Dream London

by Tony Ballantyne

  I followed Elizabeth into a kitchen. A cat flap in the back door led out into a dark green garden stacked with wooden crates. The flap moved, and I heard the mewing. Elizabeth opened the door and went into the garden.

  “It’s been in a fight,” I said. The cat was covered in blood. One of its ears was badly torn.

  “Not just a fight,” said Elizabeth. “Look, two of its legs are broken. I don’t know how it got here. The blue monkeys like to carry them up to the roof tops and torture them. Dream London is a cruel place. Give me your pistol.”

  “My pistol?”

  “I know you have one. I can see the outline in your jacket.”

  “What do you want my pistol for?”

  Miss Elizabeth Baines directed a gaze at me that would have withered a warehouse worth of flowers.

  “I was hoping to use both it and my veterinary experience to heal this cat’s broken legs.”

  “You used to be a vet?” I asked.

  “Stop asking stupid questions and give me the bloody pistol.”

  I finally realised what she meant and, somewhat hesitantly, handed the pistol across.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  She pressed the cat down onto the ground and placed the pistol to its head.

  “There you are,” she said, handing the pistol back to me afterwards. “And I note that, despite the care I took, I have blood on my sleeve. I’ll go upstairs now and change.” She fixed me with an electric blue gaze. “Why don’t you bury this cat for me, and then meet me up there.”

  “You’re not sentimental, are you?” I said.

  “I look after the animals, James. Now, are we going to bed or not?”

  I finally realised that she was teasing me. She had been teasing me ever since she had met me.

  “I only came for a bath and change of clothes. I have to be at Snakes and Ladders Square by sunset.”

  “I’ll show you where the bathroom is. I’m not sure what I have for you to wear.”

  “Clothes would be nice. A bath would be enough,” I said.

  I TOOK A bath and... well, that’s it. I took a bath. I never really expected Elizabeth to try and take advantage of me. It was nice just to soak and ease the soreness in my legs and backside. But the thirst was building in me, and all that water around me just made me thirstier, so I got out and went downstairs.

  “Are you sure you don’t want something to eat or drink?” asked Miss Baines.

  “I can’t,” I said, and I stuck my tongue out at her.

  “I can see the two slits, but there are no eyes yet,” said Elizabeth,

  “If I don’t die tonight, I don’t know what I’ll do,” I said. “Take a drink of water or kill myself. It will amount to the same thing.”

  “If you don’t die tonight, come back here,” said Elizabeth.

  “Why should I do that?” I asked.

  “Where else would you go?” asked Elizabeth.

  I gazed at her, and I felt so tired.

  “You know, I’m not Captain Wedderburn anymore,” I said. “But it’s only been a few hours. I’m not a nice person, Elizabeth. You don’t want to waste your time with me. Seriously, there are lots better men out there. I’m not what people say I am, Elizabeth. I’m not a hero.”

  “Good,” said Elizabeth. “I often think that the world needs fewer heroes and more good fathers.”

  “You just want a husband.”

  “No, I want a good husband.”

  “I’m not going to marry you, Elizabeth...”

  “You misunderstand me, James. That wasn’t a proposal. It’s just an observation. Dream London wants every man to do nothing. To be weak-willed and selfish. But if it can’t break them, it wants them to be heroes, to lead the last desperate charge, to die alone in a glorious last stand. What it doesn’t want is people who stick to the daily grind, people who become part of the quiet majority, people who do what’s right despite getting paid no notice.”

  She was right, of course. The ants in Angel Tower worked together, that was the secret of their power. They didn’t want others doing the same.

  “So which one are you now, James?”

  “I don’t know what I am any more,” I said.

  “None of us do,” said Elizabeth. “Not really.”

  She picked an imaginary hair from the lapel of my jacket.

  “Come back here afterwards,” she said. “Promise me?”

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  AND SO I found myself back on Papillon Street.

