4

On his way to Rathbone’s Show he had the impression that there were more people about than usual and more police, especially in the streets running south from Upper Parliament Street; groups of black youths stood at corners, as if waiting for news.

There were empty seats in the hall but not as many as he had expected. A good number of those present would be acquaintances of Rathbone’s like himself. Or perhaps clients, he thought suddenly, glancing round. Yes, there were faces he knew, people met on the stairs or the landing. There would be a high degree of suggestibility in this assembly – he wondered idly if Rathbone had implanted the invitation while they were under hypnosis.

All the same there were more people here than could be accounted for in this way and he supposed they must have bought tickets on impulse or for obscure personal reasons. At the far end of the front row he saw a man with a professional-looking camera slung round his neck; probably some friend of Rathbone’s on one of the papers. Various of his fictioneers were scattered about the hall. He saw Carter’s unmistakable yellow and green sports jacket up near the front. Jennifer Colomb was sitting a couple of rows behind him. He caught her eye and nodded and smiled. She looked flushed and nervous as she did when awaiting his response to the doings of Lady Margaret and Sir Reginald. He saw Elroy Palmer, the creator of Zircon, coming in through the door in his invariable red woollen hat. He felt grateful to these people, who had come here, he knew, purely as a favour to him. By the clock on the wall it was twenty-five past seven: only five minutes to go and Alma had not come yet; perhaps she had changed her mind. He resisted an impulse to go out and look for her – they had arranged to meet inside the hall. When he turned to face his front again he saw that Carter was craning round to look at him and he raised a hand in greeting. In reply Carter lifted his green bag from its place in his lap and held it aloft shaking it to and fro in a triumphant gesture. He was smiling broadly. Benson nodded, resolving to make a quick getaway after the show if possible; it had been a hard day, the last thing he wanted was another dollop of Albert and Sheila to take home with him.

The lighting was not very good; it was not theatre lighting at all, just a row of bare bulbs set at intervals overhead. However, a spotlight had been installed and the white circle of light lay dead centre on the empty stage. There was a wooden box in one corner, about the size of a tea-chest, and in another a hat-stand with a wide brimmed white hat on it, of the sort women sometimes wear in summer. Two upright chairs stood just outside the circle of light.

The audience was quiet, sitting patiently on the hard little chairs. Benson felt anxious about Alma but at the same time he was relaxed and slightly sleepy. His eyes were fixed on the motionless circle of light, within which images formed, swam into focus, fused, dissolved: Thompson raised a blind face, the owl rose into the night, the doomed soldier combed his hair, Walters whispered his mimicry, the suicide leapt from the mild spaces of air, Slater smiled through the noise of the guns. But at the very centre of the circle, where the focus was sharpest, the light was unviolated; there was nothing – these lapping images did not reach so far, did not touch the heart of the light …

“Those places free?”

He knew the voice, the loud, strangled-sounding upper-class accent conscientiously but imperfectly flattened. Glancing up he saw Anthea Best-Cummings and Hogan coming down the row towards him. With something of a shock he saw that they were holding hands.

“These are free,” he said. “I’m keeping this one on the other side.”

“Just made it,” Hogan said. “That’s what I call good timing.”

He was transformed. Maroon tie, briefcase, business suit had gone as if they had never been; he was dressed now in a tattered blue denim jacket which brought out the colour of his eyes – eyes no longer slow and stricken but full of life and animation; his sparse hair was lighter, soft-looking, free of that sweet balm. Anthea too was changed; she was in her black leathers still but her skin was clear of disfiguring spots and her hair was clean and combed and tied back. She looked extremely happy. “This is a lark,” she said. “Never been to a hypnotism show before.”

“Well, how are you two getting on?”

“We’re living together now,” Anthea said. “At my place at Birkenhead. Michael moved in the same day we met.”

“We met at your apartment, if you remember,” Hogan said. “Lucky day for me.”

Anthea turned on him a face radiant with affection. “Lucky for me, you mean,” she said.

“I do remember, yes. Well, you are both looking very well on it, if I may say so.” He felt pleased, in a gratified, fatherly way, about the change in these two people. “Still writing?” he said.

