by Tom Pollock
He’d tell you all of this, and it would be true, for him, because he remembered it. He’d built the glass buildings in his mind. And it was a long time before he could tell the difference between these fantasies and the older, deeper truths they reflected.
Once, when I was a lot older and I’d all but forgotten all those almost-memories I’d imagined, I thought I was finally about to meet Mater Viae for real.
I was in an alley in the Old Kent Road, and a dustbin fell over and a stray cat darted out and for no reason I can now fathom I thought, It’s Fleet. I was certain that any minute now cats would spill from the shadows in a purring, hissing, flea-bitten flood. And then I’ll see her, and then I’ll finally know…
But the letters on the street sign stayed the same, no matter how hard I stared at them, and although I waited until long after the lone furball found some tiny, scrabbling morsel to chase, no other cats followed it. A fox did, and a drug dealer who didn’t see me, and a couple of his customers who were too high to care who watched while they screwed against the wall, but no more cats.
And you know what? More than anything else, I felt relieved — because all my fantasies, all those almost — memories, they were safe.
That’s worth something.
CHAPTER 32
‘Do you think you could at least admit you have no idea what you’re doing?’ Ezekiel asks. He doesn’t make the effort to change his overface’s expression, but although the stone mouth is still singing a hosanna, I can see the disdainful curl of his lip beneath.
‘I’m quite serious,’ he repeats, ‘because if you persist in pretending you know how to lead an army while handing out idiotic instructions, I’m going to have to tell my boys their Goddess’ child is an imbecile. It’d be a blow to morale, but I’d take that over the risk of any of them actually listening to you.’
We’re on the Embankment, on the north side of Chelsea Bridge. Ezekiel’s got himself a plinth on the corner outside the Royal Hospital Gardens. The graceless bulk of the old Victorian infirmary looms over us; it’s under heavy repair and I watch the scaffolding surrounding its brick skin nervously, but nothing moves. It’s probably normal, lifeless steel, but all scaff makes me nervous these days.
Calm down, Filius, I urge myself, trying to give Ezekiel my full attention. ‘What’s so stupid about the idea?’ I ask in what I think is a very reasonable tone.
‘That’s a stupid question.’
My remaining patience hisses out in one exasperated breath. ‘Look,’ I snap, ‘we have to find a way to keep the element of surprise, and when you’ve got a hundred tons of ambulant bloody rock on the move, that is easier said than done. All I suggested was since we have to march at night because of the Lampfolk, you stoneskins should make like empty statues: you all shuffle up from one plinth to the next until we get where we’re going and Reach’ll be none the wiser.’
I’m actually quite proud of the idea, but I can almost hear Ezekiel’s eyebrows grazing the inside of his punishment skin as they climb his face.
The tone of his voice could wither lichen. ‘First of all, we are Pavement Priests. We are the honour guard of the Street Goddess; we do not skulk and we do not sneak and we most certainly do not shuffle.
‘Second, do you have any notion of how hard it is to move a punishment skin? That’s why they’re called punishment skins, Highness. If you want us to have any energy left to fight with, we need to go by the most direct route possible, not “shuffle” from plinth to plinth, zigzagging across the city until we can’t even lift our own limbs.
‘And thirdly, you did not “just suggest” it, you said it in front of my men, who are both soldiers and clerics: they take a “suggestion” like that from a deity — which, sadly for all of us, is what you are — as an order. An order which in effect means they are to kill themselves by the most exhausting and humiliating means possible — oh, and incidentally, to hand almost certain victory to the enemy.
‘I had to tell them you were joking, so now they think the son of their Goddess has a sick sense of humour, but that’s better than them realising that he’s either a gibbering idiot or, very possibly, insane.’
‘Look, mate-’ I start, but he cuts me off scornfully.
‘I am not your mate. I am either your mother’s obedient servant, and therefore bound, reluctantly, to serve you too, or else I am the man who will put his limestone gauntlet through your chops for being the annoying little maggot who’s interfering in the running of my order. Either way, mate doesn’t really cover it.’
