Gog

by Andrew Sinclair

  As the Ten Thousand knew, there is only one thing to say when the sea is in sight after a long march. And that is, “The sea! The sea!” with ten thousand voices. So Gog says, “The sea! The sea!” with one voice. The sea lies in a long blue-black lip beneath the sky, tucked between the slope of Burton Down and the promontory of Selsey Bill. It is part of the mouth that encircles all Albion, the mouth that has tightened round Gog and expelled him to wander over the body of Albion from the north sea to the south sea. And now he has found again the slate salt lip that spat him onto his journey, he can hope that his tramping is over and his time of settling near.

  On Gog’s left a metal viper suddenly rears its head, soon becoming a small tower among the corn. Gog pushes through the wet grain and the indifferent ears on the corn-stalks that do not listen to the excited voice coming from the tower.

  “Flee from the wrath to come, pack your bag and baggage, this is my final warning, give me the airwaves and the B.B.C., I cannot hold back the holocaust in the Far East, and it shall come here . . .”

  Gog finds himself on the edge of a hidden dip; at its bottom the Bagman sits in his stolen jeep, broadcasting his final message to the British people. Gog expects to see the Bagman’s beard shorn just below the chin by the broadsword of Evans the Latin. But no, a hairy cataract falls from the Bagman’s chin as frothily as ever. Either he is a true saint and can grow new hair by the effort of prayer, or else his beard is as false as the rest of him.

  “Ye shall not hear me again, O ye of deaf ears, ye shall be not warned again by the inspired words of Wayland Merlin Blake Smith. Tremble, Magog, in your high throne beside Moloch and Mammon in the gilded dunghills of murdering London. Give me the transmitters now, now, now! I come to London now! If the servant of the Lord be not heard, he shall call down fire and brimstone, sulphur and treacle from heaven. What shall not be given to God and his minions with full heart shall be plucked away by fire and sword. I, Wayland Merlin Blake Smith, call out for the last time to give the last message of the Lord. Deny me at your peril!”

  As Gog watches, he sees khaki men with bayonets on their rifles rise up out of the corn in a ring. “Surrender, Bagman,” a fat officer calls. “You’re surrounded. You’re under arrest for illicit broadcasting from stolen War Department property.” Without replying, the Bagman switches on the jeep’s engine and ploughs off through the corn, swerving and jinking as the bayonets jab at his tyres. One sharp turn brings him roaring straight for Gog, who leaps for safety, is caught a bad blow on his bruised left shoulder, and is spun by some trick of ballistics into the open seat beside the driver. The Bagman immediately drops the wheel and lets the jeep bucket about at random, while he grabs a spanner in each hand to stove in Gog’s skull. But when he sees who his uninvited guest is, he drops the spanners and takes up the wheel just in time to stop running down the fat officer, before he junkets off down the hill, muttering, “It would be you. Gog, the sign of the end of the world.”

  No sooner on the main road to Chichester, then the chase is on. All the transport of the British army seems to be in hot pursuit, tanks, troop carriers, scout cars, lorries, spotter planes, prams. But the Bagman’s driving is as inspired as his words. One moment he’s in Petworth, the next in Pulborough, then back to Arundel and round the corner to Amberley. In an alley, down the dumps, up the creek, under a truck, over the wall, the Bagman tries them all. Everywhere about him, transport crashes. Tanks go into churches, spotter planes into telephone poles, lorries turn turtle, motor-cycles play ducks and drakes. And still the Bagman hots up the pace, while the vehicles charge him and veer at the last moment before his bonnet, piling up in bow-waves of scrap in the ditches on either side of the road. It’s the Keystone cops in rapidest motion, W. C. Fields taking a pregnant elephant to the hospital, must deliver the little jumbo, always faster, faster, faster, till the pictures flicker so quickly behind Gog’s terrified closed lids that the images blur and smear even more than the landscape rushing past the rampaging jeep. Gog cannot bear to keep his eyes open to see death missed by a fender twenty times a second, nor can he bear to keep his eyes closed, since the thrills and spills of his cinema memories are just as bad. In the end, Gog screws both fists into his face and holds them there, until he is jolted into vision by being ejected through the air and serenaded by the noise of a gargantuan crash.

