FLETCHER WAS, IN HIS PERVERSE WAY about such things, proud of still using his old A to Z when finding his way around London. The street atlas had been published in the mid-sixties and in the years since many places in the city had altered out of all recognition. Streets had vanished, new ones been added, and whole districts erased more effectively than by the Blitz. So Fletcher thought of the book of maps as an indicator, albeit a not very reliable one, of likely ways to go. But he was sure that, even if the chart he steered by was no longer trustworthy, his instincts would set him right. For he knew that London could never be reduced to lines on paper, its nature was to change, and when travelling in the metropolis it was often best to go as an explorer entering unknown country.
‘I am,’ Fletcher would declare, ‘one of those born with a natural sense of direction.’
‘Are you claiming never to have been lost at all?’ asked his friend Mathews.
‘I have often been confused,’ Fletcher admitted, ‘but never lost.’
They were standing in Greenwich Park atop the hill and Mathews pointed at Canary Wharf.
‘It is easy to get lost round there,’ he said, ‘even with a good map. Imagine if you had lived in the area as a child and returned after thirty or forty years, not knowing how things had changed. It would be as if you had gone with the fairies for what seemed but a night, to return to a world no longer yours.’
‘As one taken under the hill,’ mused Fletcher. ‘Not many places like that on the Isle of Dogs.’
They stared at the glass and concrete buildings that dominated the riverside. The setting sun was reflected by a thousand windows. When it was full dark, Fletcher would look at the lights on Canary Wharf and think of the Last Redoubt in Hodgson’s The Night Land.
‘If one had been taken away,’ Fletcher said, ‘or lost part of one’s memory, so that you could only remember things as they had been years before, that would be . . . difficult.’
They walked in silence to the observatory, where they stopped once more to view the reach of the Thames. With silent contempt they turned their backs on the Dome to look upriver toward the setting sun.
‘It has ruined it,’ said Mathews, indicating the tower that dominated the north shore. ‘Just think of how many painters have put on canvas the view of London from this spot. And now . . .’
He waved a hand expressively and shuddered.
‘It is not a building that I could ever like,’ said Fletcher, ‘but it has a certain something.’
‘I know that things must change,’ Mathews allowed reluctantly, ‘for London cannot be still. That’s the best thing about a great city. But that building, well . . . it’s everywhere.’
Fletcher could not disagree.
They walked out of the park and across the heath to Point Hill, where they stood looking down on the roofs below.
‘Now this is an area that has hardly changed, except for the view, of course, since I was a child,’ observed Mathews.
‘One of the great high places of London, the Maidenstone,’ said Fletcher. ‘If it were not for the haze over the city we might see “Appy” Ampstead.’
‘The air is cleaner now than for a couple of hundred years,’ returned Mathews. ‘The “London Particular” is a thing of the past.’
‘Because there is no industry left,’ said Fletcher who looked sadly upon the bow of the Thames as it rounded Deptford. It was empty now; but he recalled a river full with ships, its banks lined by busy warehouses and thriving factories. It had not been so long ago, but all trace of the working Thames was now gone.
The sun sank slowly, its brightness lingering in the air above the city as the shadows of evening seemed to rise up from the soil beneath their feet. The trees that bordered the high, flat place seemed to be oddly misshapen as, one by one, the street lamps came on down the hill. If there were others about on the Maidenstone the two friends were oblivious to them, for in the thickening twilight it was difficult to see things, even if they were close by; even if they were closer than one might wish.
‘This is one of the last unspoilt places, one of the few left alone,’ sighed Mathews.
‘Amazing that it has never been built upon,’ said Fletcher, adding: ‘I suppose if anyone tried they would have been stopped.’
They walked down the steps from the hill, their route taking them between two rows of cottages. There was the unspoken promise of a pint or three ahead of them.
‘I know of a similar place,’ said Mathews, ‘on a hill, still unspoilt, with steps leading between the houses as a short cut between the streets. Not the usual thing that you find in this part of London, and not really all that far from here.’
