ARCANIA

By Brother Xanadu

Set in three major cities, 'Arcania', by Brother Xanadu, will take you on a roller-coaster ride through the wild, crazy life of a rebel funk musician. There are lots of brutally funny details of the kids of 70s London and their arty underground scene. Sex, drugs, punks and squatters all have their part in this unique tale. 

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Worldgig.com
• Release date: Jul 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781777475710

Book preview

Chapter One

One morning in early November the phone rang. It was the voice of an enthusiastic young girl, a friend of a friend, with an extraordinary suggestion.

Do you want to get married? Daisy was asking me on the phone excitedly. "Wolf says you’re handsome and you want to get married with someone, and... so do I!

Zandy, listen, shall we get married?

Her voice squeaked with excitement and a certain outrageous provocation which I could not possibly resist.

Yes, I replied instantly. O.K. Maybe! Yes, let’s do it! She yelped and squeaked and emitted silvery pearls of laughter.

The only thing is ... and she fought to find words, what do you look like? I’m very pretty, and Wolf says you’re not bad!

I supposed I’m not bad, I grumbled, mumbling a bit.

Should we meet, she shrieked, or just DO IT!

Oh yeah, let’s meet, I purred. I couldn’t wait.

She didn’t let me down. When I answered the bell she was already half inside the door.

Daisy was entirely beautiful. A long clinging emerald dress perfectly contrasted with wickedly glittering eyes, lovely full lips, flowing brown hair and the illegal, sensational curves of an eighteen year old school-girl in sunflower bloom. I ushered her into the piano room. We dithered and giggled, not knowing what to say. It was an absurd situation. We were both overcome by nervousness. I could not stop staring at her. As she talked her limbs would keep twitching and jerking themselves dizzy in a crazy theatre which was dazzlingly erotic.

How about children? she continued, getting terribly serious suddenly.

I don’t know, I said.

Me, no! She shook her head firmly.

As she chattered on the conversation moved to jazz. She knew I was a jazz pianist. She mentioned 'Bird' and 'Trane'. Then, flying into giggles, admitted that Wolf had cunningly given her a crash course so she might ‘pass the test’ with me.

Now she looked at me in a serious, intense way.

"You know, Zandy, I’ve found out what I am. I’m an existentialist. Like Wolf. I don’t think life matters. Nor does he.

It’s all completely meaningless, a waste of time!

I nodded eagerly. Now we were getting somewhere. I felt good on philosophical territory.

In fact Wolf and me have a suicide pact, she went on firmly. One day we went for a drink together and really decided to both just kill ourselves! She looked at me vacantly, face to face. I got drunk and slept out in the park. It didn’t work. Wolf was pathetic, he only took eight valium! She snorted in derision.

I was shocked and told her she was young and beautiful and all her life was in front of her.

Nothing I do is ever right, she said bitterly. Everyone hates me. I’ll never be any good, there’s no hope. I laid one hand gently on her shoulder.

You can never be sure, I said, It may get better, and by the way, I feel the same. Nothing is real any more, there’s no point in going on. Let’s try to find a way out.

It was time for her to go, she told me.

One last thing, and she stifled a shriek. Should we kiss?

Oh yes, I said firmly. She screamed again, eyes wide.

Just a little one then, she said.

It was so easy to enfold her in my arms. I wasn’t sure what kind of a kiss it would turn out to be, and, sure enough, she burst into another flood of giggles before the kiss could deepen.

I felt warm waves roll all over and around me. She darted off, promising to phone, and was gone. I was left staring out at the dark, enigmatic Hendon street-lights, wondering what had happened.

It was a rain-streaked autumn in London, with winter fast approaching. Life had a faded, dreamlike quality, but like a dream which is soon to end. I pottered around in the grand old-world finery of my parents’ house, neither they nor I being willing to face the fact that as a new young adult, I strongly needed to create my own life, yet, having chosen music as a career, had no financial ability to move out.

Above this patchwork quilt of inadequacy, my various music sessions played on insistently, hotel bands in preparation, jazz and blues duos also in rehearsal, bits and pieces everywhere, a circus of indecision.

The full glory of the British music scene was in full swing, and yet I could not attack, being far too soft.

