How he managed to survive the half-hour of filming he did not know. His voice sounded forced and clumsy in this airless room; he believed that he was talking nonsense, despite the fact that he had carefully memorised most of his lines. It had been an entirely meaningless exercise, in which all of the participants were in some way degraded. “Yes,” he said at the end, summarising the study of New York, “surprisingly good.”
“And on that note we must leave it. Goodbye from everyone on Book Ends.”
When he came out onto the street on the west side of Shepherd’s Bush Green, he welcomed the cold wind as it cleansed him. The Green itself was largely grey, the earth getting the better of the grass, and unlovely. Daniel did not know this western part of London well; it did not have the freedom and the airiness of Camden Town and the rest of North London. It seemed intimate and over-familiar. This was the effect that certain areas of the city had upon him.
He passed a small boy in the street, muttering to himself, shrugging his shoulders, raising his hands into the air and gesticulating wildly. “What am I supposed to do?” the child was asking with such a look of misery and helplessness upon his face that Daniel turned away. But then he felt the pavement beneath his feet, and the obduracy of London began to enter him. He decided to go underground at Holland Park, and travel to Liverpool Street where he could take the Cambridge train. The lift took him down to the east-bound platform, the sound of its metal gates following him as he walked through the passage. He did not know the Central Line well. He was accustomed from his childhood to the Northern Line, which seemed always to carry with it the sensations of the northern heights of Hampstead and Highgate. The Central Line was closer and more intimate; the platform was warmer, and the sound of the train as it entered the station less harsh.
He settled in the carriage with a sigh of relief. It was already midday, when the majority of people were at work, and there was a sense of illicit pleasure about the journey. It was almost luxurious. He passed through Notting Hill Gate and Queensway, when the train came to a sudden halt before it reached Lancaster Gate; the brakes shrieked and the train slid a few feet before becoming still. Daniel looked at one or two of the passengers, but there was no sign from them of disquiet or alarm.
He remained still, and looked out of the window at the darkness all around him. This tunnel had been bored through the London Clay, laid down some forty million years before. He was travelling within prehistory, held up by the remains of an unimaginable past. There was a noise as of sudden thunder ahead of the train. He imagined a vast invasion of water or, perhaps, a reawakening of some prehistoric life. But the noise passed; it was that of another train entering a tunnel.
He left the tube at Liverpool Street and made his way along one of the white-tiled passages that conveyed travellers to various parts of the world above-ground. A mild breeze surprised him. It seemed to have come up from the depths and, at the same time, he heard the sound of drums being played somewhere in the distance. It was clear that this was the work of a busker, but that did not lessen his unease; he always felt a slight tremor of anxiety when he passed such people, and he avoided looking at them.
The drums were beating out a recognisable tune in the confined space, where they mixed with the sound of hurrying footsteps. He walked along the curve of the passage, and saw the busker halfway down; he was leaning against the white tiles with the drums strapped around his waist. It was an oddly casual or capricious stance. As Daniel came closer he sensed something familiar about the man. He looked more carefully, and saw that it was Sparkler. His instinct was to turn and run back down the passage, but that would draw attention to himself. He walked on, holding himself rigidly erect; he did not look at Sparkler directly, but he knew well enough that Sparkler’s eyes were following him. He expected him to speak, or to call out, but the only sound was that of the beating of the drums. They were beating more loudly as he walked on.
The two young men had been so close, so intimate in the past. Now Daniel had not stopped, had not spoken. He had glanced at Sparkler, and then walked away. Sparkler had seen him—he was sure of that—but had made no attempt to call him back.
The drumming stopped, and Daniel was suddenly convinced that Sparkler had decided to come after him; he fled down the passage and bounded up the stairs, two at a time.
When he stopped at the gateway into the vast expanse of Liverpool Street Station, fighting for breath, he felt an uneasy sensation within his heart. He felt its unnatural beating. He walked more slowly across the concourse to the platform from which he knew the Cambridge train departed. Now he had the luxury of turning round. Sparkler was not to be seen. Yet still Daniel flushed at the thought of their previous intimacy.
A week later, on the same day that Harry flung himself into the Thames, Daniel was feeling more refreshed than he had been for some time. As he prepared a pot of tea, he allowed himself to savour the luxury of his isolation. His first supervision was at ten o’clock, on the symbolism of Bleak House, and the second at midday was on the poetry of Tennyson; he took down the appropriate volumes from his shelves, safe once more among his books.
“What we have to explain, in Bleak House, is the imagery of the prison.” The first supervision had begun on time. “It is perfectly obvious that, in most of Dickens’s novels, the city itself becomes a form of penitentiary in which all of the characters are effectively manacled to the wall. If it is not a cell, it is a labyrinth in which few people find their way. They are lost souls.”
“But what then,” the young man in spectacles asked him, “do we make of the continuing use of coincidence?”
“That is the condition of living in the city, is it not? The most heterogeneous elements collide. Because, you see, everything is connected to everything else.”
