The Doorkeepers (21 page)

“San? Of course I do. He was a good sort, San. Believed in something, unlike you.”

He looked past Simon to Josh and Nancy, and blew out a very long stream of smoke. “So who are these two? Purgatorials, are they? You're punching above your weight, Cutter, mixing with Purgatorials. No wonder the Hoodies are after you.”

Josh stepped forward, into the light. “Josh Winward – and this is Nancy Andersen. You must be John Farbelow.”

“That's right, Josh. Pleased to make your acquaintance. This is quite a novelty, meeting a pair of Purgatorials that Cutter and his ilk haven't robbed and cobblestoned, or the Hoodies taken off for their own particular requirements.”

“Well, the fact of the matter is that we didn't really come
from Purgatory,” said Josh. “We came from London … only it's kind of a different London.”

“Oh, I know that,” grinned John Farbelow. “Only children and idiots believe in the Purgatory story. You found one of the six doors; and you found out how to jump through it. People do, from time to time. Scholars, usually, who think they're the first people who ever found out what the nursery rhyme referred to. Or people looking for somewhere to hide, because of something rascally they've done in that different London of yours. Which are you two then – scholars, or rascals?”

“Neither. We're looking for the people who murdered my sister. We think she was strangled here and then taken back through one of the doors and her body dumped in the Thames.”

“Well, that kind of thing happens,” said John Farbelow, with a casual wave of his hand. “Unfortunately, you can't legislate from one world into the other.”

“I still want to know who killed her.”

“You're taking a very considerable risk, you know. The Hoodies won't hesitate to do their worst with you, if they catch you. They'd do some nasty things to all of us here, if they ever caught us.”

“What's their beef with you?”

John Farbelow sucked deeply at his cigarette, and then crushed it out. “You'll forgive me, but I don't know who you are, and I think I've already said more than it's prudent to say.”

“They're bona, guvnor,” put in Simon. “I can vouch for them myself. Up on the roof at Carey Street, they saved my bacon when the dogs were on me. They didn't have to, and if I had been them, I would've let me drop, and scarpered.”

“I see,” said John Farbelow. “But how do I know that the Hoodies haven't paid you to bring these two here? How do I know that San is really dead, and that you're not just stringing me a line?”

“Because I'm the famous Simon Cutter, and everybody knows that the famous Simon Cutter would rather poke his eyes out with a pin than run errands for the Hoodies.”

There was a very long pause. Then John Farbelow took out another cigarette and said, “Your older brother, wasn't it? Caught breaking into a television shop.”

“I don't talk about it.”

“They made him play the Holy Harp, didn't they? And he grassed up all of his friends. Seven people hanged because of him, and eight more in prison.”

“Why are you asking me, if you know?”

“Because I want to look in your squinty little eyes and see that you're not deceiving me. The Hoodies can make anybody turn. I think they could even make
me
turn, if they ever caught me – which I hope to God they never will.”

Josh said, “Listen, for what it's worth, we're just two people looking for someplace safe to sleep tonight. If you don't want to confide in us, it's fine by me. Tomorrow we'll be out of here early and you won't have to see us again.”

“So what are you doing tomorrow?” asked John Farbelow, lighting his cigarette with a shocking-pink butane lighter that must have been brought into this world by some unfortunate Purgatorial.

“First, I'm going to visit the house in Lavender Hill where my sister was lodging. Then I'm going to go to Wheatstone Electrics where she used to work.”

“Wheatstone Electrics? You're not talking about Frank Mordant?”

“That's the man. He was the one who offered my sister a job.”

John Farbelow slowly shook his head. “Frank Mordant… there's a man I'd like to see again. Nailed to the floorboards, preferably.”

“You know him?”

“Oh, yes, I know him. He's a Purgatorial, like you. Well, let's not use the word Purgatorial any more, but he came through one of the six doors, like you. He's been here for years, running various little enterprises.”

“How come the Hoodies leave
him
alone?”

