I climbed to my feet, still groggy. The crowd had carried me back into the party section, and I was surrounded once more by drunkenness and fornication.
“Oh, Mister Monagan,” I said. “This is hopeless. Really hopeless.”
“Never give up, Mister James.”
“How could I expect to form an army from this rabble? I thought they would follow me. They’re too far out of the habit. They’re all individuals. They won’t follow anyone!”
“They will, you just need to get their attention.”
“How?”
I stared at the ground, and as I did so, I heard it.
Mister Monagan looked at me.
“Can you hear it too, Mister James?” he asked.
I tilted my head. From the distance came a noise completely alien to Dream London.
The crowd heard it. It obviously stirred something within them, the memory of days before the changes. Silence was spreading once more across Snakes and Ladders Square as one of the sounds that Dream London had tried to destroy was heard for the first time in nearly a year.
The sound of a snare drum, and underneath it, the sound of the bass, the sound of steady rhythm, beat by beat. The sound of feet, marching in time. The sound of so many people doing the same thing. Of people united to a common cause, and not expressing themselves freely.
“What is it, Mister James?” asked Mister Monagan.
I stared into his orange eyes. I wondered if, coming as he had from the other worlds, the worlds long conquered by forces such as Angel Tower, he had ever heard people working together like this.
“What is it?” he repeated.
“It’s a band,” I said. “It’s a brass band.”
OLIVE
THE DREAM LONDON SILVER BAND
A STILLNESS SETTLED over the square, fighting momentarily forgotten as all faces turned towards the approaching noise. Someone began to clap, and then a ripple of applause spread through the crowd. Something was approaching over the heads of the people. Something large and square that sailed towards us...
“Is it a ship, Mister James?”
Mister Monagan’s face was such a picture of confusion that I almost laughed.
“A ship?” I said. “No, Mister Monagan. It’s a banner! This is a parade. A good old fashioned parade!”
The parade ploughed through the waves of the crowd, pulled by the sail of the banner. The brass band, led by trombones, followed by tubas and baritones and horns, marched in step through the furrow of people. The street musicians held their guitars and accordions at ease and looked on in scorn at the elderly ladies and gentlemen who marched in the band, their shoes polished, buttons on their black blazers shining, the badges on their breast pockets with the four silver letters curled around each other: DLSB. They blew on their instruments with dry lips, they played with the memory of better days, but they played and marched and their silver music silenced everything and everyone.
“It’s not bad, I suppose,” said the girl whose guitar I had broken. “But there’s no feeling to it. No expression.”
“Be quiet,” said someone else. “I want to listen.”
“What do they want?”
“Where are they going?”
“What does the banner say?”
I read it now in the red light.
London Pride.
London Pride. Not Dream London.
The crowd was muttering now. London Pride? Remember that?
The banner sailed by me and Mister Monagan, and still the band marched, and now a second question occurred to everyone.
Where were they going? I guessed the answer at the same time as everyone else.
“They’re heading into the park.”
They were. The crowd made way for them, pulled back and pushed forward, looked and shouted words of encouragement and scorn.
“You go for it!”
“You’re fools.”
“Old fools!”
“You show them boys!”
The crowd pulled back around the entrance to the park. Black marble squares seemed darker in the dying red light. The band moved across the open space. The banner was lowered as it passed through the arch into the park beyond. The trombones followed, their slides pumping back and forth in the motion of a steam engine.
“What are they doing?”
I was level with the centre of the band. A tall man walked there, a bass drum strapped to his front. He hit it to the sound of the footsteps. Left, left, left-right-left...
A smaller man strode by him, rattling on a snare drum, and then we were amongst the cornets, their bells singing sweetly in the night.
“Look at that old fart playing that trumpet,” laughed someone. “He looks like he’s having a heart attack!”
Captain Wedderburn rose up inside me and I turned to smack them across the face, but to my pleasant surprise someone had beaten me to it. A guitarist stood, hand to his burning cheek, looking shocked.
The band was marching into the park now, and I saw that they were followed by more old men and women, all wearing suits or smart dresses, all marching in time, heading into the parks. Emboldened, some of the crowd joined their ranks.
“But why?” asked Mister Monagan. “Mister James, shouldn’t they be attacking Angel Tower?”
“Maybe they have some other information, Mister Monagan.” I frowned. “It’s just good to see that they’re doing something together.”
More people were joining the parade. What a vision it must have looked from the air, the polished needle sliding into the park, the coloured swirls of the crowd attaching themselves to the rear.
“Should we join them, Mister James?” asked Mister Monagan.
“Maybe we should,” I said, thoughtfully.
The parade had shouldered aside the grey masses of the workhouses, and now the dispossessed resumed their march into the park, but with a difference. They no longer shuffled forwards with a defeated air; now they raised their heads and looked around themselves. They were no longer marching as those already sold. Now they were part of a community, part of something bigger than themselves.
