The Whispering Swarm

  Dream or not, I was enjoying the game. I tipped my hat and bowed to them as if I’d been a tobyman all my life, then stepped down the steel stairs to the lower deck and demanded the same from the red-faced bureaucrats in dark suits and loud ties blustering their threats as they parted with more than half their pay, counted out from their monthly packets. You could smell their outrage. From the size of our ‘take’ it was clear these men were doing well behind their desks. My uncle Willie, who had been a Japanese POW, had worked for the tram company until 1952. He told me how the weekly wages of drivers or conductors were half or less what these office workers received. Where I could, I took the empty packets, too. It was Moll’s idea. Here was proof how much more these elevated clerks received compared to the drivers who faced the responsibilities and dangers of the ‘steel toby’.

  A loud shot. Part of our agreed signal. I lifted my hat to the growling executives and headed for my horse.

  Then, as musket balls yelped past our heads, splintering wood and thumping into the turf, with our saddlebags stuffed with rustling fivers, fresh oncers and ten-bob notes, our cloaks flying behind us, we were off at full gallop the way we had come. The rushing adrenaline insured I kept my seat. A louder bang. Something hissed by my left shoulder and hit a willow with a great thunk, showing how serious our game was! Another shot and Moll, a black shadow, swerved, still at full gallop, to lead me along a series of narrow paths through the marsh. ‘They’ve unshipped the top deck cannon!’ Her big stallion took a hedge easily with my mare following. I, however, threatened to remain behind, almost flying clear of saddle and stirrups. I lost my seat more than once and pulled too heavily on the reins, but patient Jessie looked after me. By jumping more gates and streams we reached open fields and avoided the larger, better-lit towns. I saw a wooden signpost for Shoreditch, Stepney and Stoke Newington. The first time we slowed to a walk Moll reached over to pat my arm. ‘Good work, Master Michael! This cash will go to the Road Transport Workers Union to help their members pay for a planned strike. Meanwhile the bosses will have learned a lesson from us. They’ve just received a taste of what we can do if we decide to act. There’ll be a thousand pound in our bags tonight. We’ll take a levy of five per cent and the rest goes to the union. Workers—and bandits—of the world unite against the bosses. This is how it should be, eh?’ Her eyes were alive with excitement.

  How it should be, maybe, I thought, but rarely how it was except in fiction.

  Her rhetoric was remarkably similar to my uncle Bill’s. He had worked as a turntable man at the Camden Roundhouse when it was still a tram terminal. He had taken part in the General Strike of 1929. For a while he was a member of the Communist Party, having huge arguments with Uncle Alf the pacifist anarchist. Alf believed in mutuality and claimed Trotsky had betrayed the Russian Revolution by reneging on his promises to Makhno.

  In spite of the realities I was still at a loss to know how this could not be some sort of dream. The only bandits I had heard voicing such sentiments as Moll’s were in fiction and film—Pancho Villa in particular—but my uncle Alf had told me about Nestor Makhno and his Ukrainian irregulars whom Trotsky, for political motives of his own, called bandits. They had systematically redistributed wealth from the bourgeoisie to the peasants and punished pogromists. I had read how Jesse James and others had preserved their popularity by distributing money at random to poorer people, often signing themselves ‘Jack Sheppard’, the popular London thief and escapist, fully conscious of the legends they created. Just as calculating, Pretty Boy Floyd left hundred dollar bills under his plate to pay working people for meals they offered him, confirming their romantic expectations. As far as I knew, Moll was the only highway thief who spouted Marxist rhetoric while stealing on behalf of a trade union. Making everything all the more dreamlike!

