The Dulwich Horror & Others

by David Hambling

  Paul did not resist as the Blackshirt slipped off the armband with its red circle and white lightning bolt and slipped it over Paul’s shoulder.

  “Bit big for you, eh?” said the Blackshirt. “Don’t worry, you’ll soon grow into it. We need brave boys like you in the Union. Now, I’ll show you how to do a proper fascist salute.”

  The scarred man stood up and gave a proud, stiff-armed salute, barking “Heil Mosley!”

  He looked round the café in challenge. Nobody spoke. He should have been ridiculous, but his energy and passion were magnetic. I began to see how the appeal of the movement worked: next to rows of smart uniforms, disciplined power, and virile strength, mere intellectual arguments seemed feeble and pointless. He was a dangerous man.

  “Can you do that?” he asked Paul.

  The whole room held its breath. Webster held up a hand, but Paul stood and threw up his arm in a childish imitation of the salute, piping his “Heil Mosley!”

  “Very good, young man,” said the scarred Blackshirt. “When I’m Viceroy of India, you can be in my guard of honour.” He looked up to face the room, one hand placed protectively on Paul’s shoulder. “It’s in the blood. Even the youngest of this great race of ours instinctively recognises leadership and discipline—not spineless upper-class weaklings who are in hock to the Jew, but strong men who can lead us forward into the future. I’m not afraid to stand up and speak for what I believe in, and one day you will all join us, because you’re British.”

  Not a single voice spoke up against him. He held the room in his hand; satisfied that nobody would challenge him, he sat down.

  “I’m not having this,” Webster said quietly. “My son isn’t your—”

  He was interrupted by the waitress, who had decided to act on her own account.

  “You had better leave now, sir,” she said firmly to the Blackshirt. “This place isn’t a lecture hall, you know. There’re rules about that.”

  The Blackshirt gave a condescending smile, nodded, and casually moved to take his armband back from Paul, but the boy clung on to it stubbornly.

  “Here now, come on,” he said, looking from Paul to his father, “that’s mine.”

  “You can whistle for it,” said Webster pleasantly, sensing that the moment of crisis was approaching. He was an athletic sort at oxford. He stood up and towered over the Blackshirt, casually taking hold of the heavy Knickerbocker Glory glass in one hand, ready to use it as a weapon.

  The Blackshirt’s eyes narrowed fractionally, and I saw Webster had made an error. The smaller man had the look of a well-built and well-trained fighting machine. There were white scars on those knuckles. He would not back down, and if it came to trading punches, he would keep hitting. The two men glared at each other and the tension rose until Paul piped up.

  “You’re William Joyce.”

  The man with the scarred face looked round at the sound of his name. Vanity is the universal sin of politicians, and any recognition flatters them. His name was familiar even to me. Joyce was a big fish, Mosley’s right-hand man in the Fascist party. No wonder he didn’t want to get in trouble with the police here.

  “Yes, I am,” he said warmly, changing his ground with a politician’s suppleness. “And as you’re an admirer, you can keep the armband as a gift from me. Be proud when you wear it, boy. Tell your friends William Joyce himself gave it you.”

  Webster was about to object when a louder voice spoke up.

  “Now clear orf aht before ’e takes your bleedin’ shirt too!” a man called from the back of the room, and the whole café laughed. It was short, nervous laughter, but the tension dissolved.

  Joyce was satisfied with the outcome, and his young convert. The commotion had subsided outside; with a jerk of the head he ordered his colleague up. They strolled from the café together, almost swaggering. Even Joyce’s walk managed to suggest athletic power.

  A buzz of conversation started up before the door closed behind them. Paul was watching the Blackshirts go, but Webster had dismissed them and he was focussing on the task ahead.

  “What does Paul want to see the television studio for?” asked Webster.

  “He says they have a piece of equipment there that he can use. It’s just a matter of sending a special radio signal and he’ll be back to normal,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Paul affirmed, before his father could even put in a question.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Webster. “Just like that…all these weeks and you only wanted a radio set. It’s Logie Baird’s studio here is it, not the BBC? I’ll go and have a chat with Mr. Baird if he’s in.”

