Stand by the Window, or Things To Do In Dulwich When You're Dead
This was written as part of a universe created by cofax7, called Life During Wartime, a sprawling trek through what an alien-induced apocalypse might be like if you were to try to make it realistic. You can find it here. I urge you to read the parts written by Cofax and Maria Nicole. They are excellent.
This was my take on what might have happened to the Well-Manicured Man. It's odd to reread this now, some eight years after it was written and see that I still do the same things: quotes from unobscure poetry, arch references that don't always work, bad jokes, lots of grounding detail. Still, I quite like this. I think it's refreshingly free of my usual angsty wallowing.
[short story/secondary character/G rating]
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STAND BY THE WINDOW
Or...
Things To Do In Dulwich When You're Dead
------------------------------------------------------------------
It was a simple deal. If he stayed dead, then they would let him live.
So reluctantly, and after several days in which it became apparent that either party would revoke the offer given the least provocation, he agreed.
After all, if he or his family should suffer any 'little accidents', there were 20 attorneys on three continents who would release very damaging and, more importantly, highly believable information on his former colleagues, encompassing everything from Strughold's penchant for the ladyboys of Bangkok to Bennett's unsavory links both to the Cosa Nostra and certain prominent senators on the bulging-eyes wing of the Republican party.
And should those 20 be harmed, that information would automatically be sent out to 20 more, and 20 more after that, each level more obscure than the last. Ah, the wonders of the information age.
When he had stepped out of that limousine milliseconds before the explosion, he had thought that he could disappear and that would be the end of it. He should have known better. Despite Mulder's testimony, they knew he had not died after giving away their vaccine and the location of their largest test site.
Once they had tracked him down, only his threatened cascade of disclosure kept them at a distance, growling and snapping.
A few years ago he might have fought them, might have tried to disappear for good, or else oust Strughold. Now he was simply tired of it all.
And so he was finally forced to live the life he had pretended to have all along.
His neighbours saw a member of the English upper middle classes, just retired from a senior post at Whitehall, perhaps, or one of the old-school merchant banks. He had no family because he had died for them a year before. His absence kept them safe.
They saw a man who played golf at Dulwich and Sydenham Hill golf course to keep himself limber in his seventh decade. A man who sat in the carefully-tended jungle of his wide, glass-encased conservatory reading the Financial Times every morning. A man dressed in Gieves and Hawkes suits who took a black cab to Piccadilly to visit his club every night. A man who lived quietly and who, save for his housekeeper Mrs Waudby, was always alone.
"Nice fellow, harmless enough chap," the neighbours would say, then deliver the ultimate Dulwich compliment: "Keeps himself to himself."
He wondered what they would say if they knew that the ivy-clad villa at 7 Piper's Rise was his prison, and this life was little more than a genteel death.
He had tried to enjoy his new existence, out of the loop.
He had even accepted an invitation to a sherry party at number eight once, but had been forced to leave when he could no longer stand to listen to the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the prospect of higher income taxes in the November budget.
He had wanted to snarl that it was a moot point, taxes would be the least of their worries soon, when the end came. When London ground to a halt. When the Thames was clogged with bodies.
Instead, he said a few polite goodbyes and left.
It was a sign of old age he knew, but he occupied much of his time wondering at what point it had all spun out of his control. One minute he and his associates were showing every sign of being able to outwit the fate that was planned for the world. The next, they had capitulated in return for their own salvation.
He liked to think that it would have turned out differently if he had still had Bonita Charne-Sayre to back him up. His ally. His lover. Together they might have counselled their colleagues to take a more circumspect course of action.
Of course that was nonsense. He had not been as important as he had thought.
The Monday morning everything stopped, he sat in the moist heat of the conservatory, shaded from the pale sun by curling fronds of palm and wide yucca leaves, and looked out at his home city. All across London, lights were failing to work and radios, telephones and televisions were remaining stubbornly silent, knocked out by the massive electro-magnetic pulse that flashed around the world at 5.40am GMT.
Commuters getting ready for the morning rush were first annoyed and then alarmed to discover that the power was out not just in their street or their neighbourhood, but everywhere. Cars did not start. The perpetually late 6.59 from Shoeburyness to Liverpool Street did not arrive at all. The first planes of the morning never even reached Heathrow; they had plunged out of the sky long before they approached the capital.
This is the way the world ends, he whispered, lips curling upwards. Then he wondered what had happened to the two people who had, indirectly, condemned him to this suburban hell.
He had liked them, particularly the steely Scully, with her hair the colour of Seville marmalade and that exquisite expression of righteous indignation. The others had underestimated her, as they did all women, even Bonita Charne-Sayre, but he'd known from the start that Scully would be a problem -- the little ones always were; they felt they had something to prove.
