V 02 - Domino Men, The (21 page)

“I chose to be stationed here,” he began, apropos of nothing in particular.  “Did you know that?”

The day was bright with the cruel sunshine of winter and as our pod neared the apex of its revolution we were granted a view of the Houses of Parliament at their most ingratiatingly picturesque.

“The Directorate could have been headquartered anywhere.  But I chose the Eye.  Why?  Because I wanted to see what we’re fighting for.  You understand?  I love democracy.”

I wondered where this was heading.

“Sleep does not come easily to me.  Not any more.  But here, a stone’s throw from the cradle of democracy, here at least my dreams are not so black.”  He gargled meditatively.  “Can you guess what I’m going to ask you to do for me?”

“I expect you’ll want me to see the Prefects again.”

Dedlock observed me gravely through the glass.

I chose my words as tactfully as I could.  “I’m not sure they’re going to help us.  And when I see them…”

“Yes?”

“I feel like weeping.”

“I understand how you feel, Mr. Lamb.  I’ve met them once myself, a long time ago and a world away.”  He sighed.  “They are the ones who did this to me.  Did you know that?  They gave me these.”  Tenderly, his fingers brushed the sides of his torso, sliding over those strange flaps of skin which I had taken to be gills.  “You’re surprised?  Of course I wasn’t born this way.  They made me like this.  They turned me into their idea of a joke.”

“I hadn’t realized…”

“I know better than anyone what they’re capable of.  But we need to find Estella and it seems that you are still the only man they’ll talk to.”

“They told me terrible things…”

Dedlock swam to the edge of the tank.  “I’ll explain everything, I promise.  But for now — go back to the Prefects.  Find Estella.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said, although even the thought of returning to the hideous subterranean of Downing Street sent a liquid tremor through my bowels.

“You’ll do better than that, Henry Lamb.  You’ll have to.  The war’s in your hands now.”

In the daytime, Downing Street seemed a different place — almost friendly, peopled with flocks of policy makers and power brokers, think-tankers, politicos and wonks, but the illusion vanished as I descended underground, past the bottled ranks of madmen, who simpered, scowled and wept at the sight of me.

The guard outside the Prefect’s cell let me pass with a nod of recognition.  Inside, the television was gone but the circle was tilled with a vast amount of food — trifle, liquorice, sausages on sticks, éclairs, green jelly, slabs of Neapolitan, currant buns, biscuits in the shapes of jungle animals, cans of Tizer and sherbet dip.

My tormentors waved.

“What ho, Mr. L!”

“Hello, sir!”

“Hawker,” I muttered stoically.  “Boon.”

The ginger-haired man thrust a teetering spoonful of trifle into his mouth.  Some of the cream and at least one of the cherries splattered down his shirt and tie.

“Super tuck we’ve got here, sir!”

“Jolly good feed!”

“Triffic nosh!”

“What’s the occasion?” I asked warily.

“Can’t you guess?” Hawker chortled.

There was something I had to ask them.  Something I hadn’t even mentioned to Dedlock.  “Last time I was here you spoke about my dad again.  You said you were there the day he died.”

Boon had produced a box of macaroons and was stuffing them mechanically into his mouth in a joyless production line with the weird tenacity of some oriental eating champ.  He swallowed and reached out again for the contents of the box.

“How can you have been there?” I asked.  “How is it possible that you were there by the side of that motorway when you’ve been trapped here for decades?”

Boon seemed startled by my question.  He spluttered, a stream of half-chewed macaroon spraying into the air like green mist.  “You really think we’re here against our will?”  He wiped the crumbs from the corner of his mouth.  “You think a little line of chalk can stop chaps like us from mooching out whenever the fancy takes us?”

Hawker downed a dainty ham sandwich with its crusts cut off.  “We’re only here because we want to be,” he said, and hiccoughed.

“Why are you eating all this stuff anyway?” I asked in exasperation.

“It’s our last night here, sir!” said Boon, swigging from a bottle of ginger beer.  “Thought we’d jolly well celebrate.”

“You know what they say, sir, about the condemned man’s last meal.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Golly,” said Boon, mock sympathetic.  “Haven’t you worked it out yet?”

Hawker waggled his eyebrows at me.  “Bit slow, are we, Mr. L?  Bit of a turtle brain today, my old lamb chop?”

