Kingdom Come: A Novel by Ballard J. G

Author:Ballard, J. G. [Ballard, J. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Norton
Published: 2012-02-26T20:00:00+00:00

21

A NEW POLITICS

‘BROOKLANDS? THE WHOLE PLACE is off its rocker. I just don’t get it.’ David Cruise screwed up his paper tissue and threw it at the camera mounted on a tripod beside the swimming pool. ‘What on earth was happening last night?’

‘I think you know.’ I watched the surface of the water, as calm and eventless as plate glass. ‘An attempted putsch.’

‘Putsch?’

‘A palace revolution.’

Cruise grimaced into his make-up mirror. ‘Where’s the palace?’

‘We live in it. The Metro-Centre and all the retail parks between here and Heathrow. You and me and the people who watch your TV shows.’

‘Not enough of them—that’s the problem. Who was meant to lead this revolution?’

‘You know that as well. You were.’

‘Me? I’ll remember, the next time I need a dressing room and a courtesy car. Some revolution, some palace . . .’

WE WERE SITTING by the indoor pool attached to Cruise’s house on the Seven Hills estate, an exclusive Weybridge community once home to the Beatles, Tom Jones and other pop celebrities. The domed glass roof—a deliberate echo, I assumed, of the Metro-Centre—resembled an observatory open to the heavens, but the only star ever watched by David Cruise was himself.

The house was a substantial Tudorbethan pile, its rooms large enough to serve as squash courts, furnished like an out-of-season hotel. In an office next to the cloakrooms the day staff negotiated the fees for Cruise’s charity engagements and dealt with his fan mail. As soon as we arrived, Cruise scanned his faxes and emails, then led me through the empty rooms to the swimming pool, where we lay back in sun loungers beside the bar. Two docile Filipina girls served us breakfast—pawpaw, coffee and lamb cutlets—but Cruise was more interested in his large vodka.

I watched him settle his fleshy body in the lounger, white tuxedo and ruffed shirt well displayed. As we walked through the rooms of this mansion he had seemed bored by it, and vaguely suspicious of what was supposed to be his own home, aware that it was little more than a stage set.

Despite myself, I rather liked him. He discounted his own success, and was searching for some kind of certainty in his life, though his entire career was built on illusion and a set of emotional three-card tricks. His manner was overbearing, but he was deeply insecure and forever manipulating me into flattering him.

Meanwhile I decided to carry out an experiment, my last attempt to spring loose from the web of conspiracies that was responsible for killing my father. So far I had achieved almost nothing, playing the amateur detective who blundered into danger, perpetually dazed by the doors slammed in his face.

But in one area I was a complete professional, in that electric realm where advertising and popular taste met and fused. Brooklands and the motorway towns were the ultimate consumer test panel, and here I could put into practice the subversive ideas that had cost me my career. At Brooklands there were no ethics committees to keep an

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