  I was almost eighteen years old. Dream or not, the rush in my blood convinced me I experienced a sort of ‘super-reality’. As real as my desire to make an impression on that beautiful young woman. No girlfriend had fascinated me like Moll, nor had I ever cared about impressing one. Moll’s words stirred my soul. I was determined to prove myself as bold and brave as she was. All I wanted at that moment was to ride side by side with the dashing Captain Midnight and the legendary tobymen of The Swan With Two Necks! Anxious to seem a better rider than I actually was, I sat the horse by sheer willpower. Occasionally I looked over my shoulder to see if we were pursued. Those shots appeared to be all they were prepared to send after us. In spite of the real danger and discomfort, I never wished to wake from this dream. I smelled the sharp, wild air of the heath changing from open country to village to town to the great City herself, with the tang of soot and strong air, carrying the immunizing bacteria allowing sturdy cockneys to live indefinitely, some said forever! It’s no illusion. Many Londoners, uprooted to the countryside, die miserably from autoimmune diseases. They went off to St Dunstan’s-in-the-Wold to breathe healthy country currents and were dead as doornails within days of arriving. In later years I almost died in rural Texas.

  At last I saw a tinge of deep blue on the eastern horizon and recognised the outlines of St Bart’s, St Paul’s, the Monument and the other tall City landmarks.

  It was almost dawn. I was in no way tired. I wondered at the speed with which the night had passed. We were coming home with a fortune in stolen cash! Laughing together we shared a swaggering moment as we slowed our horses and dipped our heads under the various gates and arches which brought us, without hazard, to the courtyard of The Swan With Two Necks.

  Still in high spirits, we dismounted. I ran after Moll as she carried the bags up the outer stair and along the landing to more stairs, another floor at the very top of the tavern and finally the double doors of a large apartment. Opposite these were several shorter doors closer together, probably what the French call chambres de bonne, servant’s quarters. Moll unlocked the double door and, glancing around to be sure we were unseen, led me into a comfortable apartment, with books and a writing desk, through to a small drawing room. Off to the right, presumably, was a bedchamber. The apartment probably occupied most of the space on this side of the building. Were they her rooms or did she share them? Perhaps all her colleagues used the place? She made no effort to enlighten me as, laughing, we emptied the saddlebags onto a table. At Moll’s instigation, we sorted the notes into their various denominations, counting as we did so and bundling the money into amounts of £5, £10 and £20. We had cleared a thousand and eighty pounds, a huge sum for 1957, before decimalization caught us short. Our haul would let a lot of men go on strike without their families having to suffer. ‘At this rate we shall defeat the bosses!’ With considerable satisfaction Moll planted a sudden kiss on my cheek. I thought my face caught fire. Then, careless of what she had done, she carried on.

  ‘They’re more afraid of us than ever before. That’s why they’ve set thief takers on our tails with a vast reward.’

  I told her I’d already encountered two of them, Clitch and Love. She nodded, unsurprised. ‘They ride under the Protector’s colours and claim to work for the law. In reality they’re hired by the transport bosses to catch us. They know where and why we congregate. The UTW is our most powerful union. They help us, even though we rob the trams their members drive. Their bosses would give much to see the back of us.’

  ‘Dead or alive?’ I asked, a little hesitantly.

  ‘Alive in some shape or another. But it’s our business not to be captured at any cost. Not until I’ve signalled the union’s couriers. Quick. We must rid ourselves of these costumes and get back into our ordinary clothes.’ Tying the sacks with twine, she placed a small bundle of notes on the mantel. ‘That’s our share. We pay ten per cent to the landlord. He’ll square the ostler. Then we buy all the drinks tonight in the private bar.’ I began to wonder how profitable, if at all, this trade was. Clearly not the best paying in London. But I saw already how the attraction was not in the money but the game. I could easily become addicted to it. The chances were, o
f course, that this would never happen again. I could still wake up. And when I did, I could turn that night’s adventure into a whole series of shorts and publish in Tarzan. Or even one of the better-paying markets, like Amalgamated Press or Odhams, who did Eagle. I had a twinge of conscience. I was learning how to turn every significant moment of my life into money. Not yet eighteen and I would soon be a true Fleet Street hack!

  Leaving my jacket, shoes and scarf on the sofa for me, Moll pranced into the bedroom and quickly came out again in her women’s petticoats and pinafore. A little embarrassed I climbed quickly into my regular clothes, leaving the highwayman togs neatly folded on the sofa, the riding boots on the floor beside it.

