The Neon Court (15 page)

Something papery was pushed into my hand, then snatched away quickly by Penny. There was the silence of concentrated, determined reading. Finally, “Excess hair growth?”

“It’s very unlikely,” said Dr Seah, “but we do have to list all possible side effects.”

“What?” My voice was a lead coffin banging onto the stones. “Side effects?”

“Very, very rare,” added Dr Seah. “But I would appreciate a blood pressure check in the next two months, please, and there’s a yellow form you can fill out if you notice anything unusual. All medical information is appreciated in these sorts of trials.”

“Can I move him?” asked Penny, folding the paper away.

“Oh yes. And have a proper meal. Something with plenty of iron, yes?”

Penny’s arm went round my shoulder, helped me to my feet. With the bandages over my eyes, now I could see nothing at all, not even shadows. Dr Seah took the teacup from my hands.

“Bye now!” she trilled as Penny led me up the stairs. “And remember not to fiddle!”

Penny kicked the door shut behind us, cutting off Dr Seah’s cheerful voice.

Smell of wax.

Smell of wood polish.

Sound of bells ringing somewhere in the darkness outside.

“So …” said Penny finally, as we stood on the cold stones of St Bartholomew’s Church. “That was bloody educational, huh?”

“Never let it be said I don’t keep the syllabus varied,” I replied, groping out in front of me until my fingers brushed the top of a wooden pew. “Which way’s out?”

“It’s OK,” murmured Penny, taking my arm in hers. “I’ve gotcha. Lemon.”

She led me one step at a time towards the door. “Where now?”

“St James’s.”

“Posh arsehole land? Why?”

“To meet a posh arsehole. You’ll like him. He always provides free food.”

Penny’s aunt’s car, upon further examination, smelt.

It smelt of the same dry, fuzzy smell of all cars everywhere, except those with padded leather seats, but also had about it a lived-in stench of old coffee, cheese sandwich, long since dried-up air freshener of the kind sold as a little cardboard tree, and very, very faintly, the acid bite of vomit. I said carefully, “Penny … your aunt … she got kids?”

“Yeah, four. I said ‘you heard of condoms?’ and she was like, ‘you don’t talk that way in my house young lady’ and I was like ‘aunt, lemme get you a banana and show you how it’s done …’”

“How old are the kids?”

“Three, five, seven, eleven.”

“Any of them get carsickness?”

“That’d be Bets.”

“Bets?”

“The youngest. Her name’s Bathsheba but we all call her Bets because that way we don’t have to talk like tossers. Except her mum. She calls her Bathsheba. ‘Cause that’s her name.”

“I see.”

“My aunt’s kinda old-fashioned.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed.”

I felt Penny’s scowl through the darkness.

We listened to the radio, flicking through channels for something we could both agree on as we headed west.

Blockage on the M25 junctions 5 to 8 almost no movement at all there
…

He started screaming, they all started screaming
…

Imagine trying to get that for a pound!

We’ll be back tomorrow when funny boy Ste comes into the studio to talk about
…

It’s a disgrace, I mean, them taking our jobs, I’ve worked here for twenty years and –

I said, “If I said to you ‘where’s the sun gone?’ what’d you think?”

“I guess I’d figure it as one of the wanky cryptic things you say to piss me off.”

“What time is it?”

“Ten something. Bloody starving.”

“That’s odd, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“That you’re bloody starving. What did you have for dinner?”

“I didn’t have dinner because I was bloody saving your bloody life!”

“All right, what did you have for lunch?”

“I had … well I had …” Penny’s voice trailed off. Then, “I guess I must have had a sandwich or something, I dunno, does it matter?”

“Think. Think hard. What did you have for lunch?”

“Sandwich,” she said. “That’s what I usually have.”

“And usually the sun comes up, right?”

“Hey, Matthew, I dunno what that doctor lady put in those drug things, but you’re talking like a dork now and it’s kinda shitting me out.”

I sank back further into the seat. “Never mind,” I sighed. “Where are we?”

“Westminster. Shit! I forgot to pay congestion charge! Hey – you think the Aldermen can get me off a fine?”

