Hairy London (12 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Bedlam was bedlamitous.

Sheremy would never have imagined, not even in his worst nightmare of the fanged and glutinous peril beneath the dungeons of the Temple of Azure Lick, that a place so awful could exist. Yet this was no place of monsters. It was a place of people, hundreds of people crammed together in cages, most of them mad, and those of them not mad about to be sent mad by the injustice of being forced to live alongside the mad. He gripped the bars at the front of the cage and screamed for justice, but the cardboard-uniformed goons outside the cage just spat at him, and laughed.

The cell in which he had been dumped was as large as the back of a house, its walls damp and gunk-befouled redbrick, home to twenty inmates; more if you counted the rats. Sheremy counted the rats because they ate half the food. If you could call wet bread and hellmash food.

Though most of the inmates were struck dumb or spoke in incomprehensible loon-tongue, some were able to talk, and of these, one, a dark-skinned woman, seemed the least damaged by incarceration. At the end of the evening of Sheremy’s arrival, as the goons called for silence and spread soporific smoke from censers, she approached him with a damp cloth and said, “Place this over your mouth.”

He did not like the look of her – thin as a rake, with scraggy black hair and the pockmarked skin of one entertaining no hope. Her dark and lustrous eyes suggested an Indoo parent, but her fine nose and delicate features suggested the other might be Caucasian. Gruffly he said, “What d’you want from me?”

“You seems a man of the gentry,” she replied.

He glanced away. Her speech was rough accented, and he wanted no truck with even the sanest Bedlam inmate. But as the stinking smoke began to waft into the cell he took the cloth and placed it over his mouth, following her to a dark recess in the further wall. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Missus Groate,” she replied. “Of East Acton.”

Sheremy grunted, “Hmm, really. And was your mother a darkie slave?”

“She was an Indoo princess she was,” Missus replied, somewhat annoyed if her expression was anything to go by.

Sheremy sighed. “What’s this cloth business for?”

“Stop the smokes sendin’ you to sleep.”

He grunted again, already bored of the conversation. “As if
we’ve
got anything to talk about,” he muttered.

“I might be mulatto,” she replied, “but I
am
a person.”

“I’m sure you are.”

Missus took a pace back, scowling. “There’s no helpin’ some peoples.”

“There’s nothing mere
help
can do,” Sheremy retorted. “I’m stuck here for life, and all for something I didn’t do. How would you feel?”

“Oh, you are a one,” Missus replied. “You got no thoughts as to why
I’m
here, eh?”

“Well why are you here?” Sheremy replied, with bad grace.

“If you must know, my mother was raped. By a nob. One of
your
lot, quite possibly. So they got me a few months back and threw me in here, just because I don’t knows me daddie. Eighteen years growin’ up in East Acton, mindin’ me own businesses, then this. Nice, I calls it.”

Sheremy sighed once more. “I’m not a proper noble,” he said. “Just one of the superior classes. Sheremy Pantomile...” He almost added
at your service,
but stopped himself as he realised what that offer might entail.

She reached out, took his right hand, and shook it. He pulled away, embarrassed. “I’m not diseased,” she said. “Not even from being half Indoo.”

He shrugged. “I’m sorry about what happened to your mother.” A brief mental picture of Valantina came to his mind’s eye. “Women have worth, to my way of thinking, and deserve decent Britisher treatment.”

“Yes, well,” Missus said, “that’s that sorted then. So... what you in for, eh?”

“A rogue police officer took offence at me escaping from his jail – which I did because I was set up.”

“Set up?”

“Opium smuggling,” Sheremy said. “But I’ve never even seen opium, still less dealt in it.”

“I’m sorry to hears that, truly I am.”

“Yes, well... we’re both here for eternity it would seem. Doubtless we’ll be going mad in the years to come...”

Missus grinned. “Not if we escapes.”

“Escape? You’re still here. If you know how to escape, why haven’t you?”

She squeezed the bicep of his right arm. “Never had the man strong enough for helps.”

“Strong enough? There’s half a dozen men here stronger than me.”

“They’re all mad. Remember? You aren’t. I know ’cos I been Bedlamised a while now. I know loon-faced from sad-faced.”

Sheremy began to wonder if Missus had gone moon-addled during her incarceration. Delusions of escapology...

