The Light Ages

by Ian R. MacLeod

‘And this—this other square here represents the high guilded.’ It was a smaller square, drawn through the sticky tar. ‘And this .. He made a marginally smaller circle. ‘This is the amount of our labour that the high guilded take from us ..

  The squares and the circles and the arrows multiplied across the roof as the shadows of the gulls floated over them and Saul struggled to explain the complexities of the labour market. The bright heat, the blazing sky, those scraps of shade passing across my face too quick to be felt, and all of us citizens trapped below it. But I loved Saul and his muddled explanations. For my whole life, it seemed to me now, everything had been a total puzzle to me. Bracebridge. The mysteries of the guilds. The death of my mother. My father’s disappointments. But here, dusted on a hot roof, fragmentary and chased by shadows, was the beginning of an answer.

  On other lunchtimes, Saul would take out a pencil, peel off slivers of pale wood with a knife. With a few lines on a scrap of borrowed paper he could somehow capture the entire view which Tidesmeet spread before us. The coiled ropes and the endless spars and funnels, the cages of the cranemasters, the octagonal fortresses of the hydraulic towers which drove the lifts and hoists, the great pepperpot tower of the Dockland Exchange, all the buildings which crowded west across London like ruffled birds on a perch. He’d hold the drawing up, smile, then tear it into shreds. Nothing, after all, could really belong to anyone. Not here. Not in this Age.

  ‘Tell me more about Brownheath. I mean, about living in the countryside. What’s it really like ..

  Saul somehow imagined that, because I hadn’t been born in a huge city I must have spent my early life in some sweet-scented barn surrounded by amiable cows; a sunny place where life was somehow far kinder and easier than it was for the poor citizens of London. But I didn’t want to disappoint him, and distance soon lent even Brownheath its own kind of charm. Saul’s ambition, which he shared far more freely with me than any concrete facts about himself, was to run a farm—not, of course, that he would own it—and I found it easy enough to help him in his vague plans by embroidering my mother’s stories of her early life with byres and haystacks and flower-strewn meadows, although for me rural life had always seemed to consist of backache and manure.

  Another yellowed scrap of parchment, a resharpened pencil, and Saul’s nicotined hands conjured up undulating pastures, winding rivers, avenues of stately trees; cartoon visions of a country landscape from a city dweller who was proud never to have been beyond the allotments of Finsbury Fields. His cows looked like horses in those days, and he could only do one kind of tree. But it was incredible to watch. Over the smoky dockyard clamour, you could almost hear the birds singing, smell the fresh-mown grass. He pinned the pictures he was most pleased with to the beams in our lair in the rookery. At night, as the hot wind dragged over the Easterlies, they rustled around us like the leaves of a forest.

  There was a fire blazing in the Caris Yard one summer’s evening, and the street musicians had combined to form a discordant band. The prim guild charities with their stalls and leaflets had long hitched their skirts and gone back to Northcentral, the soapbox prophets had returned to their chapels, and even the speakers on the Rights of Mankind had vanished in flurries of leaflets, fights and accusations. But there were always fresh arrivals; day or night, the far Easterlies seemed to exert a strange attraction to the rest of London. A braying herd of young guildsmen in caps and narrow-waisted suits from one of the marine colleges had arrived for no obvious reason other than their drunkenness.

  ‘Bet you do!’

  ‘Bet you don’t.’

  ‘Do!’

  ‘Don’t!’

  I was sitting beside Saul, but for once I was no longer the prime focus of his attention. His back was turned from me as he engaged in this music hall call-and-response with a girl called Maud. I was used to seeing her about. Although she was scarcely older than me, she ran, almost single-handed, a nursery in a barn-like building which lay on the downward side of Caris Yard, where the women of the parish could leave their babies whilst they went to gut herring. Maud was hardly a pretty girl—she was thin, and her pale hair stuck out like a dry floormop even when she’d attempted to comb and tame it with ribbons as she had tonight—but she was feisty, quick, and resolutely independent. I’d also always thought her defiantly unfeminine until she’d turned up in this yard wearing dyed straw sandals and started this do-ing and don’t-ing with Saul.

  ‘You tell her ..

  ‘No it’s not.’

  ‘It’s true, isn’t it, Robbie?’

  ‘You know what—I really don’t care!’

