Hawksmoor

by Peter Ackroyd

  The gloom of the secluded wharves and muddy banks had always attracted him and, when he came to Wapping Reach, he stared down at the shadows of the clouds moving quickly over the surface of the water. But when he removed his glasses and again looked down, it seemed to him that the river itself was perpetually turning and spinning: it was going in no certain direction, and Hawksmoor felt for a moment that he might fall into its darkness. Two men passed on a small boat -one of them was laughing or grimacing, and seemed to be pointing at Hawksmoor, but his voice did not carry over the water; Hawksmoor watched this dumb-show pass until it turned the bend towards Tower Bridge and vanished as suddenly as it had arrived.

  It had started to rain and he began walking along the riverbank away from Wapping and towards Limehouse. He turned left down Butcher Row, for he could see now the tower of St Anne's Limehouse ahead of him, and he entered that area of abandoned houses and derelict land which still divides the city from the river. Then he stopped suddenly in confusion: the dampness had released a close, rank smell from the lush vegetation which spread over the stones and sprang up between wires, and he could see a vagrant squatting on the ground with his face turned up to catch the rain. So he turned away from this waste-land and crossed into Shoulder-of-Mutton Alley, and there was silence by the time he came to the front of St Anne's.

  Hawksmoor could have produced a survey of the area between the two churches of Wapping and Limehouse, and given at the same time a precise account of the crimes which each quarter harboured. This had been the district of the CID to which he had been attached for some years, before he was assigned to the Murder Squad, and he had come to know it well: he knew where the thieves lived, where the prostitutes gathered, and where the vagrants came. He grew to understand that most criminals tend to remain in the same districts, continuing with their activities until they were arrested, and he sometimes speculated that these same areas had been used with similar intent for centuries past: even murderers, who rapidly became Hawksmoor's speciality, rarely moved from the same spot but killed again and again until they were discovered. And sometimes he speculated, also, that they were drawn to those places where murders had occurred before. In his own time in this district, there had been a house in Red Maiden Lane in which three separate murders had been perpetrated over a period of eight years, and the building itself gave such an impression to those who entered it that it had stayed unoccupied since the last killing. In Swedenborg Gardens Robert Haynes had murdered his wife and child, and it was Hawksmoor who was called when the remains were found beneath the floorboards; in Commercial Road there had been the ritual slaying of one Catherine Hayes, and then only last year a certain Thomas Berry had been stabbed and then mutilated in the alley beside St George's-in-the-East. It had been in this district, as Hawksmoor knew, that the Marr murders of 1812 had occurred -the perpetrator being a certain John Williams, who, according to De Quincey whose account Hawksmoor avidly read, 'asserted his own supremacy above all the children of Cain'. He killed four in a house by Ratcliffe Highway -a man, wife, servant and child -by shattering their skulls with a mallet and then gratuitously cutting their throats as they lay dying. Then, twelve days later and in the same quarter, he repeated his acts upon another family. He was transformed, again according to De Quincey, into a 'mighty murderer' and until his execution he remained an object of awe and mystery to those who lived in the shadow of the Wapping church. The mob tried to dismember his body when eventually it was brought in a cart to the place of burial -at the conflux of four roads in front of the church, where he was interred and a stake driven through his heart. And, as far as Hawksmoor knew, he lay there still: it was the spot where he had this morning seen the crowd pressing against the cordon set up by the police. And it did not take any knowledge of the even more celebrated Whitechapel murders, all of them conducted in the streets and alleys around Christ Church, Spitalfields, to understand, as Hawksmoor did, that certain streets or patches of ground provoked a malevolence which generally seemed to be quite without motive. And he knew, also, how many murders go undetected and how many murderers remain unknown.