Hoping that drugs might cure this problem I experimented with hashish and alcohol, plus a touch of cocaine. The feeling was that of no status, no self-respect, that I was surely nothing, a nobody, and gradually I became more and more cynical, as the dark December leaf-strewn days ploughed me further into an abyss of misunderstanding.

Eventually Daisy returned, to stay the night. I was beside myself with passion for her. After the usual formalities, the evening wound to a close, and finally, around midnight I lead her upstairs. The large house, with its three flights of stairs, was dark and mournful under the moonlight. We closed the attic door behind us. This was a large, light room, shaped like an ‘O’, built around a central pillar. It had a care-free, childish atmosphere, with musical instruments, plants and even an antique pinball machine, plus records and clutter strewn haphazardly all around. The bed in the corner was small, low and narrow. She glanced at it briefly in amused alarm, said nothing, but sat down elegantly in the large green plush armchair, and as I dropped down and began to kiss her rosy flushed neck and cheeks, she looked upwards.

For a moment she waited, then made a disgusted sound and suddenly raised her arms to peel her tight sweater and blouse off, instantly revealing the most perfectly well-formed breasts a teen-age girl could have.

I understood she wanted to go all the way, immediately, and get it over with. This was strange of her but I could not resist the challenge. In a moment she had stripped naked and was lying silently on the narrow cot of a bed. There was hardly any foreplay. As I entered her she was almost totally unresponsive, as though all of it meant nothing. This hurt me more than anything I could imagine.

I had no idea why she was behaving in this manner.

Two weeks later we agreed that I would come down to her flat in Peckam, to stay the night.

I knocked on the door after a long, complicated bus journey. A short, friendly young student let me in. His name was Irwin, he told me. He made me understand that she wasn’t back yet, but that she would be returning any time soon.

I knew that Irwin was gay since Daisy had made sure to tell me in advance, in order that I shouldn’t be jealous about them sharing an apartment. For a while we sat cross-legged on the thick white pile carpet in his room, listening to rock albums.

Soon she arrived. Terribly excited, and looking sensational, she went crashing from room to room. She’d cut off her beautiful long brown hair and now looked exactly like an actress from one of those 1920s' made-for-TV dramas.

She leaped into the bath and afterwards greeted me in bed completely naked, a tangle of limbs, hot, panting, animal and feverish. Her smooth silky arms, breasts and legs wrapped me in a rising tide of excitement that lead to orgasm after orgasm. She was my mirror, my sister, my dream-person. It was the biggest feeling I’d ever had in my life. I was totally and completely head-over-heels in love with her.

And then, at around 4am, it suddenly ended.

Shall we sleep now, she said suddenly in a very determined voice, locking up her body away from mine.

Shall we sleep now? she repeated with iron emphasis. It was my first cold water shower. On top of this was my new-found realization that although I was reaching orgasm, she was not, even though I was trying for her in every way I knew.

In the morning we walked out into the grey poverty-stricken, abandoned streets of Peckam and along to the workers’ cafe on the corner. She screamed with delight at the sight of it. We both loved the roughness, the honesty and the big steaming breakfast helpings.

A few tough navvies looked on cynically as we ate. Holding hands, we cradled big white mugs of tea and secret laughter danced from her eyes into mine, and back again, as a reggae song played on the radio.

Chapter Two

My closest friend, and most treasured companion, was a fine art painter named Wolf Santiago. He was everything to me, a rich myriad of characters, fascinatingly intermeshed.

He would change constantly, like a chameleon. One moment an artist, then jester, sometimes a grotesquely virile dwarf-troll, often a noble, glorious, military commander, finally just a precarious, unstable, depressive man.

Always the mystic. A master visionary.

The face of Spartacus, peering out from a tormented, suffering artist spirit.

He would fix you with a demonic, vitriol stare, grab your arm with a quivering, iron grip, then suddenly broadcast into your ear, terminal words of doom richly embroidered with Biblical quotations. This would represent a devastatingly final judgment over some aspect of your character, perhaps some great hidden fear, or guilty streak. Stressing this point, which he identified accurately through experience, would result in you, the victim, suffering an endless series of explosively emotional traumas, at which he would then innocently detach, gulp down another great mouthful of ale, and lean back with a roll-up cigarette, suddenly calm, remote and philosophical.