“I’ve given up the novel,” Hogan said. “Given up thoughts of it, I mean.” He paused a moment, smiling. “There wasn’t really a novel to give up, was there? But I still want to write. Not stories. I’d like to write down what I see around me, keep myself out of it as far as possible. Sort of reportage, with pictures.”

“We thought, you know, that we might start up our own press,” Anthea said. “Just a small affair, of course. Bring out a sort of newspaper, real news, try to show what is happening in this city. No pompous bloody comment, no party line. Not really political at all – we just want to show what these bastards have done to the Welfare State.” She had spoken very loudly and Benson saw a certain stillness descend on the people in front of them.

Hogan said, “It was seeing these men in Birkenhead picking over a rubbish dump that started me off. There is a big municipal tip up near where we live. You go there early in the morning you’ll see maybe twenty fellers picking it over, raking about in it. Grown men, not boys. Unemployed men. Not tramps. Men like myself. Men who feel shame, Mr Benson. Parts of the tip were smouldering and there were gulls and crows picking about in it as well. I want people to see that picture – the dirty smoke, the smell, the birds and the men together in the rubbish. That is the truth, you can go there and you can see it. That is Birkenhead in 1988.”

“Michael has had his consciousness raised,” Anthea said fondly. “He was identifying with the wrong lot. They kicked him in the teeth then kept him quiet on tranquillisers – same lot of bastards, they’re all the same.”

“We’d need a camera too,” Hogan said.

“But how will you get the money for all this?”

“I think daddy would stump up if I put it to him in the right way,” Anthea said.

“I see, yes. Well, I wish you every success with the venture.”

“We’ll send you a copy of the first issue,” Anthea said. “Your friend hasn’t come. It’s twenty-five to now.”

Benson felt her eyes resting on him with a certain quality of curiosity. “Perhaps she couldn’t make it after all,” he said.

“She may have had some trouble getting through. There’s a lot of people about on the streets tonight. Something is—”

She was interrupted by a scattered burst of clapping. The tall, gaunt figure of Rathbone had emerged from behind the curtain at the rear of the stage. He was in a dinner jacket and wore a black turban tied in Sikh style, with a glittering stone pinned to it in the centre of his forehead. On that drab stage he was an impressive sight. In his husky, penetrating voice, which carried easily to every part of the hall, he began to talk to the audience – creating an atmosphere, Benson quickly realised, trying to make up for the bareness of the place, the bleak, unvarying light. He did it rather well. They were about to see a unique show, he said. One which had never so far been performed anywhere in the Western world. You would have to go back, for the nearest parallel, to the role-playing of so-called primitive societies, during which ancient myths and rituals were acted out. The participants in these ancient rituals were pastmasters in auto-hypnosis. They enacted age-old dramas concerned with the cycle of the seasons, placation of the gods, triumph over their enemies. In the course of this they assumed archetypal roles: scapegoat, healer, trickster, priest …

A form of mumbo-jumbo really, Benson thought. It didn’t matter how much the audience actually took in, so long as they were softened up. Rathbone had paused for a moment or two; now he began speaking again, moving slowly forward as he did so.

“Now we live in different times,” he said. “You often hear people say that a person cannot be hypnotised into going against his own nature. That may well be true, ladies and gentlemen. But what is this nature of ours that we speak so confidently about? Who can claim to know the capacities of his own nature? As an illustration of what I mean I should like to begin the evening’s entertainment with what we call in the profession chain-reaction hypnosis. This requires great concentration and I must ask you to cooperate with me to the full.”

He was standing now at the edge of the stage. “I’d like to ask for volunteers,” he said. “Anyone at all. I don’t distinguish between good subjects and bad ones. You are all good subjects to me. I assure you no harm will come to anyone. My methods are tried and tested. There is complete control at every stage.”

Nobody in the audience moved or spoke. “Come now,” Rathbone said. He looked down, scanning the faces. “What about you? What about you, madam? Can I request you to step up on the stage? What about you, sir?”

The man he had addressed said loudly, “You won’t catch me coming up there. I don’t believe in it.” A rustle of laughter and relief went through the audience. “Lot of hocus-pocus,” he shouted, encouraged.

Rathbone stood silent for some moments, looking directly down at the man who had interrupted. Then he said, “Your presence here gives the lie to that.” He was smiling but there had been an edge of aggression in his voice. “Real unbelievers stay away,” he said. “What about you, madam? That’s the spirit. No, bring your handbag with you.”

