The Pattern Mafia

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT – Lord Grey At Your Service...

Photoshop collage by the author

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The Story So Far…Ed the Ted has Hollywood tucked up in the Bear under Molly’s beady eye and now Ed knows exactly what to do with the girl. But the clock is ticking, he needs all the parts of the Cockney in place and no time to do it….

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Ed the Ted pulls up under the arched and buttressed span of Sir John Hawkshaw’s Hungerford Bridge. It is early morning; the traffic on the Embankment is light, and the chill of the night air is still stirring amongst the dusted and cobwebbed vaulted joints where the heavy, wrought-iron complexity of Victorian girders meet the thick Portland stone masonry of the foundations on the northern shore. Across the Thames on the South Bank the Royal Festival Hall sails ocean-liner white in the grey dawn. From where Betsy is paused the Royal Festival Hall is hidden by the poplar trees of Whitehall Gardens which separate the Embankment traffic from the chintz facades of the National Liberal Club and The Royal Horseguards hotel. Rush hour is yet to start and so the double-beat of the Café Racer’s twin pots’ thump echoes down the rectangular tunnel of Embankment Place which passes through the stone foundations of the Hungerford Bridge like a slot carved into a block of stone.

Ed shuts down the bike’s engine and pulls the Commando up onto its stand beside the green wooden cabbie’s shack beside the bridge. He unzips his Lewis leathers and raises his goggles onto the top of an open face helmet that should have been replaced a decade or two ago, but as he had never come off a bike in his life Ed doesn’t see the point of throwing out perfectly good gear.

Embankment Place is without its lights and so dim it takes Ed a minute or two of standing out of the dawn light before his eyes adapt and he can see the line of bodies hidden by sheets of corrugated cardboard, street -grey blankets and sleeping bags lying on the pavement in front of the shops. The tunnel smells of piss and vomit, shit and sweat, the intensity rising and falling according to the body he passes. The City Police will be along soon to move the bodies on and order the City’s indentured laborers to carry off the bodies that can no longer walk so that, come the hour when civilised people and tourists venture into the tunnel, it is freshly washed and scrubbed.

The Scholar is awake sitting with his back to the stonework gazing blankly at the paving, his mane of grey hair sticking at right angles to his face as if a flag swept up in a breeze. But it is a breeze made of accumulated grease and as Ed approaches, the Scholar combs the unruly wave back into some sort of order with his fingers, then adjusts the fit of his stained tie. He has found, or more likely stolen, a large and heavy overcoat that had once been a luxurious garment but is now as grimy and bedraggled as its owner. It envelops the Scholar and he wears it with its collar turned up against the cold morning air. From a distance he may still be mistaken for a gentleman, perhaps a well-meaning do-gooder, sat amongst the unfortunate as a gesture of misguided solidarity, but that is a fleeting impression. His jowled face with its high and broad forehead marked by extravagant eyebrows is sheened with grime, and his full mouth cracked and scabbed as the record of some recent brawl. When he yawns Ed can see he is missing a tooth and those that he retains Ed would have not liked in his own mouth on any terms. Ed stood a metre from the Scholar and waits to be recognised. The Scholar startles, and then Ed is reassured to hear that the Scholar’s voice has retained its gravelly power and condescension.

“Edward dear chap, what brings you to my office at such an ungodly hour? What grave misdemeanour have you committed that you seek my services so urgently? What scrape are you or your colleagues seeking to extricate yourself from now? And, more importantly, how do you propose to pay my fees?”

“Morning Lord Charles.”

“Ahh, you need the services of the Lord of the Manor. I hope you have the geld for the commissioning of such a lofty role. If not, do be on your way, my clients usually have the good manners to make appointments in advance, and my diary is full.”

“I want you to open a bank.”

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Ed the Ted herds the old man into the Burning Bear where Molly is waiting.

“Lord le Grey at your service dear lady. I apologise for my dishevelled appearance but I have just been transported at furious speed by a demonic power disguised as a motorcycle and have yet to attend to my toilet.”

Molly glances at his lordship’s distressed clothes and his wild hair, puts her hand to her nose and mouth as a barrier against the tide of body odour the tramp tows behind him and issues her orders.

