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indriSUMMARY: Giles and Ethan, the electric Kool-Aid funky Satan groove year, in the early seventies. Rated M. Spoilers to Band Candy. Acknowledgements and disclaimers.
20.
The Action Now bookshop was one street west of the high street and opposite a fishmongers. At eleven-thirty a.m. precisely, Ethan stood outside the fish shop, as if considering the relative merits of lemon sole versus cod. He was wearing Randall's jacket, Ripper's trousers, and his own shirt and shoes. He had decided against a tie. He was fairly certain that some people in offices no longer wore ties.
A man in a suit came up next to him, to look over the kippers and smoked trout. He said, "You're on time, good," and it was the same South African voice that Ethan had spoken to last night on the phone. The man was coarse-featured, shorter than Ethan, and quite thin. The man said, "Go east around the corner and find the blue sedan. The passenger door is unlocked. I'll be there in two minutes."
Ethan nodded and then did as he was bid. He walked past a barber's and the chemist's on the corner. He found a dark blue car and got in. Then he sat there, breathing shallowly, wondering why Adrienne hadn't mentioned a car.
The man appeared and got in on the driver's side. He shook Ethan's hand. "Thank you for helping our cause," he said.
Ethan wanted to nod and look sincere, but he knew his face didn't do "sincere" very well. Diedre had pointed this out to him not long after they had met, dragging him to a mirror so that he could see first-hand how he looked when he thought he was the very soul of sincerity. Whether it was the face he was born with, or what he had done with it since, he didn't know. But he aimed instead at an expression he thought he could manage, which was "mildly bored".
He wetted his lips. "There was money up front," he said.
"Of course," said the man. From his wallet he drew out a fifty pound note and handed it to Ethan. Ethan suddenly felt foolish. What was he going to do with it now? There was nowhere for him to keep it except with himself. If they caught, he'd be found with it, a huge and obviously criminal sum.
He saw the South African giving him a sidelong look. "What?" Ethan asked.
The man shook his head. "You're just younger than I expected."
He started the car then and took them through a u-turn back towards the high street. Ethan wasn't sure whether he was supposed to know where they were going, or whether he should ask. At least no-one had tried to blindfold him.
The man said, "All these precautions are probably not needed here," he said. "But I learnt to be careful, back home."
Ethan nodded, as if he knew what the man meant. Then he saw the man's fingers on his left hand. Two of them ended with knuckle-joints. A third seemed permanently twisted and without a nail.
"In the glove compartment," the man said, "there's a map."
The map was nothing more than a few pencilled lines on the back of an envelope. Ethan studied it as the man said, "We go in a side door and up the emergency stairs. On the second floor, we take the corridor on our right. They'll be a door marked 'Storage' and we go in there."
"How many locked doors?" asked Ethan, glad to have something to talk about.
"Three."
"Do we know what kind of locks?"
"Nothing unusual. It's not top security, but we've had trouble finding someone in the department to pass us the documents."
Ethan wondered what "nothing unusual" meant as the South African took them in the rough direction of Whitehall. Then he took a sudden right and parked outside a lawyer's office.
"Put the map back in the glove compartment and take everything you brought with you," the man said. "You won't be coming back to this car."
They walked the final mile to an anonymous-looking brown office block. The South African was carrying a clipboard. On the clipboard was a piece of paper with a government department stamp and a series of illegible, inked lines.
They followed a gravel path around a corner to an unmarked door in the wall. "First door," said the man, as he adopted a scowl and an air of impatience, as if he were wondering why Ethan was fumbling the keys. Instead Ethan was reaching into his pocket for a birthday candle, a lump of quartz and a cigarette lighter. He angled himself so that the man couldn't see the tools he was using. Then he blanked out for a terrifying couple of seconds until he remembered the truncated chant.
The door unlocked. Ethan pinched the candleflame out and put his toy kit back in his pocket.
Inside was a dingy concrete stairwell. They stopped two stories up. There was no-one else in the stairwell with them to accidentally see.
"I'm faster when you don't watch me," Ethan said, and the South African helpfully took the hint by looking back down the stairwell. Ethan had the door unlocked almost instantly.
