The figures of Dante, Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, gather at the memorial. The assembled poets, artists and scientists create a testament to achievement that must impress anyone who sees it, even beings from other worlds, no matter how advanced the culture they hail from. Pink granite and red granite were brought from Scotland for the pillars and the pedestal; gray granite from Ireland for four pillars made from single stones each weighing 17 tons; Portland stone for the arches of the canopy and semi precious stones in the mosaic.
‘I must find him,’ thinks Sheila, walking around the memorial to study the statues of the four continents. She remembers an old skipping song she and her friends used to sing in primary school:
North, South, East, West
Find the boy that I like best.
The Albert Memorial, 175 ft tall, is stunningly, goldenly, symmetrically beautiful. Golden stars shine in a blue mosaic canopy above where Albert sits, one knee raised, a programme for the Great Exhibition in his hand. Golden angels are above him, the monument topped with a golden cross. The marble frieze of poets, scientists and other notables is below him. One hundred and sixty nine figures crowd the monument in all. The marble figures at the four corners of the monument depicting the four continents shine brilliantly white. Albert himself is newly dipped in gold following the recent £10 million restoration project. ‘For a life devoted to the public good’ reads part of the inscription in the canopy above him.
If a monument were to be built to commemorate Roy’s life, what would it say? Is it possible to define your life with great works, for example as the prime mover behind the Great Exhibition, as Albert was? The Crystal Palace that housed the exhibition, visited by six million people, was built in Hyde Park in just six months using more than 290,000 panes of glass. Can a person expect redemption through one great act or is it necessary to live well all your life?
Prince Albert was forty-two when he died, probably from typhoid. Roy’s age. It is uncanny, Roy and Sheila and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert all being the same age. It is like being thrown together with another couple in a queue for Wimbledon or waiting to see Princess Diana’s funeral procession and discovering they have so much in common. If they had met at a caravan park in north Wales during two weeks in August they would say, ‘We must keep in touch,’ but the contact has been made through a historical monument, across a time span of over a hundred years. It is more than a chance encounter. It is another message. The tinfoil is working. Roy Travers has disappeared from Brixton but his life is not over yet. Sheila may be forty-two but she feels as young and vigorous as she did on her twenty-first birthday. She will get Roy back if she has to fight for the rest of her life to set him free.
Sheila turns around from the Albert Memorial to face the Royal Albert Hall. She makes a little sound, ‘Oh,’ at the familiar sight of the enormous oval red brick building, with its glass domed ceiling. She sees clearly as she never has before that it is modelled on the shape of a space ship. ‘You see, Sheila?’ members of the group ask her. It is a beautiful moment for all of them.
‘This hall was erected for the advancement of the Arts and Sciences and Works of Industry of all Nations’ proclaims the inscription running around the Royal Albert Hall. Albert bought the site with proceeds from the £186,000 profit he made from the Great Exhibition in 1851. Even with the predicted crash in house prices, that sum is unlikely to buy more than a one-bedroom second floor flat in Clapham these days. Even the Victorians had some delay in raising the funds to build on the site. The foundation stone was laid by Queen Victoria in 1867 and the Hall was finished in 1871, when it was inaugurated by the Bishop of London and the unfortunate echo was first noticed.
It is raining again. The rain is running down Sheila’s sleeve and soaking her blouse. As the near relative of someone who has been captured by aliens, Sheila enjoys an elevated status among the encounter group. Nevertheless, there has been some jealousy over Sheila’s tinfoil ear caps. One or two of the members have taken to wearing tinfoil to meetings, although they are cagey about whether or not this has heightened their sensitivity to messages from extraterrestrials.
The boy who wears Adidas insists on sharing Sheila’s umbrella as he hasn’t brought one of his own, but there isn’t enough room for the two of them to shelter under it. He is wearing a home-made tinfoil skull cap under a woollen Quicksilver beanie hat popular with snowboarders and other adventurous yet fashionable young people.
