Dream London

by Tony Ballantyne

  “Hey! Wait for me! I’m to come with you!”

  “Hurry up then,” I called over my shoulder. “We can’t keep the Daddio waiting!”

  “Hey! Slow down!”

  “What was that? Go faster, you say?”

  I strode as fast I could, pumping my arms like a speed walker. I had left the perfumed shade of Belltower End behind and was already walking down the gentle slope of Crapper Road. The gutters here were filled with the translucent shells of Dream London prawns. Many of the residents of the street earned their money doing piece work for the seafood processors down at the dock.

  Honey Peppers squealed at me.

  “If you don’t wait I’ll have your dick sewn inside your ball sack then I’ll watch you try and piss!”

  This final threat was so extreme it broke my concentration and made me stumble, but I strode on nonetheless.

  “I can’t hear you!” I called.

  I was jogging now, half skipping through the streets. I turned down a street at random and broke into a run. The houses to my right were derelict. Golden trees sprouted through their windows, arching over the road. I heard the chatter of blue monkeys coming from the houses and I stepped up the pace again.

  I ducked to the left and the right, plunging down alleys where the rubbish slicked the floor, walking over spongy green moss where I swayed as if drunk, then into a street where three blue monkeys sat torturing a cat. One of them looked at me, considering. I held its gaze as I walked on.

  All the time I was heading downwards, heading, whatever my intentions might have been to the contrary, towards the docks. Somewhere up above me, high up in the towers of Dream London, someone was pulling at my strings, and I danced through the streets like a marionette.

  I came to a sudden halt at the realisation. Someone was playing games with me. I looked back again. No sign of Honey Peppers. I dodged sideways down an alley and rounded a corner. A pile of broken glass panes lay outside a door, right next to what looked like a brand new gold plush armchair.

  Why was there a chair there? I didn’t consider this at the time, I simply dropped into the armchair, gasping, and sat there a while, getting my breath back. It was true, I realised: someone was playing with me.

  I was sitting on something. Something in my pocket. I shifted a little and remembered Christine’s scroll. Someone else trying to control me, I thought.

  I pulled out the scroll, unrolled it, and began to read.

  You will meet a Stranger

  You will be offered a job

  You will be offered a second job

  Go to the inn to meet a friend, one who will betray you

  Go to the docks and meet your greatest friend, the one you will betray...

  Go to the docks. Did Honey Peppers know about the piece of paper in my pocket?

  I didn’t believe in fortunes any more than I did in Christine’s list of possible husbands, but...

  I lived in a city where the buildings changed every night, where people had eyes in their tongues, where women turned into whores over three weeks. Was a scroll that told my fortune so fantastic?

  Everything on the scroll had come true so far, hadn’t it? I shook my head. Not necessarily. Meet a friend in an inn? What was so unusual about that? One who will betray you...

  Okay. I’d met Bill in the inn. Would she betray me? I had no hesitation in answering that question. Like a shot! She was in the military. My own country would have no hesitation in betraying me, why should another country be any more concerned about my wellbeing?

  But it was the next line that gave me pause...

  Go to the docks and meet your greatest friend, the one you will betray...

  Daddio Clarke had sent me to the docks. Honey Peppers had something about new friends waiting for me there...

  Why was everyone taking an interest in Captain Jim Wedderburn all of a sudden? I read the prediction again:

  Go to the docks and meet your greatest friend, the one you will betray...

  That struck a chord. That sounded like me. Meet my greatest friend and betray him. That was the sort of thing Jim Wedderburn would do. And frankly, I was sick of it. I had had enough of that in my life by now. I wanted to be better than I was. With Christine I thought I was beginning to improve, but she had dropped me and my old life had resumed in earnest. And now I was following the instructions of her prophecy scroll, things were taking another downwards turn.

  What was I to do?

  Certainly not head for the docks. Maybe it was time to return to the Poison Yews.