I’m this close to chinning him — if he thinks he can take me, I’m more than happy to educate him. ‘Fine,’ I hiss, ‘but why are you suddenly so hostile? Gutterglass said you agreed that I could lead ’em with you-’
Ezekiel freezes. Being a statue, he was pretty still anyway, and now he’s even stiller. And that, take it from me, is pretty bloody scarily still.
‘That’s one way to put it.’ He spits the words out between clenched teeth.
‘Oh? And what’s another way?’
‘Another way would be to say that Gutterglass raised it. I laughed at it. Then I realised he was serious and I argued for two solid hours, at the end of which he threatened to give my body back to the Chemical Synod and to ensure that I spend my next incarnation inside an abstract sculpture with holes in all the most uncomfortable places. At which point, yes, I suppose you could say I “agreed” you could lead them with me.’
‘Oh.’ I had been proud of that, too, imagining myself fierce at the head of a battalion of stone warriors. Now I can feel that pride swan-diving towards my bowels.
‘Gutterglass wants you visible.’ Disgust sours the stone angel’s voice. ‘He wants us reminded who we’re fighting for. Frankly I think a stuffed cat and a scarecrow would be a better symbol for Our Lady’s terrible beauty than you, but sadly, you’re what we have.’
A creaking of stone drowns out any attempt at self-justification. His vast grey wings extend either side of him, cloaking me in shadow. ‘If she wants to us to be inspired, then she should come and inspire us herself.’ I can hear the bitter complaint in his voice. ‘I need real advantages, not symbolic ones. I need Fleet’s war party, I need the Great Fire, the only weapon our foe has ever really feared.’ He exhales wearily. ‘And I need a rest. We’re going into battle against the Crane King, for Thames’ sake ‘I need a God. And instead I have you.’ He shakes his heavy stone head and flaps laboriously away.
CHAPTER 33
An army was gathering in Battersea Park. Streetlamps flickered beside the river and white light rippled along the road to Chelsea Bridge as bright spirits filled empty bulbs. The Blankleits flexed their fields and chattered in excited flashes. A few had fused together peaked caps from glass, semblances of military uniform and now they threw each other badly executed salutes. The Russian in the ragged coat leaned against a lamppost and drank, shaking his head at their enthusiasm.
Gutterglass had been busy too. Foxes and feral dogs yipped and barked and play-fought on the grass. They’d bounded with canine obedience after the Pylon Spiders who’d come by their bins, interrupting their scavenging with stories of a hunt to be joined. Deep in the park’s wooded thickets, far from the white lamps of the shore, glowing amber figures practised their war-waltzes, building their charges with slow turns. Shockwaves uprooted trees and twisted the fallen leaves into whirling vortices. All one hundred and eleven Sodiumite families were called, and most came, but of Electra and her sisters there was no word. Rumour fluttered through the ranks that Filius Viae was biting his blackened nails at their absence.
Pavement Priests moved through the throng, giving benediction in the name of the Lady of the Streets. Their steps were painstakingly slow; they were hoarding their energy for the battles to come.
And, sitting on park a bench, facing the Thames, Beth was pouring the prince of this little war party a cup of good, strong tea.
‘These’ — he sprayed crumbs over the half-empty packet of HobNobs rest
ing on his lap — ‘are amazing.’
‘You should try the chocolate ones.’ Beth said. ‘They’ll blow you away.’
‘There are chocolate ones?’ he said in an awestruck voice.
She laughed. ‘You have much to learn, Grasshopper.’
‘Grasshopper?’
‘It’s a kind of insect.’
‘I know what a grasshopper is, Beth, I just don’t know why you’d call me one. I’m at least two legs short for one thing, and I can’t jump like they do, I mean, I wish but-’
‘Fil, it’s just a-’ Beth interrupted, but the odds against him being familiar with Kung-Fu were astronomical. She sighed. ‘Never mind.’
