still, with his hands in his pockets, one little finger playing with the hole in his stone, the stone with the marks on that Geoff had given him. Slowly he ran his eyes over the ceiling; now he looked more carefully he could see several places where large pieces had fallen off, and there was rubble on the floor, and on the bundles of News Chronicles.
Oliver listened. At least his mother had stopped yelling. She’d have gone up to their flat to look for him. But someone was in the hall – or was it outside? He could hear a voice, rather faint, but getting clearer, a woman’s voice, gentle and young, and she was crying.
He glanced up through the grating but there was nobody in the street outside. Then he turned round; whoever it was must surely be standing very close to him. But there was nobody there. Oliver’s stomach lurched, and a cold icy feeling swept over him. Every inch of his scalp tingled, as if he’d been stripped naked and plunged into freezing water.
Slowly, unable to stop one foot moving ahead of the other, he moved steadily towards the grating. Then he found himself gliding sideways towards those long dark streaks in the wall, and one of them was opening up, like the earth cracking, like a huge mouth. Out of it came a roaring, terrible blackness, sweeping round him and over him, stopping his breath.
And Oliver let himself be taken, soundlessly, without struggle; the only noise in the cellar was the woman’s voice, that desperate, anguished weeping that went on and on, losing its gentleness and turning strident and hard until, at last, it became one ear-splitting agonized scream.
Oliver passed into nothing. It was as though his own head had grown huge and split open silently, and as if all the darkness inside had flowed out like a great river choking him, and swallowing him up.
He was looking out of a dirty window, down into a street, standing on tiptoe because his chin barely reached the sill. He wore a greasy brown tunic with a leather belt round the middle. His feet were bare and, between his toes, he could feel grit and dirt from the wooden floor.
It was suffocatingly hot and the small square of sky outside was a flat, hard blue. But worse than the heat was the overpowering smell, and Oliver was trying to snatch quick light breaths of air. If he took proper lungfuls he knew he’d be sick. He tried to analyse the smell but he couldn’t. One minute it reminded him of meat that had gone bad, the next of a huge manure heap. But farm smells could be quite pleasant in a funny sort of way. This wasn’t, it was a smell of rot and decay, not just hanging in the air he breathed but somehow in his own body.
He looked down. His hands and feet seemed curiously small and they were filthy, every inch of skin uniformly grey. His mouth tasted foul, his teeth sticky, as if he’d not brushed them for years and years.
He pushed his face up against the window, rubbed a little hole in the dirt, and looked through again. There were houses opposite, half-timbered with sagging tiled roofs, and with upper storeys that stuck out over a cobbled street. They were so close he could have leaned out and shaken hands with someone opposite, if there’d been anyone at home. But the house looked shut up and deserted, so did the houses to the right and left, and up through the egg-shaped cobbles he could see grass growing in little tufts.
He must be in a town because there were roofs and gables and chimneys, stretching away till they dissolved into a brown-red blur under the heartless blue sky. But it felt like a town of ghosts. Nobody came or went in that narrow little street, nobody called out. The only sound he could hear was a bird twittering away in the leaves of a fresh young tree that was growing up, just under the window.
Oliver craned his neck till he could see right along the street and spotted something he recognized, a different sort of house, more like a shop. He thought he saw a figure moving about behind the upper windows but the lower part was all boarded up, as if they were going to pull it down. The street door was a faded green colour, studded with diamond-headed nails, like the entrance to a dungeon, and painted on it, in broad rough strokes, was a bright red cross.
As he stared he saw a figure pass in front of the house opposite, walk down to the shop and take up a position outside the peeling green door. It was an old man, quite bent, with a straggly beard. He wore a peculiar cone-shaped hat and faded knee breeches and, in spite of the heat, he had a cloak wrapped round him, dark red, the colour of plums.
Oliver saw him put something down on the cobbles. It was an old-fashioned lantern, the kind that took candles; he’d only ever seen them in books. The man looked up at the house then peered vaguely along the street. No one moved, no one spoke, there was only the bird, singing its heart out in the pale green leaves of the little oak tree.
Then he picked up a pole that had been leaning against a wall. It was a pike. Oliver could see the sun flashing on the big curved blade as the old man hobbled up and down. He took six steps up the street, then six back. Then he leaned against the shop and closed his eyes for a minute, before setting off again. He was obviously doing some kind of sentry duty, as if it was his job to make sure the people inside didn’t escape. But why? That house looked ready for the demolition squad.
He watched the man take a couple more turns up and down the street, then he dropped away from the window. His feet were aching after standing on his toes for so long so he turned round to see what was behind him.
Precious little. A dark room that smelt nearly as foul as the air blowing through the gap in the window frame; low box-like beds, each one a tumble of blankets. There were no pictures, no shelves with ornaments, no books, and the floor was bare except for a dented tankard lying on its side, and a tin plate scattered with crumbs.
Oliver could hear muffled voices. He spotted a little door in the far corner and began to tiptoe across the floor, grit sticking to the soles of his feet like spilt sugar. Then he stopped dead. Something was moving by one of the beds, creeping across the floor in and out of the dusty shadows. Something sleek and black with quivering whiskers; it was a rat.
He shrank away, watching open-mouthed as it found the plate, ate the mouldy crumbs delicately, taking its time, then sat on its tiny haunches, dabbing at its face like a miniature cat. Oliver clapped his hands and stamped one foot smartly. The rat shot away towards the wall and he saw its long pinkish tail disappear through a hole in the crumbling lath and plaster. There were dozens of holes; dozens of rats, probably. But he’d thought house rats were bigger, and brown. The only others he’d ever seen were fat white ones with pink eyes.
Why did he feel that he knew about rats? And why did he feel that if he got to the back of this dark little house he would find the river Thames? Memories tugged at him, then danced out of reach, floating round his bewildered head like scraps of paper caught by the wind. Warily, keeping one eye on the holes in the rotting wall, he reached the door and pulled it open gingerly.
“Thomas … Thomas! Where are you, bird?” A woman’s voice, gentle even though she was shouting, and somehow familiar, came up the narrow wooden stairs.
“Leave him, mother, he’s sleeping. Better to leave him.” This voice was younger, different. He’d not heard it before.
“Thomas!” the woman called again, anxiously this time, but he took no notice. His name was Oliver, not Thomas, so she couldn’t mean him. Anyway, he’d found another door at the top of the staircase. He pushed at it, and crept through.
This room was tiny and contained nothing but a bed, a small one with high sides, a bed like a coffin. There was a rough grey blanket on the floor and a small lumpy object on top of it, something with a polished round head and two stuffed legs. It looked like a doll made
