Onward with trepidation to Great Queen Street

As I approached the end of Long Acre, and as the angular and domineering white exterior of Freemason's Hall slowly came into view, I quivered. I thought I saw the grand master milling around outside in full dress, but maybe it was paranoia, I forgot how hilarious some of these folks look in their garb; middle aged old men playing fancy dress. Almost wanting to run away, panicking, I ducked and spun into the entrance of the Freemason’s Arms pub, on Long Acre, a pub which had been familiar to me, and had a quick jar. Mainly full of local office workers, they had procured some excellent ales and a lovely Orangeboom, the décor was different to when I was last there: minimalist, but strangely reassuring and pleasing. Needing a sharp kick, rather than warmth and re - assurance, I opted for the lager rather than my usual ale. The Orangeboom was cold, crisp and much needed after my long journey and my impending reunion and possible interrogation with my old friends of the order. The staff are helpful and polite. Although, as I remember so many pubs in Covent Garden, it can get crowded, noisy and a tad aggressive from late afternoon. Upon leaving, I turned left into Great Queen Street.

I approach the brutal, imposing grandiosity of the art - deco based Freemasons Hall on Great Queen Street. Squeezing past some members of the order milling about in their black suits outside, I ponder that, on entering the main hall my former brothers may decide that I am not welcome and maybe I’ll be told that I should leave. Hiding my nervousness, I nonchalantly passed through the main entrance, and once my identity was confirmed by security, walked up the gorgeous marble stair case up to the main hall, greeted by the All Seeing Eye on the ceiling. On furtively entering the main hall, I was, to my huge relief, approached and embraced by an old friend who, for the purpose of this blog, we shall call Daniel. We sat and chatted for a while and the usual small - talk gave way to me explaining to him that I wanted to find Willow, that I believed her to still be alive. He seemed concerned, gently rubbing my forearm and saying that I had clearly had trouble dealing with my grief, before swiftly moving on to talk about the cricket! Another fellow, Gabriel, ran up to me and put his arms around me, shouting my name repeatedly as though he didn’t really believe it was me and I had to reassure him that it was. Although being acquainted, I remember not knowing him as well as I would have liked and wandered if senility had got the better of him in his old age!

At that moment, I could not reconcile that one of the reasons I left London was because of these people; they seemed genuinely pleased to see me… I then realized it was a game, they were playing ‘good cop, bad cop’, a well rehearsed routine, which I would like to think I am far too experienced to fall for. On cue came the bad cop… literally, a well known and senior policeman in the public eye, who shall of course remain nameless, but we shall call Henderson, asked me about my whereabouts for the past twenty – seven years and I told him a carefully thought through fabrication without batting an eyelid. The dinner was very pleasant, and for a while I was rather pleased to be back in the old place. I momentarily forgot why I had left them. The meal was interrupted by us having to sing typical rubbish in Latin about how much we revere the Queen, even though very few of us here have actually even met her, followed by a lot of handclapping… the rituals now seem silly and quaint rather than sinister. For a moment, I began to think we might start a food fight. Still quite a lot of fun though.

On the whole, apart from some of the now elderly fellows who still seemed to believe strongly in their archaic calling from God to protect Queen and country, at this point in the evening I felt re – assured that the rumors I had heard were indeed correct and that the London Freemasons were now a harmless old gentleman’s club, a place for the aspiring lower middle classes to indulge in a spot of brown nosing and nothing more… rather than how I remember them, which was, shall we say… differently.

In a previous life, as a member of the security service during the cold war, I acquired many skills, including learning to drink vast quantities of alcohol and not give away any information about my true activities and so concluded that I would use these skills as well as I could after dinner. I was as vague as I could be and after some drinks with my newly rediscovered old friends at the Center for Acts and Actors, where we now have our official quarterly meetings… we discussed my return to London. And then went down stairs into the main hall, which is a lovely dusty old assembly style hall with a stage at the back and a grand piano; almost like an old music hall. It seemed very strange, even forbidden. I was returning to sacred ground which I had already desecrated, returning to the scene of the crime.

I had already decided that there was not much point trying to deceive myself over the fact that I had committed a betrayal of trust towards my brothers, and if I wanted to re - acquaint myself and procure money, I came to the conclusion and the acceptance of the fact when deciding to make this journey to London that I might be ‘traditionally’ interrogated by some of the older boys.

I was right.