by Kate Griffin
I dialled the number for Dudley Sinclair.
Just because I didn’t trust him didn’t mean he couldn’t be useful.
A while passed before a voice answered. It was surly, with a slight lisp. “Yeah? Who’s this?”
I said, “This is Matthew Swift. I need to speak to Sinclair.”
Silence for a second — the kind of second it takes to recognise a name, dislike it, and muster a polite reply. “OK. Hold on.”
I held on. This involved hearing tunes by the Beatles played on what sounded like a reed nose-flute. I held on a little longer, drumming my fingers. It’s hard to stay psyched up for anything in the face of a nose-flute rendition of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. We nearly hung up.
When Sinclair spoke, his voice boomed out so loud and sudden that I nearly dropped the handset. “Matthew! So good to hear from you! How are you keeping?”
“Mr Sinclair,” I said. “I think you should know that someone has cursed the city.”
Not a beat, not a moment. “Really, dear boy?” he intoned. “How tedious of them. Any idea who?”
“No. But the ravens in the Tower are dead, and the London Stone is broken, and the Wall of London has been painted on in big white paint, and the Midnight Mayor was flayed alive without ever actually being touched, by a man who has no smell and is therefore probably not a man. Someone is systematically destroying all the magical defences that the city has.”
“What a pain,” sighed Sinclair. “And you have no idea who might be indulging in this scheme?”
“No.”
“Pity. I suppose this means that all sorts of nasties are going to get out onto the streets and start tormenting the innocent. Well, so much for the Christmas bonus.”
“Mr Sinclair, there’s something else I think you should know.”
“Of course, dear boy, of course, you know I always enjoy our mutually beneficial working arrangements!”
“Mr Sinclair,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I am the Midnight Mayor.”
“Really? Good grief, when did that happen?”
“About the same moment that the last Midnight Mayor expired down the telephone.”
“Oh, I see. How . . . unexpected. Yes, really, that is . . . that is most unusual and rather remarkable. I suppose it must have come as something of a surprise to you too?”
“I’m a little freaked, yes.”
“Well, naturally, yes, of course, yes, you would be! But naturally. Yes . . .” His voice trailed off. “You know, Matthew, I am very rarely surprised by much I hear these days, and I must admit, in a spirit of frankness and free exchange, your phone call and this somewhat remarkable information concerning your current mythical status is undeniably different. Are you absolutely sure of all this?”
“Yes.”
“Including being the Midnight . . .”
“Yes. It makes a sickening sense. Mr Sinclair — I think I might need your help.”
“Well, naturally, anything for you, dear boy, naturally, naturally!”
“I’ve seen the face of the . . . the creature that killed Nair.”
“Creature? Not a man, then, a creature?”
“Yes.”
“And you say you saw him?”
“Yes.”
“Remarkable! Yes, that is a remarkable thing, I must admit, I was wondering how you might have . . .”
“There was a fox that saw the whole thing. We shared a kebab and a few reminiscences. Mr Sinclair — the creature that killed Nair didn’t even touch him. I’ve never seen anything like it. And we have no reason to believe that, if it killed Nair for being Mayor, then it won’t do exactly the same to us, and we don’t know if we can stop it.”
Silence, a long while. I have almost never known Sinclair to be silent.
“All right,” he said at last. “Let’s meet.”
Purpose.
Purpose meant reason.
Reason meant thought.
Thoughts meant . . .
. . . dead men not humans just meat dead meat on the slab dead Midnight Mayor ten thousand paper cuts not even touched dead meat lost of all faces and nature and just . . .
Stop it.
. . . dead ravens GIVE ME BACK MY HAT dead ravens broken stones shattered wards broken protections GIVE ME BACK MY HAT end of the line end of the line make me a shadow on the wall no smell no smell just killed him dead meat and the fox hid no smell end of the line end of the line I am Midnight Mayor Midnight Mayor dead on a slab kill an idea kill an idea kill a city kill a city idea ward protection something coming make me a shadow . . .
We didn’t like thoughts.
We tried to muffle them in our walking.
