Disturbia

by Christopher Fowler

  This place was full of young media-types with switched-off mobile phones beside their wineglasses. Everyone looked the same: smart and confident, Gap-advertisement bland. As the waiter showed him to the table he had a fleeting fantasy, that all these diners were friends of Sebastian’s, all members of his secret club, and that they were simply awaiting a prearranged signal to fall upon his gratingly common companion like a pack of starving vampires.

  Sebastian arrived wearing his usual immaculate black suit, white shirt and crimson tie. He looked like a wealthy man dabbling in the stock market because it amused him. Vince watched warily as they ate. It seemed bizarre that Sebastian had not stopped talking since they’d met, and yet he had revealed less about himself than could be gleaned from a single newspaper article. It was impossible to find anything in his appearance or his gestures that indicated the kind of man he really was.

  Vince, on the other hand, had proven to be an open book, describing his disastrous engagement at the age of nineteen, his brushes with the law over a missing van and some stolen computer software, his parents’ endless arguments and his father’s unexpected death. He now felt uncomfortable about having been so forthcoming.

  For a while the talk was even smaller than usual. Sebastian remained circumspect about his own political beliefs. Indeed, Vince could hardly recall a single serious discussion on the subject. He had always taken care to avoid such topics himself; at home, religion, sex and politics were the three things the family never discussed, for fear of initiating one of his father’s apoplectic rants about Catholics and Communists.

  He knew Sebastian could sense the change in atmosphere between them. When their conversation finally grew too laboured he returned to safer discussion ground.

  ‘Strategy games are best, but it’s hard to find worthy opponents. Obviously, the sides must be well balanced. Great historical battles are always interesting to recreate, just to see if you can change the outcome. Waterloo, for example, becomes much more interesting if one removes Napoleon’s fatal half-hour of indecision. Gallipoli’s a good one for the novice, an outcome changed if you allow our artillery bombardment to continue for another ten minutes.’ He grew more animated when embarking on a favourite subject. ‘I’ve always wondered what would have happened to the course of the Second World War if Hitler and Churchill had actually met one another. They very nearly did, you know. As early as 1932, in the Regina Hotel in Munich. Churchill had been befriended by a man named Hanfstaengl, who told him the Fuehrer was coming to the hotel at five that day, and would be pleased to meet him. Churchill ruined his chances by asking Hanfstaengl why his chief was so prejudiced against the Jews, and Hanfstaengl immediately cancelled the meeting. So if it hadn’t been for Churchill’s insensitivity, the Second World War might even have been averted.’

  This was an ominous turn in the conversation. ‘Churchill was right to speak out,’ Vince said. ‘A man can’t help how he’s born.’

  Giving Sebastian grounds for an argument, he realised, was not the smartest of moves under the circumstances. Vince could sense the side that was closed off from public view. He wanted to leave, to push aside his meal and get out into the night air, just as much as he needed to hear the truth.

  ‘I want to ask you some things, but I don’t know the right way to go about it,’ he said finally.

  ‘Just go ahead and ask. I won’t bite.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘It’s about the New Statesman article, the one where they called you a Nazi.’

  ‘Why didn’t I sue them, you mean?’

  ‘Well, there’s that, yes.’

  ‘I knew they would find enough fuel to justify the claim. No smoke without fire and all that. They only had to look at the company I was keeping in those days.’

  ‘So you don’t see the same people now?’

  ‘Good God, no. One grows up, moves on. Anyway, you mustn’t believe everything you read. Journalists have hidden agendas, too.’

  He wasn’t apologising for his past, Vince noted.

  ‘What happened to your girlfriend? I read there was some trouble—’

  ‘I don’t consider that a matter for public discussion,’ he replied, steel entering his voice. ‘Is there anything else you feel the need to ask?’

  ‘Your involvement in the League of Prometheus, I don’t understand what that’s all about.’

