Yet just as the fuse is about to blow the Houses of Parliament to hell and perdition, a Beefeater is knocked over by Evans the Latin and sits on the spurting fire and rises, yelling with fury. But his rump has extinguished the vengeance of the Celts and Evans the Latin is carted off to the Tower by the uniformed pack. As Gog plunges in to the rescue, he sees Magog in his lobster military disguise edging away through the vaults, trying to vanish once more. So Gog shouts, “I’ll be back, Evans the Latin, when I’ve put paid to Magog,” and he’s off in pursuit through the dark passages under the Palace of Westminster.
Through the narrowing vaults oozing slimy, stone petering out in gravel and packed clay, the passage thinning to a crack then to a burrow, Magog wriggling ahead and upwards like a slug or a worm. Follow him in the slippery blackness entombed in the gut of Westminster, after him into dank oblivion and claustrophobia, struggle upwards under his heels, work elbows and knees up the moist flue from the vaults, then suddenly a lid opens and lights pour down in a square and Magog’s out and squirming away. And it’s out, out for Gog blinking at the Gothic glory about him. He rests with his elbows on the golden throne, its seat pushed up like a lid behind him. He looks down from the red gold dais over the plushy woolsacks past the red seats of the departed Lords guarded by their wooden griffins and sphinxes and lions, he looks down to the bar of metal fleurs-de-lys that hems back the Commons from entering further, he sees the tall Magog pause by the bar like a black rod who happens to be a gentleman usher, only to thunder, “You will be hanged, drawn and quartered, George Griffin, for the crime of lèse majesté. Get off that throne!”
So Gog hoicks himself out of the entrails of the seat of all the power in Britain and the Empire, he clambers onto the red and gold dais in his dirty and dripping suit under the elaborate gilt canopy more bitty-brilliant than a falling fountain, he lumbers forwards down the aisle of the Lords’ Chamber towards his enemy, tall and ready to strike him down for his traitorous sacrilege. And as Gog staggers towards the avenging figure of Magog, an old woman hobbles through the door behind Magog into the House of Lords. She raises both her blackthorn sticks on high and begins hammering at the head of Magog, screaming imprecations at him, “Where have they gone? The Bishops, where have you hidden them? They must open the box now! Joanna’s box! Or we are all doomed! The Bishops, the Box, the Box, the Bishops, box the Bishops, pish and pox, or London burns!” As Magog tries to fend off the flailing sticks, so Gog comes up behind him and boots him down, saying, “Well met, Granny Maria.” But she merely turns her sticks on him, bim bam, clonk clunk, till he’s fleeing for his life out of the Lords’ Chamber with Magog at his side, fleeing from the wrath now, never mind the wrath to come, fleeing Granny Maria as she screams.
“A pox on the Bishes and Gog and Magoggle,
If you don’t open Joanna, fire burn and cauldron bubble.”
So Gog and Magog flee beneath the high arches of the Peers’ Lobby across the tiled pavement with its sixteen-starred centre, down the Peers’ Corridor where painted Charles Stuart is still trying desperately to arrest the five Members for treasonable words spoken in the House. But Charles didn’t catch them then and no one will catch Gog now, as he’s out of the breach of privilege into the Central Lobby. There he skids to a stop before the bomb-ruins of the old Commons ahead, his lips agape under the pointed windows and the mosaics of the four Saints of Albion, while Magog slips aside into the nearest telephone booth. For ahead, wearing the robe of red and the breeks of white, the order of the Star and Garter and Bedchamber and Extravaganza, the Cross of St. Stanislas and the Faggot of King Wenceslas, the Emblem of the Knights Hospitaller and the Green Candle of King Ubu, stands Maurice, dolled up to the nines plus and sporting a long wig over his glib chops. While Gog watches, a whiskered old gentleman presses the bulb of a gigantic antique camera on a tripod, all bellows and rosewood, and Maurice drops his snooty pecker and waves a lordly arm in Gog’s direction.
