253

by Geoff Ryman

  What he is doing or thinking

  He comes to a stop, and clutches his toothache and looks around him.

  It is another vision. He is prone to them. In this vision, people walk through some dim, chattering tunnel. There are black ropes from the ceiling and a terrible smell he cannot identify. It reminds him of the charred odour of the Albion Mill. Dark, satanic, burned in fear and anger by the people, it stinks on in Lambeth Marsh.

  A vision of Albion, then, of the spirit of that scorched mill.

  The air is dim and terrible. The people scurry as if pursued. He allows himself to be blown along with them, up the tunnel. He wonders: what sad spirits are these? In what echoing bowels of Urizon are they trapped, shuffling? Their clothes are strange. He cannot quite focus on them, the materials, the colours, the cut are so alien to him. But he has learned that in visions detail is all. As in life, the solid details are emanations of the spirit.

  He follows two handsome black wenches. So imposing and so spangled with jewellery are they, that it seems to him they must be princesses from some dream kingdom. One talks animatedly. The other, evidently her superior, looks away. Lord, such savage majesty! They have blue painted on their eyelids! The inferior woman clutches a bag of miraculous tissue that contains, in its satin translucence, useful household objects which Blake recognizes. They warm his heart in a way he does not understand.

  They mount steps, into another ghostly chamber, and line up, faces dead, waiting in acquiescence before polished iron gates. Is there fire beyond them?

  They are joined by an elderly woman, gazing at flowers. A man, even older, asks her, ‘Can I interest you in a further beverage?’ His voice is richly grandiose. It is a tone of voice that Blake heard in his own age. He hates it for its aggrandisement. Yet, for all his vocal majesty, there is something glinting and small about this friendly old man. Blake somehow understands that his sonorousness is a final, sad crumbling of former grandeur.

  The woman with the flowers looks up, and smiles. Blake realizes that she and all the women here have painted on another face. Has he stumbled on some kind of theatre? The new arrivals all laugh.

  A youth joins them, as callow-faced as a Sicilian. His smooth, unharried features are those of a child. Blake peers at him and sees the child is in fact a man in full maturity, though skinny, unbent, with such a delightful expression. The manchild smiles slightly, his face illumined from within by love. Blake wonders if this beauty is to be his angel guide.

  Then Blake sees the shoes. The angel manchild is wearing what look like pillows, blue and white. His trousers are heavy and spongy, without warp and weft. They hang like a single mossy deposit rather than cloth. No one ever wore such clothes in Heaven or in Lambeth. Blake begins to appreciate the scale of what has befallen him.

  The doors rumble open, as heavily as gates of hell. There is nothing to do but stumble forward.

  In clouds of perfume. These people smell variously of mint, sandalwood, almonds, as if the breath of Araby had wafted into this strange carriage with them. They press together in the tiny chamber, the doors close, they are all trapped without a single eye for the wind. But there is no odour of human closeness. The clothes are as spotless as the faces are burnished. The old man bearing whisky laughs with all his teeth intact, as pearly as a young maiden’s. A China woman, as if all humankind had called a Parliament underground, is dressed just like Blake’s angel, though she is old and female.

  The room moves, everything shivering slightly. It is borne upwards, clanking. They are indeed underground, Blake is now sure. There are signs on the walls. They look, at first, like Blake’s own poems, portrait-shaped rectangles of melded images and fiery words.

  The all-singing musicAL

  JOLSON

  WINTER BREAKAWAYS

  The room slumps slightly as if tired. The people shuffle in place, the doors rumble open. To Blake’s great relief, there is daylight flooding the tiled chambers beyond. Blake follows his angel who strides so confidently forward.

  Straight ahead there is an arch and a blaze of light on grey. In that winter light, suddenly hurtling past are armouries of metal. They hiss, roar past the opening, in heraldic reds, blues, greens. The armouries are as polished as the people as if the devil had been freshly minting folk as well as coins.

