Hawksmoor

by Peter Ackroyd

  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.

  But then he heard a rustling somewhere to his left and, looking up, he saw a man and woman lying with each other beneath some trees. A dog had once tried to mount him when he was walking through a field: he had hit it several times with a large stone until eventually it had run away, bloody and yelping. And now he was once again filled with the same rage as he screamed out incomprehensible words to the couple who, on seeing him, sat up and stared without rising to their feet. A plane passed overhead and at once his fury disappeared; he would have resumed his silent contemplation of the cracks and hollows in the stone beneath his feet if someone, alerted by the sudden screaming, had not been walking towards him from the street.

  The setting sun was in Ned's face, and he could not see clearly, but he assumed it was a policeman and prepared himself for the customary dialogue.

  The figure approached him slowly, not altering his pace, and now stood at the bottom of the steps looking up at him; and his shadow covered Ned as he asked his name.

  'My name is Ned.'

  'And tell me, Ned, where do you come from?'

  'I come from Bristol.'

  ' Bristol? Is that so?'

  'So it seems,' Ned said.

  'It seems you're a poor man now.'

  'Now I am, but then I was in trade.'

  'And so how did you come to be here?' the man asked him, reaching out to touch Ned's right cheek with his finger.

  'I don't know how I came to be here, to tell you the truth.'

  'But do you know how you are?'

  'I'm weary, Sir, very weary.'

  'So where are you going to now, Ned?'

  He had forgotten that he had come to find the hostel: 'I don't know,' he answered, 'Anywhere. One place is as good as another when you're roaming. I might go and then again I might come back.'

  'You're like a child, I see.'

  'I might have become one, Sir, but I'm nothing really.'

  That's sad
, Ned. All that I can say is that's sad.'

  'It's sad, to say the least.' And Ned looked up at the darkening sky.

  'It's time, isn't it?'

  'It's certainly time,' Ned said.

  'Time, I mean, for you to be on your way again. This is not the place for y ou.'

  Ned remained silent for a moment: 'And where shall I go to?'

  There are other churches,' he replied. This one is not for you. Go towards the river.'

  Ned watched the man, who pointed southward and then walked slowly away. He got up, suddenly cold, but as soon as he moved away from the church his weariness left him and he went back in the direction from which he had come -along Commercial Road, across Whitechapel High Street, and then down towards the Thames and Limehouse, all the time rubbing the spherical compass in his pocket.

  This was an area haunted by other vagrants, most of them suspicious and solitary, and as he passed them he looked for those signs of degradation which tramps always recognise in each other -he wanted to see how much further he would have to fall now that he, too, had entered the great city.

  He stopped at Wapping, by the corner of Swedenborg Court, and saw a church rise up beside the river -was this the place which the figure had pointed to, saying 'there are other churches'? The experiences of the evening had left him wounded and alert, so that now he looked fearfully around; he could hear the sigh of the river upon the mudflats, and the confused murmur of the city behind him; he gazed up at the human faces in the clouds, then he looked down upon the ground and saw the small whirlwinds of dust raised by the breeze which came from the Thames and brought with it also the sound of human voices. All of these things turned around him for ever, and it seemed to Ned that it was no longer he who was watching and hearing them: it was someone other.

  He found that he was walking by the back of the Wapping church towards a park which adjoined it; here also protection might be gained and, as he hurried past the blackened stones, he caught sight of a small brick building in a far corner of the park. The place was now clearly abandoned although, as Ned approached it, he could see the letters M SE M OF engraved above the portal (the others had no doubt been obliterated by time). He peered in cautiously and, when he was sure that no other tramp was using it as a shelter, he passed the threshold and sat down against the wall; at once he began to eat some bread and cheese which he had taken from his pocket, looking around ferociously as he did so. Then he began to examine the rubbish which had been left here: most of it was familiar enough, but in one corner he found a discarded book with a white cover. He put out his hand to touch it and for a moment drew back, since the cover seemed to be protected by a sticky wax. Then he picked it up and noticed that over the course of time the pages had curled and clung together although, when he shook them, a photograph fell upon the ground. He gazed at if for a while, making out the features of a child, and then placed it in his pocket before he began painstakingly to separate the pages, smoothing each one down with his hand before he tried to read it. He concentrated on the words and symbols which were written here, but the print was now so smudged and overlaid that much of the book was quite unintelligible: he saw a triangle, and a sign for the sun, but the letters beneath them were unfamiliar. Then Ned looked out, gazing at the church, thinking of nothing.

  There was a woman in the doorway, her clothes as patched and torn as Ned's own. She was patting her hair with the palm of her right hand and saying, 'Do you want it? Come and get it if you want it.' She was peering at him and, since he had said nothing in reply, she knelt down on the floor by the entrance.

  'I don't want it,' he said, rubbing his eyes, 'I don't want anything.'

  'All you men want it. I've had experience of all types of men,' and she laughed, throwing her head back so that Ned could see the wrinkles around her neck.

  'I don't want it,' he repeated in a louder voice.

  'I've had them all,' and she looked around the abandoned building.

  'Most of them in here. It's nice in here, isn't it? Snug.' Ned started twisting a lock of his hair between two fingers so that it became as hard and as taut as wire. 'Let's have a look at it,' she said, craning her head towards him, and he flattened himself against the wall.

  'Look at what?'

  'You know what I mean. Every man's got one. Wee Willie Winkie.'

  'I've got nothing, I've got nothing for you.' And he clutched the book he had been reading.