“A brass band,” I murmured. “I would never have thought of that. It makes some sort of sense, I suppose.”
Mister Monagan was excited. He was jumping up and down, his great feet flapping on the floor.
“Mister James! Mister James! We need to find Anna. She could help us to march on Angel Tower...”
His voice tailed away. Because something had changed.
“The band,” said Mister Monagan. “What’s happening to the band?”
The shouts went up again, in the square and beyond. The band was being killed. You could hear it. It was dying, not like a group of people being killed one by one, but like a single living thing. It shouted out in a cacophony of voices: it spoke in bass and tenor and alto and soprano, it screamed in high notes, it stuttered in low notes, its middle range was cut short.
“What’s happening?” I called. “Mister Monagan! Let me climb on your shoulders and see!”
The swirl of the crowd was pushing us sideways as people sought to get away from the entrance to the park. I held onto the orange man as we were carried along with them, pushed along the iron railings at the top edge of the square, pushed away from the park entrance.
“What’s happening?” I called.
“The statues!” People were calling. “The statues! They’re alive!”
I remembered the statues, those carved shapes that filled the park. I remembered the obscene poses that they had struck.
“Here, Mr Monagan, let me see.”
Mr Monagan braced himself against the bars. I climbed up onto his shoulders and peered through the railings. I looked into the park and the band had gone.
Wide green lawns led up to walls of trees. Gravel paths ran from the gates in straight lines. The pedestals on which statues might have stood were now empty. There was no sign of the statues, no sign of the band, nothing but the distant lines of grey workers
marching to their new lives, heading off to the yellow and gold mass of the palace.
I jumped back down to the ground, just as the sound of the invisible band died in the last wail of a horn, and silence descended once more. The square was still, unsure what to do next.
People gazed at each other. The guitarists huddled together in a little group.
“See?” said one. “That sort of protest never works.”
Mister Monagan was helping an elderly man to his feet.
“I’m okay,” said the man. “I’m fine. Let me go.”
The man stood up and dusted himself off. And then he began to march once more towards the gates of the park.
“Where are you going? Don’t you know you’ll be killed?”
The old man would not listen to reason. “I have to show my support,” he said.
“Mister Monagan,” I said. “Block the gates. We’ve got to stop more people going through.”
“I don’t think you’ll be able to,” said Mister Monagan. “Look!”
I’d seen. Already the grey suited workers were forming up and walking through once more.
“Stop it!” I yelled. “Didn’t you see what just happened?”
“Of course they did,” said someone close by. “Dream London doesn’t like brass bands. You saw that! Everything was fine until the band turned up.”
“You mean you were okay!”
“That way of protest always just leads to trouble. It’s too aggressive. You need to be thoughtful.”
“What do you suggest?” I asked. “An improvised flute solo?”
“It would make a point,” said the man.
“What point?”
The man just shrugged and shook his head, pityingly. He was right and I was wrong. This was Dream London. We didn’t do things that way any more. When we did, look what happened.
“They’ve got the right idea, Mister Monagan,” I said. “They just need the support.”
I pulled the flare gun from my pocket. I had my football fans. Now to see what sort of an army Gentle Annie had raised.
“Not yet, Mister James!” said Mister Monagan, putting his hand on the gun. “We need another brass band! We need to change its direction, head it towards Angel Tower!”
“Not yet? Another brass band? Where are we going to get another brass band from?”
“There’s one coming now!” said Mister Monagan. “More than one, by the sound of it. Can’t you hear them?”
I listened. The crowd tilted their heads, too. The cynical murmuring began once more.
“More bands! The fools! What are they playing at?”
“Stupid!”
“Cynicism,” I said. “Always easier than actually doing something.” I took hold of Mister Monagan’s orange hand. “Come on! You’re right! Let’s get to the bottom of the square. We’ll change the direction of those bands, send them towards Angel Tower! We’ll reinforce them with Gentle Annie’s army!”
We pushed our way through the crowds, heading down in tens, heading towards the sound of the music. This sounded different. There was a different tone to the music.
“Kids!” someone shouted. “It’s a bunch of bloody kids!”
The next band was coming, and the shouter was right, they were just a bunch of children, dressed in blue military jackets with gold braid at their cuffs and shoulders. These children didn’t have a banner before them, they didn’t have a group of followers. What they did have was a look of pale-faced determination you could just make out behind the shiny instruments they held to their mouths. The crowd was calling out to them to stop, yet the children ignored them.
“Are they under a spell?” asked Mister Monagan.
“No!” I said. “Look at the way they march to time! They’ve been trained to do this!”
But by who? And I thought of Amit and the children with instruments who had come into his restaurant. I thought of Anna, practising all those nights whilst I drifted off to sleep in my room.
The children’s band was in the square now, marching grimly down the wide black marble path that had opened in the middle of the crowd, marching towards the entrance to the park. There was a lot of shouting, but I noticed that no one tried to really stop them.
