The Doorkeepers

Twenty-Three

It was well after two o’clock before John Farbelow woke up. He opened his eyes and the sun was shining in through the dormer window, so he dragged the Indian durry up over his face. His hair – what was left of it – stuck up like a white cockatoo’s.

“You can’t hide, John,” said Ella. “You managed to run away, but you can’t pretend it never happened.”

“They murdered them,” said John Farbelow, his face still covered by the durry. “Those Puritan bastards. Christ almighty, they were only children, some of them. Ralphie had just turned sixteen.”

Abraxas came over to John Farbelow’s couch and started to lick at his hand, his tail slapping against Ella’s legs. “Shit. Just what I need. Dog spit.”

“Abraxas is very hygienic, aren’t you, Abraxas? I give him licorice root to chew. It’s good for his breath and it’s a wonderful laxative.”

“They killed my children, Ella.”

Ella handed him a steaming blue-decorated mug. “Here, drink this. It’ll make you feel better.”

“It’s not more of your stinking ragwort tea, is it?”

“No. Black coffee with a double vodka in it.”

John Farbelow eventually pulled the durry away from his face and managed to sit up. There was a diagonal sword-cut across his left cheek, and his right eye was swollen up like a plum.

“They killed my children, Ella. How can I live with myself?”

“You have to. We all have to. It’s the price we pay for fighting against the Lord Protector and the Doorkeepers. You seem to think that it’s wonderful, living here. But this isn’t home, is it? This is exile. Who cares if they know how to cure TB and they can fly to the moon? Home is where your heart is, John, and nobody can ever take that away from you.”

Abraxas gave a sharp bark of agreement. John Farbelow tugged at his ears and rubbed him under his chin. “What a price, though, Ella. What a price to pay. We rescued one man and where is he now?”

“I don’t know. But I suspect he’s gone back, looking for his girlfriend.”

John Farbelow reached into the pocket of his shirt that was hanging on the chair beside the couch and took out a pack of cigarettes. He lit one, and coughed like a dredger.

“They’ll kill you, those things.”

“Not where you and I come from, Ella. They haven’t discovered the connection yet, between smoking and lung cancer. And even if they have, they’re keeping really, really quiet about it.”

Ella said, “I had a very strong feeling that we ought to rescue Josh Winward. I saw it in my tealeaves and I saw it in the Sybil. I also saw it in the ordinary deck. Every time I asked if we should take the risk of rescuing Josh, it came up with an ace. You know what that means, don’t you?”

“Of course. You haven’t shuffled the deck properly.”

“It means that Josh is the chosen one. I’ve seen this before. It means that no matter what you think of him, or how much you question his importance, or his good sense, or his courage, he is the chosen one. Some people are just like that. They’re chosen by fate, no matter what their aptitudes are. Joan of Arc. Toussaint I’Ouverture. Lawrence of Arabia.”

John Farbelow swallowed coffee and sucked at his cigarette and blew smoke out of his nose. “I don’t know, Ella. All this occult shit.”

“Julia Winward’s lung came out of her brother’s mouth during my séance and that was psychic evidence that somebody had stopped her from living and breathing, and a guide to how to find them. If I did the same to you, who knows, you might even find yourself holding Winnie’s hand.”

“Just her hand?”

“Of course. Spirits only materialize in little pieces. To bring a whole person back … that would probably kill the medium, and everybody else in the room. How do you think the Hoodies found you, underneath the British Museum?”

“Somebody grassed us up, that’s all. It doesn’t take much, does it? A few packets of fags and a bottle of this world’s whiskey.”

“They found you because you were all excited, after you rescued Josh Winward. The Hoodies could feel your excitement, and their dogs could, too. Especially since you killed that Thomas Edridge. I know Thomas Edridge, and I’m glad he died. For your own safety, though, you should have let him go.”

“Yes,” said John Farbelow, wearily.

Ella held his hand. “I feel guilty, that so many of your young people were killed.”

