Hawksmoor

by Peter Ackroyd

  Some distance away from them, in a corner of the ground closest to the Thames, a solitary tramp was staring at the figure in the dark coat who was now walking away: 'Do you remember me?' the tramp cried out, 'You're the one, aren't you! I've seen you! I've watched you!' The figure paused for a moment before hurrying on; then the tramp's attention shifted and, forgetting all about the man (who had even now reached the river and stood with his back towards the city), he bent over once more and continued digging with his hands into the damp earth. Behind him the outline of the Limehouse church could be seen against the darkening sky; he gazed up at the building, with its massive but now crumbling and discoloured stone, and rubbed his neck with the palm of his right hand. 'It's getting cold,' he said, T'm off. I've had enough of this. I'm cold.'

  It was about half-an-hour before sunset and, although the other vagrants would stay by the fire until they dropped exhausted on the ground and slept where they fell, he started making his way to a derelict house (early Georgian in appearance) which stood at the corner of Narrow Street and Rope-Maker's-Field. This was an area in which there were many such dwellings, with their windows boarded up and their doors fastened with planks, but this particular place had been used for many years -and, as such, it was recognised and permitted by the police. The theory was that the employment of this one house prevented the vagrants from trying to enter the church or its crypt as a resting place but, in truth, none of them would have ventured into St Anne's.

  The tramp had reached Narrow Street when he paused, recalling with sudden ferocity the back of the man who had walked away from him towards the river, although he could not remember when precisely this event had occurred. He turned around quickly and then, seeing nothing, with a slow step he walked into the house. The rain was being blown in as he entered the hallway, and he paused to look down at his cracked and gaping shoes; then he examined the moisture on his hands before rubbing them against the wall. He peered into the ground floor rooms to see if there were any faces he recognised as 'trouble': there were some who picked quarrels with anyone who came near them, and others who screamed or called out in the night.

  There had even been occasions when, in a place such as this where tramps sheltered, one would get up in the middle of the night, kill another, and then go back to sleep again.

  Three of them were already settled in the house: in the far corner of the largest room, a man and woman were lying against an old mattress: both of them seemed old, except that time moves fast for vagrants and they age quickly. In the middle of the room a young man was frying something in a battered saucepan, holding it gingerly above the fire which he had lit on the cracked stone floor. This is something, Ned,' he said to the tramp who now entered the room, This is really something, Neddo'. Ned glanced into the saucepan and saw food of an olive colour sizzling in its own fat. The smell made him feel uneasy: 'I'm off!' he shouted at the young man, although they were only a few inches apart.

  'It's terrible rainy, Ned.'

  T'm not happy here. I'm off!'

  But instead of going outside he walked into the next room, which was used as a latrine; he pissed in a corner and then came back, glaring at the young man who was still bent over his fire. The old couple paid no attention to either of them: the woman had a dark brown bottle in one hand, and waved it around as she continued with what seemed to be an interrupted conversation. 'Dust, just look at the dust,' she was saying, 'and you know where it comes from, don't you? Yes, you know.' She turned her head sideways and glanced at her companion, who was bowed down with his head between his knees. Then she started singing in a low voice, Shadows of the evening Steal across the sky…

  But her words became confused, and she repeated 'sky' or 'night' several times before relapsing into silence. She stared out of the window's broken panes: 'Now look at those clouds there. I'm sure there's a face in there looking at me.' She handed the bottle to her companion, who held it for a minute without bringing it to his lips.

  Then she grabbed it from him.

  Thanks for the drink,' he said abashed.

  'Are you happy there?'

  'I have been happy but I'm not happy now,' and he lay down with his back to her.

  Ned had also settled himself into a corner, sighing as he did so. He put his hand into the right hand pocket of his capacious coat, which he wore even in the heat of summer, and took out an envelope; he opened it, and stared at the photograph which was inside. He cannot remember now if he had found it or if it had always been his, and it was so creased that the image upon it was almost unrecognisable; it appeared, however, to be a picture of a child taken in front of a stone wall, with some trees set back upon the right hand. The child had his arms straight down by his sides, with the palms outward, and his head was tilted slightly to the left. The expression upon his face was unclear, but Ned had come to the conclusion that this was a photograph of himself as a small boy.

  The bell of Limehouse Church rang as each of them, in this house, drifted into sleep -suddenly once more like children who, exhausted by the day's adventures, fall asleep quickly and carelessly. A solitary visitor, watching them as they slept, might wonder how it was that they had arrived at such a state and might speculate about each stage of their journey towards it: when did he first start muttering to himself, and not realise that he was doing so? When did she first begin to shy away from others and seek the shadows? When did all of them come to understand that whatever hopes they might have had were foolish, and that life was something only to be endured? Those who wander are always objects of suspicion and sometimes even of fear: the four people gathered in this house by the church had passed into a place, one might almost say a time, from which there was no return.

