The Doorkeepers

Twenty-Four

Josh and Petty ran down Kingsway, their footsteps echoing against the derelict buildings. Fires were still burning in the offices all around Aldwych, and they could hear the ringing of fire-engine bells and the crackling of broken glass. All the same, they could still hear the penetrating tattoo of the drums that were following them; and the yapping of the dogs.

“Down here,” said Petty, and they turned left into Sardinia Street. In the open gardens of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, six or seven air-raid wardens were battling with a punctured barrage balloon, which filled up almost the whole square like a maddened but half-deflated elephant. They were tugging at ropes and trying to tie it down. “Your end, Reg! What the ‘ell are you up to? Pull your end!”

They reached Carey Street and turned into Star Yard. “Listen,” said Josh. “If we go through the door now, we’re going back to the world of the Hooded Men. Another London, nothing like this.”

More anti-aircraft guns coughed in the distance, over by the Surrey Docks. “There can’t be anywhere as bad as this,” said Petty. “And if we don’t go, they’ll catch us, won’t they, and kill us?”

“All right,” Josh agreed. He put his arms around her and gave her a hug.

They walked up Star Yard to the niche in the wall. Josh took three candles out of his pocket and set them on the ground.

“Is this all you have to do?” asked Petty.

“You have to recite a Mother Goose rhyme, too,” said Josh, touching each candle with his butane lighter, his hand shielding the wicks until they were all well alight.

“A Mother Goose rhyme? What’s that?”

Josh stood up. “You Brits call them nursery rhymes. Like Humpty Dumpty. This is a real old one, one of the oldest. ‘Six doors they stand in London Town …’” And then he said, “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick …”

Petty stared at him in growing disbelief. “That’s if! And that gets you through to this other London?”

“Try it,” said Josh.

Petty held back. Exhausted and grimy and shocked as she was, this was enough. She couldn’t cope with madness as well.

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

“You saw the Hooded Man. You saw his face.”

Petty covered her eyes with both hands. “I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to have nothing to do with it. I don’t want to stay. I don’t want to go. I don’t know what I want to do.”

Josh put his arm around her plump shoulders, in her cheap satin dress.

“Petty, I can’t make you any promises. If we go through this door now, it may be worse. But right now these guys are after me here and because of me they want you too.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Petty wept, and the tears poured down her cheeks and made dirty streaks in the dust.

But it was then that they heard the crackling noise of side drums, only two or three streets away. “It’s them,” Josh told her. “They won’t give up, not until they track us down. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? How do you think I feel? Why did I bloody well have to meet you, of all people?”

The three candles were burning strongly now. There was very little wind in Star Yard, and the flames scarcely nodded at all. They reminded Josh of the candles that used to burn in church, when he was a boy. “Maybe you met me because you were always meant to,” he coaxed her. “Come on, Petty, these things happen. Some people get together whether they like it or not.”

“Oh, I see. You were always meant to save me from a life on the streets, were you? By frightening the shit out of me with that man’s face. You knew he looked like that, didn’t you? You knew! That’s why you cut his hood off, you bastard.”

“Petty, I swear to you I didn’t know. I never saw one of those guys without his hood, ever. Not without his hood.”

The drumming was nearer now, and much more frantic. The Hooded Men were probably turning into Carey Street. They knew where he was going. They knew that he was trying to escape. Underneath those harsh hessian hoods they could probably sense everything that he was thinking.

“Petty, if we don’t haul ass out of here now …”

Petty lifted her face to the sky, and pressed her hands in front of her in prayer. Although she was so grimy, and her dress was so torn, Josh thought that she looked beautiful. More than beautiful, almost divine.

The drums racketed closer and closer but she kept her eyes closed and her hands pressed together. “Amen,” she said at last, and crossed herself; but when she turned to him her face was wild with worry. “I bet it doesn’t work.”

“If you think it doesn’t work, why did you pray?”

“I wasn’t praying for me. I was praying for all the poor sods we’re leaving behind.”

“So you’ll give it a try?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to die, that’s all.”

Josh recited the rhyme again, just to make sure. The drums were very close now, and he could see the flickering lights of lanterns on the buildings opposite: shadows that jumped and danced like devils.

“Go,” he told Petty. “Jump over the candles, that’s all you have to do.”

“That’s all I have to do? Jump? But there’s nothing there!” she suddenly panicked. “Only a wall!”

“Come on, you just said you were going to do it.”

“But it’s only a bloody wall!”

Josh gripped hold of her dress and stared her wildly in the eyes. “Remember that face? Remember what that thing looked like, when I cut off its hood? There are more of them coming! They’re going to be here before you can count to ten, and then we won’t have any options at all!”

“But his face . . .”

Josh, tired as he was, bent his knees and picked her up and practically threw her over the line of candles. With a screech of Cockney indignity, she landed on her bottom on the other side. He glanced to his left and saw four dogs pelting toward him, four of the Hoodies’ dogs, their tongues flapping and froth flying out of the sides of their mouths. He heaved himself over the candles, rolling over into the rubbish. He climbed to his feet, blew out the candles and took hold of Petty’s arm. “Come on, we have to get out of here fast. I wouldn’t be surprised if they come after us.”

“Hey … there’s a way through here!” Petty exclaimed. “I didn’t see that before!”

“You have to look, that’s all.”

“What? Meaning I’m blind, as well as stupid?”

“Meaning you have to look, that’s all.”

They hurried through the dark, dripping passageway between the buildings. Pigeons fluttered from the windowsills high above their heads. From time to time, Josh glanced back worriedly, but it seemed as if the Hooded Men had chosen not to follow them. Not today, anyhow. But he had no illusions that they wouldn’t go on hunting him down until they found him.

“Slow down,” he panted. His teeth were aching so much that he could hardly think, and every wound that had been inflicted by the Holy Harp was prickling with pain. Petty slowed down, and leaned against the wall, trying to catch her breath.

“They’re not coming after us, are they?”

Josh shook his head. “Maybe later. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe they’re waiting for us in this world.”

They turned the next corner in the passageway. Petty said, in bewilderment, “We’re back where we started from.”

“That’s right. That’s the way the doors work. You’re not going from one place to another. You’re going from one reality into another.”

They stepped out into Star Yard. It was raining hard and there was almost nobody around. Josh took Petty to the derelict building in which he and Nancy had first escaped from the dog-handlers, and they hid themselves in a corner office, listening all day and all night to the rain beating on the ceiling above their heads, and cascading down the stairs.

Petty fell asleep, her head resting against Josh’s shoulder, one clogged-up nostril whistling. Josh was exhausted, reality-lagged, but he still found it almost impossible to sleep. He kept thinking of the Hooded Man’s head, when he had torn his hood open. The sight had overwhelmed him. More than that, it had dropped open a trapdoor beneath his feet, so that he could no longer be sure of what was believable and what wasn’t. It was just as if his father and mother had suddenly dragged latex masks off their heads when he was thirteen years old, and shown themselves to be two hideous-looking strangers.

Petty stirred and touched his shoulder. “What time is it?” she asked him, without opening her eyes.

“Seven and a half hours to go. Don’t worry about it. Go back to sleep.”

An hour later, he heard drums rattling. The Hooded Men, on patrol. They came up Chancery Lane toward Holborn, but they didn’t stop. If Josh knew anything about dogs, they wouldn’t have stopped to sniff them out, not in this weather. All they wanted was a dry kennel and a bowl of food.

The rain stopped. Josh fell asleep at last, with his head tilted back. He woke up at five o’clock in the morning with a raging sore throat and a crick in his neck.

“Have we got any food?” asked Petty.