by Unknown
The pressure on my leg eased immediately. I looked down, fascinated despite the throbbing pain to see the fibrous root unravel and retract back into the ground, as the world returned to its default state now that the source of disruption had gone.
All around me people were getting to their feet, clutching injured limbs or limping gingerly towards each other. There would be a lot of walking wounded this night.
‘What the hell just happened?’ I heard someone ask – Ahmet, I think.
I had no intention of enlightening him. Let the story grow out of all proportion until it became too ridiculous for words, or wither away into oblivion as those who were present began to doubt their own recollection. Either way, I didn’t care.
‘I’ll say this much,’ George said as he came across to join me, evidently none the worse for wear. ‘Things are never dull when you’re around. Quite a night.’
‘It’s been that all right.’
‘Will your Green Man be okay, do you think?’
‘I hope so. He’s back in his own world now. If he’s going to find the sustenance and the means to recover anywhere, it’s there.’
‘If he does survive, do you suppose he’ll be back?’
‘Doubt it. The natural order of things is for the different realities to stay well apart. London is something of a special case. I’ve never known or heard of anywhere else where the barriers are this weak and the distances between worlds so small, but even in London an accidental crossing is rare. Without knowing precisely how the Green Man came through it’s impossible to be certain, of course, but I reckon he’ll steer well clear of us from now on. If not, and he does show up again…’
George laughed. ‘I’ll call you, don’t worry.’
He gave my shoulder a comradely squeeze and then returned to helping an injured colleague. I felt suddenly exhausted, and didn’t even bother trying to identify and chastise whoever had fired the gun. Their reckless action had precipitated events, certainly – the tree roots had only been intent on hampering us before the shooting – but I couldn’t blame them, not really. As with the man outside the tube station it had just been a default reaction, born of fear and ignorance.
Danny walked beside me as we trailed out of the park. He looked dazed. ‘Is your life always like this?’
‘No, of course not,’ I assured him. ‘Some days it gets really hairy.’
Underground
Gaie Sebold
Michael Forbes-Lathrop followed Nigel into the Duck and Gun. It was packed with a solid mass of dark, expensive suits. Nigel bulled his way to the bar, Michael looked, without optimism, for a table. Why do we come in here? He thought. It was always noisy, always crowded, buzzing and flaring like a neon bulb on the verge of explosion.
‘Here,’ Nigel reappeared and handed him his pint. ‘Look, table.’ He headed off.
Someone cannoned into him and he swore as beer splashed his leg.
‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ The woman who’d bumped him sighed. ‘It’s so crowded. I’ll get you another.’
‘Really, it’s fine. I only lost about a mouthful, look.’ He held up his glass. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ The woman’s dark fluffy hair was randomly streaked with scarlet and blue, like some exotic bird. She wore a battered leather jacket over a lacy, creamy top, a short black lacy skirt, patterned tights and heavy boots. Her mouth was soft and pink and without lipstick.
‘But your trousers…’ she said.
‘Due for the dry-cleaners anyway.’ Then, as though someone were working his mouth by strings, he blurted, ‘but you can let me buy you a drink.’ Immediately he felt his skin flush with colour. ‘Or not. You’re probably here with friends.’ What had possessed him? She wasn’t his type at all. And besides, Nigel. All the same, he found himself holding his breath for her answer.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘that’s nice, but I’m … meeting someone.’
He relaxed. ‘All right.’
‘Thanks, though.’
‘Any time.’
‘Yeah, next time I spill beer over you, all right?’ She gave him a brief gleaming grin, and moved away.
Michael saw Nigel sliding into a seat at one of the tiny wrought-iron tables. Nigel was a senior partner at Holland Mitchelson Wayne, the stockbroking firm they worked for. He was lean and pale with a long nose, and was gradually balding backwards, making him look as though he were very slowly turning into a vulture in an expensive suit. He had appointed himself Michael’s mentor at the firm. Michael tried to be grateful.
‘What’s the Socialist Workette doing in here?’ Nigel said, nodding towards the woman with the multi-coloured hair.
