‘Clod? Clod! CLOD!’
I’d been calling out in my sleep, must have fainted away again. Awake now, awake to find myself so deep underground. Buried alive.
Nothing to see, all blackness. There had been the screaming of a train’s whistle howling out deep into London, but how long ago now I couldn’t say. And I all bloody on the ground in some kind of airpocket, in the crumbling of Bayleaf House, the noises of cracking and shifting of the building giving up above me, but beside me, in the dirty darkness, we few of Foulsham. Children. Only a handful left from so many. What a murdering there had been: men, women, children, drowned in dirt and flames. My people. So few left. Must keep them. Those that still breathe, must keep them going. Precious, precious few.
Who were we? Name call, I made them say their names, in the deep dark, again and again, in our small space. Trapped, so few left now, again and again, they must give their names.
‘Lucy Pennant,’ I started.
Silence.
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘you must do it, we must keep alive. Names please, I’ll have them. Lucy Pennant, then who comes next?’
‘Jenny Ryall.’ My old friend from childhood, lived in the same building as me since we were babies.
‘Bug Ryall.’ Her brother. Real name was Dick, but everyone knew him as Bug since he made a name for himself racing cockroaches.
‘Colin Shanks.’
‘Tess Shanks.’
‘Arthur Oates.’
‘Esther Nelson.’
‘Roger Cole.’
‘Bartholomew Lewis.’
The names stopped.
‘Anyone else? Any other here?’
No more.
‘No one else? Then there are nine, just nine of us all told.’
‘Excuse me.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m here too. Haven’t said my name yet.’
‘Then tell us it, and keep sharp.’
‘I’m Molly Porter.’
‘Well, Molly Porter, call out when you’re asked, will you? We don’t want to lose you.’
‘Molly Porter.’
‘All right, Mol, we’ve got you now. Anyone else beside you?’
‘No, just me. Where is everyone else?’
‘Just us I reckon. Just us that we know of. That’s ten of us even. Ten from so many. Let’s keep it ten now, ten of us, let’s not lose any more. Is there any way out? Feel around you. Does anyone have a light?’
No one, no light.
We were stuck – didn’t seem like there was any place to move – in some small space, maybe getting smaller all the while. Couldn’t say really which way was up, which down, so turned about, and everything in darkness. Deep, deep under the ground. We’d been following a stairway, trying to get out, trying to get away from all those leathers so thick about us, Umbitt’s dumb army, trying to get away from the flames and the smashing of the heaps, one great burst and the walls broke and all came tumbling in, and we, we only ten of us, were pulled down into the deep darkness, under the ground, and here we lay, in a heap. Just ten. Only ten. No more.
Above us must have been other people that fell and were crushed. And higher yet were great flames and burning. The whole shanty city of Foulsham brought low. And us in such a small pocket of life. We picked about us, tried to find some way out, but couldn’t, not at first, not for a long time; just called out into the darkness, called to nobody.
‘Help! Help! We’re down here! Help!’
But always there were sounds, sounds of things falling, sounds of something heavy above us. Hours down there, hours and hours. Days, even? We slept and awoke screaming, we wept, and picked the broken walls with our fingers. Getting weaker, weaker and weaker all the while.
In the end I think it was the factory above us shifting that found us some way forward. If it hadn’t moved we’d be locked in that horrid space for ever and never found, or come to, years later, human fossils. The ground around us was ever shifting, it hadn’t finished its falling.
And then it broke.
And we all screamed.
And then other things fell into our space.
Something of a sudden pushing past me, shoving me out of the way. Some sort of small river of things, but hairy, with mouths and claws. Could it be?
‘Rats? Are those rats?’ I called.
‘Yes, rats,’ some kid called back. ‘Lots of them!’
‘Follow! Follow them!’ I shouted. ‘They’ll find a way out of anything!’
‘The rats?’
‘Yes! Yes!’ I cried. ‘Rats! They’ll lead us free. They know the way. Quick, all of you, quick, scramble towards the rats, our lives depend upon it!’
Awful crumblings, creaks and squeaks and shrieks of masonry, like the building itself was complaining, like it hurt so and wanted help. Thought we’d come to the end. Not yet. Not now we had company. Rats to find ways that we’d never learn. Must follow, must follow them rats, whatever else.
Moved hands around sharp things cutting into, bleeding fingers, fingers sticky with blood. Such a little space, so little room to move. I thought we would be crushed any moment.
‘Keep with me! Keep up now!’
