Strange Tide

by Christopher Fowler

  Knotting his favourite green scarf tightly around his neck and chin, Bryant crept off down the stairs and out into the street, keeping close to the wall just in case Raymond Land was looking out of his window. It was still raining, and London in the rain had its own scent. It was the smell of weeds and wet brickwork, and in the new Square Mile it was becoming rarer with each passing day. Glass and steel were odourless.

  A short walk from Tower Hill Station took him towards the banks of the Thames. Visitors were still milling about the new entrance to the Tower of London, tickets for which now included access to the Tower and the Crown Jewels, exhibitions and guided tours, historical re-enactments, activity trails and fish and chips. It’s only a matter of time before they add a roller-coaster, Bryant decided.

  He made his way down to the river’s edge, where the windswept stone concourse that presented itself did indeed display a ‘No Dogs’ sign. Anyone with a pet in the private apartments opposite would have to walk it farther along the embankment at night, so there was no point in searching among them for witnesses.

  The Thames did not possess the romantic outlook of the Danube or the Seine. There was a harshness about it that rankled in the nostrils and blossomed in the brown-green depths like a series of submerged thunderstorms. Bryant knew that if you fell into its central channel during an ebb tide there was little chance of your body ever being recovered. Mothers no longer allowed their children to play on the shoreline. Its reaches had a gloomy, melancholy aura on even the sunniest days. Ancient weathered posts, the gangrenous remains of the wharves that had bristled all along the shore, still rose up like dinosaur bones.

  Bryant considered the problem of access. To get her here, Dalladay’s attacker must have carried or walked her through some of the most heavily guarded and photographed streets in the city. If he drove in from the east he would have had to pass through the security checkpoints. From the west he would have been under the gaze of numerous CCTV banks, and once at the Thames he had the impossible problem of reaching the actual beach, so why take a risk when less than a mile down the road he would have found any number of secluded tidal spots?

  The river edge was a liminal space of dank corrosion, the exposed gut of the city, the source of its nourishment and the eliminator of its wastes. It seeped into the bones and spread malign thoughts. There was nothing kind or graceful about its unreflective surface, nothing but danger in its depths.

  He made his way down the side of the unadorned brick house that stood beyond the Tower of London gift shop and tried the spiked steel gate, noting that although the tall bars were new the lock itself was old and rusted solid. It had clearly not been opened in years. Not impossible to climb over though, if you were determined enough. But not carrying a dead weight. He was about to take his leave of the spot when he saw something move on the river.

  A wall of fog was approaching. Fascinated, he stopped to watch.

  It billowed over the water in great grey-green curls, obliterating the opposite bank within seconds. Filled with a terrible sense of foreboding, Bryant remained frozen. The noise of traffic faded away and the sound of lapping water assailed him. He remembered an ancient saying: ‘When the lions drink, London will drown.’

  The green bronze lion-heads held rings in their bared teeth and were set all along the Thames embankments as mooring points. It had long been thought that if the river rose above them it would flood the city’s great plain and London would be lost. Any passing policeman who couldn’t see the lions was to immediately report the fact so that the tube system could be shut down at once. The fog obscured them now.

  Glancing down, Bryant saw that his boots were wet with coalescing droplets. The fog was completely enveloping him. He turned around. The view had vanished in every direction. He sniffed the wet air and wrinkled his nose. He could smell fish-guts spilling from the gutters of Billingsgate Market, coal dust, leather and oil, horse dung, bad meat and rotted wood, and above all the river, unclean, unhealthy, dense and dark.

  The fog roiled and parted for a moment, revealing a forest of masts, tall chimneys belching black smoke and, in the distance, the sign of the White Lion Wharf. Mountainously overfilled lighters and barges were drawn up on the foreshore before Locket & Judkins, the coal merchants, its discoloured clapboard building poking out beside the ironmonger’s, whose sign advertised stove ranges and castings. These were separated by rickety planked wharves and surrounded by a dozen or so small cranes. Nosing through the black waters was a hay barge, a ‘stackie’, its cargo loaded to the reefed brown sails of its rigging. On the shore red-faced men in surtouts, paletots and brown waistcoats lolled about smoking clay pipes, waiting for the ‘calling foremen’ to arrive with their hire-books. The purl-men, who were licensed to sell wormwood-infused ale from their casks, rang their handbells and pushed their carts, attracting thirsty ballast-heavers and coal porters.

