The Doorkeepers

Twenty-One

He opened his eyes. The cellar was shaking. The whole world was shaking. It sounded as if thousands of airplanes were flying overhead, thousands of them. Their droning made the door rattle and the brickwork crack and the cheap aluminum saucepans drop off their shelves. Josh looked at Petty: she was fast asleep, lying on her back with her mouth open. He shook her and shouted, “Petty! Petty, wake up!”

She opened her eyes and blinked at him. “What’s the matter? I was having a good dream then. I was dancing, and all these blokes were clapping and throwing me money.” She looked around, almost as if she expected to find the bedspread strewn with five-pound notes.

“It’s another raid!” Josh shouted at her.

The roaring of aero-engines was enormous now. It seemed to blot out everything: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and any sense of logic. Josh felt as if he were drowning in it.

“There’s nothing we can do!” Petty screamed at him. “This is as safe as anywhere else!”

They heard whistling, not far away. That dreadful, triumphant wheeeeeeee! Then the sticks of bombs began to land, fifteen or sixteen at a time, running up St Martin’s Lane and Charing Cross Road in a series of minor earthquakes. They heard a gas main explode. They heard tons of masonry falling into the road. They heard bells, and bells, and more bells.

“Oh Mary Mother of God protect us,” prayed Petty.

“Are you a Catholic?” asked Josh.

She frowned at him. She was still naked, and there were red wrinkled marks from the sheets on the side of her left breast, where she had been sleeping.

“Yes, I’m a Catholic. What difference does it make?”

“It doesn’t.”

A huge explosion at the lower end of Drury Lane made the whole house shake. Josh heard windows bursting and bricks collapsing, and it sounded as if a whole truckload of bricks had been unloaded on the floor right above their heads.

“Oh please God don’t let us be buried alive,” begged Petty.

Josh didn’t say anything, but was thinking the exact same thought. Of all the deaths that he could imagine, being buried alive was the one that filled him with the greatest dread.

Another bomb hit Drury Lane, much closer this time. The impact made Josh’s ears sing, and almost threw them out of bed. Josh lay on top of Petty and pulled the blankets over his head, while even more masonry dropped on to the floor above them, and brick dust sifted down from every crevice in the ceiling.

Under the blankets, they clung to each other, sweaty and hot, but both of them praying to survive. They heard another whistle, much louder this time, and growing louder, as if a train were hurtling toward them, and Petty held him so tight that she almost suffocated him. “Whatever happens,” she breathed in his ear, “remember that I love you.”

“How can you love me? You don’t even know who I am.”

“I know. But you’re going to be holding me tight when I die. I can’t ask any more than that, can I?”

She lifted her head and kissed him. Her mouth tasted of gin and cigarettes, but all the same it was warm and soft and she obviously wanted him. At the same instant the world seemed to come to a stop. Josh felt an enormous compression in his ears, and the next thing he knew he was flung out of bed across the cellar, hitting his head on one of the armchairs and landing upside down in the kitchen, scattering cans and cartons and cutlery. Petty was hurled against the cellar steps and lay hunched up with her head in the corner as if she were playing turtles.

Tons of rubble dropped on top of the cellar. The lights went out, and they were left in choking darkness. Josh stayed where he was for a while, his feet up in the air, trying to get his breath back. Then he called out, “Petty?”

Petty didn’t answer. Josh managed to roll himself sideways, bringing down another clatter of pots and pans, and crawled on his hands and knees across the grit-strewn floor. “Petty, can you hear me, is everything OK?”

He caught his hand on a protruding nail, and he could feel the blood running down his forearm. “Petty?” he called. “Petty, for God’s sake, talk to me.”

Groping sideways, he managed to find the bottom of the stairs, and then Petty’s right foot. He felt his way up her body until he reached her head. Her hair was thick with dust and thousands of tiny fragments of glass. She might have been bleeding, but it was impossible for him to tell because his own hand was bleeding, too, and everything felt sticky and wet.