  The young man who had been bent over the fire had spent his life in a number of institutions -an orphanage, a juvenile home and most recently a prison; the old woman still clutching the brown bottle was an alcoholic who had abandoned her husband and two children many years before; the old man had taken to wandering after the death of his wife in a fire which he believed, at the time, he might have prevented.

  And what of Ned, who was now muttering in his sleep?

  He had once worked as a printer in Bristol, for a small firm which specialised in producing various forms of stationery. He enjoyed his work but his temperament was a diffident one, and he found it difficult to speak to his colleagues: when in the course of the day he had to talk to them, he often stared at his hands or looked down at the floor as he did so. This had also been his position as a child. He had been brought up by elderly parents who seemed so distant from him that he rarely confided in them, and they would stare at him helplessly when he lay sobbing upon his bed; in the schoolyard he had not joined in the games of others but had held himself back, as if fearing injury.

  So he had been called a 'retiring' boy. Now his work-mates pitied him, although they tried not to show it, and it was generally arranged that he was given jobs which allowed him to work alone. The smell of ink, and the steady rhythm of the press, then induced in him a kind of peace -it was the peace he felt when he arrived early, at a time when he might be the only one to see the morning light as it filtered through the works or to hear the sound of his footsteps echoing through the old stone building. At such moments he was forgetful of himself and thus of others until he heard their voices, raised in argument or in greeting, and he would shrink into himself again. At other times he would stand slightly to one side and try to laugh at their jokes, but when they talked about sex he became uneasy and fell silent for it seemed to him to be a fearful thing. He still remembered how the girls in the schoolyard used to chant, Kiss me, kiss me if you can I will put you in my pan, Kiss me, kiss me as you said I will fry you till you're dead And when he thought of sex, it was as of a process which could tear him limb from limb. He knew from his childhood reading that, if he ran into the forest, there would be a creature lying in wait for him.

  Generally after work he left quickly and returned through the streets o
f Bristol to his room, with its narrow bed and cracked mirror.

  It was cluttered with his parents' furniture, which to him now smelled of dust and death, and was quite without interest except for a variety of objects which gleamed on the mantelpiece. He was a collector, and at weekends he would search paths or fields for old coins and artefacts: the objects he discovered were not valuable, but he was drawn to their status as forgotten and discarded things. He had recently found, for example, an old spherical compass which he had placed at the centre of his collection. He stared at in the evening, imagining those who in another time had used it to find their way.

  Thus he lived until his twenty fourth year when, on one evening in March, he agreed to go with his work-mates to the local pub. He had not been able to concentrate on his work all that day: for some reason he had been experiencing a peculiar but unfocussed excitement; his throat was dry, his stomach tightened into cramps, and when he spoke he confused his words. When he arrived in the saloon bar he wanted to drink some beer quickly, very quickly, and for a moment he had an image of his own body as a flame: 'What'll you have? What'll you have?' he called out to the others, who looked at him astonished.

  But he was filled with good fellowship and, as he waited for his order, he saw a discarded glass with some whisky still in it; surreptitiously, he drank it down before turning to his friends with a broad grin.

  The more he drank that evening, the more he talked; he took everything that was said with a terrible seriousness, and interrupted other conversations continually. 'Let me explain,' he was saying, 'Try and see it my way for once.' Certain thoughts and phrases which had occurred to him in the past, but which he had kept to himself, now acquired real significance and he shouted them out in astonishment even as he faintly sensed the incredulity and horror which he would later feel at his own behaviour. But this did not matter if at last he was about to create a vivid impression upon the others: and that need became all the more desperate when he was no longer able to distinguish their faces, and they had become moons which encircled him. And he left his own body in order to howl at them from a distance: 'I shouldn't be here,' he was saying, 'I shouldn't be telling you this. I stole money. I stole it from the firm -you know when she puts the wages in the packets? I stole a lot, and they never found out.

  Never. You know I was in prison for stealing once?' He looked around as if he were being hunted. 'It's terrible there, in a cell. I shouldn't be here. I'm a professional thief.' He took hold of a glass, but it slipped out of his grasp and shattered as it hit the floor; then he got up from his stool and swung blindly towards the door.

  It was early morning when he woke up, fully clothed, on his bed and found himself staring at the ceiling with his arms rigid by his sides. At first he felt quite serene, since he was being borne aloft by the grey light approaching him in neat squares from the window, but then the memory of the previous evening struck him and, staring wildly around, he sprang up from the bed. He gnawed at his right hand as he tried to recall each event in order but he saw only an image of himself as blood red, his face contorted with rage, his body veering from side to side, and his voice magnified as if all the time he had been sitting alone in a darkened room. He concentrated on that darkness and was able to glimpse the faces of the others, but they were stamped with horror or detestation. And then he remembered what he had said about theft, and about prison. He got up and looked into the mirror, noticing for the first time that he had two large hairs growing between his eyebrows. Then he was sick in the small basin. Who was it that had spoken last night?

