James Herbert - ‘48

The others crowded in behind me, nervously looking around the compact, low-ceilinged entrance hall, Muriel walking straight to the short flight of stairs leading to the floor above and peering up them. Cissie finally emerged from the revolving door, her glare telling me I should have advised her. From the relief on the faces of the others I guessed they were pleased to find there were no shrivelled corpses cluttering up the place, and I wasn’t about to tell them otherwise, at least, not right there and then. Sure, there were plenty of guests still in residence, all of them dead, but I’d tucked them away out of sight along with members of staff as far as the rooms, stairways and corridors I used were concerned. Like the warden, I preferred them out of sight and out of mind. I had to give these people some warning though, because certain areas I’d left untouched.

‘Stay with me and don’t go poking your noses into any closed rooms,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t like what you’d find. And hey…’ I paused, making sure I had their full attention. ‘There are some parts we have to go through that are gonna upset you. Unfortunately there’s no other way…’

Muriel shuddered and turned from the stairs. Cissie held her own upper arms as if a chill breeze had followed her through from the street

‘I thought the hotel would be empty,’ murmured Muriel. ‘I didn’t realize…’ Her voice sharpened and there was enough daylight inside the entrance hall to see the astonished curiosity in her eyes. ‘Why would you choose to live in a…in a… morgue like this? There must be so many other places.’

I brushed past her to reach the stairs. ‘This is just one of a few safe places, lady, and one I was already familiar with.’

‘I don’t understand.’

On the third step, I turned to look down at her. ‘Did you ever hear of the 1st American Eagle Squadron?’

She nodded slowly, but it was Potter who spoke up. ‘Yanks and Canadians who couldn’t wait for their own countries to come off the fence.’

‘We joined in your war early, fought with the RAF when you needed all the pilots you could get,’ I said, too weary to explain fully, but ready to satisfy this girl’s curiosity if it would get her moving again. ‘We made our unofficial HQ in this hotel. Suite 618 – 619. We drank, we caroused, we played poker, we did anything to take our minds off killing and being killed for a coupla hours. The American Bar became our watering hole, though I don’t remember any of us ever paying for a drink. Hell, we even got into Tich’s Bar with the war correspondents.’ I didn’t tell them about Sally, how I’d courted her here, my turn to impress her after she’d shown me all the good things in her town, bomb damage or not, how I’d loved her, and yeah, one year before the last V2s had landed, had married her here in the Savoy Chapel. 318-319 was our honeymoon suite, but the hotel had only charged us room rate and had thrown in champagne and flowers as a wedding gift. I didn’t explain because there wasn’t time and there was no point. Besides, these people meant nothing to me – I didn’t owe them a thing. ‘Cept maybe the German. Yeah, he had something coming, and that was why I wanted them all to stay with me for now. I wanted him to suffer just a little before he took his last breath, but I was too beat up to play it out right then. When I put the Kraut away, I wanted to enjoy the moment. Heck, I wanted to celebrate it.

‘So why are we hanging around?’ Cissie said, looking from me to the others, then back to me again. ‘You mentioned the water’s still running, didn’t you? And I bet the bar’s open all hours, isn’t it? So what are we waiting for?’

She joined me on the stairs and when I failed to budge because my thoughts were still otherwise engaged, she prompted me with: ‘Mine’s a large gin and tonic, easy on the tonic, heavy on the gin. Hey, Mr Fighter Pilot, did you hear me? A girl could die a thirst aroun’ here.’ Her attempt at Mae West was pretty cruddy – maybe it was the hint of hysteria that spoilt it – but it changed my mood. For a short while, anyway.

I took them up to the next level, through an art deco foyer with dusty chandelier and fountain-etched mirror, then up more stairs into twilight corridors, past doors with fancy names – Iolanthe, Mikado, Sorcerer, Gondoliers – and over thick carpets that smelled of mildew. The further we ventured, the gloomier it became, until after a sharp turn the way ahead radiated a palish grey again. Soon we’d entered that grey.

‘Oh dear God.’ Muriel’s fingertips covered her lips.

‘How could…?’ Slowly Cissie had turned her eyes on me, away from the spectacle that spread out before us, away from the vast front foyer where the rich and the gracious and the businessmen on expenses had taken late-morning or afternoon tea, or evening cocktails, in elegant easy chairs or sofas set between brown marble columns and exotic potted palms, surrounded by tasteful murals and high mirrors, ormolu clocks and knee-high tables laid with finest chinaware and tiered cake-stands, served by waiters in tails, with reception clerks in morning dress bustling through it all with courteous calm, the war outside an inconvenience but never a hindrance to the Savoy, service as normal even if the building itself had become a little battered and the menus reduced to basic (if stylish) fare; where now rotted figures slumped in those same elegant easy chairs, or sprawled across those knee-high tables amid broken crockery, or lay on carpets thick with dust, the foyer nothing more than a vast emporium of horribly macabre tableaux, each one solidified in death, the plants merely dried stems, the chandeliers grey with dust, and the humans only desiccated husks. And beyond this, through the open doors to the grand restaurant overlooking the park and river, opened only for lunchtime custom in the dark days, the scene was repeated, but rendered even more grotesque by the sun’s brightness through the high, broad, taped windows. Cissie had diverted her eyes from this to look at me with…with what? Not with Muriel’s astonished curiosity when we’d first entered the building. Horror, then? Yeah, horror and something more. Dismay would come closest Her sentence might have finished with, ‘How could you live in a charnel house like this and remain sane?’

Well, lady, I hadn’t claimed to have all my marbles.

I didn’t say that, though. I just couldn’t be bothered any more. I ignored those bewildered hazel eyes and her unfinished question.

‘The stairway’s along here,’ I said instead, moving off to the right towards the Savoy’s stately vestibule and entrance hall, sensing their eyes on my back, their disgust I kept walking and knew they’d follow me anyway, like frightened stray sheep in need of a leader.

Up a broad set of steps I took them, past a balcony overlooking the vestibule, then down a high-ceilinged hallway towards the stairs next to the defunct elevator. On the way, but without changing pace, I took a quick peek into a half-open doorway, checking on the Velocette Mk II motorbike I’d hidden away in there. It nestled in the shadows like some great black and fabulous insect, tank full, parts greased and free from rust, spark plugs clean, all primed and ready for a swift start, and just a glimpse of it stirred something deep down in my gut It was the sudden urge to get away, I guess, to climb aboard that machine and roar out of the hotel and free myself from these people and the liability that went with knowing them. Involvement was something I neither wanted nor needed, because that kind of burden only brought more grief.

My own exhaustion smothered the impulse no sooner than it was roused (besides, I hadn’t forgotten Stern and why I wanted him here) and I kept going, heading towards the staircase beside the elevator.