‘That depends on your point of view,’ he suggested.
Sebastian scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘Well, which of us do you place on the side of the angels, Vince? Which is the anarchist, which the representative of the status quo? It’s confusing, the class thing, isn’t it? Never clear-cut. Alan Clark described the nouveau riche as “people who bought their own furniture”.’
‘Yes,’ said Vince, ‘but Alan Clark is exactly the sort who confuses snobbery with wit.’
‘Hmm. Yes, you have a point there.’
This was odd. Here he was, once more face to face with someone whom he had lately come to think of as the devil incarnate, only to find his feelings unchanged. There was still something disturbingly charismatic about Sebastian. Some animals had it: the ability to charm and repel simultaneously. Vince settled in his seat. ‘I guess I consider myself to be representative of most people my age.’
‘Unlikely, given your background and your fondness for supporting strikes. And what a little marcher you are! You’ve been on them all! The miners’ protests, the Anti-Nazi League, the Greenpeace initiatives, the Gay Pride rallies, the Anti-Racism demos, the Pro-Choice bike-a-thons. They only have to set foot on the streets and you’ve fallen into step beside them chanting, haven’t you? Well, you’ve fallen in behind the wrong group this time.’
One of the others poured a tall measure of port into a crystal Lady Hamilton goblet and set it on the table before him.
‘Do you understand the consequence of your actions, I wonder?’ asked Sebastian, sipping at his own glass. The others were at ease now, pouring drinks, lounging in the armchairs. Vince glanced at the door and was dismayed to see two of the largest men in the room standing either side of it.
‘You see, my friend, it’s always people like you who cause problems. You profess to care about the fate of your country but you don’t really care about your own people. You don’t care enough to do something. This group, on the other hand, cares very deeply. Ask the average man on the street about the history of his own city and his ignorance will appal you. Few of the rising generation are even capable of articulate speech, or speech of any kind. They only know what they hear and see ‘on the telly’. Ask them for a reasoned opinion, ask them for a solution to our troubles, ask them anything and all you will get back is a knee-jerk reaction, a mooing noise, the lowing of an ignorant animal. A belch of chips, a scratching of the head. And although I am loath to do so, I have to include you, Vincent. You’re one of the street people. That’s where you come to life. You own the street, but we own all the houses.’ Somebody sniggered. Vince shifted forward in his chair, growing increasingly annoyed. ‘This is all very interesting,’ he said, ‘but you can’t just suppress the things you don’t agree with.’
‘Of course not, I’d be the first to admit that. People are never prepared to see the error of their ways, their godlessness. All we can do is make sure that those of us with the right intentions have a clear path to power.’
‘Besides, you’re outnumbered,’ Vince persisted. ‘There are a lot more of us than there are of you.’
‘Really? Then why are you the one standing there alone? Your back-up crew are being a bit apathetic. Something good on the telly tonight, was there? Vince, you just have to accept that we know best.’
‘That sounds like the classic attitude of old money. I can’t say I blame you, wanting to hang on to it. I’d probably do the same in your position. When I first met you, I thought your lack of self-awareness was engaging. Now I just think of you as deluded.’
Sebastian looked back at the men flanking him. ‘You’re damned lucky to be allowed to speak to your superiors in this manner.’
Vince gave a derisive snort. ‘Don’t see yourselves as empire builders. Your forefathers might have been, but you’re not. You didn’t fight to make the country great. You didn’t build the mills and the factories. You talk about the apathy of people like me—well, you’ve been missing for the last fifty years, when the country could have done with strong leadership. Now it’s too late, and you no longer serve any useful purpose at all. You’re certainly not my fucking superiors.’ He drained his glass in one gulp and set it down gently.
‘And here, gentlemen, we find it once more, the language of the gutter finally making its appearance.’ His flash of anger faded to a look of disfiguring blankness. ‘Now listen, lad, this is serious. The League of Prometheus was founded in the reign of George the Fifth. No non-member has ever been allowed to enter its halls…’
‘They have now,’ Vince offered.
‘This is just one of our offices. You won’t have found much here. What worries me more is your lack of repentance, and the need to teach you a resounding lesson.’
‘You’ve already taught me a lot. Which cutlery to use with asparagus, how to ask for a toothpick in French. Surely you must have expected me to betray your trust?’ To think I picked his name out of a magazine, thought Vince. Jesus.
‘I can’t believe you’re the same boy who wanted so desperately to know how I lived. What a dreadful disappointment you are. Right now I feel like smacking that smug little smile from your face.’
‘Lay a finger on me and I’ll get you locked up somehow. I don’t give a fuck who your friends are.’ It was brave talk, but his heart was knocking against his ribs. What could they do? he asked himself. What could they really do? Sebastian beckoned to a couple of his pals and they moved off to a corner of the room. Everyone else stood around looking embarrassed, waiting for their leader to return. After speaking for little more than a minute, he dispersed the meeting. Several members started bundling files of paperwork into briefcases. Sebastian walked up to Vince and stood watching his face, his hands clasped behind his back.
