The Doorkeepers (36 page)

“Without anybody seeing us, or shooting us, or bursting into this room and cutting the rope when we're halfway down?”

“We don't have any alternative, do we?”

John Farbelow looked at her, and for the first time Ella saw beneath the ravages of age and pain and grief, saw the kind of hopeful young man he must have been once. Never striving to be anything important, but chosen all the same.

She climbed on to the kitchen sink and opened up the window. “The rope's here. I think it's safe. The fire brigade insisted that the landlord put it in.”

There was another kick at the door. The architrave splintered, and lumps of plaster fell down from the sides. Ella wriggled herself backward out of the window, gripping the rope with her left hand. “Abraxas!” she called. “Come on, boy! Come on, Abraxas!”

Abraxas hesitated but then he jumped up on to the draining board. John Farbelow shouted, “What the hell are you doing? You can't take the dog down with you!”

“He's my dog,” Ella insisted, just as the door was kicked again, and the two lower panels splintered.

“You can't! You'll kill yourself!”

Ella pulled Abraxas by his collar and dragged him out on to the windowsill. Abraxas whined and his claws scrabbled reluctantly against the stone, but Ella snapped, “Come on, stupid! You have to! You want to be
sancoche?”

She managed to wrap her right arm around Abraxas' chest. Then she edged her way backward, over the sill, and began to inch down the wall, gasping with the effort. John leaned out of the window and watched her in desperation. It was nearly seventy feet down to the sidewalk, and in front of the block of flats stood a row of spiked cast-iron railings. Behind the railings there was a deep area crowded with
metal trash cans and pieces of rusty corrugated iron and pieces of timber.

“Take it slowly, Ella,” John Farbelow cautioned her. “Don't worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

Behind him, the lower door panels were kicked out, and the central bar splintered. John Farbelow looked around, anxiously. Two or three more kicks and the lock would give way.

Ella managed to reach the windowsill of the flat below. She was still clinging on tight, but when she stepped off, she began to spin around, so she had to pedal desperately to get her feet back on the sill again. Abraxas began to panic, and thrashed his legs, and so Ella had to wedge herself tight against the window frame to stop herself from losing her balance.

“Calm down, Abraxas,” she soothed him, even though her voice was shaking. “Come on, boy, calm down!” But Abraxas struggled even more wildly, and barked, and bit her hand, so that she almost let go of the rope. She looked down and the whole world seemed to tilt.

“Drop the dog!” John Farbelow shouted at her. “You don't have any choice, Ella! Drop the damn dog!”

“I can't!” she screamed. But at that instant, Abraxas struggled out of her grasp and jumped toward the ground. Ella twisted around to see what had happened to him, and it was then that the rope broke.

She snatched at the wall, trying to find a handhold. Her fingertips momentarily caught the top of the sash window, but then they slipped. The next thing she knew she was plunging to the ground, her arms and legs frantically waving, as if she were drowning, rather than falling. She went on swimming until she hit the railings.

There was a dull ringing sound, like a leaden bell chiming. John Farbelow looked down and saw her lying crucified, her arms lolling on either side, both shins penetrated by the same cast-iron spike. She was staring up at the sky with her eyes wide open, as if she were surprised that this had happened.

Abraxas had hit the sidewalk on all fours. It looked to John Farbelow as if he had broken one of his legs, but he managed to
limp back to the railings, and stand looking up at Ella's body, whining in pain and perplexity.

The door opened with a crash. John Farbelow turned around as three men entered the room, all of them dressed in burnouses, like Arabs. Their faces, however, were completely masked with hessian hoods, with ragged holes torn open for their eyes.

He raised his hand and said, “I don't know who you are, or who you're looking for, but you're making a mistake!”

One of the Hooded Men drew a long saber out of his robes, and approached John Farbelow with the confident crouch of a trained swordsman. John Farbelow could hear him hissing to himself, hissing in triumph.

“This is all a mistake. None of us had anything to do with Edridge.”

