Lisa
Moran is one of the most famous and unhappy actresses
in London. She lives alone in her great house in Cheyne Walk where,
as a modern Madame Bovary, she spends most of her time plotting how
to acquire yet more money, fame and sex.
Her life both darkens and brightens when she meets Daniel Jenkins, a strange young Welsh writer who is trying to write an ambitious Ulysses-style novel about London in the Eighties. He also likes to spend a lot of his time drunk and lying about in gutters with tramps to block out the voice of God and the visions which keep telling him about a storm of violence sweeping the world. He doesn't want to know and God, it seems, doesn't bother with him when he's drunk and lying in a gutter.
Together they embark on a nightmare journey via Paris, Israel and New York, towards the heart of this growing violence to which they both unwittingly contribute and which soon begins to overtake and threaten them too. Our doomed lovers end up in Hell lost both above and below a city, in a story which will linger long in the reader's mind.
Her life both darkens and brightens when she meets Daniel Jenkins, a strange young Welsh writer who is trying to write an ambitious Ulysses-style novel about London in the Eighties. He also likes to spend a lot of his time drunk and lying about in gutters with tramps to block out the voice of God and the visions which keep telling him about a storm of violence sweeping the world. He doesn't want to know and God, it seems, doesn't bother with him when he's drunk and lying in a gutter.
Together they embark on a nightmare journey via Paris, Israel and New York, towards the heart of this growing violence to which they both unwittingly contribute and which soon begins to overtake and threaten them too. Our doomed lovers end up in Hell lost both above and below a city, in a story which will linger long in the reader's mind.
Lisa has
met Daniel at a literary party and they’ve
gone back to his disgusting flat in the East End where they’ve
both fallen into a drunken sleep at his kitchen table:
Lisa only ever took short naps and was awake within a few hours. Dawn was filtering in through the curtains and Hackney pigeons burbled on distant ledges. Ah well, if he needed to sleep he needed to sleep.
A strange one sure enough, Welsh she guessed by his accent. She didn’t usually get on with the Welsh and had actively hated Richard Burton, who had always tried to have her as another notch on his belt, although dear old Rachel Roberts had been one of her best pals.
Well, if Daniel couldn’t do anything for her at the moment she could do something for him so, with an enthusiasm which she found most depressing, she began cleaning up the flat, finding a black bin bag and throwing all the debris into it – the bottles, the pants, the mouldy loaves – everything went into the bag and, when she had filled it, she found another and filled that too.
It wasn’t likely he would have any furniture polish so she washed every surface with a damp cloth, breaking into a sweat which she wiped off her forehead with the insides of her arms, before clearing the fag-ends out of the firegrate. She had cleaners to do all this in Cheyne Walk but she had wanted to do something for him and this was all she could think of in the circumstances. But, oh, she always liked to impress with her difference too; she was always careful to arrange herself differently to everyone else in the landscape. What she feared more than most was that someone might perceive her as being the same as everyone else. That had never been a part of the Moran plan.
Lisa only ever took short naps and was awake within a few hours. Dawn was filtering in through the curtains and Hackney pigeons burbled on distant ledges. Ah well, if he needed to sleep he needed to sleep.
A strange one sure enough, Welsh she guessed by his accent. She didn’t usually get on with the Welsh and had actively hated Richard Burton, who had always tried to have her as another notch on his belt, although dear old Rachel Roberts had been one of her best pals.
Well, if Daniel couldn’t do anything for her at the moment she could do something for him so, with an enthusiasm which she found most depressing, she began cleaning up the flat, finding a black bin bag and throwing all the debris into it – the bottles, the pants, the mouldy loaves – everything went into the bag and, when she had filled it, she found another and filled that too.
It wasn’t likely he would have any furniture polish so she washed every surface with a damp cloth, breaking into a sweat which she wiped off her forehead with the insides of her arms, before clearing the fag-ends out of the firegrate. She had cleaners to do all this in Cheyne Walk but she had wanted to do something for him and this was all she could think of in the circumstances. But, oh, she always liked to impress with her difference too; she was always careful to arrange herself differently to everyone else in the landscape. What she feared more than most was that someone might perceive her as being the same as everyone else. That had never been a part of the Moran plan.
