Hawksmoor (34 page)

As I came up into Lime Street the Skie grew dark with the Cold and yet here was an old Woman with a Child on her Back singing Fine writing Inke! Fine writing Inke! and I too might have been a Child againe, so familiarly did it sound. Then there rose that Cry which I have heard all my Life, Have you something to Mend, have you something to Mend? and I passed thro' Leadenhall Street weeping, for I knew I would never more hear it. I walked down St Mary Axe to London Wall, and my Teares fell upon the Mosse as I bent to touch it; then thro' Bishopsgate and down old Bedlam into Moorfields, and here it seemed to me that I heard the Rejoycing of the Mad who have no thought of Time as I do; then thro' Long Alley where I passed the great Musick Shop where the Crowd at the Door were dancing to the latest Tune, and one little Red-faced Blade beat Time upon the Counter as I went on.

And then I turned into that part called the Great Feeld. Some children in Blew jackets and Kite-Lanthorned Caps ran past me: You will be dead before I return was my Thought as I stared into the Entry of Black Step Lane. With an even Pace I walked forward and at last my Church was rising above me: like the Noise of Thunder it struck even my own Spirit with an air of Greatnesse beyond any thing I had seen before. A man in fur Cap and grey Stockings passed me and looked back in Astonishment, so rapt was I in the sight of the vast Stone; and all the Cryes died away as I mounted the Steps and approached the Porch of Little St Hugh. The Church was above me now and, tho' I was plunged into Shaddowe, I did not move but waited until my Eyes had cleared a little. Then I opened the Door and crossed the Threshold. I walked forward saying, From my first Years Thy Honours have I endured with a troubled Mind, and I stood in the Aisle looking upwards till I could look on more: I had run to the end of my Time and I was at Peace. I knelt down in front of the Light, and my Shaddowe stretched over the World.

THE SHADOW moved slowly over his face until his mouth and eyes were obscured: only his forehead still caught the sun's rays,, and they illuminated the beads of sweat that had accumulated there before he woke. Even in sleep he knew that he was sick, and he had dreamed that the blood poured from him like coin; he was woken by the sound of an argument in the street below and, as he knelt upright with his hands over his ears, he considered the possibility that he had gone mad. 'But how could I be mad yet?' he said, and smiled at the sound of his own voice just before he heard three knocks upon the door. He dropped his hands and waited, hardly breathing, and it was only when he heard three further knocks that he got up from his bed, walked slowly into the hallway and called out, 'Who's there?'

'It's only me, Mr Hawksmoor!'

He opened the door on Mrs West, averting his eyes as he listened to her: 'I thought I heard you call, Mr Hawksmoor. Did you call?' He said nothing and she took a step forward: There was a man came for you last night. I was just putting out the bottles, not that I can hardly bend, and he was ringing and ringing so I said you was out. Was I right? And then I heard you call just now and I thought, you never know do you?

So I came up.' And all the while she examined his face with open curiosity. 'I thought there might be a reason, Mr Hawksmoor.'

He smiled, still saying nothing, and was about to close the door upon her when he remembered: 'Oh, Mrs West, I'm about to go away '

'You need a good rest do you?'

He looked at her with suspicion. 'That's right. I deserve a rest. So if anyone comes will you tell them?'

'I'll tell them.' Her hands were clenched, into fists.

Hawksmoor watched her descend the stairs, leaning heavily against the banister as she did so, and only when she had turned out of sight did he close the door. He walked back into the bedroom and, when he looked down at his arms, he saw long furrows where he had scratched himself in his sleep: and in that moment he was consumed by his hatred for those he worked with. They had not wanted him to succeed, they had tricked him, they had betrayed him, and now they had triumphed over him. He could not breathe and in alarm he crossed over to the window and opened it: it was a cold December day and, as he leaned out, he could feel the heat leaving his body like an exhalation until he became calm again. From this height, the movements of those in the street seemed to him to be marked by a peculiar fatality, as though they were being drawn by a thread which they would never see; and as he stared down at their faces he wondered what a face was, and from what original it had sprung.

