T H E A D V E N N T E U W R E S THE DEATH OF ART Simon Bucher-Jones First published in Great Britain in 1996 by Doctor Who Books an imprint of Virgin Publishing Ltd 332 Ladbroke Grove London W10 5AH Copyright © Simon Bucher-Jones 1996 The right of Simon Bucher-Jones to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 'Doctor Who' series copyright © British Broadcasting Corporation 1996 Cover illustration by Jon Sullivan ISBN 426 20481 Typeset by Galleon Typesetting, Ipswich Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham PLC All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser The ending of all hope is come Its leaden beat denying song The messenger of nothingness who's nothing more and nothing less than all that's pallid, wan and wrong The pounding of that self-same drum that serves it as a human heart repeats the beat that changes never from which no soul can stand apart within its innards rack and lever A human figure from without, its tatters hide the cogs and wheels inside its bland and friendless face It haunts the death of all that feels all places with no pride of place This is the ending worse than doubt All other dooms are rich beside The beasts disdain to lick his hands he stirs no rupture of the tide no strange births of forgotten lands This is the ending less than dust Unless the dust has been your dream, and nothingness your playfellow, and then it's cruel as the machine, inhuman as the King in Yellow This endlessness unending must become its own incarnate tomb Its blood and bone its ball and chain Its dreams the pain of afternoon forever in the fervid brain Naotalba's Song (From 'The King in Yellow', a verse-play written in Paris in the 1890s and banned by the French authorities.) Chapter Before any conflict, there are already ripples in the water where the spears will fall Natal proverb L o n d o n : 18 D e c e m b e r 1845 It was just after eight The freezing weather and the blank greyness of the morning fog squeezed passers-by into buildings until the streets were empty In the offices of the Daily News, two ramshackle houses knocked together, an old man in a moth-eaten greatcoat waved his fist in Charles Dickens's face The smell of yeast and low snuff came off the clothes under the greatcoat They were red and yellow, and tattered 'I won't stand for it,' the man snarled Dickens edged sideways, keeping the solid oak of his desk between himself and his visitor Although Dickens was the younger of the two, he was small and wiry compared to the ancient man in the greatcoat He seemed to have solidified with age into something more dense than normal flesh The room smelt of him Dickens felt a stab of fear 'Quite right,' he said 'No one could be expected to stand it I couldn't stand it No, not for a moment.' Sweet reasonableness That was the key Now, if only the fellow would explain why he was complaining The first typesetters' copy of the Daily News was on Dickens's desk and he wanted to check it There had already been dozens of delays with the printing He seized on the normality of the thought 'This is what I mean and well you know it.' A hand came down thump on the typesetters' copy "This impudent prying You thought better of putting it all into that Christmas Book but even so you're too near things best left a-lying Stick to stealing your illustrator's ideas for fat rogues, and leave other people's lives and doings alone!' Not waiting for a reply, his face redder than his fancy Punch-and-Judy man's waistcoat, the man clattered down the wooden stairs to the street below Alone, Dickens sighed gloomily Even tramps off the street had heard the slander that he had stolen the character of Mister Pickwick from Seymour's illustrations He tried to tell himself that it was a passing mood, like the depression The Times's review of his Christmas book 'The Cricket on the Hearth' had caused The reviewer had said that it was unworthy of the name of literature and possessed of neither merit nor truth Only the notion that The Times was bitter about Dickens' prospective rival paper, the Daily News, had finally raised his spirits Of course, 'The Cricket on the Hearth'! That was what had offended the stranger He must have thought himself maligned in the character of Tackleton, the toy-maker who hated children and found satisfaction in the construction of cunning grotesque creatures of wood and paint calculated to drive a child to fits or worse Dickens smiled wanly He had found the initial idea for Tackleton in Patrick Matherhyde's history of the parishes of York That book had recounted the rise and fall of the Coxham firm of Montague and Tackleton, which had floundered in the late 1780s Its downfall had been a scandal involving a doll's house built to resemble Ilbridge House, but Matherhyde had been either uninformed or carefully reticent about the details Dickens's caller would surely see that no slur was intended at his expense if he could be located and the matter explained to him Dickens called Henry, the eight-year-old printer's boy, into his office, quickly gave him a description of the toyman and, with a liberal gift from the petty cash, set him on the man's trail Reassured that the problem was, or would soon be, solved, Dickens turned to the first page-proofs of the Daily News This was what he needed, a cheerful gust of liberality and common sense His antidote to the gory refuse that sold half the papers on Fleet Street Even The Times had given space to the so-called 'pygmy murders' His eye caught a line of poetry It would be something inspirational, no doubt, picked by his co-workers He read: As each Doll its place maintains so it the fading life sustains If the Dolls be fed and plump so the waning heart will pump If