“Because like all of his kind, he's come to some kind of arrangement with them. I imagine that he supplies them
with all manner of goods and services which the rest of this godforsaken world have to do without. He comes and he goes, from your world to ours, wheeling and dealing. There are six or seven like him, that I know of, but he is definitely the slimiest of all of them.”

Nancy said, “Did he hurt you, personally?”

John Farbelow waved the clouds of smoke away from his face. “Well, well. You're the perceptive one.”

“My grandmother taught me how to read people's auras. When you started to talk about Frank Mordant, yours grew very dark.”

“You can read my mind?”

“No, but I can see your sorrow. It's all around you. You look like you're wearing a muddy cloak.”

“A muddy cloak … That's poetic. But yes, you're right. I do bear Frank Mordant a very great deal of ill will.”

“It's to do with a woman, am I right?”

The young people in the room began to shuffle restlessly in their chairs. They weren't bored: they were showing their support for John Farbelow; and that they didn't approve of any questions that might hurt or embarrass him.

John Farbelow turned to a pretty gipsylike girl sitting closest to him and said, “It's all right, Siobhan. Don't get upset about it. These people may need our help.” Then he turned back to Nancy and said, “Why don't you sit down? You look tired, both of you. What about a cup of tea, or something a little stronger?”

“A glass of water would be fine.”

John Farbelow nodded to Siobhan and she went off to fetch them a drink. Simon dragged over a sagging couch and an armchair and they all sat down. A gray cat suddenly appeared, and jumped up on to Josh's knee. It peered up at him, sniffing, and purring as loudly as a wooden rattle.

“That's not the same cat we saw in Star Yard, is it?” asked Nancy.

“Couldn't be,” said Josh. But the cat rubbed its head against him and kept patting his hand with its paw as if it was encouraging him to stroke it.

John Farbelow said, “That animal seems to have taken a shine to you, Josh.”

“Animals always go for Josh,” said Nancy. “He treats them like human beings, that's why.”

“You think they have souls?”

“Sure,” said Josh. “Just because they have fur and fishy breath, that doesn't make them any less spiritual than we are. I know a lot of old women with fur and fishy breath, and nobody ever suggests that
they
shouldn't go to heaven.”

“That's Ladslove. She used to be Winnie's cat. Winnie was the woman that I have such a muddy aura about.”

“What happened?” asked Nancy. Josh had heard her use this tone of voice before: calm, coaxing, and oddly dreamy. She had used it on him when they first met, and it had cast a spell over him immediately. It was like having your temples lightly massaged.

John Farbelow said, “I met her on a number fifteen bus, of all places. I was going to work. I used to be respectable then. Conformist. Collar-and-tie. She was bright-looking. So bright. I remember she was wearing a red coat with bright gold buttons. But she couldn't work out her bus fare. It was only 7½d, but she was like a child, or a foreigner. She just held out a handful of coins and asked the bus conductor to pick out the right money.

“She spoke in a normal South London accent, but right from the beginning there was something about her that struck me as strange. She used peculiar words, and odd sentence constructions, and when she talked she would make references to things that I had never heard of.

“I met her again the next day, and we carried on talking where we'd left off the day before. I loved listening to her. She'd be chattering on about something perfectly ordinary, like her holiday, and then she'd suddenly drop in something so –
fantastic
– that you couldn't believe your ears. I don't know … something like ‘I went to France last year. I love Calais. I don't like the Channel Tunnel, though. I keep thinking about all that water up there.'

“It was breathtaking. I thought she must be suffering from
some kind of brain damage. But I didn't interrupt her. I let her prattle on about famous actors that I didn't know and television comedies that I had never heard of. It was like talking to a madwoman except that everything was so logical. No matter what questions I asked her, she always had an answer. She kept talking about ‘Princess Di' and saying. ‘Wasn't it sad?' as if I was supposed to know who Princess Di was, and all about this sad thing that happened to her.

“I asked her where she came from, and she said Bromley. Her mother had died of cancer and her father had committed suicide two weeks later. She had suffered from terrible depression herself. Then she answered an advertisement in the paper for a new job somewhere completely different. Escape, that's what it said. If your life is getting you down, come and work somewhere completely fresh. New job, new friends, new place to live. And that's when she met Frank Mordant.

