Neverwhere (15 page)

Jessica was no longer smiling. “Is this some kind of joke?” she asked, coldly.

“Oh, and we’ve been engaged for the last eighteen months,” said Richard.

Jessica smiled nervously. Perhaps this really was some kind of joke: one of those jokes that everyone else seemed to get and she never did. “I rather think I’d know if I’d been engaged to someone for eighteen months, Mister um,” said Jessica.

“Mayhew,” said Richard helpfully. “Richard Mayhew. You dumped me, and I don’t exist anymore.”

Jessica waved, urgently, at no one in particular all the way across the room. “Be right there,” she called, desperately, and she began to back away.

“
I’m a believer,
” sang Richard, cheerfully, “
I couldn’t leave her if I tried
. . .”

Jessica snatched a glass of champagne from a passing tray, downed it in a gulp. At the far end of the room she could see Mr. Stockton’s chauffeur, and where Mr. Stockton’s chauffeur was . . .

She headed toward the doors. “So who was he?” asked Clarence, edging alongside her.

“Who?”

“Your mystery man.”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. Then she said, “Look, maybe you ought to call security.”

“Okay. Why?”

“Just . . . just get me security,” and then Mr. Arnold Stockton entered the hall, and everything else went out of her head.

Expansive, he was, and expensive, a Hogarth cartoon of a man, enormous of girth, many-chinned and broad-stomached. He was over sixty; his hair was gray and silver, and it was cut too long in the back, because it made people uncomfortable that his hair was too long, and Mr. Stockton liked making people uncomfortable. Compared to Arnold Stockton, Rupert Murdoch was a shady little pipsqueak, and the late Robert Maxwell was a beached whale. Arnold Stockton was a pit bull, which was how caricaturists often chose to draw him. Stock-tons owned a little bit of everything: satellites, newspapers, record companies, amusement parks, books, magazines, comics, television stations, film companies.

“I’ll make the speech now,” said Mr. Stockton, to Jessica, by way of introduction. “Then I’ll bugger off. Come back some other time, when there aren’t all these stuffed shirts about.”

“Right,” said Jessica. “Yes. The speech now. Of course.”

And she led him up onto the little stage, up to the podium. She tinked her fingernail against a glass, for silence. Nobody heard her, so she said, “Excuse me,” into the microphone. This time the conversation quieted. “Ladies and gentlemen. Honored guests. I’d like to welcome all of you to the British Museum,” she said, “to the Stockton-sponsored exhibition ‘Angels over England,’ and to the man behind it all, our chief executive and chairman of the board, Mister Arnold Stockton.” The guests applauded, none of them in any doubt as to who had assembled the collection of angels, or, for that matter, paid for their champagne.

Mr. Stockton cleared his throat. “Okay,” he said. “This won’t take long. When I was a small boy, I used to come to the British Museum on Saturdays, because it was free, and we didn’t have much money. But I’d come up the big steps to the museum, and I’d come down to this room round the back and look up at this angel. It was like it knew what I was thinking.”

Just at that moment, Clarence came back in, a couple of security guards beside him. He pointed to Richard, who had stopped to listen to Mr. Stockton’s speech. Door was still examining exhibits. “No,
him
,” Clarence kept saying to the guards, in an undertone. “No, look, there. Yes?
Him
.”

“Anyway. Like anything that’s not cared for,” continued Mr. Stockton, “it decayed, fell apart under the stresses and strains of modern times. Went rotten. Went bad. Well, it’s taken a shitload of money,” he paused, to let it sink in—if he, Arnold Stockton, thought it was a shitload, then a shitload it certainly was—“and a dozen craftsmen have spent a great deal of time restoring it and fixing it up. After this the exhibition’ll be going to America, and then around the world, so it maybe can inspire some other little penniless brat to start his own communications empire.”

He looked around. Turning to Jessica, he muttered, “What do I do now?” She pointed to the pull-rope, at the side of the curtain. Mr. Stockton pulled the rope. The curtain billowed and opened, revealing an old door behind it.

Again, there was a small flurry of activity in Clarence’s corner of the room. “No.
Him,”
said Clarence. “For heaven’s sake. Are you blind?”

It looked like it had once been the door to a cathedral. It was the height of two men, and wide enough for a pony to walk through. Carved into the wood of the door, and painted with red and white and gold leaf, was an extraordinary angel. It stared out at the world with blank medieval eyes. There was an impressed gasp from the guests, then they began to applaud.