“Perhaps you did, perhaps you didn't,” said one of the Hooded Men. “But, in history, even the innocent must pay for the sins of the guilty. It's the law.”

John Farbelow looked away from him; and took in the positions of the other two Hooded Men. One of them was opening every one of Ella's herbs and spices and tipping them on to the floor. The other was pulling all of her gewgaws off the wall, all her crucifixes and mirrors and necklaces and voodoo dolls, all of the pictures of her family and friends, and all of those people who had helped her to believe that she didn't have to be enslaved.

“What are you going to do with me?” asked John Farbelow.

“We're going to give you justice,” said the Hooded Man. “Isn't that what you were always fighting for?”

“Without freedom, my friend, justice doesn't mean anything.”

“So that's what gives you your excuse to murder anybody you like?”

John Farbelow moved slowly sideways. If he was quick enough, he could dodge between the two Hoodies who were ransacking Ella's apartment and make it to the broken-down door. The third Hooded Man half-turned away from him for a second. “Look at this heathen trash. And to think this
woman thought that she had some divine right to subvert our society.”

“Well …” said John Farbelow, as if he were going to say something in reply. But then he ran for the door, jinking from one side to the other like a football player.

Before any of the three Hoodies could turn around, he had made it to the door, and on to the landing. He seized the banisters and swung himself down the first flight of stairs. He heard the Hoodies shouting and running after him, their boots drumming on the cheap-carpeted treads. He threw himself down the next flight, and the next, and he was galloping down the last flight at full tilt when another Hoodie appeared in front of him, as black as the shadow of death, and he ran straight into his upraised sword.

He reached out with both hands, trying to grasp the Hoodie's shoulders to support himself. He knew what had happened to him. He could feel that the steel had penetrated his lung and come right out of his back.

“Winnie,” he whispered; and he made a conscious effort to picture her, the way he had first met her, on the number fifteen bus. Because all of his subversion, after all, had been nothing more than his rage and his grief at losing Winnie.

The Hoodie, in turn, grasped
his
shoulder, and slowly tugged the sword out, and it was a hundred times more painful than it had been, going in – especially the way it slid against his ribs. John Farbelow collapsed on to his knees and tumbled down the last six or seven stairs into the hallway, next to the bicycle.

He lay with his cheek against the grimy green vinyl, watching his blood creep away from him. He saw the Hoodies' boots stepping over him, as they left the apartment block and made their escape. By this time tomorrow, they would be back in the other London, and nobody would ever know who had murdered him. Worse still, nobody would ever know who he – or Ella – was.

Outside, in the street, Abraxas sat patiently on the sidewalk, while Ella lay spreadeagled on the railings, and the hazy afternoon air was filled with the whooping of ambulances and police cars.

Josh and Petty ran down Kingsway, their footsteps echoing against the derelict buildings. Fires were still burning in the offices all around Aldwych, and they could hear the ringing of fire-engine bells and the crackling of broken glass. All the same, they could still hear the penetrating tattoo of the drums that were following them; and the yapping of the dogs.

“Down here,” said Petty, and they turned left into Sardinia Street. In the open gardens of Lincoln's Inn Fields, six or seven air-raid wardens were battling with a punctured barrage balloon, which filled up almost the whole square like a maddened but half-deflated elephant. They were tugging at ropes and trying to tie it down. “Your end, Reg! What the ‘ell are you up to? Pull
your
end!”

They reached Carey Street and turned into Star Yard. “Listen,” said Josh. “If we go through the door now, we're going back to the world of the Hooded Men. Another London, nothing like this.”

More anti-aircraft guns coughed in the distance, over by the Surrey Docks. “There can't be anywhere as bad as this,” said Petty. “And if we don't go, they'll catch us, won't they, and kill us?”

“All right,” Josh agreed. He put his arms around her and gave her a hug.

They walked up Star Yard to the niche in the wall. Josh took three candles out of his pocket and set them on the ground.

“Is this all you have to do?” asked Petty.

