The Domino Men

Chapter 7

“At the Directorate, we don’t deal in volunteers.” The man called Dedlock was grinning at me, bobbing up and down with a grisly vigor which belied his age. “You’re one of us now.”

I opened my mouth to say something but not a single word would come. Instead, I found myself staring at the old man’s torso, fascinated by a progression of creases that seemed to strafe his skin, flaps of flesh which throbbed and pulsated as though with independent life.

Gills?

Surely this man couldn’t have gills?

Dedlock was glaring. “You find us in the midst of war. And I’m rather afraid we’re losing.”

For several minutes my mouth had been too dry to speak. Now, at last, I squeezed out a sentence. “War? Who’s at war?”

The old man dealt the side of the tank a ferocious blow. Jasper and I flinched backward and I wondered what would happen if the glass were to shatter and the water gush out, whether Dedlock would flail and flop on the ground like a beached carp. “Secret civil war has been waged in this country for half a dozen generations. This organization is all that stands between the British people and their oblivion.”

I felt concussed. “I don’t understand.”

“Comprehension is unnecessary. From now on you simply have to follow orders. Is that understood?”

I vaguely remember nodding.

“Tell no one what you’ve seen here. There are less than two dozen men alive who know the true purpose of the Directorate.”

I managed an objection. “What happens if I say no.”

“To you? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. To your good mother, on the other hand… To your pulchritudinous landlady…” He seemed to soften slightly. “You’ll find your salary many times in excess of your old employment. And we offer a first-rate pension plan. Every cloud, Henry Lamb, every cloud…”

I began to get dizzy, felt the room and its impossible occupant slide away from me and become distant and faint, like the world viewed through the wrong end of a telescope.

“Water…” I stuttered. “You’re underwater.”

“Amniotic fluid,” the old man hissed, grimacing as though at some wretched, long-neglected memory. “Not my design.” His eyes flicked dismissively over my body. “Were you close to your grandfather, boy?”

I said that I was.

He nodded. “And does the name Estella mean anything to you?”

“I just about managed a “no.”

“You must have heard something. Did he never mention her?”

“Never.”

The man in the tank made an awful clenching sound which I took to be his closest equivalent to a sigh. “If you truly know nothing then the war may already be lost.”

“What war? Who are you people fighting? Who is this enemy?”

“You know their name,” Dedlock said, his voice filled with rancor and bile. “You carry their likeness with you everywhere you go.” A twitch of his lips, as though he couldn’t decide whether to sneer or to smile. “We’ve been fighting the British royal family since 1857. We’re at war with the House of Windsor.”

I remember blurting out some objection before my limbs turned to rubber, everything started to fade and darkness closed over me.

Dedlock looked on, disdain and disappointment in his eyes. “Dear, dear. It seems we have ourselves a fainter.”

My balance went. I stumbled backward, fell into the arms of Mr. Jasper and, just before I passed out, I heard the old man’s voice again, bitter and sarcastic.

“His grandfather would be so proud.”

I woke the next morning, hours after the alarm clock usually pesters me into wakefulness, punch-drunk and groggy, with a dank, sickly sensation in the pit of my stomach. Beside my bed was a glass of water, a packet of Alka-Seltzer and a small square of cream-colored card on which was scrawled the following:

Report Monday morning.

We’ll send a car at 8.

Then, an unconvincingly hearty postscript.

Enjoy your weekend.

As soon as I had showered and felt at least 70 percent awake, I switched on my computer, logged not the Internet, clicked into Google and typed the phrase: “the Directorate.” It returned not a single hit. According to the most powerful search engine in the world, the organization which Dedlock had told me was the last hope for the British people did not even exist.

I had supper with Abbey before she went out, fielding her bemused inquiries by improvising something about having got an unexpected promotion, asked if anyone had come home with me the previous night. She shot me an oddly disappointed look. No, she said. She hadn’t seen or heard anyone but me.

We did the washing up together and she left to meet her friends, leaving me lolled in front of the television, flicking aimlessly from game show to sitcom to murder mystery, wondering whether all of it wasn’t so much lather and bubbles to mask the real truth of the world, the grime, the scum beneath.

On Sunday, partly because I couldn’t think of anything better to do, partly because Mr. Jasper had peremptorily suggested it, I went into town, where I bought myself a new gray suit, a couple of shirts and some fresh underwear, and where, for a short while, things felt almost normal again.

