“Yes, yes, quite, what? So you’re with Juinefere today.”
“I’m supporting her. Juinefere is in charge.”
Lord Gorge looked uncomfortable. “Strange kettle of fish, what, for a lady?”
“Not really. History pushes on. And Juinefere is the key to all this.”
“Yes, the good lady. But I’m not so sure now. My Cabinet–”
“Juinefere is at least–”
“I am here, gentlemen,” Juinefere said with some acidity.
Sheremy nodded. “The Prime Minister’s ear is at your beck.”
Without preamble Juinefere said, “Lord Gorge, I want today a draft declaration of independence for the East End.” She withdrew a parchment from her blouson, which Sheremy was amazed to see contained a map of the eastern reaches of London, a map she must have drawn herself, in secret. She continued, “This is my suggestion for where to put the borders. You can see I’ve included Whitechapel, Stepney, Wapping, Poplar, Limehouse and Bow within those borders. The new country would therefore have a good length of riverbank to use for imports and exports, over which it would of course exercise total control. The East End is to be ruled as a constitutional monarchy, but, unlike ours, there would be a written constitution. The eldest son or daughter would succeed to the Jellied Eel Throne however, a state of affairs we would insist upon in our negotiations should the Pearly King and Queen prefer inheritance through the male line only. Border controls would be entirely the affair of the East Enders, as would taxation. Cockneigh would be the official language.”
Sheremy took a deep breath. Lord Gorge took a deep breath.
Juinefere sipped her tea then continued, “Each country would have an embassy in the other, with ours, I venture to suggest, occupying the Cock’s Egg Building in Bow. Theirs could be in Mayfair. An ambassador would look after the vital interests of each country, and the usual diplomatic mores would be followed. The creation of a standing army would be the sole right of the East End, and all external influence over the creation and control of that army would be forbidden. Men and women of any background and race could join that army. The East End would have a parliament and an elected government, which would be voted in on a party basis, as is ours, every five years, or less depending upon circumstances. Free speech, free association and the right to a free joanna must all be in the written constitution, a state of affairs we would again have to insist upon in our negotiations.”
Juinefere paused. Took another sip of her tea.
“I think that is everything, Prime Minister.”
Lord Gorge sat, slack jawed, staring at her. Silence in the room. Then he said, “My dear lady, you simply can’t be serious, what?”
“I am perfectly serious. You must realise that this is a turning point in British history.”
“A turning point? Over my dead body, what?”
“That’s what we’re trying to avoid,” Juinefere pointed out.
Lord Gorge stood up and gestured at the door. “Out, both of you! This is madfoolery of the worst kind, what? You thought I would agree to this?”
For the first time, Juinefere’s aura of confidence seemed wan. She glanced at Sheremy, then turned to Lord Gorge and said, “You would not want me to tell the Pankhursts that.”
Sheremy winced.
“And now,” Lord Gorge thundered, “you threaten me? Out! Before I call for the Basher-at-Arms!”
Sheremy took Juinefere by the hand and led her out, hurrying into Downing Street with her at his side, whereupon the door to Number Ten slammed shut.
“Where did I go wrong?” she asked, turning to face him.
“You didn’t,” he replied. “He’s too dyed-in-the-wool to accept that London’s changing. Unless we can stop it, there will be war now between rich and poor.”
“But Sheremy, thousands will be killed, and London ruined.”
“I know, my dear, I know. And, just at this moment, I can’t think of anything we can do to stop that happening.”
~
Velvene landed the eagle on the roof of the Gordon Square flat and scrambled down, calling out as he did, “Sylfia! Wrocher! I have the pamphlet.”
Everybody sat in the common room, Sylfia standing up when he entered.
“I found Marx in the British Library and persuaded him to write us a pamphlet,” he continued. “He said I was an excellent ally to the working class, and he wished us luck.”
Sylfia, unimpressed, snatched the pamphlet from him. “I don’t believe a word of it,” she said. “What’s it about?”
“Well, it is a call to action, for the working class to support the Cockneigh Uprising.”