Think, think, sensible. Be sensible, Lucy, or this is the very very end of all, you’ll never see Clod again. He’s alive yet, isn’t he, isn’t he? One thing’s for certain, shan’t find out stuck here. I pulled them along with me, dragged them.
‘Go on! Go on! Move!’
‘I can’t!’
‘Yes you bloody can!’
‘No, no, leave me!’
‘I bloody will not! Move it, or I’ll so punch you!’
Got to keep living, got to, whatever else.
There was some crawl space, there were also flattened rats all about us, some writhing in pain. One bit hard at my leg, ow! Well then, I was alive.
How long did we crawl on, trying to follow the rats, till there was nowhere forward, till we’d come to the end of it and all seemed impossible. We must turn back, just a little bit, back, back we go, back a little to keep going on, and so back we went. We cut ourselves as we crawled in single file, feeling for a different opening, for other spaces somewhere in all that sharpness, something to give us more space, for, in truth, if there was any less of it we’d be goners one and all. Hopeless, so hopeless. We’d lost the rats, they were so much faster. They’d have found their way by now. Not us. So dark, no room, no air, weren’t even sure if we were living still, to tell the truth, animals trapped in the blackness, not a person, not a human, just a few somethings, trying to keep living in the thick, dirty air, lungs for all of dirt and dust. How many had died – don’t think on them, it’s over for them isn’t it, shan’t do any good for them, but for us it’s not over, not yet, not yet, try, try a little.
Try a little longer.
Names, names, I call out the names.
Seven of us, eight, nine and ten, all alive yet.
Have a rest, need a rest. Rest.
I think we must have slept a little in that thin air, maybe fainted, passed out a time. But suddenly I came to again, and awoke us all, all ten bodies, and dragged us on, though some cried to be let alone. Couldn’t, couldn’t let them. On, on and on, on a little more. Never knowing what might lie ahead.
We came to some sort of ledge after a bit and lay there panting, just lying, the noises of masonry still shifting, still trying to find its place, still complaining and hurting, and collapsing too. Could hear it going, hear it tumbling down, and all that mess of pipes, twisted and ripped, bent and broke all about us. Didn’t move from life, that thing, only moved because its dead body was falling yet, into the deep dirt, making its roots down in the ground where we were scrabbling, us small sacks of living. And any sounds were the sounds of the dying building, no human sound, ’cept those panting beside me, trying to steal a little air from that place. Something, some pipe above us had burst, there was water, foul water dripping down from it. Dripping on my face, filth water, stinking, leaking, like the building’s own blood, or like the building had wet itself in a panic.
Never no light, no light again.
Dampness all about us, water rising, so that the place, what little there was of it, was flooding up. Something had burst, some great waterpipe had been severed and now was seeping all over us. And the smell like a weight all on its own, a familiar rude, sweet closeness, such as sinks into you through every bit of skin until it quite takes you over. Well, I knew that, didn’t I?
I’d done that before.
‘Swidge,’ I said, remembering poor Benedict and our journey underground. ‘Sewage pipes, isn’t it!’ I said.
Sewage! River of filth, our hope, that sea of filth!
If we could find the sewage pipe, if we could follow it down, swim in that foul river, then we might escape yet. Rats about us again, ones that had been stunned by the crushing but were just coming round and clambering out now.
Rats, rats, you lovelies, show us the way, won’t you?
If there was a way, they’d find it.
‘Come on again, on we go!’
‘No! No!’ some of us cried.
‘Leave us be!’ they moaned.
‘Not for a moment,’ I shouted. ‘We must keep on, or be crushed! Move! MOVE! DON’T BE DEAD! COME ON! UP! GET UP!’
I heard a loud splashing, like something had fallen from high up into water, deep water, noises of thrashing about, there, there! While it can still be heard. Quick, don’t go silent on me!
I pulled them, grabbed and dragged them along, struck at them, and they were there crawling and then of a terrible sudden …
Huge plosh!
Where? Where? I felt around in the blackness, couldn’t feel them nowhere, couldn’t hear the splashing, where, where, lost her? Lost?
‘Jenny! Jenny!’ I couldn’t feel her, my oldest friend from childhood, my house companion, my best mate. Then:
‘Lucy, help! Lucy!’
‘Jen!’
I felt around, kept feeling about, in a panic, in a terror, for her to be alone down there in all of that and then suddenly there was nothing there, no ground beneath me at all and I was falling, falling, falling and then I hit the water and went under.