In the afternoon, I saw Granddad. The ward was busier and noisier than before, cramped with families trooped dutifully in to visit half-forgotten relatives, packing the place with their guilty faces, their bored offspring and wilting bunches of grapes. There they sat, disguising their yawns, making pointless small talk, checking their watches every other minute, counting down till the end of visiting time.

I took Granddad’s paper-skinned hand in mine and broke my silence only once.

“What were you keeping from me?” I asked. “What did you have to hide?”

No answer save for the ceaseless reproach of life support.

Suddenly the lull was over. I was out of bed on Monday morning, showered and breakfasted at least an hour before I needed to be ready. I sat watching the morning news with its usual countdowns of crisis and disaster, feeling as fluttery and nervous as I suppose I must have done on my first day at school Abbey drifted into the room in her pajamas and dressing gown, peerlessly elegant even as she rubbed sleep from her eyes. “You’re up early.”

“My new job starts today.”

“I know.” She grinned. “Wouldn’t forget that, would I?”

“You might,” I burbled. “No one expects you to keep track of the lodger.”

She reached out and ruffled my hair. “Oh, you’re more than a lodger.”

I turned a shade of damson.

“New suit?”

I said that it was.

“Thought so. But you’re not cycling in that, though, are you?”

“Believe it or not, they’re sending a car.”

Abbey arched an exquisite eyebrow. “You have gone up in the world.” She disappeared into the kitchen and re-emerged a few minutes later with a bowl of chocolate cereal. I rose, checked my appearance in the mirror and turned to say good-bye.

“Have a good day.”

“You too. Good luck.”

I walked toward the door.

“Henry?”

I turned back.

“I really like the suit.”

“Thanks.”

“You look good…” An implication of naughtiness crossed her face. “I definitely would.”

There was another silence, still longer than before, during which I cannot honestly say which of us flushed the pinker.

“Bye,” I said, and fumbled with the latch, burning with embarrassment and improbable hope. I was halfway down the stairs and almost onto the street when I was struck by a tiny irony. Today was my birthday.

An elderly black cab idled by the curb, a torn piece of card blue-tacked against its window. It read:

Lamb

The driver (unkempt, straggle haired, a stranger to the razor) was engrossed in a chunky hardback book. I tapped on the glass and he wound the window grudgingly down.

“Good morning,” I said, trying my best to sound cheerful. “I’m Henry Lamb.”

The driver stared at me.

“I was told you’d be waiting.”

Another long, sizing-up look, until: “You can call me Barnaby. You’d better get in.”

I hauled open the door and scrambled into the back seat. The interior was covered in the kind of long white hairs which smell of wet dog and cling jealously to your clothing for days.

“So you own a dog?” I asked, trying to make conversation as I strapped myself in and Barnaby cajoled the engine into life.

“Dog? Why would you think I own a dog? Yappy little gits.”

A long and very awkward pause ensued. We were passing through the dregs of Stockwell before either of us spoke again.

“What are you reading?” I asked at last, still attempting to be pleasant.

Alarmingly, Barnaby took his eyes from the road to glance down at the title. “The Middle Narratives of H. Rider Haggard and the Structuralist Problem of Modernity.”

“Sounds a bit heavy going.”

Barnaby reacted to this with barely checked fury, as though I’d just insulted his sister. “You think I’m a driver? Just a bloody cabbie? Is that what you thought?”

I blurted out a ham-fisted retraction. “I’m not sure what I meant.”

“Well, I know what you meant. I know damn well what you meant. Listen, before I was recruited by Dedlock’s outfit, I was a whole lot more than just a driver.”

“Oh, right. Really? What did you do?”

“I was professor of literature at one of this country’s foremost centers of excellence. I was an acknowledged authority on fin de siecle peril fiction. So I like to keep my hand in. Big deal. You got a problem with that?”

“Course not.” Although taken aback by his belligerence, I was still determined to be civil, the importance of a sort of relentlessly cheerful politeness having been instilled in me by Granddad since the crib. “So…” I floundered about for a question. “What made you give up academia for all this.”

“Wasn’t given a choice, was I? Those greedy bastards framed me. Got me thrown out of college on the most disgusting charges. The whole business was completely trumped up. There wasn’t an ounce of truth in any of it. It was a wicked, stinking pack of lies. You understand me, Lamb? It was all invention. The whole pernicious lot of it. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

“Absolutely,” I said hastily. “Without a doubt.”

