ATDTDA (8): Kids and Gentleman Bombers, 233-237

[Paul Nightingale]

More past-in-the-present as Lew “be[gins] to discover
a structure to the darkness, dating from quite ancient
times, perhaps well before there was any city here at
all”. He seeks “a source of Cyclamite” and tries one
“inadequate ... substitute” after another. So the
setting (“London in resolute municipal creep out of
the Realm of Gas”) is juxtaposed to a personal quest
to turn back the clock. Back in Colorado he rode the
trail, “apt to see things that weren’t necessarily
there” (171), ie the Kid-in-Black, “always just out of
eyeball range”. Lew is wary of his surroundings: “He
had learned early on the job to attend to land- and
townscapes only out as far as the range of the
firearms most likely to be in the hands of possible
harmdoers.” (174) As Ch20 begins, Lew favours black;
and he attempts to turn himself into a shadowy
half-presence (233).

The two Ns have returned from Cambridge to help him
with his habit: this passage, inconsequential, segues
into the visit to Coombes De Bottle, “through a narrow
passageway next to the shop, leading back to a mews
entirely invisible from the street”, a location
finally “somehow colder and remote from the morning
light” (234). CDB explains the attempt “to return,
step by step, to its [a bomb’s] original act of
construction” (235), a methodology that leads to “the
missionary zeal” to enlighten bomb-makers as to “the
simplest principles of lab safety”. Lew, no doubt
thinking of his previous existence, cannot understand
“the logic”. CDB’s value-judgement is to say, in
effect, that no one is innocent: the kind of
generalisation that one might associate with the young
Frank seeking “a general rule” (90), perhaps.

The GB of H is “a mysterious figure in white flannels”
(236), therefore not “in a black duster and hat”
(171). Yet he (? as always) stands in for the Kid.
Previously, the use of dynamite was deemed ironic,
“both the miner’s curse, the outward and audible sign
of his enslavement to mineral extraction, and the
American working man’s equaliser, his agent of
deliverance, if he would only dare to use it” (87).
Moreover, to Webb, “the medium of truth” might be
taken over bosses, “these criminal bastards to tell
their lies with” (85). Here, the point about the
“poison-gas genade” is that “too often the victims
aren’t aware at all of being gassed” (236). Perhaps a
sly reference to the alleged soporific effects of
watching cricket.

The timing of this chapter (“[a]s autumn deepened”,
233) is (fairly) precise; and it isn’t possible that,
as CDB insists, “the Ashes is currently in progress”
(236). Hence, not the world as we know it.
Nonetheless, there are many “Australians, with whom we
are somewhat overrun at the moment” to serve as alien
suspects: it is nothing to do with cricket, but the Ns
have already claimed acquaintance with “an Aussie we
met whilst in the nick one Regatta weekend” (234).
Nothing to do with cricket: perhaps, but both sporting
events (the Henley, a test match) have middle- or
upper-class connotations. Like the Ns, any Australian
visitors are unlikely to be penniless immigrants,
although irony is poured on irony: as any
self-respecting, Queen-loving Brit knows, Australia
was ‘founded’ by criminals transported from Britain.