Boon turned to his accomplice.  “Lamb chop!  I say, that’s rather good.”  He sniggered as Hawker ladled jelly into his mouth.  “Can’t believe we didn’t think of it sooner.”

I raised my voice, just a little, just enough to get their attention.  “It’s your last night here?”

“Course it is, sir!”

“Abso-bally-lutely!”

I glared at them.  “Why’s that?”

“Because today’s our lucky day, Mr. L.”

“I haven’t come to listen to your lies,” I said.  “Just give me the location of Estella.”

“Oh, but we can’t tell you that, sir.”

“No, no.  You’re perfectly helpless with directions.”

“We’ll take you there ourselves, sir.  Introduce you face to face.”

“What do you bastards want?” I asked.

Hawker looked scandalized.  “Cheek!”

Boon tutted noisily.  “Naughty old lamb chop.  Wherever did you pick up language like that?”

“What do you want?” I asked again, trying to stay calm.

“Just a small thing.”

“Nothing too big,” said Boon.  He had helped himself to more jelly and it was dribbling glutinously down his chin.  “But we would like to ask a little favor…”

As soon as I was clear of Downing Street, I took out my mobile and phoned Mr. Dedlock.  Exactly how this worked, since I had never seen the least evidence of any communication device in the pod (let alone a sub-aquatic one), I really couldn’t say.

“Henry?” the old man rasped.  “Have you seen them?”

“They’ve agreed to take us to Estella.  God knows what’s changed their mind.”

“This is excellent news.”

“But there’s a condition.”

“Tell me, boy.”

“They want you dead.”  I swallowed hard.  “And they want to choose the manner of your passing.  Apparently they…  Well, they’ve got something specific in mind.”

There was an achingly long pause and when Dedlock spoke again, I could detect a change in his voice, a note of sadness, even of relief.

“You’ll have my answer,” he said, “in one hour.”

As soon as he had gone, I dialed another number.

My heart lifted when she spoke.  I hadn’t realized how swiftly I’d come to find her voice so comforting.

“Hello?” she said.  “Who is this?”

“It’s Henry, Miss Morning.  I need to see you again.”  I tried to suppress the quivering vibrato in my voice.  “It’s time I knew the truth.”

Trying to forget the sticky, fleshy popping sound which the boy had made when Leviathan had sat up inside him, Prince Arthur Windsor left Mr. Streater’s presence and headed not, as one might have supposed, back to his own quarters, to seek out Silverman or his wife, but rather toward the official front door, the gateway, of Clarence House.  Half a dozen servants, thrown by this unscheduled, impromptu abandonment of the day’s agenda, were around him within minutes, enquiring as to his plans, making polite offers of assistance and discreetly attempting to slow his progress.  As the heir to the throne edged increasingly close to the open air, they frantically signaled for the prince’s regular security detail to be torn from their recreations and summoned to his side.

Arthur was polite to them all, his lifelong unease with the family’s mastery of the servant class manifesting itself in a flurry of apologies and regrets, but he was nonetheless adamant that he wished to change his plans for the day in order to pay a visit to the palace.  There was no longer any need (as there might have been ten or even five years earlier) to enquire as to whether or not his mother was currently in residence.  The palace had become her hermitage, far from the public gaze despite its location at the heart of the city, though it had always struck the prince that the
place seemed less of a spiritual retreat than a paranoiac’s bunker, as though she was expecting some imminent catastrophe and had elected to bury herself deep, hoping to wait out disaster.

A Jaguar was ready for him at once and, several imploring calls having been made to the Metropolitan Police, when the prince sank back into the downy seats the roads had been cleared for him to proceed from Clarence House toward Buckingham Palace.  No traffic light was ever red for Prince Arthur Windsor and no zebra crossing, lollipop lady or rogue pedestrian ever provided the slightest impediment to his regal procession through the city.

When he arrived at the palace, a platoon of secretaries, equerries and ladies-in-waiting were gathered in anticipation of his arrival.  Although he waved them aside, they buzzed and clustered around him, like beggar children accosting a man of evident wealth and magnificence strayed too far from his usual habitat.  As he walked, the throng of domestic staff seemed to grow in number , dozens of them trailing behind him like the anxious tail of a meteor.  They were running some kind of interference — the prince could tell that much — trying to slow him down, offering an abundance of plausible-sounding reasons for him to turn back.

