Silent multitude, p.9
Silent Multitude, page 9
By Christmas morning the highest, longest established colonies were hot with microscopic busyness, were already mature and coming relentlessly to seed. The unstressed chimney flashings and parapets held their shapes against the burrowing, or caved in slowly as the granite outcrops of Wales had done. But the threads were gone, dead, multiplied and scattered on the wind. And the lower communities prospered.
The tiny unheard voices gathered in Tug’s ears, so that he shook his head till it rattled. The voices grew and the buildings themselves were cracking. He slunk leopard-low, pausing to. look over his shoulder at the bare streets and bright lines of houses. Other cats were out. The morning was sharp with peering eyes and shoulder blades. As yet not a single building had fallen.
Tug covered the miles to home at a rocking-horse canter. He met Paper Smith halfway across the last concourse. They were both hurrying. He acknowledged Paper by matching his pace and lightly flicking the extreme end of his tail. Paper Smith unlocked the door to the coke store and they both went in. Tug scouted around, sniffing the different people who had been in since he was last there. The place was cold, but the half-dark and the reassuring smell of old newsprint calmed the cat so that he was able to settle his electric skin and climb onto a pile of paper for stroking. The old man stroked him with unusual concentration.
The morning routine demanded food. The lack of food smells didn’t put Tug off, for he had learned that food often lurked down-wind in tins. He mewed. Paper Smith went to his stove and rearranged the assorted packets of cocoa and dried onions, the bottles of coffee and vinegar, the tins of milk and foot powder and golden syrup and curry essence. In the end he brought a plate piled with dried milk which Tug lapped, sneezing as usual. Then he slept, his stomach still more or less comfortable with roast beef.
Paper Smith was traversing his corridors. Suddenly he stopped and supplied his mumbling jaws with a voice.
“There’s no police. That’s what it is.”
He knew he had pinpointed what was wrong. How they had got away with breaking and entering, how the young man Sim had been able to grab the girl without attracting attention. There were no police. Perhaps they were out on strike, or perhaps there was a revolution.
The newspapers that would have given him the answer he disregarded. It was sufficient that there had been a strike or a revolution. He needed words rather than explanations. He set off again, circling down and across, through and around.
But he was still disturbed. The thoughts in his head no longer flowed, they presented him instead with disconnected images like photographs in an album. Young Sally—that was her name—pouring him tea. He hadn’t been poured tea by the hand and the arm of a woman for a long time. His mind offered him a picture of the dispenser by the taxi rank, then flipped back to Sally. Only this time it wasn’t Sally, it was—
Dear William,
I hope this will reach you. I'm trusting Mr. Mallalieu. It’s a silly sort of do come back letter because I’m sure you wouldn’t go if you didn’t know what you were doing. Or think you knew. It can’t just be because of the curtains but if it is I’m sorry. They’ve gone back to Lew-ins who weren’t very nice but that’s that. And if it’s the other, dear, I’m truly sorry I said a word about it. Noisy things kids are and I’d rather go on the way we were. Where would I be without my beauty sleep and kids don’t let you get that so there you are. So if it’s that please don’t let it come between us. The papers were on the phone this morning and I told them you were away ill in hospital. After months of leaving us alone it’s funny how these things get about. But the papers don’t matter, nothing matters except you coming back. I’ve left it to the end and it’ll look silly in my horrible writing. I love you. Don’t worry I shall do anything silly because I won’t. Kisses.
Mary.
It had reached him. Raymond Mallalieu had done his job and held his tongue.
Of course it hadn’t been the curtains. And it hadn’t been wanting children either—she’d always had to call them kids, so vulgar. She was young and she wanted children. So he’d have given her children. He’d have given her anything if she hadn’t been destroying him. Her first husband had found her too much for him—there was just something wrong with her. Something missing. That Sally was the same. He’d have to watch her.
He sat down near to the cat and almost immediately began to feel cold. The cold and the silence seemed to go together, the silence that crept in as soon as he stopped moving about. He realized he had nowhere to go, galleries, libraries, shops, hospital waiting-rooms were all closed. He put his hand on Tug’s head, trying to draw out tranquillity, peace of mind, absence of mind. He shivered.
Sim was on the roof of the Bon Marché, testing the joins in the parapet capping.
“There’s only two things they go for. Granite and slaked lime. The lime in old mortar or the lime that’s burned in our modem cement. God knows what they see in them.”
Sally knew all about the Sickness—she had written articles on it. But she let him go on telling her.
“Their activity creates heat, you know. Things become warm to the touch. It’s the first sign.”
He hurried about the huge flat tarmac roof of the Bon Marché like an eager child.
“In the later stages some buildings are quite oppressive to be in. It’s a sort of fever.”
Sally stared out at the buildings around her.