  Curiosity gripped me and I began to unroll the rest of the scroll, to see the remainder of the predictions, but at that moment I heard a child’s voice.

  “Captain Wedderburn?”

  I looked up and there, beside me, stood Honey Peppers, golden curls tilted.

  “I think you were running away from me, Captain Wedderburn.”

  “Not at all, Honey.”

  “And yet here I find you in one of the Daddio’s traps.”

  She meant the chair.

  “I was just eager to do the Daddio’s work,” I said.

  Her pink and white dress remained spotless, I noticed.

  “I hope so,” said Honey. “If not, I would have to push ground glass into your prick, and that might mean I get my dress dirty. Now, we have to hurry.”

  “Of course,” I said. I stood up from the armchair, pushing the scroll back in my pocket as I did so. “Lead the way!”

  She took me by the hand and led me down to the docks.

  THE DOCKS HAVE grown and twisted since the changes began. The waterways have crept deep into the city streets, so that you might look out of your window and see a ship sailing by, following a canal that used to be a road.

  The cranes have grown taller, like so much else here; their booms are now wide enough that they can lift cargo from the deck of a ship and deposit it half a mile inland. I’ve stood in the yards of an inn, enjoying a drink in the sunshine, when there’s been a flicker of shadow and I’ve looked up to see the boom of a crane high above, lowering a bundle of crates or barrels down towards an impatient landlord.

  The Dockland warehouses bulge like fat sacks, their windows and doors overflowing with the goods that travel here from the strange lands that have plugged themselves into Dream London via the Roding. The streets hop with the oddly coloured rats and toads and lice that have hitched a ride on the boats and barges and now head determinedly up slope, searching for new ecosystems to make their own.

  As for the ships themselves: they line the banks in all the colours of the rainbow. Gold and silver, checks, stripes and paisleys. The ships and boats are built to alien designs, their unfamiliar crews lean on the rails and look down at you with dark eyes and half-amused smiles. Sometimes they call out obscene-sounding phrases in exotic languages.

  None of this bothered Honey Peppers as she led me by the hand through a maze of tethering ropes.

  “Down here,” she said.

  We were heading parallel to the wide band of the river Thames, walking through the maze of smaller docks that led to larger docks. We threaded a path through the garbage-filled basins of oily water, the backwaters where the less impressive ships gathered.

  The ships here were smaller than usual, and a lot less colourful. Most of them were little more than rotting wood and patched black tar. Their decks were dirty and cluttered, the tackle worn. The crews weren’t visible, preferring to stay hidden below deck with their mysterious cargoes.

  “This is the one,” said Honey, looking up at the hull of a ship. A name was written there in fading paint.

  “The Courtesan,” I read with some difficulty.

  “What does that mean?” asked Honey.

  “Prostitute,” I said.

  “You mean whore?”

  “Yes.”

  Honey Peppers nodded. I sighed. The ship loomed above us, dark and gloomy, and I had a sense of being far from home.

  “Call them!” said Honey. “Let them know
you’re here!”

  “Call who?”

  “The crew! Go on, call them!”

  I looked down at her for a moment, pink and pretty amidst the gloom and the smell of old fish, then I raised my hands to my mouth.

  “Ahoy!” I called. “This is Captain Jim Wedderburn, awaiting the cargo.”

  “Ahoy?” giggled Honey.

  “I’m a soldier, not a sailor. I thought Ahoy seemed right.”

  “Try again,” said Honey. “They haven’t heard.”

  “Hello!” I called.

  There was no reply. Nothing but the sound of Honey laughing to herself.

  “Ahoy,” she giggled. “Go on! Grow some balls. Shout loudly!”

  I did, and this time a woman appeared on the deck. She was old, dressed in filthy clothes. She looked down at me with utter contempt.

  “They sent a man?” she said.

  “They sent Captain Wedderburn!” I shouted back.

  The old woman seemed to notice Honey Peppers.