After
several dates Lisa and Daniel go to Paris for a
weekend where they end up in bed for the first time. It is a memorable
encounter for her and she is surprised at the long-forgotten feelings
he manages to stir up inside her:
Her body stretched out and stiffened slightly before relaxing and tensing again, feeling his hands holding her tightly around the small of her back, almost as if somehow, and she was not at all sure how, he was holding her high up in the air and about to eat her in full, not just a part of her, but the whole lot and, final and absolute though this meal might be, particularly for her, she felt she really didn’t mind it at all, quite welcomed it in fact. She found herself stiffening again, not at all sure where this was going but loving every minute of it anyway as she twisted her torso around again with a smile breaking out between her legs while his hands took a new, stronger hold on her. She felt like a butterfly, just pinned there to a board, skewered by her own mounting and collapsing pleasure.
He loosened his hold on her and she moved over him, holding him around his head as weeping broke out in the fires inside her and his tongue worked along the inside of her hidden flesh, making her stiffen and think about the end of her life again as her heart began straining on its guy ropes, wanting to break out of her chest and run free, just dance over the cluttered rooftops and into the Parisian night to get lost forever.
Her body stretched out and stiffened slightly before relaxing and tensing again, feeling his hands holding her tightly around the small of her back, almost as if somehow, and she was not at all sure how, he was holding her high up in the air and about to eat her in full, not just a part of her, but the whole lot and, final and absolute though this meal might be, particularly for her, she felt she really didn’t mind it at all, quite welcomed it in fact. She found herself stiffening again, not at all sure where this was going but loving every minute of it anyway as she twisted her torso around again with a smile breaking out between her legs while his hands took a new, stronger hold on her. She felt like a butterfly, just pinned there to a board, skewered by her own mounting and collapsing pleasure.
He loosened his hold on her and she moved over him, holding him around his head as weeping broke out in the fires inside her and his tongue worked along the inside of her hidden flesh, making her stiffen and think about the end of her life again as her heart began straining on its guy ropes, wanting to break out of her chest and run free, just dance over the cluttered rooftops and into the Parisian night to get lost forever.
Christmas
had arrived in London and Lisa, frantic with worry
because they’d had a fierce argument, had gone out into the
streets of the West End looking for Daniel who liked to sleep rough:
A desk drawer landed with a splintering
crash on the fire which burned with a vivid and angry fury under the arches at
Victoria Station. People circled the fire, peeling off when they were properly
warmed up, to be replaced by others for a while. They all looked as if they were
suffering from the same illness, their heads bowed and shoulders hunched, their
overcoats belted with rope and their legs so thick they might have been wearing
four of five pairs of trousers. Fragments of stale food hung in the men’s
beards and some of the women wore greasy caps or balaclavas.
Hell might look or feel like this, Lisa
thought, as she joined the circle, bowing her head and shuffling along with them.
They had strong, Hogarthian faces, often of spectacular ugliness. There were
hare-lips and broken noses, eyes which were not level with one another, lobotomy
scars, crooked mouths. Many, perhaps conscious of their ugliness, were unwilling
to look anyone in the eye. No one paid her any regard; she wasn’t a star
out here.
She had noticed subtle hints, however, of
an abiding need for love, no matter how fallen the state. Two men had dogs; a
kitten’s head poked up out of a woman’s overcoat. Crucifixes hung
around many necks, the sight of which always disturbed her. Unlike Daniel she
had almost no relationship with God but, rather like Daniel, she was afraid of
him.
Lisa
continues searching for him and finally ends up
at a party for tramps behind Kings Cross where the drugs are free
and the music is hot and loud:
This was shaping up to be the only Christmas Lisa had ever enjoyed as she held her special fag up high and jigged around and around in this seething, skirling sea of dope and stinking bodies. She had no idea who she was actually dancing with – sometimes it was the tart in the baseball cap, who seemed to have taken a fancy to her, sometimes a lively little whore with a Dolly Parton bosom. The Black Tarantula bobbed up at one stage, dealing Lisa a painful jab in her side with an elbow. Another sadistic nutcase, Lisa thought as she pogoed off to safety – only to fall into a jigging twosome with a bombed-out, slavering, overcoated tramp. No one took their coats off in the Maple, no matter how happy or hot they got and it might have been the first party she had ever attended where everyone wore at least three coats. The very air dripped with sweat.
