Dream London (38 page)

The women looked at me. I had their attention. Finally, I had their attention. Caught on the boundary between Dream London and the park, I had my audience. And now I saw a group of men in Hammers scarves, forming back there at square 93, right by the wall of the park. My football fans had come. They were being joined by a group of Armoury fans, dressed in brown and cream. My army was forming...

But in the silence another musician crept in. A young woman with a guitar. She struck a chord.

“Sing, brave women, of the new life that awaits you.”

I took hold of the guitar and smashed it against the ground.

“Hey!” Three men disengaged from the party crowd in the 80s and came over to me. They were swaying, brave on alcohol and each other’s company. Behind me, I had lost the workhouse women’s attention. The heaving crowd forced them on into the park.

“No,” I called. “Come back...”

A hand on my shoulder, pulling me back, pulling me over the line from the 90s to the 80s.

“That’s no way to treat a young lady...”

“You broke her guitar!”

“Not me, you fools!” I called. “We should be fighting that!”

I pointed over their heads, past the floodlights of the Footballdrome to the looming shape of Angel Tower. The men ignored me. One threw a punch. I dodged it and kicked away his feet. Something hit my back and I was on the floor, struggling to get up. Someone kicked my hands away. I heard a shout and caught a flash of orange. Mister Monagan was there, helping out. He was strong, there was no denying that. Strong and fast. A good frog to have on your side in a fight.

I climbed to my feet, still groggy. The crowd had carried me back into the party section, and I was surrounded once more by drunkenness and fornication.

“Oh, Mister Monagan,” I said. “This is hopeless. Really hopeless.”

“Never give up, Mister James.”

“How could I expect to form an army from this rabble? I thought they would follow me. They’re too far out of the habit. They’re all individuals. They won’t follow anyone!”

“They will, you just need to get their attention.”

“How?”

I stared at the ground, and as I did so, I heard it.

Mister Monagan looked at me.

“Can you hear it too, Mister James?” he asked.

I tilted my head. From the distance came a noise completely alien to Dream London.

The crowd heard it. It obviously stirred something within them, the memory of days before the changes. Silence was spreading once more across Snakes and Ladders Square as one of the sounds that Dream London had tried to destroy was heard for the first time in nearly a year.

The sound of a snare drum, and underneath it, the sound of the bass, the sound of steady rhythm, beat by beat. The sound of feet, marching in time. The sound of so many people doing the same thing. Of people united to a common cause, and not expressing themselves freely.

“What is it, Mister James?” asked Mister Monagan.

I stared into his orange eyes. I wondered if, coming as he had from the other worlds, the worlds long conquered by forces such as Angel Tower, he had ever heard people working together like this.

“What is it?” he repeated.

“It’s a band,” I said. “It’s a brass band.”

OLIVE

THE DREAM LONDON SILVER BAND

A
STILLNESS SETTLED
over the square, fighting momentarily forgotten as all faces turned towards the approaching noise. Someone began to clap, and then a ripple of applause spread through the crowd. Something was approaching over the heads of the people. Something large and square that sailed towards us...

“Is it a ship, Mister James?”

Mister Monagan’s face was such a picture of confusion that I almost laughed.

“A ship?” I said. “No, Mister Monagan. It’s a banner! This is a parade. A good old fashioned parade!”

The parade ploughed through the waves of the crowd, pulled by the sail of the banner. The brass band, led by trombones, followed by tubas and baritones and horns, marched in step through the furrow of people. The street musicians held their guitars and accordions at ease and looked on in scorn at the elderly ladies and gentlemen who marched in the band, their shoes polished, buttons on their black blazers shining, the badges on their breast pockets with the four silver letters curled around each other: DLSB. They blew on their instruments with dry lips, they played with the memory of better days, but they played and marched and their silver music silenced everything and everyone.

“It’s not bad, I suppose,” said the girl whose guitar I had broken. “But there’s no feeling to it. No expression.”

“Be quiet,” said someone else. “I want to listen.”

“What do they want?”

“Where are they going?”

“What does the banner say?”

I read it now in the red light.

London Pride.

London Pride. Not Dream London.

The crowd was muttering now. London Pride? Remember that?

The banner sailed by me and Mister Monagan, and still the band marched, and now a second question occurred to everyone.

Where were they going?
I guessed the answer at the same time as everyone else.

“They’re heading into the park.”

They were. The crowd made way for them, pulled back and pushed forward, looked and shouted words of encouragement and scorn.

“You go for it!”

“You’re fools.”

“Old fools!”

“You show them boys!”

The crowd pulled back around the entrance to the park. Black marble squares seemed darker in the dying red light. The band moved across the open space. The banner was lowered as it passed through the arch into the park beyond. The trombones followed, their slides pumping back and forth in the motion of a steam engine.

“What are they doing?”

I was level with the centre of the band. A tall man walked there, a bass drum strapped to his front. He hit it to the sound of the footsteps.
Left, left, left-right-left...

A smaller man strode by him, rattling on a snare drum, and then we were amongst the cornets, their bells singing sweetly in the night.

“Look at that old fart playing that trumpet,” laughed someone. “He looks like he’s having a heart attack!”

Captain Wedderburn rose up inside me and I turned to smack them across the face, but to my pleasant surprise someone had beaten me to it. A guitarist stood, hand to his burning cheek, looking shocked.

The band was marching into the park now, and I saw that they were followed by more old men and women, all wearing suits or smart dresses, all marching in time, heading into the parks. Emboldened, some of the crowd joined their ranks.