A youngish, stout woman in a green anorak had stood up and begun to make her way to the steps at the side of the stage. She had a heavy, expressionless face, one which he knew, and she looked half-hypnotised already. The audience had fallen silent again, but there was a different quality in the silence now: it was tense, expectant, alert to the prospect of conflict. Rathbone moved across to help the woman up, led her over the stage into the spotlight, placed her sideways to the audience. She stood silent there, a slight, self-conscious smile on her face, holding her large and shiny handbag.

“What is your name, madam?” Rathbone enquired with great suavity. “Will you tell the audience your name?”

“You know her name already.” It was the same man, the same voice, loud but without much feeling in it – the voice of a professional heckler. All the same Benson was sure that the accusation was true, he had recognised this woman as one of Rathbone’s clients. There had been no laughter this time at the interruption.

“You again?” There was no mistaking now the aggressive note in Rathbone’s voice. “Come on, sir, step up,” he said, and it was like a challenge to combat. “Come and have a chat with me up here. You are doing your best to ruin this show. The audience has come here to be entertained. If you think I’m a fake, step up on the stage.”

It was when the man stood up and began to move towards the stage that Benson began to feel that he might perhaps have misappreciated the situation. But there was no time to think much about it. Another man, elderly and high-shouldered, had risen in belated response to Rathbone’s appeal and was making his way forward.

Rathbone helped this man on to the stage, escorted him over to the box and seated him on it. Then he turned his attention to the heckler.

“Over here,” he said. “Come over here to me.” This obliged the man to walk the whole width of the stage. “Steady now,” Rathbone said. “Where are you going? No, I don’t want you here. Over there. Not there. I want you on one of those chairs.”

“Make your mind up,” the man said, but his voice had lost the heckling note and his face was uncertain and sheepish. He was short and poorly dressed, with a bony, sharp-featured face.

Rathbone watched the man retrace his steps, waited until he was in the act of sitting, then said in a sudden loud tone of displeasure, “Not that one. That is my chair.”

The audience was absolutely silent now, with the unmistakable silence of absorbtion. “Good God, what are you doing?” Rathbone said. The man had stood up hastily and kicked against the chair. It was clear to Benson that he was confused by the stage space, which is both vast and cramped at the same time to those not used to it. And Rathbone’s contradictory instructions were confusing him still further.

“The other chair,” Rathbone said. He moved lightly over and sat opposite the man at a distance of three feet or so. “Why are you looking at the audience?” he said. “Don’t look at the audience. Look at me.”

Benson saw the man’s head jerk round. With a sudden change of tone Rathbone said, “That’s right, that’s good. You don’t want to fight, you don’t want to argue, I’m your friend, listen to my voice, I’m your friend.”

Very quietly, in tones only partially audible to the spectators, he continued speaking, holding the other with his eyes. It seemed to Benson that the man made one or two restless movements with his head at first but after some moments he remained fixed in an attitude of attention. The rather sheepish smile he had worn on his face earlier had gone completely now. Benson saw the lowering of his shoulders.

“You are going down deeper,” Rathbone said more loudly. “Deeper … deeper. Concentrate on your hands. That’s right. Now I’m going to tell you to raise your hands and put the palms together. When you put your palms together, you will go down deeper. Concentrate on your hands. That’s good. Now raise your hands, put the palms together.”

With astonishment and a sort of uneasy pity, Benson saw the man raise his hands and place them together. Could Rathbone have seen something in the man’s face when he looked down at him, heard something in his voice? The bullying had looked genuine enough, unpleasantly so. Could he really have snared the man’s mind and will somehow, between a phrase and a phrase?

“You are pressing, pressing, your hands are pressing together. Your hands are chained together. You can’t get them apart. I’m going to count to five. When I reach five I’m going to snap my fingers. When you hear me snap my fingers you will go down deeper, you will know that your hands are chained together, you won’t be able to move your hands apart until you hear that same sound again.”