  He lands groggy, but in one piece, on the grass outside Brighton Pavilion. A hole has been torn in one of its walls. Out of the hole, the traditional tyre on the traditional wheel comes rolling and falls at Gog’s feet, bearing what seems to be the Bagman’s last awful message, Goodyear. Gog hasn’t time to check on the survival of the infernal broadcaster, because the pursuers are jammed in the neighbouring streets and soldiers are piling out of their lorries and running in through the hole in the Pavilion and swarming over its minarets and cupolas and domes and turrets and curlicues and whirligigs and filigrees and all the mad baroque follies of the Prince Regent, who never said a wise word until his last ones, which suddenly float into Gog’s mind as the Bagman’s epitaph, “So this is death. My God, how they have deceived me!”

  But certain of the chasers in uniform are turning towards Gog to ask questions, so he’s lumbering off himself, pursued down the back streets and alleys of Brighton. He ducks into an angle of a wall and from there into a dark doorway, while the chase pads past. And after a short time he emerges to find no one on his trail. Or so he thinks, until the yelping of tracker dogs approaches him and then suddenly fades as if they are following a false scent.

  Gog finds himself facing a fence of tall boards covered in creo­sote, through which a fresh hole has just been splintered. He crawls through the hole to find himself on cinders in some sort of botched stadium. In front of a crowd of several thousands, six girls in white coats and bowler hats are parading six greyhounds, dressed in muzzles and coloured jackets. As Gog watches, a man in jodhpurs comes forward and shoves each dog brutally in turn into a row of traps with grids over their front. From these half-dozen joined and narrow cages, the hounds yelp piteously.

  Gog finds himself shaking with anger at this dog-baiting and he bullocks through the crowd to the barrier round the circular grass track of the stadium. A curious humming begins from a wire in a metal groove at Gog’s feet, as he vaults over the barrier. But he ignores it and runs over to the grids in front of the six traps and tries to wrench them off to let the greyhounds run free. The crowd roars and boos, cheers and whistles. A small swaying gobbet of fur mounted on the humming wire flicks past and all the grids simultaneously fly open in Gog’s face. And number one greyhound, Magnificent Misfit, is off down the rails, and number two’s well away, O’Toole’s Wonder, but number three and number four and number five all pile up on Gog’s shins, so he’s down in a jumble with Lollipop Luscious and Call Me Nightly and Gruesome Gertrude, with number six dog, Watch My Tail, swinging wide at the first bend as he lopes after the electric hare.

  Then the punters with their money on the three middle dogs are over the barrier and drubbing Gog unmercifully, but he’s up between their hands and away round the track himself, and the bookies are offering seven to four that he’s not round once before the greyhounds are round three times, but it’s no bet because there’s a welcome committee of stewards and judges and policemen and punters fingering lumps of true Brighton rock who are waiting for Gog on the last bend, so he’s back over the barrier and scrambling through the hole in the boards and off down the alleys and back lanes onto the evening solitary pebble beach. And Gog has learned his last hard lesson, that it doesn’t do to give a dog a chance, if he doesn’t want one.

  Gog walks down to the last suck of small stones at the fretting edge of the tide. He stands now on his strong legs at the rim of the mothering sea, from which he was retched forth by the pangs of the waves. The salt water is black and shot with twists of white, like a great cloak Maire may have worn to the opera of the deep. The wash of the sea licks Gog’s boots humbly, as though he had endured as much as the
white land of Albion in resisting all the storms and furies flung at him by the encompassing ocean. And Gog looks down at the tattooes on the backs of his hands. Between the square of the levered wheels and chained crowns on the back of his right hand, MAGOG. Between the square of the sheaves and sickles on the back of his left hand, GOG. It has been a long walk to find out little about the five blue letters of his enemy’s name and the three blue letters of his own name.

  Gog turns up the dark beach under the struts and amusements of the pier. And he comes upon a strayed sideshow set against the sea-wall under the boardwalk. The weariness of his escape and the dizziness of his drained body and empty stomach make him fall back against the painted canvas of the shut attraction. Dimly in the last light of day, he can see the life-size poster adorning the booth.