‘Do you mean One Tree Hill at Honor Oak?’ asked Fletcher, who prided himself on knowing all the high places of the city. ‘The steps up the hill to the church there are very steep. They say that sometimes the ghost of a girl can be seen dancing on the steps.’
‘No, not there, but close to it,’ said Mathews. ‘Mabb’s Hill – it rises above the station.’
‘Mabb’s End,’ said Fletcher with interest, ‘a station where the trains rarely stop. I didn’t know that there was anything there, despite the name.’
They had walked down Royal Hill and stood, undecided, before two adjoining pubs.
‘Young’s, I think,’ said Fletcher.
‘Pint of special will do nicely,’ Mathews agreed.
They were soon sitting in the beer garden with their drinks. The summer night had grown humid and the lights strung from the trees and on the fence between the pubs glowed like fireflies. Fletcher had taken out his A to Z and studied the volume, with its tape-repaired spine, in the dim, uncertain light.
‘Now just where is this place?’ he asked. ‘I have the station here.’
Mathews peered at the open book. Above the garden the air was dark, for the light seemed to enclose the place in a glowing box. The uncertain illumination made the lines of the streets in the outdated atlas shift in odd patterns, as if the geography of the city was mutating before his eyes.
‘I can’t remember the name of the road, but one walks up the hill from the station and into a twisting street of Victorian houses. It is quite a climb, for the road turns sharply several times as if it were built on a zigzag pattern. Easier to use the stairs between the houses? Yes, but I think it best to be quite sure where one comes out. It is a place that might be easy to get lost in – even for someone with such a phenomenal sense of direction as yourself, Fletcher. Ah! I think that this is it.’
Fletcher looked down, trying to make out the tiny lettering at the tip of his friend’s finger.
‘Overhill Road – very apposite. And I see that behind the station, below the hill presumably, is Underhill Road. Have you ever noticed how these names always seem to go together? But I see no park or open space marked there. There is a park, farther across, opposite the station, but that cannot be the vantage point you mean . . .’
‘It is a very small place,’ Mathews agreed, ‘hardly more than the size of a couple of suburban gardens, but the view is splendid.’
Quite unaccountably, Fletcher felt suddenly unsure that his friend meant the view over London. He looked up at the night sky where no moon or stars showed as yet, for overhead all was a canopy of dark blue which turned to indigo and then black as his gaze swept from horizon to zenith. Moths danced beneath the hanging lights, flitting about the coloured glass.
‘But is it splendid enough?’ Fletcher asked. ‘I mean, is it worth going out of one’s way for?’
‘If one is near there, yes,’ said Mathews.
‘But is it worth making a trip for?’ persisted Fletcher.
Mathews appeared lost in thought for a moment.
‘If you are disappointed then you will blame me for wasting your time,’ he said at last, ‘but it is an odd spot. I came across it completely by chance.’
He took a long pull at his beer, and Fletcher sensed that an anecdote was on its way. An anecdote or perhaps something m
ore substantial.
‘It was quite a long time ago,’ began Mathews, ‘when I was looking for a flat. I had been given the address but had got myself a bit lost.’
‘I never get lost,’ Fletcher could not resist boasting. Pointing to his A to Z, he added, ‘It never lets me down.’
‘Something to depend on in a turning world,’ said Mathews dryly. ‘Do you want another pint?’
As Fletcher awaited his friend’s return he idly studied the atlas. He wondered if he might be due for new glasses for the lines on the page seemed to be all a-tumble, as if they were forming a new chart of the city, one that he could make no sense of.
Mathews returned with the ale and they sat silently for a few minutes, drinking contentedly.
‘It was quite a while since I was there and the place may have changed a good deal,’ Mathews said at last.
‘In the darker reaches of history, then,’ joked Fletcher. ‘Well, I can’t find any open space marked there at all.’