“This isn’t by Marx. It could have been written by anybody. He hasn’t even signed it.”
Velvene frowned, annoyed by her lack of faith. “Why would he sign a pamphlet, eh?” he replied. “But it is by him, and we can use it as we wish.”
Sylfia flung the pamphlet back at him. “It’s worth nothing,” she said.
Velvene gathered the papers from the floor. Now angered, he confronted Sylfia. “Why do you have to demean everything I do for this group?”
“Because, Velvene Orchardtide, you are a spy, an aristocratic spy sent here to ruin us.”
Velvene said nothing for a moment. “It is true that I am an Orchardtide,” he admitted with a shrug, “but I am banished from the family and will never again be one of them. I have put all my energies into the Marxist-Leninist Workers’ Movement Of London, you must see that by now–”
“You lie. That isn’t by Marx. You wrote it.”
Velvene did not know what to say. He had no proof, after all.
“You’re trying to take over my group, aren’t you?” said Sylfia.
“No I am not,” he retorted. “I am not interested in taking over the group. Why do you constantly accuse me of that, eh?”
Sylfia walked up to face him. “Because you don’t like a woman leading the group. Because you don’t approve of Diamony and Percivalia being here. Because you, Mr Aristocrat, don’t like women, you think they’re worthless and should be at home looking after the babies and making soft furnishings.”
“This is nonsense.”
“Are you married?”
“No, but–”
“Have you ever been married?”
“No I have not,” Velvene said, “but what has that to do with me struggling day after day for the Marxist-Leninist Workers’ Movement Of London, eh?”
Sylfia turned to address her colleagues. “I think my point has been made,” she declared.
But then Velvene, seeing the pained look on Percivalia’s face, said, “Am I right in thinking you proof-read Engels’ The Condition Of The Working Classes In England, Percivalia?”
She nodded. “Many years ago,” she said.
“And have you ever seen the handwriting of Karl Marx?”
“On quite a few occasions.”
“Then,” Velvene said, trying his best to keep the triumphalism from his voice, “you can tell me who wrote this.”
He handed her the pamphlet, which she read a few lines of. “It’s by Marx,” she said, handing it to Sylfia.
Sylfia seemed half astonished, half infuriated. At length she managed to say, “Then I suppose we’ll have to have a few hundred copies printed up.”
“Make that a few thousand,” Percivalia said. “Are we aiming for the heavens or muddy earth?”
“A thousand then,” Sylfia muttered.
Velvene nodded. “Thank you, Percivalia. We are indebted to your intellect and to your prowess in this group.”
“I’m still leader,” Sylfia insisted.
“Doubtless you are,” Velvene replied. “I suspect I shall always be the outsider. But you cannot now doubt my motives, eh? Here we have a Marx original, which we could use to support the Cockneigh Uprising. And there is something else I want to suggest–”
“Oh, really?” Sylfia said.
Velvene ignored her sarcasm. “We need foot soldiers. As many as p
ossible, young, old and middling. There is a factory on Pentonville Road where an innocent boy was incarcerated, along with hundreds of others. I want them released so that they may serve the cause. Who is with me for a raid, eh?”
At once Wrocher raised his hand. “We need as many freed workers as possible,” he said. “I know the place you mean, Velvene – the tall black building with high walls and small windows. Rotting brown doors and a workmaster with a sallow face.”
“That is the place,” Velvene said. “Those children may have nowhere to go, but the Cockneigh Uprising will have need of them. And then we shall release other workers – perhaps even the darkies of Grafton Place, though they rejected us last time.”
“How will you release all these workers?” Sylfia asked.
Velvene smiled. “Well, this is the cunning part,” he said. “During my war service in the south west of Outer London I learned the basics of making cordite, which uses petroleum compound, nitroglycerine and nitrocellulose, all substances that may easily be stolen. We shall make cordite into strings and use it to explode all the doors of any given factory. Then we shall call the workers to arms and lead them south to Old Father Thames, and the uprising.”
