The Crack (8 page)

‘So this is the other side,' he remarked. ‘There doesn't seem to be much originality of design.'

Before Thirsk, who was in the process of realizing that Waters was less inane than he looked, had time to answer, a
great scream went up from his patients under the tree. Thirsk, distracted by the sound, decided that for the first time in his life he had better admit his error. It was clear that even he would be unable to contain Waters's righteous rage.

Harcourt, sensing that his master was about to come clean, trembled in his shoes.

The screaming grew louder. Waters, the stronger of the two now, paid no attention to it.

He pulled his son's air pistol from his pocket and aimed at Thirsk. With a cumbersome gesture, Thirsk raised his great arms above his head.

Then Thirsk was saved. Followed by the mob of screaming children, an extraordinary figure was running over the muddy banks of the Serpentine towards them.

It was impossible to tell where the figure began and the mud ended. It seemed, in fact, to be the hideous mockery of a human being made entirely of mud; a living creation of the slime itself. The gun fell from Waters's hand and he crossed himself. As it came nearer, the horribly realistic limbs gesturing in a mad parody of human communication, even Thirsk paled and stepped back, stumbling in the folds of his robe.

But Thirsk was never slow to think. Regaining his composure, he faced Waters and spoke clearly and with contempt.

‘Is it not clear to you,' he enunciated as Harcourt gazed up at him with fear and admiration, ‘that this is the mirror image of the world we live in? That the people you see here, naked and savage as they are, are the reflections of ourselves? Dehumanized man laid bare: the other side of the self and other?'

Waters, temporarily silenced by Thirsk's conviction and brilliance, felt his tired mind atrophy as the events of the last twenty-four hours overcame him. Wasn't it reasonable enough that the other side would be but the mirror of the side he knew? Was it possible in life to escape yourself by moving away from your environment? He knew well that man carries his ruin with him.

The moving figure of mud ran to within a few feet of where they stood and collapsed in the element whence it had come. A
woman! Evil womanhood, dragging man down into the abyss since the beginning of time. Women symbolized by the primeval slime; all round her the fallen and ruined Garden of Eden. Woman crawling towards them like a serpent on its belly –

With expressions of fastidious disgust, both Waters and Thirsk inched away from the spectacle. Only the children, their gay laughter animating the devilish landscape, pelted the creature with balls of mud and screamed alternately.

‘Please,' cried Baba. ‘Help me. I'm looking for Park Lane – I'm on my way to the Playboy Club to get fitted out – There's a woman after me –' Baba's hands groped frantically for the hem of Thirsk's robe. Sternly he drew away from her.

‘Who are you?' Waters demanded in an inquisitorial tone. To his own shame he found the sight of the mud woman strangely exciting. How could it be that he, Waters, a supporter of the feminists in their claims for equality was provoked to a state of erection by Baba's abasement? Sighing, he supposed that these things were sent as a trial on the Other Side. The suspicion dawned on him that this might in fact be Limbo, where God examined your behaviour before making up His mind where you should go.

‘My name's Baba,' the pathetic girl said. ‘I'm looking for Park Lane!'

Sobs that were only too human choked through the thick layers of slime. In an agony of embarrassment, Waters attempted to hide with his hand his state of arousal and glanced at Thirsk for support.

Thirsk had noticed. His full power restored, he smiled invisibly behind his beard.

‘This is the type of woman who goes on to become the schizophrogenic mother,' he announced. ‘The sins of the mothers are handed down through the generations. Our opportunity, in this society at the dawn of creation, is to remove the mother altogether and substitute the communal anti-family.'

As he spoke, Thirsk's mind raced. Whatever happened, he must prevent Waters from crossing the river. He must leave him here, ostensibly in charge of the new society, while he
and Harcourt shepherded their children to the other side. What better than to set up a camp for women like this – and Thirsk didn't doubt that the clubs of Soho and the respectable homes of Knightsbridge alike would yield their quota of disastrous women, all of whom would wander into Hyde Park – what better than to suggest to Waters that he stay here in charge of them? Waters was clearly in a state of extreme sexual repression: in the guise of instructing these women in the true path, he could indulge himself to his heart's content. And get on to the first stage of regression at the same time! Thirsk liked to help all mankind.