“
The Angelus
.” Door tugged at Richard’s sleeve. “That’s it! Richard, come on.” She ran for the stage.

“Excuse me, sir,” said a guard to Richard. “Might we see your invitation?” said another, taking Richard firmly but discreetly by the arm. “And do you have any identification?”

“No,” said Richard.

Door was up on the stage. Richard tried to yank free and follow her, hoping that the guards would forget about him. They didn’t: now that he had been brought to their attention they were going to proceed to treat him as they might any other shabby, unwashed, somewhat unshaven gate-crasher. The guard who was holding Richard increased his grip on his arm, muttering, “None of that.”

Door paused on the stage, wondering how to make the guards let Richard go. Then she did the only thing she could think of. She went over to the microphone, went up on tiptoes, and she screamed, as loudly as she possibly could, into the public-address system. She had a remarkable scream: it could, with no artificial assistance, go through your head like a new power drill with a bone-saw attachment. And amplified . . . It was simply unearthly.

A waitress dropped her tray of drinks. Heads turned. Hands covered ears. All conversation stopped. People stared at the stage in puzzlement and horror. And Richard made a break for it. “Sorry,” he said to the stunned guard, as he yanked his arm out of the man’s grip, and fled. “Wrong London.” He reached the stage, grabbed Door’s outstretched left hand. Her right hand touched the Angelus, the enormous cathedral door. Touched it, and
opened
it.

This time no one dropped any drinks. They were frozen, staring, utterly overwhelmed—and, momentarily, blinded. The Angelus had opened, and light, from behind the door, had flooded the room with radiance. People covered their eyes then, hesitantly, opened them again, and simply stared. It was as if fireworks had been let off in the room. Not indoor fireworks, strange crawling things that sputter and smell bad; nor even the kind of fireworks that you set off in your back yard; but the kind of industrial-strength fireworks that get fired up high enough to cause a potential menace to the airways: the kind of fireworks that end a day at Disney World, or that give the fire marshals headaches at Pink Floyd concerts. It was a moment of pure magic.

The audience stared, entranced and amazed. The only noise to be heard was the gentle, gasping almost-groan of wonderment that people make when they watch fireworks: the sound of awe. Then a grubby young man and a dirty-faced girl in a huge leather jacket walked into the light show and vanished. The door closed, behind them. The light show was over.

And everything was normal again. The guests, and guards, and serving staff, blinked, shook their respective heads, and, having dealt with something entirely outside of their experience, agreed, somehow, without a word, that it had simply never happened. The string quartet began to play once more.

Mr. Stockton walked off, nodding brusquely to various acquaintances as he did so. Jessica walked over to Clarence. “What,” she asked, quietly, “are those security guards doing in here?”

The guards in question were standing among the guests, looking around as if they were themselves unsure what they were doing there. Clarence began to explain just what the guards were doing there; and then he realized he had absolutely no idea. “I’ll deal with it,” said Clarence, efficiently.

Jessica nodded. She looked out over her party and smiled benignly. It was all going rather well.

Richard and Door walked into the light. And then it was dark, and chill, and Richard was blinking at the retinal after-image of the light, which left him almost blinded: a ghostly series of orange-green splotches that slowly faded, as his eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness that surrounded them.

They were in a huge hall, carved from rock. Iron pillars, black and rust-dusted, held up the roof, went off into the distant dark, perhaps for miles. From somewhere he could hear the gentle splash of water: a fountain, perhaps, or a spring. Door was still holding his hand, tightly. In the distance, a tiny flame flickered and flared. And another, and then another: it was a host of candles, flickering into flame, Richard realized. And walking toward them, through the candles, was a tall figure, dressed in a simple white robe.

The figure seemed to be moving slowly, but it must have been walking very fast, as it was only seconds before it was standing beside them. It had golden hair and a pale face. It was not much taller than Richard, but it made him feel like a little child. It was not a man; it was not a woman. It was very beautiful. Its voice was quiet. It said, “The Lady Door, yes?”

Door said, “Yes.”

A gentle smile. It nodded its head to her, almost humbly. “It is an honor finally to meet you and your companion. I am the Angel Islington.” Its eyes were clear and wide. Its robes were not white, as Richard had initially thought: they seemed to have been woven from
light
.

Richard did not believe in angels, he never had. He was damned if he was going to start now. Still, it was much easier not to believe in something when it was not actually looking directly at you and saying your name. “Richard Mayhew,” it said. “You, too, are welcome here, in my halls.” It turned away. “Please,” it said. “Follow me.”

