Dreaming Again

by Jack Dann

  ‘It’s Finkel. Get that right if you’re gonna write a book.’ He growled at her. ‘I read all those books about me and my brother. All they talk about is the booze and drugs and dames. It’s like our act meant nothing at all. But we put smiles on the faces of millions.’

  ‘I know, Mr Fe … Mr Finkel. Look, can I call you Zac?’

  She held her breath while he stared noncommittally at her for a long moment.

  ‘Isaac,’ he said distantly, as if he was remembering the name of a friend long dead. Then he came back to the present. ‘Talk to me? About what particularly?’

  Erin knelt down next to him. ‘About what came before,’ she said, almost in a whisper, because that was how everyone talked about what came before.

  ‘Why me?’ he said suspiciously. ‘There are hundreds of us left from those days.’

  ‘They didn’t go through what you and Leonard went through.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘A long time ago I met Dot. We were friends. She told me things.’

  ‘And Howard still let you come and see me?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him about Dot. I told him I was interested in music hall and vaudeville. I told him I was writing a book about Zac and Lenny Feelgood. But I’m more interested in Isaac and Leonard Finkel.’

  He leaned towards her and said, ‘You know, almost no one knows the secret history of Isaac and Leonard Finkel, and how we saved the world from a fate worse than … well, worse than death.’

  ‘I know some of it. Dot told me a lot before she died. She said forget about everything I’d read, about the movies, and about how you changed your name from Finkel to Feelgood —’

  ‘And how we married too young, how we got hooked on hash and hooch, how we deserted Benny our first manager, poor dumb bastard, and how we ignored our kids, like poor dumb Dot, and how Lenny died from cirrhosis in 1953, and how I’m here forgotten in an old peoples home in 1965 and telling the nurses stories they don’t believe.’

  Erin said in a subdued voice, ‘Something like that.’

  Isaac’s face went flat and hard. He stared at Erin like he didn’t care about anything in the world. ‘Why the fuck should I?’

  ‘Because you’re dying, Isaac, and this is your last chance.’

  Isaac’s breath rattled somewhere in his chest. ‘Why do you care?’

  ‘Because it really happened,’ Erin said.

  There was another long pause, and then Isaac looked away from her and outside his room’s only window. Hard Arizona light slanted across his face. Erin thought she had lost her chance. She sighed heavily and stood up. But before she could move to the door, Isaac started talking, the words coming out slow as treacle, and Erin retrieved her tape recorder from her purse and turned it on.

  ‘This is the only story that matters, and the only reason most people haven’t heard it before is that it was too good for stage or screen let alone real life, even if the Committee for Conciliation had felt like letting it through the censor. It starts a long time ago, long before common memory, and long, long before history.

  ‘The first date to remember is May 1894…’

  … when all the way from Danzig, as hopeful as birds in spring, the Finkels arrive in London. Jacob, a cobbler, his wife Magdalena and their two children, Isaac and Leonard. But as Magdalena always said, ‘An unlucky person is — kaput! — a dead person’, and Jacob was as unlucky as they come. The Martians arrived three months after the Finkels set foot in England, and as the world soon learned the Martians had no respect at all for people with good hearts and modest ambition and a determination to work hard.

  Jacob Finkel did not live out the first onslaught, and Magdalena, with her two small boys, was taken prisoner and put in a camp in London with thousands of other survivors, all homeless and bewildered and watched over by monstrous machines with heat rays and no mercy at all.

  ‘They were terrible and beautiful, the Machines. I remember their long silvery legs moving in the morning mist from the Thames like the fingers of some giant Jehovah.’ Isaac walked three fingers on the arm of his wheelchair to show Erin how they moved. ‘And when the sun was low in the afternoon the metal on the Machines looked like molten gold.’

  Isaac paused again while he remembered the Machines, the great striding of them.

  ‘Now listen, Erin Kay, because the second date I’m going to give you is the one to remember, because that’s when it all really starts. It is 1897 …’

  … and in the refurbished rooms of Mr George Cochrane, manager of the Empire Theatre, the aforesaid Mr Cochrane is on the defensive.

  ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie.’ Cochrane said the name as if it was the start of a sigh.

  ‘I prefer Magdalena. From you, in fact, Mrs Finkel is even better.’