“Born to the people for to die of drink,” Maurice declaims, “Now I’m in the purple and in the pink. ’Ow’s tricks, Gog me old? What did I tell you, a grateful nation knowin’ a good thin’ when they see one ’ave elevated me to the ’ighest ’onours. Lord Morrie of Bethnal Green. If that ain’t a triumph for the people, what is? For singular services rendered in the line of duty, gettin’ the goods what people want to the people what wants ’em . . . at a fair price, of course.” Maurice bends over and whispers in Gog’s ear. “ ’Ere, chance of a lifetime, I’m givin’ ’em away, I’ll lend you the ’ole gear, purple tosh and the lot, for only twenty nicker. Put ’em on be’ind the pillar, an’ you too can ’ave your genuine photo took all togged up in the Lords. ’Oo’s for equality? You can be a peer, too, for only twenty nicker, and the photo lasts more than a lifetime. ’And it on to future generations, Dad in ’is Sunday coronet, the kids’ll lap it up. Free for all comers, anyone can join ’em, gents and ladies and kiddies, only twenty nicker. Seventeen an’ a cow an’ calf for you, special price for old pals what believes in the people like Lord Morrie of Bethnal Green. I tell you, I’ve even ’ad real peers took inside this gear, the moths ’ad all their togs and they didn’t ’ave the coupons. ’Ow about it, Goggie, or don’t you want to join the nobs?”
Just as Gog is about to reply, he sees a look of fright fly like the shadow of a sparrow across Maurice’s face. The Lord of Bethnal Green puts two fingers in his mouth, lets out a splitting whistle, and he’s hupped his robes round his waist and he’s scarpering off with the old cameraman, who shows a nimble pair of young shins for all his false whiskers. Gog turns to see Maire bearing down on him, wearing a black widow’s suit and attached to the right arm of Magog and flanked by six mighty policemen in a phalanx of authority.
“Officers, officers, there he is, my poor husband,” Maire says. “He’ll come quietly, I know he will. His brother, dear Magnus, won’t bring a charge against him, though he’s been dreadfully assaulted without rhyme or reason. Dear Magnus,” Maire continues, squeezing Magog’s arm and giving him a look of adoration. “I don’t know where I’d be without you. Or where Gog’d be, for that matter. Officers, take him away till he’s slept off the liquor, take him away. God knows what mad dreams of riot aren’t troubling his poor skull right now. I shouldn’t wonder if he doesn’t imagine he’s going to blow up the Houses of Parliament, or pop out of the Throne like a jack-in-the-box!”
The policemen surround Gog and begin to march him off between them, while Magog puts in a few paternal words, “Treat him gently, officers. He’s been in the war, you know. We’ll straighten him out eventually. Till then, time and patience. It’s a pity some of them came back at all from the war in the state they’re in. But still, we must learn to put up with them.”
So the policemen march Gog inexorably off between them down the lobby towards the main entrance to Parliament. Maire and Magog follow after, chatting fondly and in control of the situation. Gog strains his ears to hear their talk, but all he can half-hear above the boots and the hubbub (or is it his mind whispering?), all he can hear is Maire’s voice saying, “Yes, Magnus, tonight, if we can get him committed so soon. You and I’ll get power of attorney over the property, naturally. You know, my dearest, I only married Gog to get at his brother.”