  ‘Oh, that. I wonder you haven’t brought it up before. We meet informally,’ Sebastian explained, ‘just a group of like-minded individuals, as they say. The one thing we have in common is a passion for debate and a desire to see reform. I thought I’d mentioned it to you.’

  ‘No, never. I read about it.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware we were written about.’

  ‘On the Internet. Perhaps I could attend one of your meetings.’

  Sebastian refused to catch his eye. The shutters had come down once more. ‘I’m afraid there are no outside members allowed—it’s an old rule, there’s nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘An old rule. Then this society of yours isn’t new? I mean, you didn’t start it?’

  ‘God, no, it’s been around for generations. I’m merely the present chairman. The custodian of the League’s charter.’ He thought for a moment. ‘What else have you been able to discover about our little club?’

  ‘Nothing much, really. But I have my suspicions.’

  ‘Oh, really? You’d better make sure you have proof to back them up before you publish. I’d hate to see you get into trouble. Legally, I mean. You’ve barely touched your meal.’

  ‘I’m not very hungry.’

  ‘Then leave that and we’ll have some decent brandy.’

  ‘No, Sebastian. I have to go soon.’

  ‘Tell you what, I’ll get the bill and we can have a snifter at my club.’

  ‘I really can’t. Too much to write up.’

  He cooled instantly, sensing the change. ‘All right. If that’s what you want. I’ll get you a taxi.’

  ‘I just want to walk for a while and clear my head,’ he replied a little too fiercely, rising from the table.

  ‘Well, you must do as you feel fit.’

  Vince stood awkwardly at the corner as Sebastian hailed a cab. After entering it and shutting the door, he pushed down the window.

  ‘I think I’ve disappointed you, Vincent. Not something I intended to do.’

  ‘We’ll stay in touch,’ he said, shamed by the lie.

  ‘It’s probably best that I should wait to hear from you,’ said Sebastian civilly. ‘Take care, old chap. Don’t leave it too long, eh?’

  The cab pulled away and disappeared into the afternoon traffic. Vince knew that this was an official end to their meetings, just as Sebastian knew that there would be an unofficial continuation. He should have been relieved, but one thought kept running through his mind. What if I’ve made a mistake? Suppose he’s reformed since those articles were written, does it really matter what his politics are? What right do I have to judge him on the events of the past?

  On the tube back to Tufnell Park he found it hard to shake the terrible sense of foreboding that had descended upon him. Suppose there was some kind of comeback from all of this?

  Some things in life were dangerous; that was knowledge quickly learned. A burning cigarette-end flicked from a car. A bad neighbourhood late at night. The sound of breaking glass. Voices raised in drunken anger. These were reasons to be fearful. When Vince was a child, his father used to show him how his open razor would slice through a sheet of paper just by resting the blade on the top of the page. Its casual power appalled the sensitive young boy; it was intended to.

  He had been an easily frightened child. His world was darkened with dangers. His father’s timidity was as inoperable as cancer, and it had turned him into a bully. His endless warnings destroyed the little confidence his son possessed. Harm was found hiding in the most mundane events; the turn of the tide could transform a beach stroll into a race against the incoming sea. A picnic in the woods
could conjure images of the family lost and starving among lightning-blasted trees. In his father’s world, the simple act of replacing a three-pin plug became a feat so fraught with electrical hazard that only a fool would attempt it. The destruction of his confidence, Vince came to realise, was the most damaging childhood loss of all.

  When his father died, Vince cried because they had not been able to resolve their differences. He had wanted to show his father that all those years of cautionary advice had been wasted, that far from being scared to live he was now ready for anything the world could throw at him. One week after the funeral, Vince left his mother’s house to seek adventure in the city. Now that he had finally found it, he began to realise that there were bigger things to fear.

  Chapter 12

  The Academic

  ‘You won’t find much written down about them. They’re not the sort of organisation that likes to leave hard evidence lying around.’