  In front of him clattering devices applaud, lights flash, barring his way. Please seek assistance

  Words of fire? Blake looks around him.

  The people disperse, quickly, purposively. They ignore him. Where is his angel guide?

  Damn ye, thinks Blake and leaps the barriers. He strides on, following the boy, out through the arch, across paving, onto a polished slate surface.

  Into a place of permanent winter. Everything grey, everything paved, under stone, as if the people were swept up at night. There is a harsh cleanliness in the air. All the perfumes of Araby cannot make it wholesome. There are no fresh scents of river, lime trees, manure, straw, or laundry airing on the marsh. Instead there is a stench, like tar or oil lamps.

  Underfoot symbols zig-zag across the slate. Are they hieroglyphs? Blake stands transfixed in the middle of the road.

  Lined up, the armouries have been waiting, rumbling. Suddenly, they all leap forward, heads down, charging towards him. Blake stands dazed, raising his cane against them. All the armouries bellow and beep.

  He feels himself grabbed. His angel manchild has him by the sleeve and hauls him up, onto some kind of island of safety amid the slate.

  The angel manchild says: ‘You all right, mate?’ Please seek assistance the fire had said.

  Blake feels himself to be slack, bewildered, peering at the boy. What hundreds of years could go into the making of that voice? It is a London voice, it is the sound of the mudlark children in the clay flats herding their goats, selling their dung. And yet. This voice is also urbane, polished, fed to bursting as any aristocrat’s.

  The boy glances at the cane. ‘You need a hand across the road?’

  ‘Aye, indeed, or I fear I shall be squashed flatter than a flea between my mistress’s thumb and fingernail.’

  The boy blinks at him, then chuckles. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Where be we, boy, what place is this?’

  ‘Well, that there’s Hercules Road.’

  ‘Herc…’ and Blake falls silent.

  The human mind is not built for logic, one thing at a time in orderly progression. It is built to swallow things whole and leap to conclusions. Blake sees the Hercules Tavern. Amid the roaring traffic he looks down a street whose slight curve is familiar and sees the names of inns: Red Lion, Crown and Cushion. Where he used to drink.

  Without logic, full of dread, Blake asks, ‘What year is this?’

  The boy tells him.

  On Hercules Terrace, William Blake lived in a cottage with his wife Catherine, and he gave the place and the spirit of it a name. ‘Beulah…’ says the old man. ‘I…I lived here once.’

  ‘Was B…Beulah the name of the estate?’ the young man asks him.

  ‘Yes,’ replies Blake. Here, he and Catherine would read poetry naked but for their hats, and answer the door in that pure condition. ‘It was an age ago.’

  Leon de Marco stares at the old man and at his dress, and he too is moving faster than logic. ‘Are you a poet or something?’

  ‘Or something.’ Blake finds the idea both apt and amusing. ‘Indeed.’

  Leon takes hold of William Blake’s arm. ‘We used to have a poet live here. A famous poet. They put up a plaque.’

  ‘Did they? Well it saved paying him while he was alive.’ As if there had been some kind of signal, all the armouries have stalled, and the boy insists that they cross the road now, by pulling Blake’s sleeve.

  The Hercules Tavern is now all blue, and square. When did all the world stop building sloping roofs? Along Hercules Road, small trees sigh in the wind. ‘Are those cherry trees?’ Blake asks.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘The authorities plant cherry trees, fo
r everyone?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘The petals fall in spring?’

  Leon smiles. ‘Yeah,’ he chuckles. He’s always liked that, ever since he was a kid.

  ‘Mark them well, boy, for that is how we all fall, in beautiful lost clouds, thousands of us as if in an upward fall of snow.’

  And Blake remembers the creak of the windmill as it turned beside the brewery. He remembers the clay flats being mined, the diggers shovelling up clay into the oxcarts, the beasts relishing the mud. Across the pistachio river, up the opposite banks of shale, were the long wooden warehouses in front of the modest Parliament chambers. The market for stone and timber. The sounds of saws and the smells of wood and stone dust reached them even across the river. The long barges rested as if asleep, all in front of the Archbishop’s great house.

