bloody late now, isn’t it! Where is it?”

“I lost it. Or lent it.”

“You’re lying.”

“I had a touch of my old trouble. Didn’t you have it, recently? Paramnesia? Paramnesia?”

“That wouldn’t—”

“Then it developed into ordinary amnesia. I’m not even sure how I got here. There was a party at Holland Park…”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“Then maybe it hasn’t happened to you yet,” he told her reasonably. He paused to think. “Or maybe it hasn’t happened to any of us yet. Maybe it won’t happen, after all.”

“Oh, you shifty little sod.”

“That’s another thing I was wondering about…”

“I came here to try to clear up the confusion.” She found a wallet and began to search through it, emptying company credits and luncheon vouchers onto the floor. She turned a fifty million mark silk banknote in her fingers and absently touched it to her lips, licking it. “Why did you choose this mausoleum, anyway?”

“I forget.”

“You usually stay with your mother in a crisis.” She picked up another wallet. It contained nothing but a bundle of overstamped Rhodesian guinea-notes.

“Is she around?”

“Apparently.”

“I’m tired.” He reached for her gun.

“Steady on, Mr Cornelius.” She became alarmed.

“I only wanted to look at it. I’ve hardly ever seen one. Are they still making them?”

“How should I know?” She shook out the pockets of a black velvet jacket and began carefully to inspect each worn piece of paper. “Where are your own weapons, by the way?”

“In store somewhere.” He was vague. “Do you want to look at them?”

“Certainly not.” She had discovered a huge perfectly cut diamond and was holding it up to the green-shaded light bulb. “This is real.” She inspected the facets, one by one. “Where did you get it?”

“It’s only a model.” He put his legs into a pair of purple bells.

Grass and moss were growing over the paving stones of Westbourne Park Road. Jerry saw Miss Brunner to the gate and took in the scenes of soft decline, much more congruent, at last, with the rural atmosphere of the convent’s garden. Even the air was relatively fresh. “It’s lovely now, isn’t it?” He watched her walk to her Austin Princess. “It smells so rich.”

“Stagnation’s no substitute for stability.” She wrenched open the car’s door. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself.” From behind the façade of deserted houses on the opposite side of the street a few small dogs barked. “It’s going to take England a long time to get back on her feet. And as for the rest of the world…” She entered the car. He saw her through the clouded glass as, aggressively, she put the engine into gear. For someone who had so much to do with machines she displayed a stern hatred for most of them. He waved as she swerved into Ladbroke Grove, still puzzled as to why she had taken the laundry box with her; it had been full of his old junk—a broken watch, tickets, empty matchbooks, old calendars, torn notebooks, catalogues, useless maps, out-of-date maintenance manuals; all had gone into her box. Perhaps she thought she could feed the information into a new computer and thus reproduce his lost memory. He was quite grateful to her; there was nothing, he felt, of his past he wished to retain. He had been glad to offer her his clothes and tapes, but she had declined most of them with the air of someone who had already researched them thoroughly. Deciding against returning to his room, he locked the gate behind him and walked round to Blenheim Crescent, peering up at his mother’s flat as he passed but making no effort to see if she was still there. He was sure that Mrs Cornelius, of all people, wouldn’t have moved. He turned left at the antique shop with its smashed windows, its contents scattered on the pavement, where Sammy, his mother’s lover, had once sold pies, into Kensington Park Road. Assegais, brass microscopes, elephants’ feet, bits of sixteenth-century armour, the innards of clocks, broken writing chests, Afridi rifles inset with copper and mother-of-pearl, their stocks crumpled by woodworm, rotting books and fading photographs lay in heaps all across the street, exuding a sweet, musty smell that was not unpleasant. He entered Elgin Crescent, going towards Portobello Road, and found a shop that had once specialised in theatrical costumes and musical instruments. The door was ajar and the bell rang as he entered. Most of the costumes were still intact, in boxes or on hangers depending on racks from both sides of the showroom. He tried on the full dress uniform of a captain in the 30th Deccan Horse, discarded it. He dressed himself as Zorro, as Robin Hood, as Sam Spade. He tried the Buffalo Bill outfit and felt a little more at ease in it; he forced himself into a lurex Flash Gordon, a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker and ulster, a Zenith the Albino dress suit, a Doctor Nikola set, a Captain Marvel costume, even a Tarzan loincloth; a suit of motley, a Jester, seemed better, but he was seeking security at present, so he also discarded the Harlequin trickster set, but eventually decided upon an elaborate black-and-white satin Pierrot suit, the main colour being black, the pom-poms, ruff and cuffs being white, the skull-cap being white also, a reverse of the usual arrangement. He was pleased with his appearance. He found a pure white wig, perhaps originally for an old lady character, and put this on under his skull-cap. As an afterthought he picked up some greasepaint and blacked his face and hands then, for an hour, he sat in front of the long mirror playing a Walker five-string banjo to himself, raising his spirits still further:
On the road to Mandalay-ee, Where the flying fishes play-ee
… It was all so much more comfortable than the stockings, suspenders and girdle of his earlier disguise, so much more tasteful than the bright colours of a vanished youth. Indeed, it was the nicest of any of the disguises he had assumed since his boyhood. Nobody made any demands on a pierrot. All in all things weren’t looking too bad, really.

“Hide your tears behind a smile.” He sang blithely as he searched through the wicker baskets. “Hide your fears inside a file.” He found two or three more Pierrot costumes, two Harlequins, a Columbine and some masks, and bundled them all into a hessian sack.