Dream London (27 page)

“Exactly,” said Amit. “For that reason it would be terrible if we were to bomb the wrong place.”

I nodded. It made sense.

“So what’s in all this for me?” I said. “I risk my life going up to the Contract Floor. If I succeed, I may get killed in a nuclear explosion. If I don’t get killed by the bomb, I die of thirst in a week’s time.”

“Or you could become one of the Daddio’s men,” pointed out Mr Monagan, helpfully.

He caught my expression.

“Sorry,” he said.

“No,” I said. “I’m not going to do it. I’m not staying here any longer.”

“Then where are you going?” asked Bill. Bill who was going to betray me, I remembered. I was right. I had no loyalty to her.

“Out,” I said. “Out of Dream London.”

“There is no way out of Dream London.”

“I’ll find one.”

“Really?” Bill curled her lip. “Is that your solution to every problem? To run away?”

“There is no solution to this problem,” I said. I rose to my feet. “I’m leaving, now.”

Mister Monagan stood up, too.

“Where are we going, Mister James?”

“
We
are going nowhere,” I said. “I am going to the station and I am going to find a train out of here, no matter what it takes.”

“What about me?”

“I need you to stay here,” I said. “Keep an eye on what’s left of Belltower End.”

And if I keep you away from me, I can’t betray you,
I thought. I’d heard some bad things about myself that night. Not that I believed them, but I didn’t want to add anything else to the debit side of the ledger.

“So long,” I said, and I walked to the the door.

“James.”

Bill waited until I had my hand on the handle before she spoke.

“What?”

“If you change your mind, I’ll be at the Laughing Dog.”

“I won’t change my mind.”

I pushed open the door, and walked into the hall. But I hadn’t made it out of the house yet. Anna was waiting for me in the hallway, as cool and inscrutable as ever.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“You’re doing exactly what Dream London wants you to do,” she said.

I gave her a flat smile.

“No, I’m doing what I want to do,” I replied. I shouldered her aside and pulled open the front door. Anna didn’t get upset, she didn’t scold me. She just spoke in a calm voice.

“Exactly,” she said. “Dream London wants us all to be individuals.”

I stopped where I was. “What the fuck do you know about it? You’re only seventeen.”

“I’m old enough to see what’s going on. Dream London divides and conquers. It’s instinctive. The only thing that Dream London fears is that we might ever join together to fight it.”

“You make it sound like it can think.”

“It doesn’t think any more than a patch of weeds thinks, but like a patch of weeds it affects its environment. Why do you think Dream London messes up the geography? It’s keeping us all from staying in contact with each other. It wants to turn us in on ourselves, rather than having us reach out to each other.”

“All we need is love?” I said. “Together we are strong? Sentimental bullshit, Anna. You sound like a seventeen-year-old.”

“So what do you suggest, Captain Wedderburn? Because I’m really interested in the opinion of a pimp.”

I gazed at her.

“Don’t think that because you’re only seventeen I won’t hit you. Move out of my way.”

Wordlessly, she stepped to the side.

“Thank you,” I said.

She murmured something.

“What was that?” I asked.

“I said you don’t have to be like this,” she said. “You want to be a better person. I can tell.”

“I’ve got no choice,” I said, and I finally accepted something that Christine had understood right at the start. “It’s written.”

I pushed out into the night.

TEN

NECROPOLIS

I
AIMED FOR
Euston Station first. A train from there would take me straight to Manchester. That’s how it had worked in the old days, anyway.

I slipped through the streets towards Egg Market station, eyes peeled for Honey Peppers and the Quantifiers: they were bound to head back here looking for me. Or were they? I wasn’t sure they’d yet made the connection with the Poison Yews.

I was in luck: the streets were empty. Better yet, there was a train waiting in Egg Market station, the yellow destination boards on its side declaring it was bound for Hampstead. Euston Station lay in the direction of Hampstead, or at least it used to. I looked up and down the platform, searching for Macon Wailers. I saw no one suspicious, but the sight of a man eating an orange brought the thirst up inside me. How carelessly he peeled the fruit, juice squirting over his fingers, dropping moist and zesty pieces of peel onto the station platform.

I boarded the train and sat down by a window with a metal frame that was turning to wood. A notice opposite advertised the new Ford Focus, and I wondered why the Writing Floor of Angel Tower hadn’t managed to get it rewritten yet.

A figure moved past the window and I felt something grip my heart. Golden curls, a pink dress... but it wasn’t Honey Peppers. Just another little girl coming home from a day out with her Daddy.

A whistle blew, there was a bump, and the train began to move. I relaxed a little. I was going somewhere at last. I was heading out of Dream London, leaving all my worries behind me.

We glided from the station and out over the city, heading towards Belltower End, and I slipped down a little in my seat. If the Daddio had any sense, he’d be watching the station.

I saw the broken top of the Belltower in the distance. The top of the tower had collapsed, leaving only a broken chimney that belched dark smoke into the deep purple night sky. My piece of Dream London, now destroyed. Mr Monagan had come to fetch me... Mr Monagan.

At least by running away I’d never have the opportunity to betray him.

Because I would have done so. I knew it deep in my heart. I’d known it from the moment I met him. Captain Wedderburn puts himself first, and everyone else can go to hell. Anna’s words in the hallway came back to me: Dream London liked individuals.

No wonder Angel Tower wanted me for a sunbeam.

