The Quorum (8 page)

After peeking in on the Invader and telling Mum she’d be home before one, she put on a coat and left. It was tenish. The 43 or the 134 would get her from Muswell Hill to Highgate Village in seven minutes. Two and a half hours of party, a walk through the wood, and 1993 would be here, full of chilly promise.

Her year-end report was delivered. Dolar would have invited Neil but she didn’t have to pay attention. If anything, she was bored by the man she knew but had never met. The only curiosity was why the client was interested after so many years in so unexceptional a citizen.

Hopping off the bus at the top of the Archway Road, she looked for the address, a garden flat near Planet Janet. A group ten paces ahead was obviously on course: a busty woman in a strategically torn uniform carried a plastic Oddbins bag heavy with bottles; apes with steel helmets, ammo bandoliers and toy weapons.

Sally caught up as they waited on the sunken doorstep, hammering. The flat emanated light and the
Rocky Horror
soundtrack. A door opened; a guy in a green singlet decorated with question marks hugged the marine, then looked over her tooled-up primates.

‘Sergeant Grit and His Gorilla Guerillas,’
said the Riddler, ‘ZC Comics, 1942 to 1948, revived 1964. Created by Zack Briscow...’

The platoon struck towards the kitchen, firing spark-guns. Sally was left behind. She didn’t know the Riddler by name but recognised him from the shop. She slipped off her coat and waited to be identified.

‘No,’ the Riddler said, shaking his head. ‘Afraid I don’t know you.’

‘Olive Oyl,’ she admitted.

‘Not a comic, really. Newspaper strip,
Thimble Theatre,
E.C. Segar.’

She dumped her coat on an overburdened stand. The Riddler moved on to a couple of hairy blokes tarted up as the Fat Slags. Dolar, the Wizard of Id, was hustled past by two eleven-year-old Amazon Queens, to a front room where music throbbed. He tried to stop but the Amazons, black armbands over their toffee-paper-jewelled Circlets of Power, pummelled him until he agreed to demonstrate the Time Warp.

On the wall, cards were strung; snowy demons and bobble-hatted dragons outnumbered robins and Santas. In a nook, Top Cat nodded as a beergutted Green Lantern explained where John Major had gone wrong. Sally didn’t know anyone, masked or not, but it didn’t matter. Blending in was a speciality.

In the kitchen, she added her Australian red to a bottle forest covering every surface. A trim, prematurely grey woman with a lightning-streak T-shirt over her leotard poured a polystyrene cup of rose. She introduced herself: Janet of Planet Janet fame, mother of the Amazon Queens, significant other of the Wizard of Id.

‘I’m Sally,’ she said, lost for self-description. ‘From the other side of the wood.’

Janet had heard about the Invasion. Sally found herself in one of those Dreaded Baby Conversations that sprang like traps. She didn’t want to run through the backstory. At Christmas, Connor’s parents, so tactful she was irritated with herself for squirming, had sent a hamper of presents. The DBC died. Janet saw to the Fat Slags. Shunted aside, Sally dipped into Kettle Chips. When pregnant, they had been her craving. Having worked up to a three-bag-a-day habit, she was tapering off.

‘Lois Lane?’ someone asked.

‘Olive Oyl,’ she said.

Neil Martin was perched on a tall stool, drinking steadily, bottle of Jack Daniels in his elbow-crook, long legs twisted under him. He was in civilian dress: baggy jumper hanging from wide shoulders, hair flopped over his forehead.

From her usual distance, he was a bear who’d recently been ill and lost weight. Hunched into the wind, knuckly hands shoved into corduroy pockets. His date of birth was July 31, 1959 but she thought of him as pushing forty. Unexpectedly close now, he was younger than she’d perceived. His longish face was unlined, heavy-lidded eyes unsurrounded even by the faint crinkles she increasingly saw in her own face. He looked a bit like one of her earliest crushes, David Warner in
Morgan, A Suitable Case for Treatment.

‘You’re not in costume,’ she commented, needing something to say.

‘Yes I am, child,’ he replied. ‘I’m Cary Trenton.’

She frowned, missing the reference. These people were so deeply into their world of comics and science fiction and old television.

‘The Streak?’ he prompted.

Janet was vaguely dressed as the Streak, an American hero from the 1940s who was still running. Literally; he had superspeed.

‘Well...’ Neil opened his arms and looked down at himself. He’d sloshed Jack on his jumper.

It clicked and Sally couldn’t help shivering.

‘Cary Trenton,’ she remembered. ‘The Streak’s secret identity.’

Neil made a one-sided grin and tipped whiskey into it.

