The Crack (9 page)

A great cry went up from the men on the Playboy roof. And then, the road clear of the menacing animals and the haven of the Playboy only a few blissful minutes away, Baba began to walk quickly and happily towards them. An outfit at last! The life she had missed so much restored to her! She smiled, picking her way carefully over the broken tarmac.

Sir Max Bowlby lay dreaming in the triangular room, once Pierre Courvoisier's master bedroom with bathroom
en suite
. It was now a strange mixture of the two, the contracting walls having pushed the bath up next to the bed and flung the lavatory, a fine Victorian fake of gleaming mahogany and canework, half out of the window so that it overhung the sloping lawns below. The fitted cupboards had bulged and split, and Bowlby lay in an uncomfortable array of Madame Courvoisier's evening dresses, most of which were covered in sharp sequins that nudged him awake just as his dream was at its most reassuring.

He dreamed that everything was back to normal again.

In his office, the blonde secretary was bringing coffee to the dark-haired personal assistant. The multi-phones rang constantly, and as he snapped into the red, green and blue receivers lights flickered on the maps of the Seychelles and the Sardinian hinterland. Imposingly, taking up the entire wall opposite his desk, was the construction plan, in sombre black and white grain of the redevelopment plan for Calcutta. PUT INDIA ON THE MAP stood out in bold lettering under the plan; the best architects had been hired to outdo Brasilia for Bowlby.

On Bowlby's desk was a studio portrait of his wife and his beloved Pomeranian sheepdog. It was six o'clock in the dream, for Bowlby was rising from his desk and stretching his arms with a satisfied expression.

From the wide, curved window it could be seen that everything was normal in London, too.

The rush hour was in full swing, and at the foot of the Bowlby building Bowlby's Bentley and chauffeur waited. A slice of the dome of St Paul's, obscured by empty office blocks and skyscrapers, glinted in the late evening sun. Faces pinched
with worry, the blonde secretary and the dark-haired personal assistant hovered at the door of the office. Bowlby knew they hoped to get to the shops before late-night crowds made it impossible for them, and he smiled expansively. It was his last twinge of power before being driven home, sipping at his martini and being driven out again with his wife to a dinner where he would be asked several times to be god-father to the latest arrivals of destitute aristocratic ladies; and, as always, he took advantage of it.

‘A letter, Miss Griffiths,' he barked out.

Controlling her despair, the blonde secretary came forward. The phone rang once more: a Tokyo businessman who wanted to set up a casino complex at Lourdes. It was a good idea, Bowlby reflected, outdoing the acrosexbatics at Las Vegas. Cripples and gamblers alike could relax in the healing waters between bouts of roulette and chemin de fer. He grunted approval and hung up.

The secretary crossed her legs provocatively, shorthand pad on lap. Bowlby glanced at the clock, wondered if there was time, before the Duchess of Savage's cocktail party …

The head of a fox stole on Madame Courvoisier's best winter coat bit deep into Bowlby's shoulder and he woke up. He groaned, swinging his legs over the dusty bath to reach the window, no more than a medieval slit now, of Courvoisier's master bedroom. If only, he thought in desperation as he pushed the ponderous Victorian lavatory to one side and looked out, there could be a crowd of
people
below! A crowd of eager workers, blue-overalled. In his mind's eye he saw the bridge that would carry them across. Delicate, vast: a Tay bridge that needed men permanently on it, painting and repairing. And he and McDougall – and their wives too, of course – cutting the ribbon at the completion of the bridge, striding, high above the dregs of the Thames, to the great opportunities on the other side.

The bridge, worked on night and day by teams of sweating labourers, would take only a week or so to build. Bowlby's Versailles, his Great Pyramid.

But there was no one to be seen anywhere. An acrid stench from the open cesspit of the river-bed caused Bowlby to reach
for Madame Courvoisier's bottle of Chanel No. 5. He dabbed it on to the corner of a sequinned dress and waved it in front of his nose. It was a clear, light morning and the brown clouds had rolled away altogether, leaving a breeze that would have been deliciously refreshing under any other circumstances. Bowlby sighed.

