Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd Page B

standing in the doorway: 'It's all right,' she explained, 'Mummy's just tired'. Thomas bent down to pick up the butter and looked at her shoes and ankles as he did so.
    'Look at the dust in here,.' she was saying, 'Just look at it!' The sudden anger in her voice disturbed him but, as he stood up from the floor, he asked her in a dispassionate voice, 'Where does dust come from?'
    'Oh I don't know, Tommy, from the ground probably.' And as she said this she looked round with increased distaste at the narrow kitchen, before realising that her son was gazing at her and biting his lip in distress. 'I don't know where it comes from, but I do know where it's going to,' and she blew the dust from the table into the air. And both of them laughed before turning their attention to their food: they might have been in competition, for they ate ferociously and did not even glance at each other as quickly and silently they finished their meal. And then Thomas took the empty plates, and carried them in silence to the sink where he began running water over them. His mother gave a little burp, which she did not try to conceal, before asking him what he had done today.
    'Nothing.'
    'You must have done something, Tommy. What happened at school?'
    'I told you, I done nothing.' He never chose to mention the church, since he preferred his mother to believe that he disliked the area as much as she did. At that moment the single bell chimed seven o'clock.
    'It's that church again, isn't it?' He kept his back to her and did not reply. 'I told you time and again.' He let the water flow over his fingers. 'I don't like you going there, what with that runnel and all. It could cave in and then where would you be?' For her the church represented all that was dark and immutably dirty about the area, and she resented the fascination which it obviously held for her son. 'Are you listening to me, young man?'
    And then, turning round to look at her, he said, 'I think there's something inside that pyramid. It felt hot today.'
    'I'll make you feel hot if you go near it again.' But she regretted the severity of her tone when she saw her son's anxious face. 'It's not good for you to spend so much time on your own, Tommy.' She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke towards the ceiling. 'I wish you was more friendly with the other boys.' He wanted to leave her now and go back to his room, but her dejected expression kept him back. 'I had friends at your age, Tommy.'
    'I know. I saw the pictures.' He remembered the photograph of his mother as a young girl, her arm around a friend: both of them had been dressed in white, and it seemed to Thomas to be a painting of a time infinitely remote, a time before he had been thought of.
    'Well then.' And a note of anxiety entered her voice again. 'Isn't there someone you want to play with?'
    'I don't know. I'll have to think about it.' He examined the table, trying to puzzle out the secret of dust.
    'You think too much Tommy, it's not good for you.' Then she smiled at him. 'Do you want to play a game?' She put out her cigarette with a quick movement and took him in her lap, rocking him backward and forward as she chanted a song which Thomas also knew by heart: How many miles to Babylon?
    Three score miles and ten.
    Can I get there by candle light?
    Yes, and back again.
    And she rocked him faster and faster until he felt dizzy and begged her to stop: he was sure that she would pull his arms out of their sockets, or that he would crash to the floor and be killed. But just as the game had reached its height she let him down gently and, with a sudden and unexpected sigh, rose up to switch on the electric light. And all at once Thomas saw how dark it had become outside: 'I think I'll go up now'. She was looking out of the window at the empty street below: 'Goodnight,' she murmured, 'Sleep tight'. And then she turned round and embraced her son so tightly that he had to struggle to get free while outside, as the amber street lights were