‘Bubble and Squeak,’ Mrs Finkel said slowly, frowning. ‘What do you think?’ she asked her boys.
Isaac and Leonard exchanged glances. They were not sure what to think; Magdalena usually did that for them.
~ * ~
‘Tell me about the Empire,’ Erin said. ‘Dot showed me a picture once.’
‘What’s to say? It started life as a hole in the ground where Trafalgar Square used to be before the Martians hit London. The bastards created a natural amphitheatre, y’know, like the Greeks used, a fact not lost on Cochrane. The world has never seen an entrepreneur and entertainer like him, and never will again. When he first put on a show — Gilbert and Sullivan’s brand new operetta, The Grand Duke — no one came, including Sullivan who had been harvested the day before. Everyone was afraid the Martians would attack the audience. But nothing happened. Some say one of the Machines walked by, stopped and swayed a little, as if it was dancing, but no one believed it.
‘Cochrane’s shows were the only bright spot in our lives. He did such a great job raising everyone’s morale that the Council for Collaboration made sure he and his entourage were free from any harvesting.’
‘Did you ever see anyone harvested?’ Erin interrupted. She could not help swallowing.
‘Saw plenty taken,’ Isaac said, hollowly. ‘But not what happened after. Not for a while, anyway.’
‘What happened with the Empire?’
‘Like I said, Cochrane was a clever man, and he saw what people wanted was music hall. He put on afternoon matinees as well as night shows, and took up the acts from the destroyed Hackney Empire and the Hippodrome, the Grand and Hoxton Hall. In time, the council assigned labour teams to build proper seating and a proper foyer and ticket office; the council even wanted to build a roof over the amphitheatre, but Cochrane knew that would screw the acoustics so he didn’t let it happen. In the foyer Cochrane placed the head of Nelson from the column. It was his way of saying “fuck you” to the Martians. And “fuck you!” to the council, too.
‘The labour teams didn’t stop with the Empire. The council extended the building program to cover the whole of the prison camp, which by then had spread to include most of the old city and held survivors from the whole bloody island. The prison was turned into a metropolis. The Martians didn’t seem to mind, as long as the collectors from the Council for Collaboration were given free reign to harvest when necessary and no one got in the way of the Machines.’
He cleared his throat. ‘We started at sixpence a show. Threepence each. Oh, and a shilling for mama. We did well, figured out how to work the audience, and in a few weeks had fifth billing for the afternoon matinee. You had to be good to get that. Cochrane started paying us a shilling. The family was clearing two bob a show, nothing to sneer at in those days.’
His eyes seemed to dim for a moment. ‘Not real shillings, of course. Not real money. Little metal disks the council gave out. We just called them threepences and zacs and bobs.
He rubbed his right forearm. Erin watched his blue veins jump up and down. ‘You know what got Cochrane?’
‘Influenza, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s what they wrote for his obituary. Really it was boredom. He hated the movies and the musicals that started after the Martians were gone. His heart was in revue and operettas. He couldn’t believe the nineteenth century ever came to an end. For Cochrane even the Martians were better than what came after. He belonged to the Empire, and always would.’
~ * ~
‘You know, Mr Cochrane,’ Mr Cochrane said to himself, ‘those two boys aren’t half bad.’
Isaac and Leonard weren’t sure whether or not they were meant to say anything to that, so said nothing. They waited.
Cochrane lit one of his precious cigars. The boys watched enviously. International trade had died with the invasion and nothing was imported any more, including tobacco, but Cochrane had somehow obtained a few pre-invasion boxes of cigars for his personal use. Purple smoke curled into the air, stale but still seductive.
‘There might even be a part for you in Gilbert and Sullivan’s new piece.’
The boys could not hide their surprise. ‘Their new piece?’ Isaac said. ‘I thought Sullivan was taken?’
‘He was, but Gilbert is adapting an earlier piece. He is changing his lyrics to HMS Pinafore and telling the story of our slimy tentacled friends.’
The boys blinked. They had a vision of the new Empire being melted to the ground with them and mama in the middle of the puddle. ‘Won’t the council stop it?’
Cochrane snorted. ‘The Committee for Collaboration won’t care, so long as the punters are happy. I admit, Gilbert’s first title for the musical, HMS Thunderchild, was a little close to the bone, but we’ve settled on HMS Minotaur, martial without being exactly provocative.’
Cochrane looked appraisingly at the boys. He took a long puff of his smoke and said, ‘Gilbert has added new characters as well. There are parts for two young lads in the piece. I was going to give them to Marie Lloyd and Vesta Tilley, but you can hold a tune and act well enough.’
‘And we’re cheaper,’ Isaac pointed out.
Cochrane smiled. ‘You heard Marie’s latest?’
The boys shook their heads. Their mama still pretended they knew nothing of the world and would not let them in the audience when Lloyd or Tilley performed.
