The Last Great Hope book one

The Last Great Hope

Carey Coles

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Carey Coles

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Table of Contents

Part One: Set and Setting

Chapter 1 The Chemical Wedding, June 1965

Chapter 2 Girl Reaction, August 1965

Chapter 3 UDI, November 1965

Chapter 4 The Consolations of Loneliness, April 1966

Chapter 5 Phantom Engineer May 1966

Part Two: Blow Up

Chapter 6 Foco, Nov 1967

Chapter 7 The Birds of Paradise, Feb 1968

Chapter 8 Occupational Health, March 1968

Chapter 9 Infinite Love, June 1968

Acknowledgements

Song lyrics

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‘We are never completely contemporaneous with our present. History advances in disguise; it appears on stage wearing the mask of the preceding scene, and we tend to lose the meaning of the play. Each time the curtain rises continuity has to be re-established. The blame, of course, is not history’s, but lies in our vision, encumbered with memory and images learned in the past. We see the past superimposed on the present, even when the present is a revolution.’

Regis Debray, ‘Revolution in the Revolution ?’ (1967)

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Part One

Set and Setting

June 1965 – May 1966

****

The third week of April, 1943, was a momentous one for science. On Thursday 15th, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, a conference of physicists met to plan the manufacture of a bomb from isotope 25 of uranium. And on Friday 16th, in Basle, Switzerland, a research chemist at Sandoz Laboratories named Albert Hofmann synthesized LSD, the 25th compound of the lysergic acid amide series.

The Los Alamos meeting led to the Trinity Test, at which the first atomic bomb was dropped. As he watched the mushroom cloud rise above the desert, the bomb’s creator, J. Robert Oppenheimer, mouthed a sentence from the Buddhist text, the Bhagavad-Gita: I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

The Basle experiment however, did not lead to its planned outcome, the development of a new respiratory medication. Quite the reverse, because later that evening, Dr Hofmann began to feel very strange indeed: ‘There surged upon me an uninterrupted stream of fantastic images of extraordinary plasticity and vividness and accompanied by an intense, kaleidoscope-like play of colours.’

Suspecting he had absorbed a trace of the LSD through his skin, he decided that he should conduct a personal test of the substance he had produced. So, on the afternoon of Monday 19th of April, 1943, Albert Hofmann swallowed the first planned dose of LSD. He took what he supposed to be an insignificant measure, 0.25 milligrams, assuming he would feel no effect and could then scale up the amount. To his alarm, he soon found himself experiencing visual distortions and intense anxiety, as his mental state slipped from his control. Unable to write his laboratory journal he decided to go home, and accompanied by his assistant set off by bicycle. His companion would later confirm that they had cycled at rapid speed, but Hofmann felt himself stuck on the same spot, legs vainly rotating. Meanwhile his field of vision dissolved, as if in a hall of mirrors. Arriving home he felt convinced that he was going insane or on the verge of death, and he collapsed on the sofa, while the assistant ran for the doctor. Lying there alone he was weighed down by an immense sorrow, that he would die without seeing his family and that the promise of his life would be cut short.

Despite his fears Albert Hofmann did not die or go mad. The doctor visited and assured him he was physically well. He drank some milk, fetched by his neighbour, hoping it would flush the drug from his body. Later that night his racing mind grew calm and the terror subsided, so that lying in bed he began to enjoy the multi-coloured images which exploded behind his eyelids. Eventually he slept and when he woke next morning he felt himself reborn: ‘Breakfast tasted delicious and was an extraordinary pleasure. When I later walked out into the garden, in which the sun shone now after a spring rain, everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh light. The world was as if newly created. All my senses vibrated in a condition of highest sensitivity …’.

****

Chapter 1

The Chemical Wedding

Meridian Road, Clifton, Bristol

15th June 1965

'It really does come on sugar lumps then?'

Carrie Jones, Ed Blood and Robert Lomax sit around the low table staring at the saucer in front of them.

'It really does,' says Robert

'Because it's bitter?'

'Lysergic acid is odourless and tasteless,' says Ed. 'It's just a convenient way of distributing the dose. A droplet on each.'

Robert reaches over. 'Last chance for second thoughts?'

'Nothing in life is to be feared', says Ed. ‘It’s only to be understood.’