“Petty,” he urged her, turning her over on to her back. “Petty, for God’s sake say something.”

She remained floppy and cold and unresponsive. Josh could feel a pulse, but it was very thready. He felt for her mouth and stuck his finger into it, to make sure that it wasn’t obstructed. Then he leaned over and gave her mouth-to-mouth. A huge explosion like that could have compressed her lungs, or filled them with dust.

“Petty,” he said, between breaths. “Listen to me, Petty, you’re going to be fine. The worst of it’s over. They won’t be coming back. Not tonight, anyhow. Come on, Petty, you have to breathe here, baby. You have to use your lungs. There’s one thing for sure, I’m not going to let you die, whatever it takes.”

He kept up mouth-to-mouth for nearly twenty minutes. He massaged her heart, too. The cellar remained totally dark and he couldn’t see her at all.

“Petty, you’re going to make it. You’re going to be fine. If you don’t die, I’ll take you with me when I go back to London. I promise. And you’ll have all the food you want and all the dancing you want and enough clean knickers to stretch from here to Sausalito.”

There was still no response. Josh leaned over her and gave her one last kiss of life – and then gave her a kiss. “I’m sorry, baby. I did what I could. Take care of yourself, wherever you’re going. I love you.”

He stood up, reaching for the handrail to steady himself. As he did so, he thought he heard movement. A slight shifting, nothing more.

“I was waiting for you to say that,” said Petty, her voice clogged with dust. “Those are the magic words.”

Feeling around in the darkness, Josh managed to find her arm, and then her shoulders, and lift her on to her feet. “I’m OK,” she said. “I was knocked out, that’s all. That was a bloody close one, wasn’t it? Must have hit the building next door.”

“We need some light,” said Josh.

“That’s all right. I’ve got loads of candles. Under the basin, there’s a whole box of them. Christ, my head. I feel like somebody’s been sitting on it.”

Josh groped his way around the room until he located the sink. Underneath it, he found a brown-paper package filled with candles. He took out two to light up the cellar, but he also took another six, cramming them into his coat pockets, just in case he needed to cross through any of the doors, looking for the London he had left behind. In the darkness, he damned Nancy’s independent spirit. He loved her, and he was proud of her, but where had it got them both? He didn’t even like to think what she was doing right now, while he was trapped in this bombed-out cellar with Petty.

He flicked his butane lighter and lit one of the candles. Petty looked like a ghost, a voodoo duppy, her face white and her eyes black and her lips blood-red where Josh had been kissing them. Her hair had turned into dreadlocks, crammed with dust and debris, but glittering with glass. She had a crimson lump on her forehead, and superficial cuts and bruises, but no serious injuries. The blood that was criss-crossed all over her naked body was Josh’s.

Josh looked down at his own hand. The cut was L-shaped, deep in the muscle just below his thumb. He picked up a tea-towel from the kitchen floor, snapped it in the air to shake off the dust, and wrapped it tightly around his wound.

Petty managed to climb to her feet. Josh helped her across to the bedroom area and sat her on the bed. She coughed and spat dust, and sat with her shoulders hunched, wheezing like an asthmatic, trying to get her breath back. But at last she reached for her bra and her dress, and painfully began to dress herself.

Josh heard an ominous lurching sound from the ceiling. “We have to get out of here, Petty. It sounds like the whole goddamn house is coming down.”

Petty nodded, but she was too choked up with dust to say anything. Holding the candle high, Josh led her back across to the stairs, and the two of them climbed up together, until they reached the door. Josh took hold of the door handle and tugged it, but the door was jammed solid.

Not only that, they could both hear the deep droning noise of another wave of approaching bombers.

“Oh shit,” said Petty. “They’re really going to give us a pasting tonight.”

Josh gave the door another tug. It might be more dangerous outside, with fires raging all across London’s West End, but he couldn’t stay buried in this cellar any longer. He was beginning to hyperventilate already.

“We’ll be safer here,” said Petty, but he shook his head. He didn’t want to admit to his rising panic.

