Looking for Jake and Other Stories Read online

  [ So.

  I stopped for a bit. I had to stop. And then I had to read on again.

  A single sheet of paper. Typewritten again apart from the name, now on an electronic machine. ]

  Could you see it, Charles? The damage, halfway down Varmin Way? It’s there, it’s visible in the picture in that report. [ This must mean the picture on the left. I stared at it hard, with the naked eye and through a magnifying glass. I couldn’t make out anything. ] It’s like the slates from Scry Pass, the ones I showed you in the collection.You could see it in the striae and the marks, even if none of the bloody curators did. Varmin Way wasn’t just passing through, it wasresting , it wasrecovering , it had been attacked. I am right.

  Edgar

  [ I kept reading.

  Though it’s not signed, judging by the font, what follows are a couple of pages of another typed letter from Edgar. ]

  earliest occurrence I can find of it is in the early 1700s (you’ll hear 1790 or ’91 or something—nonsense, that’s just the official position based on the archives—this one isn’t verified but believe me it’s correct). Only a handful of years after the Glorious Revolution we find Antonia Chesterfield referring in her diaries to ‘a right rat of a street, ascamper betwixt Waterloo and the Mall, a veritable Vermin, in name as well as kind. Beware—Touch a rat and he will bite, as others have found, of our own and of the Vermin’s vagrant tribe’. That’s a reference to Varmin Way—Mrs Chesterfield was in the Brotherhood’s precursor (and you’d not have heard her complaining about that name either—Fiona take note!).

  You see what she’s getting at, and I think she was the first. I don’t know, Charles, correlation is so terribly hard, but look at some of the other candidates. Shuck Road; Caul Street; Stang Street; Teratologue Avenue (this last I think is fairly voracious); et al. So far as I can work it out, Varmin Way and Stang Street were highly antagonistic at that stage, but now they’re almost certainly noncombative.

  No surprise: Sole Den Road is the big enemy these days—remember 1987?

  (Incidentally, talking of that first Varmin occurrence, did you ever read all the early cryptolit I sent you?

  The Clerk entered into a Snickelway

  That then was gone again by close of day

  Fourteenth century, imagine. I’ll bet you a pound there are letters from disgruntled Britannic procurators complaining about errant alleyways around the Temple of Mithras. But there’s not much discussion of the hostilities until Mrs Chesterfield.)

  Anyway, you see my point. It’s the only way one can make sense of it all, of all this that I’ve been going on about for so long. The Viae are fighting, and I think they always have.

  And there’s no idiot nationalism here either, as

  [ And here is the end of the page. And there is another message added, clearly referring to this letter, from CM’s nameless interlocutor. ‘I believe it’, he says, or she says, but I think of it as a man’s handwriting though that’s a problematic assumption. ‘It took me a while, but I believe Edgar’s bellum theory. But I know you, Charles, “pure research” be buggered as far as you’re concerned. I know what Edgar’s doing, but I cannot see whereyou are going with this.’]

  URGENT: Report of a Traveller.

  Wednesday June 17th 1992.

  We are receiving repeated reports, which we are attempting to verify, of an international visit.

  Somewhere between Willesden Green and Dollis Hill (details are unclear), Ulica Nerwowosc has arrived. This visitor from Krakow has been characterised by our comrades in the Kolektyw as a mercurial mediaeval alleyway, very difficult to predict. Though it has proved impossible to photograph, initial reports correlate with the Kolektyw’s description of the Via. Efforts are ongoing to capture an image of this elusive newcomer, and even to plan a Walk, if the risks are not too great.

  No London street has sojourned elsewhere for some time (perhaps not unfortunate—a visit from Bunker Crescent was, notoriously, responsible for the schism in the BWVF Chicago Chapter in 1956), but the last ten years have seen six other documented visitations to London from foreign Viae Ferae. See table.

  [ There is a thick card receipt, stamped with some obscure sign, its left-hand columns rendered in crude typeface, those on the right filled out in black ink. ]

  BWVF collection.