  ‘You’re learning all the tricks of the nighthawk chevalier. Eh?’ Another kiss brushed my cheek and burned it. Handing me a wad of notes she led me quickly from the room.

  I felt almost sick as I put my share into my trouser pocket. There were at least two fivers and who knew how many pounds and ten-shilling notes. It had to amount to over £25! I had never earned so much in so short a time. This was contemporary 1950s money: big, crisp, white fivers, printed in black and gold, watermarked in silver; new pound and ten-shilling notes. In Fleet Street I could spend it anywhere without arousing comment. Elsewhere they might grow suspicious of someone of my youth with so much money. Yet no matter what sort of delusion I suffered I would not be exonerated should the money be traced. It was stolen. I hated stealing, even from pigs like those. I had no need of it. I told her I would buy my rounds and give her what I had left to add to the union funds. She offered me that sweet, sorrowing look women reserve for harmless idiots or their husbands. ‘Don’t expect to begin a tradition,’ she said. ‘The tobyman’s life is an expensive one.’

  I left money on the bar for my rounds and handed the rest over to Moll. Now that dawn was rising on another noisy day, I bowed and thanked her for the exciting night. ‘We must do this again.’ I was still fired up by the adventure. Grinning she moved towards me and kissed me on both cheeks. Fire! ‘Adieu for now, Michael, me lad.’

  It was time for me to return home. With her warmth and her perfume still lingering about me, I walked briskly up to the gate and hauled it open, relieved to see the sun already shining on the ivy-grown walls of the unoccupied weekend offices. As I pushed the gate further open I was suddenly face-to-face with a tall, handsome man of about my own height, wearing long curly hair, a moustache and goatee, his eyes half-hidden by the wide brim of a soft hat. He was all wrapped up in black and brown, a sort of vast, sleeveless overcoat, under which he carried something hidden in one hand. Taken aback he paused and looked me over. Then he begged my pardon. I begged his.

  ‘I seek the Abbey of the Flete Street Friars,’ he declared. I realised he spoke a rather odd French, no different in character to the English of Alsacia. What surprised me was that I could understand him. My French was notoriously bad.

  ‘You turn left past the inn and keep going until you see it. Impossible to miss.’ To my surprise, I replied in the same language.

  ‘I am at your service, sir,’ he said. ‘Do you by any chance already follow the oak leaf?’ He was charming. I found myself liking him at once. But I had no idea at all what he meant and he quickly realised that.

  Off came that wide-brimmed hat again. ‘Forgive me, sir. I understood you had already put yourself in his cause.’

  ‘Your Grace. Please, sir! To the Sanctuary or we are all lost. The Sanctuary, sir, and quickly!’ Friar Isidore’s voice. I was embarrassed. The stranger saw my response and seemed a little taken aback.

  Friar Isidore rounded the corner in haste, clearly concerned for the man who addressed me.

  ‘My dear sir, I apologise. I lost my way. I thought I knew London well enough, but not this city. And all the time you were here.’ The tall man laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Forgive me, sir, if my hurried manner startled you.’ In a swirl of loose clothing he took off for the nearest side street.

  Friar Isidore made an apologetic gesture and then went in pursuit of the tall aristocrat. I thought he said, ‘… we can afford no further fracturing.’ I suspected the other man was a patient in the monks’ care. Brother Isidore turned once. ‘Good morning!’ he called apologetically as he followed his charge around the corner.

  ‘Good morning,’ I replied. Still feeling flustered, I closed the gate and set off across the empty square. I hurried over the grass, through an archway and up the little maze of alleys which led to Carmelite Street and the familiar sight of Fleet Street, deserted apart from one or two empty taxis and a night bus returning to its depot, all but silent in the dawn light. My mum wouldn’t like me coming home so late (or rather early) but I would concoct a story about a quarrel with my mate. I was sure she would not believe the truth. I was inclined to doubt most of it myself!