  And yet in the crimes which he had investigated, there was always so strong a sense of fatality that it seemed to Hawksmoor that both murderer and victim were inclined towards their own destruction; it was his job only to hurry the murderer along the course which he had already laid for himself-to become, as it were, his assistant. It was this fatality, also, which gave such resonance to the last words of those about to die and, as Hawksmoor walked on from Limehouse to Spitalfields, he passed rooms and corners where such words had often been spoken: There's something wrong in my kitchen', 'Next time you see me you will know me', 'I want to finish a letter', 'You will be happy soon'. He was now crossing Whitechapel High Street, passing that spot where the last man had been hanged in chains: the murderer's words on this occasion had been, as Hawksmoor knew, There is no God. I do not believe there is any and, if there is, I hold Him in defiance'. Now he could see the church of Spitalfields ahead of him.

  He never neglected the opportunity of studying the pattern of murder, and the instincts of the murderer, in all their various forms: in the eighteenth century, for example, it was quite usual for the noses of the victims to be bitten off during the act of strangling but that custom, as far as Hawksmoor was aware, had completely disappeared. And it was important for him, also, to master his subject so thoroughly that he knew the seasons and the rules of death: stabbings and strangulations were popular in the late eighteenth century, for example, slashed throats and clubbings in the early nineteenth, poison and mutilation in the latter part of the last century. This was one reason why the recent cases of strangling, culminating in the third corpse at Wapping, seemed to him to be quite unusual -to be taking place at the wrong time. He did not speak of such things to his colleagues, however, who would not have understood him.

  He walked into the police station, off Brick Lane, where an Incident Room had been established after the body of Thomas Hill had been found in the abandoned runnel some nine months before. Two or three constables looked up incuriously as he came in, and he made no effort to introduce himself to them; the telephones rang occasionally and one man, smoking furiously, was bent over a typewriter. Hawks- moor watched him for a moment and then sat quietly in the far corner of the room: the open files, the plastic cups lying on the floor, the pieces of official paper pinned casually to a cork board, the discarded newspapers, the telephones ringing again, all of this disorder confused and wearied him. 'Well if you feel up to it,' one young man was saying, 'You could do that. This is true. This is true.' And then his companion answered, 'But it was raining'. Hawksmoor watched them standing together and wondered if there was any connection between the two remarks: he considered the matter carefully as the men moved a few inches backward and forward as they talked, and concluded that there was none. He listened again and he heard the phrases, 'I fell asleep', 'I dreamed' and 'I woke up' -and he repeated to himself the words, 'asleep', 'dreamed' and 'woke' to see if their shape or sound accounted for their position in the sequence which the two men were unfolding. And he saw no reason for them; and he saw no reason for the words he himself used, which came out of him like vomit, which carried him forward without rhyme or meaning. And the lives of these others gripped him by the throat and kept him huddled on his seat.

  Then an older man in uniform came up to him saying, 'We were expecting you, sir.'

  Hawksmoor suppressed the instinct to rise from his chair in alarm.

  That's right. That's why I'm here.'

  'Yes, I heard you'd been called in, sir.'

  Hawksmoor had noticed before how the older police officers seemed to lose their ability to react, as if they could no longer deal with the reality which they encountered every day; and he decided to test this man a little. The operation,' he asked, 'is it going according to the book?'

  'Yes, to the book. It's coming along nicely, sir.'

  'But perhaps there is no book in this case, in
spector.'

  'Well this is true, sir, this is true.'

  'I'm glad you know what is true.' Hawksmoor scratched his cheek as he spoke. He was playing a part: he knew this, and believed it to be his strength. Others did not realise that their parts had been written for them, their movements already marked out like chalk lines upon a stage, their clothes and gestures decided in advance; but he knew such things, and thought it better to have chosen. The uniformed officer seemed not to have heard his last remark, and looked blankly at him. And so Hawksmoor went on, 'I'm worried about the time.'

  The time? You mean the time now '

  'No, the time then, the time of the murder. I have no time.'

  That is a question, sir. I'm aware of that -' He took out a cigarette and put it between his lips, letting it hang there without lighting it.

  'Yes,' he said, That is a question.'

  'And every question has an answer, inspector. Is that true?'