The undergraduate left the room, and Daniel placed his copy of Bleak House on the shelf and took down The Idylls of the King.
When he heard the sound of drums, coming from the courtyard beneath his rooms, he was seized with an alarm so great that he almost lost consciousness. He knew what was happening, but he felt the need to witness it. He was in pain as he limped to the window. Sparkler was on the lawn beneath, entirely naked, slapping the small drums with his right hand.
He was looking up at the windows and, now that he could see Daniel, Sparkler let out a wild cry of recognition.
Daniel staggered back, his hand to his mouth, and fell into an old leather armchair. He found it difficult to breathe, and gasped for the air around him. But then the room itself began to tremble. “This is it,” Daniel said.
The next undergraduate, a few minutes late for his midday supervision, found him dead in the leather chair.
XXII
Anything is possible
AS SOON as Sam was awake, earlier on that same day, he sensed that Sally had already left the house. He was always aware of the presence of his mother; he felt more settled then, and more assured. Why had she left at such an early hour? When after two hours she had still not returned, he grew more alarmed.
Some days before, Sally had been discussing matters of business with her two sons. “I will be happy to take up the reins,” Andrew had said. “When I’m a bit older, naturally.”
“But will you enjoy it, Andrew?”
“I think, Mother, I have a pretty good head on my shoulders.”
“Do you know what I want to do?” She was addressing them both now. “I want to set up a fair rent scheme. And I want to house some of the homeless. In return they would refurbish the flats.”
“May I put my oar in, Mother?” Andrew seemed perplexed.
“Of course.”
“Aren’t you being just a trifle idealistic? I know your intentions are good, but are you sure that these homeless types will want to refurbish their flats?”
“What do you think, Sam?”
“I don’t really know.” He scratched his face. “I’ll soon be moving on, anyway.”
“Don’t say that.”
“
I’m a wanderer, Mother. I can’t stay still. I don’t know what I’m going to do, or where I want to go. Something will happen soon enough.”
By the early afternoon he had become seriously alarmed by her absence. Sally had left him when he was eight years old, and now he returned to that time when he wept for his mother under the cover of London fog and darkness. He sat by the window all that afternoon, looking into the street, caught between fear and indecision. To whom could he turn?
He had to go out. He had to walk through the streets in search of her. So in the waning light he went towards London Bridge. The street lamps shone on the crowd, casting long shadows across the brightly lit hoardings and shopfronts. It was a procession in torchlight, celebrating all the haste and fervour of London. He walked into the middle of the crowd, and slowly his anxieties began to subside. The touch of the stone beneath his feet, and the presence of the people, calmed him. He could feel the forgetfulness of the city rising within him. It was as if individual fear had no place in this concourse, where the great general drama of the human spirit was being displayed in the light of the street lamps.
He walked on across London Bridge and into the City. He soon reached Spitalfields where, in front of the old church beside the market, he saw the man he had once met in the local park at Camden; he was the one to whom he had given Tizer and packets of crisps. He had grown older and greyer, but Sam still recognised him. He looked up at Sam, and then put his forefinger to his forehead in a gesture of salute.
Sam walked further east through the dark streets, surrendering himself to the city. He realised that it had grown cold, and so he made his way towards the first pub he saw. It stood on the corner of Bethnal Green Old Street, as sturdy and as grimy as the street itself with three baskets of plastic flowers hanging above its entrance. He walked inside, enjoying the sensation of sudden warmth and the sour-sweet smell of beer and cigarette smoke.
He had gone over to the bar, and ordered a Guinness, when he became aware that he was being watched. He turned his head, and met the eyes of Sparkler.
“Hello, Samuel, fancy meeting you again.” Sam, in the sudden excitement of seeing him, embraced him. “Hang on. The locals might get the wrong idea.”
“What have you been doing? Where have you been?”
“I’ve been wandering. I’m the liberty boy.”
“Where are you living now?”
“Here and there. Everywhere.”
“You lost touch.”
“I suppose I did. But I still see Guinevere. You remember?”
“Of course.”
“She’s started a housing charity in Hackney.”
“She’ll never change.”
“Oh yes. She has changed. She don’t look young any more. I don’t think she likes her husband very much. Harry. That’s his name. I don’t think she trusts him. I think she despises him. I can’t be sure. I never met him, did I?” A shadow of a scowl passed across Sparkler’s face. “And her mother’s a right old bitch. So she says. I feel sorry for Guinevere, and she feels sorry for me. So we’re quits.” He seemed to Sam to be in a strangely excitable mood. “Guinevere told me a funny story. Not so much funny as weird. She arranged for this couple to move into a council flat on the corner of Britannia Road. Near where I used to live. She said they were a strange couple. But devoted. Then the husband goes and dies. The woman is in a terrible state, breaking down and crying at the funeral. He was cremated, by the way. She goes back to the flat and to her job. As an office cleaner. She is too poor to move anywhere else, do you see? And then one day there is a knock at the door. When she answers it, there is her husband. As large as life. He doesn’t say anything. He just walks in and makes himself a cup of tea. Just as if nothing had happened. She was glad to see him again. Of course. She doesn’t want to ask no questions. She doesn’t want to upset him. And they’ve been living together ever since. What do you think of that, Sammy boy?” Sparkler smiled and put out his hands, as if he had just performed a trick.