  ‘After all we’ve been through.’

  ‘Which is less than you imagine and more than I can bear to think about,’ Magdalena said stiffly, and gathered her boys around her to prevent any unwanted advances. Mr Cochrane may have been a cad, but Isaac and Leonard sometimes played with his own children and he was sensible about rumours.

  ‘Take my advice, my good lady. Change the name of the act.’

  ‘It is very English. I have heard English say it.’

  ‘Froth and Bubbles.’ Cochrane shook his head. ‘No. It sounds like the name of a female revue, you know, with the fan and ti … feathers.’

  Magdalena looked blankly at him.

  Cochrane cocked one heel and lifted invisible breasts. ‘Bristen … boosten?’ He wiggled his backside. ‘Toches?’

  Magdalena was horrified and tried to cover her children’s ears, but they were already tittering.

  Blushing, Cochrane cleared his throat. ‘Much better if it was something like …’ He waved a hand in the air. ‘What are they doing again?’

  ‘Some jokes, some song, some jokes, some dance, some jokes …’ Magdalena started, but her voice was drowned out by the cranking, stomping sound of a passing Machine. The walls of Cochrane’s office shook a little, and dust sprinkled from the ceiling. The boys ran to a window before their mother could stop them and caught a glimpse of a huge metal leg.

  ‘Land dreadnought,’ Isaac said with certainty.

  ‘No. Cruiser. Four heat rays —’ Leonard said.

  Isaac interrupted his younger brother. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  They were jerked away from the window, Isaac by Magdalena and Leonard by Cochrane.

  ‘Fool boys!’ the manager said shortly, handing Leonard to his mother, then craning his head out the window to make sure the Machine had gone on.

  Magdalena shook her sons by their stiff white collars. ‘Idiots! What are you? Meshugeh? Don’t you know better, as if I haven’t taught you myself? You want to disappear? You want to feed the monsters?’

  ‘Sorry, mamma,’ Leonard squeaked.

  ‘It didn’t see us,’ Isaac said.

  ‘And how does Isaac Finkel, twelve years old, know what a Martian can or cannot see?’ Magdalena demanded. ‘Are you an expert on Martians, all of a sudden?’

  ‘He thinks he knows all about them,’ Leonard piped enthusiastically.

  ‘More than you, anyway,’ Isaac said under his breath.

  ‘Both Lenny and me collected cards,’ Isaac said. He pointed to a set of drawers next to his bed. ‘In there, Erin Kay. In the top drawer.’

  She opened it. There was a wallet, toothbrush and toothpaste. And what looked like a pack of miniature cards held together with a rubber band; the back of the top card had on it a picture of a packet of cigarettes and the word ‘Players’.

  ‘Bring the cards to me,’ he said.

  Erin gave him the cards. He slipped off the rubber band, turned them face up and spread them in his two hands. Each card had a vivid three-colour illustration of a Martian Machine. Erin could not believe her eyes. She had heard descriptions of the machines from other old folk, but had never imagined they could look so lethal and so utterly alien. And yes, beautif
ul, too.

  ‘Zac and I collected them. Had every one, except the sea cruiser, which was rarer than …’ He frowned in concentration. ‘Rarer than an acorn.’

  ‘Acorn?’

  ‘From an oak tree. The red weed killed most of ‘em. After the defeat of the Martians, Players started making cigarettes again and put cricketers and racing cars and battleships on their cards. The Committee for Conciliation didn’t want any reminder of the Martians, and the world soon forgot how close it came to having no history at all.’

  A cat leaped onto the windowsill and looked into Cochrane’s office just long enough for everyone to notice it, including Leonard who sneezed violently.

  ‘Cats,’ Mrs Finkel explained to Cochrane. ‘His allergy. Also geraniums and coff —’

  ‘Bubble and Squeak,’ Mr Cochrane said.

  The three Finkels looked at the chairman with puzzled expressions.

  ‘Bubble and Squeak,’ he went on. ‘A name for the act. That’s as English as breakfast. And your boys are good with the jokes, I know, so the name fits. Like a suit, Maggie.’ Magdalena glared at him and he forced a laugh. ‘I mean Mrs Finkel.’

  ‘Bubble and Squeak,’ Mrs Finkel said slowly, frowning. ‘What do you think?’ she asked her boys.