  ‘Are the mills gone? And the factories?’

  ‘Oh,’ said the boy. ‘No factories any more. All gone.’

  ‘All gone?’ says Blake, overjoyed. ‘All gone!’ He feels his horsey, ruined teeth are betrayed by his grin. ‘Was there dancing?’

  Leon smiles at him. ‘There’s always dancing in London, mate.’

  Blake can see him clearly now. Blake remembers the Artichoke Inn, on the muddy lane through Lambeth Marsh, and the village maids and the lusty lads outside it, dancing in a ring. This is not an angel, but a lusty Lambeth lad with spots on his chin.

  He sees a woman, in middle age with brazen many-coloured hair, wearing what looks like a new bottle-green coat. Her hard glossy shoes have tiny spikes that make her trip slightly as she battles against the lowland wind. She walks like a lady of promise and stature, alone and undefended on the street. He looks at the jumble of buildings, some shiny like wrapped presents, others like wedding cakes, still others like lavatories with tiles. A mighty age, and a confused and fearful one. What achievements had been squandered here?

  ‘Not quite Jerusalem,’ says Blake.

  He turns and sees the poet’s plaque, on a brick wall that is not altogether out of place amid the Georgian houses. William Blake Poet and Painter lived here…

  Beulah. It is remembered. But why?

  There is a gust of wind, smelling of river water, mud, hops, sweat, wool and baked bread. Suddenly Leon de Marco is standing alone in Hercules. In the middle of January, clouds of cherry blossom fall billowing upwards from the single line of trees.

  135

  MR JACK SPUFFORD

  Outward appearance

  Late twenties, casually but neatly dressed, fawn slacks, dress shoes, grey anorak.

  Inside information

  A part-time classical musician and partner in If you’ve got it, flaunt it, a shop that stocks nothing but flutes and sheet music. A year ago, on a concert trip to Poland, Jack met and married Katya. The Home Office would not let her into the UK until they had been married for six months first. So Jack returned alone and they both waited. Then officials said he had to buy a flat before they would let Katya in. He was sharing with three other blokes. Someone said it was because they thought he was gay.

  He and finally found a one bedroom place for £59,000. In London that’s a bargain. He bought it, but his wife is still in Poland.

  What he is doing or thinking

  Yesterday, waiting in the immigration court opposite Lambeth North, he met the white wife of a black man. Her husband came here as a student. They are in love, they are married, but he was not allowed to work. She applied for work permits and the officials lost the applications. Now they’re saying he has to go home though the marriage is legal. Why? Well, because he hasn’t worked all the time he has been here!

  An official, another woman, had taken her aside and told her out of kindness to give up—the Agency thought it was a convenience marriage. Nothing she could do would change their minds.

  Black or white, if you’re foreign, England can be a shithole.

  Car 4 map

  Contents

  136

  MR IBRAHIM GURER

  Outward appearance

  Oppressed clerk. Bald, sweaty, plump, in fawn overcoat, grey suit, glasses and briefcase.

  Inside information

  Turkish Cypriot working in his own travel agency on Kennington Road. Times are hard. This is usually his best time of year and bookings are down. He is a specialist in tours of Turkish Cyprus, which is little help.

  What he is doing or thinking

  His life is like a nutcracker. His English wife has gone a kind of crazy. The symptom is buying sprees. One room is full of toys that the child doesn’t want. Huge blue teddy bears, pink bunnies. Another room is full of clothes and shoes. She buys a CD a day.

  He has seen Absolutely Fabulous and knows who his wife is: she is the PR lady. That is how other English people see her, almost pretty but gauche, always in pain, always demanding something. She thinks she is a woman of no position. After all, she married a Turk. He can see why she spends: if you spend money, people treat you well. It is not toys she is buying, but respect.