Just then a gap opened up in the dancers and, rather like that classic, enchanted moment in West Side Story, when Richard Beymer first spots Natalie Wood in the local hop, everything went still for Lisa and she took off her sunglasses to get a better look. Right there was Daniel Jenkins, the Missing Link, The Great Visionary from Dalston Lane, with wild, dishevelled hair and dressed in an old coat, jumping around in the spotlight with a French loaf sticking out of his flies like the largest dildo she’d ever seen. He was so drunk or stoned his blue eyes were but tiny red buttons and, as he waved his loaf around, he bellowed in a drunken, Welsh accent: ‘Come on and get it boys and girls. Come and grapple with the monster of the deep.’
Extremely shy, Natalie Wood finally walked over to her handsome Richard Beymer, stood in front of him and hoped he would recognise her. But he didn’t.
' What I need is another drink,’ he grumbled to no one in particular. ‘Why can’t we ever get enough to drink? No serious drinker ever gets enough to drink. Two hundred drinks are never enough if you are a serious drinker. Bladders to it, I say.’
'You’ve had enough, I’d say.’
Daniel was swaying dangerously as he began patting his overcoat pockets, perhaps hoping to find a bottle in there somewhere. The band began Heard it on the Grapevine and a fight had broken out about ten feet away. ‘Got to have a drink. Jus’ one drink an’ I’ll feel fine,’ Daniel said as he cupped his hand under his chin and coughed up blood into it. Another cough brought up more blood and he held it out for Lisa to examine. Richard Beymer hadn’t been like this in that West Side gym.
This was shaping up to be the only Christmas Lisa had ever enjoyed as she held her special fag up high and jigged around and around in this seething, skirling sea of dope and stinking bodies. She had no idea who she was actually dancing with – sometimes it was the tart in the baseball cap, who seemed to have taken a fancy to her, sometimes a lively little whore with a Dolly Parton bosom. The Black Tarantula bobbed up at one stage, dealing Lisa a painful jab in her side with an elbow. Another sadistic nutcase, Lisa thought as she pogoed off to safety – only to fall into a jigging twosome with a bombed-out, slavering, overcoated tramp. No one took their coats off in the Maple, no matter how happy or hot they got and it might have been the first party she had ever attended where everyone wore at least three coats. The very air dripped with sweat.
Just then a gap opened up in the dancers and, rather like that classic, enchanted moment in West Side Story, when Richard Beymer first spots Natalie Wood in the local hop, everything went still for Lisa and she took off her sunglasses to get a better look. Right there was Daniel Jenkins, the Missing Link, The Great Visionary from Dalston Lane, with wild, dishevelled hair and dressed in an old coat, jumping around in the spotlight with a French loaf sticking out of his flies like the largest dildo she’d ever seen. He was so drunk or stoned his blue eyes were but tiny red buttons and, as he waved his loaf around, he bellowed in a drunken, Welsh accent: ‘Come on and get it boys and girls. Come and grapple with the monster of the deep.’
Extremely shy, Natalie Wood finally walked over to her handsome Richard Beymer, stood in front of him and hoped he would recognise her. But he didn’t.
' What I need is another drink,’ he grumbled to no one in particular. ‘Why can’t we ever get enough to drink? No serious drinker ever gets enough to drink. Two hundred drinks are never enough if you are a serious drinker. Bladders to it, I say.’
'You’ve had enough, I’d say.’
Daniel was swaying dangerously as he began patting his overcoat pockets, perhaps hoping to find a bottle in there somewhere. The band began Heard it on the Grapevine and a fight had broken out about ten feet away. ‘Got to have a drink. Jus’ one drink an’ I’ll feel fine,’ Daniel said as he cupped his hand under his chin and coughed up blood into it. Another cough brought up more blood and he held it out for Lisa to examine. Richard Beymer hadn’t been like this in that West Side gym.
After
Daniel recovers, they travel to Jerusalem where
Lisa is acting in an ultra-violent film, Rebellion, a role of which
she is heartily ashamed but she needs the money. On her day off
they wander the city:
Mid-morning and it was raining hard on the streets of Old Jerusalem. Huge black clouds sweeping in over the Moab mountains disgorging buckets of rain on the city. Raining on Arab and Jew alike, on Lutheran and Mormon, on women and children, tethered donkeys and wandering cats. Everyone was soaked in equal measure by this impeccably democratic downpour. Raining impartially on dome, spire and steeple, raining on the Hyatt Hotel and the Hebrew University, on Mr Whiskers’ Café and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the Hadassah Hospital, the police station, the Mount of Olives and the Dome of the Rock.