My brother Dorian had discovered him one day at some art college, instantly labelling him to be ‘the real thing’. Wolf was convinced that he himself was the reincarnation of Van Gough, and he certainly looked the part.

A self-confessed dandy, he would quickly and professionally work his way through the female art students, and Daisy had been one of these. At this point, correctly anticipating trouble from the wife, Wolf hit on a brilliant idea, that if they started her, Daisy, off with me, then there would be no possible way that his wife, Bella, could suspect skullduggery.

I was blissfully unaware of the entire game.

For a precious few days I now perceived life to be a miracle, and as the drab grey contours of Hendon became progressively more bleak, chilly and wind-swept, I actually felt reborn, prophetic, or even semi-divine. Such is the power of love.

My parents’ house became ever more welcoming and womb-like as winter set in with a vengeance and Christmas decorations were solemnly hung. Daisy and I whispered our love for each other shyly down the phone nearly every night.

I couldn’t wait to hold her again. Eventually she invited me to return to her flat in Peckham. A friend’s band were playing at the Marquee club that evening. Feeling daring, macho and bohemian I stood at the front of the crowd for a while, cheering them along, before catching the late bus southwards. She had given me a key, and my heart sang as I slipped it into the lock, and crept steadily inside the moonlit apartment, so as not to wake Irwin.

Then I inched open her bedroom door.

Wolf was lying naked in bed on top of her. I saw his pelvis thrusting, and the crack between the cheeks of his buttocks. Then his head turned slowly towards me, and, as if out of a dream, he spoke.

"Oh god it’s Zand... I’m terribly sorry... we didn’t know you were coming...

"I suppose I’d better go... look Zand, shut the door....

SHUT THE DOOR, for Christ’s sake, and then I’ll go, I promise, I’ll go...

All this delivered in the casual tone of a lieutenant commander, polite, fair even, with a superb upper class British accent, and a total emphasis on fair play, and no emotion. Fair play before emotion, the traditional public school ethos.

Terribly decent of him, to be acting this way. This was the implication.

I sat in the living-room, on the sofa, with my head in my hands. All the hell of heaven and earth raged inside me.

My sanity was threatened. Actually I felt that it had gone. I was a zombie. An automaton. I didn’t dare speak, or even think.

The two came whispering and tiptoing out of the bedroom like the fox and the cat, in various degrees of undress. Wolf was making a final attempt to bargain, to cement this new virtual reality in which no actual crime had been committed, nothing had really happened, it was all just theoretical, academic, a slight imbalance, something that could easily be brushed out of sight by rational debate, a few forced marches and cold showers.

Daisy, being more realistic, yet giggling a little, was shushing him like mad and bundling him to the door, actually giving him a sort of ‘BE OFF,’ as if to an old tramp she’d unexpectedly discovered breaking into the apartment.

She closed the door, then came back and sat down beside me, putting an arm round me very gingerly, clearly concerned that I might suddenly go off like an unexploded bomb.

Oh god Zandy, I’m so terribly sorry! I had no idea you were coming tonight!

At this my rage increased because here clearly was a new implication. Did she have a different lover scheduled for every night of the week? Sensing this she frantically backpedalled.

No no no, I mean, none of this was supposed to happen, and I don’t know why it did? Isn’t he terrible! He’s just a dirty old man really, and his breath smells horribly of stale tobacco!

This last phrase was wrung with gusto as though she’d nailed down a genuinely strong bargaining chip, and she now wiped her mouth to prove the point.

I shrank from her in fear. What might this dirty old man have infected her, and maybe us - with?

I could smell Wolf’s stale tobacco breath coming from her mouth. How I hated him, and her too. I was the idiot. The poor fool. What the hell was he playing at? My best friend!

Wolf who I idolized as the Beatnik god. How could he do it!

Suggest I marry her, then f*** her when I’m not there. Like he’s giving her ‘one for the road’!

I couldn’t get the plunging buttocks out of my mind, the hairy legs, the bald Oberfuhrer’s face as he turned his eyes on me in a surgical, probing stare and then finally the ‘talk you through a bit of a bad spot, then we’ll go to mess together‘ senior army tone whose smoothness and control merely patronised to the quick.