It was time now to join them. He crept down the hallway, pausing only to put on his coat and shoes before walking slowly down the stairs and into the street. A light rain was falling, and he had just reached the corner when he glanced up at the clouds and suddenly decided to turn back; then, as he passed the Red Gates, he noticed his own reflection in the frosted window, beneath a sign for Beers and Spirits. The reflection turned to stare at him before walking on: Hawksmoor passed his hand across his face and then called out, 'Do I know you?' and several passers-by stopped in astonishment as he ran out into the road crying. 'Do I? Do I?' No answer came and, as he tried to follow the retreating figure, the crowds of the city hampered his progress and closed him in. Eventually he retraced his steps to Grape Street: he was so tired now that he no longer cared who might be watching or waiting for him on his return. He lay down upon his bed with his hand covering his eyes, but the sounds of traffic came through the open window and he could not sleep. Then his eyes opened: and that's another thing, he thought, why are churches built in that shape? And he repeated the word -churches, churches, churches, churches, churches -until it meant nothing.

'Cooee! Cooee!' The voice could have come from somewhere within the room, and on first waking he did not know what he had heard. 'Mr Hawksmoor!'

He jumped out of bed shouting, 'What is it? What's happened?' and then crouched beside the bedroom door, putting his weight against it in case Mrs West should try to enter.

'Your front door was open and I didn't know did I? I thought you was going away…'. And then after a pause she asked him, 'Are you decent?'

She was still just outside his door, and he wanted to pound upon it in his fury. 'Just a minute!' he shouted and he was surprised to find that he was still wearing his coat and shoes. Where had he been as he slept? He opened the door, and hurried past her into the bathroom where he ran cold water from the tap; he was about to splash it over his face, but instead he watched the surface of the rushing water. 'I am going away,' he called out to her, 'Eventually.'

'Where will you go?'

'Oh I don't know,' he muttered, 'Where does anyone go?' And he heard her moving about the flat. He came out of the bathroom quietly, to find her peering at the pages of the white notebook which he had pinned against the walls of his front room. He noticed that her hair was still lustrous and was about to stroke it when he realised that she had to move her whole body as she turned from one drawing to the next: 'What happened to your neck?' He tried to conceal his disgust.

'Oh that's nothing. That's my arthritis. I'm used to it.' She continued to look at the drawings, with the verses and phrases beneath them. 'What are you doing here then? Are these yours?'

'Mine? No, they're not mine.' He tried to laugh. They're just a story I'm working on. I don't know the ending as yet.'

'I like a nice ending.'

'That's the same as saying, you like a nice death.'

She was puzzled at this and simply murmured, 'Oh yes?' as she turned to go.

'But what do you really see in them, Mrs West?' He blocked her passage to the door. 'Do you see anything strange in them?' He was genuinely interested in her reply.

'Good God, don't ask me. I see nothing.'

She seemed disturbed. 'Well, don't take it to heart,' he said, 'I was only asking.'

At the word 'heart' she trembled and the weight of the years was released from her momentarily. 'What sign are you, Mr Hawksmoor?'

'Sign? I know nothing about signs.'

'You know, signs. Star signs. I bet you're a Pisces, like me.

Secretive. Am I right?' He did not answer her but looked once again at the drawings. 'They say we're going to have a good year, when Venus gets into our quarter.'

He blushed. 'I wouldn't know about that now, would I?'

She sighed and prepared once more to leave him. 'Well have a nice time, Mr Hawksmoor.' Then she winked at him. 'Once you know where you're going, that is.'

He traced his name in the dust along the window-sill and then erased it. He turned on the radio but he could hear the voices whispering, 'What wind blew you here? What wind blew you here?' As he sat in the middle of the room sometimes he could see moving shapes, just out of the corner of his eye, but they were as indistinct as shadows on water and when he turned his head to look at them they were gone.

And as dusk fell he recited one of the verses inscribed in the white notebook: I saw a door which opened on a fire I saw a pit which rose up even higher I saw a child who danced round and round I saw a house which stood beneath the ground I saw a man who is not, nor ever could he be, Hold up your hand and look, for you are he.

And as Hawksmoor's voice reverberated around the room, some coins fell off the mantelpiece. There were more verses beneath these but, since the poem seemed to go on for ever, he lost interest. And he switched on the television set, craning forward eagerly when he saw the image of a man with his back turned towards him. He turned up the contrast, and then the brightness, but the image became no more distinct. And Hawksmoor stared at the screen, as time passed.

