LONDON
I
Roderick Edgington, QC, strode through the streets at a pace which, he believed, marked him out as a man of significance and distinction. Others of his station relied upon their drivers and their biddable chauffeurs but the middle Edgington brother had ever eschewed such things, believing that to remove oneself in such a fashion from the great mass of ordinary people was to risk uncoupling oneself from their concerns and fears. He preferred to walk amongst the populace, to swim in the great, churning stream of London life so that he might remain in some sense “of the people”. He wished to hear the heartbeat of the citizenry to understand them fully.
Naturally, this insistence on pedestrianism resulted, more often than not, in Edgington running persistently late for almost every appointment.
This was the case on the afternoon in question when the barrister was walking as fast as he could up from the Strand (passing by the hostelry that, twenty-four years before had played host to those men who would have thwarted Moreau) and towards Covent Garden, at the edges of which sat an establishment by the name of Creedles, for a brief spell at the start of the twentieth century the most fashionably expensive restaurant in the metropolis.
The thoroughfares that day were crowded, with gawpers and dawdlers, and Edgington had no choice but to cut something of a swathe through them. It was a warm afternoon, more like summer than autumn, and Roderick was perspiring heavily through his thick black suit. He pulled his heavy silver watch from the left-hand pocket of his waistcoat and saw that the time was now twenty-five minutes past one; almost half an hour after the time he had agreed to meet his brother and his new friend. As the lawyer hurried on, he took a florid handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away the sweat at his brow. He glanced down at it before stowing it in his pocket and saw that it was grimy with dirt, another consequence of remaining at all times on the level of the people.
He pressed on and strode up the surprisingly steep incline which led to the market itself. He was jostled by pedestrians who were surging in the opposite direction and he had no desire to step out into the street upon which all manner of vehicles clattered by. Reaching the plateau, he struck out towards the market and the restaurant beyond only to find his way barred by a cadre of dirty-faced children. Held up in their midst as though he were one of them, they clutched a roughly-constructed scarecrow dressed in rags with a lolling face of straw.
“Penny for the guy, sir! Penny for the guy!” These words were chanted by the leader of this miniature mob, a short, surly boy of no more than ten who had placed himself directly in Edgington’s path with the pugnacious (and somehow, oddly entitled) manner of a boxer twice his age.
Finding himself unable to simply muscle his way past this insistent gang of juveniles, Edgington paused, already reaching into his pocket to locate a smattering of coins. “Is that your guy?” he asked, with an indulgent smile, nodding towards the mannequin between them.
“Course,” said one of the others, a girl, Edgington realised, looking every bit as downtrodden as the boys. “We’re going to burn him tonight.”
“Quite right too,” Edgington said, adding: “though, please, be sure to do so safely.”
The group looked up at him with a kind of incredulity which caused an immediate swell of pity in the barrister. Without meaning to embark on such an enterprise, he found himself comparing his own upbringing (a loving, well-tended thing for all its formality) with whatever forces looked over these ruffians.
“Here,” he said. “Have more.” He pulled out more money, which he gave to the leader of the little gang. “Go safely now.” He began to walk away.
“Thank you, sir!” one of them called out after him. “Oh, and mister!”
Edgington called back. “Yes?”
“Watch out now, mister. Be careful, won’t you?”
Suspecting, disappointedly, a threat, the barrister turned back. “And what exactly do you mean by that?”
The little boy grinned with chapped and grimy lips. “Haven’t you heard, sir? There’s monsters on the loose now. They live in a town all their own but they’ll be coming here soon, I reckon. They’ll be on their way!”
He seemed quite sincere but Edgington, hotter than ever, pushed aside all implications. “Nonsense. It’s extremely well known that there is no such thing.” Yet even as he spoke these words, reached for easily and almost without thought, old rumours came back to him, and family whispers, and the information which had crept out of the east of the country. “Just nonsense,” he said, each syllable inflected by doubt.
The boy was already moving away, the pack of his associates and their straw man in his wake. “If you say so!” the child shouted, his thin, high voice carrying above the bustle and clutter of street life. “Just be careful, that’s what I say. Just watch out!”
“Tsk,” muttered Edgington. The gang was already out of hearing. He turned again and walked towards the restaurant, the boy’s words echoing, inexplicably for now, in his imagination.
