London Pride
London is a city rich in mythology and legend (I'm sure Manchester is too, but I know very little about its stories) and the incident brought to mind both a favourite song - I am an admirer of the Golden Age of music from the 20s, 30s and 40s, including the Noel Coward number below, which I heard delivered to great effect by Kitt Hesketh-Harvey and Dillie Keane some years back. The song in turn brought to mind a semi-prophetic folk story from London's wide raging traditions. My spin on the story is included below - I hope it does not feel "too soon" to tell it.
London Pride
Karim’s lungs burnt as he raced through the city in hot
pursuit of his friend, his once-friend, friend no more. What madness had eaten
into Ali’s soul, Karim had no idea. They had both fled Saudi Arabia to get away
from the hatred which Ali now so actively embraced. Ali had gone first, years
earlier and established himself in their new land. Karim was only six weeks off
the plane, his English too stilted to be of any use to him now.
“I die of love for him, perfect in every way”, how that thought
had kept him going for all the years he and Ali had been parted, and how
perversely apposite they now seemed when he surely would die for the man he had
once loved. Ali had changed so much since coming to study medicine. Older, of
course, and heavier – people age, which was only to be expected. That beautiful
face half hidden now behind a straggling beard, the laughter and joy gone from
his eyes which were now all seriousness and guilt. Eyes that could not bear to
embrace Karim any more than those smooth hands could. What had once been, now
forgotten and cast into shadows as if it had never been. When their lives had
depended on secrecy, Ali had whispered in the night that he wanted to shout
their love from the roof tops. Now they were in a land where they could do so
and few would bat an eyelid, Ali refused to so much as mention what he decried
now as an abomination.
A taxi blasted its horn as it roared past, seconds from
crushing the bedraggled man who had been so hell bent on his chase that he
hadn’t even registered the road. Karim clung to the lamppost drawing in ragged
lungfuls of the toxic air and looking wildly about him. In his first week in
London some of Ali’s friends had shown him a few sites, bewildered and
overwhelmed by it all. He had tried to learn his way round, but it was
confusing enough making his to the restaurant where he now worked and back let
alone anything else.
Hauling himself across the busy road he checked the hastily
drawn map that he had copied from a website earlier that evening. He needed to get
to Trafalgar Square before midnight, less than twenty minutes from now. He hadn’t
the money to pay for a taxi and his almost non-existent English had reduced his
attempts to contact the police to an excitable, unintelligible cacophony. Who else
could he contact? Karim’s mind raced even faster than his feet, four of the
very few people he knew in Britain turned out to be deranged. He didn’t know
who else he could trust, who would help stop what was happening and who might
be aiding and abetting it. If he could get to the Square before Ali and his
co-conspirators then he might have some slim chance of stopping their
wickedness – talk them out of it, overpower them, somehow make someone else
understand what was happening.
The great column loomed in the distance, giving him a flicker
of hope as he dodged and dived between the crowds. Even at this late hour the
city never slept. Were this the weekend the throngs of people would be all the
denser and the journey that much slower.
Shoving aside a group of excitable teenage girls who shrieked
abuse at him, Karim burst upon his destination just as the first tolling of the
midnight bell struck. The bomb would be detonated on the final stroke of the
clock, he had heard them plotting that whilst he was resting in the tiny attic
room where Ali insisted he slept. The old house echoed terribly. Sometimes he
could hear customers talking in the shop on the ground floor, let alone the
secretive conversations in Ali’s room on the third floor. Had he not been
feeling ill at work that night and come home early, he would have been none the
wiser. At least not until the police had raided the house to cart off all the
inhabitants for questioning following the horrors that his former beloved and
his new circle of friends had unleashed.
As the third bell tolled he spun wildly around, a sweating
dervish alarming passers-by as he searched for the face of Ali or one of the
others that he might recognise. It was the woman he spotted first, her
bleach-blonde hair stark under the street lights. She was dressed as any other
backpacking tourist might be, unremarkable in the Square to all but the most
attentive observer who might notice the vein pulsing in her forehead or the
feline clutching and unclutching of her right hand. She spoke so fast most of
the time he could barely follow her – not that she paid him the slightest
attention. Lara only had time for Ali, who appeared to positively flourish
under the attention.
Lara was at the base of the column, gawping not at the
landmark but at someone off to her left. Pushing through the tourists, Karim
followed her gaze and saw Ali some feet away clean-shaven and looking like his
old self – though that younger Ali would never have left the house in a scruffy
tracksuit and carrying a hideous green sports bag. Further off he caught sight
of the portly figure of Asif in an ill-fitting business suit and carrying a
briefcase. The other one would be somewhere, but in all the confusion of faces Karim
could not see him. The woman was nearest – should he try to take her down? The bell
tolled nine. Ali was the leader, and even with Lana out of the picture he could
still give the others the go ahead to spread destruction.
“The tie that binds us is an unbreakable rope”, the words that
had once been whispered to Karim echoed back across the years and pulled his
feet in that direction. The eleventh bell struck as two drunks lurched into his
path and knocked him over. Sprawling on to the pavement he saw Ali reaching
inside his holdall, and screamed out for him to stop with all the force he
could muster. As the twelfth note died away the two men locked eyes, Ali
shocked to see his unwanted house mate’s horrified face. Unbeknownst to either,
Lana also recognised the screaming man on the floor and strode towards him. She
froze, as did the gathered crowds, to hear the great clock strike thirteen. They
all stared at one another in bewilderment for a few moments before a terrifying
roar blasted across the Square.
Karim huddled to the floor, hands over his head in a futile
attempt to shield himself from shrapnel that never came. Instead a second and
then a third roar reduced everyone to a blind panic. A high pitched scream
interspersed between the thunder, and Karim glanced up to see Lana staring up
at the enormous bronze lion that had suddenly stirred from its 150 year
slumber. Stretching its limbs like any waking feline it leapt with an
unexpected grace and crushed the blonde woman into the shattering paving slabs.
Fleeing people barrelled into Ali, knocking him flying and
sending his holdall skittering in the opposite direction. The second of Landseer’s
lions leapt from its stone podium and severed the unbreakable rope with a
single snap of its monstrous jaws. Somewhere on the other side of Nelson’s
column the quaking Karim saw a third lion stretch a bloodied muzzle and roar
its pride into the night. Beyond his sight, a fourth lapped at the spreading
pool of blood, drinking deep of its prey. Even before the man had recovered his
feet, two of the vast black beasts had returned to their long watch over the
city.
Soon the stains would be gone, and there would be no more
blood on London’s streets that night.
(Thanks to Abu Nuwas for the quoted lies of poetry)
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