  Disappointed with both of them, I shot Maud a look of what was probably intense hatred as I stomped away from Caris Yard. Around the next corner, there was a bar. Anywhere in the Easterlies, and just around the next corner, there was always a bar, although it was hard to see exactly what was inside this one and the prevailing smell which emanated from it was of gin, piss and vomit. But I was flush tonight—we’d just borrowed a whole display of keyrings—and I’d found that drink was a useful way of bringing the illusion of forgetfulness at those times when, as even happened in that first happy summer in London, both the present and the past seemed to conspire against me.

  I sat in a dark corner, nursing a thick-rimmed tumbler which, true to its name, wouldn’t stand up on its own. The dimly shaped citizens around me coughed and chattered in that strange accent of which, Saul’s being an oddly prim example, I could still turn my understanding off and on at will. Outside, somewhere, a pump kept clanking and a pig or some other animal seemed to be screeching its death throes. The men in these parts kept kingrats for fighting, and one was displayed, its hood stretched out in front of the bar’s only lantern as it squealed and snapped, turning the whole room into a blood-red vision of some minor hell. A discussion about the sharpness of its teeth developed into a desultory argument, then an even more desultory fight. Sometimes, London seemed almost eerily quiet, its earth impossibly still.

  ‘Why you sitting here alone aren’t you be?’

  I turned to see that the source of that tumble of vowels had sat herself down beside me.

  ‘Finished your drink couldn’t get ourselves another we?’

  The girl’s face was powdered an aethereal white within which her dark eyes and mouth and nostrils looked like the holes punched in a mask. Her hair was black, too, and she smelled of patchouli and a need of washing. We sat there somewhat dumbly, she with her drink and me with mine. Got a new one, Doreen? She gave a shrill snarl at that comment, reminding me of the kingrat. I was drinking freely, spending my keyring money so successfully that the barman lumbered over to serve us from his jug.

  This Doreen had been making a furtive motion in her lap which I’d thought was a nervous habit. I now saw that she was clutching a painstone, the nearly worn-out facets gleaming dimly like grit in the bottom of a well. There was a ready market for these in the Easterlies, just as there was for everything.

  ‘Keeps me safe in case there’s trouble and the stories like you hear.’ She blinked her black-rimmed eyes and offered the painstone. ‘Want you to try it might as well?’

  I’d never touched one before, and it felt smooth and warm and—yes—somewhat soothing. Like laying your hand on the head of a friendly dog. But the drink was better. I returned to it. ‘Where is you from?’

  I think I told her. My accent was probably as impenetrable to her as hers was to me, but unlike Saul who only cared about my rural fictions, she actually seemed to take an interest in my talk of moors and factories and the pounding earth. At some point, I discovered I needed to get up and piss. Wobbling outside, bumping a table and raising a scatter of yells, I leaned against the wall that seemed to be most used for my purpose. When I’d finished, I swayed around, and saw that Doreen had come as well and was just straightening her skirts.

  ‘Walk now shall we?’

  I stole glances at Doreen’s white face as we swayed arm in arm past lighted windows. It was hard to gauge
her age. She’d dressed herself up in a way which suggested a young woman trying to look like an old one. But whatever else she was, she was stopping me from falling over as I rambled on about changelings in crystal houses as a pink summer moon swam around the rooftops.

  ‘Here that’s like creepy is that don’t to talk about things that. Like Owd Jack and he’s out nights …’

  I swayed to face her. ‘Did you say Owd Jack?’ We were now alone in a back alley. ‘What do you know about …’ I suppressed a liquid belch and leaned against the mossy brick for support. ‘Him? Tell me—’

  But Doreen had pushed against me as if to smother my questions. ‘And what about this is you like?’ she cooed. There was a surge of cheap velvet, gin, sweat, mothballs, and my flailing hand made contact with something soft. It was too dark in the alley for me to be able to see, but I was starting to understand.

  ‘You want you need perhaps.’

  My hand was steered down towards the portion of a woman’s anatomy which I’d only ever had a chance to study in classical sculptures, and which I scarcely expected to be hairy, or wet. I was still recovering from my surprise when Doreen’s hands went to work on my trouser buckle, burrowing inside to find the erection which certainly wouldn’t have been there if I’d had time to think about it. The rest of the business was quickly done as Doreen parted the necessary bits of her clothes with surprising proficiency. The full London moon hung over her shoulder, riming with pink and gold the slates of the houses which fanned across the Easterlies towards Ashington in back-to-back rows. Imagining that this was what people did on such occasions, I attempted to kiss her, but my jaw was rudely knocked away. Then we were finished.

  ‘That’ll be then ninepence going rate.’