Without her they could probably have led the boy off the straight and narrow. He was his father's son after all.
Without him, she would never have seen a fraction of what was happening and would certainly never have believed it. But together -- ah together, they were formidable players.
When they had started their little crusade he had felt the same jolt of exhilaration as when he was a child and he and his father had first ridden to hounds. He was certain they felt it too.
The Berube incident and the killing of that careless fool Ronald had been their blooding, and he knew they had acquired a real taste for the hunt soon thereafter.
He had warned the others that taking Scully, rather than killing her, would be a mistake and so it proved. But later he found himself helping the agents -- in increments and to serve his own agenda, certainly -- but helping them nonetheless, for the sheer thrill of the chase.
He would lay odds on that they had escaped the squads who were searching for them, and smiled at that thought.
"You're very cheerful this morning," a flat northern voice intoned from behind him.
It was his housekeeper Mrs Waudby. She was a trim figure in her early sixties, but only the steel-grey streaks in her ash blonde hair gave away any clue that she was so close to her pension book. There was a neatness and practicality about her appearance that he liked; she had a reassuring broad solidity to her. She looked like a woman who had worked all of her life and had no truck with those who had not.
And for a servant, she was ridiculously decided in her opinions, willful and sarcastic. He considered these among her most attractive qualities. It was one of the few interesting challenges of his day, coaxing words and smiles out of her. They were certainly given most reluctantly. "And why not?" he said. "The journey is almost at an end. Shall we have some tea, Mrs Waudby?"
"Did you not notice the power's out?" she snapped.
"I'm sure you'll find a way. You're a very resourceful woman."
She snorted and shuffled off but ten minutes later she returned with a pot of his favourite blend -- two spoons of Assam to one of Earl Grey. The faint smell of methylated spirits that lingered around her told him she had used one of those small camping stoves. There were two cups on the tray.
"Sit with me for a moment," he said, trying to keep the imperative out of his voice. She nodded, pouring the tea through his silver strainer. In the background he could hear the first panicked shouts of his neighbours mixing with morning birdsong in the unsettling quiet of a traffic-free London.
He stirred his tea, laying the spoon on the saucer with a loud chink. "I imagine you will be leaving soon, Mrs Waudby."
She looked at him and there was a grimly defiant set to her chin that he recognised. "And what would make you think that, sir?"
He took a sip and noticed with satisfaction that he had made her fidget. "The fact that you were sent to spy on me, and now that I'm doomed along with everyone else, your job is over."
Her mouth sagged open a little and she covered it by raising the china cup to her lips. "You're talking nonsense."
"Let's not be disingenuous. I have had servants all my life, I think I know the breed. You can't cook, you clearly despise cleaning even though you do it very well and you haven't a subservient bone in your body. You're not suited to this way of life. It was obvious."
She stared at him hard and put her tea cup back on the tray. "I suppose it was," she said finally. He noted that she had shifted forward on her chair so that she could spring up from it at any second. Her shoulders were tensed, even though her face remained impassive. "How long have you known?"
"From the beginning. Someone of your supposed calibre becoming free so soon after I had struck my little deal -- it was all too convenient. When did they recruit you?"
"I was studying Russian at Durham University, in the late 1950s -- my grandfather was from Moscow; he fled here after the revolution. They needed a courier who could pass for a Muscovite. They told me I was a trailblazer for women; that I'd be helping my country and the world."
She gave a cynical smile. "And here I am, spending my golden years cleaning your toilet for the greater good of humanity."
"What was your price?" he asked.
"I have a son," she said and her face softened momentarily. "James. Works in computers. They save him, his wife and the
two kids. We all get a place in the Derbyshire shelter."
"Well, as long as it was worth it," he replied mildly. "No harm done. I had retired from the game anyhow."
"So, you were one of them; the higher-ups? This is your doing?" she asked.
"Not my choice, no," he replied. "This isn't the way I would have done it at all."
He finished his tea and sat back. "Do you like Kipling, Mrs Waudby?" he asked.
"Wouldn't know, sir. I've never kippled," she said, a smirk flashing briefly across her face.
Well, well. A joke from Mrs Waudby. Now he knew the apocalypse was here.
"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you..." he murmured. His voice trailed off. They really had lost their heads this time. What were they thinking of, to be doing this?
Then he heard her low, flat voice. "Yours is the earth and everything that's in it, and -- which is more -- you'll be a man, my son."
He was momentarily startled. "Well, quite. That's what has happened. They lost their heads and the earth besides." He looked out at the garden. "If. If only..." he whispered.
