Vampires Overhead (4 page)

‘Strewth! It’s Garrington. Rose from the ranks to be some sort of general. An’ on the gilded staff by the look of him. Don’t let me ’orses see you, they’ll bolt.’ He grinned and reached down an open hand after his whip slammed into its socket. ‘Put it there, Garry. I’m glad to see you. How goes it?’

‘And I’m glad to see you, Bingen. Been watching the horse traffic roll down Piccadilly for four years on the lookout for some of the old crush, and you’re the first,’ I cried excitedly, pump-handling his hand. ‘How are you, old timer? Quick. See if we can make a date.’

Through the inches thick of uniform padding, I could feel the manager’s disapproving eye boring into my back.

‘How can we arrange a meeting? Any chance tonight? I get off earlier than usual tonight. What d’you say?’

‘What time d’you finish?’ Bingen bent to ask. He thought awhile and continued swiftly. ‘Know the old Red Lion Brewery, over Hungerford Bridge? Stables there. I’ll wait for you there tonight. Can you come along after you’ve done here?’

‘I’ll be along soon after ten. That do? How can I find you?’

‘That’ll do fine. There’s a night watchman. He’ll let you in if I’m not there, but I’ll be there. A wicket in the entrance gates under the lion. You can’t miss it. If I shouldn’t be there the watchman’ll fix you up. Old Garrison man he is. That beaky-nosed Jew in a boiled shirt on the steps your boss? He’s got an eye on us. I’ll be getting along. See you tonight then, and we’ll make it a wet one. Old times all over again. S’long, Garry.’

‘S’long ’til tonight, Bingen. See you at the brewery. Gosh! What a rendezvous! Could we pick a better? I’ll say we couldn’t!’

Bingen’s whip caressed plump dappled flanks, and his team stiffened into their traces; the van-boy, who had been craning over the piled crates interestedly, jerked fingers in a cheeky caricature of a military salute, and I returned it with a grin; the dray swung into the traffic stream, and Bingen turned to wave a smiling farewell. Cap tilted over one eye, I went happily back up the steps to my job. It was great to see one of the old hands again, even if it were Bingen. But then, he’d a lot of good points about him, despite his two bad ones, women and beer. Anyway, we’d make a night of it tonight. A night worth remembering. I felt bucked enough to walk across the vestibule and rub my back soothingly on one of those tempting mermaids. I almost cake-walked across the steps, had to take a firm hold on myself to avoid turning and staring defiantly at the manager. For a while I could feel his eyes following me disapprovingly, then he went away.

The rest of the afternoon and the evening dragged slowly, but how quickly the time flew, for in between glancing at the ornate clock over the box-office, and scowling at the motionless hands, I was going over the old times, remembering incidents in preparation for the yarning with Bingen.

Due that night, by a lucky coincidence, to leave early, I was hurrying down the narrow slope of a back exit from the cinema shortly before ten-thirty. Queer, I felt younger, fitter, thinner out of that stifling uniform. Queer also, as I write, how trivial little incidents come jumping to my mind. Sitting here in the cottage with Janet nursing the purring cat, busy with clicking needles upon a pair of socks, I remember, as though it were but a few short hours ago, instead of eight months.

A crowded bus carried me along the Strand, across Waterloo Bridge—fallen so much sooner than the most pessimistic of engineers had prophesied—and a hurried walk through squalid streets by the riverside brought me to the brewery.

From the far pavement of the narrow street I stood awhile to stare up at the huge stone lion surmounting the entrance gates; blackly it loomed against the sky. Crimson glow from the comet tinged the moon’s pale lustre and the sky was clear, dusted with yellow stars, with light haze from the City merging into its vastness. But it seems now, when I go over everything again and again, I saw, up there in the translucent heavens, a barely discernible cloud. Since beginning this description, I have mused over details of those first nights, and the more I dwell upon them the less sure I am, that while I stared up at the lion silhouetted against the night sky, I glimpsed the first Vampires. But a faint thought will persist that I saw then something which should have warned the unsuspecting country of peril. Who else searched the heavens that night?