Rathbone stood up and moved forward to face the audience. “He’s saying his prayers,” he said. “Long overdue, I expect.” The audience tittered, nervous. Rathbone went back to the man, seated himself again and began counting in a slow, deliberate voice. When he reached five he waited a moment or two then snapped his fingers contemptuously under the man’s nose – a loud sound in that silent hall. He stood up, fished in his pocket for a moment, then held a hand up to the audience, turning a metal object this way and that. “This is an ordinary tin whistle,” he said. “You will observe that I am placing it here, on the stage.” He walked forward a few paces and laid the whistle a couple of yards beyond the circle of the spotlight.

The man had remained seated, looking mildly before him, his pale, sharp-featured face set in an expression of placid obstinacy, his hands before him, palms together. Rathbone was standing behind him now, looking down at the top of his head.

“When you hear me snap my fingers,” he said, “you will find that you can move your hands apart again, the chains will fall away. But you will have to do one more thing before you can be free. You will get up, you will find the whistle that is lying on the stage. You will pick it up and you will blow on it. Once, just once. When you have done that you will be free.”

Again he moved forward to address the audience. “He wanted to be the referee,” he said, “so we’ll let him, shall we? He can blow the whistle for us.” Again there came that nervous, half-unwilling rustle of response. Smiling, Rathbone moved across the stage to the woman, who was still standing where he had left her, near the hatstand. “Look at me,” he said. The tone was easier now, quite loud, almost conversational. “Listen to my voice, this is my voice, let yourself relax, let yourself go. You want to relax, your body wants to relax, don’t resist it, let yourself go …”

This time the effect was almost immediate, confirming Benson’s suspicion that this woman had been put under by Rathbone numbers of times before, though what she was being treated for he could only speculate. She had been visibly affected from the start, from the first words Rathbone uttered. Now Benson saw the shoulders relax, the stolidity of the face intensify.

“What is your name?” Rathbone said. “Tell the audience your name.”

“My name is Dorothy Spencer.” The voice itself sounded tranced – slow, without inflection.

“No, you are not Dorothy, you are Mary, poor Mary. Do you know the song ‘Poor Mary lies a-weeping’?”

“Yes.”

It must be obvious to the audience, Benson thought, that some of this has been arranged in advance. He must have put her through the song before. Once again he found himself doubting the genuineness of the proceedings. What he didn’t doubt was that he was watching one of the most riveting pieces of theatre he had ever seen in his life. Misinformed about owls Rathbone might be, unfrocked therapist, feverish smoker on landings; but tonight he was a magic man. This obscure hall, scene of innumerable humble functions – mothers’ meetings, Methodist tea-parties, bring-and-buy sales – was transformed into a place of wonder and terror.

“I want you to stand here and wait. In a little while you will hear somebody blow a whistle. Just once. When you hear the whistle, you will go to the hatstand and you will put on the white hat. When you put the white hat on, then you are Poor Mary, then you can sing your song. When you have sung your song you will be free. You will sing your song and then you will wake up and you will be free.”

Rathbone turned to face the audience. “I’ll let you into a secret,” he said. “In the box our friend is sitting on, there is a frog mask. We are going to see Poor Mary find her prince. I must ask you now for absolute silence. We are entering a crucial phase of the proceedings.”

He moved towards the man who had been sitting patiently all this while on the box. Standing before him and looking down intently at his face, he began to speak, but again in a different voice, this time loud and monotonous in tone. He was telling the man to relax, to relax. But what his plans were for this man, what signal he was to make, what he was to do when he heard Poor Mary’s song, nobody there was destined to know. Someone, the caretaker perhaps, thinking it too warm inside, had opened the double door at the entrance. While Rathbone was still speaking to the man on the box, the distant sound of police sirens came from the night outside and then, from somewhere closer at hand, a long blast on a whistle. Rathbone, his back to the stage, was concentrating his powers on the man before him and talking loudly. He seemed to have heard nothing.

The woman on the stage turned and went to the hatstand. Quite impassively she took the white hat and put it on. In this summery hat and her green anorak, holding the shiny black handbag, she looked painfully ridiculous. The audience made no sound at all. Slowly the woman began to move forward. Her mouth opened and she began to sing in a soft, rather breathless, surprisingly tuneful voice:

“Poor Mary lies a-weeping,

A-weeping, a-weeping …”

Rathbone turned quickly. “Not yet,” he said sharply. As he spoke the siren sounded again, very close now, it seemed just outside in the street, a loud, maniacal whooping, terribly startling in that spell-bound hall.