Baba's shrill voice broke into his calculations. ‘Oh God!' she cried. ‘Look! She's got here! Help me! Help me!'

The children gave another piercing scream as the new arrival descended on them. This was too good to be true! As Thirsk's and Waters's eyes goggled and poor Harcourt covered his face with his hands, a figure more unbelievable than the first came running with odd, mechanical movements over the grass and at full tilt towards Baba's muddy patch. Thirsk's low whistle sounded sibilantly.

‘A doll! A doll!' the children shouted. Mary and Mrs Withers rushed at it, all their frustration at their lost playthings expressing itself in a wild possessiveness.

‘Rene Mangrove,' moaned Baba. ‘Don't let her get at me, whatever happens!'

But there was little chance of that. Before she could reach her goal the life-sized artificial woman had been pulled down by the children and had disappeared in a kicking fray of arms and legs.

Ned and Mary, who had always fought over their toys, tugged at her from either end. A thoughtful bespectacled man, regressing as a long-hoped-for cure for homosexuality, pulled off her skirt and folded it into the shape of a nappy. Before he could change Rene Mangrove, Jo-Jo had seized it from him and torn it to shreds.

Bleached nylon hair came out in tufts and scattered in the breeze like dandelion puffs. A bright blue eye sailed through the air and landed at Thirsk's feet. Metallic lips curved in a love-goddess smile lay forgotten in the mud.

Baba gave a little sigh. ‘Everyone I'm connected with seems to come to a bad end,' she said sadly.

A manly feeling came over Waters at the words. Tenderly he helped Baba to her feet. With his own hands he would bathe her in the waters of the Serpentine. With his love he would bring her self-esteem and respectability.

Thirsk summed up the situation and signalled to Harcourt. In the distance, and exhibiting every sign of distress, Mrs Waters was making for her husband at full speed. The woman-doll was no more than a broken toy. The children had abandoned it already.

As Waters stood with his arm round Baba, Thirsk gathered up his flock with the promise of Smarties all round at the end of the journey, and they crept away in the direction of the river.

Park Lane was deserted except for the animals. It seemed that every pet in London, tired of waiting for the return of its owner, had decided to assemble there.

Baba, escaped from the reforming embrace of Waters, rounded Hyde Park Corner and stopped in her tracks. A phalanx of Securicor Alsatians growled menacingly at the frail mud-caked figure. Coyly aware of their attractions, a small band of trimmed white poodles danced along the road towards her. Escaped pet mice, disoriented by the absence of their toy wheel and breeding box, ran like drifting snow across her feet.

‘Oh dear,' sighed Baba. ‘Now what am I to do?'

So near, yet so impossibly far stood the imposing building of the Playboy. It was strange, Baba thought as she gazed longingly at the two erect ears still glowing luminously outside it, that the Playboy was the only place not to have suffered in some way from the catastrophe. The top storey of the Hilton – and here she had to admit to a twinge of nostalgia for poor Simon Mangrove – had fallen off completely. The Dorchester had grown extraordinarily thin in the middle and wide at the edges, so that some of the rooms, Baba imagined, must be two feet square now, and others pointlessly distended. As for Apsley House – but Baba made up her mind not to look back at the smouldering ruins of St George's and the fallen mansion of the Iron Duke. The lucky part was that the Playboy stood firm. And somehow, through this jungle infested by dangerous animals, she had to reach it.

Inside the Playboy, everything went on as it had before. Because of the failure of electricity there was no closed-circuit television, and fiery torches lent an air of late Roman extravagance to the cocktail bar, the Bunny girls resembling some kind of startling mythical animal as they handed round the
drinks and waggled their tails for the customers. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to tell that a catastrophe of such proportions had taken place outside.

‘What I say is,' remarked Nicholas Ebbing-Smith as he sipped at his fifth Old-fashioned, ‘is let them know we're not giving in this time. We can manage without their electricity better than they can manage without our money.'

‘Power cuts bring the country down,' Jeremy Potts agreed drunkenly.