‘No idea,’ Michael said.
‘Hmm.’ Nigel glared at her narrowly, then dismissed her. ‘So. How’s it going?’
‘All right.’ Michael wriggled his pint around, settling it comfortably on its beermat. ‘Listen, Nigel, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. You remember that business with the Rein Fairglove fund…’
‘What about it?’ Nigel took a sip of beer, looking at Michael over the rim.
‘There was never any fallout from that.’
‘No, so why worry about it?’ Nigel said. ‘You weren’t involved.’
‘I know. It’s just…’ Michael wiggled his pint some more, ran a finger around the glass, collecting a drip. ‘People lost their money. There were questions.’
‘No-one avoids every possible brush with something that might, might, get the regulators’ knickers in a knot,’ Nigel said.
‘Well, no, but…’
‘It wasn’t anything you did, Michael.’ Nigel looked him in the eye. ‘And even if you had, well, these things happen. That was three years ago. What brought this on?’
Michael looked around, lowered his voice. ‘This Fremantle Investments thing.’
‘Ah, that. Look, you’re at an important point in your career. You just have to know how to respond.’
‘Which is?’
‘Which is, keep your head down. No-one’s asking you to do anything wrong. Right?’
‘Well…’
‘It’s nothing. Just don’t talk to people who could be journos looking to dig a bit of dirt.’ He tipped his head, significantly, towards the bar.
Michael glanced over. The woman who’d bumped into him was still there, looking around, sipping at a glass of coke. She looked alert, almost wary. ‘You think?’ he said.
‘Look at her. This obviously isn’t her sort of place, so what’s she doing here?’
‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘You’re a smart boy, Michael, and you’ve certainly got the pedigree, not that anyone dares say that sort of thing anymore. There’s a witch-hunt going on around the finance industry right now, but it’ll die down, it always does. Just keep on track, and you could end up doing very nicely indeed.’
Nigel’s phone bongled. He checked it. ‘I’ve got to go.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘This homeless charity thing’s all very well but the people running it. Talk about pissups in breweries.’
‘All right. See you tomorrow.’ Michael gazed into the remains of his pint, a faint uneasiness in the pit of his stomach. You’ve got the pedigree. Michael’s father, Stuart, had been a Name in the industry. It had been assumed Michael would follow in his footsteps, and, eventually, he had. But it wasn’t in him to reach the dizzy heights Pops had done.
Someone approached his table and he looked up apprehensively, as though his thoughts might have been read.
It was streaky-hair, with a pint in each hand. ‘I think I’ve been stood up,’ she said. ‘And my feet are tired. You mind?’
‘Please,’ Michael said, gesturing.
The woman put the drinks down and held out her hand. ‘Shanny.’
‘Michael.’ He noticed the pint she put in front of him. ‘Oh, hey, you didn’t need to do that.’
‘Wanted to.’ She shucked her leather jacket, sat down, raised her glass. ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers.’ He lifted his pint, and sipped. She’d got it
right, too. Flowers.
‘So, Michael, how’s life?’
‘Er … life-ish, I suppose.’
‘Only ish?’
He shrugged. ‘Well, you know. So what do you…’
She held up a finger. ‘No, don’t.’
‘Don’t…’
‘Asking “what do you do” boxes people in. What we do isn’t all of what we are, is it? But once you know someone’s job, it sets up how you think of them. Then, if you want to get to know them properly, you have to dismantle that and start again.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said. ‘But what if they do something you despise? Wouldn’t you rather know?’
‘Depends. Depends if they’re proud of it, for a start.’
‘Anyway I bet you can guess what I do,’ he said, with a small sigh.
She looked him over, solemnly. He knew what she was seeing – expensive suit, Turnbull and Asser shirt, expensive watch, floppy public-school hair.
‘Artist,’ she said.
He jolted and this time he almost knocked over his own pint. ‘Hah. Funny.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘Come on.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Shanny said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘You didn’t,’ he said. ‘Why would I be upset?’ Disconcerted, yes.