“Good God, what was that?” Anthea said.

The woman’s singing had stopped abruptly, either at Rathbone’s command or in the shock of the clamour outside. She stood still for perhaps five seconds, then her body shuddered convulsively, she raised her head and broke into a storm of weeping, drawing her breath in long, painful gasps. Benson saw Rathbone move quickly towards her. The photographer had stood up and was taking pictures. The tranced heckler sat motionless with his hands together in prayer. One or two people in the audience were craning to see outside but most were absorbed in what was happening on the stage.

“I think I’ll just—” Benson got up quickly. There was a sidedoor immediately opposite him. He went through it into the street and looked up and down. The street was empty but he could hear the receding sirens and from the same direction, up towards Parliament Street, a confused sound of shouts and whistles. There was a smell of burning on the air. Benson hesitated for a short while. He did not want to go back into the hall. Rathbone’s show had distressed him considerably and it was in ruins now anyway. Also, he was curious. He began to walk down the street in the direction of the sounds. His view was restricted by buildings to begin with but at the first intersection, glancing to his left, he saw a red glow of fire in the sky, wreaths of black smoke slowly unfurling against it. The noise was louder now, more confused. Two black youths ran past him, going in the same direction. They ran side by side, quite soundlessly, down the middle of the street.

Possessed by curiosity – and against his better judgement – Benson turned left at the next corner, in the direction of the main road. He could smell the fire more strongly now, a reek of burning plastic waste and rubber. The far end of the street was blocked with uniformed figures – he saw that they were police in riot gear, saw gleams from the street lamps on visors and helmets and plastic shields. They were forming up under shouted instructions from the inspector.

Halfway down, ignored by the police, a small knot of people had gathered on a corner. Benson approached them. “What’s going on?” he said.

“You can’t get through,” an elderly man said. “They won’t let you through this way.”

“We’re trying to get across to Edge Hill,” the woman beside him said. “I don’t know how they think we’re going to get home.”

“But what’s going on, what’s happened?”

“They’ve started fires along Parliament Street. They’ve blocked the road. The fire engines can’t get through.”

After hesitating a moment longer, Benson turned and began to walk back the way he had come. He had no desire now to get any nearer to the shouts and fires. He too had to get over to the other side of Parliament Street somehow, if he was to regain his apartment. There wouldn’t be buses but he might find a taxi. He began to plot the route in his mind. This was Grierson Street, which ran into Lodge Lane. He could work his way round through the side streets …

When he was near the end of the street he heard the smashing of glass. He had been closer to Lodge Lane than he thought. Turning on to it, he saw a crowd of perhaps twenty people around the smashed windows of an electrical goods shop. Men and women were emerging from the shop on to the pavement carrying things, moving off with them, away from the light.

He had an immediate, confused sense of something travestied about these people. Then he saw that several of them had their faces partly concealed by scarves or pieces of cloth. One black youth was naked to the waist; he had taken off his tee-shirt and tied it across the lower part of his face. A middle-aged woman in a hat with a feather in it came out from the interior carrying a video recorder like a tray. She walked briskly away with it and disappeared down one of the streets on the other side. A tall black man came out hugging a television set, his eyes peering affrightedly over the top.

With a shock of surprise he saw a man in an animal mask come out – it was Mickey Mouse; the light fell for a second or two on the blob nose, the projecting flaps of the ears. A moment later, cradling a variety of small objects in boxes, he saw a grotesque, blubbery-looking Winston Churchill. They must have broken into a shop to get them, he thought, one of the kind that sells novelties and tricks. I should go, I should get back off this street … A pop-eyed Margaret Thatcher came out, a hectic flush on her cheeks, carrying a vacuum cleaner in each hand, the flexes trailing behind her. She was followed soon after by David Owen, cadaverous, with something long in a box.

Almost more striking than the masks was the decorous behaviour of the looters. There was almost complete silence among them; no voice was raised; no notice was taken of any oddities of appearance. They hung around the shattered window, dipped in and out, made off with their acquisitions like good citizens. He heard the sound of smashing windows further down: all along the street the shops were being looted. A man stalked past with clothes draped over him, misshapen and strange. Light from the street-lamp fell on his face: it was Neil Kinnock. Of course, he thought, the police will be fully occupied in closing off the main road, containing the riot. They’ve got their backs facing this way.

