The destination of this flow was Camden industrial asylum. His fellow flow displayed immense variety in their reactions to the sack of the glory train. Some laughed and replayed the begging and death agonies of the young troopers killed, others held their silence or even yelled back vituperation that slaughter of innocents was the work of glory crooks. Several fights broke out. Amid all this confrontation, no one paid the slightest notice of the big, dirty labouring type in their midst. He looked and smelled just like the lower orders of their own type. The flow passed under the white poles and gun barrels of the armoured cars’ Long 75s at the end of the turnpike—the ultramarine gatekeepers watched from the terrace of their blockhouse, all benign, now and again exchanging a wave with friends out in the flow. They knew well they must remain in good standing with the mob.
Lawrence walked on deeper into the asylum, feeling rising confidence. He was through the toll and safely inside a place where he could merge against the natural throng of hive activity. Or, so he believed. He had never been inside an industrial asylum before. Indeed, he knew almost nothing of geography outside the Grande Enceinte. He had never served in Old Greater London. By his own preference, he had sought postings as far as possible from home. That was one reason he spent over three years living up on the edge of the world in Oban.
He knew from Sarah-Kelly that North Kensington basin lay adjacent the Ladbroke Grove and White City forts of the Grande Enceinte. White City fort stood at the north-west corner of the Central Enclave. Ergo, he knew the rough direction from Camden asylum to North Kensington basin. What he did not know was the route. Was there a public drain by which he could avoid the ultramarine turnpikes? He did not know. Further, it would be dangerous to ask a stranger such a question unless he had a most fine reason for doing so. He had no such reason.
The flow was steadily dissipating around him such that he no longer felt the cover of being in a thick flow. As he moved deeper into the asylum, so the flow dispersed into the dense warren of side lanes threading amongst the brick and wooden toy houses in which the population lived. He finally came to a long stretch of wide open and empty road running beside a complex of black wooden buildings. They were the largest constructions he had ever encountered in his life—that included St Paul’s Cathedral of the Central Enclave. Innumerable sooty brick chimneys sprouted amongst the sheds. Clearly this was a factory. It must have shut while its workers were off attacking the glory train. Indeed, as he continued with a diffident manner, self-conscious that he was now walking alone, he approached a pair of cast iron arched gates as big as those of a canal lock, bearing the establishment’s name: Chance and Buckley Industries. He recognised it. This factory manufactured and refurbished trucks for General Wardian.
A conflict of instincts paralysed him. He possessed a smattering of street know-how from his early years with General Wardian as a trooper. He had shared his late teen years with lads mostly drawn from industrial asylums like this one. From this background, he knew strangers were not welcome in asylums. Strangers were thieves, keen-eyed carrion on the hunt to snatch vital tools honest folk needed for their living. Strangers were wreckers from radical groups, social vandals, the enemies of all respectable folk. Already a burly tough with a stave was peering through the bars of the gates at him. The tough was joined by another. They glared at him. Lawrence turned and retreated along his route, to find four more faces staring at him from lanes leading into the workers’ districts.
He adopted an apologetic, hasty manner, as if he had day-dreamed his way off a route he knew too well to pay attention to. It was essential to keep moving, to present the impression of bustling intent. He must suppress the urge to take cover down one of these lanes. Workers’ districts were savagely intolerant of strange faces. Any visitor had to (politely) make plain their business to the first person they met, else risk a tickle from a crowbar.
He acted out his haste along empty streets, passed from stare to glare to threatening step forward. The street opened out onto an area of gravel and weeds about as big as a rugby pitch, which is to say, it was large enough to feel like an ant crawling across white paper without being so extensive as to swallow a lone man. The lone man was on a stage, frowned upon by a scathing audience of windows and lanes and more black sheds. Evidently Wednesday was not market day in Camden industrial asylum. Fear was starting to gain a hold over him. The exit from the far side of market place led straight to the toll of a turnpike. He could see the pole blocking the way and black ultras strolling about killing time. The sight so frightened him that on raw instinct he dived off to the left into a lesser street. It wound about amongst the toy houses, getting narrower. The air smelled of cramped domestic life: fried onions, fresh bread, boiled cabbage, smoke, latrine buckets, carbolic soap. The fresh bread in particular tortured his starving guts. These were homely, clean, hard-working people, the bedrock of humble decency. Their world was home, work, marketplace, neighbourly chat and home again. They eyed the passing