“You have to recite a Mother Goose rhyme, too,” said Josh, touching each candle with his butane lighter, his hand shielding the wicks until they were all well alight.

“A Mother Goose rhyme? What's that?”

Josh stood up. “You Brits call them nursery rhymes. Like Humpty Dumpty. This is a real old one, one of the oldest. ‘Six doors they stand in London Town …'” And then he said, “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick …”

Petty stared at him in growing disbelief. “That's
if!
And that gets you through to this other London?”

“Try it,” said Josh.

Petty held back. Exhausted and grimy and shocked as she was, this was enough. She couldn't cope with madness as well.

“I don't believe you,” she said.

“You saw the Hooded Man. You saw his face.”

Petty covered her eyes with both hands. “I don't want to think about it. I don't want to have nothing to do with it. I don't want to stay. I don't want to go. I don't know what I want to do.”

Josh put his arm around her plump shoulders, in her cheap satin dress.

“Petty, I can't make you any promises. If we go through this door now, it may be worse. But right now these guys are after me
here
and because of me they want you too.”

“I don't know what to do,” Petty wept, and the tears poured down her cheeks and made dirty streaks in the dust.

But it was then that they heard the crackling noise of side drums, only two or three streets away. “It's them,” Josh told her. “They won't give up, not until they track us down. I'm sorry.”

“You're sorry? How do you think I feel? Why did I bloody well have to meet
you,
of all people?”

The three candles were burning strongly now. There was very little wind in Star Yard, and the flames scarcely nodded at all. They reminded Josh of the candles that used to burn in church, when he was a boy. “Maybe you met me because you were always meant to,” he coaxed her. “Come on, Petty, these things happen. Some people get together whether they like it or not.”

“Oh, I see. You were always meant to save me from a
life on the streets, were you? By frightening the
shit
out of me with that man's face. You
knew
he looked like that, didn't you? You knew! That's why you cut his hood off, you bastard.”

“Petty, I swear to you I didn't know. I never saw one of those guys without his hood, ever. Not without his hood.”

The drumming was nearer now, and much more frantic. The Hooded Men were probably turning into Carey Street. They knew where he was going. They knew that he was trying to escape. Underneath those harsh hessian hoods they could probably sense everything that he was thinking.

“Petty, if we don't haul ass out of here now …”

Petty lifted her face to the sky, and pressed her hands in front of her in prayer. Although she was so grimy, and her dress was so torn, Josh thought that she looked beautiful. More than beautiful, almost divine.

The drums racketed closer and closer but she kept her eyes closed and her hands pressed together. “Amen,” she said at last, and crossed herself; but when she turned to him her face was wild with worry. “I bet it doesn't work.”

“If you think it doesn't work, why did you pray?”

“I wasn't praying for me. I was praying for all the poor sods we're leaving behind.”

“So you'll give it a try?”

“I don't know. I don't want to die, that's all.”

Josh recited the rhyme again, just to make sure. The drums were very close now, and he could see the flickering lights of lanterns on the buildings opposite: shadows that jumped and danced like devils.

“Go,” he told Petty. “Jump over the candles, that's all you have to do.”

“That's all I have to do? Jump? But there's nothing
there!”
she suddenly panicked. “Only a wall!”

“Come on, you just said you were going to do it.”

“But it's only a bloody wall!”

Josh gripped hold of her dress and stared her wildly in the eyes. “Remember that face? Remember what that thing looked like, when I cut off its hood? There are more of them coming!
They're going to be here before you can count to ten, and then we won't have any options at all!”

“But his
face .
. .”

Josh, tired as he was, bent his knees and picked her up and practically threw her over the line of candles. With a screech of Cockney indignity, she landed on her bottom on the other side. He glanced to his left and saw four dogs pelting toward him, four of the Hoodies' dogs, their tongues flapping and froth flying out of the sides of their mouths. He heaved himself over the candles, rolling over into the rubbish. He climbed to his feet, blew out the candles and took hold of Petty's arm. “Come on, we have to get out of here fast. I wouldn't be surprised if they come after us.”