Still… it was dangerous enough once the robbing started. And it was fun.
2
signy
We were discussing how you cope with having sex with someone you loathe. I was trying very hard not to cry.
Ben was having a great time. He was skittering up and down giggling. ‘Why don’t you just enjoy it?’ He grinned at me. ‘Why not? I would.’
Had said, ‘It’s different.’
Ben said, ‘No, it’s not. She’s always going on about being as good as us. Well, we like doing it, don’t we, Had?’
‘So do I,’ said Siggy.
‘You haven’t done it yet,’ said Ben.
‘I have,’ insisted Siggy. And he looked all guilty at me, because I was the only one who knew for sure that he hadn’t.
‘No, you haven’t,’ said Ben.
‘Yes, I have!’
‘Anyway,’ said Had. ‘Of course it’s different. The man does it; she has it done to her.’
I said, ‘Don’t talk daft.’ Those boys! This was useless!
‘The man puts it in and she has it put in,’ said Had, just in case we hadn’t clicked yet.
‘Well, you put food in your mouth, but it’s still you doing it, isn’t it?’ pointed out Siggy.
I could have screamed. ‘If he puts it anywhere near me I’ll bite it off,’ I hissed.
‘Dead good way of breaking up the treaty,’ said Ben.
Siggy, bless him, said, ‘Sod the treaty. Who believes in the treaty? She should just refuse and we should back her up…’
And then they stopped talking about how to deal with having sex with someone you’ve never met before and got on to politics. As for Siggy’s idea – it was sweet, but forget it. They talked endlessly about whether or not the treaty could be made to work, but in the end Val wanted it and that was that. It was just… yeah, well, it was gonna be pretty lonely there in that bed on my wedding night, that’s all.
‘You’ll just have to hope he’s not as bad as he’s painted,’ said Siggy.
I thought, some hope. I’d just better hope he doesn’t hurt me too much, that’s all.
3
A cold rain whipped between the buildings and across the streets, where a thin, scratty crowd was waiting quietly. Some hid under blankets and umbrellas mended ten times ten, but most of them just stood there soaking. Val was disappointed. He’d wanted the crowds ten deep, cheering and throwing bunting. But he refused to force them.
The bodyguards waited, Val’s on this side, Conor’s on the other. They wore black suits and let the rain trickle out of their hair and down under their dark glasses. They might have been men, or machines, or animals, or all three. Under their suits you could see the outlines of powerful weapons which may have been part of their bodies.
There had been war between these two families for generations. This was supposed to be a treaty but no one really dared believe it. It was likely just another trick. But who was playing it?
For a long time there was just a low murmur from the crowd and the steady hissing of the rain on the bricks and pavements, but at last a long convoy of cars and armoured vehicles turned into Bishopsgate and crept over the cracked tarmac. As the sound of the engines grew, there was a strange effect. The hissing began to get louder. The faces of the VIPs turned upwards, looking for the heavy rainfall that must be making the sound, but the rain was falling off if anything. The hissing increased, louder and louder, even over the sound of the engines, as if the rain was insisting on its right to be heard.
It wasn’t water; it was people pulling an old schoolboy trick. The thin rows of white faces lifted up from their huddle of rags and bits of plastic to watch an old enemy arrive among them. They didn’t dare to boo or shout abuse for fear of Val’s gangmen hidden in among them, but no one could tell where the hisses came from. Faces and mouths stayed still as paintings, but hundreds of throats hissed their hatred. The gang wars had crippled London for generations. Conor and his family had fought savagely and cruelly. There wasn’t a soul in this crowd who hadn’t lost a loved one to the man now driving in to visit them.
The noise began to gather force, to swell. Val was white with rage and frustration, but there was nothing he could do about it. This was his dream! He was putting together the army that was supposed to conquer paradise. These were the people who would break out of the asylum and take the world into the pockets of the poor. The people of the city had shared so many of his dreams, but not this one – not yet.
