Hawksmoor (13 page)

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!

He felt hot suddenly, and then realised that he had put on his dark overcoat before leaving: just as he was about to remove it, he saw that he was wearing a pyjama jacket beneath it. He walked awkwardly to a wooden bench, and sat there for the rest of the afternoon as those who passed by cast nervous glances at him. Then at dusk he rose up and began walking away from the streets he had known as a child, following the curve of the long road which he knew would take him into the open fields. And this was how his life as a vagrant began.

And how does it feel to go down into the water with your eyes wide open, and your mouth gaping, so that you can see and taste every inch of the descent? At first he went hungry because he did not know how to beg and, when food was given to him he could not eat it; but as he moved towards London he was taught the phrases of supplication he might use. In Keynsham, he slept by the roadside until he learned that he must always look for the night's shelter before it became dark. In Bath, he began to notice discarded cigarette ends and the other human refuse which he placed in the capacious pockets of his overcoat. By the time he had reached Salisbury he had been instructed in the arts of other vagrants, and in his shreds and patches had at last come to resemble them as he crept across the short grass to Stonehenge.

It was just after dawn and a weak sun patted him on the head as he approached the stones. Two cars were parked nearby, so Ned was cautious: he knew that the indifference which he encountered in cities could turn to anger or hostility in the open country. In fact he thought he could hear the voices of two men -they were shouting and may have been engaged in an argument of some kind -but when he came closer to the monument he could see no one. In relief he scuffed his muddy shoes in the dew, and as he looked back he could see the trail he had left gleaming in the early light; then he turned his head a second time, and the trail had faded. A crow called somewhere above him, and so frail was he now that a gust of wind blew him towards the circle -when he looked up he saw that he was already beneath the stones, and they seemed about to fall upon his head. He bent over, covering his eyes, and there were voices swirling around him -among them his own father saying, 'I had a vision of my son dead'. He fell against a stone and in his dream he was climbing the steps of a pyramid, from the summit of which he could see the smoking city until he was woken by the rain falling on his face. A slug had crawled over him as he lay upon the ground, leaving a silver thread across his coat. He rose to his feet, clutching at the damp stone as he did so, and then continued his journey under a dark sky.

His body had become a companion which seemed always about to leave him: it had its own pains which moved him to pity, and its own particular movements which he tried hard to follow. He had learned from it how to keep his eyes down on the road, so that he could see no one, and how important it was never to look back -although there were times when memories of an earlier life filled him with grief and he lay face down upon the grass until the sweet rank odour of the earth brought him to his senses. But slowly he forgot where it was he had come from, and what it was he was escaping.

In Hartley Row he could find nowhere to sleep and, as he crossed a bridge to escape from the lights of the town, a car swerved to avoid him: he fell backwards against an iron hand-rail and would have toppled into the river if he had not somehow found his balance. When the dust had cleared he unbuttoned his trousers and, laughing, pissed by the roadside. The adventure exhilarated him and he took the spherical compass out of his pocket and in an impulsive gesture threw it in a wide arc away from him; but he had gone only a few yards along the same road when he retraced his steps to find it. At Church Oakley he contracted a slight fever and, as he lay sweating in an old barn, he could feel the lice swimming in the unaccustomed heat of his own body. At Blackwater he tried to enter a pub but he was refused admission with shouts and curses: a young girl brought out some bread and cheese, but he was so weak that he vomited up the food in the yard. At Egham he was standing on a wooden bridge, staring down at the water, when he heard a voice behind him: 'A travelling man, I see. I like to see a travelling man'. Ned looked up, alarmed, and there standing beside him was an elderly man carrying a small suitcase: 'We are all travellers,' he was saying, 'and God is our guide'.

He had his arms outstretched, palms outward, and as he smiled Ned could see the slight protuberance of his false teeth. 'So don't despair, never despair' -and he looked wistfully down at the water -'Don't do it, my friend'. He knelt down on the road and opened his suitcase, handing Ned a pamphlet which he stuffed into his pocket to use later as the material for a fire. 'You will reach your destination, for God loves you,' and he stood up with a grimace. 'For your sake He might let the sun turn back in its course, and let time itself travel backwards.'

He looked down at his trousers, and then brushed the dust off them.

'If He cared to, that is.' Then, as Ned still said nothing, he looked towards the town: 'Any chance of lodgings there, is there?' He walked on without waiting for a reply, as Ned, too, travelled forward through Bagshot and Baker-bridge until he reached the suburbs of the city.

And after a few days he arrived in London, by way of the unlucky Isle of Dogs. He had heard that there was a hostel in Spitalfields and, although he was not clear in which direction he should travel, somehow he guided himself towards it: he had, after all, the old spherical compass still in his pocket. And so he found himself walking down Commercial Road, and perhaps he was also muttering to himself there since a young boy ran away from him in obvious fright. His legs were stiff, and his feet aching: he might have hoped that the earth would swallow him, but the sight of the church ahead of him drew him forward since he had come to understand during his wanderings that churches offered protection for men and women like himself. And yet as soon as he reached the steps of the church, and had sat down upon them, he was once more seized with apathy and with an aversion for any action or decision. With his head down he gazed at the stone beneath his feet as the solitary bell tolled above him: anyone who came upon him unawares might think he had been metamorphosised into stone, so still he seemed.