1
The Beginning of Things
It was the night of the first great storm; the lobster boats strained in their moorings, giant wicker pots jostled on their decks in smelly towers and steel rigging clattered and clanged about them. Thunderous bells echoed around the purple bay and hull-cracking waves sent clods of grey foam up into the air like demented balloons. Suds blew along the beach like visitors from another world.
Mabel Crudmeyer, who made the worst tangerine jam in Blebsbury, sat hunched over her crochet kit examining her latest pink and blue extravaganza. “Mark my words, Albert,” she mumbled. “This weather is bringing in the dead from Toils Bay. I can feel it me waters. It’s a wreckers’ night alright, and they’ll be out among them giddy fishes sorting the poor souls from the kelp and bringing back the measure of the storm for us. The dead are rising, Albert, and they’re coming for us.” She bent forward to eye a knobbed pink stitch. Albert lifted his head, which looked exactly like an old potato and peered over his wire-rimmed specs. “Oh shut up, you clanking old boiler! This night is the same as any bloomin’ other. Nothing’s coming for us, except my final salary pension, and we collect that next week. There’s no room for doom merchants and crackpot prophets in the modern world, Mabel, no room at all. You mark my words; the only thing this storm is bringing is a large pile of planning applications. Every council house in the Clepp Estate will be scribbling down illiterate plans for concrete conservatories and stone cladding, drawing up blueprints for their breakfast verandas to spread across the tarpaulin-strewn roof of every extension. Storm damage means planning, and planning means Clepp. One week more of it, and then we’re off to sunny Clumpsford and that’ll be the end of it. Thirty years of saying ‘no.’”
Out on the spit, the red cabin lights of each vessel went out, leaving only the bar lights and chintzy warmth of the Dun Pig Inn to illuminate the flint walls of the esplanade, its tiny leaded panes glinting with medieval pastiche. Inside, its walls were littered with giant mounted fish and distressed harpoons which had never touched the waters of Toils Bay, nor indeed the waters of any part of the globe. It was the worst storm of the year and in the heart of it something sea-rusted, barnacled and articulated began to stretch its great limbs and reach forward among the sand and pebbles. Not quite sorting the souls of the dead from the dark fronds, but lifting its craggy bulk up from the silted harbour to begin its silent deliberations.
Up above, huge waves sent gulls and cormorants flying from the ledges of the cliffs in white squalls and squeals, circling upwards into the green ribs of the storm. All along the river mouth, the ships’ rigging hung like matted hair as the rains combed through. The docks glistened like a quartz cave and the weather grew steadily worse.
Farther up the coast, a little way past Spiggot’s Cove, in the grey muscle and concrete of the quays and jetties, trawlers and ferries opened up their sour bellies to the downpour, while cranes hung over them like enraptured surgeons. No one knew what was about to peer through the foaming waters and climb slowly out.
* * *
Every house and flat in the Clepp Estate turned its satellite dishes up towards Thanet Moor, perhaps listening to the seething planets far above the red and black gorse and heather, and between the wild stars of space and the cringing town and harbour below, the monstrous anvil of a storm cloud swirled round and round, flashing with blue white sheets of light. Rains rushed over the moorland and hill tops, over the ancient chalk carvings of the Wolf Pack, past the warehouses and lock-ups, the canals and viaducts, and on into the very centre of the town.
The tallest of Blebsbury’s buildings creaked in the wind, murmuring of beginnings and endings, and shook their cold bones. Each chrome office block breathed out a white plume which swept suddenly off from the air-conditioning pipes up into the wild darkness like ghosts escaping some desk-bound torment. Perhaps this was indeed the ghost-breath of the corporate headquarters of Fadden’s Frozen Foods or V. S. Singh’s Motorised Lump Hammers, whatever it was, it spread out in chasing wisps over the remains of the traffic.
Soon the motorway from Belkinsdale would fall silent, sliding its black tongue into the ocean of the land, where it drank up all the tench and turbot and filled its silly roundabouts with crabs and cuttlefish. Even the A roads and B roads, would pour their last cars and trucks into the blank fathoms of the valley. The world was emptying itself out it seemed, and all routes and all weather travelled to Blebsbury. It was the very top and bottom of the storm.
Out on the smoking sea bed, below the heaving weathers, the great beast climbed the coastal shelf; it was darker than the clouds above, darker than the dripping fields with their squat tractors. It was cunning, with a heart the size of a camper van, its metal chambers pounding with ideas, and one idea in particular, the idea of children and their dreams.