One of his worst troubles in the feverish night he had just spent was a recurring fantasy about a naked, mud-covered girl he had seen running down Cheyne Walk the night before. When he had mentioned the vision to his wife she had only laughed – and to punish her he had insisted she sleep in McDougall's half-destroyed study. Now he felt guilt: he knew she was suffering from bad stomach cramps after a diet of Courvoisier's preserved fruits and Charbonnel and Walker chocolates; and the cold night air must have been extremely injurious to her. But at the same time he was unable to forget the fleeing, muddy figure – the sweet little face, the buttocks like Chanteloup melons as they pumped energy into the slender legs.

Then he gave a hoarse shout. Down on the Embankment, crossing the Royal Hospital Road and looking to the right, the left and the right again at the tortured traffic lights, came a band of people. Their clothes were tattered and they seemed to be waving rattles and blowing toy trumpets, but they were people. Workers! If it seemed strange that they should pay so much attention to the pedestrian code when there were no cars in working order, it mattered little to Bowlby. He wetted his lips and gave another shout.

McDougall, dozing uneasily in his perpendicular library, leapt to his feet. If Bowlby was as excited as this, there must be some major change in prospects. Eyes shining under the brow responsible for so many conversions, he struggled to the door of Courvoisier's house and looked out.

What he saw disappointed him, but McDougall was accustomed to dealing with hippie labourers. With a well-trained eye he totted up the size of the potential work force. Over one hundred men and women! With a sigh of relief he saw the bridge leap and bound across the widening Crack.

He had been about to admit defeat. The fine weather and
good visibility was making the ordered, harmonious life in progress on the other side almost unbearable. Repeated flag-waving and booming through home-made megaphones had been answered only by cryptic and maddening messages in a woman's voice. It had seemed, even to McDougall, that the twenty-first century, beckoning and at the same time repudiating them on the far side of the river-bed had no intention of including such men as himself and Bowlby in it. But now!

Thirsk's children wandered uncertainly down Cheyne Walk. A few moments before, both Thirsk and Harcourt had been with them; now both had disappeared.

‘I want my Daddy,' moaned Mrs Withers. She kicked savagely at Jo-Jo by way of reprisal. ‘Where's that bastard Daddy gone?'

The other children eyed Mrs Withers with tired hatred and marched on. They dimly remembered the safety of Thirsk's cork-lined clinic, and felt they were nowhere near home here. Only Ned and Mary retained their ebullience, giving a halloo of delight when they saw the oozing playground of mud stretched out before them. The parent figures were forgotten as they ran laughing to the parapet and gazed down through the crumbled cement slabs at the river-bed below.

McDougall seized his opportunity. Without stopping to help Bowlby clamber down from the triangular room he dashed out into Cheyne Walk, his arms laden with gifts. A gasp of delight went up from the children as crystallized violets, Napoleon brandy and brass telescopes were showered down on them. Gratefully they sank on to Courvoisier's steep lawn and ate and drank.

McDougall ran up the lawn, grabbing at tufts of grass in order not to slip back. Peremptorily, in a tone he had almost forgotten how to use, he ordered Lady Bowlby out of the study and into the remains of the kitchen, where there might still be smoked salmon in the overturned refrigerator. ‘Make sandwiches,' he barked. ‘Hurry!'

Lady Bowlby, dazed by her bad night and the hostility of Sir Max, stumbled obediently towards the kitchen and collapsed in tears amongst the wreckage of Moffat cooker, dishwasher and severed Wastemaster.

‘Really,' she moaned to the collection of useless appliances, which seemed to be regarding her with curious disapproval, ‘if I don't get to the other side soon I simply don't know what I shall do!'

Falling in love again
What am I to do?
Never wanted to
I just can't help it.

Baba was in her seventh heaven. In fact, she had to rub her eyes often to convince herself she wasn't dreaming – but the smudge of dark blue mascara and soft iridescent eye-shadow that came off on the back of her hand when she did were enough to show that this really was happening and she wasn't asleep at all.

Here she was, doing her Marlene Dietrich before a crowd of appreciative, applauding men.

She was back in the Playboy, and when she had finished her cabaret turn a brand new bunny outfit awaited her.