  Out in the deep channel a black-sided wooden battleship was silently gliding downriver, its rigging filled with capering sailors as it set off with its cargo of human suffering, convicts from the Fleet Prison bound for Australia.

  Digging at his scarf’s constricting coils, Bryant tore them away from his throat and took great gulping gasps of air that reeked of hides and horns, shit and sulphur, coal dust, cinnamon and nutmeg. He turned and saw the great tree of Queenhithe dock, which had survived from the ninth century to the late twentieth, and the great dark dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, by far the tallest building in the city. The thin November daylight shaded into dusk and darkness as time itself stretched and shrank.

  It was impossible, absurd – this was the pungent, chaotic Thames shoreline of the 1890s, not the bare antiseptic riverside of the twenty-first century. This is worse than being lost, he thought, I’m hallucinating. It’s ridiculous, I’m bringing to life a London I never knew. I could only have seen these images in my books.

  He jumped when he felt fingers tapping at his left shoulder.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’ The constable wore a high-waisted blue serge coat with a wooden truncheon fastened at his side. In his right gloved hand he held the strap of a wooden-cased lamp. ‘Not the safest spot for a gentleman at this time of night, if I might be so bold. There’s no public footpath to the river. Only thieves and swivers come down to the Pool after dark.’

  ‘I’d lost my way—’ Bryant turned about, confused, and looked back, hoping to see something familiar.

  The constable stroked the tip of his moustache, pondering. ‘Perhaps you was headed for the service at All Hallows tonight? I was listening to the choir meself just five minutes ago. This is a foul night to be out and no mistake.’

  ‘Why on earth are you talking like an extra from a BBC costume drama?’ Bryant asked irritably. ‘I’m half expecting Sherlock Holmes to come wandering around the corner.’

  ‘There’s no need to take that tone of voice, sir. I’m a constable of this parish. I does what I likes and I likes what I do.’

  ‘Now, I happen to know that’s one of Dick Van Dyke’s lines from Mary Poppins,’ said Bryant firmly. ‘You’ve overstepped the mark there. And what have you done with Tower Bridge?’ He pointed to where the bridge should have been and found only black water.

  ‘Either you’re a visitor to these parts or you know as well as I do that London Bridge is the last Thames crossing before open sea.’

  ‘But that would make the date earlier than 1894,’ said Bryant reasonably. ‘Getting lost is one thing, but if I’m going to be hurled back in time by over a century, I may have to think about self-medication.’

  The constable had clearly tired of the confused old gentleman and pointed ahead. ‘You should be able to get a hansom on Trinity Square, sir. There’s a rank there. I’d accompany you but I have to finish my rounds.’

  Bryant had an idea. He laid his hand on the constable’s arm, pointing to the small brick house, noting that it no longer had a modern steel gate standing beside it but a low wooden fence. ‘Before you go, could you tell me who l
ives there?’ he asked.

  ‘Why, only the watchman. That’s just the old gate lodge.’

  ‘Is it the only way to reach the shore?’

  ‘It used to be “for free and public use by all” as I believe they say,’ said the constable. ‘But that was before the pillagers took their toll along this stretch of the river. So now you has to go through old Barney the gatekeeper. There’s nothing for a gentleman such as yourself down there, though. The language that floats up to my ears on some nights, it’s a mite too salty for those of a refined temperament. At night these reaches belong to the bone-grubbers and pure-finders. They lead a wandering, unsettled sort of life.’

  ‘Pure-finding? What’s that?’ Bryant asked.