II
A sense of mild disquiet hardened into the outright conviction that something was wrong as he finally reached the frontage of Creedles itself. Its exterior managed to be at once lavish and discreet, its windows darkened, the eight letters of the name picked out in gold leaf upon the glass. No passer-by could see what was occurring inside without peering in, their noses up against the panes, and the two doormen, dressed in uniforms of sombre damson, would never allow such an imposition.
A little to the right of the restaurant, however, outside what appeared to be a private residence (but which, a small gold plaque proclaimed, was in fact the headquarters of a tiny but surprisingly influential literary magazine) stood two figures. The first was immediately recognisable as that of his brother, Albert Edgington, albeit looking sleeker, less gawky and more robust than when he had seen him last. The second was that of a young woman; although she cannot have been more than twenty, she carried herself with a deal of self-possession which suggested someone considerably beyond her years.
He had come prepared to be disapproving, ready to dispense some clear-eyed fraternal criticism, yet somehow, at the sight of them, Roderick felt a note of unexpected sadness. They seemed nervous together and ill at ease and somehow, against the swirl and bustle of the city streets, both small and exposed.
Roderick raised a hand in greeting. His brother waved back. The woman only observed his approach with a flat gaze.
“Good afternoon!” he said once he had reached them. “I’m so sorry I’m late. You really ought to have gone in without me.”
“We tried,” Albert said. “But they wouldn’t let us.”
“What do you mean,” Roderick asked, “they wouldn’t let you?”
“I don’t know,” Albert said. “There’s a problem of some kind.”
The young woman spoke up. “Think it’s my fault.” Her voice was at least half-accusing. “Must be something they didn’t like about me.”
Roderick looked sharply at the woman and then at his younger brother. There seemed to be upon their faces only genuine bewilderment. “Wait here,” he said and, turning around with an almost military swivel, stalked back towards the entrance to the restaurant.
A doorman barred his way, beefy and moustachioed. “May I help you, sir?”
“I would very much like to think so.”
The doorman gazed impassively at him.
“I’m Roderick Edgington.”
“I know who you are, sir.”
“I have a reservation for one o’clock. For myself, my brother and his companion.”
“I’m afraid we’re full, sir.”
“Nonsense, man. How can you be full when I have reserved a table?”
Something like a grin flicked across the doorman’s face. “Nevertheless, sir. The facts are: we are full.”
Before he even had to be summoned, a tall man in spectacles, whom Roderick knew to be the manager of the establishment, appeared behind the doorman. “Is there some sort of problem here?”
“Alex!” Edgington was more informal than he might usually have been. “Can you please be so kind as to tell this trained gorilla of yours that there’s been a mistake and that there’s a table booked for luncheon in my name?”
The manager murmured something to his employee, who slunk obediently away, and walked to Edgington’s side. They both stood now upon the pavement; evidently, there was no possibility of Roderick being allowed so much as a toe across the threshold.
“Alex? What’s going on?”
The manager stepped very close to him, speaking sotto voce, like a mourner at a graveside approaching the bereaved. “I’m terribly sorry, Mr Edgington, but we really are full. There’s been… some confusion. Entirely our fault and all on our side. But I’m afraid that we just won’t be able to accommodate the three of you today.” At this, he glanced over towards Albert and the girl who still stood a few feet away watching the scene play out. “Of course, if you wanted to dine today alone then… yes… I do believe we could come to some arrangement.”
Roderick glared. “Is this about my brother?” he asked. “Or the woman he’s with? Or both?”
The manager smiled blandly. “Now, now, Mr Edgington,” he said. “Please make no insinuations of this kind. We have always been a broad church here at Creedles and we turn none away. Not even the most… colourful of controversialists.”
Roderick wanted to say more but he felt a hand touch his shoulder. The voice of his brother: “There’s really no issue. Let’s leave it, Roddy. It’s such a fine day. Why don’t we walk instead? There’s so much to see and it would do us good to stroll around awhile, instead of staying cooped up indoors.”
The second Edgington brother opened his mouth to refuse this request and insist that they stay and fight. But Albert merely smiled, giving Roderick cause to consider how much he seemed to have grown up in the months since he had seen him last.
“Very well,” he said. “If that’s what you like.”
The manager of Creedles melted back into the restaurant. The girl approached them, also smiling. “I’m Coral,” she said. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” said Roderick vaguely. “Yes, of course.” “So then,” Albert interjected, “shall we stroll? There’s bound to be some food and drink on the way. Besides, I expect you’ve some questions for me.”
“Just one or two,” Roderick said, his face a picture of puzzlement. “Yes, I do believe there are one or two matters which I should be most grateful if you could clear up.”
