Excerpt of The Water Room by Christopher Fowler
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1
A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER
Arthur Bryant looked out over London and remembered.
Fierce sunlight swathed Tower Bridge beyond the rockeries of smouldering
bomb-sites. A Thames sailing barge was arriving in the Pool of London
with a cargo of palm kernels. Its dusty red sails sagged in the
afternoon heat as it drifted past Broadway Dock at Limehouse, like a
felucca on the Nile. Dairy horses trotted along the deserted Embankment,
empty milk cans chiming behind them. Children swam from the wharves
below St Paul's, while carping mothers fanned away stale air from the
river steps. He could smell horse dung and tobacco, meadow grass, the
river. The world had once moved forward in single paces.
The vision wavered and vanished, displaced by sun-flares from the sealed
glass corridors of the new city.
The old man in the unravelling sepia scarf waited for the rest of the
party to gather around him. It was a Saturday afternoon at the start of
October, and London's thirteen-week heatwave was about to end with a
vengeance. Already, the wind had changed direction, stippling the
surface of the river with grey goose-pimples. Above the spire of St
Paul's, patulous white clouds deepened to a shade reminiscent of
overwashed socks. The enervating swelter was giving way to a cool
breeze, sharp in the shadows. The change had undermined his group's
stamina, reducing their numbers to a handful, although four polite but
puzzled Japanese boys had joined thinking they were on the Jack the
Ripper tour. Once everyone had settled, the elderly guide began the last
section of his talk.
'Ladies and gentlemen . . .' He gave them the benefit of the doubt. 'If
you would care to gather a little closer.' Arthur Bryant raised his
voice as a red wall of buses rumbled past. 'We are now standing on
Blackfriars—formerly Pitt—Bridge.' Remember to use the hands, he told
himself. Keep their interest. 'Bridges are causeways across great
divides, in this case the rich city on the north side—'hand usage to
indicate north—'and the more impoverished south side. Does anyone have a
Euro note in their pocket? Take it out and you'll find a bridge, the
universal symbol for something that unites and strengthens.' He paused,
less for effect than to catch his breath. Bryant really had no need to
freelance as a city tour guide. His detective duties at the London
Peculiar Crimes Unit would have kept a man half his age working late.
But he enjoyed contact with the innocent public; most of the civilians
he met in his day job were under criminal suspicion. Explaining the city
to strangers calmed him down, even helped him to understand himself.
He pulled his ancient scarf tighter and abandoned his set text. What the
hell, they were the last group of the season, and had proven pretty
unresponsive. 'According to Disraeli,' he announced, ' "London is a
nation, not a city." "That great cesspool into which all the loungers of
the Empire are irresistibly drained," said Conan Doyle. "No duller
spectacle on earth than London on a rainy Sunday afternoon," according
to De Quincey, so take your pick. One of the planet's great
crossing-points, it has more languages, religions and newspapers than
any other place on earth. We divide into tribes according to age,
wealth, class, race, religion, taste and personality, and this diversity
breeds respect.' Two members of the group nodded and repeated the word
'diversity', like an Oxford Street language class. God, this lot's hard
work, thought Bryant. I'm gasping for a cup of tea.
Excerpted
from The Water Room by Christopher Fowler Copyright © 2005 by
Christopher Fowler. Excerpted by permission of Bantam, a division of
Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be
reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the
publisher.