Rosy draws Sheila aside to talk about dolphins again. This time there is a greater note of anxiety in her voice. ‘Did you read today’s papers?’ she asks Sheila. ‘A dozen dolphins were washed up from the Pacific Ocean with small puncture holes in their skin, as if something had been implanted in them and then detonated. The reporter says they had been trained to detect mines as part of a French military experiment and then blown up when the experiment concluded.’
‘Really? That’s horrible.’
‘It’s nonsense. It’s obvious they were assassinated by the CIA because they had been making contact with extra terrestrials. You mustn’t waste any time in getting to the Kent coast to make your picture, Sheila, before the dolphins there meet a similar fate.’
As Sheila engages in a polite tugging match over the umbrella with the Adidas boy, she looks up and sees a bright ellipse-shaped light in the sky. The edge of the umbrella moves where it is pulled, providing greater shelter for her companion, and blocking out Sheila’s view of the light in the sky. By the time she pulls the umbrella back again and looks up, the light has gone, hidden behind a cloud. The few seconds’ sight of the space ship are enough. It is another sign. Sheila makes up her mind to go to the coast within the next few days.
Chapter Thirty-Seven ~ The Smallest Room
Jane telephones Harvey from ‘the smallest room in her house’ as her mother used to call it. It is neat and tidy, decorated in dark blue with a marine motif. Jane’s bathroom has none of the range of feminine hygiene products showily displayed by other women of her age in their homes. Jane simply has no need to let visitors know that she menstruates. Her moods usually advertise the progress of her monthly cycles adequately enough.
‘Can you come to Westminster with me tomorrow to do some filming? Jeremy needs to get up to the top of Big Ben to see how to stop it and I want to get some pictures.’
‘Why does he want to stop it?’
‘It’s part of a protest, he wants to turn back time.’
‘Like Tina Turner?’
‘No, like Cher. He wants to go up there tomorrow to see whether we need any specialist equipment on the big day,’
‘Like blow torches, you mean? Or a spanner? Is there a spanner big enough to unscrew the nuts and bolts that hold the hands on the clock faces?
‘I mean harnesses, specialist equipment for the performance. He hopes that if three of them hang off each end of the minute hands at the same time they can jam the mechanism.’
‘I heard they balance the mechanism with old pennies. In fact I think I saw it on Blue Peter once. If you just collect all the old pennies in the land and wait for the ones they use to wear out then it will go haywire eventually. It would be rather sweet, like collecting all the needles so Sleeping Beauty wouldn’t prick herself.’
‘There would be a national appeal for old pennies funded by the Sun newspaper and broadcast on Crimewatch and someone would find a store of them under a pensioner’s bed. Anyway hiding pennies and waiting for something to go wrong isn’t very visual. I want you to come with me to see whether you can film from Parliament Square or whether we need to get inside the car park in the House of Commons and set up the camera on St Stephen’s Green.’
‘Is that the bit of grass where politicians are interviewed for the evening news?’
‘Yes. The police won’t let us in to the grounds unless we have a valid reason to be there. I might be able to swing an invite with my press pass, although I wouldn’t want Jeremy’s antics linked back to me, it might destroy my career. It would help if we knew
an MP. Do you know any of the gay ones, Harvs?’
‘Because I’m gay, do you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘It’s got to look great and I have to be sure we can capture everything on camera. It’s a full moon tomorrow night and the weather forecast is fine for a change so we should have a clear view. The whole group is going to attempt the protest at the next full moon so we’ll have four weeks to iron out any problems but on the night itself we won’t have much time for fancy camera work. While Jeremy’s on his own up there tomorrow I’d like to try and get some shots we can cut into the film we shoot next month. I want him silhouetted in black as he passes across the clock face, flying like Peter Pan.’
‘I went to see one of those yogic fdielying gurus at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday. I didn’t go in because it was too crowded but I got talking to a very interesting woman outside, all patchouli oil, hair extensions and henna tattoos. I told her about naming things and she said that my search for the truth is external and that instead I should look inside myself.’