I sighed and leant against the window. Maybe the best thing I could do was to drink some water, let my tongue wake up, put an end to it all. Surely things wouldn’t be so bad as one of the Macon Wailers? Join their ranks, open my mouth and sing along with them, my tongue razzing the world whilst I wailed and wailed.

The train should have been approaching Belltower End station now, but it seemed to be taking a different track. I could see the tower sliding by, but from this angle it looked unusual. I didn’t think I’d ever seen it from this side before.

The view from the train looked unfamiliar, too, now that I came to look at it. There was the side of a warehouse, the name of the veneer of the week painted on its side. I had seen that before, but I’d never seen the little pink house surrounded by sunflowers that sat at its side, their petals shining soft sunshine in the night, illuminating the camomile lawn.

The train was slowing now, pulling into a station. Another train was waiting there. Blue as a whale, with silver destination boards on its side that read... Euston Station.

My train juddered to a halt and I rose to my feet, gripped by indecision.

What should I do? My train was heading in the right direction, but the one across the way was going directly to Euston. My course of action should have been obvious, you might think... but this was how Dream London played with you. I knew the game, we all did, all of us who had tried to escape from the clutches of the city.

To catch the other train I had to cross to the far platform. I saw the red bridge that spanned the track. Would I have time to run across there? Through the windows of the other train I could see the press of passengers, even at this time of night. They were still boarding...

I decided to risk it.

I was off the Hampstead train before it stopped moving. Running down the platform, pounding towards the wooden steps of the bridge. I heard a door slam. Up the stairs. A whistle. Over the bridge. Another whistle.

The blue and silver carriages of the Euston train began to glide forward just as I was descending the steps to the platform. I could still make it, I thought...

But no, by the time I reached the platform the train was moving too fast. I swore, and that’s when the whistle sounded from the other side of the tracks. My train, my Hampstead train, was leaving. I ran back up the bridge, but too late...

I stood there, above the railway lines, stood beneath the oversized Dream London moon that hung like a golden gong over the city and I twisted back and forth, watching the lights of the two trains, diminishing in both directions. The clickety-clack sound of their wheels died away.

“You were tempted by the easier way,” said the old man who passed me by on the bridge, heading for the exit. He must have got off the Euston train.

“I need to get out of here,” I said.

“Be patient,” said the man. “Accept the train that Dream London sends you.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

But the old man walked on.

“Don’t go all mystic on me!” I shouted. “Really, what the hell does that mean?”

Disconsolate, I wandered back down to the platform the Euston train had just departed from.

I saw a porter, dressed in green. His uniform bore the usual linked DLR logo.

“The next train,” I said. “The next train to Euston, when is it?”

“Not until tomorrow,” said the porter. “Your best bet, catch the next train to Hackney, change at the Angle.”

“The Angle?” I said. “You mean the Angel?”

“You pronounce it the way you want to,” he said. “Either way, it should be along in five minutes.”

He walked off down the platform, leaving me alone. Despite the activity of just a few minutes before, the station was now deserted. All those passengers a moment ago, and now nothing. Dream London was playing with me, I knew it, but I wasn’t to be defeated.

The station was called Hayling Road East. Odd that, I’d lived in this area for nearly a year and I didn’t remember hearing of a station by that name. I looked down the long stretch of track, seeking out the lights of the next train. I could still see the broken stump of the Belltower, lit up by night, and for a moment I entertained the idea of leaving the station and simply walking towards it.

That would be one way to break the Dream London railway trap. Or would it? You heard stories. Stories of people who had been missing for ages suddenly walking into their homes half starved, of people collapsing in bars telling stories of wanderings through empty streets. Or of people who had come to places where the people didn’t speak English, or where they didn’t quite look human...

I wasn’t quite ready to start walking yet, though. One missed train wasn’t reason enough to give up.

There was an old vending machine standing on the platform. Whatever it had once been, it was now something made of cast iron, shell patterns embossed on the corners. There was a place to insert money, and a slot for the product to drop from. I took a closer look at the words embossed on the machine’s surface:

TAKE COCAINE

Somewhere in the distance, music started. It drifted up from the darkness and echoed around the walls of the empty railway station. Odd music, music that was different to what you normally heard nowadays. The silver sound of a soprano cornet, the regular beat of a drum. Trombones and euphoniums. Then cornets and horns and baritones. Musical instruments, all playing together, all keeping time. A brass band. When was the last time I had heard a proper band? What was it about that sound that jarred against its surroundings?

I remembered the children carrying the instrument cases, coming to visit Amit Singh. I thought of Anna, practising with her cornet in her room, back at the Poison Yews. The sound of music boomed and echoed from the walls, it threaded its silvery way through the spaces between the yellow lamps. I stood, so lost in a trance that I literally flinched when I saw the lit windows of the electric train that had crept up so silently to the station.

The train came to a halt. I saw the word Hackney on the destination boards, so I climbed on board.

There weren’t many people on the train. A group of football supporters at one end of the carriage, brown and cream Armoury scarves tied to their arms. There was a woman with a bag full of cats, their heads emerging from the top and looking patiently outwards in all directions, a young boy reading a chapbook, a man asleep with a large pink badge on his lapel.

“Excuse me,” I said to the woman, “does this train go to the Angle?”

The woman looked up at me and replied, “Errgh oll un marv’k.”

“Thank you.”

The train jerked and began to move. I approached the young boy.

“Excuse me, do you know if this train goes to the Angle?”

“Fuck off,” said the boy, without looking up from his book. I noticed now that the cover had a picture of two women locked in an extremely obscene embrace.