Arthur ignored them all and walked on through the mazy corridors of the palace that glimmered with a casual wealth to which he was long inured.  He knew where he was heading.  He was absolutely certain where she would be — squirreled away in the north wing of the palace, hiding from the world in her private suite.

When he arrived with the mass of attendants still behind him, Arthur discovered the great wooden doors to be closed and fastened and two palace servants — burly, pugilistic types squeezed uncomfortably into dark suits — standing in front of them, arms folded, unfaltering stares in place, like bouncers at the most exclusive club in the world.

“Her Majesty is not at home to visitors,” one of them said in a dull, perfunctory voice which tacked heedlessly close to discourtesy.

“I think she will be home to me,” said the prince.

“No, sir,” said the other man.  “Not even to you.”

“She sent me a letter,” Arthur said.

“A letter, perhaps, sir.  But not an invitation.”

“Listen here.  I have a perfect right to see my mother.  God alone knows why she has decided upon this perverse seclusion of hers but something is going on in my house and I think she may be able to tell me why.”

Like a guardsman in a busby ignoring the antics of a tourist angling for a photo opportunity, the men seemed entirely unimpressed by what, according to the standards of the prince, amounted almost to a tirade.

“Her Majesty’s instructions were most specific, sir.  We are to admit nobody.”

Blood was rushing to Arthur’s head, dyeing his cheeks red with frustration.  In desperation, he leant toward the doors and shouted.  “Mother?  Are you in there?”

Everyone stared at him, a little embarrassed.

“Mother!”

The men at the door had started to move toward him as though intending, gently but firmly, to eject him from the premises when a frail, cracked voice issued from just behind the door.  Several of those present — a brace of private secretaries, two telephonists and a maid — found themselves picturing the Monarch with her ear pressed to a glass held against the door.

The voice was unquestionably hers — probably the most famous in the British Isles — reedily nasal, impeccably enunciated, a relic from an earlier and more decorous age.

“Arthur?  Go away!  Shoo!  Skedaddle!”  She seemed to relish that last word in particular, audibly enjoying the unfamiliar taste of the vernacular.

“Mother?” the prince wailed back, and for a moment, it was as though the servants, the advisers, the ceremonial train of lackeys and right-hand men had melted away and there was nobody else in that place but them, mother and son, still struggling to communicate after all these years.  “Who is Mr. Streater?  Is it true what he told me, about Leviathan?  Why won’t you see me?”

There was a hissing sound from next door, then:  “Have you still not disposed of that bitch of a wife?”

Several of the servants who had followed the prince from the moment he entered the palace at least had the good grace to look awkward at this, to turn to one side and choose not to gawp quite so openly as the rest.  None of them, it must be noted, actually walked away.

“Mother…”  There was a conciliatory cadence to the prince’s voice now, like that of a diplomat, faced with some intransigent warlord, trying his utmost to be reasonable.  “I know we’ve never exactly seen eye to eye, but really—”

“Eliminate the girl, Arthur.  Then we may talk.”  There was a sliding, shuffling noise from the other side of the door which seemed to indicate that the speaker was retreating.

The prince stepped back.  “Honestly, Mother.  You can be most unreasonable at times.”

No answer came save for that same sliding, shuffling motion, growing ever fainter, as though something of immense bulk was dragging itself into the distance.

When the prince turned to face the assembled onlookers, there was an expression on his face which, to those who did not know him better, might almost have looked dangerous.  “Take me home,” he said, and silently, respectfully, they did just as he commanded.

By lunchtime, the prince was surprised to find that he could barely wait to get back to Mr. Streater.

Usually, luncheon with Silverman was a joyous affair, brimming with talk of their schooldays, or of their time together at an expensively dour university, or of the prince’s short-lived military career (an almost wholly wretched experience save for the one spot of light that was Mr. Silverman — as faithfully attentive a batman as he had subsequently proved a valet, equerry and aide-de-camp).  On that day, however, the prince could muster little enthusiasm for any of it.  Silverman’s well-oiled anecdotes seemed so much conversational sludge, the food felt rubbery and tasteless and the wine turned to vinegar in his mouth.  His one thought was to get back to Streater, to hear the story of his ancestor and, above all else, to drink another cup of tea.