  ROSA – JOSEPHA

  See The Stupendous Siamese Twins!

  Joined Since Birth – And Before!!

  What God Hath Put Together,

  No Man DARES Put Asunder!!!

  The blue-and-orange poster shows a brace of thin girls with pouting lips, who are joined at the hip. They wear only a double sequined bodice and a single four-legged pair of brocade pants, from which their four bare legs project as if they were a beautiful stool supporting the immaculate curve of their arms. Gog racks his mind to find out why he seems to recognize the poster. But all he can know for certain is that it is the style of the Belle Epoque, as so many fairground signs are, advertising the attractions of long ago and showing the substitutes of the minute.

  But Rosa-Josepha is not dead. As Gog lies against the painted canvas, he hears two little voices whispering and answering in the same voice as if one girl were speaking to a gramophone record made by herself.

  “Ah, Rosa.”

  “Ah, Josepha.”

  “What times.”

  “What times.”

  “In the night.”

  “On the beach.”

  “Ah, Rosa.”

  “Ah, Josepha.”

  “A man.”

  “Yes, a man.”

  “But who shall he choose?”

  “But how shall we choose?”

  “If I have him . . .”

  “If I . . .”

  “You’ll be jealous.”

  “You will.”

  “If you have him . . .”

  “If you do . . .”

  “I’ll kill you.”

  “And you’ll die too.”

  The waves murmur their soft hubbub against the single voices.

  “If he has us both . . .”

  “Ah, both . . .”

  “Then we’ll both kill . . .”

  “Each other.”

  “Ah, Rosa.”

  “Ah, Josepha.”

  “A man.”

  “Yes, a man.”

  “In the night.”

  “On the beach.”

  And the single voices sound together as one strong voice.

  “For us.”

  And Gog sees them standing above him, silver and naked and joined at the hip, and they are taking off his clothes and they are caressing him with twenty long nails and they are brushing him with two pairs of lips and their four legs twine round his own legs and his waist. And he is rutting and ready and does not know which one to satisfy. And he kisses one and holds her little breasts in the great splay of his hands and the other climbs onto him and trembles and shivers and moans at his rising within her and his going down.

  And afterwards, as he lies with one of them cradled in each arm and their joined hips over his belly, Gog says, “Thank you, Rosa-Josepha.”

  “Thank Rosa.”

  “Thank Josepha.”

  “Her lips.”

  “Her belly.”

  “Her breasts.”

  “Her thighs.”

  “You don’t love me.”

  “Me.”

  “I’ll kill her.”

  “I’ll kill her.”

  “I love you both,” Gog says. “Rosa-Josepha.”

  “I’m Rosa.”

  “I’m Josepha.”

  “I’m one.”

  “So am I.”

  “Two hearts, not one.”

  “Two, not one.”

  “Choose,” demands Rosa-Josepha in a single voice.

  “Can’t we do it the other way round next time?” Gog asks. “Then you’ll both be satisfied in a different way.”

  The girls begin to weep and claw at Gog and he finds it hard to defend his eyes from the twenty nails at once. But at last, he locks their four arms in a tight embrace and says, “Rosa, I love you. Josepha, I love you. But I love you both in a different way, and I’ll have to make love to you both in a different way. I love one of you above the navel and one below . . .”

  “Who?” demands Rosa-Josepha in a single voice.

  “Rosa above and Josepha below,” Gog says at random.

  The girls both cry out with rage.

  “No, Rosa below.”

  “And Josepha above.”

  “I’m Rosa.”

  “I’m Josepha.”

  “Except when I’m Josepha . . .”

  “And I’m Rosa.”

  “You won’t ever know who is who . . .”

  “We’re so alike.”

  “No, no,” Gog vows. “I’ll know you. I’ll treat you always the same. Both differently.”

  “Her lips.”

  “Her belly.”

  “Her breasts.”

  “Her thighs.”

  And both girls break into passionate weeping and wriggle free from Gog and cling to one another and cry on each other’s shoulders and support each other, and Rosa or Josepha wipes away Josepha’s or Rosa’s tears with her hair, and Josepha or Rosa kisses the salt from Rosa’s or Josepha’s eyes.

  “A man.”

  “A man.”

  “Always the same.”