  She crawled towards him and put her hands down on the damp soil as if she were about to dig for something; Ned rose slowly to his feet, his back still against the wall, and he did not take his eyes from her face. 'Come on,' she whispered, 'Give it to me' -and then she made a lunge for his trousers. In panic Ned put out his foot to stop her, but she grabbed it and tried to bring him down to the ground: 'You're a powerful man,' she said, 'but I've got you!' And then with all his strength he crashed the book down upon her head; this seemed to surprise her, for she let go of him and looked upwards, as if the object had fallen from the skies. Then very carefully, and with a measure of dignity, she rose to her feet and stood by the entrance of the shelter, glaring at him. 'What kind of man are you, anyway?' And she wiped her mouth with her arm: 'Look at you, you pathetic object! They don't give you money out of charity, they give it you out of fear.' And he looked at her wide-eyed. 'Do you think they care about you, you daft bugger? They just don't want you coming after them, they don't want to see you in the mirror when they look at their fat faces!'

  'I don't know about that,' he said.

  'They think you're mad, talking to yourself and all. It wouldn't take them long to go mad if they had you around, oh no it wouldn't.' And then she mimicked a high, quavering voice: 'Pity me, oh pity me, can you spare me something for a cup of tea?' He looked down at himself as she went on, 'Don't hurt me. I've suffered enough. I'm ugly. I'm smelly. Pity me.' And then she gazed at him in triumph. She was about to say something else when she noticed the crumbs of the bread and cheese which Ned had been eating: and, lifting up her skirts, she kicked her legs in the air as she sang, When I was a little girl I lived by myself And all the bread and cheese I got I laid upon the shelf.

  For a moment she too might have pitied him, but then she laughed, dusted down her skirt and left without another word. Ned, still fighting for breath after the struggle, saw that he had ripped the binding of his book and that the pages were now being carried by the wind across the park and towards the church.

  It was some evenings later when Ned, preparing his meal in the red brick shelter, heard a confused murmur of voices outside; at once he grew alarmed and crouched in a corner but, after a few moments, he realised that the shouts and calls were not directed against him but were coming from the far side of the little park. He peered out of the entrance and saw a group of children jumping and shrieking in a circle: two or three of them had sticks which they were throwing at something in the middle, as their cries echoed against the walls of the church. Then Ned saw that they were surrounding a cat which was hurling itself in fear against one child and then another in order to break free, only to be caught and hauled back into the centre of the circle; it had scratched and bitten some of them but the sight of their own blood seemed only to have provoked more frenzy in the children who, in their joy and fury, were now smashing their sticks against the lean body of the animal. Their look of rage was terrible to Ned: he remembered it from his own childhood, which at this moment descended upon him again. And he knew that, if they became aware he was watching them, their rage would soon be turned against him: it was not unusual for gangs of children to set upon a tramp and beat him senseless, shouting 'Bogeyman! Bogeyman!' as they kicked or spat at him.

  He left the shelter and hurried down the small path which led into Wapping Wall, not daring to look back in case he should draw the children's glances upon him. He walked beside the river up to Limehouse, and the damp wind unsettled him; when he reached Shoulder-of-Mutton Alley he could see an abandoned warehouse ahead of him but, in his haste to
reach it, he fell and gashed his leg against a piece of metal which had been left on the waste-ground through which he now trod. He was tired and yet, when eventually he lay down inside the warehouse, he could not sleep. He looked down at himself and, suddenly disgused at what he saw, said out loud, 'You have dug your own grave and now you must lie in it'. He closed his eyes and, leaning his head against the rotten wood, he had a sudden vision of the world -cold, heavy, unendurable like the awkward mass of his own body as at last he slept.

  And the years have passed before he wakes now, after a night in the same warehouse beside the Thames -although, during the night, he had returned to Bristol and watched himself as a child. The years have passed and he has remained in the city, so that now he has become tired and grey; and when he roamed through its streets, he was bent forward as if searching the dust for lost objects. He knew the city's forgotten areas and the shadows which they cast: the cellars of ruined buildings, the small patches of grass or rough ground which are to be found between two large thoroughfares, the alleys in which Ned sought silence, and even the building sites where he might for one night creep into the foundations out of the rain and wind.

  Sometimes dogs would follow him: they liked his smell, which was of lost or forgotten things, and when he slept in a corner they licked his face or burrowed their noses into his ragged clothes; he no longer beat them off, as once he had, but accepted their presence as natural. For the dogs' city was very like his own: he was close to it always, following its smells, sometimes pressing his face against its buildings to feel their warmth, sometimes angrily chipping or cutting into its brick and stone surfaces.

  There were some places, and streets, where he did not venture since he had learnt that others had claims there greater than his own -not the gangs of meths drinkers who lived in no place and no time, nor the growing number of the young who moved on restlessly across the face of the city, but vagrants like himself who, despite the name which the world has given them, had ceased to wander and now associated themselves with one territory or 'province' rather than another. All of them led solitary lives, hardly moving from their own warren of streets and buildings: it is not known whether they chose the area, or whether the area itself had callen them and taken them in, but they had become the guardian spirits (as it were) of each place. Ned now knew some of their names: Watercress Joe, who haunted the streets by St Mary Woolnoth, Black Sam who lived and slept beside the Commercial Road between Whitechapel and Limehouse, Harry the Goblin who was seen only by Spitalfields and Artillery Lane, Mad Frank who walked continually through the streets of Bloomsbury, Italian Audrey who was always to be found in the dockside area of Wapping (it was she who had visited Ned in his shelter many years before), and 'Alligator' who never moved from Greenwich.