“Oh, I sees it in your eyes already,” she muttered. “Missus is a looper. A nut–”

“Escape is impossible,” Sheremy interrupted. “You’re imagining it.” He shrugged, then added, “I understand, however. Anybody would get drunk on dreams of escaping this place.”

“But it’s truth! Let me show you. Look yonders.”

She pointed at the blank wall. He said in a matter of fact voice, “I see brick. Lots of brick. And mad people sleeping, leaning against the brick.”

“We’re lucky they’s placed the brazier to the side of the wall tonight,” Missus said, “throwin’ shadows of bricks and mortars.”

“Shadows?”

“Don’t you sees a shape in the wall?”

The light was fire-red and dim. Sheremy took a few paces forward, stepping over sleeping bodies, until he stood a few yards away from the wall. “I see nothing except brick,” he repeated.

Missus stepped forward and traced an arc with her hand. “Theres,” she said. “An arch, all done up. The bricks is different colours, you sees?”

Hot damn, she was right! An arch-shaped hole had at some point been bricked up. “A fireplace!” he whispered, realising what structure must have been present. “Which means...”

“A chimerney.”

Sheremy nodded. “And a way up, out of this cell. But to what?”

“Not here, whatevers it might be,” Missus said.

“So my task tonight is to unblock this chimney.”

Missus nodded.

Sheremy rolled up his sleeves then glanced over his shoulder. In the ruddy light of the brazier he saw a single goon, asleep with his chin on his chest and a line of drool emerging from his mouth. “The time is now,” he declared.

He studied the bricked up fireplace, seeking the weakest mortar. Some of the bricks at floor level – stinking of rat wee – were so blown they were crumbling, and these he scraped, using just his fingers, for he had no tools.

“It’s no good Missus,” he said. “My nails won’t stand this work, and soon my fingers will be bloodied.”

She thought for a second, then pulled a clip from her hair. “Use this to makes a hole large enough to get a coupla fingers in,” she said. “Then use brutes force to pull the mortar away, eh? We’ll never gets out just scrapin’, see.”

“You’re correct,” he said. “I’ll try your clip.”

He scraped for a while, until he made a hole in the damp mortar deep enough for him to push three fingers in and feel the back side of the brick. Lying on his side, he tried to get a purchase on the ground.

“Hold my legs,” he said. “Anchor me. Then I can try to pull out the brick.”

“Rightsio!”

He pulled. The brick moved. He pulled as hard as he could, until, with a thunk and a fall of dust, it came out. At once a cold breeze wafted over his face. “Soot!” he whispered. He pulled Missus towards him and let her smell the air.

“Soots,” she agreed. “A chimerney.”

Encouraged, he pulled out more bricks, until the point came when he suspected a section of the wall might collapse. “That hole’s not big enough for us to squeeze through,” he said. “We’ll have to risk a collapse, alerting the guards.”

Missus glanced at the still sleeping goon. “He’s in byebye lands. Pull on, Sheremy, we gotta gets out soon.”

He nodded. He had made a hole a foot by a foot, which would be noticed even from outside the cell. Pulling more bricks he enlarged the hole, until with a crack and a rumble a section of the wall three feet wide collapsed. Dust plumed into the air. Inmates groaned in their sleep, but the goon dozed on.

“Now we climb,” said Sheremy.

The chimney was as black as Africa, a thin flue stinking of soot that fell upon him the moment he entered the fireplace. He coughed, then tried to stop himself coughing. Missus handed him her cloth, but it was almost dry and he had to reject it. “No more waters,” she whispered. “Get climbin’, slowcoach! We’s in danger.”

He reached up, found brick ends and pulled himself upward, scrabbling with his feet to get purchase. In this terrible fashion, half choked with soot and with no idea of how high he was, he ascended the chimney, until he thought he would suffocate and fall to his demise.

And then a breath of fresh air. He knew not where from, just that it was cold and clear. He stopped moving; tried to listen. Nothing, except Missus scrambling up behind him. Invigorated, he made one last effort, feeling a wooden ridge some moments later, which he used to pull himself up. Then he slumped upon a floor, choking, exhausted, filthy; in pitch darkness, but alive and out of the cell. Missus followed.

~

Mr Freud the psychonaut lived at 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, having been expelled from his place of birth by the Kaiser. There also lived his wife and his daughter Anna, who, rumour had it, was almost as fearless a psychonaut as he.

