King of the City by Michael Moorcock

Author:Michael Moorcock [Moorcock, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-062-04084-8
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2000-12-30T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Shaft

Sex with twins is probably the most astonishing kind I’ve had. In more ways, you might say, than one. Déjà vu multiple orgasms, sweet confusion.

Flo and Pinky Fortnum set me up for it. In those days my life didn’t have much room for extra fantasy and I’d never even dreamed of being in the same bed with those sisters. It appeared to be something they’d not only dreamed of, but planned for. Or rather, Pinky had. She didn’t go out enough.

Admittedly, I didn’t go out much for a week or two myself.

I married Flo Fortnum (almost certainly) at the old Kensington Registry Office in St Mary’s Lane. On a beautiful May morning shortly after the first big Can’t Pay Won’t Pay march. Did my heart good, that march. People 1. Thatcher 0. It was the start of the end. The public challenged Hatchet and won. It took the Labour Party years to follow their lead, and when it did, it blew it. Sometimes it’s hardly worth putting up the fucking barricades. Villa and Zapata must have got righteously pissed off after a while. Doing all that hard fighting and then having the left-wing politicians suddenly become conservatives. They didn’t blindfold her and put her up against a wall, but the Hatchet never had quite the same support again. I lost my old Minolta and my favourite Pentax in the riots, which meant I had no shots of the police arresting the juggler, the event that started it all. One minute the poor bugger was juggling, the next the jollies had him by the elbows. But I got some good stuff later on my back-up Olympus. The Minolta was smashed by the police. My Pentax was nicked by a Red Guard, whoever that was. But this wasn’t a communist plot. This wasn’t Bill Bragg’s singing. This wasn’t a bit of spin. Or a publicity success. Or a cult. Or a bunch of loonies. Or a bunch of axe-grinding radicals. This was the public showing its disapproval, deciding it had had enough. And every copper knew in his bones that he was on the wrong side. And the pictures were heroic.

Family pictures. I’ve got them in my special book. My old, sweet, darling mob. My good old London mob. Not lads. Not yobs. Not bastards. Not bitches. Not a problem. Not the marginalized. Not the insane. Not the desperate or the hungry, not the envious or the weak, not whingeing professional victims: just outraged men and women with a strong sense of how things should be. And even Tony-boy knew he couldn’t keep that mob spinning for ever. A government can only betray the public interest for so long. And a tabloid can only betray its readers’ interests until it realizes it had better follow their lead. The press is slow to read the public mood. It always thinks it’s in control. It’s always hurrying to catch up.

Over the years, as they’d come on the market, Pinky had bought all the flats in D’Yss Mansions and rented out about half of them.

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