‘Nonsense, you are looking inside yourself for the answers, that’s just the problem. You’re afraid of everything because there has never been any one thing that you have had to worry about. You need to find something, some cause that can test your limits and you need to fight for it to take your focus outside yourself.’
‘This isn’t a Foreign Legion thing, is it? I don’t think you can join the military over twenty-six and I never got further than O-level French.’
‘Don’t be flippant, Harvey. That’s what comes of taking advice from hippies. I doubt she could even find her way to the service station to buy chocolate to cure the munchies, let alone signpost the way towards the Great Truth for you. What do you really care about? If you don’t know, then find something. Your whole life should be an act of defiance, then you wouldn’t be afraid.’
‘So it doesn’t matter about naming things? Are you saying I’ve been going down the wrong track and I should live life as some kind of performance art? Do you live like that?’’
‘No, but I don’t have to. I was reading about it in Waterstone’s the other day while Philippe was buying some artsy film book. We all have different roles and we have to identify and accept them. All that cave man hunter-gather thing is bollocks. We’re civilized now. This is Cool Britannia. We’re starting the new renaissance and we have to learn from the models of old renaissance societies. Find what you’re good at, or what you want to be good at. It doesn’t really matter, so long as you do it for the greater good. For example, I should be a poet and you should be a knight. There were some other roles I think, like the princess in the tower and the evil witch, the monk and the wandering jester, but I didn’t read about them because they didn’t sound very relevant so we’ll have to make do with the poet and the knight. The poet is the chronicler, the knight is the crusader. I’m OK because I earn my living by writing but you’ve never had a fight in your life.’
‘Are you saying that I needn’t have embarked on this long search to confront my fears, I could have just browsed through a self-help book in a book shop?’
‘Yes.’
‘I should live valiantly?’
‘Yes.’
‘Damn.’
Chapter Thirty-Eight ~ Big Ben
Alison has been too preoccupied with the postman’s dog and the baby to photograph Harvey’s new advert. Before committing to be involved in tonight’s filming, Harvey has persuaded Jane to follow him around south and west London with his stills camera. Jane has taken Harvey’s photograph from several angles in front of the giant hoardings in Vauxhall, Hammersmith and Clapham Common that bear the latest car advert with Harvey’s strapline: ‘To Die For.’
When they get to Westminster that night, Jane and Harvey set up their camera on the grass on the Parliament Square roundabout, just next to the statue of Churchill looking uncomfortable in an overcoat and listing slightly to his right. Jeremy is already there. He is wearing peacock blue and Seville-orange Lycra, trimmed with velvet and accessorized with matching tights.
‘You look like a harlequin Hamlet,’ Jane tells him, checking her watch. It is midnight. Even though there is a full moon tonight, the opulence of his outfit would be lost in the darkness if it weren’t for the bright lights Jane has borrowed from Philippe to illuminate Jeremy’s ascent of the clock tower.
He straps a belt around his waist. Each of twelve pockets sewn into the belt contains a dummy hand grenade.
‘No,’ says Jane, stepping forward to unbuckle the belt and remove it. ‘You look like you’re wearing one of those flotation devices that toddlers use when they’re learning to swim. Ready, Harv? Action.’
‘I’m going to stop the traffic,’ says Jeremy, direct to the camera lens, a little loudly because he is wearing ear plugs against the sound of the bells.
‘Oh my God,’ says Harvey, his voice very small, his face unseen behind the camera.
‘If anything happens to me, if I get arrested or die in the attempt, will you take this locket and find Sylvia? I want you to tell her she’s wrong. She mustn’t fight against the circus.’
Jane pokes Harvey with a biro under the ribs to make sure he’s still filming. She puts out her hand and takes Sylvia’s address that Jeremy is holding, written on a folded piece of paper, and she takes the locket. It is small enough to lie in the palm of her hand, in the hollow bordered by the deep creases that form her heart line and her life line.