“But why?” asked Mister Monagan. “Mister James, shouldn’t they be attacking Angel Tower?”

“Maybe they have some other information, Mister Monagan.” I frowned. “It’s just good to see that they’re doing something together.”

More people were joining the parade. What a vision it must have looked from the air, the polished needle sliding into the park, the coloured swirls of the crowd attaching themselves to the rear.

“Should we join them, Mister James?” asked Mister Monagan.

“Maybe we should,” I said, thoughtfully.

The parade had shouldered aside the grey masses of the workhouses, and now the dispossessed resumed their march into the park, but with a difference. They no longer shuffled forwards with a defeated air; now they raised their heads and looked around themselves. They were no longer marching as those already sold. Now they were part of a community, part of something bigger than themselves.

“A brass band,” I murmured. “I would never have thought of that. It makes some sort of sense, I suppose.”

Mister Monagan was excited. He was jumping up and down, his great feet flapping on the floor.

“Mister James! Mister James! We need to find Anna. She could help us to march on Angel Tower...”

His voice tailed away. Because something had changed.

“The band,” said Mister Monagan. “What’s happening to the band?”

The shouts went up again, in the square and beyond. The band was being killed. You could hear it. It was dying, not like a group of people being killed one by one, but like a single living thing. It shouted out in a cacophony of voices: it spoke in bass and tenor and alto and soprano, it screamed in high notes, it stuttered in low notes, its middle range was cut short.

“What’s happening?” I called. “Mister Monagan! Let me climb on your shoulders and see!”

The swirl of the crowd was pushing us sideways as people sought to get away from the entrance to the park. I held onto the orange man as we were carried along with them, pushed along the iron railings at the top edge of the square, pushed away from the park entrance.

“What’s happening?” I called.

“The statues!” People were calling. “The statues! They’re alive!”

I remembered the statues, those carved shapes that filled the park. I remembered the obscene poses that they had struck.

“Here, Mr Monagan, let me see.”

Mr Monagan braced himself against the bars. I climbed up onto his shoulders and peered through the railings. I looked into the park and the band had gone.

Wide green lawns led up to walls of trees. Gravel paths ran from the gates in straight lines. The pedestals on which statues might have stood were now empty. There was no sign of the statues, no sign of the band, nothing but the distant lines of grey workers marching to their new lives, heading off to the yellow and gold mass of the palace.

I jumped back down to the ground, just as the sound of the invisible band died in the last wail of a horn, and silence descended once more. The square was still, unsure what to do next.

People gazed at each other. The guitarists huddled together in a little group.

“See?” said one. “That sort of protest never works.”

Mister Monagan was helping an elderly man to his feet.

“I’m okay,” said the man. “I’m fine. Let me go.”

The man stood up and dusted himself off. And then he began to march once more towards the gates of the park.

“Where are you going? Don’t you know you’ll be killed?”

The old man would not listen to reason. “I have to show my support,” he said.

“Mister Monagan,” I said. “Block the gates. We’ve got to stop more people going through.”

“I don’t think you’ll be able to,” said Mister Monagan. “Look!”

I’d seen. Already the grey suited workers were forming up and walking through once more.

“Stop it!” I yelled. “Didn’t you see what just happened?”

“Of course they did,” said someone close by. “Dream London doesn’t like brass bands. You saw that! Everything was fine until the band turned up.”

“You mean you were okay!”

“That way of protest always just leads to trouble. It’s too aggressive. You need to be thoughtful.”

“What do you suggest?” I asked. “An improvised flute solo?”

“It would make a point,” said the man.

“What point?”

The man just shrugged and shook his head, pityingly. He was right and I was wrong. This was Dream London. We didn’t do things that way any more. When we did, look what happened.

“They’ve got the right idea, Mister Monagan,” I said. “They just need the support.”

I pulled the flare gun from my pocket. I had my football fans. Now to see what sort of an army Gentle Annie had raised.

“Not yet, Mister James!” said Mister Monagan, putting his hand on the gun. “We need another brass band! We need to change its direction, head it towards Angel Tower!”

“Not yet? Another brass band? Where are we going to get another brass band from?”

“There’s one coming now!” said Mister Monagan. “More than one, by the sound of it. Can’t you hear them?”

I listened. The crowd tilted their heads, too. The cynical murmuring began once more.

“More bands! The fools! What are they playing at?”

“Stupid!”

“Cynicism,” I said. “Always easier than actually doing something.” I took hold of Mister Monagan’s orange hand. “Come on! You’re right! Let’s get to the bottom of the square. We’ll change the direction of those bands, send them towards Angel Tower! We’ll reinforce them with Gentle Annie’s army!”

We pushed our way through the crowds, heading down in tens, heading towards the sound of the music. This sounded different. There was a different tone to the music.

“Kids!” someone shouted. “It’s a bunch of bloody kids!”

The next band was coming, and the shouter was right, they were just a bunch of children, dressed in blue military jackets with gold braid at their cuffs and shoulders. These children didn’t have a banner before them, they didn’t have a group of followers. What they did have was a look of pale-faced determination you could just make out behind the shiny instruments they held to their mouths. The crowd was calling out to them to stop, yet the children ignored them.

“Are they under a spell?” asked Mister Monagan.

“No!” I said. “Look at the way they march to time! They’ve been trained to do this!”

But by who? And I thought of Amit and the children with instruments who had come into his restaurant. I thought of Anna, practising all those nights whilst I drifted off to sleep in my room.