  Amid everything else she was saying, I kept detecting references to money. The moon looked amused now as it hung over the chimneys and the effect of the drink was changing. I knew about dollymops—they were impossible to avoid in the Easterlies—but I’d failed until then to make any connection with what Doreen and I had been doing. Taking my puzzlement as an attempt at bargaining, a one-sided argument ensued, with Doreen shouting things at me which I didn’t need to fully understand to get the gist of. Nine whole pennies was more than I had left after the drinks I’d bought, but I was happy to offer what I had left in my pockets, and to put up with the surprisingly hard punch she threw at my shoulder in a final flounce, just to be rid of her.

  I wavered back towards Caris Yard, then up the ladders and stairs of the rookery. When I reached our roofspace there was no sign of Saul in his usual corner. I stood for a while at the archway, feeling lonelier than I had in all the time since I had arrived here. This was it. London. Hallam Tower, rising at it always rose, flashing misty bright. And the guildmasters sleeping in their houses. The poor in their hovels. Tidesmeet. Stepney Sidings. Dockland Exchange. The cranes. The funnels. The distant snow-white hills of World’s End. The swooping, murmuring telegraphs. The greatgrandmasters, even, in their palaces. The spires of the churches, and the endless, endless factories.

  Saul was uncharacteristically subdued one summer morning as we wandered the quiet markets up by Houndsfleet. It was a relief to get back to the roaring tramtracks of Doxy Street, where large guildsmen, hotly dressed in suits and hats and knotted ties, barged uncaringly past us. Then he turned without explanation into a quieter road. Here, at the furthest end of a cul-de-sac, behind stalky masses of untended privet, stood a gabled house. Taking the alley beside the dustbins, he worked open the back gate and ducked through a maze of underskirts on washing lines to enter a brown kitchen. A woman dressed in little more than a vest and bloomers was frying an extremely late breakfast.

  ‘We’re not open—’ She saw Saul, let out a shriek, ran over to hug him. ‘Saul Duxbury! Where have you been?’ She studied him admiringly. ‘You’ve grown so. What have you been up to?’

  I watched as Saul and this woman patted and admired each other. Even in the unadorned state that she was in now, she was very pretty, with black wavy hair and fine white skin. I did the obvious calculation and decided that she couldn’t possibly be his mother.

  ‘I suppose you’ll want to see Marm,’ she said finally as my mind churned with possibilities. What was she—actress, dollymop, dancer? ‘She’s just upstairs. Same as ever ..

  A stairway, a landing. The air grew thick with the smell of old and greasy carpets and stale toilet water—and, beneath that, a sharp, medicinal odour of burning. Saul knocked lightly on the door at the far end of the top flight of stairs.

  ‘I told you—’ a quavering voice began.

  ‘It’s me, Marm …’ Tentatively, he stepped inside. ‘Saul.’

  ‘My darling!’ A big woman in a bright dressing gown swept herself up from the window couch of a crowded room to engulf him in breathy giggles. The two of them squirmed and wrestled for a moment as I stood in the doorway. Then the woman’s face, round as the moon’s and almost as mottled, studied me over Saul’s shoulder.

  ‘And who’s this?’

  ‘This, Marm, is my friend Robbie.’

  ‘And where did you get him from?’ Marm released Saul and rummaged on a side table to light a cigarette then collapsed back on her sunlit couch. ‘And where are you now living?’

  ‘Robbie’s from somewhere called Bracebridge, Marm. We’re both up by Caris Yard.’

  Ash snowed from the tip of Marm’s cigarette. The sash window was half open. Outside, pigeons were cooing. Marm’s eyes, I saw, as the silence persisted, were restless beneath their painted lids. Like those pigeons, her whole body was shivering slightly.

  ‘It’ll do for the summer, won’t it … ?’ Saul trailed off, standing in the rucked middle of the carpet where Marm’s embrace had left him. ‘I mean, the Easterlies ..

  Another long pause ensued. I breathed more of that medicinal, burning smell as Marm ground out her cigarette in a plant pot.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it’ll do very nicely. And what kind of work are you doing anyway?’

  ‘Just around the docks … Collecting things. Well, you know how it is, Marm—it’s money.’

  Marm reached to light another quivering cigarette. ‘Of course my darling there’s always money,’ she said, each word punctuated by a coil within the smoke. ‘Funny old stuff, isn’t it? You can say what you like about all that citizen nonsense, but we need it like the air we breathe …’ Her eyes dulled and drooped as if in sad contemplation of this fact, then brightened as Saul began to reach into the satchel which contained the borrowed pieces we’d been hawking around the stalls all morning.

