then nothing, just calm, like they had never appeared. A strange hallucination. I turned to her. She was still looking over at the whitewashed office block.
- four -
The canal was looking quite filthy; more so than usual. It was in need of a desperate dredging, but the dredgers were nowhere in sight. I thought about the grease and oil seeping into the murky water from the discarded scooter beneath its surface. I wondered what kind of effect such a thing would eventually have on the health of the swans ifit was left there, underneath the murky water, ignored by the dredgers.
My gaze wandered to the whitewashed office block. The man who usually wore the slim-fitting shirts and ties was outside the office, he was leaning by a pillar on the company esplanade. He was smoking a cigarette and staring into the murky water. I watched him. I watched him because I knew now that she was watching him, too. Soon he finished his cigarette and flicked it into the canal. As he was about to turn and saunter back into the office he was joined by the woman whose desk he would always walk over to, countless times throughout the day, back and forth, back and forth. She stood close to him. He offered her a cigarette, she took it from him, he lit himself another, sharing his light with her. It didn’t look like they were talking. It was hard to see, but it was obvious that they both had the same thing on their minds. She began to cough beside me, the sort of little coughs people do when they are agitated.
A military Chinook passed by over the rooftop of the expensive flats above the offices. It was quite high, nose tilted downwards, its twin rotor blades slicing through the air. I watched it. It was on a diagonal trajectory across the city—on its way, most probably, to the barracks on City Road. The HAC Grounds. I instantly thought of the makeshift morgue that was erected there the same day of the London bombings. I thought about the body parts: all that flesh and human muscle decaying under the white canvas of the marquees. The stench must have been unbearable in there. The HAC Grounds sits next to Bunhill Fields, a burial ground from the Saxon times and, since 1685, a cemetery that was once used for victims of the plague, and later on for nonconformists and some infamous writers and poets.
I used to walk to Bunhill Fields with my father from time to time. He liked to sit and feed the pigeons in there, ignoring the signs pinned to the railings urging people not to. Every time, when the feed was all finished, and I had asked him if there were really bodies in the numerous sarcophagi scattered about, he’d tell me about how the cemetery got its name. He would speak quietly, telling me how it was originally called Bone Hill and that Bunhill is a modern bastardisation of that name. He would then fall to a mere whisper as he told me about the countless cartloads—over one thousand in total—of dried bones that were taken from St Paul’s charnel-house around 1549 and dumped on the boggy fen and moor that once stood on that very spot under our feet. A wondrous hill of dried bones eventually rising from the marshes, big enough to build three windmills on it—which were subsequently demolished when urgent land was needed for the myriad plague victims that had been piling up on every street corner. Each time he would end his macabre tale with the same words, a wry smile forming in the corner of his mouth: “We’re literally walking over the London dead.”
It would send a shiver through me, but eventually, over time, I got used to it and it soon became a running joke between us. It’s funny to me now. I still think of those words most days when I’m walking through the city, to the shops, or waiting at bus stops. When I’m standing still with nothing to do or laying flat out on the grass looking up at the trees and sky, I still think of the London dead beneath my feet.
I shuffled my feet in the dirt. I began to think about those countless
- four -
The canal was looking quite filthy; more so than usual. It was in need of a desperate dredging, but the dredgers were nowhere in sight. I thought about the grease and oil seeping into the murky water from the discarded scooter beneath its surface. I wondered what kind of effect such a thing would eventually have on the health of the swans ifit was left there, underneath the murky water, ignored by the dredgers.
My gaze wandered to the whitewashed office block. The man who usually wore the slim-fitting shirts and ties was outside the office, he was leaning by a pillar on the company esplanade. He was smoking a cigarette and staring into the murky water. I watched him. I watched him because I knew now that she was watching him, too. Soon he finished his cigarette and flicked it into the canal. As he was about to turn and saunter back into the office he was joined by the woman whose desk he would always walk over to, countless times throughout the day, back and forth, back and forth. She stood close to him. He offered her a cigarette, she took it from him, he lit himself another, sharing his light with her. It didn’t look like they were talking. It was hard to see, but it was obvious that they both had the same thing on their minds. She began to cough beside me, the sort of little coughs people do when they are agitated.
A military Chinook passed by over the rooftop of the expensive flats above the offices. It was quite high, nose tilted downwards, its twin rotor blades slicing through the air. I watched it. It was on a diagonal trajectory across the city—on its way, most probably, to the barracks on City Road. The HAC Grounds. I instantly thought of the makeshift morgue that was erected there the same day of the London bombings. I thought about the body parts: all that flesh and human muscle decaying under the white canvas of the marquees. The stench must have been unbearable in there. The HAC Grounds sits next to Bunhill Fields, a burial ground from the Saxon times and, since 1685, a cemetery that was once used for victims of the plague, and later on for nonconformists and some infamous writers and poets.
I used to walk to Bunhill Fields with my father from time to time. He liked to sit and feed the pigeons in there, ignoring the signs pinned to the railings urging people not to. Every time, when the feed was all finished, and I had asked him if there were really bodies in the numerous sarcophagi scattered about, he’d tell me about how the cemetery got its name. He would speak quietly, telling me how it was originally called Bone Hill and that Bunhill is a modern bastardisation of that name. He would then fall to a mere whisper as he told me about the countless cartloads—over one thousand in total—of dried bones that were taken from St Paul’s charnel-house around 1549 and dumped on the boggy fen and moor that once stood on that very spot under our feet. A wondrous hill of dried bones eventually rising from the marshes, big enough to build three windmills on it—which were subsequently demolished when urgent land was needed for the myriad plague victims that had been piling up on every street corner. Each time he would end his macabre tale with the same words, a wry smile forming in the corner of his mouth: “We’re literally walking over the London dead.”
It would send a shiver through me, but eventually, over time, I got used to it and it soon became a running joke between us. It’s funny to me now. I still think of those words most days when I’m walking through the city, to the shops, or waiting at bus stops. When I’m standing still with nothing to do or laying flat out on the grass looking up at the trees and sky, I still think of the London dead beneath my feet.
I shuffled my feet in the dirt. I began to think about those countless
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