“A good plan,” Sylfia said, “but I’m making one alteration.”
“What would that be, eh?” Velvene asked.
“I’m coming with you, not Wrocher. You need to see what a woman can do.”
“I already know what a woman can do. I have seen you in action.”
“Then you’ll see me in action again,” Sylfia replied.
And so the plan was set. Velvene and Sylfia would work as a pair to blow open the Pentonville Road factory, at which point Diamony would enter, using her powers of oratory to persuade everyone to join the uprising. Percivalia and Wrocher would stay concealed nearby, carrying five hundred pamphlets each.
With the cordite manufactured, they set out one morning to Pentonville Road. Velvene felt a number of contradictory emotions pass through him as he viewed the place: anger that Tyko had been captured, fear of what might happen if the plan failed, excitement that the Marxist-Leninist Workers’ Movement Of London was at last rallying support to the cause.
Sylfia suggested a route and a method of laying the cordite that offered the least chance of them being noticed and caught. It was a good plan and Velvene, aware of her simmering resentment, agreed to it without issue. They set to work. The morning was quiet, the hair on Pentonville Road thick, and nobody challenged or even noticed them. With the cordite leads laid, all that remained was to link them up and set the charge.
Sylfia did this. The cordite exploded, blowing four doors off their hinges, but then, in direct opposition to the plan, she ran into the factory building. Velvene, not knowing what she was doing, followed, waving Diamony on.
Inside the building all was chaos. Two workmasters, including the sallow faced man who had captured Tyko, screamed at the children, cracking whips against the innocents’ flesh. Sylfia raised one arm into the air.
Velvene saw that she carried a pistol. She fired.
At once silence fell across the place.
She said, “Boys! Girls! Men and women. We have come to rescue you from tyranny. To the south, an uprising has begun that will topple both government and aristocracy–”
“Wait, wait!” the sallow faced man interrupted, cracking his whip against the floor. “’Oo the bleedin’ ’ell are you to smash our ’ouse?”
“You will be quiet and listen!” Sylfia retorted. “You’ve caused quite enough damage to these workers–”
The man cracked his whip once more. “I’ll bleedin’ ’ave you, I will!”
Sylfia lowered her pistol and fired twice, hitting the man in the chest. He fell, motionless. Then she turned the pistol on the other man and killed him too.
Velvene leaped forward and grabbed her arm, but she was strong and lithe, and managed to release herself from his grip.
“Do not kill anybody else!” Velvene cried. “There is no need for murder!”
By now hundreds of children and workers, shocked beyond measure, began running, streaming out of the factory, many of them screaming in panic.
“Stop, stop!” Diamony yelled. “You don’t know what to do! You don’t know where to go!”
A few of them stopped, but the majority fled.
Velvene rounded on Sylfia and shouted, “You fool! We have lost hundreds of soldiers now. What do you think you were doing, shooting men like that?”
Sylfia turned and pointed the gun at him. Velvene raised his hands. To Diamony she said, “Take the workers outside and tell them what next to do.”
A few minutes later only Sylfia and Velvene remained inside the factory.
Velvene said, “You are no better than Pertrand, shooting your way through your life with no regard for anybody.”
“I don’t care what you think. I’ve never trusted you, not from the moment poor Pertrand brought you to our place.”
“Well, what are you going to do with me, eh? Kill me because I am an inconvenience?”
Sylfia shook her head. “I’m going to give you two options. Stay in the Marxist-Leninist Workers’ Movement Of London and be shot, here, now. Or leave with your life and never come back.”
Velvene lowered his hands. “That is Hobson’s choice,” he said. He bowed, then added, “Farewell – and good luck.”
Sylfia scowled, gesturing to the nearest door with her pistol.
Velvene hurried away. Outside he came across Diamony orating to a hundred or so confused, scared workers. “Is Tyko here?” he asked her.
She shrugged.
To the workers he cried out, “Is Tyko Matchmaker here?”