  'Yes I suppose you're right there, sir, you're very right there.'

  Hawksmoor watched him closely: he wanted him to break down and confess his ignorance, or cry out in bewilderment at the deaths he had seen: anything, so that he might relieve Hawksmoor of his own feelings. But the inspector had now wandered to another desk, starting a desultory conversation with a young constable who shifted from one foot to another as he spoke. Hawksmoor rose and walked out of the room.

  A police car drove him through the grey evening until he got out at the corner of Grape Street, near the Seven Dials. He rented a small flat here in an old house beside the Red Gates, a pub which he now passed while lost in his own thoughts; and as he mounted the stairs he considered the steps in the tower of the Wapping Church. He had almost reached his own door when he heard a voice beneath him calling out, 'Cooee! Cooee! It's only me, Mr Hawksmoor! Have you got a minute?' He paused and looked down at his neighbour as she stood in the open doorway, the light from her small hall casting her shadow upon the landing. 'Is it you Mr Hawksmoor? I'm that blind without my glasses.' And he saw her looking at him greedily. There's been a gentleman calling for you.' She fingered the edge of her cardigan which barely concealed the outline of her plump breasts. 'I don't know how he got through that front door. Don't you think it's shocking, Mr Hawksmoor '

  That's right, Mrs West. That's quite all right.' He gripped the dusty banister with his right hand. 'Did he say what he wanted?'

  'I didn't think it was my place to enquire, Mr Hawksmoor. I said I'm only Mr Hawksmoor's neighbour I'm not his housekeeper and knowing him he wouldn't thank me if I was!' Hawksmoor wondered how well she did know him and, as she laughed, he watched the dark mound of her tongue. And as she laughed she stared at him also; she saw a tall man wearing a dark coat, despite the summer heat, slightly balding but with a moustache darker than was usual in a man of his age. Then he said would you be back? I said I couldn't tell, you don't keep such regular hours. And then he said neither did he.'

  Hawksmoor climbed the last stairs. 'I'll see to it, Mrs West. Thank you.'

  She took a step out onto the landing in order to watch him before he climbed out of sight. That's all right. I'm always here. I'm not going anywhere, not with my legs, Mr Hawksmoor.'

  He opened his door, just enough for him to slide through so that, even if she had craned her neck, she would not be able to see the interior of his flat. Thank you,' he called out before closing the door, 'Good night. Thank you.'

  He entered the main room and stood by the window, looking out at the building opposite; he could see shapes there, but then he realised that they were reflections of the house in which he now stood -and he did not know if he was looking out or looking in. The smell of cooking ascended from Mrs West's kitchen, and as he thought of her bent over her plate he could hear vague sounds of shouting and laughter from the Red Gates. And for a moment everything was real: this was how life had always been.

  He turned round with a start, thinking he had seen a sudden movement in a corner of the room. There was a convex mirror propped there (it was of the type generally used in shops to deter thieves), and he lifted it up to see if anything had crawled behind it; but there was nothing. He carried the mirror into the centre of the room, and the dust from its edges came off on his fingers; then he held it up against the light of the window and, although he tried to gaze calmly at the reflection, his calmness was broken by the sight of his face staring distended out of the frame with the world itself curved around it. And he could see the same person he had always been -the character which does not age but which remains cautious and watchful, and which stares out with the same intensity. He tried to smile at himself, but the smile would not last. So he remained still until his face became an object like the others swimming in the circle of his gaze -an armchair, a grey carpet, a lamp upon a dark wooden table, a transistor radio placed upon its side, and the bare white walls around all of these things. He put down the mirror. Then he raised his arms above his head and clenched his palms, for it was time to make his visit.

  He was about to leave the flat as quietly as he had arrived but then on a sudden instinct he slammed the door and, as he went out into the early evening, he enjoyed the sound which the heels of his shoes made on the pavement. As he walked down St Giles Street he could see two street musicians ahead of him, one of whom was singing a melancholy pop-song while the other begged for money. Hawksmoor recognised the refrain, although he could not remember where he had heard it: I will climb up, climb up, even if I Come tumbling down, rumbling down.

