The Somnambulist: A Novel

by Jonathan Barnes

  Beneath the city, the old man dreams, turning uncomfortably on his steel cot, drifting out of sleep and into a strange half-wakefulness, an unhappy hallucinatory consciousness. Faintly, he becomes aware of movement around him, of faces glimpsed through the murk of sleep, lips forming his name, eyes watching. Often he feels that he is being scrutinized and observed and that the manner of those who watch him is weirdly reverential — pilgrims at the foot of his bed come like the Magi to pay homage and to worship.

  As before, his dreams are filled with the boy Ned, with glimpses from his past, but now they seem to darken, showing him old mistakes come back to him in evil new shapes. Old hopes, too, the paradise of Pantisocracy turned sulphurous and rank. He sees a feverish mob of Pantisocrats careering through the streets, eager for blood, slaughtering all who stand in their path. And others with them, strange, incongruous figures, monsters in the skin of schoolboys who turn upon the dreamers and rip them to shreds. A world he barely recognizes congealing into bloodshed.

  Pity the dreamer! If only he had known what was unraveling above him. If only he had known what Mr. Skimpole was about to set into motion, of the serpent who had entwined himself around poor Grossmith, of the dark path down which Moon and the Somnambulist were traveling. Had he but known the scope of what awaited him, I have little doubt but that he would have remained safely underground, away from the corruption of the surface. He would have stayed asleep. He would have stayed, blissfully, in Love.

  Chapter 17

  A little over an hour after the death of Ned Love, two advertisements appeared in the personal columns of the Echo, the Gazette, the Times and the London Chronicle (evening editions only).

  The first read:

  INFORMATION WANTED

  Anyone who works or has worked

  in the Underground tunnels

  in the areas of

  Eastcheap and the Monument.

  SUBSTANTIAL REWARD

  Apply in person to Mr. M.

  There then followed the address of a celebrated city hotel which, for obvious reasons, I have elected to censor.

  The second, far shorter and enigmatic entry ready simply:

  LUD

  Come at once. Much at stake.

  E

  Regrettably, the man for whom this last, cryptic message was intended never had an opportunity to read it. At the time of its publication he was being detained against his will in a manner he had entirely failed to predict.

  Cribb had been walking alone, his head full of a jumble of ill-considered thoughts and half-digested philosophies, when he was surprised to see a carriage pull up beside him and its driver beckon him across. Cribb played his part, walked over to the vehicle and listened as its occupant asked him for directions to the Tottenham Court Road. Needless to say, Cribb was quite unable to resist such an invitation, or the temptation to add a number of interesting historical tidbits. He was still speaking, and in the midst of a droll anecdote about the medieval witch of Kentish Town, when the stranger invited him into the carriage, the better (he said) to consult a map in his possession. Cribb did as he was asked, but given his talent for prognostication ought perhaps to have recognized the insignia stenciled discreetly on the carriage door — a black five-petaled flower.

  Two men sat inside — thuggish, burly types, the kind who break people’s arms for a living, professional maimers. As Cribb entered the carriage, one of them plumped a fist meaningfully into his outstretched palm and smiled greedily.

  “I was expecting you, of course,” the ugly man noted. “I’ve seen the future, you see. I know the plot.”

  At this, one of the men shoved him against the back of his seat and began what many of us have long harbored aspirations of doing. He pummeled Cribb repeatedly in the head until at long last (and still stammering something about time flowing in a different direction for him) the ugly man fell unconscious.

  Mrs. Grossmith, meanwhile, felt happy. Wonderfully, improbably, deliriously happy.

  She all but skipped into her employer’s bedroom, not even bothering to knock before she entered.

  “Mr. Moon!” she trilled in a girlish falsetto. “Mr. Moon!”

  But as she came into the room she felt chastened and ashamed, like a wedding guest who gatecrashes a funeral by mistake. Transparently irritated by the interruption, three men glared back at her — Mr. Moon, the Somnambulist and a loutish-looking stranger.

  “What do you want?”