“Well, I feel guilty, too; and sometimes I wish that the Hoodies had killed me, instead of any one of those young people. But that’s not the way life works, is it? Life is unfair. Life is full of surprises. All of those clichés.”

At that moment, there was a pummeling knock on the apartment door. Abraxas barked wildly and ran over to it. John Farbelow swung his legs off the couch and said, “Ella? Are you expecting anybody?”

“No, I’m not. And even if I was, they’d always press the downstairs bell first.”

John Farbelow went over to the kitchen area, tugged open the cutlery drawer and took out a chopping knife.

“It could be Nancy or Josh,” said Ella.

John Farbelow shook his head. “It could be. But I’m not taking any chances, that’s all.” He went over to the door and listened. There was silence for a long, long while – so long that Ella thought that whoever it was had given up and left. But then there was another thunderous knocking, and something that sounded like a kick.

“For Christ’s sake, that’s my door!” shouted Ella.

“Open up!” a voice demanded, in a muffled roar.

“Oh, Jesus,” said John Farbelow. “It’s the Hoodies. They’re here.”

“Oh, shit. How good are you at abseiling?”

“Abseiling – what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about climbing out of the kitchen window and sliding on a rope down to the sidewalk.”

“Without anybody seeing us, or shooting us, or bursting into this room and cutting the rope when we’re halfway down?”

“We don’t have any alternative, do we?”

John Farbelow looked at her, and for the first time Ella saw beneath the ravages of age and pain and grief, saw the kind of hopeful young man he must have been once. Never striving to be anything important, but chosen all the same.

She climbed on to the kitchen sink and opened up the window. “The rope’s here. I think it’s safe. The fire brigade insisted that the landlord put it in.”

There was another kick at the door. The architrave splintered, and lumps of plaster fell down from the sides. Ella wriggled herself backward out of the window, gripping the rope with her left hand. “Abraxas!” she called. “Come on, boy! Come on, Abraxas!”

Abraxas hesitated but then he jumped up on to the draining board. John Farbelow shouted, “What the hell are you doing? You can’t take the dog down with you!”

“He’s my dog,” Ella insisted, just as the door was kicked again, and the two lower panels splintered.

“You can’t! You’ll kill yourself!”

Ella pulled Abraxas by his collar and dragged him out on to the windowsill. Abraxas whined and his claws scrabbled reluctantly against the stone, but Ella snapped, “Come on, stupid! You have to! You want to be sancoche?”

She managed to wrap her right arm around Abraxas’ chest. Then she edged her way backward, over the sill, and began to inch down the wall, gasping with the effort. John leaned out of the window and watched her in desperation. It was nearly seventy feet down to the sidewalk, and in front of the block of flats stood a row of spiked cast-iron railings. Behind the railings there was a deep area crowded with metal trash cans and pieces of rusty corrugated iron and pieces of timber.

“Take it slowly, Ella,” John Farbelow cautioned her. “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

Behind him, the lower door panels were kicked out, and the central bar splintered. John Farbelow looked around, anxiously. Two or three more kicks and the lock would give way.

Ella managed to reach the windowsill of the flat below. She was still clinging on tight, but when she stepped off, she began to spin around, so she had to pedal desperately to get her feet back on the sill again. Abraxas began to panic, and thrashed his legs, and so Ella had to wedge herself tight against the window frame to stop herself from losing her balance.

“Calm down, Abraxas,” she soothed him, even though her voice was shaking. “Come on, boy, calm down!” But Abraxas struggled even more wildly, and barked, and bit her hand, so that she almost let go of the rope. She looked down and the whole world seemed to tilt.

“Drop the dog!” John Farbelow shouted at her. “You don’t have any choice, Ella! Drop the damn dog!”

“I can’t!” she screamed. But at that instant, Abraxas struggled out of her grasp and jumped toward the ground. Ella twisted around to see what had happened to him, and it was then that the rope broke.

