Dream London

by Tony Ballantyne

  “If only we had a cheese shop,” said Anna, dryly.

  “Anna! Manners!” said Margaret.

  Alan and Shaqeel whispered to each other. Margaret leant a little closer to me so that her breast pressed against my arm.

  “Some more wine, Captain?”

  “No thank you,” I said. “I’ve got work in the morning.”

  Margaret filled her own glass to the top. She was beginning to sway a little, I noticed. Alan and Shaqeel were lost in their own private little world, Anna gazed at me without interest, and Margaret leant closer and closer. One of her breasts pushed into my arm.

  “I like your jacket, Captain,” she said. “It makes you look so dashing.”

  “It’s not real,” I said. “I bought this for show. These colours are a Dream London invention.”

  “Still, it suits you.”

  The final dish was brought through.

  “Lemon sorbet,” said Margaret, touching my knee. “Cleanses the palate. Do you like it?”

  “Needs more egg,” I said.

  Her face froze, just for a moment, as she wondered if I was being rude. And then she laughed.

  THE MEAL ENDED and Anna said goodnight, heading upstairs to her homework, or so she said. Alan retired to his study with Shaqeel.

  “Would you like a brandy, Captain Wedderburn?” A hand laid itself on the top of my thigh. Well, I say top of my thigh, but I’m being polite. To be more accurate, Margaret clasped my balls.

  “No thank you, Margaret. I thought I might take a walk before bed. I need the air.”

  “When you come back, I’ll probably still be up. Look for me in the drawing room.”

  I left the house and spent half an hour or so walking the streets. I couldn’t quite relax, though. All the time I wondered if Honey Peppers was out there somewhere looking for me.

  To the east, rising up into the purple night, I saw the bulging spires of the City. The place I was going tomorrow. The blue monkeys were whooping loudly. I heard the terrified yowling of cats and I touched my pistol for reassurance. Someday the monkeys would turn their attention from the cats to bigger amusements. When they did, I would be ready for them. I walked through the stillness of the evening, listening to the sounds of the city.

  Eventually, I returned to the Poison Yews and slipped upstairs to my room.

  I undressed and pulled on the blue and white cotton nightgown that someone had folded neatly on my pillow, then got into bed and picked up the first book from the pile by my side. It was a book of poetry. I turned to the first page.

  The Foundation, by T. S. Eliot

  April is the happiest month, laughing

  Lilacs in the fresh wind, bobbing

  Memory and Desire, awakening

  Feeding roots with spring rain...

  I didn’t recognise the poem, but that’s no surprise, as I don’t read poetry. It was enjoyable though, if rather long. Flicking through the pages I noted the poem was made up of several sections.

  I read the first section, The Welcoming of Children, wondering at the closing lines where people walked the streets of Dream London.

  My eyes became heavy, and from somewhere in the house I heard the sound of someone playing scales on a trumpet.

  I laid down the book, turned off the light, and drifted to sleep to the silver sound of arpeggio rain.

  YELLOW

  THE NUMBERS FLOOR

  I WAS WOKEN by the sound of a tap on the door. The maid entered the room carrying a steaming jug of water which she placed by the basin. She nodded at me and left the room. The window was open and I could smell the heavy scent of flowers awakening. Today was going to be hot.

  As I was shaving, Anna knocked on my door. I turned to see her looking like jail bait in a grey school uniform.

  “I see you’re awake,” she said.

  “Was that you I heard playing the trumpet last night?”

  “The cornet. Your breakfast is ready.”

  There was no sign of Margaret; I guessed she was in bed with a hangover. Anna served us bacon and eggs and mushrooms from the dishes on the sideboard. We ate in silence. I left the house with Alan shortly before seven.

  The whores and the costermongers of the night before had faded from the streets, and I found myself part of a growing river of businessmen dressed in identical dark suits and starched white shirts, all heading towards the railway station. The blue monkeys that nested on the window ledges looked down at us, laughing, and I found myself laughing along with them at the absurdity of it all.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Alan.

  “How long before we’re all wearing bowler hats?” I asked.

  The railway station was set above street level. A green electric train glided towards it between the red tiled roofs, a crocodile swimming between clay river banks.

  “Oh, good,” said Alan. “I hate the steam trains. They get your clothes so dirty.”

  We ran up the steps to the station. A ticket inspector waited at the top, dressed in a black wool uniform and peaked cap bearing a polished brass badge with the letters DLR entwined upon it. I showed him the little rectangle of cardboard that Alan had given me that morning. A season ticket.

  We boarded the train.

  “I usually read the paper on the way in,” said Alan, shaking out a pink copy of The Financial Times he had picked up outside the station.

  “Okay,” I said. I looked at the headlines: commercial rents were up by forty-five per cent. Bored, I gazed out of the window, down at the streets below.

  London had always been a patchwork, Dream London was even more so.