I came up at last, kicked myself up through God only knows what, so cold, trying to breathe in that wet coldness. A hand on me then, a hand pulling me on, pulling me closer.
‘Effra!’ I gasped. ‘It’s only the bloody Effra! The underground river! We’re saved! Come on, all of you, jump down, you must jump. Follow our voices. Down, down, we’ll help you. You must come! Must!’
Plop.
Splash!
Crash!
Down they come, one by one, those few left of Foulsham, into the hidden river, there to swim in dirt, to go on a little. Call out the names.
‘Lucy Pennant.’
‘Jenny Ryall. Bug? BUG!’
‘Bug Ryall.’
‘Thank God.’
‘Who else?’
‘Arthur Oates.’
‘Tess Shanks.’
‘And Colin. Colin Shanks.’
‘Esther Nelson.’
‘Roger Cole.’
‘Bartholomew Lewis.’
‘And? And? Molly? Where’s Molly?’
‘Molly Porter, here, here I am!’
‘Good girl! Well done all of you!’
So then which way? That was simple, the only way we could. One way was blocked and full, I supposed all chocked up with what was once Foulsham. The other was free, and surely led London way.
We swam and were sick and swam, and swam about, and on we went a long time, but there in the end at last there was a ladder along the great pipes, up and up and up it went, we climbed it rung by sharp rung, and it led all the way back up to land, which land we couldn’t say but above ground somewhere, somewhere with space and air to breathe.
We clambered up.
The ladder came to an end.
Big metal cover.
Here goes.
I gave it a push and another, a twist, and a screech, and another shove and it shifted at last, and the air came stinging in, what air that was, like a first lungful. There was no one there, no one around. Early in the morning I think it must have been, no sun yet. Slid the thing back, awful din it made, but no one about, houses and a street and places where people lived, but no people that I could see. Colder up there, colder on the ground, London cold come about us and bit hard.
‘I think we’ve done it,’ Jenny said.
‘London? Is it, is it London after all?’ some kid asked – Roger Cole, panting and shaking in the cold.
‘London,’ I said. ‘London proper?’
‘London.’
‘London.’
‘London,’ I said.
‘Yes, this is London,’ came a deep adult voice from behind us, ‘and you are not welcome here.’
‘Scarper!’ I cried. ‘Flee, run for it!’
A whistle was blown, a policeman’s whistle.
‘Over here!’ yelled the policeman. ‘Over here! Rats! Dozens of them! Here!’ And he blew his whistle and ran at us. He had hold of some small boy, it was Bartholomew, little Bartholomew Lewis, he had him and shoved him under his arm like he was a chicken. I leapt at the policeman, just leapt at him, clawed my fingers into his face, like some desperate mad mother, as if the poor little brat was my own child. Then others had the idea of it too, and we were tumbling the man down and kicking into him until he let the boy go, he had to, or I think we might have pulled every bit of flesh off him and left him there all bones and nothing else, but he was there still breathing and bloody and full of his hatred. We hadn’t done the policeman over proper and that was our mistake, because then he was blowing his whistle again. I couldn’t believe it, he wouldn’t take a hint this bastard, so I marched back over and gave him a good Lucy Pennant welcome – I kicked him full in the face. What blood! Truth was, I was glad to see it. And that stopped the whistling, and then, yes, at once, we ran pell-mell into the night.
We run at last towards a bridge; I was ahead of them, just running and going on, Jen beside me. I thought they were all coming on, but we’d split already. Can’t say which way the others went, but we came along what I now understand to be Vauxhall Bridge, we must have come up above ground somewhere near Kennington. I know that now. I studied it on the map. Didn’t know then, then it was just a bridge. Just a place to flee along.
But by the time we were over the bridge we weren’t all there. Some had run off into different streets. Couldn’t keep them all with me, all in a tumble panic, all screaming. More whistles then from different places, and calling out and then, oh then, Christ then, of God then, bloody bloody then came a loud cracking sound, like some furious metal animal had just barked and I knew what that noise meant. Gunshot, wasn’t it. There were guns, we were being fired at. They’re murdering us. Dead if we go back underground, dead if we stay on the streets, and over yonder the other side of the river, more dead and dead and dead piled in burning heaps. Nothing but death, was there? How to keep alive in that, how to tiptoe around all that deading and keep alive somehow, find a little little corner to breathe in and prosper? That’s all we want, to keep living. Not so much to ask, is it?
Yes, it bloody was. Yes it always is. The biggest thing to ask.
How to live, how to keep living?
‘Run!’ I screamed. ‘Run for it!’