Take Back The City - Part One of the 'Life in London Town' series

22 - A Night in St James's Park

The royal red tarmac of The Mall unfurled like a deep-pile carpet as we passed through the wrought-iron gates of Admiralty Arch. Trees and tattered Union Flags obscured the starry night sky, which poked shades of dark, aristocratic purple and light-absorbing black through every gap it could; the twinkling stars in the sky created a path in the sky that matched the path of the street in front of us, converging on the golden beacon of the Victoria Memorial half a mile away. Not a sound was to be heard for miles around. Both the harsh noises of war and the welcoming sounds of civilisation had faded away; for the first time in three years, my ears had been thrown open to the wondrous sounds of the natural life which, ever since the blockade of Central London and the beginning of war against the Faceless, had come to dominate the two contained Royal Parks.

   “Beginning to regret your little idea, Nox?” asked Victor. He was visibly shattered, not due to the walk from Holborn, but due to the dead human being slumped over his shoulder. Despite this, his face still showed me that he supported my plan. I shook my head no, then returned to my own objective of lugging the young girl whom, along with Patrick’s son, I was set to carry down to the lakeside in St James’s Park. Victor and I hadn’t told him that Victor was carrying the body of his dead father – not yet, at least – but I did see his face droop lugubriously as we arrived at Cambridge Circus; I think that, try as he might to hide the fact, he was waiting for one of us to confirm what he already knew.

   As much as this evening was supposed to be about Patrick’s son and I rediscovering our lost youth, I thought that it would be only right to give Patrick the send-off he – and, in fact, every single person that had died for our cause – deserved. It was for this reason that Victor, Patrick’s son – whose name I still could not remember – and I had decided to take a little detour down to Cambridge Circus before cutting south to the Park. His was the body on Victor’s shoulder.

   Leicester Square was our next port of call. Though the young girl had been cut down from the noose from which I had found her hanging, the three of us thought it wrong to leave her to rot on the un-mowed grasses in the middle of the Square; it was for this reason that we decided to take her with us. Both Patrick’s son and I were charged with carrying her; due to the fact that she was considerably taller than me – then again, who wasn’t – I could not carry her alone.

   “We haven’t got far to go,” I reassured Patrick’s son, who was beginning to look as if he was about to drop to the ground in an exhausted muddle. “The Blue Bridge is just around the corner from here. We’ll rest up there.”

   Stone pillars marked the entrance to St James’s Park. A path of yellow sand and gravel led to the Blue Bridge, which extended over the green and turquoise-blue expanses of the lake which led from island to island, soaking the willows as it flowed and shimmied from one end of the park to the other. We passed two dilapidated souvenir stands as we made our way to the shore, waiting for the moment at which we could finally lay the two figures we’d lovingly lugged down here to rest.

   Victor was the first to reach the shimmering waterside. As if he was the leader of a royal procession through Westminster Abbey, he reached a weeping willow to the right of a junction in the pathways, stood as still and dignified as Nelson perched upon his column, then plucked Patrick off of his shoulder and laid him to rest on the soft lawns. As Victor retreated from the dead body, the young girl found hanged at Leicester Square was ceremoniously laid to rest such that the bodies were side by side like lovers.

   “What are we to do with them?” asked Victor, his voice solemn and piteous. “Are we just going to leave them there?”

   “Of course we aren’t,” I retorted. “If we were just going to leave them here, why would I have made us heave them all the way down from the West End?”