  In the decade or more that she had spent in his employ, Mrs. Grossmith had become accustomed to Moon’s testiness and abrasive manner, and she took this latest snappish remark, delivered like a prosecuting counsel hurling questions at a defense witness, as she had all the many other slights and dismissals over the years — by pretending not to notice, by giving him her biggest smile and carrying on regardless.

  “Sorry to disturb you. I wonder if I might have a word?”

  “Not a good time.”

  Mrs. Grossmith persisted. “I’ve news. It can’t wait.”

  “Mister?” the stranger interrupted. He nodded toward Grossmith. “’Scuse me, but this is important.”

  He was a grimy, lean, leathery man, engaged in unfolding a series of maps on the table in the center of the room. The Somnambulist, apparently fascinated by all this cartographic paraphernalia, peered, enthralled, over his shoulder.

  Moon waved vaguely toward him. “This is Mr. Clemence. He answered my advertisement.”

  “Call me Roger,” the stranger said and offered Grossmith a lascivious wink.

  “Mr. Clemence,” Moon said, “what was it you were about to tell me?”

  Clemence gesticulated at one of the maps. “See here. Here’s where it happened.”

  Mrs. Grossmith began to protest but the conjuror cut her short. “Please. This is of the utmost importance.” As he strode across to examine the map, Mrs. Grossmith could only sniffle forlornly, her earlier ebullience quite gone.

  Moon relented slightly. “This gentleman was formerly employed by the city railway. Love have their headquarters underground. We’re trying to find a way down.”

  The housekeeper sighed. “Very interesting, I’m sure.”

  Clemence pointed to a section of the map. “See there. Under the Monument. All that’s abandoned track. They’d planned an extension to King William Street Station. It would have been directly beneath Love’s offices. Never happened, of course.”

  The Somnambulist, eager to be a part of the conversation, nodded in sober agreement.

  Clemence leant across the table, rustling the maps. “If you’re serious about going down there, you’ve a right to know the truth.”

  Mrs. Grossmith cleared her throat. “I really need to tell you something.”

  “Not now,” Moon growled. “Wait.”

  Clemence lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I knew some of the men who worked on the King William Street extension. All trustworthy, believe me. Oh, one or two of them might have liked a drink from time to time, but they can’t all have been wrong. They saw something down there. No question.”

  “Tell me. Tell me what they saw.”

  “Tunnels — tunnels that weren’t never on any plans, tunnels that ain’t been built for no railway. Great, fantastic warrens of them, like giant rat holes leading into the dark. Some sort of jade door, set into the ground itself. And something lived down there — that’s what they said. Two of the men went missing — just vanished, never seen again, like. After that, the rest of them got nervous, superstitious, started saying they didn’t want to work there no more.”

  “What happened?”

  “The work got abandoned in the main. A few of ’em wanted to stay on, of course. The brave ones, or the stupid. Still, maybe not so stupid. Most of ’em are rich now — far richer than any railwayman has any right to be. Those that didn’t end up in the nuthouse, that is.”

  “Nuthouse?”

  “Something happened. One of the men had to be committed. Poor beggar started seeing
things and babbling like an idiot. Course it might just have been that place. Down there, underground, in the dank and the dark… Your mind plays tricks on you.”

  “Some vanished, some became rich. And some went mad.” Moon sounded as though he was thinking aloud. “Thank you, Mr. Clemence. This has been invaluable.”

  “Pleasure.”

  The conjuror proffered a handful of coins, but as Clemence reached forward to grab them, Moon closed tight his fist. “Can you take me there?”

  The railwayman looked uncertain. Moon glanced meaningfully down at his clenched hand.

  “I’ll take you to the entrance of the tunnel,” the man said doubtfully. “No further. What I’ve heard… I wouldn’t go down there for anything.”

  “You won’t have to. The Somnambulist will be with me. Can we do it tonight?”

  Clemence thought for a moment. “Shall we say midnight, at the Monument?”

  “Excellent,” said Moon, shepherding him to the door. “I’ll see you then.”

  Clemence nodded politely again, then sloped away, incongruous against the spotless beige of the hotel corridors. On his way, he passed a beaming Arthur Barge, bustling toward Moon’s rooms.