'Eh?' wonders Carrie.

'Marie Curie said that.' Then, to her blank stare: 'She discovered radioactivity.'

'But I’m not afraid. It's just like being pleasantly drunk, you said.'

'Yeah,' says Robert. 'Very pleasantly drunk.' Ed’s eyes betray no dissent.

'Cheers then!' Robert raises a cube to his lips.

'Cheers!' says Carrie, placing the dose on her tongue. Apprehensive, Ed does the same. They fall silent, the angular lumps stopping conversation.

Ed Blood observes his two companions. Robert, lounging back on the cushions, is snappily dressed as always. Green polo-neck, cord drainpipes and Chelsea boots, every inch the modern Adonis. It’s nearly three years since the two of them met, their first term in hall, he the gauche chemistry scholar and Robert the urbane economics student. An unlikely pairing, though one which survived the second-year diaspora, thanks to their shared loves of sci-fi and cruel humour. That and the forbidden smoke, because their first taste of pot had also been together, supplied by a friend of Rob’s, and oh what mysteries it opened for them. Mysteries that have led to today, and this more momentous experiment.

Across from them sits Robert’s latest acquisition, Caroline Jones, ‘Carrie’ to her friends. Still unused to the nearness of women Ed steals only sidelong glances. Dark lashes fluttering beneath her fringe, with tight-cut frock in white, lemon and pink, her sandals encasing lotus feet. So enchanting. And such a handsome couple. Not like him, he realises sadly. He’d caught her expression when he arrived, and immediately felt embarrassed in his scruffy shoes and sports jacket.

Awkward too, because he knows that Robert’s motive for inviting her today is not so innocent. He’s already confided the reason. They’ve been seeing each other for months, and although on the pill she’s been unwilling to go all the way. Consummation has become for Robert a distant memory, as, citing pressure of exams, she’s granted only heavy petting and goodnight kisses. Now though, with finals receding into the past, he’s hoping her inclinations have changed. And if not, perhaps the psychedelic sugarcubes will assist?

The sugarcubes … purchased in London by Robert, who’s talked of nothing else since. The revelation a week ago had been unexpected. He’d gone up to celebrate the end of his last exam paper with his old pal John Banner. But arriving at the flat in Fulham for a dissolute evening he’d found his irascible friend become surprisingly tranquil. Turned out this was thanks to the new drug John was selling alongside the cannabis and uppers, and since he was in an end-of-term mood he’d agreed to a sampling session with the ‘acid’.

The next twelve hours had been: ‘The most extraordinary of my life!’ Excitedly he’d told how they’d roamed the streets of West Kensington at dawn, hoisting chilled milk bottles from doorsteps and feeling like explorers of fantastic new worlds. ‘You have to try it,’ he’d said. ‘You have to see!’

So now they’re about to.

'Nothing's happening,' says Carrie, after fifteen minutes. 'I don't feel any different.'

'Patience,’ says Robert ‘is a virtue.'

'But I don't feel anything. Maybe I got one with none in it?'

Ed announces 'Full absorption of LSD into the bloodstream takes an hour from ingestion.'

'Oh,' she says, put out. 'I'll stick a record on then shall I?'

One of the traits she admires in Robert is his love of possessions. Like the gramophone on the dresser with its aroma of warm plastic. And next to it, not 45s, but a pile of albums. She begins to flick through, though most are unknown. Shall it be Bob Dylan, or Miles Davis? Or perhaps John Barry's theme for From Russia With Love?

She thinks not, and selects instead The Rolling Stones, hoping this will penetrate the boys’ torpor. Mick and the band kick into ‘Route 66’ as she turns to face them:

'I really don't feel anything.' Idly she responds to the music, feet and fingers twitching.

'How about some tea?' asks Robert. 'Now that you're up.'

'Okay.' She slinks to the kitchenette. Brews a pot, and for no apparent reason sets the table with cups and saucers:

‘A tea party.’

As soon as he takes his first sip Ed knows for sure he's coming up. They're maybe twenty-five minutes gone now, and it’s with the music that he notices. The way Jagger’s voice starts to sound, somehow hollow … echoey. And Brian Jones’ guitar resonates with an unfamiliar twang. A little … weird.