After that, the rest of the journey went by in sullen silence, as we passed through Clapham, Brixton and on to central London via an unusually circuitous route. Abruptly, we turned a corner and found ourselves in the taxi line at Waterloo station.

Barnaby exhaled noisily. “You can get out and walk from here.”

In the shadow of the Eye, Mr. Jasper was waiting. A queue of sightseers snaked around him on the pavement — disgorged passengers from those coaches already wallowing by the side of the street.

Strange that in the twenty-first century, the city’s greatest attraction should be a bird’s-eye view of itself. For all its cocky futurism, there was something Victorian about the Eye. It had a sense of permanence and antiquity, as though it had been there for decades, looking down upon London as it burgeoned and swelled. It is easy to imagine the Elephant Man being taken aboard for a daytrip, staring awe-struck through the glass and wittering on about how terribly kind everyone had been to him.

“Good morning, Mr. Lamb,” Jasper can only have been a year or two my senior, yet he invariably spoke to me like I was a school leaver on work experience. “Nice suit.” This was said with heavy sarcasm but I mumbled thanks all the same.

“How do you like our driver?”

“I’m not sure I made the best first impression.”

“Barnaby takes a bit of getting used to.”

“I can imagine.”

“You’d better come up. Dedlock is expecting you.”

The pod door was open and I saw the same gaggle of tourists inside as I’d seen on the previous Friday, but today they seemed weirdly frozen, calcified and motionless, like statues pointing toward sights they couldn’t see.

“We don’t maintain the illusion twenty-four-seven,” Jasper murmured. “These days we just can’t get the funding.”

Bolder than before, I stepped into the mirage and emerged to face the old man. He had swum close to the glass of his tank and his pale fingers were pressed against the pane.

“Good morning,” he said. “I trust you had a restful weekend.”

“Yes, thank you.” My voice was trembling a little. “But I’d appreciate some answers.”

“In good time.” He swiveled toward my companion. “Jasper? Why haven’t you got your hat on?”

Jasper screwed his face up into a sulk. “I had hoped you were joking.”

The old man struck the side of his tank and snarled. “Put it on this instant.”

Huffily, Jasper reached into his suit pocket, pulled out a pink, neatly folded paper hat and placed it upon his head.

Dedlock gave him a steely look. “That’s better.” I got a gummy smile and noticed for the first time that the old man had few teeth left — and of those that remained, all were stumps, yellow, rotting and askew. “We wanted you to feel at home,” he said. “Happy birthday, Henry Lamb!”

I fought back the urge to laugh hysterically.

Dedlock flaunted his dental remnants again. “Enjoy your birthday. Celebrate your survival. But pray you never have to suffer as many of the things as me.”

The pod shook as it began its ascent and when the man in the tank looked at me again, he was no longer smiling. “Party’s over. To business.”

“I’d like to know what you want with me.” I spoke as calmly and precisely as I could. “I’m nothing special. I’m just a filing clerk. I’ve got nothing to do with your civil war.”

“You’re quite correct.”

“Oh.” I was faintly hurt by this. “Am I?”

“There is nothing special about you, Henry Lamb. Not remotely. And yet your grandfather — he was remarkable. I knew him very well. For a time, we were even friends.”

“You and he? Friends?”

“Certainly. Indeed, it’s only because he held such inexplicable affection for you that you are summoned here at all. I’m sure that this is how he wanted it to be. When you work alongside someone for as long as we did, you get to know the way they think. And I’ve little doubt that this is what he meant to happen.”

Certain peculiar suspicions were coalescing in my mind. “Granddad was something to do with all this, wasn’t he?”

Dedlock and Jasper exchanged watchful glances.

“Was he…” I trailed off, hardly daring to articulate the thought. “Was he one of you?”

The old man gave a long, sober stare. “There was a time, long ago, when I would have said he was the best of us.”

“Tell me more,” I said. “Right now.”

Dedlock turned away and started to paddle over to the other side of his tank. “We’re looking for a woman named Estella. Find her and the war is at an end. Your grandfather was the last man alive who knew where she was and I can only hope that he has done us the courtesy of leaving us a clue. I need you to take Jasper to the hospital.”

“Why on earth-”

“This is a direct order. Your generation may be a soft and feckless one but you are at least familiar with the concept of an order, yes?”

I said nothing.

“In good time, Henry Lamb, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Until then — do your duty.” And with this final exhortation, dolefully delivered, the old man turned his back upon us and gazed silently out across the sky.