  “You can’t just—”

  “I know perfectly well what I can ‘just’, Blake,” said Webster. “You stay here with Paul.”

  II

  I ordered another tea, and lemonade for the boy.

  “Better take the armband off,” I said. “People will think you’re strange. Now where were we—prehistoric races seventy million years ago? And that’s how you know so much about dinosaurs.”

  “There is a sort of zoo in my city,” he said. “They don’t walk down the street, you know.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Must have been quite a city. What happened to it?”

  “We all left it,” he said. “There was a war with another race—the others— so we went away through time. To an era far in the future from now.”

  “By thought energy transference,” I said. “Of course. A mass migration through time. You didn’t fancy our era, however, even though it’s a bit closer.”

  “The others,” he said with a shudder. “They are still here. When they swarm …”

  This fantasy of Paul’s was getting more complicated. I could believe a single alien life form occupying a human mind; but fleets of them cruising up and down millions of years, swerving to dodge this other alien race who were apparently still here, was too much of a stretch. Still, delusions need not be plausible. I was still wondering what might have been behind his whole psychosis, what sort of event might have triggered it.

  Perhaps he had heard talk of the possibility of another war. Baldwin’s chilling prediction that “the bomber will always get through” was a commonplace, and every pub know-all predicted the destruction of London. Perhaps a young boy might seek to escape from the fiery Armageddon with dreams of time-travel to the age of dinosaurs. And if the boy had fled, who was it in his place? He must be one of the dinosaurs’ intelligent neighbours, so he had to act accordingly.

  His finger was tracing a swastika on the pamphlet Webster had picked up.

  “The fascists have some interesting ideas,” I said as bait. “Very bold thinking.”

  “They are very advanced,” said Paul. “They understand the need to exterminate other races, the need for control. At home our bodies are like beautiful pine cones ten feet tall. We are graceful and quiet. Our world is very simple, but grand. Our cities are like music made into stone. Everything is well ordered. All is all clean and hygienic. Everything is perfect. Not like here. But the others are resurging in that time, and we will have to leave.”

  “Who are these others?” I asked.

  Paul gave another shudder so violent it seemed to be the precursor to a fit, but it passed in a moment.

  “They are horrible,” he said. “Dreadful…things. We do not talk about them.”

  It was something like a phobic reaction, or like the deep taboo certain tribes have about mentioning certain subjects. Like a Victorian matron asked to talk about human reproduction, he could not face the subject.

  “This is all very complicated,” I said, changing tack. “So you will migrate to the far future, to another different race?”

  “Yes, the race that comes afterwards. After humans and others become extinct in a final war.” He said this with definite satisfaction. The end of the others was a real source of pleasure.

  “They do say that cockroaches are the toughest creatures in the world,” I said jauntily, ignoring the matt
er of human extinction. “They outlived the dinosaurs and made it through the ice ages. Cockroaches can survive poison gas, germ warfare—even cosmic rays and radiological warfare. Will it be super-evolved cockroaches?”

  His eyes widened. It seemed I had hit the mark. His fantasy did seem to follow along reasonably scientific lines, which was unusual. It reminded me of a piece of science fiction by Olaf Stapleton about highly evolved men from the future mentally projecting themselves back in time…but this was far more peculiar.

  “What ho, Blake!” said Webster, putting his hat on the table and looking pleased with himself. Now that he had a way forward, he was a changed man. “I hope you still want to visit the television studio. It’s all organised for this afternoon when they shut up at five.”

  “That’s wonderful,” I said.

  “Lord no,” said Webster. “It’s a mere bagatelle, old man. I’ve opened bigger doors than that. ‘Nihil tam munitum quod non expugnari pecunia possit,’ as they say.”

  “‘Nothing is so well fortified that it can’t be stormed with money,’” I translated slowly. “Cicero?”