She mistook his remark and stared at him with a cool, flint-hard regard. "Rudyard Kipling, I know. I'm not an idiot."
"I never thought you were for a second. But remember that my colleagues like their factotums stupid and biddable. Even the ones with
degrees in Russian. Never let them see who you really are, Mrs Waudby."
Mrs Waudby's expression softened a little. "I'll try to remember that, sir."
"Very good. Is James safe now?"
She nodded. "They picked him up last night. I'm supposed to meet them in three hours."
"Well go and join them, Mrs Waudby, by all means. There's not much time." He held out one elegant, papery-skinned hand and she took it in her square, calloused one, and shook. It was the first and last time they ever touched.
He looked out over the garden as Mrs Waudby hauled herself to her feet and shuffled around behind him, preparing to leave. When he heard the click of the highly illegal handgun, he sighed.
"Orders, sir." She sounded almost wistful.
"I think that's probably overkill, Mrs Waudby, I'll be dead by the week's end, anyway."
There was a brief silence. Another snicking sound. He felt rather than heard the door into the house open, as cold air snaked round the back of his neck. He didn't turn round. Minutes later the front door slammed for the last time.
Four days after, he decided enough was enough. The power had been out for a while now but the conservatory captured the weak heat of the sun and held it fast, so he was rarely cold.
He had taken Mrs Waudby's small meths stove from the kitchen and boiled up the last of the water before pouring it into the blue china pot. He was a little clumsy; it had been decades since he last made his own tea.
He slipped the ground up pills into the pot and let it brew for a long time. Then he poured, sending steam slipping through fronds of the ferns Mrs Waudby had been cultivating, misting up the nearby pane of glass and infusing the room with a sweet, comforting odour that still evoked childhood to him.
He looked out to where the vivid orange blaze of the sunset met the rising roar of the fires that were sweeping the city, at the plumes of smoke the wind curled westerly, and thought for one last time about his former colleagues.
One by one, he saw them -- that old fool Konrad; Antonio, who could never quite break with his shady past; Carl, full of resentment at being the messenger boy; Bill Mulder, with his wilful blindness and queasy conscience -- and most of all Victor Klemper, the one whose scientific breakthrough made everything else possible.
And who had found Klemper in the wreckage of the Sudetenland and rescued him from an angry mob? Who had introduced him to the rest of the group, spiriting him out of the reach of justice?
He had.
He drank his tea and sat back in his chair, watching fire devour the world.
"I made this," was his last thought before he slept.
This was my take on what might have happened to the Well-Manicured Man. It's odd to reread this now, some eight years after it was written and see that I still do the same things: quotes from unobscure poetry, arch references that don't always work, bad jokes, lots of grounding detail. Still, I quite like this. I think it's refreshingly free of my usual angsty wallowing.
[short story/secondary character/G rating]
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STAND BY THE WINDOW
Or...
Things To Do In Dulwich When You're Dead
------------------------------------------------------------------
It was a simple deal. If he stayed dead, then they would let him live.
So reluctantly, and after several days in which it became apparent that either party would revoke the offer given the least provocation, he agreed.
After all, if he or his family should suffer any 'little accidents', there were 20 attorneys on three continents who would release very damaging and, more importantly, highly believable information on his former colleagues, encompassing everything from Strughold's penchant for the ladyboys of Bangkok to Bennett's unsavory links both to the Cosa Nostra and certain prominent senators on the bulging-eyes wing of the Republican party.
And should those 20 be harmed, that information would automatically be sent out to 20 more, and 20 more after that, each level more obscure than the last. Ah, the wonders of the information age.
When he had stepped out of that limousine milliseconds before the explosion, he had thought that he could disappear and that would be the end of it. He should have known better. Despite Mulder's testimony, they knew he had not died after giving away their vaccine and the location of their largest test site.
Once they had tracked him down, only his threatened cascade of disclosure kept them at a distance, growling and snapping.
A few years ago he might have fought them, might have tried to disappear for good, or else oust Strughold. Now he was simply tired of it all.
And so he was finally forced to live the life he had pretended to have all along.
His neighbours saw a member of the English upper middle classes, just retired from a senior post at Whitehall, perhaps, or one of the old-school merchant banks. He had no family because he had died for them a year before. His absence kept them safe.
They saw a man who played golf at Dulwich and Sydenham Hill golf course to keep himself limber in his seventh decade. A man who sat in the carefully-tended jungle of his wide, glass-encased conservatory reading the Financial Times every morning. A man dressed in Gieves and Hawkes suits who took a black cab to Piccadilly to visit his club every night. A man who lived quietly and who, save for his housekeeper Mrs Waudby, was always alone.