Sip, wait, listen, three people in a room, as the static crackles between each two minute wonder. ‘Yeah,’ cries Mick, as Ed catches Carrie’s eye, then shyly looks away.

‘Yeah, little by little,

I'm losin’ my love for you

Yeah, little by little,

I found out you was untrue’

It fades, and Robert jumps up, saying 'We need another one.' Lovingly he cleans the vinyl, then drops the needle onto Miles’ latest, ESP.

'Jazz,' complains Carrie. 'I've never liked jazz. There's no proper tune.'

'You'll like this,' says Robert, as the music starts to breathe.

'You know,' she goes, after a bit. 'Maybe I do feel something. Like a taste on my tongue.'

'Yeah', says Robert. 'I can taste it too. Kind of metallic.'

No sound from Ed Blood, who, slumped on the settee, is becoming pre-occupied with the music in a quite different way. His mouth falls open, as he finds himself drawn into the textures, going deep inside. Into the sonorities of Miles Davis's trumpet, his concentration spooling with the record, till he feels himself to be present at the recording, right there in the studio. Not until the track ends does he re-enter the present, and catches Robert’s knowing look.

Robert meanwhile has forgotten his tea, and is watching that glassy-eyed sensibility creep over his companions. Watching the sensations take hold, and the promised magic start to work. And he’s feeling it too, delicious butterflies before the onrush. Then his first visual effects, as the colours of Carrie’s dress start to tremble and dilate.

Nearly 50 minutes in, and she too is coming over mighty strange. Something undeniably happening now. But what exactly? It’s like she’s on the edge of wonder, a playroom of the mind. And the strange thing is, she's really there. Really, really there.

Spellbound by the sounds, Ed feels himself slipping further under the influence. After all the anticipation there’s not time to catch breath, for the enchantment of listening, really listening, has him in its sway. He finds he can pierce the very fabric of Miles’ music, plunging into the reservoir of emotion from which it wells. In its depths he fancies he hears the patient struggle of the American negroes, a people of whom he knows little, but who live in his imagination through the oratory of Martin Luther King. The patient struggle, that’s what he hears.

Such profundity’s lost on Carrie whose eyes are drawn to the teapot, at once comic and morose. To her the jazz is a Dumbo soundtrack that serenades the one-eared elephant, as her drink sits forgotten in its china.

‘I’m definitely feeling it,’ she declares, and then she just has to laugh because her voice is not hers but that of a little girl, all full of glee.

Grinning back at her from his magic pillow Robert looks just like the Cheshire Cat.

'What? What do you feel?'

'It's here,' she says, touching her stomach. 'Like Christmas morning and I just got my stocking.’

And then it wells up inside her, carrying her away with helpless laughter. Because it’s so, so funny, her little girl voice, all excited, and him sitting there with his goofy smile. She can’t help it, she doubles up. It’s like she gets the joke, really, really gets it, chortling away from right down inside her solar plexus.

‘So what’s in your stocking then?’ Robert demands, and the inanity of his question, with the sexy double entendre he doesn’t even notice, it just kills her all over again! Quivering, she rocks in her chair, tears running down her cheeks. This time it infects him, her good humour catching, and he’s suffused with pleasure too.

‘Toys!’ she announces, when she finally catches breath. ‘And dolls, lots!’ Then off she goes again, into helpless gales.

Miles's set draws to a close and the open-jawed Ed re-enters the present, to find her still chortling.

'Hello Teddy,' says Robert, still with the nursery theme. 'Back with us then?'

Ed doesn't register. It’s what his grandpa used to call him.

'I've been transported,' he says. 'That was amazing.'

'Transported?' says Carrie, not getting him at all.

'More music,' says Robert, without stirring himself.

'Yes,' cries Carrie clapping her hands. But half way out of her chair she spots her teacup and veers off towards the tepid drink.

'Time please?' asks Robert.

Ed peers at the clock above the kitchenette, the Roman numerals dancing all over its face. He tries to focus, distracted by the infinitesimal rotation, eventually reporting: 'Seventy-one minutes. We should be experiencing the full effect.'

He’s so unbearably solemn that Carrie decides it’s time he joined the fun. Suddenly overcome with affection for this fellow creature, she quite forgets convention. Up she clambers, chortling to herself, and crawls over to the sofa where he sits. Then, to everyone’s surprise she plonks herself in his lap.

