James Ballard - Kingdom Come - A Novel

‘Sir, I’ve been watching you. Am I right? You have your eye on that refrigerator. The big fellow . . . ?’

I waited as Christie sized me up. I was the enemy, in my dove-grey summer suit, a creature of the Metro-Centre and the retail parks. I was fairly sure that he no longer remembered me. His arrest, the violent police, his appearance at the magistrates’ court, had disappeared into some garbage chute at the back of his mind.

‘Yes, the big fellow.’ I touched the huge wreck of the refrigerator. ‘Can I assume it works?’

‘Absolutely. Enough ice cubes to freeze the Thames.’

‘How much?’

‘Well . . .’ Enjoying himself, Christie closed his eyes. ‘Seriously, you couldn’t afford it.’

‘Try me.’

‘No point. Believe me, the price is beyond your grasp.’

‘Twenty pounds? Fifty pounds?’

‘Please . . . the price is unimaginable.’

‘Go on.’

‘It’s free !’ An almost maniacal grin distorted Christie’s face. ‘Free!’

‘You mean . . . ?’

‘Gratis. Not a penny, not a euro, zilch.’ Christie patted me cheerfully on the shoulder. ‘Free. An inconceivable concept. Look at you. It’s outside your entire experience. You can’t cope with it.’

‘I can cope.’

‘I doubt it.’ Confidentially, Christie lowered his voice. ‘I come every Saturday, sooner or later someone asks, “How much?” “Free,” I say. They’re stunned, they react as if I’m trying to steal from them. That’s capitalism for you. Nothing can be free. The idea makes them sick, they want to call the police, leave messages for their accountants. They feel unworthy, convinced they’ve sinned. They have to rush off and buy something just to get their breath back . . .’

‘Very good.’ I waited as he lit a roll-up. ‘I thought it might be a piece of street theatre. But in fact you’re making a serious point.’

‘Absolutely. Maya, hear the man.’

‘This is your stand against the Metro-Centre, and all the other super-malls. Why not just burn them down?’

‘It could be done.’ Christie sucked the sweet smoke from the spliff. ‘If I lit the fuse, would you hold the torch?’

‘I might. As it happens, I have my own problems with the Metro-Centre. My father died in the shooting there.’

Christie puffed his spliff, and turned to look at me without surprise. For a few seconds all expression drained from his face, but he was devoid of emotion. Pain, sympathy and regret had moved to another floor of his mind. Whether or not he recognized me as the man who had watched him outside the magistrates’ court was now irrelevant. I realized that even if he had been responsible for the shooting he would have long since repressed all memory of it.

‘Your father? That’s a hard buy.’ He stepped away from me, drumming his fists on the washing machines. As his wife climbed from the driving cab he called out: ‘Maya . . . a close shave. I nearly had a customer.’

‘Christie, we need to go.’

She was quiet but determined, watching over her husband like a tired mental nurse. Her eyes met mine, then looked away, as if used to dealing with the human strays that Christie’s aimless garrulity drew to him.

A LARGE AMERICANcar had stopped by the kerb fifty feet away, a silver Lincoln with a cable-company logo emblazoned on its doors. A chauffeur in Metro-Centre livery stepped out, and strode around the car to the rear passenger door. A waiting television unit approached the car, guided through the watching crowd by three uniformed stewards. The Steadicam operator crouched inside his harness, filming the rear-seat passenger, a familiar handsome figure who was inspecting his deep tan in a vanity mirror.

David Cruise was wearing studio make-up, ready for the tracking shot that opened his Saturday show. The camera would film him stepping from the silver Lincoln, saluting the cheering customers and drum majorettes, and then entering the consumer palace over which he presided.

A band struck up ‘Hail to the Chief’, and a smile touched Cruise’s upper lip, a faint tremor that spread outwards to annex the muscles of his face. Energized by this grimace, he leapt nimbly from the passenger seat. He greeted the spectators like a practised politician, pinching the cheek of a delighted old lady, exchanging quips with two workmen in overalls, picking out people in the crowd and treating them to their own personal smile. I noticed his lack of aggression, and the softness of his hands, which were everywhere, fluttering around him like well-trained birds, squeezing, patting, waving and saluting.

With his lipstick, blusher and pancake make-up, Cruise seemed even more real than he did on television. He reminded me of all the minor actors I had coached while filming their commercials. The TV ad jumped the gap between reality and illusion, creating a world where the false became real and the real false. The crowd watching Cruise as he made his regal progress to the South Gate entrance expected him to wear make-up, and took for granted that he made exaggerated claims for the products they were so easily persuaded to buy. David Cruise, supporting actor in television serials that he always joined as their ratings slumped, was a complete fiction, from his corseted waist to his boyish smile. But he was a fake they could believe in.

‘You’re right,’ I said to Christie. ‘Nothing is true, and nothing is untrue. What was it? Say nothing, believe everything . . . ?’

Christie stood beside me, so close that I could hear his laboured breathing. His lungs moved in sudden starts, as if his body was trying desperately to uncouple itself from his brain. In a deep fugue, he stared at the retreating figure of David Cruise, parting the crowd like a cut-price messiah. I assumed that Christie was on the edge of an epileptic fit, surrounded by the warning aura that preceded an attack. I put my hands on his sweating shoulders, ready to catch him when he fell. But he pushed me away, straightened his back and gazed at the drifting blimp above our heads. He had willed himself into the fugue, expressing all his hatred of the fleshy actor who incarnated everything he loathed about the mall.

‘Christie—it’s time to go.’ His wife took his arm, and whispered loudly enough for me to hear, ‘Baby’s getting tired.’

‘Baby not tired. Baby waking up . . .’

I turned, glad to leave them to their marital games, and found myself facing a thuggish group of stewards in St George’s shirts. They pushed through the crowd, grappling with each other like wrestlers in a ruck. A child screamed, setting off a deranged Airedale that started barking and biting. Trying to escape, husbands collided into their wives, and a scuffle broke out as the cabinet refrigerator toppled to the ground. Stewards shouted above the pipe band.

‘Right! Let’s have you! Off with this rubbish!’

Fists pounded on the side panels of the pick-up. Clutching her daughter, Mrs Christie flailed with her free hand at the brawling stewards. Fully awake now, her husband wrestled with their leader, a blond-haired bruiser with ice-hockey armour under his shirt.

I stepped back, and lost my balance when I was shoulder-charged by a heavily built woman wearing a biker’s crash helmet. Through the mêlée of legs, knees and fists I saw an open-topped car draw up behind the pick-up. The driver sprang from his seat, fastening a leather jacket around his midriff, apparently eager to join the brawl.

He searched the crowd, forcefully pushing aside anyone who approached him. He was well into his fifties, with an almost jocular scowl, a boxer’s rolling shoulders and the shaven scalp of a nightclub bouncer. He often appeared on television, but the last time I had seen him he was sitting beside Geoffrey Fairfax in the front of the lawyer’s Range Rover. This was Christie’s psychiatrist, Dr Tony Maxted, and the third of his helpful witnesses.