Peter Ackroyd - Hawksmoor

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.

He was leaning forward to listen to his father, but he heard only the words, 'Here comes a candle!', before the old man looked up at him and, with a smile like that of a child, spat in his face. Hawksmoor recoiled, and looked at him in horror before wiping his cheek with the sleeve of his raincoat: 'I'm late!' he shouted, 'I'm going!' And there was a general wailing and commotion in the ward as he departed.

Mrs West heard the ringing and looked down into Grape Street: 'Is it you again?'

'Is he not back yet?'

'He's come and he's gone. He's always rushing around.'

She was bored with her own company on this summer evening.

'You can come up and wait for a minute,' she said, more quietly now, 'He may not be long.'

'I'll just come up for a minute then. I can't stay.' And Walter Payne ascended the stairs.

Mrs West was waiting for him at her door, having hastily replaced her cardigan over her blouse which, even so, gaped open at one or two points. 'You just missed him. Didn't you hear him slam that door. It's shocking.' She was discomposed enough to lean against Walter as she bent down over a teapot and a plate of biscuits. 'What do you fancy?

Go on, have a brandy snap. Be a devil.' And then she added as Walter sat down with a sigh, 'I suppose it's important is it?'

'I work with him '

She interrupted. 'Oh, him. Don't ask me anything about him. I can't give you any information there. My hands are tied.' And her hands came out before her, one placed on top of the other as if they were bound together at the wrist. Walter looked down in alarm, while at the same time Mrs West noticed the brown spots on her wrinkled and faded skin. 'I can't fathom him,' she said, almost to herself, before glancing curiously at the plate of brandy snaps and then grabbing another one. Walter would have liked to pursue this subject, but she carried on talking as she ate. 'But these old houses, you see, you never know what you're hearing. Sometimes I wonder what it was like before my time, but you never know…'And her voice trailed off just before she stuffed another biscuit into her mouth. 'And I didn't catch your name.'

'It's Walter.'

'Well then, Walter, tell me a bit more about yourself.'

'Well, like I told you, I work with him upstairs.' And both of them now looked up at the ceiling, as if Hawksmoor might even then have his ear to the floor. 'Previously I was with computers.'

Mrs West settled herself comfortably in her chair. 'Now that's a subject I don't understand. Like my thermostat.'

'It's simple. You feed in the information and out comes the answer.'

Walter never tired of this subject, although his eagerness seemed to exhaust Mrs West. 'You know, you could put the whole of London in the charge of one computer and the crime would go right down. The computer would know where it was going to happen!'

'Well that's news to me, Walter. And how does this computer know what to do?'

'It's got a memory bank.'

'A memory bank. Now that's the first time I've heard about anything like that.' She shifted in her seat. 'What kind of memory?'

The memory of everything.'

'And what does this memory do?'

'It makes the world a safer place.'

'Pull the other one!' she said as she lifted her skirt slightly and kicked her leg in the air. Her curiosity now sated, she moved over to the television and switched it on; and in companionable silence they both settled down to watch the cartoons which had appeared on the screen. Mrs West shrieked with laughter at the antics of a wolf and the little creatures it was pursuing; even Walter found himself amused by the inhabitants of this harmless world. But when the cartoon was over she gazed out of the window.