  And when the singer gazed at him he felt uneasy; he could find no coins in his pocket, and stared helplessly as the other gambolled around him with open palms. It was only when he had gone a few yards further that he realised that the singer had been blind.

  It had grown cold by the time he reached the home where his father was kept; he believed that he was late but, as he hastened down the gravel drive, he felt the old agony return at the sound of plates rattling within the building and the bark of a dog somewhere in the yard behind the large brick house. 'He's waiting for you,' the nurse said with a smile which lasted only as long as she looked at him, 'He's missed you, he really has.' They walked together down a corridor where the smell of old age lingered and then gusted suddenly as a door slammed in the distance. Some of those who passed Hawksmoor glared at him, while others came up to him, all the time talking and then fingering his jacket -perhaps they thought they knew him well, and were continuing with a conversation which had only recently been broken off. One old woman stood in a night-dress, her back against the wall, and repeated 'Come John, come John, come John' into the air in front of her, until she was taken gently by the arm and led away still muttering. This was a quiet place, although Hawksmoor knew that it was only the drugs which kept most of them from screaming.

  'Oh it's you,' his father murmured when Hawksmoor approached him; then he stared down at his hands, groping at them as if they belonged to someone else.

  And Hawksmoor thought: this is how I will see you always, bent down and looking at your own body. 'I've just come to see how you are, Dad,' he said loudly.

  'Well please yourself. You've always pleased yourself.'

  'And how are you keeping?'

  'I keep myself to myself.' And he glared at his son. 'I'm all right.'

  And there was another pause before he added, 'There's life in the old dog yet'.

  'Are you eating well?'

  'I couldn't tell you about that. How do I know?' He sat very still on the edge of his narrow bed when a nurse passed with a trolley.

  'You look healthy enough. '

  'Oh yes. Well, I haven't got worms.' And then suddenly his hands trembled uncontrollably. 'Nick,' he said, 'Nick, is there still more to come? What happened to that letter? Did they find you out?'

  Hawksmoor looked at him astonished. 'What letter, Dad? Is this a letter you wrote?' He had a sudden image of the mail being burnt in the basement of this place.

  'No, not me. Walter wrote it. You know the one.' And
then the old man gazed out of the window. His hands had stopped trembling but he made shapes in the air with them, all the time murmuring under his breath. Hawksmoor leaned forward to hear and, as he came closer to his father, he smelt once again his flesh and his sweat.

  And he could still remember the days, many years before, when after his mother's death he could smell the drink on his father's breath as he lay sodden and snoring in his armchair. Once Hawksmoor had opened the door of the toilet, and he was sitting in front of him with his shrivelled cock in his hand. 'Don't you knock,' he said, 'before coming in?' And after that Hawksmoor always felt ill when he ate the food his father prepared. But there came a time when his disgust seemed to cleanse him, and he grew to enjoy the silence of the house and the purity of his hatred. And slowly, too, he learned to hold himself back from all others: he despised their laughter and their talk about sex, and yet he was still fascinated by such things, like the popular songs which unnerved him but which sometimes so overwhelmed him that he eventually woke from them as from a trance.

  On his thirteenth birthday he had seen a film in which the central character was a painter who, unable to sell his work, grew cold and hungry as he went from one unsuccessful interview to the next; eventually he had become a vagrant, sleeping in the streets of the city where once he had walked in hope. Hawksmoor left the cinema in a mood of profound, terrified apprehension and, from that time, he was filled with a sense of time passing and with the fear that he might be left discarded on its banks. The fear had not left him, although now he could no longer remember from where it came: he looked back on his earlier life without curiosity, since it seemed to lack intrinsic interest, and when he looked forward he saw the same steady attainment of goals without any joy in their attainment. For him, the state of happiness was simply the state of not suffering and, if he cared for anything, it was for oblivion.