Conor’s convoy, tiny in the shadow of the Galaxy Building, stopped in the square outside and the soldiers emerged from the armoured cars, bristling with weaponry like little toy men in the wide road.
The crowd began hissing again when Conor’s personal bodyguard got out of the car. He… it… bared its teeth and its fur stood up on end at the sound until it looked pretty near twice as big. Then it opened its mouth – shouting or barking, who knows. It turned to open the door for Conor.
That was a halfman; Londoners had reason to hate them too, but Conor was the real monster. When he stepped out of his armoured car, the hissing swelled up until it sounded like something was going to burst. Conor pulled his coat around him and looked about as if he stood alone on the rainy street.
Out from among the umbrellas came Val, dressed all in grey, as usual, as if he was someone’s clerk. But around his neck he wore a bright crimson silk scarf, as he always did on public appearances. A symbol of fire and blood.
The crowd began to cheer for their leader. They loved Val even more than they hated Conor. But the cheering faltered as Conor and Val embraced each other. A few seconds later, as Val took his daughter in his hand and handed her to Conor, it was in a stony silence. Signy was fourteen years old, and scared white even though she knew how to kill a man. Conor leaned across and kissed her. Among the guard of honour that led between the convoy and the Galaxy Building, Siggy stood with the rain streaming down his face, but he kept so completely still that no one could tell his face was wet with tears.
4
siggy
It was shit. I mean, I never take any notice of the politics but even I could see it was shit. Val was getting old. Doing that to Signy! But he convinced them, same as he always does.
The security arrangements! Conor had to have an army pointing at our throats, we had to have an army pointing at his. What sort of a treaty is that? We should have carried on the war, even if it took another generation. But Val was in a hurry, see. The job he wanted to do was the task of a century, but he wanted it all now, while he was still around to see it. So he ballsed it up.
There were armed thugs wandering around the streets for weeks. People were getting shot up because of fights breaking out between his forces and ours. And for what? For a handful of dreams. Val’s dreams. He’s a big man, my father, but dreams are just dreams even if you dream them for everyone. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean you just gotta look after Number One. But first of all you got to look after the people you can look after. Like Signy for instance. That’s the way I looked at it. If you can’t look after your own you can’t be trusted to look after the whole world. But that was Val – his dreams were bigger than he was.
Half the city had to be prettied up for the wedding. We’d had old road surfaces broken up and melted down to resurface the car park for Conor’s cars. We’d refurbished and decorated whole floors of the Galaxy Building for Conor’s guests. It cost millions. If Val wanted to make things so great for every-one else, why didn’t he just cancel the wedding and give London enough to eat for a couple of weeks? It would’ve been cheaper. Had did the money side of things; he told me. He’s good at that sort of stuff – Val reckons Had could organise the sun at midnight, but I reckon getting Conor and the Volsons to make a treaty is harder. Had’s the one who’s supposed to take over from Val when the time comes, but I tell you, if anyone’s fit to follow Val it’s my sister. She has the brains and she has the vision. She’s his true successor. But he’ll just sell her off to servic
e Conor and probably half his kitchen staff as well, once things break down.
My job was getting Galaxy in order. I had to supervise the building work and the decorators, clean the place up, get it painted. All pretty boring stuff. The only fun bit was clearing out the street kids from the ventilation system.
See, the ventilation system is such a great place for the homeless kids to live. They came from miles around to get in. Whole gangs live in there, like rats. Well, it’s about thirty thousand times better than the street. They were quite happy to climb twenty storeys high or more to get in. Let’s face it, Galaxy must be the richest building in town. Just the crumbs on the floor were better than most people’s dinners.
Val didn’t like it much. He thought it was a security risk, but security’s about all he can think of. Show him a cheese sandwich and he’ll be wondering about the security implications. Trouble was, though, you’d get more and more of them creeping inside until the place was infested, and it’d begin to stink. Then we had to clear the lot of them out. Actually, it wasn’t that smelly when Conor turned up, but we don’t want his lady guests being disturbed in the bathroom by a seven-year-old rat-boy jumping out and pinching her powder puff, do we? Those ducts run all over the place and you could hear the kids in the guts of the building, whispering, laughing, chatting, scratching, fighting, from miles away. You never knew where they were. They couldn’t hear us, of course, but it did something to your sense of privacy having to listen to them shouting names at you even when you were in your own room.