  His brother in shipping back home sent Ibrahim a substantial sum to invest. He is doing nothing with it, but let his wife spend. He will be destitute. He looks at the travel advertisements above the seats, they all offer the same destinations. He racks his brain. What else can he offer?

  For no reason, he remembers an old Led Zeppelin album cover: the Devil’s Causeway.

  Of course. Come see beautiful Northern Ireland. After all, there’s a ceasefire.

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  Contents

  137

  MR XAVIER DUCORO

  Outward appearance

  Determined young black man. Blue suit, burnished black shoes, beige overcoat. Shaved, short hair with a fashionable Tin Tin flip in front. Stares, his face slack, at a personal organizer.

  Inside information

  His father was a builder who decided that Chartered Surveying was the profession for his son. His son agreed: it was an attractive mix of professional standing with outdoor, masculine work. Has met at his church the woman he wants to marry, Charlotte. He is courting Charlotte in the classic manner of dates and visits with her parents. Works in an architects’ office near the Elephant, serving his apprenticeship to become a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (FRICS).

  What he is doing or thinking

  He is turning the names of stations on the Bakerloo line into anagrams.

  Bakerloo line anagrams have become an obsession. It started when, through a train window, the words ‘Oxford Circus’ miraculously rearranged themselves into ‘X. Ducoro, FRICS’. He took this as a symptom of overwork.

  The next day, however, the letters of the word ‘Waterloo’ swam like fish until they read ‘a Wet Rolo’, which is what he was eating at the time. It seemed the anagrams only formed when they told the truth. After he arranged a loan, ‘Embankment’ became ‘Met bank men’.

  Just now in his notebook, ‘Charing Cross’ has morphed from ‘Char Crossing’ to ‘Scorch in rags’ to ‘Crash so ring C’.

  If that’s true too? What if Charlotte’s in trouble? He gets off early at Waterloo to ring.

  The signs in the station now read: ‘Woo later’.

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  138

  MR NICHOLAS PAGANOS

  Outward appearance

  A gangster from a 1930s movie. Plump, groomed, handsome, with slick wavy hair, and a suit and a tie. Curve of his mouth gives a permanently satisfied look.

  Inside information

  Owner-manager of gentleman’s hairdressers on Lower Marsh. Came from Cyprus soon after the troubles in the sixties, when he was just a child. Happily married, one son in university, one daughter taking A levels.

  What he is doing or thinking

  His third child, twelve-year-old Angelica, has the potential to be a professional tennis player. Her teachers spotted it first. She began to train an hour every day after school, and win weekend tournaments. On Saturdays, the family would watch
Angelica play. She looked so small and frail with the huge racket. But her very smallness, hardness, was a kind of strength.

  They’ve been told that now she needs professional, individual coaching. This is different from lessons. This means someone who devotes himself to training her. They are talking Olympics. They’re talking prize money. They are talking fees that he can’t afford.

  Nicholas remembers driving out of Cyprus. There was a terrible smell, and the car crept cautiously into a village. A man in khaki trousers lay in the dust and then his mother’s hands covered his eyes. Your life is upended, you change countries, you cut hair, and suddenly you have a chance for your daughter to really achieve something. And she wants it. She works so hard, so small, so serious, her face like a little hazelnut. What wouldn’t he do?

  Nicholas decides. He’ll remortgage his house.

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  Contents

  139

  MR HISHAM BADHURI

  Outward appearance

  Indian movie star? Handsome, broad shouldered. Blue jeans, trainers, baseball cap, brown leather jacket with an American oil company logo.

  Inside information

  Graduate business student on a trainee placement with British Telecom. First degree from Ein Shamsh University in Cairo. Taught himself English as a part-time tourist guide. Learned other things from them as well. A Muslim fundamentalist dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Poster in his bedsit shows the hand of Islam smashing the star of David against the Dome of the Rock.