“Come on mate, let’s do what we can.”
A man in a blue boiler suit was directing the salvage, trying to recognise which parts belonged to whom. He spoke matter of factly: they go with Josh (a pair of little feet still laced into sandals), I think that’s Betty Rae (an arm with some shoulder), no idea (some charred ribs) put ‘em with the lost souls. Donald and Bartram searched down in the crater. Donald found some fingers, splinters of bone, a bottom jaw taken off clean with the tongue and several shards of brutally torn steel. Bartram informed him these were fragments of artillery shells, known as shrapnel. Now it was clear how bodies got sliced to pieces and flung in all directions.
The crater was deeper than Donald was tall, covering roughly the area of a squash court. Beyond that was a greater extent blasted flat, then an outer fringe of buildings with only damage to the upper floors. In such a compressed mass of habitation, he guessed at least ten families had been wiped out by this one shell. From what he gathered listening, at least a dozen shells had hit the asylum. There were bitter jokes that not one had hit a factory. Gold kisses gold, how fucking typical, were common reactions. Donald helped carry the remains out to the plaza and up towards the tents and stalls of the market at the top end.
They worked their way to the front of a silent crowd beside one of the marquee tents. Human remains had been laid out over an area the size of a gymnasium. The gang put down their load of pieces at the edge and made the area a little bigger. Donald stared at it all, at a naked child, headless, scorched like grilled meat, a pregnant women, her body ruptured by blast so that the head of the foetus showed. A heap of guts, brains hanging out—these were normal. Men and women roamed amongst the remains, trying to keep the seagulls off, without much success. A siren wound up through the scales behind him. Then another and another, until there was wailing all around. Gouts of workers in coloured overalls poured from the gates around the plaza and flowed up towards the marquee tent, swelling into such a mass as Donald, who was tall enough to see across it, could scarcely believe. The crowd was like a restless lake. Currents flowed in to look at the remains and then swirled back out to the middle. From talk around him, he learned that the Saturday morning shift had run as usual—these were workers released for the afternoon. All his senses told him that he, as a ‘toff’, would get a rough time if he opened his mouth. They might even kill him. The pistols inside his raincoat would not hold off a mob. A fury was building. Someone shouted “Death to the dogs!”, a roar echoed off the chimneys. “Death to the sovereigns!”, another roar. At school, he had read about masses like this during the Glorious Resolution. They became human storms, tearing whole cities apart. He thought about Sarah-Kelly. Attractive young women would be gang-raped.
“People of Brent Cross,” spoke a voice from the air. The crowd froze, silent, mystified, looking around at the clouds and the surrounding factories as if one of them had spoken. “My name is Vasco Banner, I am the leader of the National Party.”
Where the crowd washed against the end of the marquee tent, a pole lifted into view carrying a flag. It was an orange circle on a forest green background. Donald easily recognised the close-cropped white hair and lean form of Vasco Banner balancing on the shoulders of two men, using the flag pole to brace himself. The voice, Donald could now see, came from a loud speaker of the same tuba shape as used by the glory troopers at Ladbroke fort. Quite possibly the devices were manufactured here in the asylum.
“I have been passed a message delivered an hour ago to the mayor of this asylum. It was issued by the General Wardian glory trust. I shall read it to you. ‘This morning our Naclaski stations traced radio emissions to a location within Brent Cross asylum. As warning shots have failed to deter this flouting of the law, we hit the source of the broadcasts, which ceased. Let it be hoped that Brent Cross will maintain control of its citizens from now on’.”
Vasco Banner paused, drawing out the fury of the crowd.
“Today marks a new depravity in the standards of the dogs.”
The crowd growled with anger.
“Here I have a declaration sealed by every factory owner of this asylum.” He held up a sheet of vellum from which the ribbons of the factory owners’ seals dangled like coloured seaweed. “This is what it says. ‘We seal our trust in the National Party’.” He let the implication sink in. “The old feud of capital and labour is finished. Now we are one. Solidarity, unity, nation.”
The chant caught. Solidarity. Unity. Nation. The slogan of the long-extinct SUN Party roared again! Thousands of fists across the lake pulsed as one. Donald’s was one of them. Isolated far from the servile affectations of decent society, his mind inflamed with excitement. He swam an ocean of minds as outraged as his. Yet he also looked down upon himself, fist high, boxing a future in which this moment must always