'Poor Teddy,' she says, pinching his cheek. 'Cheer up.'

Ed Blood is completely astonished, for such intimate contact with an adult female is the stuff of fantasies. Forcibly wrenched from habitual shyness, he’s entirely without reference points.

'I'm not upset,' he says, like a scolded pupil. 'I was just listening. It was incredible.'

'Teddy,' she says, reaching under his jacket, 'you're too serious.' And her fingers and thumbs start to tickle his ribs, working at them like scrubbing mud off her shoes.

'Oh God', he cries, yelping uncontrollably. 'Oh God, stop!' Then his laughter fills the room, like crazy music, and she accelerates her vibrato touch. Gagging, he keels sideways, completely in her power.

'Oh God,' he squeaks, 'stop!' But Carrie's enjoying the mischievous pleasure and she’s not letting up. In that moment something profound starts to happen to Ed Blood. As he shakes helplessly, somewhere between hilarity and rage, the inhibitions he’s configured over the years, the ones about his parents, about girls, about his sheltered childhood, they all come tumbling out under her fingers. She’s in childhood playtime and for him it’s liberation!

Robert’s at the gramophone, lowering the arm onto Palestrina’s Missa Benedicta Es. 'Okay. Ready for a mood change?'

'What?' says Carrie, looking up from Ed’s prone torso. 'Not more jazz?'

The Renaissance polyphony starts to well and Robert nudges the volume higher.

'What’s this then?' she goes. 'It sounds like church.’

'Trust me, you're going to love it.'

'It sounds like church. Like hymns.' Uncertain, she relinquishes Ed and collapses into the sofa, swinging her legs over his knees.

Ed’s still struggling for air, stomach jumping. He feels the softness of Carrie's limbs and finds himself blissfully connected to her rhythmic breathing. And as he regains his composure, so the celestial voices rise, first permeating his senses, then his whole consciousness.

His gaze lifts to the Georgian windows of Robert's third floor flat. Above the chimneys the flossy clouds drift, and beyond just sky. As the angelic voices start to soar, so too does he. A thick slab of sunlight falls into the room and he watches as the heavenly dust tumbles. The sopranos glide and he’s gently lifted up, lifted, lifted up. Around the white gloss of the window frame the refracted light stains his retina and little shards of red, green and blue drift like dancing cherubim in the angles of his vision.

'Oh God,' he gasps quietly, as helplessly he falls into deep reflection on his life, seeing it in totality, from birth to here, the age of twenty-two. Feels the wound of his father’s disappearance, recognises it like he never has before. Gazes back on his childhood. A boy with his mother and grandfather. Introverted, seeking solace with the birds and insects. It was good, he realises. It was all right.

Because look at him now, a scientist. For that’s what he’s become. A scientist. With a life of endless curiosity ahead, unwinding like a golden road. It’s going to be all right.

The choir hits an extended high note, then silence reigns. Has it been twenty minutes or just the blink of an eye? Who can tell? None of them speaks, letting the reverberations die away.

Then Robert breaks the spell: 'What did I tell you? Immaculate.'

'That was … remarkable,' says Ed, struggling with the inadequacy of mere words.

'And what did Madam think?' Robert asks.

Carrie has fallen silent, mischief turning to pensiveness. Then she says: 'Yeah, but I was just looking, you know …. like fairy lights!’

‘Visual distortions,’ says Ed. ‘Retinal imprints.’

‘Hey’, says Carrie, waggling her foot on his knee, ‘just stop that Teddy. No seriousness.’

‘I’m a scientist,’ he rejoins, ready for her now. ‘It’s what I do.’

‘And as for you,’ she says, unsteadily levelling her finger at Robert. ‘You said it was like being drunk. And now I find myself … like this!’

‘There are some similarities,’ says Robert. ‘Anyway, it’s a euphemism.’ He sits back with a grin so wide it almost covers his face.

‘You know what happened to the Cheshire Cat don’t you?’ she says, still pointing. ‘He disappeared except for the smile.’

Two hours have passed.

‘You know what we should do?’ says Robert. ‘Get out for a walk.’

‘Go out?’ says Ed, incredulously. ‘I don’t even think I can stand.’