He was about to pursue his intention and cross over when, without any warning at all the intent cluster of looters was broken, the crowd round the shop surged across the street towards him. They were joined at the edge of the pavement by another flow from his own side. A moment later he was swept back in a press of bodies. At first he tried to struggle forward against the rush. Then he saw a Black Maria come nosing slowly into the street that ran off opposite and he let himself go with the movement of the crowd. This quickened, he was obliged to break into a stumbling run. The faces around him had a sort of staring exhilaration about them. One man was laughing widely. Benson saw Woody Allen and Stalin and David Steel and Popeye. He was forced back the way he had come for a short distance, then the crowd divided and he found himself jostled forward into a narrow entry between house-backs. His heart was beating heavily. He was powerless to struggle against the tide of bodies behind and around him. He concentrated on keeping his footing. Ahead of him he saw a leaping glow of flame. There was a sound of confused shouting, then a heavy, rattling sound like a roll of drums. A moment later he was out on to broad pavement, in firelight that seemed clearer than daylight. The crowd flowed away, thinned out in this greater space.

In the minute or so that he stood there the scene printed itself in his mind in all essential details – and for ever. He was facing towards Smithdown Road. A barricade of blazing cars blocked the street and there were fires beyond this and within it – he saw that the new branch of Barclay’s Bank was burning fiercely, the flames leaping high into the night. Houses on either side of this were alight too, and he saw the movement of flames inside the derelict International Club directly across from him. Soot and sparks showered through the air. Against this lurid light he saw figures of men, mainly young, black and white side by side, bending, running forward, leaping, retreating, in what he took in the first confused moments for a sort of dance. Then he saw the arcs of the missiles rising over the flames, saw them fall among the ranks of the police beyond the barricade. The rattling he had heard before began again – the police were striking with their batons in unison on their riot shields. As they drummed they advanced at a slow run, spread in a line across the street, straight at the volleying stones, the blazing cars. Benson saw a policeman fall and be carried back helmetless, a dark glint of blood on his face. At the barricade they divided, seeking a way through. Then he saw police on his side of the fire, saw batons rising and falling, saw the stoners giving back.

It could only be a matter of time, he knew, before fresh contingents of police, forming behind the lines, came up the way he had come, took the enemy in the flank – and anyone here on the pavement would be the enemy. Escape along the street was impossible – the crowd was too thick. The only chance was to get back down the alley he had come by, even if it meant fighting his way. He had been forced several yards along the pavement in the first surge of the crowd. He was beginning to edge his way back when he caught sight of Alma. She was no more than a dozen yards away but it was a dozen yards in the wrong direction, nearer the police advance. The crowd there could not disperse easily. They were packed too close together. Benson began to push his way through. He was sweating profusely from exertion and from the heat of the fires. He could hear his own panting breaths. Again the fear came to him that he might faint.

She did not see him until he was only a yard or so away, then she began at once to struggle in his direction. She shouted something.

“What?” They were standing up close together and he had his hand under her arm.

“My car,” she said. “I had to leave my car.”

“Never mind the bloody car.”

The crowd was yielding now, flowing back. The recoil of panic at the front was transmitted to them here in a slow eddying motion. Keeping a tight grip on Alma he began to shoulder his way back towards the mouth of the alley. He was aided now by the movement of the crowd and after some moments of effort they reached it, got down into it in the midst of a struggling group of others with the same idea. The coolness and darkness here, as they moved further down, was miraculous almost, better than the thickest shade on the hottest day. Benson was still audibly panting. “Christ,” he said, “I’m too old for this.”

After that neither of them said anything much. They encountered no police and saw very few people once they had left the alley behind and started to make their way westward towards the centre. Ten minutes’ walking took them from all sound and sight of riot. The taxi they stopped wouldn’t let them in until the driver had made sure which way they wanted to go.

“Nobody’s going across the city tonight,” he said through the heavy grid that separated him from his passengers – most Liverpool taxis were fitted with this shield now, assaults on drivers having become so frequent. “Now is the time they will do you,” he said, “now the fuzz is busy. They put me in hospital once. This is the second bonfire party in six months. It gets the city a bad name.”