Velvene piloted the machinora to Maresfield Road, landing in a great tuft of brown hair. The machinora changed colour so as to blend in with its surroundings as Velvene disembarked. He carried his rucksack on his back, but left the clay figure and the trolley inside the machinora’s wicker capacity. Then he forged a way through the thick street hair to Mr Freud’s front door.

A bell tinkled. Velvene, a veteran of the Egyptian Baboon Expedition, recognised it as one from Cairo. The door opened and he saw a young woman.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Is Mr Freud in?” asked Velvene. “I am Velvene Orchardtide of the house of Orchardtide.”

“Yes,” the young woman replied. “I’m Anna Freud. Come in, do. Father’s at a loose end – he’s lost a lot of clients recently because of all this hair we’ve been having.”

“Indeed!” Velvene chuckled. “And does he have an explanation for it?”

Anna considered this question. “You think it might have its origin in a person’s mind?”

Velvene shrugged. “Anything is possible in the modern world.”

Anna laughed and said, “I’ll go and tell father you’re here.”

Velvene waited, pulling his rucksack off to appear more like a gentleman. He had brushed and cleaned his clothes as best he could, but was aware that he still appeared dishevelled, not least because he had not shaved for days – an event unknown in his life so far. He glanced into a mirror, wiped beads of sweat off his forehead, straightened his cravat.

On a side table lay a copy of that morning’s
Times
. He glanced at the headline.

ROYAL INSTITUTE SCIENTISTS FOCUS ON CHELSEA COSMETICISTS

Rumour of rogue hairdressers confirmed by PM

“My father will see you in his study,” Anna said.

Velvene walked into the study to see Freud, dapper in a pinstripe suit and straw boater, standing beside an Egyptian potato. He glanced around the room to see a painting of Oedipus and the Sphinx, a green tub chair, and a luxurious couch on which lay a rug patterned in red, yellow and brown.

“A rug from Iran, I note,” he remarked.

“You have been to Iran?” Freud asked, sitting in the tub chair.

Velvene sat back on the couch, arranging the chenille cushions so that he was more comfortable. “I was a member of the Suicide Club’s Tehran Expeditionary Force,” he said. “Last year we went to rescue the Shah from the Red-Faced Devil Boys of Esfahan.”

“They hate their fathers, you know,” Freud observed.

Velvene took a deep breath and said, “Sir, I have come here on a vital mission. Will you aid me, eh?”

“Certainly,” Freud replied. “Why not lie back on the couch and make yourself as comfy as possible?”

Velvene did as he was instructed, then continued, “Rather foolishly, some might say, though mostly because I found myself short of funds, I signed up to a wager that involves uncovering the true nature of love. Now Mr Freud, I am a man who delights in the company of women and marvels at their many accomplishments, but I have never known love, nor even been married. Nor even... well, you know.”

“Excellent,” Freud said. “What I want you to do is talk to me about your mother. Do not consciously constrain what you say. Do not, to use the journalistic term, edit yourself. Just tell me what comes into your head when you think about your mother.”

“I like her... no no, I hate her. I want to kill her.”

“Why do you want to kill her?”

“Because she is a dragon, and dragons must be killed. Like St George, eh? She flies and flaps around the place, putting everything in order, telling me that God will punish me, praying for me, while all the time my wretched brothers with their simpering faces and stupid cassocks prance around Ely and Lincoln telling their flocks how bad they have been! It is an outrage!”

“You hate your brothers, then?” asked Freud.

“No, not hate them... despise them.”

“Are they older than you?”

“Yes, Chompton is the eldest, with Sphagnume the middle one.”

“What comes into your mind,” said Freud, “when you think of your mother and your two brothers together in some familial setting?”

“I am being mocked, excluded, laughed at when I look the other way. I remember a picnic we had, they all ate duck and partridge sandwiches while I had mere ham. Mere ham! It makes me fume to this day that she only gave me ham. And me losing all my hair.”

“Are you losing all your hair?”

“Well, yes, yes,” Velvene muttered, embarrassed that he had said such a thing. “Going a bit thin on top. But what has that to do with it, eh?”

“You said it, not me.”

Velvene frowned, gazed at the ceiling, then shut his eyes. “I suppose, being the youngest of the family, I was ignored somewhat. I am guessing, Mr Freud – I have no evidence, you understand. But it seems to me that the dragon was more interested in the Church than me. And my two brothers part of the Church. So
convenient!
No bloody wonder I joined the bloody Suicide Club!”