‘Listen to me carefully, Vincent. It would be easy for me to simply punish you, but you’re clearly unrepentant about this, so go back to your grim little flat and continue writing, fuelled by the thought that you’ve uncovered something. You don’t understand what any of this means. You think your actions will have no consequences. You have issued me with a challenge, and I—we—accept that challenge.’ He looked to the others for approval.
‘I pick up your gauntlet.’ He waved a hand, gesturing Vince up from his seat. ‘We’ll behave like civilised men. Go on, return to your home. At some point in the weeks to come you will receive a summons, and then we shall see who is on the side of the angels. But before that, Prometheus will bring you a sign. It will be the sign of fire, Vincent, and I hope it will make you realise the gravity of the challenge. Go, go, go.’
The men at the entrance doors stepped aside to allow him through. The room was pin-drop silent as he took his leave. He felt sure they would set upon him and at least give him a good kicking, but no, moments later he was walking briskly along the fourth-floor corridor, then down the thickly carpeted stairs and back out onto the streets of Holborn, half-wondering if he had imagined the entire episode.
He returned to his apartment more determined than ever to write about Prometheus. So far he had a plastic ring-binder full of notes, some pages of observations and research references, his Internet material, a stack of source books and seven and a half chapters of the first draft, all of which had somehow been pawed over by Sebastian’s burglarising playmates. That night he searched the flat for signs of a break-in. Nothing was missing. Nothing appeared to have been moved. He asked the couple who lived in the flat across the landing if they had seen anyone calling, but they were unable to help.
The phone rang, but he did not answer it. Probably Louie, wanting to know what had happened.
That night he fitted a deadbolt on the front door. Drove screws into the window frames to keep them closed. Put Louie’s old cricket bat under his bed. Made a copy of his notes, and sent them to his brother at his army base in Southampton. Then he began looking for evidence that would really take the wind out of Sebastian’s sails.
Chapter 17
Approval
Sebastian called a spec
ial meeting of the Inner Council at his flat in Regent’s Park and presented his idea for the challenge. Only Caton-James and St John Warner complained, considering the exercise to be a waste of time and money, but their objections were quickly overruled. In particular, Caton-James felt that Sebastian was using the situation to indulge his love of games, but he remained silent while the chairman outlined his proposal.
‘From time to time throughout the century, the members of the League have been required to make a stand for the things in which they believe,’ Sebastian pointed out. The eleven men gathered before him sat patiently listening. ‘That occasion has arrived again, just as it did in my father’s time. I think, gentlemen, that it will prove the solution to our internecine problems.’ There were murmurs of agreement as he laid down the ground rules.
‘The challenge must provide a genuine test of knowledge that teaches our young man a lesson. It must provide a fair opportunity to reach a solution. That means you cannot require him to visit, say, a club that refuses entrance to non-members, or a guildhall that bans public entry. Besides, I have a feeling Mr Reynolds would be able to handle problems like that. He got into the Holborn chambers without too much trouble. Exercise more subtlety. Mess with his mind. He thinks he’s closer to the street than you or I, and he’s right, if the street includes the gutter. I want you to take the strut from his stride. Make him realise that he owns nothing of this city, and that his kind never will.’
‘Fine,’ said Caton-James, ‘so long as you don’t mind us adding a few rules of our own. After all, this isn’t just about you and the boy, is it? There’s the matter between ourselves to settle.’
‘I understand, of course.’ Sebastian was chastened. ‘Tell me what you want.’
Caton-James proceeded to outline a handwritten page of additional points. It took another two hours for everyone to fully agree on an order of events, but by the end of the meeting full approval from the other League members had been granted.
After the rest had taken their leave, Sebastian sat by the window thinking. It really could work. He could kill two birds with one stone, and enjoy the game along the way. There were hazards involved, of course, but where was the challenge without them? Best of all, there was something about Vincent Reynolds that he genuinely admired. His unrepentant questioning, his enthusiasm for tasks that offered little or no reward. Sebastian thought of him as a reconstructed cockney, a kind of junior Sid James, muddling through the post-war debris, making the best of things. He had earned his right to be an opponent. It helped to balance the odds, and made the risk all the more worth taking.
First of all, though, a gesture was required. Something that would prepare Reynolds for the seriousness of his situation, and goad him on. He set to work immediately.
Chapter 18
The Gesture
‘If you are prepared to accept Jesus into your heart, the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven shall be yours. HALLELUJAH!’
Carol Mendacre grimaced and dug about on the passenger seat until she found an unboxed cassette. She inserted the tape and adjusted the volume, then returned her concentration to the lane ahead. The rain had renewed its strength half an hour ago, and she had lowered her speed accordingly. At this time of night the wet roads were easier to negotiate, save for the spray from articulated trucks heading southwest. Carol hated driving, and only undertook journeys of any length when she knew the traffic volume would be lighter. Why did they always have to hold publishers’ conferences at hotels in the heart of the countryside?
‘There is something indefinably keen and wan about her anatomy; and she has a watchful way of looking out of the corners of her eyes without turning her head, which could be pleasantly dispensed with—especially when she is in an ill humour and near knives.’