Walking meant rhythm.
Fleet Street. Pinstriped trousers, perfect silk suits, swished-back hair, black leather briefcases. Lawyers and bankers, the common, rich men of the city. Did these men smell? Hard to tell in the exhaust from the buses, the coffee from the open doors, cakes and the smell of yeast from the expensive bakeries, perfect drenched cleanliness from the cafés, stiff cleaning powders from the dry-cleaners. Did their hearts beat, did they breathe, did their throats draw in and out inside the collar of their shirts? To look was to stop walking too fast, to walk slow was to think, to walk slow was to be noticed, and who knew who would be watching? And we saw endless blotchy anonymous faces blurred into pinkish-grey passing shadows moving in and out of the streetlamp glows, sharp polished leather shoes snapping on the paving stones, white shirts and crisp ties, and what colour had the tie of Nair’s killer been? We couldn’t remember, it had been smell and terror and sense and blood. Ten thousand little deaths all at once, every one stinging sharper than the finest razor on the flesh, all at once, ten thousand little deaths from a face . . . just a face in a pinstripe suit. And it didn’t get much more pinstriped than Fleet Street.
This was my city.
Royal Courts of Justice. News crews, knobbly stone spikes and bright white lights. Aldwych. St Clement’s Church, ringing out “Oranges and Lemons” above the tree-shaded bus stops, the London School of Economics, all chips, ring-binders and scuttling shoes, a bank, the BBC, statues of big ladies holding burning torches, the Indian embassy, swastikas and curly lettering in stone — and did that kid over there in the hood have a face? Cafés and theatres. Bright lights that drove away shadow and imagination. Cheap sandwiches, packed bus stops. We could taste the magic on the air, bright, hot, red, like strong curry settling over our stomach, filling our veins, pushing us further forward, giving us courage. We couldn’t imagine these lights ever going out, no harm here, too many people, too much brightness, too much we could use.
Drury Lane, one show that had run for ever, one show that would die in a week, five different kinds of restaurant and one warehouse piled full of furniture that no one would ever sit on, and everyone would always admire. I went for the backstreets, wiggling round the back of Covent Garden, watching my back, running my fingers over the railings, round the streetlamps, over the walls, listening with much more than ears, staying smart. I did two whole circuits of Covent Garden before I finally chose to go inside, looping the loop round the back of St Paul’s Church, its yard shut up for the evening, round the cobbled street that threaded its quiet way south of Long Acre, back towards Bow Street, into the Royal Opera House. Glass, steel, marbled pillar and thick red carpet. I rode bright new escalators up past a glasshouse laden with candle-lit restaurant tables. In the bar I ordered a packet of peanuts, a big glass of orange juice and rights to the darkest, tightest corner there was. It cost the price of a small dowry, but we were not in the mood to complain. There we sat and watched.
Theatre-goers in London’s West End are unique unto themselves. Opera-goers are a step beyond. Women in big throat-clutcher necklaces, fat silver brooches pinned above their silk-clad breasts; jackets that looked like shawls, coats that wished they were cloaks left over from some forgotten era when the top hat was still sexy, handbags on gold chains, fine-rimmed spectacles balanced on the end of
ski-slope noses. For the men, suit and tie was still the norm, but even here they’d raised the bar. Walking penguins complete with silk handkerchief from a waistcoat pocket bustled against 100 per cent tartan sleeves, who in turn shuffled round with murmurs of “excuse me, excuse me, yes, thank you, excuse me” in suits of sweetcorn yellow and navy blue, to suggest that while they were dressed up for the evening, it was a casual thing that had cost great time and expense in becoming so.
Very few people stood out from this silken medley; I feared I was one of them. There were also an American couple, all big bum bags and open necks; a cluster of Japanese tourists who nodded and bobbed at everything they saw; and a pair of students whose big hair and carefully slashed jeans cried out “arty type”. Whoever had said in the guidebooks that the bum bag was a sensible device against theft had lied; no single item of dressware ever invented cried out “mug me” more than a pouch of zip-up plastic suspended by your groin.
