And the stockbroker’s clerk tipped his bowler to Clara, wished her all the bestest for the balance of the day and returned to his office with a story to tell. (But not of the shag he’d been hoping for.)
And so it came to pass that Clara, all spiffed-up and trendy-looking, found herself in Trafalgar Square.
And it was there that she looked all around and saw that things were not right. That something was in fact very wrong indeed, but that, it appeared, she was the only person who could see it.
Which is where those shadows come in.
So let us speak of them now.
36
Clara saw the shadows and she was afeared.
At first she thought it was some kind of optical illusion, or delusion, brought on by her sudden transition (via Selfridges) from subterranean prison to sunlit Trafalgar Square. But her head soon cleared itself of this thinking because a revelation was granted to her, through the medium of a voice, which whispered rather closely at her ear that she now had the gift to see them.
To see the extra shadows that were there.
The extra shadows of the men and women who passed by in that fine historic square, that was named for that great naval victory. Not all possessed them, but some. Few in fact were they, but Clara saw them. The folk who had an extra shadow. That is what she saw.
Certainly now many of us are aware of the phenomenon. It seems extraordinary today that anyone, particularly the cinema-goers to whom the phenomenon was ever on view in the movies of the day, failed to see it. Check out any Hollywood cowboy film of the late fifties and early sixties. Anything starring John Wayne, for instance. Check out the outside shots, those sunny-day gunfight scenes. Look at Mr Wayne, then look at his shadow. Or rather shadows! For he casts more than one. It’s there in almost every movie, captured on the celluloid. And Clara saw it there in Trafalgar Square, that certain folk had more than one shadow. And that these folk were wrong from the inside to the out.
Her mental-mesh was damaged indeed, and she could see more than others.
But Clara kept her alarm to herself. She did not cause a fuss, because such a fuss might well have landed her in a police cell, then a psychiatric unit, then back at the Ministry of Serendipity.
No, Clara kept her alarm very much in check. She took herself off to a well-known American-style eatery and ordered a hamburger, French chips and a Brown Derby Ice-Cream Sundae, and a cup of tea, and pondered deeply on her situation.
And she viewed the waiters and waitresses coming and going in their elegant and distinctive red and white livery. And she noted well that one of them cast more shadows than she felt was strictly necessary and determined on a plan. Because she had now become a most determined woman.
At three in the afternoon there was a change of shifts and the waiter with the surplus shadow clocked off and, like Elvis, left the building. And Clara followed this fellow.
To the Underground Station she followed him. And there he purchased a ticket and she a Red Rover, as she hadn’t seen which ticket he purchased. From there to a train and on this train, as fate would have it, back to Croydon.
Breathing God’s good air, Clara emerged from Croydon Station and followed the caster of the double shadow, who, oblivious to the fact that he was being shadowed, strode on with that air of confidence and self-assurance that is the almost exclusive preserve of waiters the whole world over.
And eventually this waiter reached the ornate gates of the Croydon Municipal Burial Ground, paused for but a moment and then entered there. And though Clara followed him closely, very soon he was gone. To where? And how? Clara did not know. But she was rattled.
And in that state of rattledness she returned home. And at the corner of the street that was her own she paused, because there ahead of her was a long black car with blackly mirrored windows. And it was parked right outside her house. And there were men dressed in black standing around in her front garden.
And one of these was talking to her husband Keith (who should surely have been at work) and Keith was wringing his hands and looked a little weepy overall.
And Clara flattened herself into a hedge of a privetty nature and realised that she was indeed in very big trouble. And was somewhat stuck as to just what to do about this.
And so she hid and she waited. And eventually the men in black returned to their black limousine and this drove away at some speed. And Clara crept down a side alleyway and along to the rear of her house, and from there into her back garden where she sneaked to the living-room window and peeped in.
And there was her husband, wringing his hands and pacing up and down. And Clara was overcome by his obvious emotions and she tapped upon the window. And her husband Keith saw her and broke into a smile and they were reunited there and then.
And Neil concluded the story there, as we sat in Club 27.
‘Hold on,’ I said to Neil. ‘That can’t be the end of the story. What else happened?’
But Neil was now dipping strawberries into a bowl of cocaine.
‘Come on,’ I said, reaching for a strawberry and giving it a dip. ‘That can’t be the end of the story. What has it got to do with Shadow Night at Club Twenty-Seven?’
Neil chucked a strawberry down his throat. ‘Oh, all right,’ said he. And carried on.
Clara’s husband Keith made a pot of tea for his wife, and at length he joined her in the lounge room. Clara was a bit sobby and sniffy now, what with the emotional reunion and all that had gone before it, and her husband poured her tea and asked her to tell him everything. Because, as he told her, the men in black who had visited had told him she had died.
And so Clara told him everything.
And Keith listened to this everything with a perplexed expression on his normally cheery chops. And when Clara had done with the telling of everything, he reclined back in the Parker Knoll Recliner [19] and said, ‘By golly, by gosh.’
‘By what?’
‘By golly?’
‘Golly, where?’
‘Not here.’ And husband Keith patted the wrist of his wife and told her that this was a right old pickle, as well as being a fine kettle of fish and a rum one, to be sure. And then he took to thinking. And then he said, ‘Wait here.’
And he went upstairs and rummaged about. And then he returned, bearing in his hands his old service revolver, which he had been allowed to keep at the end of the Second World War, as a gift from a grateful officer-in- command for the many valorous deeds that the then Private Keith had performed that were above and beyond the call of duty. And he showed this service revolver to his wife.
And his wife was further alarmed by this display of hand armament. Although also strangely comforted. And she asked her husband Keith what his intentions were concerning the deployment of this weapon.
And husband Keith twirled it upon his finger, as John Wayne was wont to do in the movies. And he told his wife that it would put an end to their particular problems.
And then he aimed it at Clara’s head and pulled the trigger.
And the last thing that she noticed, before all-encompassing blackness closed in about her, was that the raised arm of her husband cast two shadows.
And Neil dipped once more into the strawberry bowl.
‘No, no, no,’ I said to Neil. ‘Although very good in an Outer Limits kind of a way, that still doesn’t explain Club Twenty-Seven’s Shadow Night. Or much else when it comes right down to it.’
‘Well, there is another version,’ said Neil, who now seemed to be growing rather animated.