  Dream London was descending towards evening. The sky was on fire as it always was at this time of day, red and yellow bloomed on the streaking clouds, and the air smelled of the usual spices and flowers. I could hear the distant sound of cheering and clapping. The match had started. I heard the roar of the crowd rise and fall as the ball travelled back and forth across the pitch. The buildings echoed to the sound of drums and singing.

  A great drama was being played out within the stadium, but a greater one was unfolding outside it.

  Tonight, Dream London would be fully joined to the other worlds.

  I began to walk the streets towards Snakes and Ladders Square. There was no question of the direction. Everything flowed that way, the other pedestrians, the clouds, the birds. Even the roads themselves seemed to flow downhill towards Snakes and Ladders Square. That was the place to be. I thought it was my plan to raise an army there tonight. If it was, Dream London seemed happy to go along with it.

  A sudden roar sounded, the animal howl of the city. It soared over the houses, it echoed from every surface. Someone had scored a goal. Soon the match would finish and the fans would pour from the ground and head towards the pubs surrounding Snakes and Ladders Square. They would drink and sing and fight in a riot of burgundy and silver, brown and cream. The roar of the crowd died away in a thunder of drums, and I heard other instruments taking up the slack. Guitars and accordions and flutes, all the soloists of Dream London filling the air with white noise.

  I was getting closer now. Three teenage girls staggered out of a house in front of me. They wore short dresses and high heels and were obviously drunk already. One of them glanced at me and announced in a loud voice:

  “I’m so drunk I’d even fuck him!”

  The other two laughed, and they staggered on their way towards the revelries. I stepped up my pace, impatient to be there at the end, but a great silence brought me to a halt.

  A long building lay to my right, the sort of grey brick industrial construction that you could find anywhere in the streets of Dream London. Grey walls surrounding the higher buildings beyond. Frosted glass windows peering over the top of the walls. Wide, arched gates in the centre of the wall standing wide open, the emptiness beyond sucking the life from the street.

  I read the words written in wrought iron that vaulted the space over the gates.

  Snakes and Ladders Street Workhouse.

  I walked up to the open gates and looked beyond into the empty yard. I could see the blank walls of the workhouse proper, its doors standing wide open.

  “Hello?” I called. I listened to the echo of my own voice.

  Standing in the workhouse yard, the sounds of Dream London faded away.

  “Hello?”

  The workhouse was deserted. Everyone who had inhabited the place was gone. I walked into the main building. There were offices here, furnished with fine walnut desks and leather chairs. I found a cup of tea on one desk, still lukewarm. A half written letter lay beside it, and I read the words forty strong men and six girls, suitable for service.

  “Hello?” I called again, unnecessarily.

  I wandered from the offices, on through the factory floors. I passed lines of looms, strung with ochre wool. Into another room and I saw garments that resembled yellow jumpers hanging from racks. They were too long, the arms longer still, and they had holes stitched into the back of them. I unhooked one of the yellow jumpers and held it to myself and thought, and it occurred to me that if I was a mon
key I might wear this garment and stick my tail through the hole at the back.

  I passed into the living quarters. Two doors, marked men and women. I went into the men’s quarters. There was nothing there but bunks. Thin mattresses barely thicker than the thin blankets that covered them. Somewhere for the men to sleep in shifts. There was nothing else there. No possessions whatsoever.

  I went into the women’s quarters, and found them just the same as the men’s. I walked down rows and rows of bunks, and something caught my eye. There on the floor, a bloom of dirty pink. I bent down to see a doll’s head staring back at me. Some child’s makeshift toy, dropped in the sudden evacuation.

  Where had they all gone?

  I knew the answer. I had seen it earlier. These people had served their purpose in Dream London and now they were to be transferred to where they could be more profitable.

  I held the doll’s head in my hand, and I squeezed it hard.

  OCHRE

  SNAKES AND LADDERS

  SOME PEOPLE TREAT life like a game of chess. For most people, life treats them as players in a game of Snakes and Ladders.