I huddled deeper into the shadows of my corner. There was magic here, expectation, secrets, trickery, illusion, they were the business of the place and that I could use. People were more willing to sink into a spell, more willing not to notice, and both these things could keep me safe. I wrapped myself in the stuff, dragged thick blankets of shadow over me, spun distraction and expectation into the air and let every eye that glanced across my corner see nothing more than a shape in a shadow and then forget and move on to more important things. I drank my orange juice and ate my peanuts: opera house special, coated in spices and roasted in a Mediterranean sun.
Dudley Sinclair arrived three minutes before the curtain went up. He wore full evening dress complete with semi-cloak draped off his great round shoulders; his paunch was warping within the straitjacket waistcoat he’d somehow welded around himself. He wasn’t alone. I recognised Charlie, his usual companion, PA, secretary, assistant, whatever. I smelt Charlie, even in the bustle of the room: the rolling treacle smell of shapeshifters who’d spent too much time as a rat.
They didn’t bother to look for me, and I didn’t bother to introduce myself. I sat and watched and waited, looking to see if they’d brought anyone else. If they had, “anyone” was doing a good job of blending in. The bell rang as a final warning, the crowds sloshed through the open doors to the auditorium. Sinclair went with them, Charlie remained by the door. I waited until he was the last person there; then since he was, and since I was, he saw me.
He gestured impatiently. I finished my drink and walked towards him; he handed me a ticket. “Paranoid,” he snapped.
“Stabbed and burnt,” I explained, gesturing vaguely at my battered skin.
Charlie merely grunted.
Sinclair had got a box. We felt instantly uncomfortable, locked away in a little upholstered cabin with this great fat man and his friend. I had always imagined that when the revolution began and the guillotine went up, people who had their own private boxes at the opera would be the first for the chop.
I sat uneasily in my chair, shuffling it closer to the wall, wanting to get my back against something more solid. Sinclair said, “Matthew! So glad you could make it! Do you like opera?”
“Not sure,” I mumbled. “Never seen any.”
“Well then, this will be an experience. A chance to enlighten the uninitiated. Champagne?”
There was a picnic hamper set on a small folding table in front of us. We began to understand the point of boxes after all. I said, “I’d better not drink,” as we took a sandwich. We never say no to food. I’m always a little surprised to see our reflection looking so thin.
“You look tense.”
I shot him a sour look. “Lincoln was assassinated in a theatre.”
“But at least the assassin was caught, no? Matthew! You are in a dreadful way, aren’t you? You should relax a little. I’m sure all this business with the city being damned and you being responsible will be sorted out without too much fuss, and when it’s all over, you’ll look back and laugh and say, ‘thank goodness that’s over, what an anecdote for the pub’. Now sit back . . . and enjoy one of man’s greatest art forms.”
We tried our best.
Man’s greatest art form, if that’s what it was, involved a cast and chorus of approximately forty people dressed in anything from tight tights and a clinging top to Viennese ballgowns of the kind that required you to turn sideways to get through any door. We regretted that we understood so much of it. The music of itself seemed beautiful, even moving, but we couldn’t reconcile ourself to the lyrics, which much of the time seemed to revolve around bickering over who sent who what letter.
I did my best, letting the spell roll over me, trying to wash out all the thoughts of fear and confusion. We had always loved a good story, and I wanted, just for a moment, or a lot of very long moments, as the show turned out to be, to feel safe, and forget to think with words.
Sounds and music helped take the trembling away, helped hold us still, if only for a while. We let it. Sinclair had probably planned it that way. He was smart, when it came to things like that.
At the interval, gins and tonics were brought to the door by a soft-footed man to whom Sinclair tipped a fiver. Charlie gave me a glass. I said, “I’m on painkillers, I’d better not.”
“Never mind,” replied Sinclair merrily, and before we could object he had taken the glass back from us and handed it without a glance to Charlie. Charlie downed it in one, like it was vodka.
