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 by a witch doctor, something evil, to stick pins in. For a minute he stayed over by the door, he’d seen movement. Rats, three or four of them, had shot away into the walls like streaks of ink. They must live in the plaster all over this house. “Runs” their escape routes were called. How did he know about rats? And where was his mother, fussing about getting a good set for her jam? And where were the old people?
But he didn’t go looking for them, he looked through the tiny back window at the Thames; that river was more familiar to him than anything else in life. It was like breathing.
When he saw it, majestic and glittering under the hot blue sky, relief flooded over him. This was London, and he was Oliver; here was the Thames. It curved round in its old way, like an arm with its hand disappearing east, under the double railway bridge and out towards a power station. But the bridge he saw now was quite different, low-arched and narrow and cluttered with houses, and where the chimneys of the power station should have been he saw green fields, blue-edged in the haze.
The river was busy. Crude wooden dinghies, piled high with bundles, scurried under the low bridge like water beetles, heading east and out of sight. There were bigger craft too, sailing boats, their whitey-yellow canvases plump with wind. Some were moving slowly down river, others were moored to the far bank, and he could see little black figures, like stick people, going down swinging gangways with boxes and baskets, stacking things on deck. But no one was tying up and coming ashore, he noticed. They were all leaving London.
Oliver wiped the sweat off his face. It felt like an oven in that tiny room and his dirty brown tunic was sticking to him. Underneath he was naked. His mother always insisted on sensible underwear, even in summer, but he wasn’t thinking about her any more; she’d become irrelevant.
He turned away from the window, crossed the room and started to creep down the stairs. Another door stood open on the floor below and through it came a sound he’d heard before, the woman’s voice weeping again. Oliver stopped. He wanted to see who was there but he hated the crying, the sound of that desperate, unknown voice filled him with pain. It cut right down inside him, making him want to cry too. What was the matter with her? Why couldn’t she stop?
He peeped round the door into a largish room, smelly and hot, and faintly smoky. There was no fire though, the smoke seemed to be coming from some little brown pots. There was one on a table, another on a shelf. They gave off a peculiar chemical smell, a bit like fireworks.
The woman sat at the table with her face in her hands and there was a girl standing behind her. They were both dressed in the same coarse brown, and their skirts swept the ground. Their long dark hair was braided and pinned up.
“Don’t, mother, don’t,” the girl was saying, in a frightened whisper, and he saw her bend down and put her arms round the woman’s neck.
“The sickness is in White’s Alley, Elizabeth,” he heard. “The houses are all shut up. And Biddy Skelton is taken away, and her man fled to Greenwich with the children and ’tis come to the Marleys’ house too, in Bearbinder Lane, all five of them dead, Elizabeth, and Susan, she that was my good friend …”
“We must pray, mother,” the girl said quietly. “We must say our prayers and take comfort from the scriptures. That’s what the Reverend Pearson told us to do.”
“Priests,” the weeping woman said bitterly, “and doctors. Where are they now when the people need them? The whole city is dying, Elizabeth, and there is no one to comfort it. Don’t speak to me of Reverend Pearson. He’s gone into the country, he was one of the first. It was his own skin he wanted to save.”
But the girl had put a book down on the table and started to read, tracing the words with her finger like a child that barely knows its alphabet. “Unto Thee, O Lord, will I lift up my soul,” she began. “My God, I have put my trust in Thee. O let me