"Two down," he said.
The corridor was wood-panelled. Many doors opened from it, each with a pane of frosted glass and a black name label. There were many people walking around, carrying lunchboxes, purses or wallets. There was office chatter and the sound of a few persistent typewriters.
They reached the door marked "Storage". The South African stood behind Ethan, pantomiming impatience again, as Ethan attended to the door. Flame, candle, chant -- in.
The room was full of steel filing cabinets. There was a woman at the other end, squatting in sensible shoes next to an open drawer. She wasn't paying them any attention yet.
The South African motioned towards a filing cabinet marked "D". Ethan looked at him blankly; wasn't his job done? But no, the man wanted him to open the filing cabinet. Of course he did, that's what offices have, filing cabinets, and this would surely have been obvious to Ethan if he'd ever set foot in an office in the past five years. They were there to steal documents and documents were stored in filing cabinets.
Ethan had never unlocked one. He couldn't visualise their locking mechanism. Was it more like a door or a briefcase or was it something else instead? Seconds were passing, it was getting awkward, surely the woman was going to notice them?
He made himself pause and close his eyes. He reached inwards and outwards of himself for the long, low note, for the music which was always there. The sensation of connection, of unity, of the awareness that made everything transparent and malleable.
The filing cabinet unlocked.
Ethan went to look through the frosted glass window as the South African looked through the drawer. Ethan could see all the dim silhouettes of office workers going out for their lunch.
They went out the way they came in. The South African was now clutching several thick manila folders to his clipboard. When they reached the street, they went in a direction away from the car.
When they reached a Tube station, the man passed him a plain envelope and then dashed ahead, down the stairs into the station, without looking behind. Ethan looked in the envelope and there was the second fifty pound note.
He walked down to a platform and sat on a bench with his eyes closed for half an hour, hardly able to believe that it was done. The clocks had said when he arrived that it was one o'clock. Ninety minutes, he thought, and a hundred pounds. The two fifties weren't the crisp, clean, virgin notes that he'd imagined, but seemed to be good currency. And they were more money than he'd seen in one place in years.
Trains and crowds of people came and went. Eventually he realised that he was on the wrong platform and got up to go to another. He changed trains at Holborn and soon he was walking his home streets.
He went to Terry's. In the curtained back room, he drew out the two fifties and placed them on the counter. Terry's face registered no surprise, but Ethan thought he moved with an extra note of respect. Terry nodded once and then opened a cupboard door, drawing out three books for Ethan's inspection.
Ethan looked at each of them in turn, as if he were considering their relative merits. But in truth, there was only one he really wanted. "I'll take this one," he said.
It was sixty pounds, a fantastic sum of money. But he left the shop clutching his book and with forty quid still in pocket.
21.
They took Ripper to their local that night. He supposed they wanted to make him feel better after the band's temporary breakup. On the other hand, maybe they did this every Friday night.
Ethan shouted them the first couple of rounds. Adrienne left soon after that, to go to some political meeting or other. Then it was Randall's round, then Dee's, and finally Ripper decided it was probably his turn. By then Stan had gone, and Tom, so it was just four of them staring at the empty pint and gin glasses on the table: Ethan, Randall, Dee and Ripper.
Randall was telling some story about California when Ripper came back with the drinks. Ripper only caught the end of it, something about stampeding bison in Golden Gate Park.
"So how come you're in London?" Ripper asked him.
Randall took his pint. "Well, my parents moved here. They weren't happy with the crowd I was with back home and they hoped a year in a good school far away would straighten me out. So my dad took a job here."
"Randall's father's a top surgeon," Dee said.
"But my friends back in the Haight knew some people in London and put me in touch. So I fell in with the same kind of crowd here. It doesn't matter where you are, so long as you're with your people, you know? And I know when I meet my people."
"I met Randall shortly after I moved here," said Ethan. "We shared this terrible bedsit in Cricklewood. Bloody miles from anywhere."