She propped her chin on her hand, stared at him with those huge brown eyes. She must know damn well he wasn’t an artist. Or ever had been. Not properly.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘What you do is something financial, isn’t it?’
‘Bang on. And you, you are an artist. Or a poet or something.’ Not a journalist, he was pretty certain, and bugger Nigel anyway.
‘Look again,’ Shanny said. ‘Really look.’
So he looked. Now she’d taken her jacket off he could see that her arms were smoothly, surprisingly muscular, her shoulders broad. Strong hands, short unpainted nails. A ring on the middle finger of each hand. Left, a silver band with a Celtic design, right, a smooth oval dark green stone set in silver.
Sherry-brown eyes with faint silvery streaks in the iris, wise, considering eyes with a slightly world-weary look at the edges. The beginnings of humorous wrinkles in the corners, a pale line of scar-tissue alongside the left. Older than he’d first thought; thirties. A straight nose with something Arabic in its definition. That soft pink mouth quirking into a smile as he studied her. Suddenly, vigorously aroused, he blushed, and gulped his pint.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Police,’ he said, because the only other thing he could have said right then was God I would love to take you to bed.
‘Woh,’ she said. ‘Interesting.’
‘Stupid. Sorry.’
‘No, not stupid. But definitely interesting.’
‘Are you going to tell me, then?’ he said.
‘Not yet.’ She flashed that grin again, and though he felt that he should have been exasperated, he grinned back.
‘So, why this pub?’ Shanny said.
‘It’s just where everyone comes, and the beer’s all right.’ He wrinkled his nose.
‘You don’t like it?’ She leaned in. He caught a whiff of some dark, complex perfume.
‘Actually, no, I don’t,’ he said. ‘No reason, really.’
‘Nor do I,’ she said.
‘Why were you here, then?’
‘Checking it out. Fancy going somewhere else?’
She took him to a tiny Thai restaurant he hadn’t known existed, where they ate magnificently and talked about everything except work. Music. XTC and what exactly New Wave was, and how they’d discovered their favourite bands and ‘real’ R and B which led to The Commitments and films.
He talked about skiing, the high-speed runs he loved, silence underlined by the slish of skis through the snow, the heady speed, the second-by-second calculation, the bright contrasts of the snow and the pines and the sky, until he skidded to a halt, embarrassed by his own sudden eloquence. ‘It cleans my head out,’ he said, shrugging.
‘Yes. Parkour’s like that for me.’
‘Is that the stuff where you run around roofs and swing around railings?’ He blinked, impressed. He’d seen those guys (and girls, he amended) on Youtube. That stuff looked hard. No wonder she had muscles.
She nodded. ‘But parkour’s a philosophy as much as a sport, at least, it is for me. It’s supposed to be useful.’
‘How?’ He said. ‘Sorry, that sounded…’
‘It’s all right.’ She laughed. ‘Depends. You never know when you might need it.’
‘How do you get into something like that?’
‘A friend. He…’ The corners of her eyes and mouth suddenly quirked downwards; gently ageing her with grief. I’d like to have painted you, he thought. I really would.
‘He died,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry. Was it … did he fall?’
‘It wasn’t parkour, no.’
She changed the subject to favourite pubs. ‘The Salisbury,’ she said. ‘I love all that fabulous old glass. Besides, it…’ she broke off, shrugged. ‘I like it.’
‘I love the Lamb and Flag but it’s always so rammed in there.’
‘People used to call it the Bucket of Blood,’ Shanny said.
‘Really?’
‘Prizefights. It has history. All of London has history, stories, it’s in the fabric. What is it you like about it?’
‘The Lamb and Flag?’ Michael considered. ‘The wooden bar. That big old iron lamp outside. There’s a really nice fireplace upstairs. And it feels right.’ He didn’t know why he’d said that last part, except that it was true.
‘You notice stuff,’ she said. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Some, I guess. What I do, it’s about spotting trends, a lot of it. And the people who are really good, spot trends quicker, with fewer cues.’ He’d mentioned work, which was taboo, but she was nodding.