‘“She Sits Among Her Cabbages and Peas.” Had the audience rolling in the aisles.’ Then, strangely, he grimaced. ‘Not quite the standard I expected to introduce into the Empire.’ He looked down at his cheroot and sighed heavily. ‘Still. I don’t suppose we should expect anything at all to go our own way. The future doesn’t exactly belong to us any more.
‘One possible problem, though. The name. Finkel? No good at all. Too foreign. Too Jewish.’
‘Mama.’
‘Tell her it’s just for the posters and bills. Finkel just won’t work. Tell her it’s not English enough.’
~ * ~
‘And what did your mama think of the idea?’ Erin asked.
~ * ~
‘If Finkel was good enough for Jacob, your father, it is good enough for Mr High-and-Mighty. Tell him that, Isaac’
As arguments went it was a hard one to fight, so Isaac said to her, ‘Mama, you have to see it his way. Mr Cochrane is an impresario; he sees the big picture. He knows what’s best for us.’
‘I know what’s best for you, thank you very much. I am your mother, who brought you all the way from Danzig in a leaking boat filled with fish and your father sick over the side. We survive pogrom, the North Sea and the Martians. I know what’s best for my sons.’
‘It’s entertainment,’ Isaac said. ‘Nothing more. We can call ourselves Finkel in the street, in the home, we can shout it from the mountains for all Cochrane cares. But not in the Empire, not if you want us to do Gilbert and Sullivan.’
‘Finkel is your name and that is the end of it.’
In the distance, the family could hear a Machine patrolling the walls. They could feel the vibrations through the floor of their small apartment.
Isaac had a sudden idea. ‘Mama, what do we call ourselves in the matinee? The Finkel Brothers? No. We call ourselves Bubble and Squeak. You were even going to call us Froth and Bubbles. How is Isaac and Leonard Feelgood any different from that? In fact, how about Zac and Lenny Feelgood? Now that’s not bad.’
‘It is a long way from Isaac and Leonard Finkel,’ Mama said.
Leonard said, ‘It’s a long way from Danzig.’
Magdalena fell silent. The boys waited for her to make a decision. The sound of the Machine faded as it walked away from them.
‘Not just a long way from Danzig,’ Magdalena said solemnly. ‘Very well, Isaac, if you think it’s for the best, have it your way. Have it the way of Mr High-and-Mighty CoMchrane.’
Later, when Magdalena was preparing their daily meal and the sound of the patrolling Machine was still fresh in their memories, Leonard said, ‘Jack Bissel says eve
ryone will be harvested in the end.’
Isaac looked up from his sewing, glancing first at Leonard and then at his mama.
‘Jack Bissel is a schmuck,’ Magdalena said.
‘Mama!’ Isaac and Leonard said together. It was alright for them to say such words, but they could not believe their mama knew the word let alone spoke it out loud.
‘Don’t you two “mama” me. You think I came in the last shower? I know what Bissel is because I know what his father is and what his mother is. Jack Bissel is lower than Martian’s petsl.’
This time the boys laughed they were so surprised, but they stopped when Magdalena glared at them in challenge. ‘Some things are not to be laughed at.’
She was chopping squash and carrot and cabbage into a cooking pot, vegetables that were now grown in the small market gardens that had started almost as soon as the city had been rebuilt. The gardens had produced their first crop just in time, for the Martians had turned virtually the whole of Britain into a red wilderness where nothing grew that was of use to people. Even the Thames, which for a short period after the invasion had become filled once again with fish that could be eaten safely, now carried water that was crystal clear and completely barren of all life. At least the water could be used in cooking and to drink.
‘So,’ Magdalena continued, ‘Jack Bissel does not know what he is talking about. We are not going to be harvested. We are going to live. We have not gone through all that we have gone through so the Martians can take us. It is not God’s will, I am telling you, and it is not my will.’
Isaac and Leonard both knew God’s will was irrelevant — how else could the Martians ever have invaded the Earth and caused so much death and destruction? — but the will of Magdalena was a natural force, like the wind and sunshine. For the first time he could remember, Isaac started believing he would survive, that he had a life whose course ran so far into the future he could not read it.
He returned to his sewing, and the glimmer of elation he had felt was reduced by the knowledge that he was now cannibalising his last spare pair of pants to keep his best pair in decent order. Soon Magdalena would have to spend some of their hard-earned coins to buy material from the looters and scavengers who searched through the ruins in the red wasteland for things that were no longer produced, such as cloth and fabric and kitchen utensils and even coal for heating and cooking.
Isaac dropped the sewing, stood up and went to the window and looked out over London. It had rained an hour before, but now the sky was clear and the sun shone on a city that shimmered. He thought London looked like a glittering diamond set in red velvet, and for a moment he realised the Martian landscape held a soft and muted beauty of its own. Almost immediately he felt guilty, as if he had betrayed his own race, his own planet, by admitting such a thing. But it was true, and he sensed he understood a small part of how the Martians saw the universe.
What if this is God’s will? he wondered. What if the Martians were His Chosen People and the rest of us the chaff to be winnowed from His creation?