‘Got it in one, Olive.’

No matter how feeble Amy McQueen was, Cary Trenton was a loser she could (and did, when they teamed up in
Dazzling Duo Stories)
look down on. A nerd
avant la lettre,
Cary had unruly hair, bottle glasses, and a habit of falling over that prevented anyone from deducing he was the superconfident and dextrous Streak.

‘Superheroes,’ Neil sneered. ‘Amazon Queen, Popeye, Dr Shade, all of ’em. Flying overhead, getting between us and the sun. Why can’t they bloody grow up?’

The stool balanced miraculously against the edge of the counter; he took a gulp and held it in his mouth, letting it seep down his throat. Sally was held, fascinated. What would she think, she wondered, if she didn’t know anything about this man?

‘Shaggin’ Streak,’ he said, flapping fingers at Janet. ‘I was at school with the bloke who draws the Streak, you know.’

Sally did know.

‘Mickey Yeo. Smart biscuit. Wasting himself.’

There were pictures of them all in the file. Dr Marling’s Grammar School for Boys, 1970-1973; Ash Grove Comprehensive, 19731975; West Somerset College, 1975-1977. In school uniforms, then clothes more antiquated than fashions of the Roaring Twenties. Grouped together, studied in seriousness or goofiness.

‘The Streak,’ he burped. ‘One whoosh and the bastard’s gone, gone, gone...’

* * *

In the dance room, a TV was on with the sound down. Running up to midnight, Clive James sprinkled wryness between news clips. Derek Leech’s face appeared, squeezed between breasts as he introduced the
Comet’s
Knock-Outs of the Year. Dancers paused to hiss; a fanboy complained that since the tabloid tycoon devoured ZC Comics, the stable of superfolk had been reduced. Amazon Queen, Sally was appalled to learn, had been sucked out of existence by a time-warp; not just killed, her whole life revoked.

A 1969 compilation rattled ancient speakers and Sally’s teeth. She bopped with the smaller Dr Shade to ‘Dizzy’ and Tamsin’s ‘Aquarius’. Dr Shade was another Leech property: a strip in his ‘heavy’ paper the
Evening Argus.
In her TV researcher days, she once stepped into a life and came face-to-face with Derek Leech. He’d not seemed fiend-like, though she gathered most horror stories about him were, if anything, understated.

Deserted by a temporary hero presumably not speeding off in a Rolls-Royce Shadowshark to combat Forces of Evil, she fended off the Fat Slags, who slam-danced to Thunderclap Newman. She was pleasantly squiffy: the music was loud enough for her not to have to talk; the Invader was at home, love-tentacles slopping out for her heart. Tomorrow, they’d go to Highgate Wood: fairy frosts and frozen trees; ten months wasn’t too early to experience the world outside the flat.

1993 approached. ‘Israelites’ was interrupted; Dolar turned up the TV sound and channel-hopped. As she stopped dancing, Sally felt muscles pop in her legs. Since the Invasion, her exercise class had lapsed. Among celebrities on Channel 4, she glimpsed the client. Was it possible to enjoy a party in front of cameras? Dolar found Big Ben: the preliminary chimes had started. Everyone linked arms and waited for the peals.

‘That’s it,’ a Fat Slag said, ‘goodbye Czechoslovakia, hello European Customs’ Union.’

Pumping arms, they remembered most of the lyrics of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. The song collapsed: Sally was kissing and being kissed by people she barely knew. She broke contact when a gorilla put a hairy glove on her bottom. Party streamers rained in the overpopulated room. The taller Dr Shade, mysterious in wide-brimmed hat and concealing goggles, delicately pressed cold lips to hers. She kept her eyes open: across the room, Neil leaned against a door-jamb, barely supported by an Amazon Queen. Sally shrugged off Dr Shade, who enveloped a Ninja girl with his cape: she considered kissing Neil but he radiated grouchiness even to the Amazon Jailbait who stuck a chaste smacker on his cheek.

Dolar, robes pungent with dope, came from behind and hugged Neil. He wished him a Zappy New Year. Neil managed a chuckle.

* * *

Within a quarter of an hour exhaustion set in. Her psychic link with the Invader gently tugged. A deadline-at-dawn, rock-around-the-clock, this-is-much-better-than-what’s-in-the-charts-nowadays, who’s-been-in-the-bog-for-an-hour?, neighbours-round-to-complain, sick-in-the-street, busted-by-the-police, joints-rolled-on-album-covers, empty-the-fridge party was shaping up. She’d do well to miss the dregs. To ‘Goo Goo Barabajagal’ she unearthed her coat.