The Dean had gone, had now finished ringing the five minute bell and was presumably holding another of his fantasy services. She could see the Cathedral between the glassed towers that surrounded it It was massive, the solidest thing in the whole city. The Dean believed that when the mortar in its joints was eaten away it would simply settle slightly and continue to stand. Understandably the Dean was believing what he wanted to believe. It cut him off, separated him still further. She thought about him, intoning down there among the echoes. It was a magnificent concept—she wondered if he had the power to transcend the theatricality it might involve. No, the theatricality would be in her eyes, and the sadness. They would have no part in what passed between the old man and his God. It was for this reason, she saw now, that she had refused his invitation to attend the service. She would cheapen herself with the cheapness she would see in his jeweled robes and die balancing of his cadences. Better to stay here, better to preserve her fragile belief that something great and mystical and holy was going on down there below her.
“Funny to think,” said Sim, “that were wading about in the things. Millions must die on a place like this where theres nothing for them. Their individual life is very short, the scientists tell us.”
“More to the point if they'd tell us how to make their lives even shorter than ever. Stamp them out altogether, in fact.”
“They're working on it. Personally I don't think they've got much chance—the whole metabolism is so extraordinary. But that may be just my wishful thinking.”
“The mad architect, I see, glorying in the destruction of all that he stands for.”
“It’s not that. After all, Im the one that’s being destroyed really.” He laughed. I'm sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“Boring you. Death wishes are the most boring things I know. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t reassure him. He was smug and didn’t need reassurance. She kept to the practical.
“And when it’s all crumbled?” She frowned up at him, against the sunlight. “What then?”
“I’ve no idea. Why ask me? Overcrowding, epidemics, the end of the human race—I’ve no idea. My interests are more selfish.”
Sally said nothing, feeling irritated and, as he had feared, more than a little bored. She turned her eyes away again to the towered city. In a day it would be gone, would be a pile of colored rubble like the pictures she had seen of Bristol. Giant steel climbing frames sticking up here and there, rusting already and distorting on their weakened foundations. To look at Gloucester now was to look at a man and see the month-old corpse he implied. She pointed down to the top of some trees showing over the roof terraces of the Hilton Hotel Charlemagne. To see Sim’s reaction she said, “Take me for a walk in the park, Sim. I’d like to feed the ducks in the park.”
The grass in the park was thin and hard. Rime still clung in the lee of the bushes, and a fine film of ice rustled along the edges of the lake. The place was noisy with birds, starlings, robins, sparrows, a barbarous collection of ducks and by the far boundary a bundled colony of rooks, bringers of good fortune. The sun spread magical shadows of the naked trees. The ground curved and paths wandered freely across it between the roots and hollows. There was a folly, a Gothic ruin that emerged between pine trees. And in the distance the city towers sailed by like the conning-towers of great ships.
They stood arm in arm by the lake and fed the ducks on packets of Bon Marché biscuits. At the far edge of the clamor three black swans moved with restrained anger back and forth. Only Sim could skim the biscuits far enough. They talked of what they were doing,'absorbed in it.
“Now one of the little one with the yellow crest. Look how bright her eye is. You are silly, you’ve let old bulgy beak get it. Let me try. Honestly, I don’t know how the little ones survive at all. And I always thought drakes were supposed to be so chivalrous.”
They turned the packets upside-down, banging out the last of the crumbs. Then they wandered off between the trees. They sat in a shelter and read who loved whom and who was a hot number.
“You know, Sim, I remember coming through here very early one morning. I was on my way home from some dreary all-night party. I sat on a bench—that one over there, I think. Suddenly damp brown gravel was the most beautiful thing in the whole world. It was like being given mescalin or something.”
“Those parties are often worth it. So much unrelieved bloodiness, it sort of opens your eyes. And the aftereffects of all that alcohol, I suppose.”
“D’you know, it must have been about this time of year—I can remember the peeling trunks of the plane trees, and the wonderful bareness of it all. Oh God— I’m sounding like Nature Notes. I must watch myself.” “If a things beautiful but hasn’t been made by some scabby artist and so can’t be analyzed, then we mustn’t talk about it. It’s one of the curses of our society.”
“You’re quite right Even the robins have been ruined by Christmas cards. It’s a brave little bird. Look at that one.” Brave little bird—she’d used it in its country sense, meaning “fine.” She hoped Sim would understand.
“There’s a brave little bird,” he said, and they hugged together against the cold wind.
They left the shelter and walked on. They peered in through the windows of the boarded-up Tivoli Tea Rooms, making jokes about the women who would take tea at the old-fashioned tables. The wooden veranda was a little rotten and bounced as they walked on it Further on they came to the open-air theater. Sim left her, lumbered up and down the stage mopping and mowing, then did Pyramus and Thisbe in a terrible cowlike moan.
“O grim-look’d night, O night that ever art when day is not, O night, O night, alack alack, alack, I fear my Thisbe’s promise is forgot.”
She didn’t know the scene, could only watch and laugh till tears came.
“Sim, you’re priceless. You really ought—”
“Don’t say it. Even while I was still at school I’d decided not to go on the stage because it would be so unfair to the inferior talents already there.”
“Oh Sim-”
“Actually I might have.” He chilled suddenly. “If I hadn’t been so set on following my father’s example.”
She refused to notice.
“Do the dying bit again, Sim. I die, I die, I die . . . How many times does he really repeat it?”
“I’m never sure. I learned it too long ago. I trust to my instinctive artistic restraint.”
