The Liberators Read Free Page B

an inch of wall was bare. When it was, it showed cream and crimson stripes.
    His shoes made very little noise on the stairs, which had a thick blue carpet running down the middle. Down a flight he passed what he guessed were the family bedrooms. He heard voices as he came down the next flight on to the first floor, and saw a long, low room full of light through an open door.
    He caught sight of his aunt’s back as she sat in a chair, an easel in front of her, talking softly to her subject. He didn’t want to alert her to his presence, so he tiptoed past. He strained to catch sight of the painting – but all he could see was a mass of colour that had not yet resolved itself into a figure.
    He sped silently down the last flight, out into the hall, the floor of which was tiled and cool. Doors led into the drawing room, a sitting room and a study, and one more flight, which he didn’t set foot on, he guessed went down into the kitchen in the basement.
    Ivo felt a tingling all over him. It was time to test the waters of his new kingdom. London was unknown territory, just as hostile to him as the bleakness of the Mongolian steppes was to his parents. His early years had been spent at his father’s house in Devon. Trees rustled by his window, a stream that could be forded ran nearby. He had no brothers and sisters, and had grown used to being on his own in the forests and fields. But all the same, he had yearned for bustle and movement, for people, lights and action. He went up to the huge black door, opened it, and stepped out into the street. The city, vast, abrasive, alive, was waiting.
    â€˜London, you are mine,’ he said under his breath, and strode out into the street.
    Grey clouds were weighing down, filling the sky with their gloomy presence, threatening at any moment to explode in rain that had the cold sharpness of knives. Ivo pulled his coat around him more tightly. It wasn’t thick enough for this weather. He muffled his mouth in his scarf, feeling it warm up with his breath, but it soon became uncomfortable and he pulled it down, letting the wind in. He could feel it chapping his lips. Trees loomed, houses squatted, cars shot by.
    He had gone to the garden in the middle of the square, but the gates had been locked and he didn’t have a key, and when he’d tried to climb over the fence an angry keeper had shouted at him. He’d forgotten to bring the A–Z with him, but he didn’t want to risk going back to pick it up. He didn’t know in which direction he should walk to get to anywhere interesting. Even if he did, he reflected, he didn’t know where he should go.
    Sighing, he stumbled down one of the roads that led off Charmsford Square and then, wandering through a street full of chic shops and hairdressers, he came across a newsagent’s. A board in front of it screamed in fake handwriting:
    .
    TUBE TERROR
    He went in and bought an Evening Standard , and then, driven by the cold, slipped into a small greasy spoon next door to the newsagent’s. It was crammed full of formica tables, each with a bottle of ketchup and mustard nestling in the middle, a plastic menu card stuck in between the salt and pepper cellars. There was a muggy, homely smell in the air. The customers were few, and slow, muttering quietly amongst themselves.
    As he waited for the waitress to bring his tea, he settled down to read the feature:
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    It wasn’t a bomb. But at five fifteen on an ordinary Friday afternoon, the passengers of a southbound Bakerloo line train might have been forgiven for thinking so. Just before the train pulled into Edgware Road station, the lights went out. ‘I thought I was going to die,’ said Joan Freeman, 42, of Dulwich. ‘There was a terrible screaming. I thought, “This is it.”’ Reports are confused, but it is known that there was one fatality. Charles Blackwood, 28, was killed on that carriage by what eyewitnesses are calling