‘It is a very small area,’ said Mathews thoughtfully, ‘like the place had been overlooked when the district was first built up. Not really a park at all.’
‘Probably not worth going to,’ said Fletcher, who was mildly annoyed at not being able to find the place in his book of maps. ‘I really don’t know why you bothered to tell me of it.’
‘Oh, but it is worth going to, if one is near and can find it. For the view.’ Mathews looked at Fletcher for a moment and raised his glass, but before drinking could not resist adding, ‘Perhaps you do not know London quite as well as you think.’
Fletcher, as was his way, began to regale his friend with rather tall tales of his adventures in the odder and more neglected corners of the city. Soon the conversation turned to other, perhaps more interesting things: the Matter of London, the terrible decline in the standard of real ale and its rising price. The hill above Mabb’s End and its wonderful view were forgotten, for the time being.
The conversation with Mathews had almost slipped Fletcher’s mind until a few months later, when he unexpectedly found that business would take him near Mabb’s End.
‘I shall have the time,’ he mused, ‘so I might as well seek out Mathews’s wonderful view.’
Later that day he stood outside the station consulting his battered street atlas. Fletcher saw that Overhill Road was almost directly opposite, and rose quite steeply, just as Mathews had described. On each side of the road, which curved sharply to the left, Victorian houses of three and four storeys rose sheer as cliffs. Fletcher set off and turned the bend in the road, only to find that another faced him but a few dozen yards away.
‘Turn and turn again,’ he muttered when, on navigating this second corner, he was confronted by yet another bend, only a house length ahead. Certain that the map had not shown all these sharp turns he opened the book and a slip of paper, one that marked the relevant page, fell out and, caught by a vagrant breeze, fluttered before his face. Fletcher, who had written an important address on the paper, snatched at it, but the scrap easily evaded him and floated just out of reach to land on the pavement by the steps of the house.
It was then that Fletcher noticed the old man who stood by the door watching with interest his contortions as he tried to catch the paper.
‘It’s there,’ said the old fellow, pointing to the note, which lay before the steps at his feet.
As he retrieved the slip Fletcher suppressed the urge to retort that he was not blind, and instead thought it prudent to enquire if he was on the right road.
‘Excuse me,’ he asked, ‘but is there a piece of open ground near here? A sort of park at the top of this road?’
Scratching his head thoughtfully, the old man looked up the hill, which rose ever more steeply above them.
‘Don’t know,’ he said, adding by way of explanation, ‘I’ve never been up there.’
‘Oh! Don’t you live here then?’ asked Fletcher.
‘Yes,’ answered the old chap, ‘right here.’ He pointed, rather unnecessarily, to the house. ‘I’ve never needed to go up there.’
Fletcher was at a loss to understand how someone could not take the trouble to walk to the end of their street. Was the man entirely rational? Then another explanation presented itself.
‘Have you just moved in?’
The man gave him an odd look and replied, ‘I’ve been here nearly forty years.’
‘So in forty years you have never been to the end of your street?’ Fletcher exclaimed.
‘No point,’ said the old fellow with a hint of pride. ‘Nothing there.’
Fletcher felt a flicker of excitement. A place with nothing there. Of course, it was silly to put such a literal construction on the phrase. There was always something, even if it was not a very interesting something. With a nod to the old man he resumed his climb.
‘Its a steep way up,’ came a call from behind him.
‘How do you know if you’ve never been up there?’ Fletcher demanded, turning round.
A confused, anxious look passed across the man’s face, as if the question was profoundly upsetting. ‘My wife did once,’ he said abruptly, and disappeared inside, slamming the door behind him.
How peculiar, thought Fletcher, with a shake of his head. He knew that some Londoners took a perverse pride in not knowing their city, but never having gone to the end of one’s own street was taking parochialism a bit far. He shrugged – if he followed Overhill Road he must surely get to somewhere.