‘Starve them out.' Ebbing-Smith strengthened his point.

Potts and Ebbing-Smith sat in companionable silence for a time. Potts glared down at his watch and sighed. ‘Five o'clock,' he said. ‘Another late night, Nick. But what's the use of going to the office when the air-conditioning doesn't work? Think I'll skip it again.'

‘I used to envy you, having an office to go to,' Ebbing-Smith confided. Eyes moist, he turned to his friend for sympathy. ‘But seeing what a worry it's been to you, I'm pretty glad now I didn't take the plunge.'

‘Ulcers,' Potts confirmed. He glanced at his watch again, puzzled. ‘Hey, Nick, it can't be five in the morning, you know. It must be – how long
have
we been here, anyway?'

‘You mean to say it's the afternoon?' Ebbing-Smith chortled. ‘Well, well.'

Although both men laughed, a tiny shadow of fear crept across their faces. In the light from the flares, the bar where they sat seemed suddenly timeless, without beginning or end or geographical existence. The piano tinkled; the girls passed like waves lapping on a beach. Behind the bar, always and mysteriously full, the bottles of scotch and vodka and crême de menthe glinted. The barman's arm rose and fell, an unending martini shaking gently between his hands. Potts and Ebbing-Smith glanced at each other, still pretending to smile.

‘Let's go up to the roof,' Ebbing-Smith suggested casually. ‘If it's the afternoon it'll do us good to get a breath of air.'

The two men rose and sauntered to the door. To their surprise, they found they were joined almost at once by all the other men in the bar. Only the Bunny girls went mechanically about their business. The piano tinkled on monotonously, unaware
of the sudden rush to the exit. ‘Great men think alike,' Potts said uneasily.

A heave from the impatient crowd behind them sent Potts and Ebbing-Smith at frantic speed up the stairs. Ignoring the feeble cries of the Playboy visitors who had been in the lift at the time of the electricity cut, they surged out on to the roof.

A deep gasp, like a dog snarling in its sleep, went up from the men as they saw the scene before them. For a moment there was silence.

Then fifty voices started up at the same time. The older customers, some of them still convalescing from prostate operations, clasped themselves and gazed apprehensively up at the skies for signs of Hitler's bombers. The younger men, unprepared by the State for an emergency on this scale, stared in perplexity and horror at the fallen houses and wrecked funfair of Hyde Park.

Below, scenting the presence of humans, the abandoned pets sent up a howl of rage and protest.

‘Whatever can have happened?' Ebbing-Smith said. In spite of the lameness of his remark his obvious unflappability caused several of the more panicky men to cluster round him for support.

‘And what's that?' Potts cried. The hysteria in his voice communicated itself to the crowd, which now edged away from its two leaders.

‘Air raid,' barked an ex-brigadier amongst them. ‘Cover, boys!'

A rushing sound, growing louder and louder, filled the air. Hands over their ears, the terrified men crouched on the Playboy roof. Apart from the fact that half of them thought that the sound heralded the arrival of the Russians and the other half that it was the Chinese, the feelings were unanimous. The end had come. They were all about to die.

A voice – low, chilling, a woman's voice – spoke through the mad whirlpool of racing air. Slowly, trembling with fear, the men uncovered their ears and looked up at the brown clouds above them as they churned across the sky.

The voice seemed to emanate directly from the heavens:

The river is exhausted, the banks are wide,
A new life for women on the Other Side.

The rushing sound died away. Shakily, not liking to catch each others' eyes, the men rose to their feet.

Then another sight, more disturbing to them than the wreckage of Park Lane, caused them to pull their handkerchiefs from their pockets and dab desperately at their brows.

The Bunny girls had escaped out into the street and were running as fast as their legs could carry them down to Hyde Park Corner.

In blind obedience to the voice they ran through the swarming pets and past the muddy, pathetic figure of Baba, who hesitated still amongst the ruins of Les Ambassadeurs. They had to get to the river. They had to find Medea Smith.

Taken aback by the giant rabbits, the dogs and cats and hamsters backed into the park. A short volley of barking went up, but the girls ran on unmoved, their ears flapping as they ran.