And now I had to figure out what to do, how to act, when I felt dead, numb, gone, paralysed. Daisy was still soothing and cooing and caressing and crying a little bit, though I suspected that was theatre.

Part of me, the beatnik part, actually warmed to what Wolf had done. I could see the joke. I could have cheerfully killed them both, but a voice was telling me, ‘Don’t blow up, don’t go crazy, don’t give them value for money, just ignore.’

In my heart my wife-to-be was dead. I took her to the bed and f***** her like she was a dead body.

In the morning I went back to Hendon an old man. Suddenly there was an infinite tiredness, and a feeling of being sick to the stomach. All in one moment everything had been revealed, and I finally knew the paranoia, the tragedy, the futility and the laughable meaninglessness of life.

All of my dreams, my hopes, and my faith in myself were suddenly crushed. The colours of the world retrograded to black and white. Nothing was sacred any more. There was no longer any muse or spirit. Everything had been defiled.

How could they have done this to me?

And still the agony increased. At first both phoned saying nothing like that would ever happen again. I was dazed and hurting and gently let Daisy know that perhaps we might remain lovers, but any idea of marriage was clearly crazy.

And then one night came a manic determined phone call from Daisy saying that Wolf was off to the south of France on a painting trip, and she was going with him, and they were going for good, and I’d have to marry her to stop her. I felt traumatized, destroyed and obsessed as I put the phone down. I knew that I really would have to marry her to keep her, and that was how badly I needed her, even though the better part of me was screaming at the insanity of it all.

I was unable to tell my parents. In the end I wrote it on the blackboard on the kitchen wall last thing at night, before the day of the event. Wolf had come to visit and stay over and by chance my mother went down to the kitchen in the night and saw the message and he was there and had to explain things.

I think my mind, soul and body had been hijacked.

The following day we drove to the registry office in stony silence. The day was a masterpiece of alienation, of hopeless and mindless futility, all British reserve, and stiff upper lip.

It was the ultimate humiliation for both my mother, and myself.

Chapter Three

We moved into a hotel for a few days, then left for Paris. As my parents drove us to the station I saw them start to cheer up. They had finally recognised the fact that this bohemian, existentialist thread which was unravelling before their eyes was truly Parisian in spirit.

It was true that Daisy and I were on a breakneck dance into hell. We had packed a tape player, and Billie Holiday and Django Rheinhart cassettes and a huge bottle of Perno, and also endless cartons of Gitanes, and were now in a drunken reverie in a tiny hotel room high above the Seine.

But predictably, she grew by the day, more depressive, till one night she drained a huge quantity of spirits, then tried to jump out of the window, while I held her back, the both of us crying like anything, until she slumped back onto the bed and was out till morning.

I tried to blot this all out, and simply take things as they came.

We busked on the Metro. It was hard to sum up the courage. Where to stand in the dark stone tunnel? Starting was difficult, but as I heard her lovely voice harmonize with mine in a classic folk song, and then how our voices echoed all around the tunnels, and also as we watched coins jingle into the open guitar-case, it became easier every second.

We became familiar faces at the busker cafe where all would shout each other down and street artists toasted us in glasses of rich scarlet wine.

In the mornings we would make coffee on a tiny camping stove in the hotel room, a satisfyingly illegal ritual. It was inevitable that the money should soon run out, causing us to pawn the tape machine at a loss, and run for London, tail between our legs. At this stage I felt desperate, and closed in on all sides. But I did not hate either Daisy or Wolf. I just felt terribly sorry for Daisy. I tried not to patronise. She did have a good side.

She was totally vibrant, courageous and beautiful, and fiercely battled the neverending injustices of life.

Entering the room, eyes blazing, woe betide he who was foolish enough to stand in her way. She had infinite compassion for all animals. Once I came across her washing our long-haired mongrel dog in the bath in a way that suggested that this animal had never really been cared for with the full attention and love it deserved.

With Wolf, Daisy had a unique chemistry. He would be painting away, making fierce, Viking gestures with arms and legs, dancing all around the easel, wearing a dandy combination of eye-catching colours, three days of stubble sprawling from cheek to cheek, dog-end curled under left of lip, the familiar jar of Dutch shag on the table, Van Gogh cords and hot-nailed Dr Martin boots threatening to kick hell into any who might resist.

There would be Django on