  Isaac and Leonard exchanged glances. They were not sure what to think; Magdalena usually did that for them.

  ‘Tell me about the Empire,’ Erin said. ‘Dot showed me a picture once.’

  ‘What’s to say? It started life as a hole in the ground where Trafalgar Square used to be before the Martians hit London. The bastards created a natural amphitheatre, y’know, like the Greeks used, a fact not lost on Cochrane. The world has never seen an entrepreneur and entertainer like him, and never will again. When he first put on a show — Gilbert and Sullivan’s brand new operetta, The Grand Duke — no one came, including Sullivan who had been harvested the day before. Everyone was afraid the Martians would attack the audience. But nothing happened. Some say one of the Machines walked by, stopped and swayed a little, as if it was dancing, but no one believed it.

  ‘Cochrane’s shows were the only bright spot in our lives. He did such a great job raising everyone’s morale that the Council for Collaboration made sure he and his entourage were free from any harvesting.’

  ‘Did you ever see anyone harvested?’ Erin interrupted. She could not help swallowing.

  ‘Saw plenty taken,’ Isaac said, hollowly. ‘But not what happened after. Not for a while, anyway.’

  ‘What happened with the Empire?’

  ‘Like I said, Cochrane was a clever man, and he saw what people wanted was music hall. He put on afternoon matinees as well as night shows, and took up the acts from the destroyed Hackney Empire and the Hippodrome, the Grand and Hoxton Hall. In time, the council assigned labour teams to build proper seating and a proper foyer and ticket office; the council even wanted to build a roof over the amphitheatre, but Cochrane knew that would screw the acoustics so he didn’t let it happen. In the foyer Cochrane placed the head of Nelson from the column. It was his way of saying “fuck you” to the Martians. And “fuck you!” to the council, too.

  ‘The labour teams didn’t stop with the Empire. The council extended the building program to cover the whole of the prison camp, which by then had spread to include most of the old city and held survivors from the whole bloody island. The prison was turned into a metropolis. The Martians didn’t seem to mind, as long as the collectors from the Council for Collaboration were given free reign to harvest when necessary and no one got in the way of the Machines.’

  He cleared his throat. ‘We started at sixpence a show. Threepence each. Oh, and a shilling for mama. We did well, figured out how to work the audience, and in a few weeks had fifth billing for the afternoon matinee. You had to be good to get that. Cochrane started paying us a shilling. The family was clearing two bob a show, nothing to sneer at in those days.’

  His eyes seemed to dim for a moment. ‘Not real shillings, of course. Not real money. Little metal disks the council gave out. We just called them threepences and zacs and bobs.

  He rubbed his right forearm. Erin watched his blue veins jump up and down. ‘You know what got Cochrane?’

  ‘Influenza, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s what they wrote for his obituary. Really it was boredom. He hated the movies and the musicals that started after the Martians were gone. His heart was in revue and operettas. He couldn’t believe the nineteenth century ever came to an end. For Cochrane even the Martians were better than what came after. He belonged to the Empire, and always would.’

  ‘You know, Mr Cochrane,’ Mr Cochrane said to himself, ‘those two boys aren’t half bad.’

  Isaac and Leonard weren’t sure whether or not they were meant to say anything to that, so said nothing. They waited.

  Cochrane lit one of his precious cigars. The boys watched enviously. International trade had died with the invasion and nothing was imported any more, including tobacco, but Cochrane had somehow obtained a few pre-invasion boxes of cigars for his personal use. Purple smoke curled into the air, stale but still seductive.

  ‘There might even be a part for you in Gilbert and Sullivan’s new piece.’

  The boys could not hide their surprise. ‘Their new piece?’ Isaac said. ‘I thought Sullivan was taken?’

  ‘He was, but Gilbert is adapting an earlier piece. He is changing his lyrics to HMS Pinafore and telling the story of our slimy tentacled friends.’

  The boys blinked. They had a vision of the new Empire being melted to the ground with them and mama in the middle of the puddle. ‘Won’t the council stop it?’

  Cochrane snorted. ‘The Committee for Collaboration won’t care, so long as the punters are happy. I admit, Gilbert’s first title for the musical, HMS Thunderchild, was a little close to the bone, but we’ve settled on HMS Minotaur, martial without being exactly provocative.’