  He was walking around in circles, the smell of the old furniture suddenly very distinct. There was a newspaper in his hand and he started reading it, paying particular attention to the headlines which seemed to be floating towards him so that now a band of black print encircled his forehead. He was curled upon the bed, hugging his knees, when the next horror came upon him: those who heard him last night would now have to report his theft, and his employer would call the police. He saw how the policeman took the telephone call at the station; how his name and address were spoken out loud; how he looked down at the floor as they led him away; how he was in the dock, forced to answer questions about himself, and now he was in a cell and had lost control of his own body. He was staring out of the window at the passing clouds when it occurred to him that he should write to his employer, explaining his drunkenness and confessing that he invented the story of theft; but who would believe him? It was always said that in drink there was truth, and perhaps it was true that he was a convicted thief. He began to sing, One fine day in the middle of the night, Two dead men got up to fight and then he knew what was meant by madness.

  The terror began now: he heard a noise in the street outside his window, but when he stood up he turned his face to the wall.

  Everything in his life seemed to have led him towards this morning, and he had been foolish not to see the pattern taking shape ahead of him; he went to his wardrobe and inspected his clothes with interest, as if they belonged to some other person. And it was while he was sitting in his faded armchair, trying to remember how his mother had bent forward to caress him, that he realised he was late for work; but of course he could not go there again. (In fact his colleagues had realised that night how drunk he had become, and paid little or no attention to his conversation: his remarks about theft and prison were thought to be an example of a strange sense of humour which he had never revealed to them before.) At some hour his clock sounded its alarm and he stared at it in horror: 'My God!' he said aloud, 'My God! My God!'. And so the first day passed.

  On the second day he opened his window and looked about with curiosity; he realised that he had never properly noticed his street before, and he wanted to discover exactly what it was like. But it was like nothing, and he saw faces staring up at him. He shut the window quietly, waiting for his panic to subside. That night he talked in his sleep, finding the words for his bewilderment which he would never hear. And the second day passed. On the third day he found a letter which had been pushed under his door: he made a point of not looking at it but then, in exasperation, he placed it under the mattress of his bed. It occurred to him now to draw the curtains as well, so that no one should suspect he was indoors. Then he heard scuffling noises outside his room and he shrank back in terror: a large dog, or some other animal, was trying to get in. But the noises stopped. On the fourth day he woke up realising that he had been forgotten: he was free of the whole world, and the relief dazed him. He dressed quickly and went out into the street, pausing only to glance up at his own window before entering a pub where an old tramp with matted hair watched him intently. In his distress he picked up a paper, and saw that he was reading an account of a robbery. He stood up quickly, overturning the small table at which he had been sitting, and walked out. Then he returned to his small room and addressed the furniture which smelled now like his parents. And the fourth day passed: that night, he peered into the darkness but could see nothing and it seemed to him that his room, with all its familiar objects, had at last disappeared. The darkness had no beginning and no end; this is like death, he thought just before falling asleep, but the disease affecting me is one I cannot see.

  His terror became his companion. When it seemed to diminish, or grow easier to bear, he forced himself to remember the details of what he had said and done so that his fears returned, redoubled. His previous life, which had been without fear, he now dismissed as an illusion since he had come to believe that only in fear could the truth be found. When he woke from sleep without anxiety, he asked himself, What is wrong? What is missing? And then his door opened slowly, and a child put its head around and gazed at him: there are wheels, Ned thought, wheels within wheels. The curtains were now always closed, for the sun horrified him: he was reminded of a film he had seen some time before, and how the brightness of the noonday light had struck the water where a man, in danger of drowning, was struggling for his life.

  He now sometimes dressed in the
middle of the night, and took off his clothes in the late afternoon; he was no longer aware that he put on oddly matched shoes, or that he wore a jacket without a shirt beneath it. One morning he left his room early and, to avoid being seen by the police (who he believed to be watching him), went out by the back entrance of the building. He found a shop several streets away, where he bought a small wristwatch, but on his return he became confused and lost his way. He arrived at his own street only by accident and as he entered his room he said out loud, Time flies when you're having fun'. But everything seemed quite different to him now: by approaching his room from another direction, Ned at last realised that it had an independent existence and that it no longer belonged to him.

  He put the wristwatch carefully on the mantelpiece, and took up the spherical compass. Then he opened the door, and stepped over the threshold.

  As soon as he had left the room and walked into the air, he knew that he would never return and for the first time his fears lifted. It was a spring morning, and when he walked into Severndale Park he felt the breeze bringing back memories of a much earlier life, and he was at peace. He sat beneath a tree and looked up at its leaves in amazement -where once he might have gazed at them and sensed there only the confusion of his own thoughts, now each leaf was so clear and distinct that he could see the lightly coloured veins which carried moisture and life. And he looked down at his own hand, which seemed translucent beside the bright grass. His head no longer ached, and as he lay upon the earth he could feel its warmth beneath him.

  The afternoon woke him with a shout -two children were playing a little way off, and they seemed to be calling out to him. He stood up eagerly trying to catch their words, which had ended with something like 'All fall down', but when he walked towards them they ran away laughing and shouting, Sam, Sam, the dirty man, Washed his face in a frying pan!