  The train ran on stilts above the streets, and looking down I could see how the disparate elements of the city were stitched together: slums backing onto mansions, little garden squares pushing against crumbling concrete walls. The track split into two and we rolled past factories, squeezed into the V between the railway lines, bright graffiti on their ridged roofs. Then there came a line of narrow gardens, conservatories hard against the factory walls, their light dimmed to nothing by the overgrown greenery, and then more tall factory walls surrounding little courtyards and I realised I was looking down into a workhouse. I saw grey-suited workers carrying boxes across a monotone courtyard. A line of windows, children bent down at machines...

  ... then with another flick we passed a line of dappled plane trees and we slowed to halt at a station. Lines of black and white passengers waited there. The woman in the purple dress stood out like a plum on a chessboard. Her eyes locked with mine, so it was no surprise when, moments later, she sat down opposite me. She was an attractive woman. A little older than my preferred type in that she was about my age and running to plump, but she had such a pretty face.

  “There you are, Captain Wedderburn!” she said. “You’ve no idea how much trouble I’ve had tracking you down.”

  I noticed Alan lowering his newspaper, looking over the top of it at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I began, “I don’t think I’ve...”

  “Of course we’ve never met, Captain. Or should I call you James? Only I bought your name from a shop. Look, I have it here...”

  She opened her purse and pulled out a sheet of parchment. She showed it to me. It took me a moment to make out the words there, written as they were in cursive script.

  Your true love is... Captain James Wedderburn.

  I read it carefully.

  “I thought these things came as a list,” I said.

  “I paid for the premium service. My name is Miss Elizabeth Baines, and I am your soulmate.”

  She smiled at me then, a smile of such longing and happiness that, for a moment, I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Baines,” I said. “I think you wasted your money. Someone has conned you. Something like this happened to my old girlfriend. She bought a list too...”

  The look that flickered across Miss Baines’ face would have melted the heart of one of those cruel statues that have grown in Piccadilly, but
she recovered quickly enough.

  “They said you would say something like that,” she said, in a businesslike way. “They said that it was typical of a man to deny his true feelings where matters of the heart are concerned, and that my best course of action would be to just keep plugging away. Well, Captain Wedderburn, can I assure you of the sincerity of my affections, and that I...”

  “How can your affection be sincere?” I interrupted. “We’ve only just met!”

  “... and that I,” repeated Miss Baines in a firm voice, “will not be swayed from true love’s path.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to this. Fortunately, Alan folded his paper away and lent a hand. He had turned grey with worry, and it was only now that I realised that Miss Baines had blown my cover.

  “Miss Baines. You must be aware that my nephew is on his way to work. Could I suggest that a meeting later on may be more appropriate? How about the Tiger Tea House at the corner of Leicester Square, say at five o’clock?”

  Miss Baines beamed.

  “That would be most appropriate!”

  The train was slowing now, coming in to another station.

  “And here’s my stop already,” said Miss Baines, getting to her feet.

  Alan watched her go.

  “You’re not seriously suggesting I meet her again, are you?” I said.

  “Of course not,” he hissed. “I just wanted her out of here!” He flapped up the pages of his paper and retreated back behind it.

  “But...”

  He wasn’t listening. I thought about Miss Elizabeth Baines. Did I feel a twinge of conscience at that moment? Captain Wedderburn had known lots of women in his time, and rarely given them a second thought. Why should my sentimental thoughts of the plum-coloured women, tearful at being stood up, be anything but evidence of Dream London having its effect on me?

  The train was off again, wheezing and sparking and grinding along the warped track. Given the way the railways coiled about the city at night it was a wonder we managed to stay on the lines. I looked out at the passing scenery once more. The train was winding through widely spaced trees, their trunks casting long dark shadows through the golden morning. I thought of the parkland spreading out at the centre of Dream London and all those roads that emerged from the point in the centre and I wondered what was going on there. An eager feeling awoke within me: that was what I was going to find out. That’s why I was riding the train to the City.

  The train turned a corner and, all of sudden, there were the towers of the Square Mile. Shafts of ebony thrust from the earth towards the heavens, draped with scarlet vine and flocked by birds. They loomed over the city, they loomed over the train, so tall they seemed to lean, falling towards us. A feeling of vertigo spun within me just at the sight of them, and I had another sense of just how futile my task was. Something had bought those towers, there in the Square Mile. The former banks and financial houses had been purchased and through that process something had gained a foothold in London. Gradually its influence had spread, and, as it did so, its hold over the city.

  I looked at the towers. The train was running alongside the Thames now, grown to many times its former width and flowing golden in the morning sunshine. The towers were spaced further apart than the skyscrapers of the old city, and they were much, much taller. The base of each tower betrayed the structure’s original construction. I saw brick and glass and steel and stone. But as the gaze travelled up the extent of the building the towers started to swell and deform. No two towers were alike. Some of them shone in brilliant colours, some of them trailed with creepers. Though it was difficult to tell at this distance, one of them seemed to be covered in fur. The train jerked to the left and abruptly we entered a tunnel.

  All around me passengers were climbing to their feet, folding their newspapers, getting ready to exit.

  “This is it,” said Alan.

  I took a deep breath. It was time.

  WE LEFT THE station and walked down the street towards Angel Tower.

  A man in a suit just like mine sat propped against the wall, holding out his hands.

  “Please?” he begged. “I lost my job. I can’t pay my rent. Don’t let them send me to the workhouse...”