  Barge knocked politely, sauntered in and made a beeline for Mrs. G., immediately clasping her hand in his, as unselfconscious as lovers half their age meeting after a long separation. In fact, they had seen each other at supper barely an hour earlier.

  “Have you told him?”

  Mrs. Grossmith sighed. “I haven’t had a chance.”

  “Told me what?” Moon asked testily.

  “I’ve been trying to say ever since I got here, sir. You wouldn’t listen.”

  Moon softened. “Then tell me now. You have my full attention.”

  “It’s good news.”

  “Delighted to hear it.”

  When she spoke, Mrs. Grossmith gripped Arthur’s hand all the tighter and the words tumbled out overeagerly, scrambling over one another in their haste to be heard. “Earlier this evening, Arthur did me the honor of asking me to marry him… And I’ve accepted, Mr. Moon, I’ve accepted. I’m going to be his wife!”

  There was a moment’s silence. The detective managed a thin-lipped smile. “Well done,” he said eventually, speaking as one might to an old dog who had finally mastered a new trick.

  The Somnambulist tried his best to write CONGRATULATIONS but misjudged the length of the word and got in a terrible muddle with his spelling, with the result that it actually read:

  CONNGRATT

  followed by an indecipherable scrawl.

  Mrs. Grossmith understood enough, however, to appreciate the sentiment. “Thank you.”

  Barge disentangled himself from his fiancée and stepped up to Moon. “It must seem awful sudden to you,” he began. “We’ve only known one another for a month or so, but something just seemed right between us from the first. We understood each other. And at our time in life you can’t afford to wait, if you catch me meaning. We all deserve some happiness. And I think we’re going to be happy, Emmy and me.”

  It was obviously a well-prepared speech. Moon listened as graciously as he was able and, when it was over, added rather pompously: “You have my blessing.”

  “Well, thank you, sir,” said Barge. “That means a lot to me. Truly it does.”

  Moon turned to his housekeeper. “But am I to understand, whilst these glad tidings mean that Mr. Barge is to gain a wife, that I am to lose a housekeeper?”

  Grossmith looked embarrassed. “I don’t… That is, we haven’t decided.”

  “I’ve enough to keep us both,” Barge said proudly. “Her skivvying days are over.”

  “Well, then, I wish you joy.” Moon turned away and busied himself with clearing up the maps and plans of underground London. “Eggs and bacon, if you please, Mrs. Grossmith. We’ve a long night ahead of us. And I sincerely hope that at the end of it we’ll finally have some answers.”

  “Emmy,” he murmured once the couple had left, no doubt to canoodle in the kitchen over a frying pan. “Short, one presumes, for Emmeline… I must confess that, until today, I never even knew that was her name.”

  There is something both melancholy and oppressive about a schoolyard at night. Melancholy because one sees only silence and empty space where, according to the natural order of things, there ought to be laughter and movement and learning; oppressive because despite its desolation there is a strong and persistent sense of other people, of strangers present but unseen. Stand alone in a deserted playground at midnight, long after its daytime inhabitants have been tucked in to bed, and it is easy to imagine oneself surrounded by a thousand ghostly schoolboys — easy, too, to glimpse the whirl and bustle of their play, hear the shouts of their games, the thud of ball on bat, the groans of disappointment as the bell calls them back to study. Mr. Skimpole had never been an especially imaginative man — had prided himself, in fact, on his regimented common sense and rigorously practical mind — but even he could feel something of this eerie sensation as he waited alone in the playground of Gammage’s School for Boys.

  He had never liked schools, of course, whether fully occupied or not. Evil memories crouched behind the blackboard; they strutted along the cricket pitch and strolled with deceptive nonchalance across the yard, where the spectral outline of a long-abandoned game of hopscotch could still be dimly traced.

  He shivered and checked his watch again. They ought to be here by now.