“I suppose,” Sam said, “that anything is possible.”
“You can believe it. Guinevere says that the neighbours have just accepted it.”
Sam pointed to the pair of small drums that Sparkler had placed on the counter. “What are they for?”
“I’m doing a bit of busking, aren’t I? Keeps me occupied. And I earn a few quid. Do you want another one?” In the surprise of meeting one another, they had drunk their beer very quickly. “I saw your brother this morning. Daniel. Danny boy.”
“You know each other?”
“Oh yes. We go way back. Or we did. He looked out of the window. Danny boy. It’s a long time since I’ve been in Cambridge. I was afraid the porter would come after me. But, you know me, I’m invisible.” He tapped the drum. “They seek him here, they seek him there. I was back in London before you could say—whatever people say.”
As soon as Sam returned home, drunk and weary, he knew that his mother was in the house; characteristically she had left her high-heeled shoes at the bottom of the stairs. She did not want to damage the carpets. In his dreams that night, the three brothers were sitting in a darkened space that had no palpable boundaries; then they began to disintegrate, like clouds, and to become part of the darkness.
His mother was already in the kitchen when he went down. “Sleepy-head,” she said.
“I didn’t get in till late.”
“What were you doing?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Were you?”
“Where had you gone?”
“It’s a long story.” She turned away for a moment towards the sink, and pretended to arrange some dishes. “I wanted to find Julie.” Sam waited for her to continue. “I wanted to confront her. I wanted to lay out the charges against her. That sounds very official, doesn’t it? I had no real evidence. And what good would it do? I have to protect Andrew, you see. But I wanted her to admit that she had done wrong. Do you want a cup of tea?” Sam shook his head. “She lives in Camden. In Cooper Crescent. Near where we—Anyway, I waited for her until she came out. She surprised me by going into the church round the corner. The one where you saw me. Ages ago. I was going to walk up to her. I don’t know what I would have said, but I would have said something. But she knelt down and started to pray. I didn’t have the heart to interrupt her. I don’t know. She may have been praying for forgiveness or something. A woman came out from the room beside the altar. She was wearing a blue coat. One of the cleaners, probably. She went up to Julie and put her arm around her. Julie looked up at her, and I could see that she was smiling.”
Sam misheard the word. “Crying?”
“No. I don’t think so. But I didn’t want to talk to her any more. When I left the church eventually, I just wandered through the streets. I never knew that you were looking for me.” She turned back to the sink. “Well, that’s the end of that. I should get your lunch ready. It’s nearly midday.”
“It may not be the end,” he said. “What was it Dad used to say? Wait and hope.”
“That reminds me. A letter came for you.”
He picked up a slim envelope from the kitchen table, addressed to him. He took out a small piece of white notepaper with the heading “Our Lady of Sorrows.” The letter was very brief.
“Dear Sam, We appreciate all the work you have done for us. Come back at any time. We have been waiting for you.”
A Note About the Author
Peter Ackroyd is an award-winning novelist, broadcaster, biographer, poet, and historian. His novel Hawksmoor won both the Guardian Fiction Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award. His fiction includes The Lambs of London, The Clerkenwell Tales, The Trial of Elizabeth Cree, and, most recently, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein. He lives in London and was awarded a CBE for services to literature.
Other titles by Peter Ackroyd available in eBook format
Albion • 978-0-307-42465-5
The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein • 978-0-385-53149-8
Chaucer • 978-0-307-42353-5
The Clerkenwell Tales • 978-0-307-27692-6
The Fall of Troy • 978-0-307-47281-6
J.M.W. Turner • 978-0-307-42365-8
The Lambs of London • 978-0-307-38702-8
The Life of Thomas More • 978-0-307-82301-4
London • 978-1-400-07551-5
London Under • 978-0-385-53151-1
Milton in America • 978-0-307-81624-5
Newton • 978-0-385-52557-2
The Plato Papers • 978-0-307-42920-9
Poe • 978-0-385-52945-7
Shakespeare • 978-0-307-49082-7
Thames • 978-0-385-52847-4
The Trial of Elizabeth Cree • 978-0-307-81623-8
Venice • 978-0-385-53153-5
For more information, please visit www.nanatalese.com
ALSO BY PETER ACKROYD
FICTION
The Great Fire of London
The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
Hawksmoor
Chatterton
First Light
English Music
The House of Doctor Dee
Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem
Milton in America
The Plato Papers
The Clerkenwell Tales
The Lambs of London
The Fall of Troy
The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein
NONFICTION
Three Brothers Page 22