  Vince finally managed to collar Dr Harold Masters on the steps of the British Museum, where he had just delivered a lecture on the celebrations of the Inca calendar and early Mayan beliefs, and was now hurrying through the early evening drizzle, anxious to get home. Vince was late and lucky to have recognised him at all, considering he only had Esther’s description (‘absurdly tall, unsuitable tortoiseshell glasses’) to go on.

  ‘You’ll have to walk with me, I’m afraid,’ said Masters, striding ahead. ‘My wife will kill me if I’m not on time. We’ve some Egyptian ceramics people for dinner and they’re unfamiliar with the concept of fashionable lateness. Come under shelter. Pity about this weather. It was so nice yesterday.’ He was carrying a gigantic green and white striped golfing umbrella.

  ‘In the twenties they were known as the Young Prometheans. Information on them is all rather hazy. No idea why they linked themselves to Prometheus, except of course Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is subtitled The Modern Prometheus, isn’t it? Enlightened man, and all that. The heyday of such societies was in the Victorian era, of course. They always picked classic-sounding names with quasi-mystical connections. The League is almost certainly Edwardian in origin, although it seems to have a group of founders rather than one single leader. It began as little more than a splinter group of an Oxford debating society, that much is sure, but its character changed during the Second World War.’

  ‘Why was that?’ he asked, hopping ahead to keep abreast of the doctor.

  ‘Oh, for the simple reason that they supported Mosley during the conflict. Around this time they gained the support of the British Union of Fascists, oddly enough through their mutual admiration for Edward the Eighth—the BUF were royalists to a man—and of course the Mitfords began throwing money at them. But the alliance with the Black-shirts marked a move to the far right from which they never recovered. Of course, all sorts of odd things happened in the war. That forecourt, for example,’ he indicated the museum at his back, ‘was full of onions, runner beans and cabbages, a victory garden dug up by the wife of the Keeper of Coins and Medals.’

  ‘There’s something I don’t understand, Doctor.’ Vince paused with him as they reached the kerb. ‘What exactly does the League do?’

  ‘That’s an interesting question.’ Masters rolled his eyes knowingly. He looked slightly mad. ‘Their actions certainly seem to be more negative than positive, rather like a radical mini-version of the House of Lords. Basically, they prevent things happening that they don’t agree with. From the wealthy backgrounds of their associates I imagine they operate some kind of privilege system that allows their members to get on at the expense of others. You know, do subtle, appalling misdeeds to the underclass and always manage to hush them up, place favoured sons into the jobs their fathers had before them, that sort of thing.

  ‘A few years ago I ran afoul of them when I wrote a monograph on the later history of the city guilds. In the course of my research I upset a few younger members of the Oxbridge set by suggesting that the City of London corruption cases of the eighties could be traced to the exclusion practices of the old boy network, and I went as far as to name a few of the culprits. I had no idea they were Masons. Next thing I know, this chap Wells calls me up—on my unlisted number, no less—and actually has the audacity to threaten me, in the most affable manner conceivable, but still a threat. Tells me my research is based on false assumptions, perhaps I’d care to rethink my proposals, or he’ll be happy to have some of his colleagues come around and help me with the revisions.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘What could I do? I’m an academic, not a gladiator. I amended the document to exclude them. Funny thing, though, I was introduced to Wells at a party a few months later and he was charm incarnate. I didn’t much care for him, swanning about as if he owned the place. The city, I mean. Struck me as your classic bright boy gone to the bad. A head full of silly ideas and no practical abilities. Wealthy people always assume they have the right to be eccentric.’ He halted at the corner of New Oxford Street and peered beyond the edge of the umbrella. ‘If you’re thinking of getting mixed up with these people, I’d bear in mind that they have some pretty powerful friends. And I should think they can be dangerous. I don’t know that they’ve actually ever killed anyone, although there was some speculation about a journalist who died slipping on some steps, but over the years they’ve exerted a lot of pressure on specific targets. Still, you can’t be too careful. There’s nothing more harmful than an opinionated intellectual with too much money.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice. I’ll bear it in mind. Just a couple more questions.’