Crossing the street at last, I banged upon the great gates, the sound reverberating loudly in the deserted street. Footsteps clattered over cobbles and, after many creakings and squeakings as though the tiny wicket were seldom opened, it swung wide to let me stoop and enter. Bingen locked the gate behind me.

‘Won’t do for anyone to come along and catch us in here,’ he said, after we greeted each other. ‘Old Dad, the watchman, tells me the manager left his car here tonight. Said he won’t be wanting it until the morning, but one never knows, and I shouldn’t like to lose the old fellow his job any more than I’d like to get the sack myself.’

‘You’re sure it wouldn’t be better to come along out to a pub in the Waterloo road,’ I suggested. ‘There’s still half an hour to go before they shut.’

Curiously, the closing and locking of that wicket set in the great gates towering between pillars, vaguely disturbed me. It was as though I were being imprisoned. The place gave me a presentiment of evil. The yard, large as it was, seemed hemmed in by tall, surrounding buildings. Black and eerie shadows stained the cobbles, and little barred windows, glinting darkly in the blank walls, were as those of a jail. I glanced up at the stars again with a weird sensation of being smothered.

‘It’s gloomy in here, Bingen. You’re sure you wouldn’t rather come out to a pub?’

‘It’s gloomy enough. The stables at the back are cheerier, but it’s cosy in the watchman’s hut. Old Dad’s been on the job for twenty-four years, and he’s made himself comfortable. There’s hardly time to have more than a couple if we go out. It’s free here, and I’ve got some of the real stuff at that, baksheesh from Dad. Not often anyone can get baksheesh from him. Come on.’

I followed across the yard, with the pungent odour of hops filling my nostrils, to where a golden oblong of light splashed on the black cobbles from the open door of the watchman’s hut, and turned once more to stare back, almost apprehensively, at the shadows in the yard, before stepping out over the threshold.

Despite the strangely tropical weather, a large fire burned brightly in an old-fashioned hob and flickered upon a warlike display of weapons hanging on the walls. Bayonets, cutlasses, swords, lance and spear heads arranged in symmetrical designs, polished and burnished from the care so evidently bestowed on them. The watchman apparently lived here, for in one corner, neatly ‘made-up’ barrack-room style, were brown army blankets folded with scrupulous exactness upon a low iron bed. Fronting the fire stood a wooden table. Scrubbed to a pristine whiteness, it supported, smartly in double file, what I presumed to be the ‘baksheesh’ ‘scrounged’ from Old Dad; a double or so tall black bottles with dust from a cool cellar still thick upon them.

‘Here y’are, Dad, meet Garrington. Out of the old Battery. Weren’t exactly bosom pals were we, Garry?’ Bingen eyed the table affectionately and smiled. ‘But there, times have changed. There aren’t many of us left. When any of us do meet, well, it’s up to us to have one, and be glad we’re here and able to have one. Set ’em up, Dad.’

The night-watchman, a thin old man, showed pink toothless gums in a smile of welcome, shook hands with me, and busied about the bottles. His spare shoulders, even yet, showed evidence of drilling, and his wrinkled brown face told of acquaintance with tropical suns.

‘Well, Garry, here’s to you. Seeing you in Piccadilly standing on those steps like a cast-off Mexican general was the surprise of my life,’ said Bingen, lifting his glass towards me and gulping thirstily. ‘Phew! I’m thirsty. It’s hot for so early in the year. Must be over a month since we had rain.’

‘Six weeks tomorrow, and that blasted comet’s been here nearly as long,’ the watchman said. ‘But it’ll rain tomorrow. It can’t go on like this. Why, even when I was in Aden we . . .’

‘When you were in Aden, Garry and I weren’t pupped,’ Bingen interjected rudely. ‘Tonight is our night, Dad. Some other time we’ll listen to all your yarns of ten-sixty-six. Tonight Garry and I are going to hold the fort.’

‘We are that,’ I agreed, taking the glass Bingen offered me. I toasted them. ‘To you, Bingen, and to you, Dad. To the old times and the times ahead.’