  Snakes and Ladders Square started out as a tiny space at the back of Dream London Hospital. A tiny cobbled yard, halved by a wooden fence that cut out all the light save for the few shafts of sun that vaulted into the dimness at midday. The caretaker who opened the door leading into that dank space used the yard to dispose of waste cardboard boxes. It was easier than taking them to the incinerator, and besides, he could listen in on the nurses chatting at the other side of the fence, he could eavesdrop as they shared their previous night’s conquests whilst smoking their break-time cigarettes.

  This was before the changes, back when the rain still fell in a cold drizzle, soaking the boxes and leaving a brown mush on the cobbles stirred only by the rats. Of the former yard, only a little patch of stone was left, ten stones by ten stones.

  And then the changes had come, and a story arose.

  Back then, the caretaker had looked out the back once every couple of days, and he had watched the little yard grow. He had seen the hundred little cobbles gradually flatten into black marble squares. Over the weeks the yard had grown, and as it did so the former cobbles had grown to the size of flagstones. The sounds of the nurses faded, the wooden fence was overgrown with ivy and light flooded back into the little yard, now not so little. Now the caretaker could walk into the middle of the square and gaze up at the red brick walls of Dream London Hospital. No one ever looked back down at him from those blind windows.

  Perhaps the caretaker should have spent more time thinking about the space beyond the walls of the yard. Perhaps he should have thought about what was happening beyond the ivy-covered fence, now turning to metal, but who can blame him if he spent his time looking at the patterns forming on the great flagstones of the floor?

  The black marble squares grew bigger than a man. Grooves formed upon them, spaces that wormed their way across the shiny surfaces, hovering on the edge of meaning. And then, from the twisting shapes, symbols formed. The numbers came first, counting from 1 to 100. The pictures that formed behind them were too hazy to make out, or so the caretaker said. Worse, they seemed to rearrange themselves. Every time the door was opened the numbers were in a different position. Or maybe he was just making excuses for his foolishness, because surely any Dream Londoner would know better than to step out of a door onto the square marked one?

  THAT’S THE STORY anyway, and it’s a story told every night in a different pub in Dream London. The door will swing open and a man will stagger in, dressed in rags and with a beard down to his waist. He will ask for a drink, for something to eat, and more often than not he will be given both because everyone likes a good story, particularly if it’s accompanied by a good act. The caretaker will tell how he is traversing the board of Snakes and Ladders, how every night he takes another step, and each time he is raised up on a ladder or swallowed down by a snake. The disbelieving crowd will ask the caretaker how he got here, and why he is not still upon the board, but the caretaker will just shake his head and shiver, and go on eating and drinking.

  I’ve never seen him myself. Maybe it’s just a story, but nonetheless, Snakes and Ladders Square exists. A vast empty space with Dream London Hospital on one side and the Dream London Footballdrome on the other. There are lines of pubs and cafés at the bottom of Snakes and Ladders Square, and ivy covered railings at the top. There are 98 squares in Snakes and Ladders Square, numbered from 2 to 99.

  Squares 1 and 100 are yet to be found.

  TRAILS OF BLACK birds filled the skies, streaming in from miles around, heading for a point somewhere beyond Snakes and Ladders Square. The sounds of singing and laughter and drums filled the night, and the perfume of the flowers was enough to make Tower Bridge raise itself in salute.

  Snakes and Ladders Square, already vast, had grown larger to accommodate the people who had come there for the party, for the women, for the drink, for the spectacle. The sun was setting in crimson at the far end, bringing a feeling of the end of the world to the red-shadowed people. It felt as if the sun had got it right, and the people who had come for a party raised a glass to the sun as they drank themselves into oblivion.

  I was there on square number 3, down at the bottom, waiting for the night to begin.