"Oh, it was horrible. I couldn't believe it when I first went to visit," said Dee. "Mold everywhere and you had to go down a corridor and then down some stairs for the bathroom and you had to share that with total strangers. I said there was no way I was moving into that."
"You couldn't have moved into it anyway," said Ethan. "It was the size of a postage stamp."
"More the size of this booth," said Randall, to Ripper.
"So I asked Adrienne," said Dee, "who was my friend from school--"
"I know," said Ripper, tiredly.
"Where would there be a good place for us to live. And she found us our house."
"Terrific, isn't it?" said Randall.
"Who owns it?" Ripper asked.
"Absentee landlord," said Dee. "Lives in Qatar. It's completely legal for us to squat. Adrienne checked it all."
"English law," said Randall, appreciatively.
"Whose round is it now?" Ethan asked. "Mine again?"
"You're flush tonight," said Dee. "Helped Adrienne's friend out, did you?"
Ethan grinned. He was still in his cobbled-together suit. If he got any drunker he'd be spilling best bitter over Ripper's only good pair of trousers. Ripper watched him carefully as he brought back another tray from the bar.
"So tell us about your grandmother then," said Ethan, as he passed Ripper his beer.
"Well," said Ripper, considering. "She was a very brave and very kind woman. She--"
"Tell us about her magic, I mean," Ethan said. "How did she learn it?"
"Well, it runs in my family, I suppose," said Ripper. He was trying to be careful, despite the volume of alcohol he'd now consumed. "She taught me -- the basics of ritual magic, some wards, that kind of thing."
"Did she teach you directly, or did she have books?"
"Both," said Ripper. "We did have quite a lot of books."
"Do you still have them?"
Ripper looked at Ethan warily. "No. They were, ah, passed on to some other members of the family."
"How disappointing for you," Ethan said, "to have lost that."
"No," said Ripper, "no. I have a good memory. I still remember most of it."
"Then I look forward," said Ethan, "to getting it all out of your head."
"Or as much as you feel comfortable with," said Diedre.
Randall laughed. "It hardly hurts at all."
End of Part One: The Worst Crowd that Would Have Me.
20.
The Action Now bookshop was one street west of the high street and opposite a fishmongers. At eleven-thirty a.m. precisely, Ethan stood outside the fish shop, as if considering the relative merits of lemon sole versus cod. He was wearing Randall's jacket, Ripper's trousers, and his own shirt and shoes. He had decided against a tie. He was fairly certain that some people in offices no longer wore ties.
A man in a suit came up next to him, to look over the kippers and smoked trout. He said, "You're on time, good," and it was the same South African voice that Ethan had spoken to last night on the phone. The man was coarse-featured, shorter than Ethan, and quite thin. The man said, "Go east around the corner and find the blue sedan. The passenger door is unlocked. I'll be there in two minutes."
Ethan nodded and then did as he was bid. He walked past a barber's and the chemist's on the corner. He found a dark blue car and got in. Then he sat there, breathing shallowly, wondering why Adrienne hadn't mentioned a car.
The man appeared and got in on the driver's side. He shook Ethan's hand. "Thank you for helping our cause," he said.
Ethan wanted to nod and look sincere, but he knew his face didn't do "sincere" very well. Diedre had pointed this out to him not long after they had met, dragging him to a mirror so that he could see first-hand how he looked when he thought he was the very soul of sincerity. Whether it was the face he was born with, or what he had done with it since, he didn't know. But he aimed instead at an expression he thought he could manage, which was "mildly bored".
He wetted his lips. "There was money up front," he said.
"Of course," said the man. From his wallet he drew out a fifty pound note and handed it to Ethan. Ethan suddenly felt foolish. What was he going to do with it now? There was nowhere for him to keep it except with himself. If they caught, he'd be found with it, a huge and obviously criminal sum.
He saw the South African giving him a sidelong look. "What?" Ethan asked.
The man shook his head. "You're just younger than I expected."
He started the car then and took them through a u-turn back towards the high street. Ethan wasn't sure whether he was supposed to know where they were going, or whether he should ask. At least no-one had tried to blindfold him.