Resolutely, Fletcher set off again, noticing as he turned yet another bend that the higher he went, the taller the houses became. There were extra storeys topped off with sharply sloping roofs, and attics with steep gables that overlooked the street. He felt quite dizzy from staring up at them. Pausing for a moment to draw breath, he had the vague suspicion that he was on an Escher-like world, one where up and down, high and low did not quite mean what was normally accepted.
Then he noticed that, between two of the houses, a stepped alley ran. Recalling Mathews’s description, he made for this, thinking to save time that would be wasted negotiating another bend. As he climbed the steps a young woman pushing a pram appeared at the top, and waited for him to ascend.
‘Let me give you a hand,’ he offered, pleased to be able to indulge in a little minor gallantry. The girl, who like so many mothers these days seemed to be distressingly young, smiled assent. Fletcher grasped the bar of the old-fashioned baby carriage, which despite its size felt quite light, and lifted it down with the girl holding on to the handle. On reaching the bottom of the steps he set the pram down and looked inside, ready to make an appropriate remark. But it was quite empty and he was at a loss for words.
‘Keep on going,’ said the girl, cheerfully. ‘You’ll get there before you know it.’
Fletcher smiled at her. He had begun to puff and pant rather and he thought he must be somewhat red in the face.
‘The road does seem to go on for ever,’ he said ruefully.
‘It can do, if you let it,’ said the girl, turning to head downhill.
‘It’s all right for you,’ Fletcher laughed, ‘with an empty pram.’
She turned her head and grinned back at him.
‘It’ll be full on the way back.’
So saying, she disappeared around the abrupt bend. Fletcher thought her smile, while by no means unwelcome, was rather too knowing. She was certainly right about his stamina. The climb was proving much more difficult than he could have anticipated. Mathews really had not properly described how absurdly steep the hill was. Fletcher was beginning to feel worn out and testy.
‘There had better be something at the end of this,’ he muttered darkly, and took out the A to Z again. As he opened the dogeared paperback a page came loose. He looked at it in bewilderment. Despite its age the street atlas was in good condition, and this was the first time that it had shown signs of disintegration. Fletcher looked at the errant page, trying to see what part of the city had come adrift. He could not recognize it at all. H
ood Lane, Hobb Street. None of the names were familiar. Ah! Here was a station – Pook End. He had never heard of it.
Then, as he stood shaking his head, Fletcher noticed something even stranger. The road seemed to have changed, for the slope had somehow levelled. For a moment he had the feeling that he might not have walked up the street but had gone down, and that he now stood in a dip or valley between two rises. Closing his eyes in bewilderment, he began to wonder if he had over-exerted himself. Could he be having a mild stroke? After a few seconds he opened his eyes and was relieved to find that the street had returned to normal – if such a punishing gradient could be described as normal.
Fletcher still held the loose page in his hand, but refused to look at it; instead, he placed the sheet between the cover and first page, resolving to study the map later. He saw with dismay that other sheets were coming loose too, and it struck him that the London he knew so well was now falling apart.
‘That’s it,’ he said aloud. ‘I’m going back down.’
‘You’ve come too far now. You have to carry on.’
It was the girl with the pram, or at least it looked like her. But she was coming downhill towards him, moving rapidly, almost at a run, as if by her speed she could take off and all the faster reach the bottom, or wherever she might be going.
‘Straight up?’ Fletcher asked as she sped past. He could not now be sure if it was the same girl, for he saw that this pram had an occupant. But it sped past so fast that he had no time to make out who or what it was. As he spoke Fletcher pointed uphill to where the road made yet another sharp bend.
‘It’s hardly straight and it’s not up,’ she replied without looking back and vanished into the stepped alley, leaving only the sound of wheels clacking on stone. Fletcher decided that it must be a different girl. Perhaps there was a nursery nearby. This might explain why the first girl’s pram was empty. She had deposited her baby somewhere. He took a deep breath and considered the girl’s words. Well, he had come too far now to stop. It would not do to tell Mathews that he had given up on the hill.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2002, Volume 13 Page 40