They drove back to London in contemplative silence, and the Lawyer of Blunt let them out at Marble Arch; for while he had to go about the town canvassing signatures for Böm's brief and arranging for its deposition at the Lawd Chancellor's Department, it was decided that the other two would take a turn in the Royal hunting park. Dave f-forfend, the Lawyer stammered, b-but should our plans go awry you may soon find yourselves in close confinement.
As the Taffy cabbie whipped up the jeejees and the limmo pulled away in the direction of Selfridges, Böm realized they had made a bad mistake. The noise in the square was loud and mounting, while from the Edgware Road came the sound of chanting. He looked up and saw that the roofs of the buildings were thronged with seeseeteevee men. The chanting grew closer. It was the same horde who had been terrorizing the mummies and opares in Westminster the day before, and now there were far more of them — perhaps as many as two or three hundred dads. As before, they were tightly packed and marching at a run. Their uniform black T-shirts, their high-topped white trainers, their gnashing teeth — it all gave them the aspect of a many-legged, many-headed beast intent on some monstrous and predatory act.
They were preceded by twenty or so mounted Drivers and a platoon of chaps with shooters at the ready. As they came into the square some fanned out to stop the traffic, while another posse escorted a sweatbox towards the Arch itself. O my Dave! Antonë exclaimed. It's an execution, we don't want to get mixed up in this. It was, however, too late for them to escape, for along with the dads and Drivers came the London mob in all its perversity: lawds, bondsmen, tradesdads and chavs. Carl saw the most gussied-up dandies cavorting alongside the filthiest slubberdegullions. From the Queers' Quarter came blokes who looked like Antonë, plump, digit beards, soft hands in their belts. There were opares and mummies mixed up in the ruck, with the ubiquitous urchins darting here and there, snatching at cockpieces, cutting at purses. A great proportion of the crowd were mullered, for the landlawds of the city's numerous boozers, not content with plying their wares to the mob as it processed from the Tower to Marble Arch, had seen fit to join it. There were many little vans bumping along with barrels resting on them from which chasers could be bought for a penny. The stench of jack was overpowering.
Fukk ve SeeEssA! Fukk ve SeeEssA! the angry dads chanted. Some held aloft effigies of mummies lashed to long poles. The cloakyfings of these dummies bulged in a peculiar and obscene fashion as they were thrust up and down. The mob propelled all before them — and Carl and Antonë found themselves in the front row of the spectators, who, trapped between ranks of dads and Drivers, ranged about the arch. The sweatbox had been drawn up to the pale-pink cliff, and a pair of warders roughly extricated a mummy from the inside. She screamed and tried to claw her way back in to where three children could be seen, weeping and beseeching. The warders were having none of this and dragged her up a ramp on to the top of the arch, then over to where a barbecue was erected amid a pile of faggots.
Fukk ve SeeEssA! Fukk ve SeeEssA! The dads sank the poles bearing the effigies in the dusty ground and linked arms. Two hefty chavs in the livery of the PCO stepped forward into the square. One bore an immense drum on his back, which the other beat upon. The defeaning reports of the drum reverberated from the crete frontage of the Odeon, and the crowd began to fall silent, save for a few urchins who were climbing about on the scaffold. A Driver stepped forward, while behind him a fony unrolled an A4, and once he had it in his mirror the Driver began to read in a deep, stentorian voice that was clearly audible to the whole assembly:
— That you, Sharún Lees, on three separate occasions, did wilfully retain your three kiddies and keep them concealed from their lawful dad; for this heinous malefaction, a profaning of the Book and the Wheel and of Dave Himself, you have been sentenced in the Children and Families Advisory and Support Services Forecourt to be burned and the noxious exhaust of your chellish body piped into your kiddies. Let it be marked, no Changeover –
— No lyf! the crowd bayed.
— No Breakup.
— No Nolidj!
— No Knowledge.
— No Nu Lundun! No Nú Lundun! No Nú Lundun!
Mercifully, the mummy had fainted dead away as the sentence was read. In the sweatbox the kiddies threw themselves against the bars. Another driver stepped forward and began to pour glistening moto oil over the mummy, the barbecue and the faggots. A third came afterwards with a lighter. There was a moment's stillness — then 'Fumf!' The mummy was a writhing, pulsing, fat-spitting firework. Fonies pushed forward a funnel-shaped contrivance attached to a bellows and positioned it so as to suck up the noxious exhaust. It was conducted through a pipe and into the sweatbox, the irony shutters of which were slammed against the whey faces of the children and bolted by attendant Drivers.
'Fumf! Fumf! Fumf!' All through the crowd the dads had set their sinister effigies alight. The cloakyfings went up in a flash, revealing that beneath them were bundles of live cats, tied by their necks to the poles. Their fur fizzed and flashed; they yowled in torment. The dads began their chanting once more: Fukk ve SeeEssA! Fukk ve SeeEssA! Fukk ve SeeEssA! Fukk ve SeeEssA! Carl could not conceive of a more horrific scene, as the pall of meaty smoke rose up over the square in poisonous billows, and the mob eddied and moaned with evil exaltation. A thick musk of excitation emanated from the close-packed bodies around him. The mummy was still writhing — although tongues of white flame were shooting from her eye sockets and mouth. Carl shut his own eyes and resolved not to open them until they could escape this hell on earth.
Then he involuntarily opened them — because he'd received a sharp dig in the nape of his neck. Hanging in his visual field was another pair of eyes — bloodshot, indifferent, very fatigued and framed by the mirror that was dangling right in front of his face. Carl turned to his companion. Antonë also had a mirror positioned before his face and behind him stood a Driver with a drawn blade. The crowd had fallen back on all sides, and a third Driver bearing a badge that showed the Wheel superimposed on the Tower stepped up and unfurled an A4. He began reading in a bored voice:
— Carl Dévúsh and Antonë Böm, I arrest you both in the name of the PCO on charges of bilking, flying and treason. You will accompany us to the Tower.
The crowd, its anarchic hysteria instantly transformed into fearful conformity, drew back to allow a wide gangway, and down this Carl and Antonë were hustled in the direction of Park Lane.
14. Getting Out from Behind the Wheeclass="underline" February 2003
In the sparkling-wine light police tape festooned the traffic lights and the crash barriers — the bunting of a criminally enormous party. A police car, its blue light revolving, siren squawking suppressed whoops, shepherded people along the roadway like a game little terrier. A volute of cloud twisted across the sky, and the cold bit into Dave's neck. He saw the already discarded placards that littered the verge and the scores, then hundreds of demonstrators. Individually they were aimless, yet the whole throng moved with collective determination over the churned-up sand of Rotten Row and towards Speakers' Corner.
Phyllis looked as eccentric as ever, wrapped up in a woollen coat sewn from crocheted panels of scarlet, green and yellow. Her mad curls escaped from beneath the ear flaps of a Laplander's hat, her Dolly hands were tucked into matching mittens. She took his cold hand in her woolly pad and squeezed it. 'The turn-out,' she said excitedly, 'it's huge. I knew — but I never thought — so many people.' Dave saw gloomy old pranksters in harlequin tights, Socialist Worker clones in donkey jackets and Doc Martens, laughing crocodiles of British Asian girls down from their northern redoubts, their Muslim Association of Great Britain placards held at jaunty angles. Between these factions, stolidly tramping, in their pastel anoraks and buff fleeces, was a great mass of ordinary punters, who, even to Dave's jaundiced eye, seemed secure in the knowledge that by their sheer weight of numbers they could prevent the bombers from taking off and Stop the War!