"Nice fellow, harmless enough chap," the neighbours would say, then deliver the ultimate Dulwich compliment: "Keeps himself to himself."
He wondered what they would say if they knew that the ivy-clad villa at 7 Piper's Rise was his prison, and this life was little more than a genteel death.
He had tried to enjoy his new existence, out of the loop.
He had even accepted an invitation to a sherry party at number eight once, but had been forced to leave when he could no longer stand to listen to the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the prospect of higher income taxes in the November budget.
He had wanted to snarl that it was a moot point, taxes would be the least of their worries soon, when the end came. When London ground to a halt. When the Thames was clogged with bodies.
Instead, he said a few polite goodbyes and left.
It was a sign of old age he knew, but he occupied much of his time wondering at what point it had all spun out of his control. One minute he and his associates were showing every sign of being able to outwit the fate that was planned for the world. The next, they had capitulated in return for their own salvation.
He liked to think that it would have turned out differently if he had still had Bonita Charne-Sayre to back him up. His ally. His lover. Together they might have counselled their colleagues to take a more circumspect course of action.
Of course that was nonsense. He had not been as important as he had thought.
The Monday morning everything stopped, he sat in the moist heat of the conservatory, shaded from the pale sun by curling fronds of palm and wide yucca leaves, and looked out at his home city. All across London, lights were failing to work and radios, telephones and televisions were remaining stubbornly silent, knocked out by the massive electro-magnetic pulse that flashed around the world at 5.40am GMT.
Commuters getting ready for the morning rush were first annoyed and then alarmed to discover that the power was out not just in their street or their neighbourhood, but everywhere. Cars did not start. The perpetually late 6.59 from Shoeburyness to Liverpool Street did not arrive at all. The first planes of the morning never even reached Heathrow; they had plunged out of the sky long before they approached the capital.
This is the way the world ends, he whispered, lips curling upwards. Then he wondered what had happened to the two people who had, indirectly, condemned him to this suburban hell.
He had liked them, particularly the steely Scully, with her hair the colour of Seville marmalade and that exquisite expression of righteous indignation. The others had underestimated her, as they did all women, even Bonita Charne-Sayre, but he'd known from the start that Scully would be a problem -- the little ones always were; they felt they had something to prove.
Without her they could probably have led the boy off the straight and narrow. He was his father's son after all.
Without him, she would never have seen a fraction of what was happening and would certainly never have believed it. But together -- ah together, they were formidable players.
When they had started their little crusade he had felt the same jolt of exhilaration as when he was a child and he and his father had first ridden to hounds. He was certain they felt it too.
The Berube incident and the killing of that careless fool Ronald had been their blooding, and he knew they had acquired a real taste for the hunt soon thereafter.
He had warned the others that taking Scully, rather than killing her, would be a mistake and so it proved. But later he found himself helping the agents -- in increments and to serve his own agenda, certainly -- but helping them nonetheless, for the sheer thrill of the chase.
He would lay odds on that they had escaped the squads who were searching for them, and smiled at that thought.
"You're very cheerful this morning," a flat northern voice intoned from behind him.
It was his housekeeper Mrs Waudby. She was a trim figure in her early sixties, but only the steel-grey streaks in her ash blonde hair gave away any clue that she was so close to her pension book. There was a neatness and practicality about her appearance that he liked; she had a reassuring broad solidity to her. She looked like a woman who had worked all of her life and had no truck with those who had not.
And for a servant, she was ridiculously decided in her opinions, willful and sarcastic. He considered these among her most attractive qualities. It was one of the few interesting challenges of his day, coaxing words and smiles out of her. They were certainly given most reluctantly. "And why not?" he said. "The journey is almost at an end. Shall we have some tea, Mrs Waudby?"
"Did you not notice the power's out?" she snapped.
"I'm sure you'll find a way. You're a very resourceful woman."
She snorted and shuffled off but ten minutes later she returned with a pot of his favourite blend -- two spoons of Assam to one of Earl Grey. The faint smell of methylated spirits that lingered around her told him she had used one of those small camping stoves. There were two cups on the tray.
"Sit with me for a moment," he said, trying to keep the imperative out of his voice. She nodded, pouring the tea through his silver strainer. In the background he could hear the first panicked shouts of his neighbours mixing with morning birdsong in the unsettling quiet of a traffic-free London.
He stirred his tea, laying the spoon on the saucer with a loud chink. "I imagine you will be leaving soon, Mrs Waudby."
She looked at him and there was a grimly defiant set to her chin that he recognised. "And what would make you think that, sir?"