He heard more bombs falling, only a few streets away, and that gave him the strength to wrench at the door again and again, until he had pulled it half-open. Outside, the hallway was blocked with debris. The staircase had collapsed, and the banisters covered the cellar like a fence. Huge blocks of broken brick were piled on top of each other, some of them still plastered and wallpapered.

“We’re going to have to move some of this stuff if we’re going to get out,” said Josh. “Come on up here and give me a hand.”

He managed to twist three uprights out of the banisters, backward and forward, until they eventually came free, and toss them out of the way. Crouching down like Quasimodo, he climbed out of the cellar, underneath the banister rail, and into the hallway itself. His shoes slid down a heap of pulverized dust and glass and broken china. He saw half a willow-pattern teacup and a doll’s face with staring blue eyes, as well as a vegetable-strainer and a diary with all of its pages singed at the edges.

“Come on, Petty,” he insisted. “You too.”

Awkwardly, she climbed out after him. “God, look what the bastards have done to my house!” she wept. “This is my house, this is where I live! What right have they got to come and smash it all to pieces? What right? I don’t care if they’re part of the bloody Empire or not!”

Outside, the sky was growing lighter.

They looked around, in that gray hallucinatory light just before the sun comes over the horizon, and they could have been standing in a stage set, meant to depict the end of the world. Drury Lane was nothing more than two parallel heaps of bricks, with fires burning everywhere. It wasn’t even recognizable as the same street that Josh had been walking up earlier this morning. The theaters had gone, the shops had gone, the houses had gone. There was nothing but rubble and slates and broken chimney pots and twisted fire escapes and skeletal roof timbers. And fires everywhere, and acrid smoke.

“Are you OK?” he asked Petty.

Petty was shivering, but she nodded. “I’m all right. I wish it was over, that’s all.”

Josh put his arm around her. “Cocks and chocolate?”

She managed a smile. “That’s right. Cocks and chocolate.”

“I guess we’d better find ourselves someplace to hole up.”

“What about your friend? The one you came here to find?”

“John Farbelow? I’m not sure that he even exists in this London. Even if he does, he may not even be the same guy.”

“Well, we’ve got to do something. Can’t we go back to your London?”

“We can. Well, I hope we can. But not yet. We have to wait until one o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, wonderful. And what do we do in the meantime?”

Josh stopped, and listened. “Do you hear something?” he asked her.

She wrinkled up her nose. “Like what?”

“Like a sort of drumming noise.”

“Don’t ask me. I can’t hardly hear nothing after that last bomb went off.”

Josh listened even harder, gripping Petty’s wrist so that she was sure to stand still. They could hear fire engines racing around London, their bells frantically ringing. They could hear the diminishing drone of scores of heavy bombers, circling around East London on their way back to their bases in Normandy. But they could hear something else, too. They could hear drumming. Ratta-tat-tatt! Ratta-tat-tatt! And they could hear barking, and the piercing whistles of dog-handlers.

“Oh God,” said Josh. “I don’t believe it. It’s the Hooded Men.”

“The Hooded Men? Who the hell are the Hooded Men?”

“Ask me later. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

He grasped Petty’s hand and started to jog northward, up toward High Holborn, where automobiles were burning. But Petty said, “I can’t, Josh. I can’t go any further.”

“You have to. Don’t you realize what these people can do to you?”

She slowed down to a walk. “I don’t care what they do to me. I’m not going to run any further. I can’t.”

Josh stood beside her. The drumming sounded louder, and sharper. The dogs began to bark more enthusiastically, because they had obviously picked up the scent.

“Come on,” he urged Petty. “They’ll kill us if they catch us.”

He pulled her behind him with her bare feet reluctantly slapping on the ground. Up ahead of them, the street was filled with billowing black smoke from a burning office building. “Come on, we can use the smoke to get away from them.”