  Date:

  7/8/1992

  Name:

  C. Melville

  Curator present:

  G. Benedict

  Requested:

  Item 117: a half-slate recovered

  from Scry Pass, 7/11/1958.

  Item 34: a splinter of glass

  recovered from Caul Street,

  8/2/1986.

  Item 67: an iron ring and key

  recovered from Stang Street,

  6/5/1936.

  [ This next letter is on headed paper, beautifully printed. ]

  SOCIÉTÉ POUR L’ÉTUDE DES RUES SAUVAGES

  20 June 1992

  Dear Mr Melville,

  Thank you for your message and congratulations for have this visitor. We in Paris were fortunate to have this pretty Polish street rest with us in 1988 but I did not see it.

  I confirm that you are correct. Boulevard de la Gare Intrinsèque and the Rue de la Fascination have both stories about them. We call him le jockey, a man who is supposed to live on streets like these and to make them move for him, but these are only stories for the children. There are no people on these rues sauvages, in Paris, and I think there are none in London too. No one knows why the streets have gone to London that time, like no one knows why your Importune Avenue moved around the area where is now the Arc de la Défence twelve years ago.

  Yours truly,

  Claudette Santier

  [ There is a handwritten letter. ]

  My Dear Charles,

  I’m quite aware that you feel illused. I apologise for that. There is no point, I think, rehearsing our disagreements, let alone the unpleasant contretemps they have led to. I cannot see that you are going anywhere with these investigations, though, and I simply do not have enough years left to indulge your ideas, nor enough courage (were I younger...Ah but were I younger what would I notdo?).

  I have performed three Walks in my time, and have seen the evidence of the wounds the Viae leave on each other. I have tracked the combatants and shifting loyalties. Where, in contrast, is the evidence behind your claims? Why, on the basis of your intuition, should anyone discard the cautions that may have kept usalive? It is not as if what we do is safe, Charles. There are reasons for the strictures you are so keen to overturn.

  Of course yes I have heard all the stories that you have: of the streets that occur with lights ashine and men at home! of the antique costermongers’ cries still heard over the walls of Dandle Way! of the street-riders! I do not say I don’t believe them, any more than I don’t—or do—believe the stories that Potash Street and Luckless Road courted and mated and that that’s how Varmin Way was born, or the stories of where the Viae Ferae go when they unoccur. I have no way of judging. This mythic company of inhabitants and street-tamers may be true, but so long as it is also a myth, you have nothing. I am content to observe, Charles, not to become involved.

  Good God, who knows what the agenda of the streets might be? Would you really, would you really, Charles, risk attempting ingress? Even if you could? After everything you’ve read and heard? Would you risk taking sides?

  Regretfully and fondly,

  Edgar

  [ This is another handwritten note. I think it is in Edgar’s hand, but it is hard to be sure. ]

  Saturday 27th November 1999.

  Varmin Way’s back.

  [ We are near the end of the papers now. What came out of the package next looks like one of the pamphlet-style reports of sightings. It is marked with a black band in one corner of the front cover. ]

  URGENT: Report of a Walk.

  Walkers: FR, EN, BH (author).

  At 11:20 p.m. on Sunday 28th November 1999, a Wal
k was made the length of Varmin Way. As well as its tragic conclusion, most members will be aware of the extraordinary circumstances surrounding this investigation—since records began, there is no evidence in the archives of a Via Fera returning to the site of an earlier occurrence. Varmin Way’s reappearance, then, at precisely the same location in Plumstead, between Purrett and Rippolson Road, as that it inhabited in February 1988, was profoundly shocking, and necessitated this perhaps too-quickly-planned Walk.

  FR operated as base, remaining stationed on Rippolson Road (the front yard of the still-deserted number 32 acting as camp). Carrying toolbags and wearing Council overalls over their harnesses and belay kits, BH and EN set out. Their safety rope was attached to a fencepost close to FR. The Walkers remained in contact with FR throughout their three-hour journey, by radio.