As they reach the door of the street outside the Commons, Gog sees the wheeled box of the Black Maria waiting. But packed round the mobile prison is a dense mass of Londoners, West Enders and East Enders and up and down the towners, cockneys and costers and hawkers and buskers, skivvies and floozies and chippies and chars, soldiers and sailors and airmen of all the nations, tinkers and tailors and beggars and thieves, barrow boys and spivs and crooks and mudlarks, the people out on the spree round Big Ben because the pubs are open and the Japs are up the spout and it’s a bit of all right, till the thick head in the morning. While Gog watches, twenty hefty marines pick up the Black Maria and dump it on its back, useless as a tin turtle. Before the policemen can hurry Gog back into the safety of Parliament, the crow
d’s seized them and scattered them like chaff before their fists. Gog’s hoisted up on the mob’s shoulders and passed from hand to hand, black bottles are thrust down his gullet so he chokes on liquid fire, they’re singing and roaring Tipperary and We’ll Hang Out Our Washing On The Siegfried Line, and he finds himself stuck up on the plinth of Richard Coeur de Lion, high under the bronze belly of the Lionheart’s nag. And the mob’s roaring for Lofty, Give it ’em, Lofty, and Gog’s yelling, Kill, kill, burn and kill, Pull it down, brick by brick. Bastille of the Thames. Tear ’em, rend ’em, slay and slaughter. Remember Boudicca. And the mob roars with laughter and shoves more bottles down his throat, bathes him with alcohol, breaks his back with slapping, while he shouts, Kill ’em, my people, Kill ’em, among the cheers and the roister and the aimless spill of men.
On the morass and eddies of the human marsh about him, Gog sees Maire carried off by a wave of sailors, carried like the drowned corpse of a black queen borne down the current, carried off to God knows what orgies in the hammocks and stokeholds of the docks, shanghaied perhaps for months for the pleasure of the crew, but sure to rise among them to be mistress of the boat, turning it pirate and sailing under the skull and crossbones, cruising back into London docks with damask sails on the black-backed freighter, Maire the Magnificent in white breeches and black shirt, a cutlass between her teeth and a pistol in her belt, always on top of God and the Devil and mere men.
There’s Magog, too, tossed from hand to hand like an elongated bedding roll, slugged upwards like an aerial punch-bag, ripped and gouged by thousands of talons on the myriad up-reaching hands, his clothes in flayed cloth about his wrists and waist and ankles, his fluffy hair matted with blood, his scythe nose broken, his lank joints wrenched loose in their sockets, his plump purse of a mouth scattering screams like largesse in the claws of the mob. So Gog watches the drunken people rip Magog to pieces, scratch him and scour him and slice him and skewer him with their nails and callouses, until a gigantic stoker lifts him high on hairy forearms twined with strands of muscle thicker than a hawser, lifts him and throws him with crunch of snapped bone against the bronze flanks of the Lionheart’s nag, so that Magog slides down dead to the world and half-way to heaven in the arms of his blood-brother.
As the mob roars about Gog for the kill, as the rabble chants for the sacrificial victim whom Gog has hunted from the Tower through the bowels of the earth to Parliament Square, as the people bellow for the blood sacrifice of the dandy ruler to bury below the cornerstone of a lasting peace on earth, Gog looks down at the face of Magog bloody in his arms.
The drink goes sour in his veins and his eyes become sharp as pickled onions and he sees that the face of Magog is the face of his half-brother Magnus, a man wounded and bloody and half-alive in his arms. The sickness of bad liquor, or else a pity for all things broken and blood spilt and life ebbing, makes Gog’s guts heave. He cradles Magnus on his lap and he spits into his hands and he rubs them together and he wipes away the dark black goo that oozes from the cuts in Magnus’s face. When the hands of the mob reach up pitiless to drag Magnus down and drown him in a crushing sea of boots below the statue, Gog fights them off and swings Magnus over his shoulders and climbs up the bronze tail of the horse, he scales the nag’s rump to the back of the bronze Crusader in his mail and stillness, he drapes the body of Magog over the pommel of power and majesty, he reaches up the King’s right arm as high as the tip of his half-broken sword, he wrenches the stabbing point free and squats down, jabbing at the rabble that comes climbing at him like breakers from the human storm below.
The whistles shrill for rescue and the horses of the mounted policemen come in inexorable as dredgers and the mob parts on either side of the ramming hooves and the line of booted blue-coats on their high nags reaches the plinth and Gog chucks down the body of Magnus onto the helmet of a riding copper, then he’s jumped down the far side of the statue and scarpered off with the ebb of the mob that’s sucking back down Victoria Street and Whitehall and the Embankment.