  The constable shook his head, sucking at his teeth. ‘Oh, a nasty, unclean business that is. They collect dog dung for the tanning yards. For the purifying of skins. They reckon they can always earn seven and six a week along this stretch, on account of there being so many tan-yards in Bermondsey, but to my mind there must be easier ways to get your crust. That’s the trouble here, sir. Where the water meets the city it’s a sort of no man’s land, unscrupled you might say. Always has been, always will be. Well, I must be on my rounds so let me bid you goodnight.’

  He gave a cheerful salute and faded into the fog, until just the soft yellow glow of his lantern remained.

  And then there was the noise of traffic once more, modern petrol-engine traffic, not the clatter of carthorses and hansoms, and the fog had gone and some Japanese tourists were waving selfie sticks in the direction of the Tower of London, and everything was normal again.

  Except that it wasn’t. It wasn’t normal at all. Everything was wrong.

  Bryant had expected a stately deterioration of the senses, gradual but consistent, a gentle dissipation into the netherworld of dementia, and instead there were these frightful lurches: first his periodic inability to recognize people and places, and now a time machine back to a history-book blur of fact and fantasy. He would have to see Dr Gillespie as soon as possible. In the meantime, it was imperative that he returned to the PCU before anyone else noticed he was missing.

  Flicking Dan’s GPS tracker back on, Bryant headed for the tube station. But when he took one last quick look back over his shoulder, checking that the present was still in place, he felt that he could almost overlay the scene he had just witnessed on the world that had replaced it. And the one might just inform the other.

  12

  SWORDS & SCIMITARS

  Cassie had never believed that Ali’s name was really Gordon Hendrick, not for a minute, but she went along with it to keep things smooth between them. They fitted together comfortably. As the months passed she came to think of him not as a foreigner but as a Londoner. He never spoke of his old life, just about his new one, and for all his talk about making a fortune he still seemed to believe that there was money to be made in magic. When he held his cards or his magic books in his hands, it was as if he was recalling some happy distant memory and trying to recapture it.

  Ali was smart; he picked up any subject he knew nothing about and quickly become proficient in it. He was a sponge, a chameleon, an opportunist, and he had come up with a new name for the act: the Great Hidini, which had been the name of one of Houdini’s rivals.

  In an old bookshop off the Edgware Road he had found a paperback condensation of Houdini’s notebooks, and it became his constant companion. Cassie wouldn’t allow him to attempt the more dangerous escapes, like the Chinese Water Torture Cell, the Damsel Sliced by Swords or anything that involved being suspended in a straitjacket, and besides, they didn’t have the money to purchase the paraphernalia for the tricks. Joining a professional group was out of the question as it would involve registration forms that Ali was reluctant to fill in, so they kept to variety acts that had elements of Houdini’s magic, touring the satellite commuter towns, being paid cash in hand, gradually working their way towards the centre.

  Ali quickly realized that Houdini had been a master of marketing as much as magic – he had once paid seven top-hatted men to sit in the street and expose their bald heads simultaneously, revealing the word ‘HOUDINI’ painted on their pates – but he knew the pair of them had to keep a low profile for now and continue quietly amassing money until he could at least afford to buy a passport with an undetectable provenance. He and Cassie were lovers by convenience, linked more by ambition than romance.

  Their next show was at Carpenters’ Hall in South London, a shabby concert venue that had been reclaimed as a community theatre. There was no orchestra pit, so shows had to make do with an onstage resident band which usually consisted of a piano and drums.

  Their days were long and hard: finding bookings and renting lodgings, travelling and practising, always practising. For now Cassie was happy enough to follow him and tried to avoid asking awkward questions. She was so undemanding and loyal that Ali suspected she was escaping a difficult past of her own.

  The Milk Can was the best escape Houdini ever invented. The props were simple to build from salvage but it was a tricky act to pull off. Ali created a metal cylinder out of scrap, and welded it into shape with tools borrowed from a used-car dealer. The trick, he knew, hinged on the audience’s fear of drowning, so he made Cassie describe the effects of such a death beforehand in great detail. He was working on his London accent but had trouble with Ts and certain vowel sounds, and still felt self-conscious when addressing audiences.

  After inviting a member of the public up onstage to inspect the can and find it escape-proof, Cassie topped it up with a garden hose and produced a pair of handcuffs. With his wrists locked together before him Ali climbed into the cylinder, displacing water everywhere, which only disturbed the audience more.