  “Always.”

  “Like the other one.”

  “I had him.”

  “I had him.”

  “Some of him.”

  “Some of him.”

  “Never a whole man.”

  “Never a whole one.”

  “But I love you, Rosa.”

  “I love you, Josepha.”

  And they both say in their strong single voice, “Then we shan’t need another man.”

  And they walk away, silver and naked and joined at the hip, over the pebbles of the beach. And Gog calls after them, “I love you, Rosa-Josepha. Tell me, who was the other man?” And their voices laugh together and answer together in one mocking sound, “Magnus, Magnus, Magnus . . .”

  Gog blinks by the painted canvas to find himself cold and alone. He does not know whether he has been awake or dreaming. There is not even the poster of Rosa-Josepha there; only the bare canvas. If the Siamese twins came to Gog, silver and naked and joined at the hip, they must have gone away with the poster rolled up between them, the poster of the Belle Epoque that Gog knows he has, either in the furnished room waiting for him in Maire’s house in London, or in the slowly filling room of his once-bare mind.

  On the promenade, Gog finds a fish-and-chip shop open, and he spends his last shillings to wad his hunger with grease and ground-tuber and sea-fruit. Then he moves north-east on the road to Canterbury. He passes the Georgian terraces of Brighton with their tall oblong windows and white regularity and good proportions that seem to have stolen the golden mean from the Greeks, as the Greeks once stole the golden fleece from Colchis. When Gog asks himself why the Regency terraces are so perfect, his answer is that everything in them is built in the shape of a man. The height of the houses, of the windows, of the doors, is exactly the height of a large man in ratio to his shoulders. The houses contain no squares nor circles nor horizontal oblongs to destroy the vertical spaces, into which a giant may fit from shoulder to shoulder, from crown to toe. Perhaps a man sees most beauty in the house which most follows his own ideal shape. Yes, the Regency terraces are like rows of pale soldiers standing in th
eir ranks. They are built for men to inhabit, and, since they are built like men, they seem the best to men to inhabit. Gog is content to find even the buildings representing his new-found harmony with his own kind. And he remembers that the other beautiful buildings he has seen, the great cathedrals of Durham and Winchester, the ruined abbeys of Rievaulx and Glastonbury, why they, too, are beautiful because they are based on the shape of a crucified man.

  So Gog leaves the south sea on his last night’s tramp, because he has nothing else to do and feels ready to reach London. And, indeed, he never gets to Canterbury on his way there, he never finishes the pilgrimage suggested to him by Maire. After several hours of slogging along the Sussex roads above Brighton, he sees a glow in a wood and turns off his almost sacred way, as though it were enough to feel a living man again and to renounce any spurious holy purpose.

  XXXII

  Gog follows the lights wavering between the bars of the trunks of the birch trees that stake the torches about like haphazard pickets. He dodges from trunk to trunk, concealing his approach. Soon, he is looking over a bush at the edge of a clearing, where a circle of people dances about a bonfire lit beneath an iron tripod. If this is an orgy of devil-worshippers, it is a godly one; for the dancers wear Sunday clothes of blue and strike up a chant suspiciously like a hymn to the tune of Rule Britannia.

  “Come, loud hosannas let us sing.

  By all the earth let praise be given.

  Praise God for giving us a King

  To make this earth resemble Heaven.

  Rule, King Shiloh! King Shiloh, rule alone,

  With glory crowned on David’s throne.”

  The dancers throw themselves on their knees as an old woman leaning on two blackthorn sticks hobbles out of the ring towards the fire. She stops by the flames and raises both sticks up towards the heavens. Trembling and shaking in her long robe of black, she calls to the sky for vengeance.

  “O Lord, who still keepest Joanna with Thee in a Trance and hath not yet given her back to us in Reawakening, who caught up her Son and Thy Son Shiloh unto Thee at His birth, grant that the Day of Their coming again may be soon, O Lord, and grant us a Sign, grant that the hearts of the black Bishops may be turned from their Wickedness and that they may open and examine Joanna’s Box, in which her True Prophecies have lain sealed for many generations, grant us this, O Lord, that London may not be consumed again in fire and brimstone by the anti-Christ. Amen.”