Perfect Gallows by Peter Dickinson Page B

somewhere definite, with a confident officer-voiced “Good-night” for any bobby or warden he ran into. He found these places better suited to his mood in any case, the unlit streets and the still, inward-turned houses, thousands of bedrooms each with its dreamers, individuals all with their own names, identities they would never leave, while among them, unnoticed walked Adrian Waring—Adrian who had no identity, let alone an Identity Card, and who thus was able to become anybody, by the power inside him—magic-seeming but real as an electric current—was able to step forth for three blazing hours in the face of an audience, to show them a whole human being, rounded, complete, known like an old friend—and then, as the curtain fell, vanish!
    On the Friday of the Dame’s extravaganza he walked the streets in a trance. It was a frosty night, with a half-moon coming and going behind the light clouds, but he didn’t notice the cold. His mind was full of the episode. He recreated it, detail by detail, trying to analyse how the old boy had achieved his effects, the switchings of pace and volume, the varied pauses, the apparent hesitations, the tone at times of joining his audience in a glorious conspiracy against common decency, and at others of silent outrage that they should find anything amusing in the obscenities he was uttering, all with the faint but thrilling undertone of contempt for them that they should have brought a man of the Dame’s abilities down to pig it at their level. The slave’s contempt for his master, the mob. Adrian would have that too. The slave’s contempt …
    â€œAnd where are we off to, lad?”
    Enthralled by his vision Andrew hadn’t noticed the bobby. He blinked into the shaded torch-beam. He had no idea where he’d got to in the city. He shook his head and put on a friendly but adult smile.
    â€œI seem to have got a bit lost,” he said. “I was trying to get to Fawley Street.”
    â€œYou’re right off track for that … sir. Got an identity card, then?”
    Andrew took out his wallet and produced the card. The bobby studied it under the torch-beam.
    â€œHeard there’s been a bomb in Fawley Street?” he said.
    â€œNo! Are you … which number?”
    â€œDon’t know that, sir. News in just as I was leaving the Station. Wasn’t there a bit of bombing there in forty-two?”
    â€œThat was the other end … I suppose … How … I mean, from here …”
    â€œSteady now, sir. Just the one house hit, I heard. Let me see, Fawley Street—you want to go back the way you come far as …”
    Neat as a missing tooth. The roof-ridge snapped out between the two chimney-stacks. Clear sky now, and the moon shining on to the far wall, so that Andrew could see (or think he saw, knowing it so well) the tulip-pattern of Mum’s bedroom wallpaper. Her mantelpiece hung in mid-air, swept clean of its clutter of knick-knacks and photos. A beam-end poked out of the shadow below. Faint smoke, white in the moon, drifted away. Some shaded hand-torches gleamed in the blackness, defining by their movements the invisible mound of debris.
    The street was roped off either side of the gap. A few spectators lounged on the further pavement, their attitudes somehow suggesting that nothing new was going to happen. It was cold and late. They had almost made up their minds to go home.
    Andrew stood and stared for a moment. His only feeling was emptiness. He knew he ought to have grand emotions churning inside him, horror and grief and outrage, but they weren’t there. He ducked under the rope and crossed towards the shadow, but a man in a steel helmet, an ARP warden, immediately came out of the darkness.
    â€œOther side of the line, sonny.”
    â€œExcuse me. Can you tell me? Mrs Wragge …”
    â€œGoner, I’m afraid. Dug her out half an hour back.”
    â€œOh … was