Richard and Door followed the angel through the caverns. The candles extinguished themselves behind them.

The marquis de Carabas strode through the empty hospital, broken glass and old syringes crunching beneath his square-toed black motorcycle boots. He stepped through a double door that led into a back staircase. He went down the stairs, to the cellars beneath the hospital.

He walked through the rooms beneath the building, stepping fastidiously around the heaps of moldering rubbish. He walked through the showers and the toilets, down an old iron staircase, through a wet, swampy place; and then pulled open a half-rotted wooden door, and went inside. He looked around the room in which he found himself; he inspected, with mag-nificent disdain, the half-eaten kitten and the heap of razor blades. Then he cleared the debris off a chair, sat down, comfortably, luxuriantly, in the dankness of the cellar, and closed his eyes.

Eventually the door to the cellar was opened and people came in.

The marquis de Carabas opened his eyes and yawned. Then he flashed Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar a huge smile. “Hello boys,” said de Carabas. “I thought it high time I came down here to talk to you in person.”

“D
o you drink wine?” it asked.

Richard nodded.

“I had a little wine once,” said Door, hesitantly. “My father. He. At dinner. Would let us taste it.”

The Angel Islington lifted the bottle: it looked like some kind of decanter. Richard wondered if the bottle was made of glass; it refracted and reflected the candlelight so strangely. Perhaps it was some kind of crystal, or one huge diamond. It even made it seem that the wine inside was glowing, as if it were made of light.

The angel took the top off the crystal and poured an inch of the liquid inside it into a wine glass. It was a white wine, but a wine unlike any Richard had ever seen. It threw light around the caverns, like sunlight on a swimming pool.

Door and Richard sat around an age-blackened wooden table, on huge wooden chairs, and said nothing. “This wine,” said Islington, “is the last bottle of its kind. I was given a dozen bottles by one of your ancestors.”

It handed the glass to Door, and began to pour another inch of the glowing wine from the decanter into another glass. It did this reverently, almost lovingly, like a priest performing a ritual. “It was a welcome gift. This was, oh, thirty, forty thousand years ago. Quite a while ago, at any rate.” It passed the wine glass to Richard. “I suppose that you could accuse me of squandering something I should treasure,” it told them. “But I receive guests so rarely. And the way here is hard.”

“The Angelus . . .” murmured Door.

“You traveled here using the Angelus, yes. But that way works only once for each traveler.” The angel raised its glass high, staring at the light. “Drink it carefully,” it advised them. “It is most potent.” It sat down at the table, between Richard and Door. “When one tastes it,” it said, wistfully, “I like to imagine that one is actually tasting the sunlight of bygone days.” It held up its glass. “A toast: to former glories.”

“Former glories,” chorused Richard and Door. And then, a little warily, they tasted the wine, sipping it, not drinking.

“It’s amazing,” said Door.

“It really is,” said Richard. “I thought old wines turned to vinegar when they were exposed to air.”

The angel shook its head. “Not this one. It is all a matter of the type of grape and the place it was grown. This kind of grape, alas, perished when the vineyard vanished beneath the waves.”

“It’s magical,” said Door, sipping the liquid light. “I’ve never tasted anything like it.”

“And you never will again,” said Islington. “There is no more wine from Atlantis.”

Somewhere inside Richard a small, reasonable voice pointed out that there never was an Atlantis, and, thus emboldened, went on to state that there were no such things as angels, and that, furthermore, most of his experiences of the last few days had been impossible. Richard ignored it. He was learning, awkwardly, to trust his instincts, and to realize that the simplest and most likely explanations for what he had seen and experienced recently were the ones that had been offered to him—no matter how unlikely they might seem. He opened his mouth and tasted the wine once more. It made him feel
happy
. It made him think of skies bigger and bluer than any he had ever seen, a golden sun hanging huge in the sky; everything simpler, everything
younger
than the world he knew.

There was a waterfall to the left of them; clear water ran down the rock and collected in the rock-pool. To the right of them was a door, set between two iron pillars: the door was made of polished flint set in a metal that was almost black.

“You really claim to be an angel?” Richard asked. “I mean, you’ve actually met God and everything?”

Islington smiled. “I claim nothing, Richard,” it said. “But I am an angel.”

“You honor us,” said Door.

“No. You do me much honor by coming here. Your father was a good man, Door, and a friend to me. I was deeply saddened by his death.”

“He said . . . in his journal . . . he said I should come to you. He said I could trust you.”

