'Are you?'
'Are you?'
'Are you?'
Until one of them said, 'You're bigger. You go first'. This was unanswerable: they spat on their hands and touched their thumbs together before the older boy lowered himself through the entry they had made and the other followed.
They stood up in the dark portal, and clutched each other in the manner of those who are in danger of falling. The first boy then tentatively began going down the steps, reaching out for his companion's hand as he did so, and as they descended the sound of their rapid breathing was quite audible in a place which was otherwise silent. When they reached the bottom they paused until their eyes became accustomed to the darkness: a tunnel seemed to appear in front of them, although it was of incalculable length, and there were words or drawings on the stones above their heads. The older boy moved a little way into the passage, flattening his right palm against the side although the wall itself was damp and cold, and after six or seven steps he came to a room on the right. They peered in, hesitating while the deeper darkness swirled around them, and slowly there emerged in one corner the outline of a bundle of rags. The older boy started to make his way into this small room when he thought he saw the rags heave and move: something might have been turning in its sleep and he screamed, stepping backward in his fright and knocking the smaller boy to the ground. Was there now a noise coming from within the room, or was it an echo of his scream? But both of them had already scrambled back to the stairs, and were escaping through the aperture they had made. They fell out of the tunnel and then stood up in the shadow of the church, looking in each others' faces for signs of the fear which both of them felt, before running down the gravel path towards the gates and the streets beyond. 'I fell over,' the younger one said when they were once more part of their own world, 'I hurt my knee. Look!' He sat down by the side of the road, and was sick in the gutter. 'You can put some iodine on that,' his friend told him before turning away in the expectation that the other would follow. And the darkness grew like a tree.
Thomas was now lying on his bed and, at the time when the two boys were escaping from the runnel, he was making shadows against the wall with his hands: 'Here is the church,' he whispered to himself, 'And here is the steeple. Open the doors and where are the people?'
Then he tired of this game, and turned the page of his book.
He and his mother lived in the upper two storeys of the old house in Eagle Street (beneath them was a dress-making establishment owned by an Indian family). His father, a baker, had died six years before: Thomas remembered a man sitting at the kitchen table, taking up a knife to carve some meat and then falling sideways with a smile upon his face, and his mother with a hand over her mouth. Now he heard the front door opening and then his mother climbing the stairs: Thomas!' she called, 'Are you in, Tommy?'. There was a slight quaver in her voice the second time, as if the fact that he did not reply at once meant that in some way he had been harmed. The death of her husband had rendered her timorous; the ground was now made of the thinnest glass through which she could see the abysses beneath her, and she had communicated this fearfulness to her son who always preferred to remain in his small attic room.
During these long summer evenings he would lie on his bed and read, sometimes concealing himself beneath a light cotton sheet which lent the pages an even and gentle glow. As his mother was climbing the stairs, he was reading an historical romance for children entitled Dr Faustus and Queen Elizabeth. He had just finished the chapter where the Virgin Queen had sent for the Doctor after she had been informed of his magical powers: for she had been told by a wise man that, if she could unriddle the mystery of Stonehenge, she would bear a child. And so Fausrus had sailed to England, only just escaping death as a dark whirlwind threatened to overwhelm his frail bark.
And now they were walking together towards the great stones: 'Faith,' exclaimed the Queen with a rueful smile, 'I wish I knew their dark mysteries.'
'Forsooth do not disturb yourself, your majesty,'
Fausrus replied in an imposing manner, 'I verily do believe that I can unriddle them.'
'Well deuce take you if you cannot,' she replied haughtily. And Thomas had read on quickly, hoping to reach the passage where the Devil takes Faustus into the air and shows him the kingdoms of the world. He had another book beside him, entitled Some English Martyrs; he had found it lying discarded at the back of the church, and the first of the stories he had read was of Little St Hugh: that he was 'a child of ten years, the son of a widow. One Koppin, a heathen, enticed him to a ritual house under ground where he was tortured and scourged and finally strangled. Then his body was left there unknown for seven days and seven nights. Immediately Hugh's body was recovered from the pit a blind woman was restored to sight by touching it and invoking the martyr; other miracles followed'.
Thomas often gazed at the pictures of the martyrs in this book, with their flesh being carved out by laughing men; their bodies were always thin and yellow but their bowels were very red, and underneath each illustration there was a phrase in Gothic lettering: Prophesy Now, Violent Hands, Devouring Fire, and so on.
His mother had stopped calling his name and was now climbing the second set of stairs to his room; for some reason he did not wish her to see him lying sprawled upon the bed, and so he jumped off it and sat on a chair beside the window. 'How's my Tommy?' she said hurrying towards him and then kissing him on the forehead; he flinched, turning his face away from her, and then pretended to watch something in the street outside in order to account for this gesture.
'What are you thinking about, Tommy?'
'Nothing.'
And then, after a pause, she added, 'It's so cold in this room isn't it?'
But he hardly noticed the cold and, after she had gone downstairs in order to prepare the evening meal, he sat very still in his chair and let the shadows pass across his face. He could hear faint voices from the adjoining houses, and then the chiming of a clock; and he heard, also, the rattle of plates and cups in other kitchens as his mother called for him to come down.
He descended slowly, counting out the stairs so loudly that he might have been hurling abuse; he was shouting out different words as he entered the kitchen, but then stopped abruptly when he saw that his mother was engaged in her unequal battle against the world -a world which, on this evening, adopted the dimensions of the wooden chairs which fell down at her feet, the gas rings of the oven which refused to light, and the kettle that burned her fingers; although growing within this little space there was also, as he knew, his mother's fury at the house and neighbourhood in which she felt herself to be trapped. She had just dropped a packet of butter upon the floor and was running her fingers along the table as she stared at it, when she caught sight of her son 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.