  A sudden gust of wind, a cloud edged across the moon and all at once the shadows crowded eagerly about him. Skimpole felt a surge of dizziness and took deep, gulping breaths, but still he felt queasy and uncomfortable. He had no desire to check but he was certain that some of his sores were bleeding. The stains, he reflected, would be impossible to get out.

  Over the course of the day, the lesions had grown infinitely worse. He had changed after dinner and found them — flaky, livid, puckering red — covering most of his belly and moving inexorably up his chest, toward his neck. One had already appeared on his face, high on his left temple, though Skimpole was relatively confident that he had managed to disguise it by artful positioning of a stray strand of hair. He hoped that his son hadn’t noticed.

  Where were they? They must come soon or he feared they would arrive only to find him sprawled unconscious (or worse) upon the asphalt.

  “Hello?” the albino called out to the darkness. He coughed. A small amount of phlegm came up, but the vulgarity of spitting in public having been instilled in him as an infant, he forced himself, with some discomfort, to swallow.

  “Hello?” he said again, more gingerly this time. “I’m here. I’m waiting.”

  Still nothing. He pulled his coat tighter about him, did his best to remain calm and, not for the first time that day, wondered whether he was truly doing the right thing.

  At last he was disturbed by the sound of an unfamiliar voice calling his name. Two strangers stood before him, and he realized with some astonishment that they must have crept up without him hearing, a feat he had long believed impossible.

  “Well, chop off my legs and call me Shorty,” said one, peering curiously at Skimpole. “What a deuced queer-looking johnny. I was expecting someone taller. Bit less pale, ruddier of cheek. Weren’t you?”

  “Abso-bally-lutely, old chum,” said the other. “He’s a rum ’un and no mistake.”

  In all his extensive experience of the weird and grotesque, these two men were by far the most singular individuals Skimpole had ever encountered. The first was big and brawny, the other small and neat, and they spoke in cheerfully upper-crust, well-bred accents, their voices thick with money and casual privilege. But what was most striking about them was the fact that whilst they were evidently well into middle age, both were absurdly dressed in matching school uniforms. They wore identical bright-blue blazers, school ties and gray flannel shorts cut off just above their gnarled and hairy knees. The smaller man wore a little stripy cap.

  Skimpole stuttered in disbelie
f. “Are you really them?” he managed at last.

  The big one grinned. “I’m Hawker, sir. He’s Boon. You can call us the Prefects.”

  His companion frowned. “Hang it all. That’s my speech you’ve just pilfered. I always say that. It’s practically a tradition.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Hawker protested. “About time I had a crack.”

  “But we always agreed I’d say it. You’re a wretched sneak to go back on your word. If old Skimpy weren’t here I’d give you a sound hoofing.”

  “I’d like to see that, you silly young josser. Little Poggie Thorn and ‘Baby’ Wentworth from the lower fifth could trounce you in a scrap and you jolly well know it.”

  “You can be the most priceless idiot sometimes, Hawker.”

  “Rather that than a born sniveler, Boon.”

  “Pipsqueak.”

  “Beast.”

  “Hog.”

  Skimpole could only stand there and blink in bemusement at this remarkable exchange. Briefly, he toyed with the idea that these apparitions might be some by-product of his illness, phantasms conjured by his febrile mind as his body sped toward total shutdown.

  Boon broke away from his argument and turned back to the albino. “Awfully sorry, sir,” he said. “You must think us the most fearful asses to stand here joshing like third-formers.”

  “Jolly decent of you to call,” Hawker said, their spat seemingly forgotten as quickly as it had flared up. “Boon and me had been bored to tears on our hols and we’d been simply dying to bunk off for a bit of fun.”

  “Why here?” Skimpole asked.

  “We thought it apposite, sir,” Boon replied.

  “Apposite,” Hawker mused. “Good word. Might write that down. Boon’s a veritable thesaurus, Mr. S., once he’s in the mood. Oh yes, he knows how many beans make five. Though I’ve never been so hot at study myself. Between the two of us, I’m rather a prize dunce. Boon here rags me raw about it.”

  Skimpole tried to steer the most bizarre conversation of his life back toward some semblance of normality. “I meant to ask about the book—” he began.