  “William the Latin teacher! Old George gave me a silver watch with that engraved, that’s how I know it…” Webster trailed off, perhaps realising the faux pas of mentioning our mutual friend George and reminding me of his ghastly fate. “Anyway, since Mr. John Logie Baird’s company is in a fine state—didn’t you know?—he jumped at the chance to impress a new investor. A man will arrange everything when they shut up shop at five.” Webster beamed about him. “In the meantime I suggest we enjoy whatever the Palace has to offer, and then see about a spot of lunch. What d’you say, young Paul?”

  We walked up to the terrace, and I smiled to see how Paul stood and surveyed the whole huge expanse of the great Crystal Palace. Many people say it’s just an overgrown greenhouse, but it has overgrown into a thing of such colossal majesty, all eighteen hundred glazed feet of it, that it impresses everyone. Paul might have seen some great architecture in his visions of the Cretaceous, but I daresay that the Crystal Palace could stand proud among them.

  Of course the Palace had seen much better days. The maintenance costs were impossible, and it had barely made a profit since the War. The fountains and gardens were too run-down to awe the visitor, and the days of lavish spectacle were long gone. The only exceptions were Brock’s fireworks displays, which still pulled in the crowds, and you never saw a more fabulous show of pyrotechnics than the ones at the Palace. But by day it had a slightly grubby, dilapidated air about it. Close up you could see how filthy the panes were from the grime and smoke of London. Regular cleaning was out of the question.

  We strolled down the arcades lined with palm trees and stopped to watch the roller-skaters.

  I showed them the clock, and the crystal fountain, and the immense Handel organ with its ninety-two pipes, the largest of them stretching to the ceiling, with thousands of raised banks of seating around it, all empty. There were a few stalls selling snacks and handicrafts, various souvenirs of the palace, but as it was a weekday most of them were shut up.

  We stopped for a while at the slot machines, and Webster gave his son a fistful of pennies to spend. He was surprisingly adept at rolling a coin at a target, or guiding it through an obstacle course with a steering wheel. Paul managed to win his coin back again and again.

  “That is very unusual, isn’t it?” Webster asked in an undertone as we watched Paul playing Big Game Hunt. The tin elephants and lions flopped down one by one. A bell rang at the end, and his coin was returned. “He was normal before.”

  Paul stopped at the Gipsy Fortune Teller, a plaster bust swathed in scarf and jewellery under a glass bell jar. Her smile was sinister rather than welcoming. At the front of the machine was a hand-shaped brass plate on which you were supposed to place your palm to be read. Paul stood in front of it, reading the sign but without comprehending.

  “It tells your future,” said Webster. “Want a go?”

  “No,” said Paul firmly.

  “It’s just a chance thing, “ I said. “There’s no actual mechanism to it; it just chooses fortunes at random. Here.”

  I put a coin in the slot. Four bulbs flashed feebly for a minute while the Gipsy head turned and nodded, and a slip of printed paper was ejected.

  “‘I Tell Your Fortune: If you play with fire you may get your fingers burned!’” I read. On the other side there was a Bible quiz question—a sop, perhaps, to those who thought fortune-telling was unchristian. “Do you know who was cast into a fiery furnace?”

  Paul looked at me uncomprehending.

  “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, of course,” I said. “Book of Daniel.”

  I was reminded for some reason of my friend Daniel. Daniel who had died in a fire nine years ago. Daniel who had not survived the fiery furnace. Daniel who had his fingers burned in an inexplicable fire.

  “It’s just random,” I repeated.

  Paul stopped for a minute longer, scrutinising the machine minutely as though there might be some secret hidden in the folds of the plaster gipsy.

  “Random events are not always random,” Paul muttered, turning away to a sort of mechanical shove ha’penny with spring-loaded flippers.

  Afterwards we ate lunch at the Crystal Palace Grill Room, an outlandish piece of Victorian extravagance. It was all deep carpets, red plush, and tables festooned with silver cutlery and white linen. It was expensive for my tastes, but to Webster it was clearly nothing special. They served a very decent roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and roast potatoes, with a gravy boat generous enough to smother the lot.