“Do it again, Sim.”
“A wise conjuror never repeats his tricks.”
They fooled a bit more, he falling in with her pretense that nothing had changed. Then they left the theater and made for one of the park exits. Sally followed him without argument, tired of trying, silent. They walked apart.
“You see that ruin? It's based on the Edelberger Schloss. My father designed it.”
“Your bloody, bloody father.”
“You've got it wrong, Sally. You think I'm one of those men busy hating their fathers. I'm not like that at all. We got on very well—common interests, the same respect for truth. If I resent him at all its because I don't have his genius.”
She felt oppressed. The city was around them, and the smell of its death. Her relationship with her own father was too unexamined—she preferred to hang a quick label on his and dismiss it. Sim was a weight beyond her bearing, his curious attractiveness a pain she wasn't yet willing to suffer. They walked under leafless trees, black and bitter. The birds were all silent, had flown away. As they reached the edge of the park Sally saw the blue checkered facade of the Hotel Charlemagne through the trees on their right. She needed to pierce the enameled silence between them.
“Why don't we take a room in the hotel, Sim? I'm sure Mr. Hilton wouldn't mind.”
Her words contained a suggestion not consciously intended. Once out, she left them—rather than make things worse.
“Not enough time left to make it worth moving.” He took her remark on its face value, paused, and stared up at the smooth sweep of glass. “And anyway, too much of it is only three stories high.”
“Isn’t that better? The weight of all that stuff above us in the Bon March6 worries me.”
“It’s much safer. The nearest I came to being killed was in a two-story motel near Cardiff.” He looked up at the stepped skyline of roofs. “You see, with the rot beginning at the top things tend to fall through the ceiling. They also pile up against the outside. If you have plenty of building above you the various floors finally combine into a sort of stopper. And the first floor is safer than the ground because you’re less likely to get buried by the stuff outside.”
His calm practicality was hardly reassuring.
“Do we stay indoors when things get as bad as that?” “Sometimes when it happens it happens very quickly. Besides, you may prefer to be under cover when the big ones start coming down.”
She hadn’t really believed it, and somehow she still couldn’t.
“It looks so solid,” she said.
“You and me, Sally, they say we normally lose fifty thousand brain cells a day. We look solid enough, don’t we?”
They went out through the park gates. There was a list of bylaws, statutory penalties for damaging foliage and throwing things into the lake.
“The old man, Sim, we must tell him what’s happening. He’s sure to get killed if we don’t.”
“It’s a waste of time. You’ve seen him—he’s completely incapable of understanding.”
“At least we should try.”
“I said don’t tell him, Sally.”
“I want to save him. Why shouldn’t I?”
“Save him for what?” His eyes were bright and old.
“The city made him. In a way he is the city. If he dies he dies. I said don’t tell him.”
And the camera that had hung unnoticed from his shoulder was suddenly a polished wall between them.
Matins were over. The shades had gathered and filed out, invoked and departing now in their wimples and broadcloth, their breeches and paduasoy, twin-sets and Crimplene. The Dean watched the empty lines of seats till the last was gone. Then he knelt, tried to pray for himself.
“Defend me, O Lord, from pride and arrogance. Defend me from the easy answer. Defend me—” His mind wandered off into wordless prayers for adequacy. The world had killed him with kindness. “Help me, God, please help me to—to”—always he hoped for the transcendental—“to know Thy Face.” But it was an insincere prayer, and one that terrified him as he made it. The face of the board of governors, the face of the Bishop, even the face of the Cathedral. The Face of God was for bigger men than he. “God, I am a small man,” and he prayed that he meant it. “As You have found a place for me to serve You here on earth, please find a place for me in Heaven.” He wasn’t mystical, he hadn’t even a gift for lyricism. “And help me to be to the people I go among today a worthy ambassador of Thy Holy Word. Help me to help them.” There wasn’t an angel by his shoulder, but he didn’t dare to look. “Today is Christmas,” he said. “Give me a chance to do something about it.”
He stumbled to his feet, collected his Bible, which he had left on the altar rail, bowed, and went to remove his surplice and the bands he had chosen for Christmas.
He was distressed. The extraordinary meeting in the shop, with its hint of madness, had troubled him more than he realized. It was terrible that Paul Crankshawe’s son should have turned out so peculiar. And the girl— he had felt she was afraid of Simeon, and no wonder. What he really regretted was their treatment of the old tramp. The pale eyes may have appeared expressionless, but he had no doubt that the mind behind them was shrewd enough, observing and judging. He liked to treat people who had moved out of society with a special care—obscurely he felt they needed to be proved wrong. The performance Simeon had laid on set the worst possible example. He shook the creases out of his surplice and hung it carefully in the press.
He paused outside the Cathedral and stared back up at the tower. He tried to imagine the fungus spores at work on it. He knew they must have arrived by now, yet it was hard to credit. Eight hundred and fifty years the Cathedral had stood. Eight hundred and fifty years. He sighed. And now man’s restless spirit had taken him out to the planets and brought back, brought back this bitter pestilence. In Old Testament days it would have been taken as a sign. He sighed again.