“Bath. Now. Carbolic. Burn those rags. He can wear a pair of Norm’s pyjamas. And mind you scour the bath out after. Scour it mind.”

“Yes Moll.” Ed agrees the terms without debate, unlike the lord of the manor who ventures a defence.

“Oh I must protest. This is a Huntsman three piece dear lady. My cutter Desmond will be devastated.”

“Shut it. Upstairs. End of the corridor. Green door in front of you. Do not touch ANYTHING.”

After a time, the sound of singing can be heard from behind the green door.

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I wake to a cracked and sandpapered baritone singing about a “Lil’ white bull.” It’s a jaunty song rendered with a full score of flat notes, but in compensation, the old voice roars. I watch the fat seagulls wheeling in the ceiling sky. The chair is still pushed up against the door. No one had broken into my room in the night. I remember the sight of the two SUVs punching the night aside to get to me, the cruel laugh of that bull necked cab driver. But I’m alive. This is undeniable. And if I am honest, it’s unexpected.

My skull has a tiny hammer inside that taps on my temples, but I have had worse, much worse. More urgent is the thirst. I haven’t had a drink in a while, and the thirst builds. It never leaves you, but after a while it builds to a real need. Puritans don’t understand this. The closest I have got to explaining it is to tell people not to breathe. It’s easy. Just don’t breathe, all you have to do is hold your breath, just for five minutes, try it.

I get up and survey the pile on the floor. My Chanel suit needs pressing, and I left without a change of panties. My shirt stinks but that’s all I have. I want to wash my panties and shirt, but the bathroom is now a music hall, and so I get dressed in what I have, pull my fingers through my hair, and look at my face in my compact. Yeah, I had forgotten I cried. Eyes like a damn panda. That’s why you never cry, Parker. I pull on my Blahniks and and go and kick on the bathroom door. The singing pauses. There is the splashing of water.

“Occupied!” comes a fruity old voice, the sort you hear on old Brit TV - I mean really old 2D TV.

“I’ll give you five and I’m coming in!” I call back. There’s a pause.

“Right Ho!.... Once upon a time there was a lil’white bull”.

Five minutes stretches to ten so I kick the door again, hard.

It opens.

There should be a formal warning about old men in towels, like a viewing discretion warning, or an X rating. Maybe a double X rating.

“Good morning! All yours my dear.”

The old man in the doorway has a mashed lower lip and a bruised face. His wet hair is scraped back over a large skull. His eyes are orbs lying in fleshy pits, I can see the ridges of the sockets beneath the skin, but the eyes are a piercing blue.

“Goodness me, rather formal dress for breakfast but a feast for the eyes nonetheless,” he starts.

Pushing past would mean contact with wrinkles and pockets of sagging flesh, so I step back and say, “I need to pee.”

“Gosh, my manners, please, my dear, entrez-vous,” and he stands not quite aside.

 I push through anyway. I brush against something soft, damp, and hot, but it can’t be helped. Fluid transfers to my hand. Water. I shut the door and lean back against it. Just got to get out of this place. Freshen up, drink up, run away. Another masterful plan from the mind that brought you the end of the world by alien insemination.

But I can’t run away. There are two big olive skinned men sitting at the table near the pub entrance who watch me as I enter the bar. I try to stretch out the wrinkles in my skirt, aware of my damp panties and the wet circles under my arms from my shirt. Skeleton Man is at another table with the Meistersinger, who is wearing these vast pyjamas like a salmon pink and white striped circus-tent dropped over his head and cinched with rope.

Skeleton Man looks up at me. Points to an empty seat at the same table. The two big men by the door are watching my every move. One nods to me, but it seems more like a warning than a greeting. They are eating. Two pistols lay beside the knives they are not using, cutting their eggs and bacon with the edge of their forks instead.

The angry blonde woman appears from the door behind the bar, marches up to me, and says, ” If you scratched my floor last night dragging stuff about you will pay for it,” and marches back to Skeleton Man’s table. “Yes Ed?”

Skeleton Man, Ed, looks at me. “What do you want, Hollywood?”

“I need a fucking drink.”