“She didn't talk much about Frank Mordant. Eventually – after a great deal of persuasion – she told me that one of the conditions of her job was that she didn't tell anybody how she had got it and where she came from. But … she and I saw each other every day on the bus, and then every evening after work and then we fell in love.

“And one night, in a hotel on the Hog's Back, in Surrey, after we had made love for the first time, she told me where she came from.”

“Purgatory,” said Josh.

“Well, the Hooded Men want us to believe that it's Purgatory, to discourage us from trying to visit it, and to give them an excuse for capturing and killing everybody who accidentally makes their way through. It's a mystical explanation for a place that actually exists. Not in the mind. Not as a myth, or an ancient legend. It's a parallel world, similar but critically different, that actually exists. As I now believe that heaven does, and hell. They exist. They can be reached. They are other worlds, so close to our own that we can reach out and touch them.”

“That's what I thought,” said Josh. “What you've done is …
taken the words right out of my mouth. Similar but critically different.”

John Farbelow lit yet another cigarette. “I felt as if I had been struck down by a thunderbolt. I couldn't believe it. I
wouldn't
believe it. How could there be another world where people went by train under the Channel and people flew to New York in three hours and there was color television and cures for tuberculosis and almost everybody was connected to almost everybody else by computer? And much more than that, another world where people were free to worship in any way they chose? Or not at all, if they didn't want to?

“I couldn't take it in. It almost drove me out of my mind. Winnie told me that it wasn't all nice and that there was pollution and wars and overcrowding, but I knew that I had to go there, I had to see it. I felt as if I had spent my whole life inside the grounds of a lunatic asylum, never realizing that there was a world beyond the walls. A world where men weren't hunted down with dogs because they wanted to worship with the Book of Common Prayer, or because they believed in the power and the purity of the Holy Virgin, or because they lit candles to Shiva.”

“So what did you do?” asked Josh, stroking Ladslove's ears. The cat looked up at him as if he should have known already.

“I couldn't go back to work, could I? I was working for Hoover, selling vacuum cleaners. And Winnie told me that where she came from, there were vacuum cleaners made of light colored plastic that were fifty times more powerful and didn't need bags. Knowing that, how could I possibly go back to work? What was I going to tell my customers?

“Maybe it sounds ridiculous to you. But once I knew that better things existed, I couldn't pretend that they didn't. There was a cure for TB, for God's sake! There were cures for cancer! Apart from that – much more serious than that – I knew that if men and women were free to worship somewhere in this universe, then they should be free to worship everywhere.”

Nancy reached out and – uninvited – touched his hand. Josh glanced at her with a slight tinge of jealousy, but she gave him
a tiny shake of her head to indicate that John Farbelow needed closeness now, and personal warmth, if he was going to tell them what had happened to Winnie, and why he hated Frank Mordant so much.

“I went to Winnie's flat early the next morning. She wasn't there and her bed hadn't been slept in. I went to Wheatstone Electrics and asked to see her. Frank Mordant came down himself and told me that Winnie had left Wheatstone's of her own accord; and that she had left no forwarding address; and that nobody had any idea where she was.

“I stood and I looked him in the eye and said, ‘What about the Channel Tunnel?' And he knew then that I knew what he had done; and who he was; because all he said was, ‘What about the Commonwealth? And what about the Hooded Men?'

“I knew then that my life was in danger, and I left as quickly as I could. I stayed with some friends in Kennington for a few days, and then I came here. To study.”

“Did you find out anything about the Hooded Men?”

“The Doorkeepers, yes. As you have plainly discovered, there are six doors between one London and the next. Into infinity. There are more Londons than you could ever imagine; and more New Yorks; and more Los Angeles. Some of them are so similar that you could never tell them apart, except for the color of their taxis and certain inflections in their speech. One London is flooded, and has gondoliers, like Venice. Another London is like a garden, with nothing but pagodas and summer houses, and firework displays almost every night.