I jumped in front of them, held my arms out wide
“Stop!” I called, to no avail. The marching ranks split neatly in two. The children streamed past around either side of me, still playing. I saw a young girl, blowing on a shiny cornet, and I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her clear. She carried on playing all the while.
“Stop that!” I said, pulling the cornet from her. “Where have you come from?”
“Bow Temperance Hall,” said the little girl. “Let me go! I have to play.”
“Are you under some sort of spell?”
“Certainly not! We’re here to show people what to do. We have to march!”
“But not that way! You’ll all be killed! Join me! March on Angel Tower.”
“Let go of me!” the little girl squealed, and again I found myself on the wrong side of the crowd’s temper.
“Let go of her, you nonce!”
The man who said the words looked like a fighter. Thick muscles, turning to fat, and a shaven head.
“She’ll walk into the park!” I screamed. “Is that what you want?”
“I said let go of her, you filthy pervert!”
The man was moving closer to me, fists raised.
“You tell him, Bill,” said his girlfriend, straight blonde hair covering her eyes. “Filthy nonce.”
“Leave him alone,” said an accented voice nearby. “He means no harm, even if he is doing the wrong thing.”
“Amit!” I called. I spun around, delighted at last to meet an ally. Amit stood there, dressed in his Hollywood Sikh outfit. Fifty men similarly dressed stood close at hand. The crowd eyed them respectfully. The shaven-headed man lowered his fists and backed away, warily.
“I thought we were meeting on square 73?” said Amit.
“Never mind that, what are you doing to these kids?”
“I’m helping them to have a chance to live in a better world than their parents have chosen for them.”
“But they’ll be killed.”
“Or they’ll be taken into the slavery of the workhouse. These children know what they are doing.”
“Do they?”
The sound of brass faltered. The children were entering the park.
“You butcher!” I shouted. “Listen to that!”
“The children were warned,” said Amit calmly. “They chose to do this. What’s the alternative? To walk in there subservient, like their parents, willing slaves for other worlds?”
He pointed to the grey shapes of the workhouse people.
The little girl struggled further in my arms.
“Let her go. Let her join her friends.”
“Do you want that?” I asked the girl. “Listen to them!”
She broke free of my grip and stood there, sobbing.
“I want to go home,” she said. She sat down and started to cry. No one came to her aid now, I noticed. The shaven-headed man was looking away. Fighting is easier than helping, after all.
“You killed those children,” I said to Amit.
“Not me,” he said. “That wasn’t my band.” He looked to the bottom of the square, cupped a hand to his ear. “My band are coming now. Can you hear them?”
I could. I could hear many bands, all of them converging on this spot.
“Listen, Amit,” I said. “This is important! Don’t send your band into the park.”
“Why not? That’s what they were trained for.”
“No! Send them towards Angel Tower. If we can get in there, get up to the Contract Floor...”
“Taking the Contract Floor is only part of the story,” said Amit. “Angel Tower only established a toehold here because we allowed it to. There were always enough people in London to resist its influence, if only they chose to do so.”
&nbs
p; He smiled complacently and looked around the square.
“Look at them. They’re happy to sing a song or hold a peaceful demonstration. That sort of thing never changes anything. That’s just playing the game the way the people in charge want it played. They’ll give you a pat on the head, tell you that you’re a good little soldier for protesting peacefully, and then they’ll just continue doing the same thing.”
“And getting kids killed makes a difference, does it?”
“It sometimes does,” said Amit. “Let’s see, shall we? Perhaps by watching their children die these people will rediscover their courage.”
“There’s got to be a better way,” I said.
“I’m open to suggestions,” said Amit, drily.
“They’ll be killed!”
He fixed me with a black gaze, and I realised that I was looking at a man from the old world, the world that London had been part of, the world that was in fear of what might happen tonight.
“What do I care if English children die?” he said, softly.
Bands were approaching from all directions now. The sound was echoing off the walls.
The crowd began moving again, and I saw that another set of players had come to join the game. There were soldiers entering the square. Soldiers, marching in from the park. Dressed in pale yellow uniforms that glowed orange in the red light of the sun, their rifles held at their sides, the regiment of the Ninth Dream Londoners had arrived. The regiments of men and women who had signed up to the armies of exploration had come back to impose order on their own kind.
Down at the other end of the square the sound of drumming and brass increased, enough to resonate in even the hardest heart. The empty chests of the street musicians reverberated with something else now. The crowd was parting again, allowing a black marble path through the square. The sound of marching feet could be heard.
The Ninth Dream Londoners formed two lines across the gates to the park, barring the entrance to the silver green lands beyond. They stood at the ready, their wooden rifles held crosswise before them, feet slightly apart. Moustaches bristled on the implacable faces of men who knew they were in the right.
Dream London Page 29