And so off they went, the three of them, into the whirl and dash of the metropolis.
“So what did he say?”
This was Roderick’s wife, Diana, when he returned home that evening. She was a thin-faced woman inclined to meanness though this emerged (he suspected) largely from frustration at a life which involved little more than overseeing the house and accompanying her husband. Were there any way to measure intellectual capacity he had no doubt that she would score more highly than he; yet the disparate circumstances of their birth had arranged it so that his was the life of garlands and bustle while her lot was to walk forever three paces behind. She chafed at it and he could not blame her, though, of course, he had never formulated these thoughts in any actual conversation with her.
“He had rather a lot to say, my dear. I confess it was hard to keep track of it all.”
“Well, try.”
Diana had been waiting for him in the drawing room of their home in Maida Vale. She had been leafing through a novel (a fresh adventure from Mr Scott) which she cast aside immediately upon her husband’s weary arrival.
“I need to fix myself a drink, darling,” he said. “Might I get something for you?”
She held up her hand. “Just tell me what your brother said.”
He went to the drinks cabinet and made himself up a glass. When he looked back, Diana was gazing at him still more frostily than usual. “Oh it was quite a story, my dear. Long and involved. Outwardly fantastic, of course, but Albert swore that every word of it was true.”
“And Silas?”
Roderick settled himself onto his usual chair. He sipped from his glass and swallowed. “It would seem that the newspaper reports were accurate.”
“Poor man.”
Roderick must have looked more sceptical than he had intended at this remark as Diana said quickly: “I know I never cared for him, but there’s very few who deserve to die as he did.”
“Quite so, my dear. Quite so.”
She looked evenly at him. “And who’s this young woman he’s been stepping out with? I take it she was there too?”
“Coral,” Roderick said with careful formality. “That’s her name. And she seems to me to be a young woman of singular determination. I think she’ll be rather the making of young Albert.”
“But she’s… surely, some sort of revolutionary?”
Roderick drank again, to fortify himself, perhaps. “It sounds as though she simply saw a flagrant injustice, my dear, and set her shoulder to the wheel in her efforts to reverse it.”
Diana sniffed. “And it would seem a great many people have lost their lives as a result of that reversal.”
“Well, yes,” Roderick murmured. “That’s maybe true. But such is the way of things. Don’t you think? ‘These violent delights have violent ends…’ All of that.”
“Were any of them there? Any of those… creatures?”
“No, no. Of course not. Far too soon, I’d wager, for that.”
Diana looked appalled. “You make it sound like an inevitability. That one day they’ll come here.”
“Well, it probably is,” Roderick murmured, gaining courage from his drink. “In the end. I dare say they’ll be everywhere. Rather exciting in a way. A whole new species in our midst.”
At this point it became apparent to Roderick that Diana was having to work quite hard simply in order to keep her temper. Her hands, formerly flat upon her knees, were beginning to clench. Her face was very pale. There was in her voice to be heard the faintest suggestion of a tremor. The calmer and more reasonable he seemed the more secretly furious she’d become, a pattern which had grown by no means unfamiliar over the course of their marriage.
“They’re animals,” she said.
“Hardly that,” said Roderick mildly. “Sounds like they’re doing everything they can to make a proper state out of that place. Seems they’ve all kinds of plans for the future. And you can’t say they’re not following the international rule of law now. Why, the long trial to which they’re subjecting that fellow, Vaughan…”
Diana shook her head in a single savage motion. “Animals,” she said again. A long pause ensued. Then she added: “And you, Roddy, you’re a born fool.”
Roderick drained his glass and set it aside. Without saying more, he got to his feet and left the room. He knew without having to ask that he would sleep in one of the guest rooms that night. This was usually by far the best solution when life threw up some petty disagreement between them. Diana had generally forgotten all about it by morning and everything proceeded afterwards just as it had before.
He was surprised, then, when, at long past midnight, a soft tapping came at his door and Diana, in her nightdress, stepped into his room and slid into bed beside him. Even in the gloom, he could tell that she had been crying.
“Diana? Whatever’s the matter?”
“You don’t see, do you? You don’t understand.”
He reached for her hand, feeling a tenderness which he had not experienced in relation to her for years. “Darling, what do you mean?”
“That this is the beginning of the end of it all…”
“What?”
“It’s the start of the downfall of mankind.”
She clung to him then, as though she really believed her words. He responded in kind and they did not speak again till morning.