The man said, "All these precautions are probably not needed here," he said. "But I learnt to be careful, back home."
Ethan nodded, as if he knew what the man meant. Then he saw the man's fingers on his left hand. Two of them ended with knuckle-joints. A third seemed permanently twisted and without a nail.
"In the glove compartment," the man said, "there's a map."
The map was nothing more than a few pencilled lines on the back of an envelope. Ethan studied it as the man said, "We go in a side door and up the emergency stairs. On the second floor, we take the corridor on our right. They'll be a door marked 'Storage' and we go in there."
"How many locked doors?" asked Ethan, glad to have something to talk about.
"Three."
"Do we know what kind of locks?"
"Nothing unusual. It's not top security, but we've had trouble finding someone in the department to pass us the documents."
Ethan wondered what "nothing unusual" meant as the South African took them in the rough direction of Whitehall. Then he took a sudden right and parked outside a lawyer's office.
"Put the map back in the glove compartment and take everything you brought with you," the man said. "You won't be coming back to this car."
They walked the final mile to an anonymous-looking brown office block. The South African was carrying a clipboard. On the clipboard was a piece of paper with a government department stamp and a series of illegible, inked lines.
They followed a gravel path around a corner to an unmarked door in the wall. "First door," said the man, as he adopted a scowl and an air of impatience, as if he were wondering why Ethan was fumbling the keys. Instead Ethan was reaching into his pocket for a birthday candle, a lump of quartz and a cigarette lighter. He angled himself so that the man couldn't see the tools he was using. Then he blanked out for a terrifying couple of seconds until he remembered the truncated chant.
The door unlocked. Ethan pinched the candleflame out and put his toy kit back in his pocket.
Inside was a dingy concrete stairwell. They stopped two stories up. There was no-one else in the stairwell with them to accidentally see.
"I'm faster when you don't watch me," Ethan said, and the South African helpfully took the hint by looking back down the stairwell. Ethan had the door unlocked almost instantly.
"Two down," he said.
The corridor was wood-panelled. Many doors opened from it, each with a pane of frosted glass and a black name label. There were many people walking around, carrying lunchboxes, purses or wallets. There was office chatter and the sound of a few persistent typewriters.
They reached the door marked "Storage". The South African stood behind Ethan, pantomiming impatience again, as Ethan attended to the door. Flame, candle, chant -- in.
The room was full of steel filing cabinets. There was a woman at the other end, squatting in sensible shoes next to an open drawer. She wasn't paying them any attention yet.
The South African motioned towards a filing cabinet marked "D". Ethan looked at him blankly; wasn't his job done? But no, the man wanted him to open the filing cabinet. Of course he did, that's what offices have, filing cabinets, and this would surely have been obvious to Ethan if he'd ever set foot in an office in the past five years. They were there to steal documents and documents were stored in filing cabinets.
Ethan had never unlocked one. He couldn't visualise their locking mechanism. Was it more like a door or a briefcase or was it something else instead? Seconds were passing, it was getting awkward, surely the woman was going to notice them?
He made himself pause and close his eyes. He reached inwards and outwards of himself for the long, low note, for the music which was always there. The sensation of connection, of unity, of the awareness that made everything transparent and malleable.
The filing cabinet unlocked.
Ethan went to look through the frosted glass window as the South African looked through the drawer. Ethan could see all the dim silhouettes of office workers going out for their lunch.
They went out the way they came in. The South African was now clutching several thick manila folders to his clipboard. When they reached the street, they went in a direction away from the car.
When they reached a Tube station, the man passed him a plain envelope and then dashed ahead, down the stairs into the station, without looking behind. Ethan looked in the envelope and there was the second fifty pound note.
He walked down to a platform and sat on a bench with his eyes closed for half an hour, hardly able to believe that it was done. The clocks had said when he arrived that it was one o'clock. Ninety minutes, he thought, and a hundred pounds. The two fifties weren't the crisp, clean, virgin notes that he'd imagined, but seemed to be good currency. And they were more money than he'd seen in one place in years.
Trains and crowds of people came and went. Eventually he realised that he was on the wrong platform and got up to go to another. He changed trains at Holborn and soon he was walking his home streets.
He went to Terry's. In the curtained back room, he drew out the two fifties and placed them on the counter. Terry's face registered no surprise, but Ethan thought he moved with an extra note of respect. Terry nodded once and then opened a cupboard door, drawing out three books for Ethan's inspection.
Ethan looked at each of them in turn, as if he were considering their relative merits. But in truth, there was only one he really wanted. "I'll take this one," he said.
It was sixty pounds, a fantastic sum of money. But he left the shop clutching his book and with forty quid still in pocket.
21.
They took Ripper to their local that night. He supposed they wanted to make him feel better after the band's temporary breakup. On the other hand, maybe they did this every Friday night.
Ethan shouted them the first couple of rounds. Adrienne left soon after that, to go to some political meeting or other. Then it was Randall's round, then Dee's, and finally Ripper decided it was probably his turn. By then Stan had gone, and Tom, so it was just four of them staring at the empty pint and gin glasses on the table: Ethan, Randall, Dee and Ripper.
Randall was telling some story about California when Ripper came back with the drinks. Ripper only caught the end of it, something about stampeding bison in Golden Gate Park.
"So how come you're in London?" Ripper asked him.
Randall took his pint. "Well, my parents moved here. They weren't happy with the crowd I was with back home and they hoped a year in a good school far away would straighten me out. So my dad took a job here."
"Randall's father's a top surgeon," Dee said.
"But my friends back in the Haight knew some people in London and put me in touch. So I fell in with the same kind of crowd here. It doesn't matter where you are, so long as you're with your people, you know? And I know when I meet my people."
"I met Randall shortly after I moved here," said Ethan. "We shared this terrible bedsit in Cricklewood. Bloody miles from anywhere."
"Oh, it was horrible. I couldn't believe it when I first went to visit," said Dee. "Mold everywhere and you had to go down a corridor and then down some stairs for the bathroom and you had to share that with total strangers. I said there was no way I was moving into that."
"You couldn't have moved into it anyway," said Ethan. "It was the size of a postage stamp."
"More the size of this booth," said Randall, to Ripper.
"So I asked Adrienne," said Dee, "who was my friend from school--"
"I know," said Ripper, tiredly.
"Where would there be a good place for us to live. And she found us our house."
"Terrific, isn't it?" said Randall.
"Who owns it?" Ripper asked.
"Absentee landlord," said Dee. "Lives in Qatar. It's completely legal for us to squat. Adrienne checked it all."
"English law," said Randall, appreciatively.
"Whose round is it now?" Ethan asked. "Mine again?"
"You're flush tonight," said Dee. "Helped Adrienne's friend out, did you?"
Ethan grinned. He was still in his cobbled-together suit. If he got any drunker he'd be spilling best bitter over Ripper's only good pair of trousers. Ripper watched him carefully as he brought back another tray from the bar.
"So tell us about your grandmother then," said Ethan, as he passed Ripper his beer.
"Well," said Ripper, considering. "She was a very brave and very kind woman. She--"
"Tell us about her magic, I mean," Ethan said. "How did she learn it?"
"Well, it runs in my family, I suppose," said Ripper. He was trying to be careful, despite the volume of alcohol he'd now consumed. "She taught me -- the basics of ritual magic, some wards, that kind of thing."
"Did she teach you directly, or did she have books?"
"Both," said Ripper. "We did have quite a lot of books."
"Do you still have them?"
Ripper looked at Ethan warily. "No. They were, ah, passed on to some other members of the family."
"How disappointing for you," Ethan said, "to have lost that."
"No," said Ripper, "no. I have a good memory. I still remember most of it."
"Then I look forward," said Ethan, "to getting it all out of your head."
"Or as much as you feel comfortable with," said Diedre.
Randall laughed. "It hardly hurts at all."
End of Part One: The Worst Crowd that Would Have Me.
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Date: 2010-11-18 12:26 pm (UTC)Also, there are a few small typos in this section, which I'll point out when I get home so you can correct them when you're feeling better.