Once again Gog begins the slow trudge back to Hampstead and towards the North. But while the drunken people of London pad and roar like a great beast about Gog, he knows himself a man at last. While the revellers chanting peace and victory smash their fists in each other’s faces, Gog feels his hands hang slack by his side. While the very lamplights waver boozily, Gog feels his head spark and logic hone his mind enough to know that the lamps haven’t had too many beers, there’s a power cut. Unbidden tears begin to streak his cheeks, his heart swells up and bursts inside him, he curses the heavens for making him too much of a coward to fight for his faith. He knows that the Gog before the war is forever dead and gone. For he loves the people no longer, they are the mob and the rabble. He loves persons, perhaps, if he can find persons to love. Even his arch-enemy, Magnus and Magog, why, he’s a man, he bleeds like any other, he must be saved like each victim.
A man is a man is a man. He has only his body to inhabit. He fights for himself, not the people. He struggles for his own. He has no other. He is his champion. He battles for his cause. He does not want Liberty, but to be free. He does not want Equality, but to say sir to no one. He does not want Fraternity, but to have some brothers. A man’s ribs are his own castle. There he dwells until he dies. As he can love his own person, so may he love each person and all persons.
In these words, Gog finds out a new conscience on the way to Hampstead. It speaks clearly enough to make choice and action possible for him for the first time, as he approaches the fork at Camden Town. Take the left fork and it’s the Great North Road of learning self by feet and circumstance, the road that is just beginning to make a new man of Gog. Take the right fork to Hampstead, and it’s the old life with the past and Maire to remind him of what he was and may be still. And Maire will be surely sitting there in judgement and welcome, saying, “Gog, Gog Griffin, you’ve been home drunk since lunchtime, Magnus brought you back straight in the taxi, Jules-Julia will swear to it and Mishkin will say miaow, too.” And Magnus will turn up, suave and smiling and unmarked and saying, “Old man, you really should see a doctor and get those disorderly thoughts of yours into some sort of shape. I know a good mind-bender, he’ll knock some sense into you.” And they’ll prove to him in Hampstead that all his journeys and his rebellions are fantasies of the mind, when it doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t matter if he lives half in cloud and half on earth, as long as there are no witnesses and liars to accuse him of falsehood and madness. Memory is all, memory is all, a man is his memory and it tells not the false from the true.
So Gog approaches the fork in the road at Camden Town. The left fork leads to the Great North Road and the journey that is only just beginning in search of Gog after Gog after Gog since the green sides of Albion first rose out of the North Sea. The right fork leads to Maire and Magnus and Magog and the power of London, stretching out its iron and brick fingers to pinch in all Britain. As Gog comes to the fork, sober yet unsteady on this August night of victory and peace on earth, he does not know which way . . .
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Sinclair was born in Oxford in 1935 and was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. After earning his Ph.D. in American History, he initially pursued an academic career in the United States and England. His first two novels, written while he was still at Cambridge, were both published in 1959: The Breaking of Bumbo (based on his own experience in the Coldstream Guards, and later adapted for a 1970 film written and directed by Sinclair) and My Friend Judas. Other early novels included The Project (1960), The Hallelujah Bum (1963), and The Raker (1964). Sinclair’s best-known novel, Gog (1967), a highly imaginative, picaresque account of the adventures of a seven-foot-tall man who washes ashore on the Scottish coast, naked and suffering from amnesia, has been named one of the top 100 modern fantasy novels. As the first in the “Albion Triptych”, it was followed by Magog (1972) and King Ludd (1988).
Sinclair’s varied and prolific career has also included work in film and a
large output of nonfiction. As a director, Sinclair is best known for Under Milk Wood (1972), adapted from a Dylan Thomas play and starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. His nonfiction includes works on American history (among them The Better Half, winner of the 1967 Somerset Maugham Award), as well as books on Dylan Thomas, Jack London, John Ford, and Che Guevara.
Sinclair was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1972. He lives in London.
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