‘Don’t you know if it impairs bodily functions?’ enquires Carrie. ‘I thought you knew all about it.’

‘I don’t mean physically. It’s more a question of finding my coat.’

‘Teddy,’ she says. ‘Be logical, you’re wearing it.’

‘Ah. So I am.’

‘He’s got a point,’ ruminates Robert. ‘This does need planning. Keys and money are the two things needful.’

‘You know,’ says Carrie, ‘I can’t work it out. I’m going to go like this and you two have to take care of me.’ She tries to stand and looks round unsteadily.

Half an hour later they’re finally out the door after retrieving Carrie from the bathroom. So entrancing, those fishes, as they come dancing out of the fountain where she bathes her hands.

Robert leads the way, his questing nature impelling him on while his companions cower. For how must they look, wandering the streets in this state? Perhaps like gorgons, with luminous snakes curling round their skulls? And yet it seems, as an elderly couple walks by oblivious, that they may gawk at the world with impunity.

Around them tower the townhouses of the sugar merchants and slave traders. Ahead, like an angry bee, a car goes by, determinedly displacing the air. Next comes a Mini, the car of the moment, yet today so silly, like a child who’s wearisome to all but its parents. Then on the pavement an old guy rolling towards them, Players Navy Cut gummed to his lip. Ed’s gaze rises towards him, eager to greet this fellow human being, but the guy averts his eyes as if they’re ghosts.

Up ahead, Robert takes Carrie’s arm and, the Start-rite kids venturing over the road.

‘Wait,’ calls Ed, ‘wait! I’ve got to tell you.’

Robert half turns.

‘We look through each other, like we’re not here!’

‘No,’ says Carrie. ‘We don’t. We’re with you. Don’t worry Teddy.’

They reach Queens Road and moments later a double-decker looms. Robert flags down the mammoth, and they climb woozily upstairs. The conductor’s sniffing behind, but Robert saves the day with a carefully prepared half-crown. The tickertape spews and officialdom melts away.

Carrie stretches out, looking around. A few seats behind a middle-aged woman stares steadfast out the window, beehive perm chiselled in place. Long nose and pale cheeks, she’s a pitiful distillation, all broken by childbirth and hard graft. How like a portrait she is, a Rembrandt maybe. Drugged recognition too, as Carrie glances beneath the folds the unsullied face of a young woman. Her own face? And there, in that very millisecond, she can see it slipping by. In the face of bus lady. Sees it all in motion, passing by.

Is it a minute, or half an hour before they reach the Downs? They decamp and she waves an affectionate goodbye. And here they are in the sunshine, the grass beneath their feet.

‘Where next oh leader?’ she asks Robert.

‘I got us here, someone else choose.’

‘Okay, let’s see,’ goes Ed, turning about like Nelson at Trafalgar. To the left lies the perimeter road above the cliffs of the Avon Gorge. To the right clumps of trees dot the landscape. He spies a handsome grove of oaks in the middle distance. ‘Over there.’

‘The bus lady,’ Carrie’s explaining to Robert, ‘she seemed so sad.’

‘Maybe she was. But you don’t have to be.’

It’s true, because here she is, with the sun warming her skin. And how can things be tragic, when there’s grass, and light, and sturdy trees? Nature fills her senses, and it’s like she can hear the foliage, panting for oxygen. Longing to be at one she slips off her shoes and rakes her toes through the carpet, so that looking down she hallucinates herself as a sapling sprung from the ground.

Now they’ve reached a spot where the shrubbery shields them from the open. Exhilarated by the seclusion Ed breaks into a run, snaking behind a cluster of beech then dancing back towards his comrades. But they are otherwise employed, Carrie contemplating her willowy legs in the grass, and Robert, like Byron, musing on a handsome leaf he holds between thumb and forefinger. Their self–absorption encourages him, and utterly unburdened, he whirls about the bushes like a kid let out for break. With a final pirouette he slumps onto his back, the lawn springy beneath. Now at last he can resume contemplation.

What seems to be happening is that the acid’s given him the facility to detach from his life. To examine his personal history with the wisdom of a sage.

First he’s recognised that his childhood, father-less, contained much sadness. But that it doesn’t have to feel that way. Such a difficult thing, even after fifty years