  In this occurrence of Varmin Way, the street is a little more than 100 metres long. [ An amendment here:‘Can you imagine Edgar going metric? What kind of a homage is this?’] We proceeded slowly. [

  Here another insertion:‘Ugh. Change of person.’ By now I was increasingly irritated with these interruptions. I never felt I could ignore them, but they broke the flow of my reading. There was something vaguely passive-aggressive in their cheer, and I felt as if Charles Melville would have been similarly angered by them. In an effort to retain the flow I’ll start this sentence again. ]

  We proceeded slowly. We walked along the unpainted tar in the middle of Varmin Way, equidistant from the rows of streetlamps. These lamps are indistinguishable from those in the neighbouring streets.

  There are houses to either side, all of them with all their windows unlit, looking like low workers’ cottages of Victorian vintage (though the earliest documented reports of Varmin Way date from 1792—this apparent aging of form gives credence

  [ To my intense frustration, several pages are missing, and this is where the report therefore ends.

  There are, however, several photographs in an envelope, stuffed in among the pages. There are four. They are dreadful shots, taken with a flash too close or too far, so that their subject is either effaced by light or peering out from a cowl of dark. Nonetheless they can just be made out.

  The first is a wall of crumbling brick, the mortar fallen away in scabs. Askew across the print, taken from above, is a street sign. Varmin Way, it says, in an antiquated iron font. Written in biro on the photograph’s back is: The Sigil.

  The second is a shot along the length of the street. Almost nothing is visible in this, except perspective lines sketched in dark on dark. None of the houses has a front garden: their doors open directly onto the pavement. They are implacably closed, whether for centuries or only moments it is of course impossible to tell. The lack of a no-man’s-land between house and Walker makes the doors loom. Written on the back of this image is: The Way.

  The third is of the front of one of the houses. It is damaged. Its dark windows are broken, its brick stained, crumbling where the roof is fallen in. On the back is written: The Wound.

  The last picture is of an end of rope and a climbing buckle, held in a young man’s hands. The rope is frayed and splayed: the metal clip bent in a strange corkscrew. On the back of the photograph is nothing. ]

  [ And then comes the last piece in the envelope. It is undated. It is in a different hand to the others. ]

  What did you do? How did you do it? What did you do, you bastard?

  I saw what happened. Edgar was right, I saw where Varmin Way had been hurt. But you know that, don’t you?

  What did you do to Varmin Way to make it do that? What did you do to Edgar?

  Do you think you’ll get away with it?

  That was everything. When I’d finished, I was frantic to find Charles Melville.

  I think the ban on telephone conversations must extend to email and web pages. I searched online, of course, for BWVF, ‘wild streets’, ‘feral streets’, ‘Viae Ferae’, and so on. I got nothing. BWVF got references to cars or technical parts. I tried ‘Brotherhood of Witnesses to/Watchers of the Viae Ferae’

  without any luck. ‘Wild streets’ of course got thousands: articles about New Orleans Mardi Gras, hard-boiled ramblings, references to an old computer game, and an article about the Cold War. Nothing relevant.

  I visited each of the sites described in the scraps of literature, the places where all the occurrences occurred. For several weekends I wandered in scraggy arse-end streets in north or south London, or sometimes in sedate avenues, even once (following Unthinker Road) walking through the centre of Soho.

  Inevitably, I suppose, I kept returning to Plumstead.

  I would hold the before-and-after pictures up and look at the same houses of Rippolson Road, all closed up, an unbroken terrace.

  Why did I not repackage all this stuff and send it on to Charles Melville, or take it to his house in person? The envelope wrongly sent to —ley Road was addressed to —ford Road. But there is no

  —ford Road in London. I have no idea how to find Charles.

  The other reason I hesitated was that Charles had begun to frighten me.

  The first few times I went walking, took photos secretively, I still thought as if I was witnessing some Oedipal drama. Reading and rereading the material, though, I realised that what Charles had done to Edgar was not the most important thing here. What was important was how he had done it.