Best of all, all the other girls had left. Baba felt she should have warned them that however compelling Medea Smith's voice might sound, they wouldn't enjoy the converted church at World's End. But they had run off too fast. And now Baba was undisputed Queen.

With a final brandish of her top hat, Baba stepped down from the stage. The tinkling piano started up again; the men strolled over to the bar to help themselves to drinks. The shaker went on shaking. Glacé cherries and olives fell with little plops into iced spirits. Nuts spilled out into dishes and were consumed hungrily.

The men were tired, Baba realized this, but what a perfect life to go on in perpetuity! If they became jaded she regaled them with another number and they soon perked up again. It was just as Baba had always said: the sexual appetite was what counted.

Smiling and bowing, Baba ran off to change into her bunny
outfit. The trials and exhaustions of the days since the Crack were already forgotten, and she found she wasn't tired at all. It would be nice, she decided, to serve the next round of drinks herself – then the poor angels wouldn't have to stir themselves. Glowing with happiness and success, she arranged her new tail and gave a pert nod that sent her ears flying.

‘What the hell are we going to do?' Ebbing-Smith muttered to his friend Potts. ‘If this is a war, why haven't we been captured or something?'

The two men, close since their schooldays and automatically suspicious of any outsider, had been joined by a third man. Smooth dark hair, a slightly sanctimonious smile: he bore all the marks of the type of person most mistrusted by Potts and Ebbing-Smith. In order not to be overheard by him they spoke in choked whispers, glancing pointedly away from him when he seemed about to speak.

She used to love waltzes
So please don't play a waltz.
She danced divinely, and I loved her so.
But there I go.

croaked the pianist. The martini shaker, keeping time with the music, rattled monotonously. Ebbing-Smith groaned.

‘Excuse me,' the stranger said. ‘May I introduce myself?'

Potts stuffed a handful of nuts into his mouth and reached for a cigarette. Ebbing-Smith waved with simulated gaiety at Baba as she came towards them.

‘Cornelius,' the stranger persisted. ‘Brother Cornelius as a matter of fact. I just happened to be passing, you know, when this … this cataclysm took place. And ducked in for shelter, you might say.'

‘Really? How interesting,' Potts said in a bored voice.

‘I never imagined,' the priest gabbled, ‘that I'd find Sodom and Gomorrah the only places not destroyed.' He gave a high, excited giggle. ‘And I keep hearing voices – messages from the other world–'

Potts and Ebbing-Smith glanced at each other with distaste. This was the last straw: a Roman Catholic priest, of all things, in the Playboy. And every sign of being walled up with him till Judgement Day.

Baba lowered her tray of drinks and waggled her tail.

‘A drink, sir?' she murmured to Brother Cornelius. The man had intrigued her while she was doing the number before the Marlene Dietrich – the vamp number in which she stripped down to fishnet tights and nothing else. He had seemed strangely agitated, changing his seat several times and ending up with Potts and Ebbing-Smith as if he thought they were likely to provide protection.

‘Er, no thanks,' Brother Cornelius muttered. He closed his eyes until Baba's cleavage was removed. ‘You see,' he went on earnestly to Ebbing-Smith, ‘I happened to pick up this little transistor in the street. Now the strange, the awesome thing is that God himself is speaking directly – using the media, you might say – to tell us what is happening to this poor little planet earth of ours.'

He paused for breath, his eyes rolling wildly. Potts and Ebbing-Smith made a dive for the transistor, which the priest was holding with reverence. The unusual energy of their movements brought the other men running up to the table. The piano stopped and the martini shaker was still.

‘Oh dear,' cried Baba. ‘What's the matter now?'

It seemed to her sometimes that no sooner did she get what she wanted than it was taken away from her.

‘Let me have that!' An ex-rugger blue grabbed the transistor. He held it high above his head, arm muscles rippling, and the other men stood round him in a circle.

At first there was silence. Brother Cornelius assumed an attitude of prayer. Then a voice – the woman's voice that had so alarmed them on the roof – began:

Sisters!

I speak to you of the Other Side.

None of the troubles of the old life are to be found there.

Harmony, peace and pleasure will be ours.

The goddess will be restored to her throne.