Practicality, however, was the enemy of the Dreamlands explorer. He would be standing around in the mundane world until his sola topi bleached and his elephant gun rusted, while in the meantime the disgusting woolly-minded artistic types were off writing bad sonnets by the lake at Sarnath, having wandered into the Dreamlands by the very virtue of being woolly-minded artistic types. It was as intolerable as, for example, the British Library suddenly enforcing a ‘Monkeys Only’ rule, leaving serious scholars fuming outside while, within the sacred walls, macaques made merry with the Magna Carta, and capuchins defecated on the Gutenberg. It galled Cabal beyond belief that those of analytic mind who could make most use of the strange resources of the Dreamlands were, by their very nature, denied entrance.
There was one way through, however: the Silver Key – always capital S, capital K because it truly was that important and that unique. There may be only one Holy Grail, but it is part of an entire junk shop’s worth of similar relics – fragments of the One True Cross, the Spear of Destiny, the Burial Shroud in Turin, and more miraculous bits of dead saints than bear thinking about. The Silver Key, however, was truly unique – the only artefact that allowed physical rather than psychic entry into the Dreamlands, and the only artefact that could be used by absolutely anyone with the will to do so, regardless of opium consumption.
Finding it, however, was the natural prerequisite to using it, and finding it had proved impossible. It seemed to have an irrational fondness for ending up in the hands of the very wastrels who could just as easily have reached the Dreamlands by the narcotic route, and as drug-addled wastrels make poor documenters, the trail of hands through which the Key had passed was as ephemeral as footprints by the low-tide mark.
And now, having been dismissed as, at best, unfindable and, at worst, non-existent, the Silver Key of myth and legend was almost in his hands, certainly within his reach. Cabal considered walking to the village in the night, murdering the men in their beds and stealing the Key, but discarded the notion. After all, they might not have it with them. Besides which, the idea of leading a funded expedition into the Dreamlands appealed to him. He could use the hunt for this ‘Phobic Animus’ of theirs as an opportunity to scout out the land, and gather intelligence for his own subsequent explorations. He did not even mind having three unctuous men following him around: he agreed with their aims and if, wonder of wonders, they succeeded, the mortal world would be that much more rational, and therefore personally bearable to Cabal. Also, he was confident that he could outrun any of them, and if the party ended up being pursued by one or other of the Dreamlands’ many horrors, it was good to know that there were three alternative meals that he could leave in his wake.
The village – it had a name, but Cabal rarely used it – lay some four miles away from where his house stood in its sheltered little valley, a location calculated to prevent the slightest tone of a church bell reaching it even with a tailwind. Four miles is also, incidentally, an awkward distance for a torch-bearing mob to cover: torches gutter, pitchforks grow heavy, and the length of the walk robs a lynching of its necessary spontaneity. Not that the villagers did very much of that, not after the last time.
Cabal kept his visits there to the bare minimum, and for their part, the villagers tolerated him with a forced civility that said as much for their Englishness as for any fear of him. The grocer would take his order in polite silence, only speaking to make the mandatory opening conversational gambit of greeting and comment upon the weather, then to clarify any ambiguities as he transcribed Cabal’s list of requirements, and finally to bid him a sincere and relieved goodbye. People on the street ignored him. Even the most wilful teenager knew the stories and avoided eye contact.
The only individual who sought Cabal out when he visited was Sergeant Parkin, the senior officer of the village’s police force, consisting of Parkin, two unambitious constables, and an ageing Alsatian called ‘Bootsy’. People liked Sergeant Parkin and were grateful for the calm way in which he dealt with the Cabal problem. ‘He knows better than to throw his weight around here,’ Parkin would say, while drinking on duty in the saloon bar of The Old House at Home. ‘We treat him polite, like, and he’s here and gone, and good riddance.’ The villagers might have been less pleased to know that Parkin’s public-relations efforts were entirely focused upon them, as Parkin himself was in Cabal’s employ. In return for a suitable emolument in a brown envelope every Christmas, Parkin kept the village in a state of delicate uncertainty, as a Swiss village might be beneath a mountainside deep in snow: providing they remained calm and quiet, no avalanche would descend upon them. Parkin saw no clash between his role and his actions. After all, his primary concern was to keep the peace, and this he did.
Parkin was talking football in the pub when Mr Jeffries, whose home overlooked the dusty and rarely travelled road that ran by Cabal’s house, entered, approached the sergeant directly, spoke quietly and calmly in his ear, and left again.
Parkin frowned and looked at the calendar hung behind the bar. Beneath a gaudy McGill painting of an exasperated judge and a smirking divorce case co-respondent (‘You are prevaricating, sir. Did you or did you not sleep with this woman?’ ‘Not a wink, my lord!’), the date caused him some mild consternation.
He buttoned up his uniform tunic, put on his helmet, said, ‘Duty calls,’ to the landlord, slung the last inch of his pint down his throat, and went out to face the dreadful Herr Cabal.
Cabal was unsurprised to see Sergeant Parkin waiting by the pump, trough and rarely used well on the village green, his arms crossed, his expression vexed. He walked directly to the policeman, aware that every busybody in the place was watching them. It did not help Cabal to undermine Parkin’s authority, so he exhibited enough deference to maintain the sergeant’s standing, and just enough coldness to remind the onlookers just who they were dealing with here.
‘Funny time of the month for you to be out of your bailiwick, isn’t it, Mr Cabal?’ said Parkin, loudly enough to be heard by the watchers. Then, more quietly, he added, ‘Bugger me, chum, a word of warning would have been nice.’
‘Of course, Parkin,’ replied Cabal, also quietly. ‘I should have sent a member of my extensive household to tell you. The under-butler, perhaps, or a footman, or possibly one of the many grooms.’
Parkin, who knew that Cabal was the only inhabitant of his house, or at least the only living human inhabitant, grunted, and let the point go. ‘All right, so you’re here now. What is it you’re after? You only had your groceries last week. You haven’t run out, have you?’
‘No. I have had visitors. I believe they are staying at the tavern. I wish to speak to them.’
‘What?’ Parkin shot a glance at the Old House at Home. ‘The undertaker, the unfrocked priest and the bloke who looks like an alky? I knew all that codswallop about butterfly hunting was bollocks, but I didn’t know they were anything to do with you. I don’t recall you having any visitors before, Cabal.’
‘I have visitors, just not often, and they don’t normally stop here.’ Cabal was aware of hostile eyes upon him, and of the delicate status quo of the relationship between the villagers and himself seesawing dangerously. ‘Is this a problem, Sergeant?’