  I have eaten and drunk at all the cafés on Plumstead High Street. Most are unremarkable, one or two are extremely bad, one or two very good. In each establishment I asked, after finishing my tea, whether the owner knew anyone called Charles Melville. I asked if they’d mind me putting up a little notice I’d written.

  ‘Looking for CM’, it read. ‘I’ve some documents you mislaid—maps of the area etc. Complicated streets! Please contact:’ and then an anonymous email address I’d set up. I heard nothing.

  I’m finding it hard to work. These days I am very conscious of corners. I fix my eyes on an edge of brick (or concrete or stone), where another road meets the one I’m walking, and I try to remember if I’ve ever noticed it before. I look up suddenly as I pass, to catch out anything hurriedly occurring. I keep seeing furtive motions and snapping up my head at only a tree in wind or an opened window. My anxiety

  — perhaps I should honestly call it foreboding—remains.

  And if I ever did see anything more, what could I do? Probably we’re irrelevant to them. Most of us.

  Their motivations are unimaginable, as opaque as brickwork sphinxes’. If they consider us at all, I doubt they care what’s in our interests: I think it’s that indifference that breeds these fears I cannot calm, and makes me wonder what Charles has done.

  I say I heard nothing, after I put up my posters. That’s not quite accurate. In fact, on the 4th of April 2001, five months after that first package, a letter arrived for Charles Melville. Of course I opened it immediately. It was one page, handwritten, undated. I am looking at it now. It reads:

  Dear Charles,

  Where are you Charles?

  I don’t know if you know by now—I suspect you do—that you’ve been excommunicated. No one’s saying that you’re responsible for what happened to Edgar—no one can say that, it would be to admit far too much about what you’ve been doing—so they’ve got you on non-payment of subscriptions. Ridiculous, I know.

  I believe you’ve done it. I never thought you could—I never thought anyone could. Are there others there? Are you alone?

  Please, if ever you can, tell me. I want to know.

  Your friend.

  It was not the content of this letter but the envelope that so upset me. The letter, stamped and postmarked and delivered to my house, was addressed to ‘Charles Melville, Varmin Way’.

  This time, it’s hard to pretend the delivery is coincidence. Either the Royal Mail is showing unprecedented consistency in misdirection, or I am being targeted. And if the latter, I do not know by whom or what: by pranksters, the witnesses, their renegade, or their subjects. I am
at the mercy of the senders, whether the letter came to me hand-delivered or by stranger ways.

  That is why I have published this material. I have no idea what my correspondents want from me.

  Maybe this is a test, and I’ve failed: maybe I was about to get a tap on the shoulder and a whispered invitation to join, maybe all this is the newcomer’s manual, but I don’t think so. I don’t know why I’ve been shown these things, what part I am of another’s plan, and that makes me afraid. So as an unwilling party to secrets, I want to disseminate them as widely as I can. I want to protect myself, and this is the only way I can think to do so. (The other possibility, that this was what I was required to do, hasn’t passed me by.)

  I can’t say he owes me an explanation for all this, but I’d like a chance to persuade Charles Melville that I deserve one. I have his documents—if there is anyone reading this who knows how I can reach him, to return them, please let me know. You can contact me through the publisher of this book.

  As I say, there is no —ford Road in London. I have visited all the other alternatives. I have knocked at the relevant number in —fast and —land and —nail Streets, and —ner and —hold Roads, and —den Close, and a few even less likely. No one has heard of Charles Melville. In fact, number such-and-such

  —fast Street isn’t there anymore: it’s been demolished; the street is being reshaped. That got me thinking.

  You can believe that got me thinking.

  ‘What’s happening to —fast Street?’ I wondered. ‘Where’s it going?’

  I can’t know whether Charles Melville has broken Varmin Way, has tamed it, is riding it like a bronco through the city and beyond. I can’t know if he’s taken sides, is intervening in the unending savage war among the wild streets of London. Perhaps he and Edgar were wrong, perhaps there’s no such fight, and the Viae Ferae are peaceful nomads, and Charles has just got tired and gone away. Perhaps there are no such untamed roads.