He took a sip and noticed with satisfaction that he had made her fidget. "The fact that you were sent to spy on me, and now that I'm doomed along with everyone else, your job is over."
Her mouth sagged open a little and she covered it by raising the china cup to her lips. "You're talking nonsense."
"Let's not be disingenuous. I have had servants all my life, I think I know the breed. You can't cook, you clearly despise cleaning even though you do it very well and you haven't a subservient bone in your body. You're not suited to this way of life. It was obvious."
She stared at him hard and put her tea cup back on the tray. "I suppose it was," she said finally. He noted that she had shifted forward on her chair so that she could spring up from it at any second. Her shoulders were tensed, even though her face remained impassive. "How long have you known?"
"From the beginning. Someone of your supposed calibre becoming free so soon after I had struck my little deal -- it was all too convenient. When did they recruit you?"
"I was studying Russian at Durham University, in the late 1950s -- my grandfather was from Moscow; he fled here after the revolution. They needed a courier who could pass for a Muscovite. They told me I was a trailblazer for women; that I'd be helping my country and the world."
She gave a cynical smile. "And here I am, spending my golden years cleaning your toilet for the greater good of humanity."
"What was your price?" he asked.
"I have a son," she said and her face softened momentarily. "James. Works in computers. They save him, his wife and the
two kids. We all get a place in the Derbyshire shelter."
"Well, as long as it was worth it," he replied mildly. "No harm done. I had retired from the game anyhow."
"So, you were one of them; the higher-ups? This is your doing?" she asked.
"Not my choice, no," he replied. "This isn't the way I would have done it at all."
He finished his tea and sat back. "Do you like Kipling, Mrs Waudby?" he asked.
"Wouldn't know, sir. I've never kippled," she said, a smirk flashing briefly across her face.
Well, well. A joke from Mrs Waudby. Now he knew the apocalypse was here.
"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you..." he murmured. His voice trailed off. They really had lost their heads this time. What were they thinking of, to be doing this?
Then he heard her low, flat voice. "Yours is the earth and everything that's in it, and -- which is more -- you'll be a man, my son."
He was momentarily startled. "Well, quite. That's what has happened. They lost their heads and the earth besides." He looked out at the garden. "If. If only..." he whispered.
She mistook his remark and stared at him with a cool, flint-hard regard. "Rudyard Kipling, I know. I'm not an idiot."
"I never thought you were for a second. But remember that my colleagues like their factotums stupid and biddable. Even the ones with
degrees in Russian. Never let them see who you really are, Mrs Waudby."
Mrs Waudby's expression softened a little. "I'll try to remember that, sir."
"Very good. Is James safe now?"
She nodded. "They picked him up last night. I'm supposed to meet them in three hours."
"Well go and join them, Mrs Waudby, by all means. There's not much time." He held out one elegant, papery-skinned hand and she took it in her square, calloused one, and shook. It was the first and last time they ever touched.
He looked out over the garden as Mrs Waudby hauled herself to her feet and shuffled around behind him, preparing to leave. When he heard the click of the highly illegal handgun, he sighed.
"Orders, sir." She sounded almost wistful.
"I think that's probably overkill, Mrs Waudby, I'll be dead by the week's end, anyway."
There was a brief silence. Another snicking sound. He felt rather than heard the door into the house open, as cold air snaked round the back of his neck. He didn't turn round. Minutes later the front door slammed for the last time.
Four days after, he decided enough was enough. The power had been out for a while now but the conservatory captured the weak heat of the sun and held it fast, so he was rarely cold.
He had taken Mrs Waudby's small meths stove from the kitchen and boiled up the last of the water before pouring it into the blue china pot. He was a little clumsy; it had been decades since he last made his own tea.
He slipped the ground up pills into the pot and let it brew for a long time. Then he poured, sending steam slipping through fronds of the ferns Mrs Waudby had been cultivating, misting up the nearby pane of glass and infusing the room with a sweet, comforting odour that still evoked childhood to him.
He looked out to where the vivid orange blaze of the sunset met the rising roar of the fires that were sweeping the city, at the plumes of smoke the wind curled westerly, and thought for one last time about his former colleagues.
One by one, he saw them -- that old fool Konrad; Antonio, who could never quite break with his shady past; Carl, full of resentment at being the messenger boy; Bill Mulder, with his wilful blindness and queasy conscience -- and most of all Victor Klemper, the one whose scientific breakthrough made everything else possible.
And who had found Klemper in the wreckage of the Sudetenland and rescued him from an angry mob? Who had introduced him to the rest of the group, spiriting him out of the reach of justice?
He had.
He drank his tea and sat back in his chair, watching fire devour the world.
"I made this," was his last thought before he slept.