  Alan ignored him. I did the same. So did all the other men walking past.

  “Just along here,” said Alan.

  I could see the base of our tower up ahead. It looked as if it was made from shiny black marble the colour of a hearse. It made me think of a mausoleum.

  “Don’t look up,” said Alan.

  “Why not?”

  “Just don’t.”

  I kept my eyes on the ground and followed him along the street. A set of bronze revolving doors rotated at the base of Angel Tower, too small and out of proportion for the vast bulk of the building. They spun around, scooping up the dark stream of suited figures in regular gulps. I felt the gentle pressure of Alan’s hand on my back, pushing me inside. Terrified, I was spun into the tower...

  ... and stepped out into a wide atrium. There was a reverent silence in here, broken only by the gentle pad of footsteps on the dark marble floor. A high marble counter stood to my right, staffed by three older men in dark suits. They looked close to death, with that closeness not being measured from the living side. Tall and grey with cold eyes, they appeared to have accepted zombiehood as part of the terms and conditions of their employment.

  Alan took my arm and swept me past them, heading to the lifts at the back of the building: three wide doors set in brass frames, three throats. An arrow was set over each door, turning to point at the floor numbers. So many numbers that the arrow had a magnifying glass set in the end so that the tiny digits it identified could be read. I peered carefully, and saw the digits went up to twelve hundred. Twelve hundred and four, to be precise.

  “I can’t believe it’s so tall!” I said.

  “It grows at least a floor every day,” said Alan morosely, and at that moment I forgot Alan’s warning and made a huge mistake, one I instantly regretted. I looked up.

  The ceiling was high above me, five floors up, and in the ceiling there was a hole. And the hole seemed to rise up and up, and I found my eye drawn into its depths, trying to see what was at the end of the hole. And I felt something looking back at me...

  “... James! Are you okay?”

  Alan slapped me on the cheek once more. I placed my hand there, feeling the sting.

  “What happened?” I said. I felt sick to the stomach, as if I had been violated in some way. “What happened?” I repeated.

  “I told you not to look up,” said Alan. “Now come on.”

  He took me by the elbow and led me into one of the waiting lifts. I whimpered as the doors slid shut, and then I gasped as the acceleration pushed me down into the floor.

  “You never quite get used to it,” said Alan morosely.

  I looked up at the brass needle of the indicator, ticking off the floors. It passed the 500 mark and I heard the clang of a bell. We began to slow down.

  The doors opened and we stepped out, somewhat shakily, onto the 829th floor.

  I walked unsteadily into a room that looked as if it had come out of a Dickens novel: a room completely out of place in a skyscraper. The space was subdivided by wooden panels and furnished by wooden desks. Men sat or stood at the desks, sheets of paper in front of them.

  A young man hurried up to us, his hair plastered to his head in proper clerkly fashion.

  “Good morning Mr. Sinfield,” he said.

  “This is my nephew, James,” said Alan. “Would you be so kind as to show him to his desk?”

  “Of course, Mr Sinfield.”

  Alan turned to me.

  “My office is on the next floor. Perhaps you would like to join me for lunch?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Collins, when the time comes, would you be so kind as to show my nephew the way to the Executive Dining Room?”

  “Of course, Mr Sinfield.”

  The cler
k waited for Alan to leave before fixing me with a look that conveyed exactly what he thought of me and my nepotistic advancement.

  “I...” I began, but he didn’t give me chance to speak.

  “This way,” he said, and immediately plunged into the maze of desks and partitions without waiting to see if I was following. I jogged after him, hot and uncomfortable in my thick woollen suit. Collins led me past lines of similarly suited men, all sat at their desks adding up rows of figures by hand.

  “What are they doing?” I asked. A man looked up at me and held a finger to his lips.

  “Shhh!”

  Collins led me deeper and deeper into gloom, further from the large windows in the far wall. We traversed a labyrinth of desks and metal filing cabinets slowly turning to wood. Bentwood hat stands, vacuum tubes that led up the ceiling. All around me there was the suck and pop of cylinders vanishing into the network. The gloom deepened, the desks become more crowded, the stacks of paper taller. Finally, we came to a tall desk crammed into a corner, half drowned in paper. A dull yellow electric bulb hung overhead: it seemed to cast more shadows than light. There was a stack of paper already piled upon the desk, a fountain pen at the side. The office had yet to return to paper and quills.

  “Don’t I get a chair?” I asked.

  The clerk gave a knowing smile.

  “Not as a junior. Status is very important here in Angel Tower. If you work hard and show due merit, you may find yourself promoted to a position where your desk has a chair. Continue to show due diligence and you might find that you are awarded a desk closer to the window.”

  “Oh.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver pencil. He passed it to me with an unctuous smile, as if doing me a great favour.

  “Of course, those people with an uncle working upstairs may find themselves progressing faster than others. Let’s hope they remember the people who made their life easier when they started.”

  So that was the game. Life in Angel Tower was the same as life on the street. You eyed up those around you, deciding whether they were worth brown-nosing or shitting upon. Collins seemed to be playing it both ways with me. Well, a partial ally was better than none.