Now a morning service was being transmitted, and he knew that it was a Sunday. The priest was raised above his congregation: 'So you may say how complicated and perilous modern life is, and how dark the future seems, and how distant our ancestors. But I will tell you this, my good friends, that each age has found itself to be dark and perilous, and each age has feared for its future, and each age has lost its forefathers. And so they have turned to God, thinking to themselves, if there are shadows there must also be light! And beyond the years, my friends, there is an eternity which we may see with the help of God's grace. And what is so wonderful is that this eternity intersects with time, just as in this church -' Hawksmoor's attention wandered to a fly which was trying to find a way out of the closed window, and when he looked at his television again the priest had moved on -'when a mother glances at a child with love, the light from her eyes soothes and nourishes the infant; the voices we raise in this church can also be instruments of light, banishing shadow; you must learn to see this light, my friends, and you must move forward towards it for this light is a reflection of the Light of God.'

Hawksmoor seemed to recognise the interior of the church as an image of the hushed congregation appeared on the screen; and then the exterior of the church was shown as the camera moved downwards from the bell tower to the steps, lingering on the sign beyond the porch which read 'Christ Church, Spitalfields. Erected by Nicholas Dyer, 1713'. And the time before had been a dream for he knew now: he was looking down at the body in front of St Mary Woolnoth and once again noticing the sign which read, 'Founded in the Saxon Age and Last Rebuilt by Nicholas Dyer, 1714'. There had been such a name upon the board by the Greenwich church, and he recognised what a symmetry this was.

He allowed the knowledge of the pattern to enclose him, as the picture on the television screen began to revolve very quickly and then to break up into a number of different images. Where before the churches had been for him a source of anxiety and of rage, now he contemplated each one in turn with a beneficent wonder as he saw how mightily they had done their work: the great stones of Christ Church, the blackened walls of St Anne's, the twin towers of St George's-in-the-East, the silence of St Mary Woolnoth, the unbroken façade of St Alfege's, the white pillar of St George's Bloomsbury, all now took on a larger life as Hawksmoor contemplated them and the crimes which had been committed in their name. And yet he sensed that the pattern was incomplete, and it was for this that he waited almost joyfully.

It had grown colder when he left the house the next morning, and the frost obscured the windows of the public library when he took down the encyclopaedia and turned to the entry for DYER Nicholas.

And this is what he read: '1654 -c.

1715. English architect; was the most important pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, and a colleague both of Wren and Sir John Vannbrugghe in the Office of Works at Scotland Yard. Dyer was born in London in 1654; although his parentage is obscure, it seems that he was first apprenticed as a mason before becoming Wren's personal clerk; he later held several official posts under Wren including that of surveyor at St Paul's. His most important independent work was completed as a result of his becoming the principal architect to the 1711 Commission for New London Churches; his was the only work to be completed for that Commission, and Dyer was able to realise seven of his own designs: Christ Church Spitalfields, St George's-in-the-East Wapping, St Anne's Limehouse, St Alfege's in Greenwich, St Mary Woolnoth in Lombard Street, St George's Bloomsbury and, finest of all, the church of Little St Hugh beside Moorfields. These edifices show most clearly his ability to handle large abstract shapes and his sensitive (almost romantic) lines of mass and shadow. But he seems to have had no pupils or disciples in his lifetime, and changes in architectural taste meant that his work has had little influence and few admirers. He died in London in the winter of 1715, it is thought of the gout, although the records of his death and burial have been lost.' Hawksmoor stared at the page, trying to imagine the past which these words represented, but he saw nothing in front of him except darkness.

The streets were already filled with people when he left the library and returned to Grape Street. Despite the intense cold he was sweat ing as he took down the pages from the white notebook, placed them carefully in order, and then with a gesture of impatience stuffed them in his pocket. He tried to concentrate on what he should do next, but his mind wavered and fell away into the shadows of the unseen church of Little St Hugh. He had come to the end by chance, not knowing that it was the end, and this unanticipated and uncertain climax might yet rob him of his triumph: his will was emptied, replaced by the shape of moving things as he sat in his dark coat and watched the sun rolling across the roof-tops. Then he shook his head and stood up with an urgency which suggested that he wished to forestall, at least, another death. But as soon as he stepped into the street he felt afraid; someone knocked against him and he might have turned back at this moment, if the bus which travelled between Bloomsbury and Fenchurch Street had not arrived and if Hawksmoor had not entered it without thought. He sat huddled in his seat while in front of him an infant lay asleep with its chin upon its breast: and that, Hawksmoor thought, is how you will sleep when you are old. His forehead burned; he pressed it against the window and gazed at the mist which rose from the mouths of the people as they hurried through the streets of the city.