As they neared the smoke, however, Josh heard more drums, right in front of them. He stopped, and turned around. The drums were still following them. He turned back, to see four men approaching through the smoke. A drummer, with his side-drum, beating out an endless and terrifying rattle. Two dog-handlers, with bull terriers wheezing at their leads. And a tall man wearing an angular black hat, his face covered by a hessian mask. As he walked toward them, he swung his shining sword from side to side, as if he were cutting off wheat stalks.

“Is that a Hooded Man?” asked Petty, gripping Josh’s arm.

Josh nodded. Behind them, the drums came closer and closer, and he could hear the dogs yapping in a frenzy of excitement.

“Who are they? What are they going to do to us?”

“I don’t know. It’s me they want. They must have followed me here.”

There was no point in trying to run. Josh knew that the dogs would catch them before they had covered less than fifty feet. All they could do was stand and wait as the Hooded Man walked up them; two more Hooded Men appeared from behind.

“Well, Mr Winward,” said the first Hooded Man, in a harsh, muffled voice. “We have you.”

“What the hell are you after me for?”

“Isn’t murder enough?”

“I never murdered anybody. What those guys did when they rescued me, that was nothing to do with me.”

“Come now, Mr Winward. The murder was committed in effecting your release from custody. That makes you a co-conspirator.”

“I told you that I wasn’t interested in making trouble. If you’d let me go—”

The Hooded Man lifted his sword and prodded Josh in the chest with it, again and again. He didn’t prod hard enough to penetrate his shirt, but Josh could feel the point against his ribs.

“You are a liar and a subversive and a murderer, sir. You are one of the rats that run in the sewers beneath our society, spreading the plagues of dissent and faithlessness. Believe me, you will suffer for what you have done.”

Another of the Hooded Men came up to Petty, and took hold of the sleeve of her dress. “And who is this whore?”

“Don’t touch the girl. Let go of her. She has nothing to do with this.”

“I can find that out for myself, thank you. Both of you are coming with us.”

“Well, sorry about that. I’ve only been here since one o’clock this morning. I can’t go back to your London. Not for seven hours yet.”

“We’re not taking you back there,” said the Hooded Man. “We have a house here, just as we have houses in every reality that we can visit. Now, let’s be moving on, shall we?”

The Hooded Man prodded Josh again, in the shoulder this time. Then he prodded him yet again, and again, and this time the point actually broke the skin. Josh stepped back, covering his shoulder with his hand. The Hooded Man stabbed him in the forearm.

“I said, let’s be moving on, didn’t I? So let’s be moving on.”

He stabbed Josh twice more, but this time Josh held his ground. He had never been physically brave, even when he was training in the Marine Corps. Suddenly, however, he felt an extraordinary rush of power – a power that was totally overwhelming, like nothing he had ever felt before, ever. It was partly anger, and frustration, and a sense of injustice. But it was much more than that. It was a complete absence of fear. He wasn’t afraid of the Hooded Men. He wasn’t afraid of their swords, or their dogs, or anything.

Without hesitation, he ducked forward and seized the Hooded Man’s wrist. He twisted his arm around and pulled the sword right out of his hand. Then he elbow-punched him very hard in the chest. Beneath the black tunic he could feel a deep, bony ribcage, and he was sure that he felt something crack.

The Hooded Man dropped to his knees in front of him. The two other Hooded Men drew their swords and one of them shouted, “Dogs! Let the dogs have him!”

But Josh lifted the Hooded Man’s sword and shouted back, “Stop! You let those dogs go and I’ll take his head off! I swear to God!”

To his own amazement, he realized that he meant it. And the Hooded Men must have realized it, too, because they stayed where they were, and one of them lifted a cautioning hand to the dog-handlers.

Josh gripped the Hooded Man’s white Puritan collar and pulled him on to his feet. The Hooded Man felt bulky and disjointed, as if he had all of the components of a human body, all the bones and liver and intestines, but all thrown together willy-nilly. He had a smell to him, too – a sweet distinctive smell that reminded Josh of rotting apricots. He pressed the sword-point into the Hooded Man’s back and said, “Now it’s your turn to be moving on, pal. And I warn you I’ll kill you if you give me any problems.”