It was also sheeting down on the Via Dolorosa where Daniel and Lisa were standing, hand in hand, looking down it. Daniel was showing her the sights and they had begun working their way along the Stations of the Cross in the Via Dolorosa. A few other wet pilgrims appeared occasionally but mostly it was just the two of them with raindrops chasing one another off the ends of their noses. ‘This is the first Station of the Cross, where Christ was condemned by Pilate,’ Daniel explained. ‘There’s a Roman cistern down there and a stretch of the road where Christ is supposed to have walked. Somewhere near here a crown of thorns was fastened on his head.’
Lisa was a country child on her first visit to the big city, happy to let Daniel show off even if, in truth, all this Route-of-the-Cross stuff, with all these plaques, was extremely disappointing and all got up for pilgrim money, no doubt. But it all came down to money in the end didn’t it? Even the death of Christ, as old Judas would have undoubtedly attested. Nothing and no one had ever broken the power of money.
They came to the final station, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and this was an even bigger disappointment, its floors covered with vast puddles from the leaking roof. Even holy old Daniel hated it, she was pleased to learn: run by half a dozen quarrelling sects, each with its own patch of religious icons and collection plates. Never forget the collection plate, best beloved. ‘There’s more spirituality in my lavatory,’ she whispered to him. ‘And I would never trust that priest there; just look at the old git eyeing up that woman’s knockers.’
Mid-morning and it was raining hard on the streets of Old Jerusalem. Huge black clouds sweeping in over the Moab mountains disgorging buckets of rain on the city. Raining on Arab and Jew alike, on Lutheran and Mormon, on women and children, tethered donkeys and wandering cats. Everyone was soaked in equal measure by this impeccably democratic downpour. Raining impartially on dome, spire and steeple, raining on the Hyatt Hotel and the Hebrew University, on Mr Whiskers’ Café and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the Hadassah Hospital, the police station, the Mount of Olives and the Dome of the Rock.
It was also sheeting down on the Via Dolorosa where Daniel and Lisa were standing, hand in hand, looking down it. Daniel was showing her the sights and they had begun working their way along the Stations of the Cross in the Via Dolorosa. A few other wet pilgrims appeared occasionally but mostly it was just the two of them with raindrops chasing one another off the ends of their noses. ‘This is the first Station of the Cross, where Christ was condemned by Pilate,’ Daniel explained. ‘There’s a Roman cistern down there and a stretch of the road where Christ is supposed to have walked. Somewhere near here a crown of thorns was fastened on his head.’
Lisa was a country child on her first visit to the big city, happy to let Daniel show off even if, in truth, all this Route-of-the-Cross stuff, with all these plaques, was extremely disappointing and all got up for pilgrim money, no doubt. But it all came down to money in the end didn’t it? Even the death of Christ, as old Judas would have undoubtedly attested. Nothing and no one had ever broken the power of money.
They came to the final station, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and this was an even bigger disappointment, its floors covered with vast puddles from the leaking roof. Even holy old Daniel hated it, she was pleased to learn: run by half a dozen quarrelling sects, each with its own patch of religious icons and collection plates. Never forget the collection plate, best beloved. ‘There’s more spirituality in my lavatory,’ she whispered to him. ‘And I would never trust that priest there; just look at the old git eyeing up that woman’s knockers.’
Later
that year, Daniel is in Brixton following
the progress of a riot when, in all the swirling violence, he sees
a vision:
Daniel remained well out of the way but stiffened when he heard a noise which sounded like a squealing mob riding along atop a medieval siege machine.
The squeals and creaks were becoming louder and louder and, as this huge truck began approaching, Daniel had to shield his eyes from its brilliant and vulgar dazzle. The wheels of the truck seemed to be made of fire and several separate lights turned and turned again on its roof, all glaring with incandescent whiteness. The silhouettes of three men were moving around inside these swirling white lights and they all seemed to be working a sort of giant television camera which was soon focused on the blazing house with the crowds gathering and quarrelling all around it.
A policeman tried to arrest one of the youths and the separate lights of the truck came together and focused on the youth as he struggled in the merciless spotlight. A lot of shouting and pushing followed when the truck’s spotlight jerked up abruptly and focused on another fire which had broken out in another derelict house a little further down the road. Those screams straight from hell started up again as the truck creaked forward to that fire.