What you do is, you get the men to cover off the ventilation grids with nets, then you let the dogs in. Pipe hounds, Ben called them. We kept this pack of wiry little terriers just for it. It was so funny! You could hear it all going on – the dogs scampering, growling and barking like little cannons going off. And the kids screaming, yelling, trying to work out where the dogs were and screeching suddenly like demons when the dogs came on’em, ‘It’s there! It’s there!’ Then they’d start howling and running and the whole place would rattle and ring from the inside.
One after the other they’d come popping out of the walls into the arms of the security men. Then I gave them a packed lunch and a blanket and sent them off into the street. They were grateful for the blanket. Val was OK like that. He thought it was a good political move, keeping in with the common people, that sort of thing.
Of course, they’d gradually creep back in, one by one, and the whole thing would have to happen all over again. It was neat. It just pissed me off it was all for Conor and his mob.
Listen. Maybe you think I’m being some kind of spoilsport. Maybe you think I’m soppy about my sister. Well, it ain’t like that. I just want a life. Politics stinks. Anyway, I’m the youngest – none of that stuff is anything to do with me. As for Signy – she’s my twin. I just don’t like my sister being used like a lump of meat, something to barter. I just don’t want her to go away.
5
signy
I’d been having nightmares about it for months. And then there he was! He was awkward and shy – that was the first thing. I wanted to despise him for it but I couldn’t.
I thought he was weak, the way he stood there smiling and not meeting my eye, but as soon as he turned away and started dealing with his men he was different. It was they who couldn’t meet his eye then. It was… what is it certain people have? My father has it too. Certainty. The absolute right to have things his way. But Conor was different from Val. He was the man, the numero uno, but at the same time you got the impression that he was expecting it all to disappear at any moment. As if the bad fairy was going to turn him from a king into an urchin if he just said the wrong thing.
He sent his people away, then he turned back to me and stood there scowling, all cross with himself, like an earthquake waiting to happen. You could almost see the molten red beneath, and his expression floating on the surface. I thought, what’s going on? And then I thought, this man is dangerous.
I felt a little thrill go through me, right down my neck to you-know-where and then out again through the balls of my feet.
‘I don’t know how to speak to you,’ he said.
‘Then keep your mouth shut,’ I told him.
He looked a little confused. I bit my cheeks; I wanted to laugh at him. ‘You own a quarter of London and you don’t know how to speak to me?’ I teased.
‘Not a quarter, a half,’ he said.
‘A half! Nothing like it. A third maybe. At the most.’
It was so childish, we smiled at each other. ‘A third then,’ he said. ‘Depends how you measure it, some would say.’ Then he scowled and looked intently at me. ‘Don’t hate me because of my father – that’s all I ask,’ he said suddenly. He looked me in the eye for the first time, then. I looked straight back. He blinked first.
We were talking in the fruit garden. The grow-lights spread across the ceiling over groves of oranges and bananas. Very romantic, that was the idea. There was an awkward pause, nothing to say, which he broke by spreading his hands. ‘This is wonderful. We don’t have anything like this in the north,’ he said.
‘I don’t need to be flattered,’ I sneered.
I was still scared of him and I hated him for that. I’d not been scared of anyone for years. No, that’s not true. Thing is, I always knew in the past that being scared only made me more dangerous. But now it was different – I was scared because of what he could do to me with the consent of my father and my brothers and all the troops. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men. I can kill a man. I know how. I’ve done it enough times. In a fight you can do what you want but in this game he can stab me through and I just have to lie there and take it.