When the bells have finished chiming midnight, Jeremy starts to climb to the top of Big Ben, dragging ropes and harnesses with him so he can fix them on the tower. This is a job usually undertaken by rigging experts. Jeremy is a performer.
By twenty past midnight he has reached the spire. By a quarter to one he has fixed the apparatus.
‘Come on,’ says Jane, jiggling about on the spot like a little girl needing to use the toilet.
Jeremy grasps the end of a thick rope, two inches in diameter and sealed with wax at its end. He tugs at the rope to engage the pulley system, then jumps into nothing so he can make a quick descent to reach the first set of clock hands, flying more like Errol Flynn than Peter Pan. The pulley fails to engage and he falls ten or fifteen feet very fast then stops. He hangs awkwardly for a few seconds as if the rope is caught or he has managed to catch hold of something to stop his fall. Then he falls again, reaching the ground very quickly, landing near the mini traffic lights by the car search area in front of the Houses of Parliament.
Jane and Harvey run across the road into Bridge Street and peer through the railings. It is plain to see Jeremy is dead, lying pale and smashed on the ground like a hard-boiled egg taken from a schoolboy’s pocket. It is a few minutes before one o’clock.
Harvey is still filming. Jane turns to do a piece to camera, white-faced and shocked. She pauses, unable to find the right words. ‘Oh my God,’ she says. With her silver-ringed right hand, she covers her mouth and the whole lower half of her face, from nose to chin.
Harvey and Jane talk all night. Jeremy’s death is very shocking to them, even for two such sophisticated city-dwellers. When they talk about things that trouble them, usually, it is in the hope of rationalising their feelings and even achieving some kind of a consensus that they can live with. This approach doesn’t seem to be working tonight.
‘I had started to feel that it was within my power to make Jeremy happy or not happy,’ Jane tells Harvey. ‘Do you think that means I was in love with him?’
‘Maybe he was in love with you, which is even worse, because you end up feeling responsible for someone if they are in love with you.’
‘Well, you know, I’d been wondering what was going on because I’ve never been in love before. I didn’t even wonder about whether he was in love with me. I knew he loved Sylvia. He mentioned Sylvia a few times.’
‘Did I tell you he rang me up once, ages ago? All this time you were talking about Jeremy and sex and birdsong and climbing Big Ben
and I didn’t realize that he was the one who called me up about stopping the traffic. I’d often wondered what he was like and what he was doing. I never thought he’d be like that. I never thought I’d watch him die.’
‘Who would ever think that?’
‘Do you think that if I’d managed to make some kind of connection with him then, things would have turned out differently?’
‘Harvey, don’t.’
‘Do you think that he jumped?’
‘Don’t.
‘Do you think that it would be better if he’d jumped, and he was trying to do one wild, brave thing and he threw his life away for it? Or would it be better if he’d slipped?’
‘I don’t think anything. I feel numb. I suppose we have to go and tell Sylvia.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine ~ Philippe Starck
‘I don’t know if I belong here,’ Roy tells Sylvia. His muscles ache from his recent preparations for the high wire.
‘If you let go of your past life it will be easier, Roy,’ Sylvia tells him. She says the words that give her comfort sometimes. ‘Only believe.’
‘I usually plan my wedding when I’m alone on long journeys,’ Alison tells Sheila. Sitting next to Alison in the front of the car, her limp red hair a few points brighter than Alison’s in nature’s color spectrum, Sheila could be a close relative rather than a client. She has left behind the tinfoil ear muffs that she habitually wears and looks the part of a respectable, ordinary woman on an outing.
‘I didn’t know you were getting married.’ Sheila rallies at this piece of good news from her friend.
‘I’m not. That’s why it passes the time so well – I can linger over every lavish detail because there’s no need to ground the planning in any kind of reality. I don’t think I’ll ever get married again.’
Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries Page 77