  Cochrane looked appraisingly at the boys. He took a long puff of his smoke and said, ‘Gilbert has added new characters as well. There are parts for two young lads in the piece. I was going to give them to Marie Lloyd and Vesta Tilley, but you can hold a tune and act well enough.’

  ‘And we’re cheaper,’ Isaac pointed out.

  Cochrane smiled. ‘You heard Marie’s latest?’

  The boys shook their heads. Their mama still pretended they knew nothing of the world and would not let them in the audience when Lloyd or Tilley performed.

  ‘“She Sits Among Her Cabbages and Peas.” Had the audience rolling in the aisles.’ Then, strangely, he grimaced. ‘Not quite the standard I expected to introduce into the Empire.’ He looked down at his cheroot and sighed heavily. ‘Still. I don’t suppose we should expect anything at all to go our own way. The future doesn’t exactly belong to us any more.

  ‘One possible problem, though. The name. Finkel? No good at all. Too foreign. Too Jewish.’

  ‘Mama.’

  ‘Tell her it’s just for the posters and bills. Finkel just won’t work. Tell her it’s not English enough.’

  ‘And what did your mama think of the idea?’ Erin asked.

  ‘If Finkel was good enough for Jacob, your father, it is good enough for Mr High-and-Mighty. Tell him that, Isaac’

  As arguments went it was a hard one to fight, so Isaac said to her, ‘Mama, you have to see it his way. Mr Cochrane is an impresario; he sees the big picture. He knows what’s best for us.’

  ‘I know what’s best for you, thank you very much. I am your mother, who brought you all the way from Danzig in a leaking boat filled with fish and your father sick over the side. We survive pogrom, the North Sea and the Martians. I know what’s best for my sons.’

  ‘It’s entertainment,’ Isaac said. ‘Nothing more. We can call ourselves Finkel in the street, in the home, we can shout it from the mountains for all Cochrane cares. But not in the Empire, not if you want us to do Gilbert and Sullivan.’

  ‘Finkel is your name and that is the end of it.’
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br />   In the distance, the family could hear a Machine patrolling the walls. They could feel the vibrations through the floor of their small apartment.

  Isaac had a sudden idea. ‘Mama, what do we call ourselves in the matinee? The Finkel Brothers? No. We call ourselves Bubble and Squeak. You were even going to call us Froth and Bubbles. How is Isaac and Leonard Feelgood any different from that? In fact, how about Zac and Lenny Feelgood? Now that’s not bad.’

  ‘It is a long way from Isaac and Leonard Finkel,’ Mama said.

  Leonard said, ‘It’s a long way from Danzig.’

  Magdalena fell silent. The boys waited for her to make a decision. The sound of the Machine faded as it walked away from them.

  ‘Not just a long way from Danzig,’ Magdalena said solemnly. ‘Very well, Isaac, if you think it’s for the best, have it your way. Have it the way of Mr High-and-Mighty CoMchrane.’

  Later, when Magdalena was preparing their daily meal and the sound of the patrolling Machine was still fresh in their memories, Leonard said, ‘Jack Bissel says everyone will be harvested in the end.’

  Isaac looked up from his sewing, glancing first at Leonard and then at his mama.

  ‘Jack Bissel is a schmuck,’ Magdalena said.

  ‘Mama!’ Isaac and Leonard said together. It was alright for them to say such words, but they could not believe their mama knew the word let alone spoke it out loud.

  ‘Don’t you two “mama” me. You think I came in the last shower? I know what Bissel is because I know what his father is and what his mother is. Jack Bissel is lower than Martian’s petsl.’

  This time the boys laughed they were so surprised, but they stopped when Magdalena glared at them in challenge. ‘Some things are not to be laughed at.’

  She was chopping squash and carrot and cabbage into a cooking pot, vegetables that were now grown in the small market gardens that had started almost as soon as the city had been rebuilt. The gardens had produced their first crop just in time, for the Martians had turned virtually the whole of Britain into a red wilderness where nothing grew that was of use to people. Even the Thames, which for a short period after the invasion had become filled once again with fish that could be eaten safely, now carried water that was crystal clear and completely barren of all life. At least the water could be used in cooking and to drink.