‘Pattern recognition. We humans are exceptionally good at that. It works on places, too.’
‘Places?’
‘There’s a lot of folklore in London.’
‘Most of it’s rubbish, though, isn’t it?’
‘Some is, but some of it’s lies with a hidden truth. You poke about, you find stuff, and follow your instincts. Some places feel right, and some wrong. You must know places that feel wrong.’
Uneasy, he said, ‘Well, the office. But who doesn’t hate work?’ Now he sounded like a dick.
‘Where do you work?’
‘Holland Mitchelson Wayne.’ Normally, in the circles he moved in, that came out with an upwards swing, an unspoken ‘tah-dah!’ In the low-lit, lamb-and-ginger scented restaurant, it seemed to land on the table with a flat, metallic slap.
‘Where’s that?’
‘King William Street. Near the Morgan Rothschild building.’
‘Oh,’ she said. Her eyes seemed to have gone slightly opaque, the reflected candle-flames hiding an expression he couldn’t read. ‘There are stories around that area, too. Have you worked there long?’
‘About a year. Let’s not talk about work, you don’t want to box me in, do you?’ He tried to smile.
‘Just one thing. You use Bank station?’
‘Yes. It’s a pain in the arse.’
‘Yes, yes it is,’ she said. ‘There are stories about most of the stations, ghosts, phantom trains, but Bank … you ever talk to any of the night staff there? No-one likes it.’
‘Maybe they scare themselves with ghost stories,’ he said, but she didn’t smile.
***
He woke up with the memory of her soft pink delicious mouth on his lips from the kiss she’d planted on him as she’d left, and a slightly tender place in his memory that suggested he’d babbled about things he normally kept to himself. Some of the conversation had been … odd, but still. He glanced at the clock, realised he’d overslept, swore, and bolted for the shower.
Normally he was on his way by six a.m., when a lot of the people on this line would be in fi
nance; or cleaning staff. This morning a wider variety of humans surrounded him. He found himself, foolishly, looking around for Shanny, even though he doubted very much she did the nine-to-five commute, and even if she did, the chance of her being on the same train at the same time was remote. He thought about trying to work out the odds in his head, but there wasn’t enough information. He still didn’t know what she did for a living. Still, it had been fun. More fun, different fun, than he could remember having in a long time. He sighed. It wouldn’t do, of course. He tried to imagine taking her to meet Mother and Pops, and his stomach clenched.
Bank station. Endless white-tile tunnels, a monstrous chilly throat swallowing the crowd like cheap coffee. The usual shudder of dislike washed over Michael as he hurried through.
The Holland Mitchelson Wayne building, minutes from the station, was a discreet grey sub-classical edifice. The receptionist buzzed him through, the door clunked and hissed shut. It sounded like a high-security prison, he thought; he’d thought it since the day he started.
‘Mikey-boy!’ Jack Pointer waved. ‘What’s going on? You’re never late. I set my watch by you.’ He tapped his chunky Tag Heuer and grinned expansively. ‘Fun night?’
Whatever his face was saying, Jack interpreted it in traditional Jack Pointer fashion. ‘Oh, oh, Mikey got it on!’
‘Not really.’
‘Not really?’
‘Later, Jack,’ Michael said. ‘I am late.’ He switched everything on and started to scan the Bloomberg screens. Numbers and letters and figures, charts and waves, colours on black. It made him think, briefly, of Shanny’s hair. But soon he was absorbed in it. Twists, turns, hints, possibilities, calculations, risks. His heart rate rose, his cheeks flushed.
This was the part of the job he liked. The charge, the pumping adrenals, the rush that was like the rush of the white gleaming snow; avoiding the bump, the ridge, the patch of ice, the sudden deadly edge always waiting. He didn’t take stupid risks; the same as when he skied, he made damn sure he knew the run, knew the weather, had the right equipment. It was the test of his skill that charged him up.
He rather liked Jack, too. Jack was such an unashamed wide-boy. He drank like a fish, traded like a boss, and owned a gloriously vulgar gold-sprayed Cadillac.