He was surprised at the jealous ache that suffused him, for the time his daughter must have spent with the pictures, then sneered at himself, Why? You were hardly clamouring for her attention at the time, were you?
Exhausted and enervated, he’d entered a kind of fugue state, aware of the pattern of every manhole cover, the thin shadows cast by the naked branches of every tree. Beth’s paintings had been hidden in the random jumble of Hackney’s mass of graffiti like code words in a cipher text, but now he knew how to decrypt her. There were places where the pictures were more numerous, places where he’d felt her presence more strongly, and he’d followed those feelings like a pilgrim.
Eventually the trail dead-ended at the fenced-off abandoned railway. He had threaded his fingers through the wire loops and gazed blankly up the length of the tracks, to where they disappeared into the tunnel under the main road, when he had spotted one of the stones between the sleepers had been painted with a tiny, stylised black rabbit, scurrying into its burrow.
Paul had smiled, wedged his toe into the fence and started to climb.
Inside the tunnel he’d found a torch, still working. When he’d switched it on and seen the pictures he’d swayed a little on his feet — so many fragments of Beth’s mind — but none of it meant anything to him. In that moment of panic, an impossible distance seemed to stretch between them…
He remembered fretting when she’d been late learning to talk, lying awake, imagining his daughter grown but still emitting the same baby-gurgles, trying to work out how he’d cope if he couldn’t talk to her. Marianne had laughed at him, but his fear had felt so real.
And now, here in this strange deserted tunnel, there was so much violence in the shapes on the walls, as though Beth had discharged all her anger into the bricks. Here was a black bull charging, there a snake coiled around a clarinet, and skeletons and stars and butterflies danced across mountain-ranges, and Marianne.
He exhaled hard, as though he’d been punched. Marianne, his wife, Beth’s mother, appeared over and over again, smudged and pale as a ghost.
The other graffiti was a garden of bright neon dreams, and amongst it, the white chalk lines that brought Marianne to life were so unassuming that he’d almost missed her — he would never have believed that, but he’d missed her.
He looked again at the charging animals and flying planets and soldiers and monsters, and this time he saw the battles Beth had fought, the world she’d escaped into, and the memory, etched in chalk, that haunted it.
He reached into his jacket pocket and his fingers brushed paper. He pulled out a crumpled paperback from his inner pocket. Yes, he understood.
He exhaled hard into the tunnel’s chill. ‘Beth,’ he began, ‘I’m so-’ Then he stopped and bit the apology back. When he said sorry, he promised himself, he’d make sure she heard it. He looked up at one of the chalk sketches of Marianne and swallowed.
‘I’ll find her,’ he said. This time his voice didn’t waver. He knew he wasn’t the first person to have spoken to that image of Beth’s mother, and warmth spread through him. For the first time since she’d disappeared he felt like he understood a little bit of the girl who had drawn her, over and over again, in this dark, safe place.
He turned off the torch and started for the mouth of the tunnel. His wife’s chalk gaze watched him go. Despite the tiredness settling like silt in his limbs, he found he could manage a shambling run. He had a lot of ground to cover in his search for fresh paint.
CHAPTER 35
‘Is this sign of her favour enough to satisfy you, Stonewing?’ Gutterglass’ speech was oddly formal. ‘Our Lady of the Streets has sent her most trusted warriors to herald her arrival.’
They were gathered inside a shuttered ice-cream stall in the middle of the park. Ezekiel had knelt in front of his prince as soon as he’d landed, leaving his stone robe riven with cracks. Beth guessed that the gesture of respect was as much for the threadbare tabby Fil was petting as for the Street-Prince himself.
‘It is. It surely is.’ Ezekiel couldn’t stop staring at Fleet, and his voice was hoarse with awe. ‘And I do heartily repent of my impertinence to you, Highness. My lack of faith — it was a sin.’ He hesitated, then bowed his head again. ‘I will willingly — willingly — undertake any penance your Highness sees fit to-’
‘His Highness’ held up a hand to silence the Pavement Priest. He glanced sideways at the teetering form of Gutterglass, and then at Beth, who shrugged. He looked deeply uncomfortable. ‘Get up,’ he said at last.
Ezekiel creaked to his feet in a shower of stone chips.
‘Get out,’ Fil said.
Ezekiel began to protest, but he was cut off.
‘Get over it.’
When he had clunked from the room, Gutterglass murmured, ‘Well, that was abrupt.’
‘It was embarrassing, is what it was,’ Fil snapped. ‘And I don’t know what he thought he was apologising for; he was right, I was being an idiot. Saying sorry for calling me on it is just bollocks.’
Gutterglass’ eggshell-eyes squeezed shut: a silent prayer for patience. ‘Be that as it may,’ he said then, ‘it was not appropriate of him to show you disrespect. You are the object of his devotion…’
‘ I am not — my mother is.’
Gutterglass gazed at him dispassionately. ‘You bear her name. You bear her blood. You bear her worshippers.’
A frustrated breath streamed from Fil’s nostrils. ‘Right.’
Rats’ tails poked out from under Gutterglass’ shoulder blades as he leaned to peer out of the door after Ezekiel. ‘Are you sure you can’t be persuaded to dole out at least some token punishment to Stonewing?’ he asked. ‘After all, he is a zealot. Without chastisement he’ll probably feel cheated.’
Fil shook his head firmly and Gutterglass sighed and bowed. A dozen chittering bodies bore him from the room like a kind of furry conveyor belt.
‘Thames’ sake!’ He slid to the floor and dropped his head into his hands. Fleet coiled into his lap and began to mewl comfortingly. Beth sat beside him and slid an arm around him. She still felt a little jumpy at the proximity of his skin.
‘You okay?’ she asked.
‘I’m a God. Doesn’t that mean I have to be?’ His lips curled upwards, but it wasn’t a smile.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘Nothing to talk about,’ he said, ‘but — this — something’s not right, whatever Glas says. “Herald her arrival”? You never see the Cats without their Mistress — it’s never been heard of, not since Fleet disappeared after her decades ago. This is not how it’s supposed to go, know what I mean?’
Beth looked at him. He wore an expression she recognised: he’d never admit it, but he was scared. He was struggling to thread together a story, to make some excuse for why he was facing this all alone without a parent to shield him.
Not for the first time, Beth felt a surge of anger towards the absent Goddess. She took a deep breath and gave him the only answer that had ever made her feel better. ‘You don’t need her,’ she said. ‘We’ll do better without her.’
He rubbed his eyes, and then looked around. ‘Thames and rotting riverfish and bugger it,’ he declared. As he stood up and squared his shoulders, Fleet bounded from his lap. ‘Let’s get on with it, then.’
‘Get on with what?’ she asked.
‘Getting this damn circus on the move. If they want a God, I’ll show ’em one, but I don’t think they’re goin’ to like it much.’
The Lampfolk hadn’t even set foot on the bridge when the first fight broke out. A full-hipped Sodiumite girl moved towards the Thames. Rather than walk, she floated ostentatiously an inch off the ground on her fields, fibre-optic hair streaming, a show of strength to the Whities she thought so contemptible. Behind her, white and yellow lights stood in separate groups on the pavement. Her kindred jabbered, nervous of the river, but this girl had a spark of pride in her and she would not be cowed.
The incessant flashing bickering dimmed for a moment and there was a sense of held breath as Blankleits and Sodiumites alike watched her in silence. The bridge’s vast suspension cables stretched in taut triangles before