He heard Leonard say in a thoughtful voice, ‘You are right, Mama, Jack Bissel is lower than a Martian’s petsl’
Isaac could not help laughing again.
And cut it short as the Machine they had heard before returned suddenly, its shadow falling across the window. It was a dreadnought. It had come so quietly he had not heard it. The Machines did that sometimes, stalking through the city as silent as silver spirits as if to prove a point to their prisoners, that death can be as unexpected as lightning from the sky. The dreadnought seemed to hover outside their tenement for a long moment, and brought one leg down so hard the whole building shook. Then it was gone.
~ * ~
‘Did you ever go over the wall? Outside of London?’ Erin asked.
Isaac sucked his lower lip. His yellow teeth looked like thick tortoise shell pegs. ‘Well, once,’ he said after a while.
‘With Leonard?*
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Just you and Leonard?’
‘Nope. One other, a boy who did the act before us. He was a couple of years younger. Cleverest boy I ever met. Tiny bugger, but as agile as a monkey.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Charlie Hawkes.’ He wheezed as he remembered. ‘Poor fucking Charlie Hawkes.’
‘What happened.’
~ * ~
‘Jesus, it goes everywhere,’ Charlie said. ‘All the way to Timbuktu, I bet.’
‘Not over seawater,’ Isaac said. ‘None of that red stuff goes near the ocean.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Heard it from others who saw it first put down,’ Leonard said.
‘Well, who’s to say the Martians didn’t land in Sudan and Siam and all the way to Mexico?’
Isaac and Leonard didn’t want to think about that, so they shut up.
The rolling red hills of England spread out before them. The landscape stank like old seaweed and dead squid.
Leonard sneezed.
‘Cat,’ Isaac joked.
‘What?’ Charlie said.
‘He always sneezes when there’s a cat around.’
‘Do not,’ Leonard protested.
The air thrummed. All three boys stared at each other. You only got that sound when they were real close ...
‘I can’t see it,’ Leonard said, almost squealing.
Isaac looked over his shoulder to the hole in the London wall. If they were real quick, maybe the hole wasn’t as far as it looked.
‘We have to run!’ he said to the others. ‘Now!’
Leonard didn’t wait, but scooted faster than a rat down a drainpipe with Isaac only a tenth of a second behind. Charlie, though, he was braver.
When the two brothers got to the hole, Isaac saw Charlie still hadn’t moved an inch.
‘Damn you, Charlie, get your arse over here!’
Too late. The Machine first appeared around the corner of the wall and one triple-step later was standing over Charlie Hawkes. No argument this was a dreadnought, Isaac thought. Clear hundred and fifty feet straight in the air with a cabin on top shaped like the head of a beetle, four heat rays under and four on top in twin turrets, legs three-jointed and splay-footed, and around the front of the cabin were clumps of metal tentacles like the whiskers of a catfish. It reflected red in the red landscape except for Charlie’s oblong face all distorted and gigantic in the concave underbelly of the thing. Two of the tentacles extended out, fell down and wrapped themselves around Charlie, then whipped him up to the cabin. And he was gone.
At first Isaac thought it was Charlie screaming, heard all the way from inside the cabin, but then his brain recognised the clear bell tone of Leonard’s sweet, sweet eleven-year-old voice.
‘Shut up, Leonard! Fuck’s sake, shut up!’
Another of the tentacles slithered down, but this time it didn’t wrap around anyone, just pointed at Leonard as if it was seeing him and sniffing him at the same time, then was gone.
Leonard shuffled backwards until he was back behind the wall, then dragged Isaac back after him
‘We can’t leave Charlie!’ Isaac said.
Before Leonard could say anything, there was a slurping sound from the machine, and out of the cabin dropped a small red bundle with bones sticking out of it.
~ * ~
‘And you think that was Charlie?’ Erin asked.
‘Don’t know what else it could have been. Anyway, he was never seen again, poor bastard.’ Isaac wrung his hands. ‘Had to tell his mama and that was hell. Never seen anyone cry so much as Charlie’s mama. It drove her mad in the end.’
‘Did you get in trouble?’
‘Nope. Everyone was so relieved the Machine only took Charlie they never minded us, except ordering us never to go near the wall again. We were happy to oblige.’
~ * ~
Isaac was kissing Mary Ester’s pink ear lobe while his hand fumbled in the top of her dress. He had just managed to cup her left breast when Leonard barged
into the dressing room and said, ‘Oh, there you are!’
Mary yelped, pulled away from Isaac and ran out, straightening her neckline as she went.
‘She’s nice,’ Leonard said approvingly. ‘I saw her with Oliver Mark the other day.’
‘Shut up,’ Isaac said.
‘Be nice or I’ll tell mama. She thinks you’re holier than Moses.’
‘What’d you want to come in and spoil things anyway?’
‘We’ve got a date.’
‘Date for what?’
‘For HMS Minotaur! Five days from now!’
The Year's Best Australian SF & Fantasy - vol 05 Page 40