The Midnight Mayor

“I think Nair understood that cities change.”

Earle was silent as he contemplated this. Then he shook his head, almost sadly. “Would you like to hear my theory?” he asked. “I’ve been thinking about it too, of course. We all have, all the Aldermen, all the ones who seemed more qualified.”

I shrugged.

“I think . . .” He took a deep breath, as if perhaps this was too important to bungle. “I think that Nair made you Midnight Mayor in order to eliminate a threat.”

“Mr Pinner?”

“No. Well — Mr Pinner too. But another threat, possibly one even worse.”

“Which is?”

“You.”

“I’m confused.”

“You. I think Nair made you Midnight Mayor in order to force you to take responsibility, to make you become involved, to drive you to take a side and fight for it. I think he did it to control you, to bind you, to curse you with this office. I think he did it to eliminate the threat of the blue electric angels.”

We stared at him long and hard, too surprised to say anything. He let us stare, then smiled a real smile, cruel and dry. “If you can’t beat them . . .”

“We don’t believe that.”

“That doesn’t matter, does it? What matters, is whether Nair believed it. And there, I fear, is something we’ll never know.”

We didn’t speak. He let out a great, tummy-clenching sigh, and stood up sharply, his leather shoes snapping against the polished floor. “Still, none of this is really to the point, is it? You want to know about the inauguration, how to survive? The answer is I can’t really tell you. It’s always different for each new Mayor. Being, as they are, just a man with a brand on the hand. I know it has to be done, in order for the transfer of office to be complete. And if you are going to survive any more encounters with Mr Pinner, I suggest you take every advantage presented to you.”

“What do I need to do?” A voice that might have been ours, somewhere a long way off.

“You have to walk the old city walls, seal the gates against evil.”

“That’s not just unhelpful, it’s pretentiously vague.”

“It’s what it says on the cards.”

“And how do I do that?”

“I don’t entirely know. Not being, myself, Midnight Mayor.”

“I’m a sorcerer, not a Jedi.”

“Is that something you tell yourself in times of doubt?”

“It’s something a religious nutcase pointed out to me in a moment of prophetic insight.”

He shrugged. “I can only hold your hand so far. You’ll work it out.”

“You’re really not much use, are you?”

He treated me to the crocodile smile. “May the Force be with you,” he said, and gave me a Vulcan V for good luck. And then his smile almost became a chuckle. “No one else is.”

Afternoon melted into evening.

Evening asked night if it was free for a coffee.

Night sheepishly went in search of its dancing shoes, having left them somewhere behind the spotlights.

The orange glow of urban darkness slithered over the sky.

We ate Thai fish cakes with sweet and sour sauce.

We felt a bit better.

We ordered more food.

Pad Thai noodles with chicken, lemon and crushed peanuts.

We felt a lot better.

The smiling waitress at the restaurant, a small place shimmering in soft candlelit cleanliness on Exmouth Market, asked us if we wanted anything more.

We thought about it, and said yes. Anything with a theme of coconut.

The evening passed on by nicely.

We almost managed to forget.

That special, subtle “almost”, that drives the fear out of the stomach, leaves only a few claws scratching away at the junction of small and large intestine.

We went to the toilet more often than was our inclination.

We had no reason to believe that there was a God, but if he/she/it existed, it had a sick sense of the silly.

Time passed.

Can time take its time?

It did tonight.

Then, just when I was getting used to its saunter, it started to jog, and my Alderman watcher/carer/guardian/assassin said, “We have to go.”

They took me by car to the base of London Bridge. They unloaded me in the bus lane on the south side, and sped off, citing traffic regulations. The tin shed of London Bridge station squatted behind, the yellow towers of Southwark Cathedral across the other side of the street. It was midnight in London, and the city was taking its time, or maybe time was taking it. The wind carried the sound of the bells of St Paul’s as they banged out the hour. Behind HMS Belfast, Tower Bridge was lit up in dangling red and green lights. The Tower of London sat squat and orange, like an angry garden gnome in the family too long to care that it was now cracked and ugly. The black lamp-posts along the river, stretching out past Butler’s Wharf, were hung with shining white bulbs; the grey concrete of London Bridge was lit up with shimmering pinks and purples the entire span of its length.

I took a deep breath of clear Thames air.

It made me feel cooler inside, sharper on the edges, drove the weariness out of my eyes and the lead from my brain. They say yogis can live a whole day on just one breath. If it was the breath of the river of the city they loved, then I can see how it might work.

Earle had said: magic is life.

He’d got it only slightly wrong.

The rest of what he’d said seemed, to our mind, utter bollocks.

I started walking.

Or maybe, we should call it processing.

Whatever that walk was that the Midnight Mayor did, I did it that night.

Second Interlude: The Inauguration of Matthew Swift

In which various dead things make their point, the ethics of urban planning come under scrutiny, and a new Midnight Mayor learns some important lessons about some old ideas.

The Lord Mayor, when he gets inaugurated on that cold, drizzling November evening, doesn’t just get cocktail sausages — he gets champagne, pineapple, cheese on sticks and someone to hold the umbrella.

So much for perks of office.

I wondered, as I walked across London Bridge, trailing my fingers along the railing and watching the water gush and slide beneath me, if Earle was just holding out on the cocktail sausages as a matter of principle. The life of Midnight Mayor seemed a precarious one, obtained for the most part after years of questionable service. And to be Midnight Mayor and face various unnatural and, in my case, unkillable dangers, all of which seemed out to get you, thank you kindly, without even a piece of pineapple on a stick as a reward, seemed . . .

. . . unnatural.

Which was probably the point.

So much for the ruthless application of reason.