the maker the deed which allows the Dolls to feed, fearing neither man nor hell, they will prosper, wax and swell Live forever and escape in the end from human sha Dickens tore his eyes from the page What was this doggerel rubbish, this unpleasant morbidity, doing in his paper? He looked for the author's name There was no poem There was only normal prose set in newspaper columns Suddenly he felt very cold and ill, as if not all the sweet air and light in the world could him any good, as if there was no sweet air or light anywhere; only night and stars that were the empty eyes of dolls gazing blankly from the ownerless heavens 'Nonsense,' he said loudly, three times, until the staff looked in from the print works, Henry not being there to head them off, and he felt infinitely reassured that their eyes were flesh and not glass Shooing them out, he poked the fire to life reflectively Something had happened that he did not understand Something unnatural He shuddered A writer treasures his imagination; his dreams For a moment he had felt them twist like snakes in his grasp He realized that, despite the cold, he was sweating * * * Dickens had started looking for Henry as soon as he had recovered from his experience with the proofs, but it was afternoon before he found him The boy was on his way back, shivering in the winter chill Dickens paid for some hot pies for the boy and himself, and they sat on the steps of one of London's old churches to eat Henry, his hunger abated, picked a piece of gristly flesh from between his teeth 'His name's Montague, Mr Dickens He's got a toyshop down Billingsgate way, but none of those I know there ever buy from him There's talk he's got a frightful temper, and no one seems to know what he lives on, save the drink.' 'Even a toy-maker must eat,' Dickens said, and the nervousness of his own voice surprised him Henry sniffed 'Maybe, but if he eats more than his dolls do, he's never seen to it I don't like it, Mr Dickens It ain't right.' Dickens saw Henry was hesitating, and recognized that the boy was wary of confiding further He lowered his voice 'Montague did something while he was in my office He tampered with the proofs of the paper I need to find out if he's working for a rival.' He passed Henry another coin Henry looked rueful 'Mrs Singleton - she's past fifty and her eyesight's failing, but she gives her affy davy that she saw one of the doll's heads in his window open its eyes and look at her And they say at night the heads whisper to each other.' It was later that Dickens, full of brandy and alone, trotted nervously down the back alleys The noxious overflow of the gutters bit into his nostrils The cold deadened the smell somewhat but, shivering in the thick wool of his dreadnought coat, he was still uncomfortably aware of the decay This part of London, windward of Billingsgate and damp as a fish's underbelly, sucked all the joy out of walking Not even blowing steam like a boiler in great clouds of condensing breath cheered his spirits The decision to pay the disgruntled toyman back seemed unnecessary or dangerous now, in the back streets Crumpets and toast and a crackling fire would meet the case much better Kate and the children would be waiting for him at home Why not let the mouldering old toy-maker fume in his garret, nursing his imaginary grievances? It would serve him best not to be taken seriously Perhaps even magnanimity would defeat him A suitably impressive goose or a plum cake might set Montague alight with the combustion of his humours, like a living brandy-snap No, Dickens knew in his chilled heart that an appeal to good fellowship or even to self-interest would be as lost on Montague as if it was wine poured into the Dead Sea The thought pushed him to a decision He would find the shop and mark it well for a visit in the light and dry Noon, not a rain-soaked afternoon, was the time to confront Montague In the heat of the sun the alcoholic vapours would boil off, leaving him a thin straggly wretch, a mere doll or puppet Shivering, Dickens decided that was not a cheerful thought after all The image of Montague with a face of porcelain from which a film of drink evaporated, like a ghost leaving a corpse, was just the kind of overwrought imagining that the damp engendered He turned to retreat down the Dock Road A thin scratching sound came from the overhanging warehouses to his left He ignored it He was round the corner, leaning forward like a man walking into a headwind There was nothing to keep him here and every comfort to be found elsewhere, and yet he found it harder and harder to place one foot in front of another The noise of the scratching, unnaturally loud through the rain, reverberated in his head As he turned he saw the first of the dolls crawling towards him He ran from the back street, and from London and the Daily News, and the books he wrote from that day onward were colder and bleaker than any he had written before He never saw Montague or his dolls again Twenty years later he told some of the story to a drunken Wilkie Collins and they cautiously approached the site of Montague's shop at noon ... experienced the touch of fear that Viers had felt as the skin of the child had darkened in the sunlight as he left the house, changing from the purest white to the black of the Devil's heart Viers's... full of wonder 'Look, it's beautiful.' Seen from the height of the console, over the edge of the monument to Napoleon's conquests, the gas-lit river of the Champs-Elysees stretched off into the. .. seem to be the main access point to the upper part of the catacombs,' Roz said 'If we can destroy them, we will cut Montague off from the members of the Brotherhood 239 currently in the tombs.'