“I only hope that I can be worthy of that trust.” The angel sipped its wine. “London Below is the second city that I have cared for. The first sank beneath the waves, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. I know what pain is, and loss. You have my sympathies. What would you like to know?”

Door paused. “My family . . . they were killed by Croup and Vandemar. But—who ordered it? I want . . . I want to know
why
.”

The angel nodded. “Many secrets find their way down to me,” it said. “Many rumors, and half-truths, and echoes.” Then it turned to Richard. “And you? What do you want, Richard Mayhew?”

Richard shrugged. “I want my life back. And my apartment. And my job.”

“That can happen,” said the angel.

“Yeah. Right,” said Richard, flatly.

“Do you doubt me, Richard Mayhew?” asked the Angel Islington.

Richard looked into its eyes. They were a luminescent gray, eyes as old as the universe, eyes that had seen galaxies congeal from stardust ten million, million years ago; Richard shook his head. Islington smiled at him, kindly. “It will not be easy, and you and your companions will face some very real difficulties, both in the task, and in the return. But there could be a way that we can learn: a key to all of our problems.”

It got up, and walked over to a small rock shelf, where it picked up a figurine, one of several on the shelf. It was a small black statuette depicting some kind of animal, made of volcanic glass. The angel handed it to Door. “This will bring you safely through the last stage of your journey back to me,” it said. “The rest is up to you.”

“What do you want us to do?” asked Richard.

“The Black Friars are custodians of a key,” it said. “Bring it to me.”

“And you can use it to find out who killed my family?” asked Door.

“I hope so,” said the angel. Richard finished his glass of wine. He felt it warming him, running through him. He had the strange feeling that if he looked down at his fingers he would be able to see the wine glowing through them. As if he were made of light . . .

“Good luck,” whispered the Angel Islington. There was a rushing sound, like a wind soughing across a lost forest, or the beating of mighty wings.

Richard and Door were sitting on the floor in a room in the British Museum, staring up at a carved painting of an angel on a cathedral door. The room was dark and empty. The party had been over for a long time. The sky outside was beginning to lighten. Richard stood up, then leaned down, and helped Door up.

“Black Friars?” he asked.

Door nodded.

He had crossed Blackfriars Bridge, in the City of London, many times, and he had often passed through Blackfriars station, but he had learned by now not to assume anything.

“People.”

Richard walked over to the Angelus. He ran a finger down its painted robe. “Do you think he can really do it? Get me my life back?”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing. But I don’t think he would have lied to us. He is an angel.”

Door opened her hand, looked at the statue of the Beast. “My father had one of these,” she said, sadly. She put it deep in one of the pockets of her brown leather jacket.

“Well,” said Richard. “We’re not going to get the key back by lollygagging around here, are we?” They walked through the empty museum corridors.

“So what do you know about this key then?” asked Richard.

“Nothing,” said Door. They had reached the main doors of the museum. “I’ve heard of the Black Friars, but I’ve never actually had anything to do with them.” She pressed her fingers against a seriously locked glass door, which swung open at her touch.

“A bunch of monks . . .” said Richard, thoughtfully. “I bet if we just tell them it’s for an angel, a real one, they’ll give us the sacred key, and—and throw in the magic can-opener and the amazing whistling corkscrew, as a surprise bonus.” He began to laugh. He wondered if the wine was still affecting him.

“You’re in good spirits,” said Door.

He nodded, enthusiastically. “I’m going to go home. Everything is going to be normal again. Boring again. Wonderful again.” Richard looked at the stone steps that lead up the British Museum, and decided that they were made to be danced down by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. And seeing that neither of them happened to be available, he began to dance down the steps, doing a Fred Astaire impersonation, while humming something approximately halfway between “Puttin” on the Ritz” and “Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails.” “Ya-ta-ta-da-da-ta-ta-ya,” he sang, soft-shoeing down the steps and up again.

Door stood at the top of the steps, staring at him in horror. Then she began to giggle, helplessly. He looked up at her and doffed his imaginary white silk top hat to her, mimed tossing it high in the air, catching it, and putting it back on his head.

“Twit,” said Door, and smiled at him. In response, Richard grabbed her hand and continued dancing up and down the steps. Door hesitated for a moment, then she, too, began to dance. She danced much better than Richard did. At the bottom of the steps they tumbled, breathless and exhausted and giggling, into each other’s arms.

Richard felt his world spin.