  People were staggering. Streams of football supporters emerged from the Footballdrome, burgundy and silver colours from the one end, brown and cream from the other. Some were heading for the line of shops and pubs along the bottom edge of the square. Those that couldn’t be bothered to stagger that far headed for the vendors closer at hand, their carts and barrows dispensing beer and whisky. Across the square, doctors and nurses lined up before the red brick walls of Dream London Hospital, ready for business.

  The square was filled with a festival atmosphere. The sounds of laughing and cheering, of people squaring up for a fight...

  ... but not the sort of fight I was looking for them to take part in. I’d come to raise an army, what I had was a rabble. I had a drunken crowd of hedonists who would fight for their own gain and would run at the first sign of danger. Dream London had done its job well, subduing any rebellion in its own fashion.

  Football fans, whores, party goers, sightseers... The musicians were also out in force. Fiddles and guitars, flutes and accordions, each of them providing their own little bubble of contrasting music, adding to the air of cacophony.

  This was a party, not an army.

  “Jim!”

  I didn’t recognise the woman at first. She wore a striped dress with a bustle, and a man in a dark scarlet coat stood at her side.

  “Jim, it’s me.”

  “Hello, Christine,” I said.

  “It’s Mrs Cadwallader now,” she said, holding out her hand to show me the ring.

  “Congratulations,” I said.

  “It’s been something of a whirlwind romance, to be honest. Eric is something big in the New Territories. We’re heading out there tonight, after the party...”

  I looked at Eric. He had a square, honest face, a big moustache. He looked like a man you could trust.

  “Good, I am pleased,” I said.

  “Are you sure, Jim?”

  She touched my arm, a look of concern on her face, and as I gazed at her I realised that whatever I had once felt for her had gone. Dream London had eaten up the old Christine.

  “Really,” I said. “I wish you all the best.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You too, Mr Cadwallader,” I said, shaking the man’s hand.

  He smiled at me, and they turned to go. I was distracted by a familiar voice.

  “Mister James! Mister James!”

  I turned at the sound of my name, Christine already forgotten.

  “Hello, Mister Monagan.”

  The orange man looked as pleased to see me as ever. He had found a camouflage jacket from somewhere, and he wore it over his white shirt and dark trousers with pride.


  “I was waiting for you here, just like you asked! I knew you’d make it here!”

  “Did you bring the girls?” I asked.

  “I did.” He pointed over to Gentle Annie and the rest, dressed in their Friday best: stockings and garters and low cut tops. The girls were standing on square 15, flirting with a group of football fans. Lovely Rita was being pulled towards a laughing fan by the maroon scarf he had thrown around her neck.

  “Gentle Annie will know what to do,” I said, approvingly. “Fire the men up with the promise of something after the fight. Get them drunk enough so they lose their fear, but not so drunk they’re not good for anything....”

  The fan pulled Lovely Rita close for a kiss. Laughing ,she pushed him away.

  “You’re all talk,” I heard her say. “I like a man who can handle himself.”

  “I can handle myself,” said the fan, over the laughter of his friends.

  “Really? Prove it, then.”

  The fan looked at his friends.

  “Come here and kiss me and I’ll prove it!” he said.

  “No,” said Rita, and she slipped out from under the scarf. “I don’t think so. You look too delicate for me.”

  “Delicate?” shouted the man. “I’ll show you delicate!”

  “Well done, Rita,” I murmured.

  Gentle Annie saw me. She slipped away from the laughing crowd and crossed to join me on square 3. The red setting sun highlighted the fine lines around her eyes.

  “We’re doing our best, Captain, but it’s hard. These men would rather watch people fight than fight themselves.”

  “Who wouldn’t, Gentle Annie? Just do your best.”

  She fumbled in her skirts.

  “Here,” she said. She passed me something that looked like a wide brass pistol.

  “Is that a flare gun?” I asked.

  “Sort of,” she said. “Dream London has modified it, but it will do the job. It will summon our army to you.”

  “And then we can march. We can attack Angel Tower.” I put the flare gun in my pocket. “Thank you, Annie. You’ve done well. Now, go out and do your part!”