  ‘We’ve brought you something …’

  Marm was half sitting forward now and half leaning back, like someone caught in a blurry photograph between two stages of movement. Her whole body was quivering. Indeed, I thought, as she hunched forward on that sunlit couch and the pigeons chimed and the smoke and the dust played around her, there was something that was ill-defined about Marm despite all her obvious physical presence. As if you’d have to travel a long way through those folds of flesh and robe before you actually reached her real substance.

  ‘A gift now, perhaps, is always pleasant … Always something to be waited for …’ Maim was talking to herself in a breathy whisper as Saul unfolded the waxed wafers which contained a scrap of Dutch lace. ‘A surprise without asking …’ Maim was still talking, and her trembling had become a rocking motion as she leaned closer to inspect the contents of the paper flower which Saul had laid before her on the table. The smoke of her cigarette made agitated leaps. ‘You see, your Marm loves a gift, don’t she?’ And there it was, a fine lace choker, beaded with tiny fragments of jet and lapis lazuli. ‘Imagine all the work, my dearie. Those aching hours with the bobbin …’

  Snatching it from Saul’s fingers, she raised it to her neck and fumbled with the bead clasp. ‘Will you help your Marm, my darling. These things are so … It’s a little tight. But never mind. It’s the thought that counts. That’s what they all say isn’t it?’ The thing vani
shed into the folds of her chin. ‘And Marm’s so pleased you’re here. Yes she is. So sweet of you … Did I tell you that … ?’ I watched as Marm drew Saul into another embrace. She was still talking, but it was hard now to make out the words as she fingered the curls on his neck.

  Eventually Saul straightened and looked across at me. He coughed and smoothed back his hair.

  Marm studied the end of a new cigarette. ‘But I know,’ she said, ‘I’m not the one you’ve come to see here. All the girls are still sweet on you, Saul. Always were, weren’t they? So why don’t you just toddle off and leave your friend with me here. What was it … ?’ She slowly fixed me with her gaze. ‘Was it Robbie from Bracebridge?’

  ‘But, Marm, you can’t—’

  ‘Off you go, my darling!’ Ash billowed about her. ‘And you did say the lad was your best friend. So how else can he and Marm possibly get familiar ..

  I shot Saul a despairing glance before he closed the door, then watched with a dry mouth as Marm heaved herself back to her feet.

  ‘Of course,’ she muttered as she waddled across the rugs, ‘I’ve heard of Bracebridge, even if he hasn’t.’ Her hands, I noticed, grew surprisingly still as she tilted the syrupy contents of a decanter into a thimble-sized tumbler on a side table. ‘How could I not have, being in this business?’

  I cleared my throat. ‘To be honest, Marm, I’m really not sure-’

  ‘You mean my son hasn’t told you?’ She tipped back the thimble, suppressed a small shudder. ‘But then, looking at you, I doubt if you’d have understood … Not without a little demonstration.’ Moving close, Marm patted my worn jerkin, running her painted nails along the seams until the stitching crackled. ‘At least you don’t seem to have any lice on you. You barely stink. And Saul’s right—you’re really not doing so very badly down in the Easterlies, although I’m sure some other people are doing worse as a result.’

  She laid a hand on my shoulder. It was my turn to suppress a shudder.

  ‘You see, Robbie, this house isn’t any of the things you might imagine. We’re not like the dollymops in the street, or the tarts in the pox houses …’ She smiled. ‘But then, you still hardly know what they are, do you? But take a tip from me and forget love. What we sell here is far more precious. This is a dreamhouse, and we sell dreams. And the dreams come from Bracebridge, just like you do—or some of them anyway. Isn’t that a sweet coincidence?’ She refilled her glass thimble and sipped it. ‘I’m disappointed, really, that Saul doesn’t remember the name of the place, all the years he was here under its spell. But then he’s been trying hard to forget, hasn’t he? Neglecting his Marm, all this rubbish about people all being the same, never coming here,’ she continued with a pout. ‘Not that Marm doesn’t like a present …’ She worked a finger around her neck. There was a sharp snap. She dropped the lace choker to the floor. ‘I’m sure this is what every hovel whore and fishwife is wearing. Pity, really, it’s not quite the look of this Age …’ She hurrumphed. ‘But you still don’t really know what we do here, do you? Would you like to know?’