“I’m not sure they’d regard that as strictly ethical.”

“Screw that! What’s the point of having a whole connected secret organisation thing doing your shit for you if they can’t get you – or
your seriously underestimated totally cool life-saving apprentice – out of a driving ticket?”

“I’ll ask next time I see them.”

St James’s was, without a shadow of a doubt, posh arsehole land.

Shops selling cigars and suits, antiques and pictures of ancient naval battles, cufflinks and stationery all bound in moleskin and silver. Wide quiet streets, tall stone houses, private clubs flying the Union Jack, with, inside the massive doors, pictures of the Duke of so and so beside portraits of the Queen and Margaret Thatcher. Every now and then the inhabitants of St James’s would claim that the streets between Piccadilly, Buckingham Palace and St James’s Park were not as posh as they seemed. This was always a mistake, for if there was one thing guaranteed to piss off the average Londoner more than Silly Money, it was Silly Money that didn’t have the brains to realise its own good luck.

And so St James’s endured as a part of the
other
city, the one that the tourists visited in T-shirts proclaiming ‘I
London’, the one where the cars were driven by men in peaked hats, where the tea was always served in a china pot, where the sandwiches were cut to the shape of a triangle, the jumpers were cashmere, the socks were silk, the windows were clean, the booze was £500 a bottle. It was a glimpse of another world, inhabited by another species, one which surely couldn’t have bodily functions and spiritual needs like the rest of us, for it did not pine for the smell of fish and chips at supper or get angry at the failure of the 341 bus to come when you needed it, or fumble in its pockets for change for a pack of fags. Certainly, London, the
real
London, the majority experience of London, envied the grand streets laid out around the palace, and even felt a quaint protective streak towards it, as if to say ‘We may think that St James’s is full of rich tossers, but they’re
our
rich tossers and if we could be rich tossers too, we would be. So just because we’re rude about it doesn’t mean you can be.’

To us, St James’s tasted of fog tainted with greenish-grey smoke, of the magics of stones and statues with empty eyes, of secrets tucked just out of sight behind impregnable walls. It was the place to cast defensive spells, and slow, lingering enchantments.

Penny said, “If I park here, will I get towed?”

“Dunno. You used to be the traffic warden – you tell me.”

“Pal, my beat was Willesden, it’s not like I got to ticket a fucking royal. Fuck it, I’m going to park here.”

She did, and I heard the beginning of violent oaths as she found the parking metre. “Twenty fucking pence for four fucking minutes!” she shrilled as she helped me out of the car. “Do you know how much it is for an hour?”

“Um … three quid?” I hazarded.

“Magic it,” she snapped. “Come on, I’ve seen you defraud all sorts of wankers with your magicky ways, come on! Magic the fucking thing!”

I gave in, without much of a fight. “Help me to the parking metre.”

She did. My hand was laid on a square metal object with only three buttons and no slot for returned change. I ran my fingers down it, making out each button one at a time, thought about it, and then gave the machine a good, hard kick.

Something whirred inside.

Something clattered and clacked.

A piece of paper emerged from a small slot. I tugged it free and held it out towards where I vaguely thought Penny was. “One parking ticket, on demand, ma’am.”

“That,” said Penny, snatching it from my unresisting fingers, “was fucking awesome. You didn’t even have to chant or anything.”

“Penny, it may have looked like all I did was kick the machine,” I sighed. “But I assure you a lifetime of experience has gone into learning
where
to kick the machine.”

There was a door.

It was an automatic door that sounded like glass when it swished effortlessly open before us. There was a hot blast of air from above, sealing off the pristine inner world from the rain-spattered dirty world outside. I could hear the low buzz of artificial lights and a computer fan whirring. There were slippery tiles beneath my feet and the smell of freshly watered plants.

Then Penny rested my hands on something cool and glassy, the height of a reception desk, and said, “Good evening! We’re here to see this dude about the imminent destruction of stuff and shit and this
here’s the Midnight Mayor, very senior fucker, don’t mind him, sound cool?”