The second half didn’t do much to resolve the crises of the first, but seemed to forget about them and carry on in its own strange way with a new story, involving a fool and a priest. All things were eventually sorted, courtesy of two stabbings and a bout of consumption that, for all it killed the woman who sang about it, didn’t seem to get in the way of her vocal control. At the end of each good bit, the audience stood and went as wild as an operatic audience could. We leant on the edge of the box, chin rested on our hands, and watched, fascinated. We had never before encountered the full bizarre, hypnotising strangeness of opera, never imagined it would be so bright and big and loud, and just so much so.
When it was done, the audience cheered and the cast bowed for a brief eternity.
Sinclair clapped nicely and didn’t cheer.
“Rather crude,” he muttered. “Not the finest work.”
Charlie just smiled. It was the smile of a man who’d sat through more opera than the eardrums could take, losing the ability to hear all frequencies in the soprano range, but not missing them one bit.
We drifted out into the departing crowd. It was lateish, that odd hour of the night when it’s justifiable to go to bed, but somehow it’s not honourable. Covent Garden was yellow washes of light and buzzing arcades, open doors and clattering chairs, tinkling music and strumming buskers; still alive, still heaving, despite the biting cold and settling fog, visible as a haze over the streetlamps.
“You won’t say no to a little supper, will you?” said Sinclair, as Charlie carefully wrapped another layer of coat around his boss.
“Supper would be good.”
“Excellent! I know a little place . . .”
The little place was a restaurant tucked into the tight dark streets between Covent Garden and the Strand, where long ago Dickens had feared every shadow, and thieves had lurked in alleyways now filled with hissing vents and rotting chips. It was the kind of restaurant that you could only go to if you knew about it. There was no menu on the door, no sign above, no indication in the brown-stained windows that, within this plain black door that could have been any stagehands’ exit, here was a place to eat. The sense of unease, which the music had largely suppressed, returned to us.
Inside the door, taking Sinclair’s coat and hanging it up behind great red curtains, was a man in a top hat and white gloves. We stared at him in amazement. He looked at us with barely hidden distaste and said, “May I take your coat, sir?”
I shook my head numbly. “I’d rather keep it.”
“Of course, sir.”
There
were a pair of escalators, clad in bronze. One started as we approached, then carried us up a narrow stairwell lined with mirrors, also in bronze, that projected our warped faces at us to infinity. At the top of the stair was more red curtain, swished back by more white gloves, and an interior of dim lighting, copper and bronze, everywhere everything glimmering with twisted faded reflection. I was relieved to see other diners at the tables, and hear the low burble of good-mannered, wine-fed gossip. We were led to a circular table in the middle of the room, with three chairs already in place. We weren’t given a menu; I guessed it was bad manners to ask.
“It’s a very modern style,” offered Sinclair to my look of bewilderment. “The chef here likes to experiment with some interesting ideas . . . not really my thing, of course, but interesting, nonetheless. An experience.”
He knew us well.
I smiled, nudging a piece of cutlery in front of me that looked like it had escaped from an eye surgeon’s trolley.
“So,” said Sinclair calmly, “you’re the Midnight Mayor.”
“Yup.”
“And how is that working out for you, Matthew?”
“Not too well.”
“No, no, of course, no. It is of course none of my business and I wouldn’t want to give the wrong impression, naturally, naturally, but as a friend I can’t help but notice that you look a little pale.”
“Yes.”
“May I, in fact, make a great leap of judgement, and forgive me if I go astray here, but were you not, indeed, not planning on becoming the Midnight Mayor? It doesn’t seem like the kind of career path you would choose.”
“I didn’t,” I snapped. “The phone rang and I answered and next thing I know, whack. Some arsehole has gone transferring titles down the telephone line and I’ve got a hand like a boiled beetroot and four angry spectres after me.”
“Spectres?”
“Four of them.”
“How unfortunate. I take it the encounter didn’t end too badly?”
“I got one in a beer bottle,” I replied. “The others scarpered. At the time I thought they were sent by the same person who attacked me down the telephone. But now I think about it . . . they weren’t sent to attack me, they were out looking for the Midnight Mayor. Drawn to it. You can’t have that kind of transference of power without some sort of hitch.”