  “Is that your Daddy, little girl?” she called. “Tell him to get back! A man won’t be able to withstand my girls.”

  “I’m not her...” I began, but Honey was already calling back.

  “He’s to take them to their rooms over at Belltower End!”

  “No he’s not,” shouted back the old woman. “These are Moston girls. They’ll drain him dry. Send him away. You’ll have to do it.”

  “But...”

  “Do you want them to escape? Send him away now! I’m about to lower the gangplank!”

  “You heard what she said, Honey.” I smiled down at the little girl. “ I don’t think the Daddio would like it if I’m sucked dry by the Moston girls. You take the girls, I’ll meet you back at Belltower End.”

  “But...”

  Somewhere above a dirty plank of wood was slid forward. I heard the sound of young women singing.

  “I’d better go,” I said, and I patted her on the head. “See you later.”

  “You needledicked fucker.”

  “I know. But what can you do?”

  I spun on my heel and quickly marched away.

  But not too far.

  Just around the edge of a warehouse, just, hopefully, out of range... I leant back around and spied on the Moston girls as they walked down the gangplank.

  They didn’t seem anything special at this distance. Just sixteen skinny teenagers with lots of bushy blonde hair. Their clothes were ragged, and I got a good view of their pale boyish bodies through the holes. Not my sort at all, I like my women to look like women, with curves. The Moston girls giggled and held hands and pushed each other and took it in turns to pat Honey Peppers on the head and tell her how adorable she was. I couldn’t see what the fuss was about. And then – it was as if they sensed me, smelt my male scent – one of them glanced in my direction. She giggled and pointed at me. Then the others were looking at me too, big blue eyes gazing beseechingly in my direction, and I suddenly saw just how attractive they were. Was attractive the right word? No, less than that. It wasn’t attraction, but something far more basic: they oozed sex appeal. I found myself moving towards them, and it was with some effort that I pushed myself backwards, back around the warehouse and out of their sight. If I stepped into their full view, I don’t know what power they would have over me.

  I realised then that the old woman was right. I couldn’t handle the Moston girls. Let Honey Peppers take them back to Belltower End. I would deal with them later. For the moment, it was time for a drink.

  JUST BEYOND THE Docklands I found an inn standing on the edge of the Thames itself. There I sat down to think as the sun descended towards evening. The inn behind me was crowded, and I could hear the sounds of laughter and drinking.

  Three men sat on the bench near mine, and two of them were consoling the third.

  “Never mind, Paul,” said one. “You’d only have been tied down if you bought this place.”

  Paul wasn’t going to be comforted.

  “The gentry are taking over this area,” he said bitterly. “I had enough money to buy my pub only last week! I went to the estate agents this morning and the price had doubled. Doubled! How is that fair?”

  The other man shook his head in sympathy.

  “Yes, but the gentry don’t want you to buy properties, do they? Better that you take a loan to buy it and that way they get interest for twenty-five years. Better yet that you have to rent it and that way they get money for life!”

  It was a story I was more than familiar with. Hadn’t my attempts to buy Belltower End yielded similar results? It was a tough world all round.

  I looked out across the water. The river had widened during the past year. The far bank was over a mile away. The buildings over there were not so tall as in the City, and there were things like banana palms growing between them, giving the skyline a tropical air. Large creatures grazed in the water by the far bank, and not for the first time I wondered about crossing over to get a better look at them. There had been no bridges along this stretch of the river before the changes, only the Blackwall tunnel and the Greenwich foot tunnel. Since the changes... well, no one who entered the Blackwall Tunnel had yet walked out the other side. As for the Greenwich Tunnel, it had widened as it had lengthened, the tiles in the walls turning a deep glossy green, crystal chandeliers dropping from the ceiling. Elegant shops had opened in the tunnel walls for those who could afford them.