  As it happened I got to my bed before Mum woke up. I began to wonder if the adventure were still going on when, reaching to close the curtains, I saw a large raven perched outside on the windowsill. The bird was glorious, cocking his head to look enquiringly up at me. I smiled, preparing to talk to him. Then he opened his beak, seemed to wink at me, spread his shining wings and flew away to the southeast. I watched him go. I had always been fascinated by corvids of every kind. The raven, I guessed, was heading back towards the Tower of London. Perhaps his flight feathers had grown faster than anticipated. I understood they clipped their ravens’ wings in the belief that when the ravens deserted the Tower, then England would fall.

  I feigned sleep when Mum looked in on me. It being Saturday, I was able to rest until noon, rise and make myself breakfast, since she’d be working the market stall until six PM at least. I still wondered if I had experienced some sort of hallucination. But my body ached from the ride. My bruises were visible, proving I had not had a conventional dream. I even had a very faint but persistent murmuring in my head which I thought was some sort of hangover. This left me with only a couple of unlikely explanations. The most fantastic was that I had actually been in some parallel London! Surely the raven wasn’t from there?

  Maybe, I thought, feeling a little sick and smiling at my own predicament, I had overdone the fantasy reading, yet somehow this had a different quality. Where in history or legend, for instance, had anyone, dressed and mounted like mid-eighteenth-century highway robbers, set off to hold up the great metal trams of the early twentieth? On behalf of a trade union? This wasn’t just impossible. It was truly absurd! And those ‘thief takers’! They weren’t even from the same period as the others. Clitch and Love, as well as the man who had interfered to help me, dressed like men from the mid-1600s, the end of the English Civil War. They claimed to work for the Puritan Parliament of Oliver Cromwell. What place did they have in the fantasy?

  I thought of Smollett, Peacock, Firbank, Jarry, Vian and the other absurdists I loved so much. They somehow confirmed my own strange familiarity with this experience. All through my childhood, when I grew overtired, I had seen things others said were not there. ‘Christmas lights in August,’ my mum called it. She was used to me doing it. I had to be hallucinating. And who was the handsome man I had bumped into when leaving? He had also dressed in seventeenth-century style. Some foreign nobleman? Had we really spoken French? I was tempted to laugh, but the mystery scared me a bit, too. My sanity might depend on solving it. I would return as soon as I could and find someone prepared to tell me what was happening. I was sure Moll took pleasure in keeping me mystified. She might have known how mysteries make women all the more interesting. Was I in love with her? Not a good idea. Even then I recognised the danger of creating your heart’s desire out of a particular waistline, a smile, a haircut and some makeup. I didn’t know her at all. I was perfectly clear in my young mind about what was going on in that respect, but of course I still remained fascinated.

  After dropping in on my mum’s stall to tell her I was fine, I strolled back down to Fleet Street, Carmelite Street and, eventually, into Carmelite Inn Chambers. I almost burst
into tears when I realised what was happening again. The gates had gone. As if the buildings of the square had somehow drawn together and made them vanish! For the life of me I could not find the way back into the Alsacia. I felt strangely helpless, as if a terrible trick had been played on me. If I kept staring at the building standing where the gates should be, I would eventually be arrested and taken off to the loony bin. I became confused and enlightened at the same time. There was only one explanation: I had experienced some sort of hallucination. I had better keep it to myself in future. I wouldn’t even tell Barry or Pete.

  But my senses still believed it had all been real. Wouldn’t Barry confirm it? He had been so hungover, he might not remember. I knew exactly what a shrink would tell me. Because of my very active creative gift I was, when tired, very good at imposing my imagination on the world around me. Probably, they would say, I had found that gate precisely because I had wanted to find it. By ‘closing’ the gate, my mind was warning me that I shouldn’t try to go through it again. I really had suffered an incredible hallucination! But Friar Isidore was real, surely? If I met him again next week at the typesetter’s wouldn’t he tell me the truth? Had I conjured those two Puritan rascals out of whole cloth? To scare myself? As a child I had been able to see ghosts. Even then I had been aware that I was imposing the images on the world, because my imagination was stronger than most. I was baffled, yet oddly reconciled. I had a nagging association at the back of my mind which recalled that last encounter at the gates. What was ‘the oak leaf’? Something to do with the Jacobites?