The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(156)
A muffled noise broke his chain of thought. Glancing down the far end of the tunnel, he saw that Garvin had collapsed from sheer exhaustion, so that the barrel he was transporting had rolled over his poor legs. All of them heard the crunching sound of his bones breaking in several places. The guards exchanged glances, and a few moments later, the boy’s shackle emitted a sound that was so familiar to all of them. The unconscious Garvin began rising grotesquely to his feet. Once he had stood up, his head swinging from side to side like a pendulum, he began marching on impossibly twisted legs toward the exit. Charles watched aghast as he left the pyramid, praying the boy would not regain consciousness before falling into the funnel.
That night, back in his cell, his diary open on the table, Charles could not help remembering the lithe, cheerful boy Garvin had been during his first months of imprisonment. He recalled how he had volunteered to form part of the resistance group Captain Shackleton was trying to assemble, for he was proud of having been the only survivor of a tripod attack on his building and was eager to avenge the death of his parents. He was convinced that, in time, he could even become the brave captain’s right-hand man. But above all Charles recalled, with a rueful smile, the boy’s laughter, that melodious experience they had been deprived of for so long in there, the uplifting sound of children’s laughter. Yet Garvin’s was not the only laughter he recalled.
DIARY OF CHARLES WINSLOW
16 February, 1900
We had been walking for a couple of hours in the sewers when, echoing down the dank tunnel, we heard the last sound we would have expected to hear in such a place: children’s laughter. We walked on, glancing uneasily at one another as the ringing sounds filled the air. Their laughter echoed in the distance, awakening in us a familiar and forgotten sense of well-being. These children, with their happy, fragile laughter, had dared to defy the Martians, had refused to accept the end of the world. Increasingly excited, we quickened our pace, smiling at one another, guided by the laughter—so incongruous in our present situation—which, with the burble of the water, seemed to compose a delicate and magical symphony.
We soon saw them: there were at least a dozen aged between four and eight, busy playing on the narrow walkway, illuminated by the faint lamplight. Most of them wore modest, grubby garments, but three or four of them were neatly dressed, as though they had just left their nanny sitting on a park bench. And yet these differences didn’t seem to bother them: they played together in the natural way children do, without making the distinctions we adults make, sometimes unconsciously. Bunched into small groups, they resembled characters in a diorama: a few of the younger children were holding hands and turning in a circle as they sang nursery rhymes; next to them, two older girls had chalked lines on the grimy floor and were playing hopscotch; farther away, a pair of girls turned a skipping rope while a third jumped, her long braids flapping in the air; three or four boys suddenly hurtled from the dark end of the tunnel chasing a hoop with a stick, charging past another group playing spinning tops.
They were so absorbed in their games that they didn’t notice us until we were about a dozen yards away. Then they all stopped playing and gazed at us suspiciously, even with a hint of annoyance, as if we were nothing more than eight grown-ups who might threaten their enjoyment and who had appeared as if by magic in a place they had perhaps begun to think was exclusively their own, where the only rule was to take pleasure in the moment. Yet it was enough to look at them to see that once the novelty of their newfound freedom had worn off, they would be suddenly vulnerable, afraid to find themselves alone there, without any adult to watch over them. For a few moments the two groups stared at each other, visibly bewildered, each finding the other’s presence there absurd. Then, like a pair of experienced nannies, Emma and Jane approached the children cautiously, as though afraid they might take off, stooping so they were at the same level. The children watched them mistrustfully.
“Hello, children,” Wells’s wife said, smiling at them amiably. “My name’s Jane and this is my friend, Emma.”
“Hello!” Emma said in a singsong voice. “Don’t be afraid, we won’t hurt you. We just want to say hello, that’s all, isn’t it, Jane?” she said to Wells’s wife, who nodded enthusiastically, still smiling at the little ones.
The children stood motionless on the brick path staring at them unblinkingly. Then one of them moved suddenly, scratching his head vigorously so that the hoop propped against his leg rolled away slowly, spinning in a silvery spiral until it collapsed with a clatter at Jane and Emma’s feet. Emma took the opportunity to pick it up gently and pretend to admire it.
“Goodness, what a pretty hoop,” she said. “I had a wooden one when I was small, but this one’s made of . . . iron, isn’t it?”
“It’s from a barrel, miss. They roll much better than the wooden ones, and they’re sturdier,” replied a skinny child, a mop of curls falling over his eyes, who looked like the eldest among them.
“Is that so?” Emma said. “Well, I didn’t know that. And where did you get it from . . . er, what’s your name, young man?”
“Curly,” the boy murmured, somewhat reluctantly.
“Curtis?” Emma pretended not to have heard, while two of the smaller girls stifled a giggle.
“Curly, they call me Curly . . . on account of my hair, you see,” the boy replied, shaking his ringlets and proffering his hand in a delightfully grown-up manner.