He stepped backward, away from the Hooded Men and their dog-handlers and their drummer. Petty hesitated, but Josh said, “Come on, Petty. Let’s get out of here.”

Petty followed him, and together they began to retreat along the street toward the smoke that still poured out of the burning offices. The Hooded Men remained where they were, but the drummer started up a single, threatening beat, like the beat that used to accompany condemned men to the scaffold.

“You can never escape us,” said the Hooded Man. “We can follow you to the ends of the earth. We can follow you to the ends of every earth.”

“Just shut up,” Josh told him, and pulled at his collar even harder.

They walked into the whirling smoke, and the other Hooded Men were gradually blotted out of sight, although they could still hear the persistent drumbeat. The smoke was hot and filled with flying sparks. It smelled strongly of burning varnish and their eyes filled up with tears.

Petty started to cough, and even the Hooded Man began to wheeze for breath.

“As soon as we’re clear, I want you to run,” Josh told Petty.

She coughed and nodded and waved her hand.

“You will suffer for this,” the Hooded Man grated. “You will beg to be put out of your misery, I swear it.”

Josh ignored him. He dragged him as far as the end of the office block, where the smoke began to thin out, and then he released the grip on his collar, pushing him away.

The Hooded Man took two or three steps back, apparently staggering, and for a moment Josh thought that he was going to fall over. But then, without warning, he pulled a long dagger out of his tunic and lunged at Josh from the right-hand side, trying to catch him underneath his sword. He was so quick that it was almost unnatural, like a special effect in a movie.

His dagger sliced at Josh’s side, but Josh dipped to the left and swung the sword over his head. The Hooded Man tilted back, and feinted, and tried to stab Josh’s wrist. There was a clash of steel on steel – one cutting edge against another. The Hooded Man spun around and kicked at Josh with his buckled shoe. Josh swung at him, again and again, and the sword-blade whistled through the smoke.

The Hooded Man dodged to the right, and then to the left, and then he suddenly rolled over on the ground and stabbed at Josh’s knees. Josh jumped back and whirled his sword in a great circular sweep. He was only trying to protect himself, but at that instant the Hooded Man tried to stand up. The sword hit him in the side of the neck – knock! – cutting right through his hessian hood and almost taking his head off.

He dropped backward on to the road, with blood squirting out of his neck like a crimson geyser. He tried to reach up to his neck, to stop himself from hemorrhaging, but the wound gaped open so wide that there was nothing he could do. He let out a horrible gargling, his hands shaking and his feet kicking, and then he lay still.

“Oh my God,” said Petty. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Josh stood back, the smoke still swirling all around him. Christ almighty, he had killed a man, and killed him with a sword. He didn’t know whether he felt like a medieval hero or a homicidal maniac. The feeling was completely primitive.

“We should run,” Petty told him, glancing back anxiously in the direction of the single drumbeat. “Don’t tell me they won’t be looking for us.”

“Yes,” said Josh. “You’re absolutely right. We should run.”

“Then run, for fuck’s sake!”

Josh nodded. But for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to leave the still-shuddering body on the ground. He approached the Hooded Man, and stood over him. His hessian mask was almost completely soaked in blood, and his head was tilted sideways at an impossible angle. One more swipe from his sword would have beheaded the Hooded Man completely.

“Please,” begged Petty. “Let’s get out of here!”

Josh prodded the Hooded Man’s chest with the point of his sword. Then, carefully, he started to cut at the side of his hessian hood.

“What are you doing?” Petty fretted.

“I want to see,” said Josh. “I want to see what these bastards really look like, underneath their hoods.”

He carried on cutting. The hessian was old and fragile, so he cut through it quite easily. Then, still using the point of his sword, he pulled it off the Hooded Man’s head, and flung it aside.

“Oh, my God,” said Petty; and even Josh could only look for an instant before he turned away.