  As I sat there, lost in thought, I noticed that something was moving through the water. Something from another place, from far down one of the alien tributaries that had insinuated their way into the Thames. It looked like an orange man, swimming like a frog. Or maybe it was an oversized frog who moved like a man. Whichever, the creature was naked. It swam confidently through the crystal blue waters of the magically healed river, the dark brown bands that tiger-striped its glistening back rippling in the fading light. As it approached I saw that it carried a bag balanced on its shoulders. Two pale yellow eyes sat high on its head looking forward through the waters. It saw me, and the creature’s eyes fixed on my own. I rose to my feet as it turned and headed directly for me.

  A set of stone stairs ran down to the river, the base furred in green weed. One wide orange hand reached up and seized the lowermost step, and the creature began to climb out of the river. He was more man than frog and I saw now that he walked upright like a human. But his body was smooth; there was nothing between his legs but smooth orange skin. His face was almost human: his mouth a little too wide, his eyes too large and bulging, his nose two slits, but he looked handsome enough in his odd way. He was smiling at me as he climbed the steps, and now as he approached the top he held out one hand.

  “Good evening, kind sir!” he said. “Good evening!”

  “Hello,” I said, carefully.

  “Pardon my ignorance, but whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

  “Call me James,” I said.

  “James! James! What a most excellent name! I am Mr Monagan!”

  He was jerking his hand at me, eager that I should take it. Slowly, I did so and shook it. His hand was surprisingly warm and already dry, I noticed. The water seemed to have no purchase on his body.

  “Pleased to meet you, James,” he said, shaking my hand. He looked around himself and then hesitated a moment. “Excuse me for asking, but this is London, isn’t it? London, the city of humans?”

  “I haven’t heard it described that way before, but yes, this is London.”

  He cut a little jig there and then before me, such was his delight.

  “Thank you, kind sir! London! And to think they told me I could not swim that far! To think that they told me I should never make it here! Well, here I am! London. The place where I can finally be accepted as a human being!”

  A human being, I thought?

  Well, why not? This was Dream London after all.

  (A FEELING OF FULFILMENT)

  MR MONAGAN

  THERE WAS A large, naked frog man st
anding before me. Despite myself, my eyes kept flickering down to the empty space between his legs. The orange frog man looked horrified when he noticed where I was looking.

  “Oh, sir! Of course! I almost forgot! Clothes! They told me, I must wear clothes! They insisted that I bring them with me, and I thought they were joking! It seems that I too was mistaken! Now, just a minute...”

  At that he took hold of the black leather bag that he had carried on his back and unlaced the top. A breath of spice puffed into the air, the smell of warmth and other places that waited at the dim ends of sinuous tributaries, lands lost to green moss, pickerel weed and bald cypress. The creature produced a pair of black trousers and quickly pulled them on. That was followed by a white shirt and a red patterned tie that he carefully knotted around his neck.

  “I’ve been practising,” he said, with some pride. He reached into his bag once more and pulled out a green waistcoat, a pair of black brogues and, last of all, a bowler hat. This he pulled firmly down on his head so that the brim almost touched his two bulging eyes.

  “Now, Mister James. I have money! Allow me to buy you a drink by way of welcome!” He reached once more into his black bag and began to draw out, like it says in the carol, a purse of stretching leather skin. There was something about his trusting enthusiasm that thawed even my cold, suspicious nature.

  “Better not to announce your money, Mr Monagan,” I said.

  He looked crestfallen.

  “But why? I earned this myself! Working on the paddleships that made their way into Aquarius.”

  I glanced around. Mr Monagan’s tall orange frame was attracting attention. Already three men dressed in black jackets had nonchalantly leant themselves against the wall of the inn behind us, docker’s hooks tucked into their belts. They were eyeing Mr Monagan as if he were a piece of cargo himself. Now, Captain James Wedderburn is not so hard hearted as to leave a stranger to be gulled by others. Not when he may have the opportunity to do so himself.

  “How about we go somewhere else?” I suggested. “Come on. There is a place I know that’s a little more discreet.”