  Cassie seemed barely able to lift the steel cover, although it was actually made of aluminium and easy to handle, and bolted it into place, fastening it with a padlock. The first few times she had drawn a screen around the can before counting down, but now they had dispensed with that in order to heighten the drama of the trick.

  Its secret was simple and undetectable. Ali’s escape depended on the fact that the top of the can’s tapering section was not actually riveted to the lid. Once inside the milk can he could easily separate the two portions at the joint, and as the lid was much lighter than Cassie made it appear, escape was guaranteed. The churn sat on a wooden pallet to prove that there was no trapdoor beneath it (the public were obsessed with trapdoors, he had discovered, even though they were rarely used). When he climbed inside, he made sure that his body displaced enough water to provide a narrow breathing space at the top. They had performed the trick half a dozen times with great success. Then one night it went wrong.

  The house was never more than half-full but tonight it was particularly poor; snow had shut several railway stations and caused many of the older audience members to cancel their tickets.

  ‘We could shorten the slot tonight and skip the escape,’ Cassie suggested, tugging at the crimson and gold bugle-beaded panels of her assistant’s outfit. ‘I’ve been getting a lot of stick from front of house about the water spilling over on to the aisle carpet.’

  ‘No, we go on,’ Ali told her, his brown eyes shining with the anticipation of performance. ‘We have to give them value for money so they will tell their friends. How will we ever build a reputation otherwise?’

  She checked that his bow-tie was straight. ‘You do know that we’re never going to get rich doing this? We still owe money on the outfits.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘I’m working on something new. We’ll become famous because I’ll make it happen. We’re going to get the money and respect we deserve very soon now.’

  He moved around her, getting ready to go on, but she placed a hand on his chest. ‘I don’t understand you. Why are you in such a hurry all the time? London’s not going to disappear overnight. Why is it so important for you to make it big?’

  He shrugged off her hand. ‘You wouldn’t understa
nd. You’re already on the inside. People like me, we have to work harder to get in.’

  Two old ladies dressed in Pearly Queen outfits came off the stage, having just sang ‘The Lambeth Walk’. ‘They’re all yours, love,’ said one of them, ‘and bleedin’ good luck.’

  Ali and Cassie dragged the props onstage themselves because the centre couldn’t afford stage hands. After the usual card tricks and a mentalism feat performed with a borrowed phone, Ali moved on to producing bottles from empty tubes. The council had banned the use of animals in acts, so dragging a rabbit from a top hat was out of the question.

  Finally it was time for the Milk Can escape. Cassie finished filling the churn with tepid water and, amid wolf whistles from the old ladies in the front row, Ali tore open the Velcro strips on his suit to reveal sunbed-tanned musculature. As Cassie handcuffed him she described the dire consequences of the stunt going wrong. Ali climbed up and over the rim of the churn. As he made a display of lowering himself inside, Cassie turned to the audience and asked for silence. Ali began to work on removing the handcuffs even before she had locked the lid of the can in place.

  The cuffs came off easily. He could hold his breath for a minute and eighteen seconds, but never needed more than thirty seconds to effect his escape. The rest was just waiting until the last possible moment, feeling the tension ramp up in the audience.

  But tonight when he pushed at the lid nothing happened. He had very little leverage inside the cramped can, but it usually lifted with ease. Trying not to panic, he thought back through the preparations. He had heard Cassie making an effort of rolling, then lifting the lid. She had dropped it into place and hammered it down.

  That was it. She had hit one side harder than the other and jammed it. He punched at the lid with his fist but nothing happened. Pushing himself up into the air-space at the top of the can, he knew that if he panicked now he would start breathing too quickly and run out of air before he could be rescued. It was better to keep very still, conserving breath and energy. So he sat there with his unlocked wrists before him, imagining what it would be like to drown, as Ismael had drowned in the dark ocean off the coast of Lampedusa. He, Ali, had been spared for a higher purpose. He would face drowning a second time, and he would survive again.