  “Those Blackshirts are fools,” said Webster. “They think this country is besieged by a conspiracy of Jewish bankers in league with the Bolsheviks. Hah! Half the men I do business with are Jewish, and they don’t care for Bolshevism any more than any other millionaires. Ridiculous.”

  “I tend to agree.”

  “They have a lot of superstitious tommy-rot instead of political theory,” said Webster. “Ancestral Aryan race gibberish about runes and old gods and sacred caves. It might wash in Germany, but it won’t wash here.”

  “They’re quite popular right now,” I said.

  “Yes—for all their stupidity, they’re more dangerous than you might suspect,” Webster said, suddenly serious. “I don’t expect you’re following this business about the king? No, they’ve kept it out of the newspapers here, but the American magazines are full of it. Our monarch has taken a shine to an American divorcée called Wallis, would you believe. And that means we are about to have a constitutional crisis.”

  “Does it really matter whom he marries?” This was the first I had heard of the affair, and I did not appreciate its significance.

  “Of course it does,” said Webster. “One of two things will happen. Either Baldwin will force the king to abdicate, or the king will dissolve Parliament and ask someone else to form his government. And our fascist friend Mosely is tipped to be his man; the king is very taken with fascism.”

  “A coup, in Britain? Surely not,” I objected. “And that bully-boy as Viceroy of India?”

  “The king is popular, Mosely is popular,” said Webster. “If they can take the people along with them—you know, put on a lot of jolly Royalist flag-waving and patriotism—it’ll be a fait accompli. The Army won’t stop them. Look at Italy and Germany.”

  “William Joyce could be leader,” said Paul slowly. “He has the right brain. He can sense things other people can’t. He will be a great war leader.” Paul’s voice dropped to a murmur and he seemed to be looking at something far away, listening to chanting crowds. “Strike first. Strike hard. None must survive.”

  “Those fascist pamphlets talk a lot about an ‘inevitable’ war with Russia,” Webster told him. “But it’s all bosh, Paul.”

  “Were you talking about a war against Russia?” I asked, and Paul shook his head.

  “Not a war against Germany,” said Webster dismissively. “And especially not if Mo
sely and his crew get in charge—they’d side with Hitler. Anyway, we’re watching things very closely. It’ll all break in the next few months, Blake, mark my words. And Paul, don’t let me see you wearing that armband or mentioning anything about fascism, especially in front of your mother. We have Jewish relatives, you know.”

  “Only the fascists are strong enough,” said Paul stubbornly.

  “Sometimes you have to lie politely,” I told him. “Have you ever thought, wouldn’t it be ghastly if you asked someone how they were, and they actually told you?”

  Webster laughed, but Paul gave me a queer look. In his world, his world of well-regulated cities, people did not lie. Deception, social or otherwise, was not part of their society. That would make it difficult for someone coming to our world, where we are all such practised liars, especially if they had to practice a deception while they were here.

  Social customs will always be the hardest part of trying to pass as a native. We scarcely notice them ourselves, like fish in water, but if you tried to live with Kalahari bushmen, or Borneo head-hunters, or Chinese rice farmers, you would be permanently wrong-footed. You encounter your brother-in-law: should you greet him with a bawdy joke, because not doing so would make you seem unmanly? Or must you avert your eyes until he recognises you, on pain of a grave breach of etiquette? Or must you offer some ritual blessing? Quick, quick, a second’s delay and your strangeness will be remarked on at once.

  Webster consulted his old-fashioned pocket watch.

  “We should make our way to Mr. Logie Baird’s studios shortly,” he announced, and waved to a waiter for the bill.

  The studios were in the Crystal Palace itself, opening on to the South Transept. We passed a trickle of engineers leaving, and it looked as if the place was being shut up, but a young man in a smart suit stepped out to greet us.

  “Mr. Webster, sir,” he said brightly, “I’m Roberts. Very pleased to meet you, sir. Mr. Logie Baird sends his very best compliments.”