* * *
As humans do, they slept through it all, missing the virtues and horrors of the tempest at its height, not hearing the soggy cats fighting over the larder of each dustbin, nor the dogs barking at paving stones and sideboards as daft dogs do, poor things.
Now some adults can dream of iced buns and beer, and some can dream of soaring naked flights over the clustered allotments, or even of black pudding sandwiches with plum sauce, but Albert dreamed of The Procedure, because Albert loved The Procedure, loved it, in fact, as poets loved the turtle-green hills or charcoal-black rivers. He obeyed its orderly call and imagined that sheep and pigs and chickens and all sensible decent folk would muster to its designs and occasions, longing for the certainties of clerical precision. For Albert, all time sauntered through The Procedure, like a vast recipe for cabbage soup, and every single ingredient had its unique preparation and its own special purpose in the long history of cabbage soup endeavours.
The Procedure was the way the world should work, indeed would work if Albert had had his way, especially the world of the Blebsbury Town Council, and everyone, including the Ludges on Great Thompson Street, and especially Oscar Ludge, the stinky old rebel, would abide by the Rules and Regulations of The Procedure, or else the world would disintegrate into a great pneumatic splurge of inappropriate building and, of course, be overrun by Ludge’s blasted scooters.
But for now, in the black teeth of the night, the town of Blebsbury became one colossal drum, such as the old colliery band once battered on feast days, or celebrations of the monarchy, or industrial glory, all long faded into memory like tea cards and threepenny bits. Still, the oak trees hung onto the dripping land, waving their fat arms through the night, covering their eyes and ears as the dark air swelled and tormented them, and tore at their clothes to leave them naked by midnight.
It was 3 a.m., and the bare land stared back into the storm, rigid, rinsed and worn. It was at this precise moment, as the blue haddock clock on the old Town Hall struck its third note that the giant storm wolf appeared on the edge of Link Pyke. It moved out through the drifting skirts of rain like some scrapheap dinosaur, more beautiful and preposterous, its great iron flanks crusted and orange like a ship wreck. He crossed the swollen River Bleb close to the willow trees on Isaac’s Field and began his journey down. He clanked and grinded past St Cripplemaker’s graveyard, long grown foreign with indifference. He banged and hammered through Burke’s Farm with its deaf horses and pylons. He groaned and chimed through the Nevis industrial estate, stopping to peer at the peculiar towers of surveillance cameras. He crossed the last fords and weirs and finally stepped into the town of Blebsbury at Castle Hill, and there he stopped, silent in his tracks. He had arrived at the very beginning of things, motionless for now, like a vast gantry or oil derrick outside Albert Crudmeyer’s terraced home, with its barley-brown veranda and crochet work on every sill.
The metal wolf observed his new domain, the breath stung in his chest, black oil rushed through his great orange legs, his huge tail hung above the parked cars like some rusting conifer. Everything about the wolf was listening, every rivet and every bolt, down to the great, jointed claws. He tapped the asphalt to hear to the echoes ring between the houses, as blankets of water swept this way and that down to Bint’s Arcade with its boarded-up shops and posters and painted galleon motifs.
The wolf turned his great ears, like two enormous metal tents, turned them slowly forward to hear the town’s people snoring, listening farther and deeper into the very dreams of each home. He listened to the cosy crumpled children in their soft beds, heard them breathing beside broken wardrobes and the turrets of pets and laundry. Yes, here he was at the very beginning, ready to sit out the worst storm in Blebsbury’s history, about to make a start on things outside Albert Crudmeyer’s well-planned home, with its For Sale sign bent over in the wind.
* * *
Not everyone was sleeping of course; but the butchers were sleeping, the tattooed night watchmen, and the security guards and shelf-stackers from Modcon’s, the conniving police officers, too, and the armed forces out on manoeuvres in the chalk pits. On they slept, lost in the longest, dankest sleep of their lives. A sleep so intense and problematical that it led them through dreams of thorn forests into black barns and the madness of owls, on into the heart of the carbon city, past isolated car parks and topographic wasteland, until it reached the tarred brick arches of the railway station holding their secrets of destinations and departures. But, as every sleeper knew, every track would inevitably lead to Blebsbury by morning, with its history of pottery and fish paste, piracy and lump hammers and, of course, municipal planning applications. There they would sleep, among the ghostly carriages until the storm broke and the grass would shine clear again beyond the council flats and school yards, and the air would deliver its message of appalling wolf-packed futures.