Steam whistled from the kettle and she smiled her thanks to the Blankleit whose lap was heating it (she couldn’t pronounce his name, so she’d nicknamed him ‘Steve’). She poured water into the two chipped Mr Men mugs she’d dug out of a skip. She counted to ninety in her head, fished out the teabags, added milk and handed one to Fil.
Who stared at it.
‘What am I supposed to do with that?’
‘You drink it.’
He squinted at the liquid suspiciously, and then took a large gulp.
Beth smiled and sipped her tea while Fil doubled up coughing and spluttering. ‘ Ow,’ he wheezed hoarsely.
‘Hot?’
‘It’s scalding! People actually drink this? Voluntarily? That’s barbaric.’
‘We usually let it cool down a bit first.’ She reached across and lifted a HobNob from the packet on his lap. ‘So what you’re saying,’ she said, returning to their previous conversation, ‘is that we’re totally boned.’ She made sure that her face was turned away from Steve so he couldn’t read her lips.
‘I didn’t say that at all,’ he protested. ‘It’s simple: all we have to do is get this little lot’ — he jerked a thumb at the variegated horde in the park behind him — ‘across that bridge, east into the City to Blackfriars. Get ’em formed up and then march on St Paul’s without ol’ Rubbleface noticing it.’
‘Yeah,’ Beth dunked her HobNob, ‘but the Whities and the Amberglows will be trying to rip each other’s throats out as soon as they get within a hundred yards of each other. I can’t imagine that will attract any attention. And the Pavement Priests are determined to charge on Reach with flags waving and a bloody fanfare. And I have no idea how to control the dogs. Remind me what happens if Reach’s forces catch us in the open?’
Fil raised his tea cautiously back to his mouth, darting furtive glances at Beth to check that he was doing it right.
‘They pull us apart like an overfull binbag,’ he replied. ‘Probably.’
‘Oh, so we’re only probably totally boned.’
‘Exactly.’
There was a long silence.
Neither of them had mentioned the kiss. That moment on Canary Wharf was stranded in time, like a lonely shout that needs to be taken up before its echoes fade, or be forgotten.
Be careful of that kiss, Beth cautioned herself harshly. They were at war. She thought of her dad, frozen in grief at his kitchen table. How could you ever let yourself love someone — yes, she let herself think the word love — when they might not survive the night?
Fil was engrossed in a one-sided staring contest with the last remaining HobNob.
‘It all seemed such a good idea at the time,’ he said. ‘Simple: meet a girl, round up a ragtag army, carry out an all-out assault on a skyscraper God.’ He gazed at the biscuit. ‘Discover HobNobs.’
Meet a girl. Beth stared carefully ahead and said nothing.
‘Fair point,’ he said into the silence, ‘put like that it sounds like a really terrible idea. But it’s at least half your fault. I was all for scarpering. I’d’ve been out of here faster than a sewer rat down a pipe. It was you got me to stay.’
Beth’s smile was tight-lipped. ‘That’s me, a siren call to self-destruction.’
He gazed out over the water for a while, and then, later enough that it was almost a non sequitur, he said, ‘I’m glad, though. Glad I did stay.’
Beth looked at him. ‘Even if it was a terrible idea?’
‘Even if.’
Beth studied the paving between her feet as though following the cracks might show her the branching of her possible futures. She splashed the dregs of her tea onto them and stood up. ‘Fil,’ she said, ‘a word?’
She mouthed goodbye to the Blankleit and led Fil through the treeline, under the cover of the massive beeches. Fallen leaves crunched under her feet. Finally, she turned to face him. Her heart was clamping up hard in her chest, but she saw he already knew what she was going to say.
His expression was neither wounded nor indifferent, both of which she’d feared. Instead, his grey eyes were intent. ‘This is about last night?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You think it was a mistake.’
Beth swallowed a boulder of empty air. ‘Yeah.’
‘You think — what? It’ll distract us? It’s too risky?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You think we should just be friends?’