Daniel followed the truck with the wheels of fire from a distance of about twenty five yards, stopping when it stopped and starting again when it moved on. He couldn’t quite make out what it was supposed to be doing except that it was clearly some infernal force for disturbance since trouble was breaking out all around it with gangs of youths sprinting alongside it, some peeling off to smash windows and, as each window shattered, smaller groups scurried across the street, picking up small items at first then becoming bolder, carting off fully clothed mannequins, piles of this and boxes of that as yet more windows were broken.
The most peculiar feature of all this mayhem, for Daniel, was that all these hooligan acts seemed to be carefully framed in the intense white glare of the truck’s spotlights and it was almost impossible to work out if these acts only happened in the spotlight or were actively encouraged by its attention.
With more people running out of doorways into the streets, which had become alive with police sirens and the baying cries of looters who had lost control of themselves, the truck pressed on, its white spotlight picking up a policeman falling backwards clutching his face which had become a mask of blood. A petrol bomb smashed into the front of the Post Office, then another. A police helicopter whump-whumped overhead. A phalanx of police with riot shields marched into the fray, beating their shields with truncheons in some hopeless effort to scare the rioters into behaving themselves. Smoke eddied one way and another as another group went running past the truck.
And then Daniel saw something, as terrifying as it was amazing, since all manner of strange colours were trembling and liquefying around the truck with the wheels of fire. All at once, these colours seemed to rush into one another and then shoot straight up into the sky like some strange, malevolent rainbow, black like sin and red like blood and yellow like pus, scorching a rising arc of evil into the very sky when, after a series of small explosions deep within it, the rainbow’s arc broke into thousands, perhaps millions of smaller rainbows which then broke from the others and then joined them again until the whole sky was but a criss-crossing mesh of conjoined rainbows.
Daniel remained well out of the way but stiffened when he heard a noise which sounded like a squealing mob riding along atop a medieval siege machine.
The squeals and creaks were becoming louder and louder and, as this huge truck began approaching, Daniel had to shield his eyes from its brilliant and vulgar dazzle. The wheels of the truck seemed to be made of fire and several separate lights turned and turned again on its roof, all glaring with incandescent whiteness. The silhouettes of three men were moving around inside these swirling white lights and they all seemed to be working a sort of giant television camera which was soon focused on the blazing house with the crowds gathering and quarrelling all around it.
A policeman tried to arrest one of the youths and the separate lights of the truck came together and focused on the youth as he struggled in the merciless spotlight. A lot of shouting and pushing followed when the truck’s spotlight jerked up abruptly and focused on another fire which had broken out in another derelict house a little further down the road. Those screams straight from hell started up again as the truck creaked forward to that fire.
Daniel followed the truck with the wheels of fire from a distance of about twenty five yards, stopping when it stopped and starting again when it moved on. He couldn’t quite make out what it was supposed to be doing except that it was clearly some infernal force for disturbance since trouble was breaking out all around it with gangs of youths sprinting alongside it, some peeling off to smash windows and, as each window shattered, smaller groups scurried across the street, picking up small items at first then becoming bolder, carting off fully clothed mannequins, piles of this and boxes of that as yet more windows were broken.
The most peculiar feature of all this mayhem, for Daniel, was that all these hooligan acts seemed to be carefully framed in the intense white glare of the truck’s spotlights and it was almost impossible to work out if these acts only happened in the spotlight or were actively encouraged by its attention.
With more people running out of doorways into the streets, which had become alive with police sirens and the baying cries of looters who had lost control of themselves, the truck pressed on, its white spotlight picking up a policeman falling backwards clutching his face which had become a mask of blood. A petrol bomb smashed into the front of the Post Office, then another. A police helicopter whump-whumped overhead. A phalanx of police with riot shields marched into the fray, beating their shields with truncheons in some hopeless effort to scare the rioters into behaving themselves. Smoke eddied one way and another as another group went running past the truck.
And then Daniel saw something, as terrifying as it was amazing, since all manner of strange colours were trembling and liquefying around the truck with the wheels of fire. All at once, these colours seemed to rush into one another and then shoot straight up into the sky like some strange, malevolent rainbow, black like sin and red like blood and yellow like pus, scorching a rising arc of evil into the very sky when, after a series of small explosions deep within it, the rainbow’s arc broke into thousands, perhaps millions of smaller rainbows which then broke from the others and then joined them again until the whole sky was but a criss-crossing mesh of conjoined rainbows.