No, not everyone was asleep; teachers were still bent over their daily marking like court clerks or monks, chewing their nails. Dentists counted their horror of lips, watching the candlewick bedspread squirm above their thin knees. A few remaining vicars counted their adjudications, staring into absence. And Myrtle Tweed lay looking at her ceiling rose unable to close her eyes for the fourth night this week. She was waiting for her seventh Fantastic Birthday and the certainty of receiving her first Gussy Pony, fresh in its box of forest tinsel and fairy glitter, and she would never share it with anyone, least of all Bony Bridget from Miss Timple’s class. She lay and watched the plastic stars on her coving panels glow with troubled light as the room howled and thumped with the weather. She lay and planned her great day in every iridescent detail, including the cooking of the Imperial Princess Indulgence Cake, for which she had bought a dozen packets of fig rolls, six boxes of midget gems, a box of hundreds and thousands and, to cap it all, eight pints of Birds custard.
As Myrtle slumped considering the very many trestle tables and flowers, her curtains swept up to show the sleeping tenements and fishermen’s cottages, and on the horizon the great iron wreck of the wolf. He leaned forward to lick the roof tops which shone under the boiling clouds. He slavered as he listened to all the idle dreams running on the wind; rolling each fresh insight around his cavernous head. He learned of special moves and game cheats in Ginger Baldyke’s Criminal Blitz, he garnered information about the golden wrappers and prizes that came with Cadbury’s Chocolate Apes. Indeed, dreams were more wondrous than storms.
There he stood and waited, until the first thin slivers of light appeared in the east. The egg-yellow threads, the soft lilac blotches opening out under a pewter sun. Soon the first windows lit up, and heavy curtains were snatched apart to show white nets and cerise glass vases. A few sparrows bolted for a breakfast of pavement-stranded worms, and the first doors lifted their latches and creaked open on to the street.
* * *
Albert ran his hand over his measled head and fussed with the few remaining strands of hair, he stepped out of the hall, fumbling with his wool tie, yawning and puffing in the chilly air of 5 a.m. He locked the deadbolt, and peered through the dimpled glass to check the stairwell. He felt for his wallet, patting his bottom, pulled out his car keys, and turned around to walk to his car. At that moment he stopped dead, vacantly blinking into the thin air of Bulmer Street. He took a step back and looked up. His mouth opened at an odd angle, showing his speckled teeth and a little bit of sausage and egg, still lodged from breakfast. He stared at the latest addition to the street. There before him was a giant paw parked beside his Escort, like an enormous rusting van. He raised his head, and a string of saliva ran from his mouth. He raised his head higher, and higher still, until in the lemon light he saw the pointed head of the iron wolf, like a rusting barge in the sky, hanging motionless.
“Great stoking furnaces! It’s bloody public art! What daft fool put this here! It’s not on, not on at all, there was no consultation. There’ll be an outcry; there was no mention of it at the Council offices. There’ll be fifty Remedial Action Forms to fill in for this. I’d better ring the planning office straight away. Blazing crab burgers! Street art in Blebsbury, whatever next! Just wait till I tell Dorothy and Sylvia over in Arts Admin. Sparks will fly. No planning permission, no notice period, nothing. It’s completely outrageous. Just what is it meant to be? It’s that group of militant shipwrights and sail makers, I’ll bet. They all turned into artists since the docks closed. Mabel will do her nut. I’ll have them. Whoever welded this bloody crate together, I’ll have the lot of them.”
Off he strode, past the crumbling gnomes, over the crazy paving, across the green painted concrete of the sunken garden with its fringe of black moss, past the broken For Sale sign, and he forced the keys into the car. Within moments it belched into life. Albert slipped the car into some indiscriminate crunching gear, let off the handbrake, and a soft cloud of burning oil exploded at the back of the mustard-coloured Escort. Off he sped, down the salty road, screeching towards the sea front, completely unaware of the black devastation of the previous night, the wild cloisters of the storm, and as he thumped over each speed ramp, the roving eyes of the wolf followed him, the first human to flee. Its bolted nostrils flared, and the sun, finally warming to its nuclear task, lit the orange and red metal of the monster and cast a shadow all the way up to Gun Hill.