She snatched at the wall, trying to find a handhold. Her fingertips momentarily caught the top of the sash window, but then they slipped. The next thing she knew she was plunging to the ground, her arms and legs frantically waving, as if she were drowning, rather than falling. She went on swimming until she hit the railings.

There was a dull ringing sound, like a leaden bell chiming. John Farbelow looked down and saw her lying crucified, her arms lolling on either side, both shins penetrated by the same cast-iron spike. She was staring up at the sky with her eyes wide open, as if she were surprised that this had happened.

Abraxas had hit the sidewalk on all fours. It looked to John Farbelow as if he had broken one of his legs, but he managed to limp back to the railings, and stand looking up at Ella’s body, whining in pain and perplexity.

The door opened with a crash. John Farbelow turned around as three men entered the room, all of them dressed in burnouses, like Arabs. Their faces, however, were completely masked with hessian hoods, with ragged holes torn open for their eyes.

He raised his hand and said, “I don’t know who you are, or who you’re looking for, but you’re making a mistake!”

One of the Hooded Men drew a long saber out of his robes, and approached John Farbelow with the confident crouch of a trained swordsman. John Farbelow could hear him hissing to himself, hissing in triumph.

“This is all a mistake. None of us had anything to do with Edridge.”

“Perhaps you did, perhaps you didn’t,” said one of the Hooded Men. “But, in history, even the innocent must pay for the sins of the guilty. It’s the law.”

John Farbelow looked away from him; and took in the positions of the other two Hooded Men. One of them was opening every one of Ella’s herbs and spices and tipping them on to the floor. The other was pulling all of her gewgaws off the wall, all her crucifixes and mirrors and necklaces and voodoo dolls, all of the pictures of her family and friends, and all of those people who had helped her to believe that she didn’t have to be enslaved.

“What are you going to do with me?” asked John Farbelow.

“We’re going to give you justice,” said the Hooded Man. “Isn’t that what you were always fighting for?”

“Without freedom, my friend, justice doesn’t mean anything.”

“So that’s what gives you your excuse to murder anybody you like?”

John Farbelow moved slowly sideways. If he was quick enough, he could dodge between the two Hoodies who were ransacking Ella’s apartment and make it to the broken-down door. The third Hooded Man half-turned away from him for a second. “Look at this heathen trash. And to think this woman thought that she had some divine right to subvert our society.”

“Well …” said John Farbelow, as if he were going to say something in reply. But then he ran for the door, jinking from one side to the other like a football player.

Before any of the three Hoodies could turn around, he had made it to the door, and on to the landing. He seized the banisters and swung himself down the first flight of stairs. He heard the Hoodies shouting and running after him, their boots drumming on the cheap-carpeted treads. He threw himself down the next flight, and the next, and he was galloping down the last flight at full tilt when another Hoodie appeared in front of him, as black as the shadow of death, and he ran straight into his upraised sword.

He reached out with both hands, trying to grasp the Hoodie’s shoulders to support himself. He knew what had happened to him. He could feel that the steel had penetrated his lung and come right out of his back.

“Winnie,” he whispered; and he made a conscious effort to picture her, the way he had first met her, on the number fifteen bus. Because all of his subversion, after all, had been nothing more than his rage and his grief at losing Winnie.

The Hoodie, in turn, grasped his shoulder, and slowly tugged the sword out, and it was a hundred times more painful than it had been, going in – especially the way it slid against his ribs. John Farbelow collapsed on to his knees and tumbled down the last six or seven stairs into the hallway, next to the bicycle.

He lay with his cheek against the grimy green vinyl, watching his blood creep away from him. He saw the Hoodies’ boots stepping over him, as they left the apartment block and made their escape. By this time tomorrow, they would be back in the other London, and nobody would ever know who had murdered him. Worse still, nobody would ever know who he – or Ella – was.

Outside, in the street, Abraxas sat patiently on the sidewalk, while Ella lay spreadeagled on the railings, and the hazy afternoon air was filled with the whooping of ambulances and police cars.