“What the hell did you do that for?” Nancy demanded. “He could have been killed!”
“Teach him not to lean on other people’s motors,” Simon replied. “You know what it says in A Child’s Book of Simple Truth. The property of others is God’s property, held in trust. Treat it as sacred.’”
“I’ve never had the pleasure of reading A Child’s Book of Simple Truth,” snapped Nancy. “Besides, it seems to me like you’re the last person who should be giving lectures on the sacredness of other people’s property.”
“That’s different. I’m a revolutionary, like John Farbelow.”
“You’re a goddamn opportunist, more like.”
“That’s right. I’m a revolutionary goddam opportunist. What else do you want me to be, in a world like this?”
They reached a wide, open square, paved all over, with fountains and statues. The paving stones were shiny with rainwater and the wind blew the fountains into white mares’ tails. In the center of the square stood a tall stone column with a statue of a man on top of it, wearing a Puritan hat and knee-britches.
“Isn’t this … Trafalgar Square?” said Josh, dubiously. “It kind of looks like it, from all of those 1960s movies I used to watch.”
“Santa Cruz Square,” said Simon, as he steered his way around it, and headed down Whitehall. “That’s Robert Blake, standing on the top, pigeons and all.”
They drove down Whitehall toward Parliament Square. Josh had never been down Whitehall before, so he didn’t realize that the Cenotaph, the British war memorial, was simply not there; and that there were no security gates across the entrance to Downing Street.
The Houses of Parliament looked the same to Josh as they had in “real” London, except that there were noticeably different trees in Parliament Square, and no statue to Winston Churchill. They crossed the Thames again, but Josh didn’t look at it, and Nancy, grasping his hand, knew why.
The Austin whinnied its way southwards along the Fairfax Embankment. The rain grew heavier and drummed on the roof like the drummers who preceded the Hooded Men. The windshield wipers could barely cope with the downpour, and Simon kept smearing the glass in front of him with his sleeve, so that he could see where he was going.
At last they reached Lavender Hill. In this parallel London it looked just as dreary as it had in “real” London, except that there were no Indian takeaways and no used-car lots. Simon had a map penciled on the back of a brown envelope, and he steered them slowly toward Kaiser Gardens. It was a short, sloping street, with scabrous plane trees on either side. The houses were small and cramped, with cheap nets hanging at their windows, and front gardens crowded with irrationally cheerful gnomes. They crept along the curb until they found 53b, and then Simon pulled on the handbrake.
They climbed out of the car and pushed open the gate to 53b. Up and down the street Josh could see nets being drawn back and pale anxious faces looking out. Nancy said, “You couldn’t even drop a gum wrapper around here without everybody knowing about it.”
Number 53b was a pebble-dashed semi. Its bright green door had an oval stained-glass window in it, depicting a galleon under full sail. The tiny front garden had been laid with crazy paving, but there were no gnomes here, only a diminutive wishing-well cluttered with wind-blown candy wrappers.
Simon went up to the door and pressed the button. He waited for a while, then he pressed it again. “Nobody home. Either that, or the alex doesn’t work.”
“Try knocking,” Josh suggested. Simon rapped on the stained-glass window with his knuckles, and listened some more. As he did so, however, they heard a grinding, droning noise in the distance somewhere.
“Do you hear that?” asked Nancy, frowning.
The droning grew louder. Within less than a minute, it was so deafening that they could hardly hear themselves speak. The windows in number 53b began to rattle and a dog started barking in the garden next door. “Simon – what the hell is that?” shouted Josh.
Simon prodded a finger up toward the sky. “The ten o’clock from New York, that’s what. It’s coming in low because of the weather.”
At that moment, an immense gray shape appeared over the rooftops, no more than two hundred feet above their heads. It was ten times the size of a whale, although it was almost the same shape. It had eight propeller engines suspended underneath it, which accounted for the grinding noise, and a large pale cigar-shaped gondola, with windows all the way along.
It seemed to take an age to pass over their heads, and all the time the dog kept on barking and the windows continued to rattle. Josh watched it with his hand cupped over his eyes to keep out the rain. He felt an unexpected sense of dread, as if he were watching aliens landing in The War of the Worlds. At last it turned north-eastward, over the Thames, and gradually disappeared behind the clouds.
“Wouldn’t get me up in one of those,” said Simon, giving another sharp knock at the door. “Full of toffs and hydrogen.”
There was still no answer. The rain made a prickling noise in the nettles.
“Maybe she’s out,” Josh suggested. “Looks like we’ll have to come back later.”
Simon lifted the letterbox flap, and peered inside. “I don’t know … I think I can hear a television. She wouldn’t go out and leave a television on. Besides, there’s nothing on at this time of the morning. Only the test card.”
He tried the door, but it was locked. Josh said, “Let’s take a look around the back. Maybe she simply can’t hear us.”
Simon went up to the side gate, reached over the top and pulled back the bolt. They walked along the narrow path at the side of the house, negotiating three overflowing trash cans, until they found themselves in a small sloping backyard, with a scrubby patch of wet green grass and a lineful of washing hanging up to dry – frayed towels, socks, and a brassiere.
“What woman leaves her washing out in the pouring rain?” said Nancy.
Simon went up to the back door and rapped his ring-covered fingers on the frosted glass. “Mrs Marmion! You in there, Mrs Marmion?” He rapped again and this time the door swung open. He ran his fingers down the left-hand side of the frame. “Somebody’s had a jemmy to this.”
Josh came up behind him and opened the door a little wider. Inside he could see a small scullery with a floor covered with green and cream linoleum. There was a heavy china sink with a single cold faucet dripping into it, and a knocked-over bucket with a mop. In the background, he could hear the high-pitched whining of a television set.
“Hallo?” he called. “Mrs Marmion? Are you there? It’s Josh Winward, I called you yesterday!”
Still there was no reply. Simon said, “Something’s wrong here, guvnor. Let’s hop the Charley before we get caught.”
“Let me take a quick look inside,” said Josh. “It’ll only take a minute.”
“Entering somebody’s house, that’s chancing it.”
“I have to see Julia’s room. Mrs Marmion tried to tell me over the phone that somebody had been here to take all of her things away. But you never know. She might have left some kind of clue behind. A note. A letter. She always kept a diary, too.”
He stepped into the scullery. It smelled like old damp floorcloths and it was crowded with buckets and brooms and shelves full of firelighters and Brasso and tins of shoe polish. There was a coal-burning boiler at one side of the room, but when he laid his hand on it, it was stone cold. Josh hesitated for a moment and then he made his way through to the kitchen. This wasn’t much larger than the scullery, with a view of the side wall of the house next door, a small enamel-topped table, and a cream-painted hutch stacked with yellow tins of Colman’s mustard and brown jars of Marmite and boxes of Shredded Wheat.