He felt her heart beating against his chest. The moment began to transmute, and he wondered if there was something he should do. He wondered if he should kiss her. He wondered if he wanted to kiss her, and he realized that he truly did not know. He looked into her amazing eyes. Door put her head on one side, and pulled free. She pulled up the collar on her brown leather jacket, pulled it around her: armor and protection.

“Let’s go and find our bodyguard,” said Door. And they walked away together, down the sidewalk, toward British Museum Station, stumbling only a little from time to time.

“What,” asked Mr. Croup, “do you want?”

“What,” asked the marquis de Carabas, a little more rhetorically, “does anyone want?”

“Dead things,” suggested Mr. Vandemar. “Extra teeth.”

“I thought perhaps we could make a deal,” said the marquis.

Mr. Croup began to laugh. It sounded like a piece of blackboard being dragged over the nails of a wall of severed fingers. “Oh, Messire Marquis. I think I can confidently state, with no risk of contradiction from any parties here present, that you have taken leave of whatever senses you are reputed to have had. You are,” he confided, “if you will permit the vulgarism, completely off your head.”

“Say the word,” said Mr. Vandemar, who was now standing behind the marquis’s chair, “and it’ll be off his neck before you can say Jack Ketch.”

The marquis breathed heavily on his fingernails and polished them on the lapel of his coat. “I have always felt,” he said, “that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the final sanctuary of the terminally inept.”

Mr. Croup glared. “What are you doing here?” he hissed.

The marquis de Carabas stretched, like a big cat: a lynx, perhaps, or a huge black panther; and at the end of the stretch he was standing up, with his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his magnificent coat. “You are,” he said, idly and conversationally, “I understand, Mister Croup, a collector of T’ang dynasty figurines.”

“How did you know that?”

“People tell me things. I’m approachable.” The marquis’s smile was pure, untroubled, guileless: the smile of a man selling you a used Bible.

“Even if I were . . .” began Mr. Croup.

“If you were,” said the marquis de Carabas, “you might be interested in this.” He took one hand out of his pocket and displayed it to Mr. Croup. Until earlier that evening it had sat in a glass case in the vaults of one of London’s leading merchant banks. It was listed in certain catalogues as
The Spirit of Autumn (Grave Figure)
. It was roughly eight inches high: a piece of glazed pottery that had been shaped and painted and fired while Europe was in the Dark Ages, six hundred years before Columbus’s first voyage.

Mr. Croup hissed, involuntarily, and reached for it. The marquis pulled it out of reach, cradled it to his chest. “No no,” said the marquis. “It’s not as simple as that.”

“No?” asked Mr. Croup. “But what’s to stop us taking it, and leaving pieces of you all over the Underside? We’ve never dismembered a marquis before.”

“Have,” said Mr. Vandemar. “In York. In the fourteenth century. In the rain.”

“He wasn’t a marquis,” said Mr. Croup. “He was the earl of Exeter.”

“And marquis of Westmorland.” Mr. Vandemar looked rather pleased with himself.

Mr. Croup sniffed. “What’s to stop us hacking you into as many pieces as we hacked the marquis of Westmorland?” he asked.

De Carabas took his other hand out of his pocket. It held a small hammer. He tossed the hammer in the air and caught it by the handle, ending with the hammer poised over the china figurine. “Oh, please,” he said. “No more silly threats. I think I’d feel better if you were both standing back over there.”

Mr. Vandemar shot a look at Mr. Croup, who nodded, almost imperceptibly. There was a tremble in the air, and Mr. Vandemar was standing beside Mr. Croup, who smiled like a skull. “I have indeed been known to purchase the occasional T’ang piece,” he admitted. “Is that for sale?”

“We don’t go in so much for buying and selling here in the Underside, Mister Croup. Barter. Exchange. That’s what we look for. But yes, indeed, this desirable little piece is certainly up for grabs.”

Mr. Croup pursed his lips. He folded his arms. He unfolded them. He ran one hand through his greasy hair. Then, “Name your price,” said Mr. Croup. The marquis let himself breathe a deep, relieved, and almost audible sigh. It was possible that he was going to be able to pull this whole grandiose ruse off, after all. “First, three answers to three questions,” he said.

Croup nodded. “Each way. We get three answers too.”

“Fair enough,” said the marquis. “Secondly, I get safe conduct out of here. And you agree to give me at least an hour’s head start.”

Croup nodded violently. “Agreed. Ask your first question.” His gaze was fixed on the statue.

“First question. Who are you working for?”

“Oh, that’s an easy one,” said Mr. Croup. “That’s a simple answer. We are working for our employer, who wishes to remain nameless.”