‘Maybe,’ said Quill, ‘that would be the point at which to start negotiating about a few things. Like Objective six: us getting rid of the Sight. But we have to nick her first. And that cat isn’t going to help.’
Sefton watched as the others drifted back to their regular tasks. He’d observed some lessons of his own from the cat’s story, but wasn’t sure they were the kind of things that would mean anything much to the others. He wasn’t even sure about them within himself. But now there was somebody else he could tell.
The march held that Saturday headed down one side of Hyde Park, a long column with banners and drums and air horns. In the middle of it walked Kev Sefton, feeling deeply awkward, as Joe strode beside him.
‘I wanted,’ said Sefton, ‘to talk somewhere private, you know?’
‘It’s noisy enough for privacy, and I’d promised them I’d come along.’
‘Who are “they”?’
‘It’s against the cuts. This is mostly Occupy, but our section is walking under the pink flag.’ Uniforms lined the route. Cars sounded their horns as they passed, either supportively or aggressively, it was impossible to know. Sefton tried to find support around him, wondered if this sort of thing contributed to being remembered. Maybe. But you needed to mean a lot more, individually, to a lot more people, before you could draw on power like that, even if you knew the right gestures and could make your voice sound the right way. It was like a big but weak force, while sacrifice was for smaller things, but stronger ones. He wondered if Losley, now she’d mastered both, had turned into some sort of higher being, and was no longer concerned with killing. But then he noticed that one of the copies of her was stalking along beside the parade, as everyone else talked about the match on Monday, and just a look at that essence of her told him she still was what she was. She couldn’t forget her past, that history of hers they’d heard. She was addicted to that past. It was all he could do to keep himself walking along, as he felt the weight of the crowd around him, the nausea of all these individual desires seething among the single purpose. Thank God he had more control of the Sight now, or he’d have been in real trouble. He’d hoped to be able to talk to Joe about this stuff, but, just looking around now. .
‘I’m already-’ The music around them suddenly got even louder, and Sefton had to shout to be heard above it. ‘I’m already having to try very hard not to see a few things even among this lot.’
Joe looked around, interested. ‘You mean with the Sight?’
‘No, I mean like that bloke in a mask, and the couple of canisters being passed back, and I’m not keen on how sharp some of these sign poles look.’
‘Look, we don’t all-’
‘You know what I bloody am.’ I’m like her, against one thing and also its opposite, like a lot of people now, maybe like a lot of people always are. And that pink flag above me is sort of my West Ham, but so’s the warrant card in my pocket. And I don’t want either to become my club, like hers is. ‘Listen, I’ve been thinking about what I need to do.’
‘What?’
‘I heard her history, and she went through some extreme shit. She was dedicated. She was passionate. You meet a fighter like that, you’ve got to step up, you’ve got to be on their level, yeah? I’ve just been fumbling around with this shit, I’ve been experimenting, I’ve been making mistakes. I can’t seem to find my right moment, find my voice. She didn’t do any of that: she just dived into something she feared, in order to help someone she loved. At least one of us needs to get as deeply into this stuff as she did. And there’s only me who’s doing it. I’ve got to learn it the hard way, without a teacher, like she did. Maybe get hurt like she did, dig as deeply into myself as she did.’
‘If you feel that, then-’ But now there were shouts from ahead of them, and the sound of horses charging, and the crowd burst apart in all directions around them, yelling and screaming.
There’d been some violence up ahead, and it exploded back down the column of marchers, splitting it as whole groups tried to turn away from the route, either to get out of the way or because they’d arranged it beforehand. Sefton and Joe stumbled and swayed with the crowd surging around them, as shouts grew louder from every direction. Sefton felt the Sight pushing the violence of the situation into his head, making him want to hide. Then the group were shoved aside as another group came barrelling into them, and they found themselves slammed back against the railings. People started climbing up over them, some of them masked, all of them yelling. Some of them tumbled over the railings into the park, and some of them merely fell back.
‘Oh fuck,’ said Sefton, ‘we’ve been kettled.’ And, just as he said it, in came the smoke, a wave of it directed elsewhere but blown back against them. People nearby started throwing things back in the direction of the attack, their muscles and shouting and sweat all getting into his head now. He looked deep into the swirl of the smoke and saw tantalizing images of proud protest, of ragged peasants and charging soldiers and gunfire and a map unfolding of how that eruption had poured a more lovely and awful England into the world. He felt it like another awful nostalgia, a road he couldn’t take, an illusion and a truth both at once. He knew that if he stayed here long enough for the smoke to get into his lungs, he’d be taken by one side and thus lose his place in the other, and end up off his feet, and unable to stand as he needed to now.
He grabbed Joe and kissed him. ‘We’re going now,’ he said. And then he pulled out his warrant card.
‘What do you mean, “we’re going”?’ But Joe let himself be dragged forward as the crowd went bulging that way, towards a perimeter on the pavement where people were shouting at and arguing with and attempting to negotiate with a row of uniforms with helmets and riot shields. There was a sudden surge behind them, and Sefton found himself thrown up against one of those shields. His warrant card flew out of his hand. He bent to pick it up-
He was knocked flying, a knee in his head. His hand closed over the card. Beside him, Joe fell, along with a row of others, a baton bouncing back off his head. ‘Hoi!’ shouted Sefton. ‘Hoi!’ He leaped to his feet, hauled Joe up beside him, and saw the waves back away from him, gathering strength: the two sides about to slam down and force him into some screwed-up space he couldn’t live in. He held up his warrant card in front of him like a talisman.
‘Right you!’ bellowed the copper directly in front of him, his shoulder number hidden. Sefton and Joe were grabbed and hauled through the shield line. Sefton was shoved down again and heaved himself up, ready to thump the next uniform that waved a baton at him-
But they were out of it now. The wave of uniforms had moved past them, leaving them both sitting there in the road. More uniforms rushed past, and from this angle Sefton could see a running battle taking place, the uniforms being pelted alongside those railings, and he felt an immediate stupid anger back in the other direction, and the waves inside him and surging across the protest rolled round London again and never broke. Sefton went over to Joe and helped him stand, put his hand to the man’s wounded head.
‘Thanks for getting me out,’ Joe said.
‘They shouldn’t have fucking-!’
‘It’s okay. I know you’re-’
‘You know I’m both. Which is why I’m not going to be remembered, since nothing complicated gets remembered, not as it really is.’ He looked back at the protest and saw the batons rising and falling, and felt the blows echoing off the sky above him, echoing all the way from the suburbs. ‘That’s why I’m going to have to make a sacrifice.’
Quill had heard from Sarah that she was spending Saturday working at the office, and he very much didn’t want to be at home alone with his brain in its current state. So he’d gone out into the pubs of London. Out of a feeling of duty, he’d texted Harry to come and join him, half hoping he wouldn’t be up for it, but he was.