A lone voice shouted, “’E’s gone off, guv. Down Gray’s Inn Road. Scared, ’e was. If you run, you’ll catch ’im.”
Velvene sighed. “Good luck Diamony,” he said.
~
Eastachia struggled to Kew Bridge Road before collapsing into a lock of brown hair, sobbing. The experience of arguing with Kornukope, of dealing with the hideous Bane and with escaping from the guard had exhausted her. She curled up, wept, then sat up and wondered what to do.
She did not feel like returning home. But where else to go?
Then she remembered where she was: Kew, south west of the city, with Southall, the spiritual home of the Indoo in London, hardly more than three miles away. Yes, that was a different kind of home, where nobody would find her, where she could fit in…
She wept again, appalled that circumstances had brought her to a position of rejecting decades spent happy and contented, for the most part, in Hampstead society. But what she felt, she felt strongly. Kornukope had treated her like an inferior, and she was not. She was his equal.
Then, thinking of him, she shuddered. The Shiva device, that she guessed to be an annihilator, was in the hands of buffoons and stiff-necked old men who would use it against the unarmed masses. What could she do?
She stood up. There was no point weeping here, it might attract scavengers; besides she was done crying. Her practical nature took over and she considered the best way of making a path through the hairy streets.
For a while she pushed on alone, struggling against thick clumps of matted black hair that choked Brentford High Street, before turning off into Boston Manor Road, but there she saw a remarkable sight. Ingenious locals were moving hither and thither on skis set with small wobbling balloons. Stopping a young man, she asked, “How do you travel so easily on those?”
“The balloons are full of shampoo,” he replied, “which lubricates the hair and the bottom of the ski. It’s harder work than walking, but it gets you about at a decent speed across the hair.”
“Could I buy a pair?”
He pointed to a shop just about to close for the evening. “Mrs Gudmundsdottir’s Ice And Related Emporium,” he said. “Hurry!”
Eastachia entered the shop, found coins in her handbag and purchased a pair of beginner skis, which she strapped on in the str
eet outside, filling the balloons with echinacea and camomile shampoo then attaching them to the application nozzles on the skis. Thus equipped, and standing upright, she was away, skiing in fine form across the hair.
Skiing, a journey that might have taken four or five hours took just one. As the sun dipped below the horizon and rain clouds drew in from the west she entered Southall Broadway and saw the Trimurti Temple at its western end, where it met the Grand Union Canal. She stopped, relaxed. She took off the skis and, on a whim, gave them to a young woman struggling with a heavy bag.
And she felt at home. But with no actual relations here – all her kin were in Moonbai – the only place she would find succour was the Trimurti Temple, so to that vast, multi-levelled building she walked.
Across the exterior of the temple she saw ten thousand statues; gold leaf covered the parapets and stanchions; cows chewed the cud outside and elephants pulled logs from the wood behind the temple, while on a hillock sat a wizened old guru who smiled at her as she passed.
Then she stood at the temple doors. A dozen people rushed past her on their own business, unaware, it seemed, of her presence. But then a voice said, “Welcome, daughter of Indoo. You have seen Lord Shiva recently?”
She jumped and turned around to see a young, black-haired Indoo woman, her ears and nose almost invisible behind gold rings, her sari crimson and silver, her sandals supple badger skin stitched with gold wire.
“Who are you?” she asked the woman. “How do you know me?”
“I am Vandana Patwardhan, and I do not know you. But I recognise the mark of Lord Shiva upon your forehead.”
“There isn’t a mark,” Eastachia said.
“There is in the sight of those who can see,” Vandana replied. “Come into the temple. I sense you need food, water and rest.”
Vandana led her into a cool chamber to the side of the entrance hall, in which stood ewers of water, oat biscuits and Punjabi puri. They sat on cushions made in the shape of elephants.
Vandana played with a floppy ear as she said, “I am a devotee of Lord Shiva, inducted into the aura mysteries. I saw you walking up the Broadway and hoped you would approach the temple. You have seen Lord Shiva recently, have you not?”
Hairy London Page 27
