A Long Walk to Wimbledon

by H. R. F. Keating

  In a very short time she had finished.

  ‘Come on then,’ she said.

  She led the way across to a pair of tall doors with pictures of many-roofed pagodas on them and, above, just to be glimpsed in the flicker of the candle, a gold arch writhing with a thick-bodied painted dragon. On the far side a long, long corridor, twelve feet high or more, ran into the darkness ahead. Its walls were patched where once paintings had been hung.

  Where would these be now? Stored in some cave in Wales or somewhere, waiting for the ‘peace’ that was at best impossibly far off? So had they been defeated, those assertions of order created in the chaos of their times, comparatively feeble though they might be? Well, the great assertions, too, the ones which like Mozart proposed an order against all chaos, they must be stored away somewhere as well, such of them as had not been destroyed. Had they too lost their power there in the cave darkness? Or were they ever-burning lights against the return of a day when they could safely shine again for the thousands? If that day was ever to come.

  Ahead, the wheels of Marigold’s shopper squeaked abominably and the shadow of her little figure danced this way and that as her candle tilted.

  When they had gone what must have been a good hundred yards they came to a set of elaborate doors forming a mirror-screen right across the corridor. Marigold dealt with them briskly. And then a new long corridor stretched in front of them.

  Squeak, squeak, squeak. He followed the insistent sound of the shopper’s wheels into the dark. Once they passed a column plinth with the bust that had stood on it carefully removed. He wondered whom it might have been of. Not Lord Lister. Some other less worthy worthy, no doubt, whom the sculptor had intended to be preserved for ever against oblivion.

  Then, just as he calculated they ought to be nearing the end of the second corridor, Marigold stopped. There was a door to their right. She opened it.

  A random draught at once blew out her stub of candle.

  ‘Don’t matter,’ she said. ‘Marigold knows her way. You just take hold of her coat. You’ll be all right.’

  He put out a hand, quite urgently, and found her shoulder. The plastic of her ancient mackintosh was hard and crackly to the touch.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘You just keep hold.’

  They set off into the darkness, which seemed absolute to him though Marigold crossed whatever room it was they had entered not much less quickly than before. The loud regular squeaking of the shopper was a decided comfort now.

  They stopped and he heard the rattle of the handle of another door. When this opened he could feel quite strongly the current of cool air, a gust from which had blown the candle out.

  ‘We got some stairs down here,’ Marigold said.

  Still keeping his hand on the cracked plastic of her mackintosh, he followed her downwards, the shopper bouncing on every step. He could smell her too now, a high ammoniacal odour.

  When they reached the bottom they stepped into moonlight. It was diffused at first but, as they went along a short passageway, it grew brighter and when they turned at its end it positively flooded down, full as it had been when it had woken him in the house in Mayfair.

  It was pouring in, he saw, through what had been one of the outer walls but was now an open shell-blasted space. Beyond it must lie the Palace gardens.

  ‘We got a nice old scramble next,’ Marigold said, almost with relish it seemed.

  She went across and, for all her diminutive size, climbed confidently over the broken wall. He followed.

  Garden, he found when he had dropped down on the far side, was a misnomer. More than one shell must have landed in the area and the ground ahead was a welter of mounds and troughs grown over now with tall weeds but still, in Marigold’s words, a nice old scramble to get past. But evidently she knew it well and she wriggled her way across in the moonlight like a supple animal, along a ridge, down into a dip, up again, round a jagged window frame jutting perilously up, twisting and turning, sometimes humping the shopper over her shoulder, sometimes squeaking it along for a yard or two.

  When at last they emerged from the Palace grounds through what had once been a high blank wooden gate leading from the Royal Mews he recognised not far away to the right the big anonymous intersection at the start of Buckingham Palace Road.

  Buckingham Palace Road. And a straight run to the River. He looked up at the sky. A large cloud was sailing towards the moon and away to the east he thought he could make out the first whitening of the new day. It must, then, be about 6.30.

  He felt a stirring of confidence.

  Marigold was standing in the gateway, looking from side to side, up and down, with the sharp life-preserving head movements of a bird.

  ‘Come along then,’ she said at last, rather in the tone of a small girl addressing a not particularly intelligent but lovable pet. He was even reminded of the newspaper and television pictures they had used to have almost annually of a policeman shepherding ducklings across the gardens here into St James’s Park.

  He resented it. But he could not stride away from her immediately.

  She had trotted into the roadway, the shopper squeaking out at a rapid rhythm. Hurrying to catch up with her, he reflected that if she was to stay with him for more than a quarter of an hour he would have somehow to oil its wheels. Otherwise the sound would drive him mad.

  A new name for his list of the insane.

  The centre of the road was clear enough, though pieces of rubble lay here and there on the pavements on both sides and the buildings – there had been rows of moderate-sized shops with offices above them – had plainly suffered a good deal, at least in their upper storeys. At ground level they seemed pretty well intact, bar the fact that the old shop-fronts were almost all open to the weather.

  In one, just before the moon went behind the cloud, he saw under a sign saying ‘Fashion Footwear Centre’ a single one of the stilt-like block-soled sandals that had been the craze somewhere in the seventies. Perhaps the place had closed down about then and the shoe had lain behind its boarded window until it had been revealed again when shell blast had ripped the boards away to stay lying there ever since. A useless object.

  Turning to keep up with Marigold – her rapid steps were getting them along at a good pace – he looked at her shoes. A man’s pair, with a stuffing of newspaper to make them fit frothing over their edges. Not elegant. But practical.

  They reached the end of the first stretch of Buckingham Palace Road where Victoria Street bears away to the left at Victoria Station.

  Marigold halted.

  ‘We’d best go down Vauxhall Bridge Road and cross the River there,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I’d thought I’d go straight on and get over at Chelsea Bridge. It’s more direct. So if you want to go that way, I’ll say goodbye. And – er – thank you.’

  She gave him a quick nursemaidy look.

  ‘Chelsea Barracks,’ she said. ‘There’s a nasty lot in there. You’ll come with me over Vauxhall.’

  He hesitated. A nasty lot. Some robber baron’s rabble? Or another Regent’s Park Estate? It was likely as not that a wanderer like Marigold would know. And getting over the Thames at Vauxhall Bridge would not be much of a detour.

  ‘All right then.’

  They rounded the corner and went on for a few yards. Then Marigold halted again.

  ‘We’ll go over here,’ she announced.

  He frowned in puzzlement. There was no point as far as he could see in crossing the big bare empty roadway. Certainly soon they would have to veer to the right to get into Vauxhall Bridge Road, but they had no need to cross nor even to change course yet.

  He looked this way and that, seeking for some danger which Marigold, animal-experienced in this deserted concrete and brickwork jungle, might have spotted and which he, the innocent, had missed. But there seemed to be nothing. Only the wide brownish expanse of worn tarmac with, still faintly to be seen just in front of them, the wide alternating black and white stripe
s of one of the old pedestrian rights-of-way, a zebra crossing. One of the posts that had marked it still had half of its orange globe on top.

  ‘Come on then,’ Marigold said, a little tetchily. ‘It’s a zebra, ain’t it? We’ll cross.’

  ‘But, Marigold … There aren’t any cars any more. You can cross where you like, if you have to cross.’

  She turned on him a gaze rich with venomous contempt.

  ‘Luck,’ she said. ‘Luck. Don’t you know that going over a pedestryman’s brings luck? Don’t you know nothing?’

  He blinked.

  ‘Well, by all means let’s cross by this one, if you want to.’

  Marigold bumped the shopper off the kerb and started across. Stumping a pace or two ahead she threw out another comment.

  ‘An’ I bet Old Marigold’s had more luck than you, more luck than you’ve ever had in your whole bleeding life.’

  It could be true, set aside her madness. Certainly his life had been far from lucky. And it still was not. Not much luck had come his way since leaving Highgate, except for Marigold having been inside the Palace when he had got over its railings just ahead of the dog pack.

  Up on the far pavement they made their way past the small block of shops that had used to stand in front of the entrance to Victoria Station. There was an enamelled sign in green and white proclaiming ‘Cheap Day Returns To All Parts.’

  Then another chance to go across a zebra – he had already somehow appreciated that they brought luck only if they actually came on the route – and they had reached the beginning of Vauxhall Bridge Road.

  Now the sun was just below the horizon somewhere over to their left and with every moment the light was getting brighter. It showed the wide street empty in front of them except here and there for dust-scuffling little bands of sparrows twittering eagerly at the start of a new day. But the whole long row of buildings had suffered enormously in the fighting of the Second Riots. Mark felt that if he had been put down into it from some helicopter he would not have had the least idea where he was although he had known it more than well in the old days. There was not a block that was not broken and blasted, the tall towers put up in the sixties equally with the ornately faced offices erected a century or more earlier. Shells and rockets had grooved out long scars on the walls and brown-patched them with scorch marks. The turnings on either side were impassable with the remains of once fiercely-contested barricades, buses piled one on another, gaps filled with crushed cars. The arch that had used to lead to the side entrance to the big station through a tall flat-fronted building just to their right had been closed entirely by two large transport containers, now beginning to fall to pieces. The walls of the buildings opposite, a row of smallish shops – one, he saw, had sold tropical fish and he could just make out the bright signs that had told customers that credit cards were accepted – were so riddled with the holes made by armoured bullets and pieces of shrapnel that they looked as if they were made of pure lace. It was a wonder they had stayed upright so long since.

  But at least the centre of the roadway was unimpeded.

  As Marigold seemed to appreciate.

  ‘Soon have you there now,’ she said, giving her shoulders a brisk shake.

  But perhaps this was the time to make the break.

  ‘Well, yes, it looks fine,’ he answered carefully. ‘And it’s been good of you to come this far with me. But once I’m over the bridge, I’m sure I shall be okay on my own.’

  ‘Oh, no, you won’t.’

  He felt a quick jet of anger. But he stopped himself showing it.

  ‘No, really,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very kind, but I can find my way easily once I’m over the bridge. I’ll go along Wandsworth Road and then turn and cross over Clapham Common and then –‘

  He stopped.

  ‘No,’ he said, with a little dry laugh. ‘No, of course, I won’t cross the Common, just in case there are dogs there too. I’ll go by South Lambeth Road instead.’

  ‘An’ what makes you think you’re going to get across the bridge in the first place?’ Marigold demanded in answer.

  ‘Get across— But that’s what we agreed we’d do.’

  ‘There’ll be soldiers on that bridge, like as not. Soldiers on all the bridges just now. Lot of Army on the other side. Didn’t know that, did you?’

  ‘Well, no. No, I didn’t. And you think they won’t let anybody cross?’

  ‘Depends, don’t it? Depends what they feel.’

  He experienced an access of depression. Walking along at their brisk pace, he had begun to feel that everything was at last going to be easy. But this sudden discovery that the Army was established in force just south of the River seemed to present problems he could see no certain way of overcoming. Even if the soldiers let people across Vauxhall Bridge, would they permit free movement through the area on the other side? It was not very likely. If the Army was planning at this of all times to resume control of Central London – and why else would troops be massing on the south bank? – then unaccounted – for civilians would never be allowed to go wherever they pleased. At best, then, he faced a huge detour. And at worst he could find himself arrested, put into some detention camp. He had heard about such places, crowded with people who had fallen foul of the military in one way or another.

  Whatever happened the moment of reaching Jasmine must be delayed by hours and hours. By too many hours, in all probability. There were few enough left now.

  ‘What – what are we going to do?’ he asked, conscious of how feeble he sounded, but unable to think of anything more constructive.

  Marigold turned and gave him a sharp smile.

  ‘Have to see, won’t we?’ she said. ‘Never can do more than see, not no one.’

  He needed a moment or two to sort out those jutting spears of double negatives, but when he had done so he saw that she was making sense. Wait and see. Mad Marigold might be, but that was probably the sensible course.

  They tramped on. Behind the blasted buildings on their left, the sky, clear of cloud, grew lighter and lighter. Ahead, as the road bore gently eastwards, a partially wrecked high tower building came into view outlined against storm-cloud, looking at this distance like some romantic ruin of old.

  ‘Going to be a nice day,’ Marigold said. ‘We’ll get some rain before long. Always like a bit o’ rain.’

  ‘But don’t you get wet?’

  Her cracked old mackintosh would scarcely keep out the lightest of showers, and up at Highgate he himself had always tried to avoid going out when it was raining. His burberry took hours to dry in the scarcely heated house and his shoes had not been properly waterproof for years.

  ‘Oh, yes, Old Marigold gets a bit wet. But she don’t mind that. An’ it cleans the place up wonderful, a bit o’ rain.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, becoming conscious again at once of the ever-pervading faint smell of decay, of the extra whiffs that came out of the blocked storm-drains, of the occasional sweetly rotten stench where some animal had died, or some person.

  They had just passed, off to the right, the remains of a shop-sign saying ‘Funerals’. How long had it been since the dead had been buried with ceremony? Since many of them had been buried at all?

  The bridge, with its possible complement of soldiers barring any passage, was not yet in sight. But they were nearing it steadily. Ahead, to the right, he recognised a complex of brick-built buildings as an estate that had been put up when it had begun to be realised that cramming people into high-rise blocks had been a mistake. Even with walls crumbling and shell-battered it still looked as if it would have been a pleasant place to have lived in. Not everything had been bad in those days before the explosion.

  Suddenly he found that he wanted to know more about Marigold, about her life in those days and about her life now.

  ‘What were you doing in the Palace last night?’ he asked. ‘You said you’d arrived in the evening. Where were you on your way to?’

  ‘Just here an’ there, just h
ere an’ there,’ she answered. ‘It was coming on dark an’ as I’d got to be near old Buck’nim Palace I thought I’d pop in.’

  ‘Lucky for me you did.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, with a touch of cheerful contempt which in spite of himself he found he now rather liked. ‘Oh, yes. An’ I dare say you’d got yourself into other scrapes before them dogs.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I had.’

  So, instead of learning about her, he told her about himself, about his meeting with Dr Satpathi suffering under the bullying of the hulking window-cleaner, about Brian Parkinson jumping on him from the bakery window as he had been scouting round the arrack drunks and how in the end the amateur soldier knight-errant had led them into Regent’s Park Estate and how Dr Satpathi had died.

  ‘Poor little feller,’ Marigold said. ‘Ah, here’s the old bridge.’

  He looked up.

  The bridge was fully in sight. And on it, clear in the increasing daylight, were two big camouflage-painted tanks, squatting like a pair of rough-skinned toads.

  ‘We’ll have to try to cross somewhere else,’ he said at once.

  Marigold laughed.

  ‘Oh, there’s no doing with you. If it ain’t traipsing across a park full o’ dogs, it’s wanting to run a mile just because he sees a soldier.’

  He felt insulted. Which was absurd.

  ‘It’s not a soldier,’ he said. ‘It’s tanks. They’ll never let us over if they’re guarding the bridge that well.’

  Marigold looked at him. Her wrinkled brown face was alive with cunning.

  ‘They won’t let you over,’ she said. ‘Not looking like what you do. But they’ll let Old Marigold over. Or they won’t. An’ if you looks like Old Marigold they’ll let you over too. Or they won’t.’

  ‘Look like you?’

  Puzzlement occupied the whole of his mind.

  ‘Mad, dearie. Mad. You got to look mad.’ ‘But-’

  Then he saw that she just might be right. Soldiers on guard, if they were not actually guarding the heart of an operations group, might well let an old madwoman wander past. Or even an old madwoman and a madman.