‘Yeah.’
He stepped in close to her. The frost-cloud of his breath washed over her face. ‘You wanna do it again?’
‘Yeah…’
There was supposed to be a but somewhere on the end of that, but somehow Beth never got it out, because his lips with their rough pavement grain were already against hers, and she was tasting the heat of his tongue. Their hands rose, and they held each other’s heads as though the kiss were a promise they were holding each other to: a promise simply to be there, a promise to survive.
But they couldn’t keep that promise, could they?
Beth wound her fingers into Fil’s hair and pulled him back, hard, and he came away from her, gasping. She looked at him, r eally looked, into his wide eyes, and saw him for the trap that he was. His voice sounded in her memory: Reach is going to kill me. It was like standing above some unimaginable precipice, her toes curling over the edge. This was too much of a risk. An image flashed into her head, a floor littered with photographs. Now was the time to stop. Little detonations were filling her veins. The blood in her ears was artillery-loud. Now was the time to back away. Her head was ringing.
Now.
They fell in an awkward tangle of limbs into the chill leaves, their hands hovering uncertainly on one another’s bodies. For a fraction of a second Beth thought she wouldn’t have the nerve. Then she pushed her fingers inside his clothes and as her hoodie rode up she felt the shocking heat of his palms pressed up against her bare skin. Then he was tugging at her T-shirt and she was pushing it off over her head. And it was happening, it was happening so fast, and she was going to let it happen No, she thought, no, she was going to make it happen. She pushed into him and kissed him, determined to be bold, guiding his hands to her bra.
Unfortunately he struggled a bit with that, and she broke away after a few moments. ‘Christ’s sake, Fil, it’s a bra, not a Rubik’s cube.’
‘A what?’
‘A puzzle-’
‘Puzzle? You mean like a test? I have to pass an exam for this?’
‘It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard,’ she laughed. ‘Here, let me.’ She unhooked it and then hesitated, suddenly aware of him looking at her in a way that made her shiver all over. She’d never simultaneously wanted and not wanted something anything so much as for him to look away…
Okay. In her head it sounded more like a prayer than a decision. Okay.
‘Take your jeans off, then,’ she said as she wriggled out of her own. Nerves made her voice haughty and she winced inwardly, but he didn’t seem to mind.
He didn’t look away, of course, and neither did Beth as he stripped. She studied the play of his muscles under the skin intently, and the sharp lines of his hips. It would have been rude not to.
They stepped towards each other tentatively, like new dance partners. Beth blushed as they each put cautious hands on the other’s hips, and
she saw his face colour too. They broke into enormous, jaw-straining grins.
‘Wow,’ he said.
A sound came through the trees: a commotion, blowing the silence apart. She could hear shouting, and the crackle of branches broken by running feet. From overhead came the thud of churning air, stirred by heavy stone wings.
Fil dropped to a crouch, pulling Beth down with him. For a moment Beth was certain they’d been busted, and a burning tide of embarrassment went through her, halted abruptly by the chill realisation that it was much more likely they were under attack. She cocked her head, probing with her newly sharpened senses, listening for the enemy.
And then she heard Ezekiel’s voice over the beat of his wings, pealing out again and again with evangelical joy: ‘It’s the Cats! Filius, come quickly, it’s Fleet! The Cats are here!’
Fil stopped rooting through the undergrowth for his clothes long enough to turn to Beth with a sheepish little shrug, but she cut him off before he spoke.
‘Later,’ she said, vibrating with a mix of relief and aching disappointment and a kind of anticipation that made her knees feel like untied knots. ‘I know.’
Four lithe feline shapes threaded their way over the grass, following the indirect and mysterious paths that cats always do. Pavement Priests and Lampfolk and Masonry Men all stood back in awe as the four-footed legends slid through their ranks, imperiously swishing their tails.
Names were whispered, passing through the ragtag army like a breeze through rushes, names from never-quite-forgotten stories:
