Read Online Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd - Free Book Online

illuminated, the local children were playing at catching each other's shadows.
    Thomas could not sleep that night, and he was filled with a growing sense of panic as the solitary bell of the Spitalfields church chimed the half-hour and the hour. Once again he contemplated the events in the schoolyard, and in the darkness he imagined other scenes of suffering and humiliation: how the same boys might lie in wait for him, how when he passed they would fall upon him and kick him, and how he would not resist until he lay dead at their feet. He whispered their names -John Biscow, Peter Duckett, Philip Wire -as if they were deities to be propitiated. Then he climbed from his bed and leaned out of the open window; from here he could see the silhouette of the church roof, and above it seven or eight stars. In his mind's eye he tried to draw a line between each star, to see what complete figure it might make, but as he did so he felt a pressure on his cheek as if an insect were crawling across it: he glanced down into Monmouth Street, beyond the shed where the coals were kept, and saw what seemed to be a figure in a dark coat looking up at him.
    It was winter now, and in the late days of October the children of Spitalfields made figures out of old clothes or newspapers and prepared them for the burning. But Thomas spent these evenings in his room, where he was constructing out of plywood and cardboard a model of a house. He used a small penknife to cut windows in its sides, and with his wooden ruler he laid out the plan of the rooms: indeed, so great was his enthusiasm that the little building already resembled a labyrinth. And as he walked to the churchyard in the early afternoon he was considering whether it was necessary to construct a basement: would the model be complete without it, or would it not? He came to the south wall and sat down in the dust, settling against the corner of the buttress in order to reflect upon these matters.
    Until he became aware of movement in front of him: he looked up in alarm and pressed himself closer against the great church when he noticed a man and woman walking beneath the trees, which shook in the rising wind. They stopped; the man drank from a bottle before they both settled down upon the earth and lay beside each other.
    Thomas glared with contempt as they kissed but, when the man put his hand upon her skirt, he grew more watchful. He got up slowly from beside the buttress in order to lie on the ground closer to them, and by the time he had done so the man had taken the woman's breast from her fawn jacket and begun to feel it. Thomas caught his breath, and started rocking himself on the ground in the same rhythm as the man's hand which now worked up and down; he felt a large stone digging in his stomach as he lay sprawled upon the earth but he was hardly aware of the discomfort as the man put his mouth to the woman's breast and kept it there. Thomas's throat was dry and he swallowed several times to try and control his rising excitement; it seemed as if his limbs were growing, like those of a giant, and he was sure that at any moment something would burst from him -he might be sick, or he might cry out, and in his alarm he rose to his feet. The man saw his shape against the stone and, grabbing the bottle which was lying by the woman's side, hurled it at Thomas who looked wildly around as it swung in an arc towards him. Then he ran to the back wall of the church, passing the entrance to the abandoned runnel before he collided with a man who must have been standing there. Without looking up, the boy ran on.
    Pleading tiredness he went to bed early that night and, as he lay in his dark room, he could hear the sounds of rockets and flares issuing from the neighbouring streets. He believed that he did not miss such things, but he lay face downward on his bed and put the pillow over his head so that he could not hear them. And once more he watched as the man and woman walked beneath the trees and as