Carol recognised Dickens’s description of the maid from Chapter 12 of Bleak House, and recalled that she was a considerable way past that point in the novel. She glanced over at the seat; the Talking Book tapes had slipped from their case and become muddled.
She was considering the best way to sort them out without leaving the road when the car behind switched its headlights to full beam. She was unable to make out the vehicle that loomed in her rear-view mirror. What was its problem? She was doing nearly sixty in the centre lane, and there were no other cars around. Was the driver mad? Her heart started thumping as her grip tightened on the wheel. Her mirror was a panel of white glass. The interior of the car was filled with light.
When the vehicle came so close that it gently touched her rear bumper, she panicked, allowing the wheel to slip through her hands as she swerved left into the slower lane. But the car was still with her, just as close, and she fought to control the sliding wheels beneath her and failed. The last thought to pass through her mind as her cigarettes slid from the dashboard and the vehicle began to slowly turn over, fighting the force of gravity, was the realisation that she would not hear the end of Dickens’s epic tale of chancery.
—
On a freezing afternoon in early November Vince met with Esther Goldstone at her office in Covent Garden, and described what had happened in the Holborn chambers. Esther listened patiently, waiting for him to finish. She looked tired.
‘I have some bad news,’ she said finally. ‘Your commissioning editor—my friend—was involved in an accident a few nights ago. Her car left the road and overturned just outside Bristol. It was burned out by the time the emergency services arrived. Nobody seems very sure how it happened. There were no other vehicles involved.’
‘Prometheus brought her fire,’ said Vincent.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sebastian warned that Prometheus would bring me a fiery sign. It was meant to show me the seriousness of the challenge.’
‘You think Carol’s death was to do with you?’ Disbelief creased Esther’s face. ‘Even if it were true, how could you prove such a thing?’
To Vince, this was obviously the handiwork of the League. They were stopping the book at its source. ‘That’s how they work, don’t you see,’ he said quietly, ‘they leave no trace. You told me to use my heart, my instincts. Well, I know they did it, and I have absolutely no way of proving it. The fire cleanses. It destroys all the evidence, wipes out everything except your inner knowledge of the truth.’
Esther eyed him unsurely. The distant soprano was singing her scales in the Opera House’s rehearsal room. On such a day as this it was hard for anyone to imagine that behind the normality of the streets, real, honest-to-God conspiracies were being hatched. Esther tried to shake his fears from her head. ‘If these people really were responsible for such a terrible thing—which I have to say I doubt—they’ve failed to stop the project going ahead.’
‘Why?’
‘I offered to take her work over as a freelance assignment, and the publishers accepted. I came from the editorial ranks, after all. I’m familiar with the background and I’m aware of Carol’s intentions for the series. I also know most of the authors involved. As far as I am concerned, the book will remain on schedule. And I hope to God your fears are ungrounded.’
‘I’m positive the League was involved—’
‘Carol was a terrible driver,’ Esther cut in. ‘It was late at night and raining hard, and she’d had a couple of glasses of wine. I know. I was with her when she drank them.’
‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Just make this the best thing you’ve ever written, because her name is still going to be on the cover.’ Esther slapped her palms on the table. ‘Let’s get back to what we were discussing. Are you sure about everything you’ve described to me? The way this League operates, for example? You’re not exaggerating?’
Vince dug in his leather duffel bag and produced a fistful of crumpled photocopies. ‘I think I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface.’
‘You were on the premises illegally,’ she pointed out. ‘You were very lucky they didn’t call the police. Telling people you’re a writer guarantees you no immun
ity.’
‘Do you think that’s what I should do? Go to the police?’
‘And say what? You’re annoyed because your feathers were ruffled by members of a meeting to which you were not invited? Don’t be so naive, Vince. If you really want to research the organisation—and while I find the subject interesting I don’t think it’s essential to your thesis—you need to approach it through more orthodox channels. Talk to associates, business colleagues, students who knew these people at Oxford. You have some contacts of your own. Your London articles showed that.’
‘They’re not the right sort. I don’t get any sense from them about this kind of thing,’ he said gloomily. ‘Reliable sources won’t talk about Prometheus because their knowledge is based on hearsay. It’s all so hard to define. They’re a bunch of blokes who hold private meetings—not an illegal thing to do—and they’re used to getting their own way. People owe them favours. Friendships go back the best part of a century. No one’s going to say anything bad. It’s impossible to confirm or deny the simplest statement. There’s nothing on paper anywhere.’
Esther set down her cup. ‘Have you asked yourself why you need to find a conspiracy? This isn’t just going to be a hatchet job on someone who’s annoyed you, is it?’
‘They broke into my flat—’
‘You don’t know that for sure. They might have obtained their information in other ways. Do you have a landlord?’
‘A landlady, but she’s not on the premises.’
‘She has a key, though?’
Vince reluctantly nodded.
‘There you are. You have to stop jumping to conclusions. If you’re going to do that, you’re no good to me. You need facts. If you have any doubts about the material you’re using, if you’re concerned about legal infringements, bring it to me and we’ll sort it out together.’
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