Waving a general goodbye, she slipped out. Neil sat on a low brick wall at the boundary of the front garden, holding his head, radiating the helplessness she associated with the Invader. He lived on her route home: in Cranley Gardens, of mass-murder fame, a large bedsit partitioned into a cramped flat. She’d walked past, attentively, dozens of times.

He looked up at the skies with unfocused eyes. It would be foolish to get to know Neil Martin. He was responsible for her moderate prosperity; that she’d been able to restart her agency so soon was a fluke. Without the client’s interest in this befuddled kitchen-sitter, she’d be a single parent queuing at the Department of Social Security.

‘Olive,’ he said. ‘Had your spinach?’

He stood up, limbs not quite synchronised.

‘I’m walking down Muswell Hill Road. I’ll see you home.’

He’ll tumble, Mummy. He’ll wonder how you know where he lives. It’s suspicious.

Nonsense, darling child. When you’re older I’ll explain about hangovers. Tomorrow, he won’t remember my name.

‘You’re a heroine, Olive. Not like those supershits.’

‘Hurry up. This is a one-time offer.’

Crisp cold air cleared her mind. Neil took a moment to coordinate, a dinosaur with separate brains for knees and elbows. From observation, she knew he was like this even without a pint of Jack in him.

They crossed Archway Road and walked past the steps that led down to Highgate tube. A scattering of people were on the streets, mostly alcohol-fortified. The road, broad and well-lit, curved and dipped slightly as it threaded from Highgate to Muswell Hill, separating the forested patch of Highgate Wood from the smaller Queen’s Wood. Sally, confident there were enough huge and threatening forces in her life for her not to be bothered by ordinary dangers, walked at all hours. Dennis Nilsen, the local serial killer, had worked in the DSS, not lurked in the park.

Almost out of the wood, Muswell Hill up ahead, Cranley Gardens a turn to the right: Neil concentrated on making his legs work.

‘Got any fags?’ someone asked, quickly. Suddenly in front of Neil, standing too close.

Nearby: another young man, ungloved hands not in his pockets.

‘Cigs?’

The questioner prodded Neil’s jumper. Neil looked puzzled at the pavement. He patted his pockets.

‘Smokes?’

The questioner: jutting teeth, shell-suit. Eyes glittered, hostile. His friend: black guy, moustache wisp, oversized flat cap. Neil, half a head taller, looked sad.

‘Don’t smoke,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

The questioner jabbed. Head turning, Neil missed getting a broken nose. He folded against railings, blood blurting from a nostril. The black guy loped forward and tilted on one hip, jabbing a shoe-toe above Neil’s ear. He spun and stumbled. Sober and tense, Sally looked into the white man’s little face and made fists.

People were coming from behind, interrupting. The black guy knelt to punch Neil in the side, then pulled his friend’s sleeve. They ran off without trying to take anything or touch her. A long dark car cruised by, fanning light on the road. Fleeing shadows became spider-limbed straggles. Dr Shade in pursuit of evil-doers?

She let out steamy breath. Neil gulped porridge into the gutter. People around: Gorilla Guerillas, costumes and make-up half gone. Sergeant Grit waited for Neil to finish being sick and helped him up. A tissue wiped a rope of clear fluid from his mouth.

The gorillas apologised as if it were their fault. Once the Sergeant was sure Neil was okay, she wanted to go home and not be dragged to a cop shop. Who wanted to be detained all night, dressed as a mercenary monkey, not be able to give a decent description, for something not serious?

When the Gorillas trooped off, Sally was left with Neil. She should take him to Fortis Green Hospital. A flappy hand pressed to his face, blood smearing between his fingers, he was pliable. He followed meekly as she led him up towards Woodside Avenue. This was another New Year’s Eve she wouldn’t look back on fondly.

‘A
re we quorate?’ Mark asked.

Mickey gave an ‘aye’ and wrapped thin hands around his coffee mug for warmth. His shoulders shivered in his immobile fringed, white jacket. Despite the log fire, the country cottage froze in winter.

Michael raised a languid hand and eased himself into the best armchair. He wore last night’s tuxedo, loose tie-ends on silky lapels. He’d been chubby as a child; sleek now, he still had a fat boy’s manner.

‘Three of Four,’ Mark said, formally. ‘Most but not All. We are a Quorum.’

He pulled his forefinger cracking the knuckle. The ring, looser on him than on Michael, felt momentarily strange. As host, Mark was the new Ring. He stood in front of his fire, warmth seeping through the back of his jeans, and looked to the outgoing officer. Michael was Mark’s oldest friend; they’d met in September 1970, minutes before Neil came along, a full day before Mickey.