The times ahead! We didn’t think much about the times ahead that night. Old times . . . they occupied our thoughts, and, as the beer loosened our tongues, we yarned of the Menin Road; Cairo; Karachi; Poona; the ‘Shot’; old friends. Who knows of what we talked that night!

Bingen opened bottle after bottle with all his old expertness, and Old Dad, despite protest, was driven to the cellar once again for more . . . and outside, high in the heavens,
those blood-seeking, fire-breeding
Vampires must have been dropping silently, nearer and nearer to earth!

Bingen and Dad began to be triplicated before my wavering eyes. The black bottles on the table swayed so that I watched them seriously against their falling. Bingen’s voice began to acquire, as usual when in drink, a pugnacious note. The watchman grew worried that someone might hear the sounds of revelry, and Bingen wanted a lot of persuading before he allowed the old man to proceed on his bi-nightly patrol of the brewery. But eventually Dad got away with his lantern and his knarled stick, and when we were alone Bingen resumed his narrative of the divisional Sword
v
Bayonet contest out of which he had been so foully cheated.

‘. . . it was like this. I cut, and then to my surprise the judge he whips across and disqualifies me on the spot,’ growled Bingen. He had lurched from his chair and was illustrating the fight with bare hands, when his gaze fell on the weapon-decorated walls. He lifted a sword and a bayoneted rifle from their fastenings. ‘Good! I’ll be able to show you better with these. Take this gun and get over there, and I’ll show you ’zactly how I got dished out of the championship.’

Taking the rifle I began to parry at Bingen’s instructions, and the wildly thrusting sword would soon have sobered me had it continued for long. The watchman’s hut resounded to the clang of weapons and the stamp of our unsteady feet. Breathless, I was glad of the interruption when it came.

‘Stop! Be quiet,’ suddenly came a voice from the door. ‘Stop, you fools. Stop!’

I remember hazily, for I was intent upon Bingen’s dangerous sword, the return of the watchman, but I know that we ignored him until he pushed his meagre figure perilously between us. Bingen tried to wave him away, but I leant thankfully on the rifle, glad of a respite, watching them dizzily.

‘Get away out of it, Dad,’ Bingen said surlily. ‘We aren’t going to hurt your rotten old collection. Just going to finish showing Garry how I lost, then we’ll hang ’em up for you again.’

‘S’not that, you idjuts. It’s someone at the gate . . . the manager!’ the old man stuttered, stammering breathlessly. ‘He’s out there at the gate banging away like hell. Come back for his car, I s’pose. Said he wouldn’t want it ’til morning, and here he is now, the skunk.’

The old man danced nervously between us, shook angry fists at Bingen, and turned to me.

‘If he finds Bingen here, let alone you, I’m sacked. What are we going to do?’ Dad gasped and then shook a clenched fist excitedly. ‘I’ve got it! Bingen, you know the tunnel down to the hard, both of you get in there, out of the way until he’s gone. Go right in and down, round the bend. Keep quiet. Then, as soon as I’ve got rid of him, I’ll come along and let you out. Make Bingen go, and keep him quiet. Stop him making a row.’

This last was to me, and the old man gesticulated agitatedly for silence and expediency.

‘N’mind about them,’ Dad whispered hoarsely as we started to replace sword and rifle. ‘Take ’em with you if it pleases you, but for Gawd’s sake come out of here. Get a move on.’

Foolishly, I followed Bingen out into the darkness of the yard, and with the night air, cool after the warmth of the room, playing about my temples, giddiness overcame me, for I had drunk more than I was accustomed to these days. In front, Bingen rolled ever so slightly as he tiptoed exaggeratedly over the cobbles. He carried the sword and a bottle, while the rifle dangled in my hand. Past the shadowed buildings to where a gate, looming darkly even in the surrounding murkiness, showed bars glinting blackly. I leant against the wall while the watchman fumbled cursingly with the padlock.

‘This ain’t been opened in years,’ he whispered, and when at last the gate swung creaking on rusty hinges, motioned us eagerly into the blackness of a sloping tunnel. ‘Quick! Get in there out of sight.’