  The doctor was busy searching the rainswept street for a cab. ‘Fire away,’ he said, distracted by his need to find transport quickly.

  ‘How many members of this society are we talking about?’

  ‘There you have me, I’m afraid. Could be five or fifty, although if it’s the latter, I imagine there’s an inner circle that makes all of the more contentious decisions. An organisation like this tends to have a highly developed internal pecking order providing different levels of information on a need-to-know basis. If you look at the early structure of the Nazi party you’ll find pretty much the same thing.’ He spotted a cab with its light on and threw out his arm. ‘What was the other question?’

  ‘Where do they operate from?’

  ‘I’m sure they recruit at the main universities, and I imagine their membership is swollen by sheer osmosis.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, that like-minded individuals naturally drift towards them.’

  Funny, Vince thought, that was the same phrase Sebastian used.

  ‘It’s pretty much public knowledge that they have a central London meeting-lodge not far from the Holborn Masonic Temple,’ the doctor went on. ‘I don’t have an address for them, though. Didn’t get that far, but I daresay I could find it for you easily enough.’

  ‘If you do come across it, could you phone it through to me?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. On the condition you don’t go doing anything stupid. God, I’d love to see it all brought out into the light. Mind if I ask you a question now? Why would you want to get involved with these people in the first place?’

  ‘I’m a personal friend of the ringleader,’ he explained apologetically.

  Chapter 13

  Weighing In

  On a certain kind of rainy October night some London streets fall back into the past, and it becomes impossible to pinpoint their exact year, like stumbling across an old photograph without a date. On such nights, the dingy dwellings of Spitalfields and Whitechapel still seem to belong to the Huguenot silk-weavers, the prim backstreets of Kensington appear eternally Edwardian, and the houses of the Chelsea embankment, primped with gothic trimmings and standing in Sunday finery like a charabanc of ruddy-faced matrons, remain the province of the Pre-Raphaelites. It is among these latter buildings that the members of the League of Prometheus had set their headquarters.

  Although the house itself only dated from 1865,
the grounds in which it stood held ancient secrets. Buildings change; sites do not. In later decades London’s luminaries attended fashionable parties on its candelabra-filled first floor. Conan Doyle, Whistler, Elgar and Wilde had all taken tea in the Oak Room, a large dark lounge made more depressing by a series of staggeringly ugly morality paintings rendered on fourteen separate oak panels.

  Above this room, in the rather inaccurately named Temperance Gallery, Sebastian Wells sat, as was his habit, and watched the setting sun. The air over the river had turned to the clear violet hue that had once been so common above the city before the Industrial Revolution. In those days the seasons were plainly designated, temperatures rising and plunging with clockwork precision. In the winter, the Thames froze over. In summertime, tinder-dry fields caught fire in East London, the billowing pale smoke drifting down to choke the maze of bookshop-filled streets behind St Paul’s. But here in this reach of the Thames, at this time of the year, it was impossible to look out and not be reminded of Turner’s hazy, iridescent river.

  Sebastian stared through the hand-rolled diamond panes, sipping the porter Barwick had fetched him from the kitchens, and thought about Vincent Reynolds.

  There could be only one explanation for the young man’s sudden change of heart—he had discovered something damaging about the activities of the League. Unease showed in his face, his composure. At their final meeting Vince had avoided pushing for more detailed answers to his questions, as though he was afraid of what he might hear. He had cast his eyes aside, fidgeting like a cat unable to settle, awaiting the payment of the bill.

  What had he discovered, though? The League’s business activities existed in an area between the land’s laws, a mysterious region of favour and reciprocation, of imperceptible nods and understanding smiles, of quietly stopped documents and discreetly passed bills. Isolating a single piece of firm evidence was like sifting through sand. God knows, some very clever journalists had tried and failed.