I smiled sweetly at him. ‘Here, have a banana,’ I said, and I pulled one off the tree and offered it to him. He scowled as he took it. I don’t suppose they’ve got so many bananas in the north. He stood there trying to peel it but it was green. I laughed at him. I thought, you fool.
Conor threw away the fruit. It was a real flash of violence. Anger. I flinched, but then I stuck my face forward. I thought, if you hit me I’ll stick you. I had my hand on my knife.
‘We have to decide… you have to decide… what kind of marriage we’re going to have,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘For politics. Or for real.’
I said, ‘For politics,’ at once, and my heart went bang bang bang suddenly. What was he getting at? Let’s face it, he could use me to blow his nose on once he got me home. Was he actually going to be decent about it? Or did he really want this mess to work? He didn’t look in the least like he was interested in decency.
Now he looked hurt and that made me feel very strange. ‘I ask for six months. I…’ He was looking all over the place, but he forced his eyes to settle on mine. ‘I want to try it.’
‘You want to try me,’ I said, cool as you like.
‘No.’ He said it very quickly. He sounded very sure. ‘I mean… yes, I want you.’ He blushed. He actually blushed! Then he waved his hand dismissively, as if his own words were worth nothing. ‘I don’t know you at all, how can I say if it would work? But if it did I’d be very happy about it.’ And he blushed again, deeper than ever. I thought, you weed. But already my heart wasn’t in it. It really was sort of sweet. He was the enemy of decades, the murderer, the man my father had chucked me to as some sort of sacrifice, the way you chuck a morsel of meat to a lion when you want to sneak past it. Here, have this.
But… he was sort of sweet all the same. I couldn’t believe I was thinking that he was sweet.
‘All I ask is that you give it six months. Come home with me for six months. If you want to go back then, that’s up to you.’
‘I don’t think my father would be very happy about that.’
‘You’ll be my wife,’ he said. ‘I can tell him where you’ll live.’
I said, ‘You can’t tell Val anything,’ as scornfully as I could. He didn’t reply. He stood there waiting.
�
��I’ll think about it,’ I said.
Conor nodded. He looked away to a corner of the glasshouse and said vaguely, ‘You’re very beautiful. You’re very desirable. I want you to be my ally as well as my wife. I want you to help me rule. I think… who knows?… maybe I can love you.’ He reached out and touched my arm gently. It was the only time he touched me. ‘See you at the wedding, then,’ he said. He turned on his heel and he was gone before I could say anything.
6
The wedding took place in Westminster Abbey, where the Kings and Queens of England used to be wed – as if these little gangmen fighting over a single city were kings. Val liked to curl his lip and say it was all done to please Conor’s vanity. If it was up to him, the Abbey would have to wait until he had the nation in his pocket. The roof would be put back on and the old Kings and Queens, who had been dug up and removed when the government left, would be back under the stones. Then, perhaps, the place would be ready for Val to use.
But Conor wasn’t greedy for the future; he wanted it all now. Decent houses had to be knocked down to get timber for stalls for the guests. There wasn’t a sheet of plastic big enough to cover up the roof, but they hung up awnings and canopies and put down red carpet plundered from a hotel in Park Lane. The remaining saints were painted in bright colours so you could see them better and a sound system was rigged up to play organ music for the congregation.
The Abbey was a Christian temple. The Volsons had given up on all that years ago but, like all the ganglords, Val was a superstitious man. It’s true that under his grey silk suit he wore a silver cross, just in case Jesus happened to watching, but by its side was the stubby barrel of a small handgun, sawn off short and hammered into the likeness of a man with one eye. That was in honour of the strange gods who were said to have awakened in the halfman lands, and who had been seen these past few years inside the Wall, in the slums and suburbs of London itself. And for the same reason – unknown to Conor who would certainly have objected – a dead man hung upside down from his heel out of sight behind an awning. The new deities were said to favour sacrifice in this form. All nonsense of course – silly stories grown up from halfmen sightings by men from Ragnor or the other cities checking up on them. But Val considered it wise to take all precautions.
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