I wished my eyes were open, so I could have closed them again in despair.

Then a voice from behind the desk, polite and perfectly rounded by years of listening to the BBC, said, “Of course. I’ll let them know you’re here.”

Her voice became the distant platitude of someone talking on a telephone.

“Yes … yes, I have a Midnight Mayor plus one to see … yes, that’s correct … I’ll send them straight down.” A tap of a key on a keypad, then, “If you’d just follow my associate here …”

Tile became wooden floorboard, polished and uneven underfoot. The sound of machinery faded, except for the distant thrum of air through a vent somewhere overhead. My fingers brushed rough worn brick, wood, painted canvas inside ornate wooden frames, and occasionally velvet, hanging down from the ceiling here and there like some sort of medieval tapestry. We went down a set of tight spiral stairs, stone, the middle of each step worn to a groove, a thin metal rail added as an afterthought to either side of the staircase. At the bottom the wood beneath our feet had become brick, and the air was colder, the swish of fans in the ceiling a little more pronounced. We walked thirty-two steps and turned left, paused two steps further on in front of a door, knocked.

A voice from inside, muffled but still clear, boomed, “Enter!”

The door opened with a thunk of a heavy metal knocker bouncing on the wood that held it. We stepped inside. The door closed.

The air smelt of food.

Our mouth started watering immediately.

I forced us to stay still, gather the remaining information. Smell of sausages and French dressing, of wine and the kind of cheese that sucked refrigerator doors closed from the inside. Whiff of magic, thick, treacle-black magic, mingling with the shadows.

Then a chair creaked and a voice exclaimed, “Good God! Matthew, what happened to you?”

The voice was loud, as rich and round as the belly that produced it, and spoke of the waistcoat that contained it and the round face that
owned it as surely as if sight had confirmed it. It was, in short, the voice of Dudley Sinclair, concerned citizen, dabbler in things that should not really have concerned him, and which, for that very reason, did.

“Evening,” I mumbled. “Or maybe morning. Whatever.”

“Sit, dear boy, sit!” I was led to a large padded chair padded further with velvet pillows, and sat. I heard something move behind me, that wasn’t Penny, and added, “Evening, Charlie.”

“Mr Swift.” Charlie, Sinclair’s silent assistant, a man who was not always, entirely, just a man. Even if my guess hadn’t been good, the smell of his magic on the air was unmistakable. “And this is … ?”

“Me?” Penny’s voice, surprised. “Well, I’m Penny Ngwenya, Matthew’s butt-kicking, life-saving, totally awesome apprentice. Um. Hi.”

The slightest of pauses, the briefest of hesitations. There had been a time, not so long back, when Sinclair had been of the opinion that the safest thing to do about Penny was kill her; a revelation we all decided at once and in complete silent accord to skip.

Then Sinclair again: “Matthew, your eyes.”

“Oh, yes, my eyes! Yes. Unfortunate encounter with Oda, ‘psycho-bitch’, resulting in temporary – let me emphasise
temporary –
blindness, splitting headache, bleeding nose, bleeding ears, and um … no, I reckon that’s about it. All of the above. Sorry, is that food I can smell? I’m bloody starving.”

“It is indeed food, Matthew – I thought that considering the hour a little breakfast might be called for.”

“Supper,” corrected Penny casually.

“Do I mean supper? Yes, I suppose I must mean supper. Good grief how peculiar. Yes, of course I mean supper.”

“Um, question?” asked Penny, as cutlery clinked and a napkin was folded carefully out across my lap.

“Yes, my dear?”

“Where are we and who are you?”

“Ah – Matthew hasn’t filled you in fully, has he?” sighed Sinclair. “Well, then if I may do the honours. We are in the wine cellar of Loveless and Headley Esquires, wine merchants, established 1887, or, to be more exact, we are in one of their private chambers which they lease out for corporate meetings. The food is complimentary – we have
an understanding with Loveless and Headley – and while I would love to introduce us all to a bottle of the 1972 Sanchez and Petty, perhaps, considering the circumstances, that may have to be a pleasure for another time.”