Players at the Game of People Read Free

uttering creaks and showers of dust. Taking a single step seemed

like a terrifying commitment, not solely because glass and brickwork

crunched at every move, reminding him of the image of the trampling

giant (but the aircraft were swerving away, lightened and quickened

by the disposal of their bomb loads), but because those tall façades

of masonry had been rendered precarious, the element of choice removed

from them in favor of something random, something hazardous, something

impervious to reason and to prayer . . .

Godwin had never been so exhilarated in his life.

One wall in particular was clearly about to collapse: the frontage of the

building where (if she still lived) little Greer must be hiding. Apart

from having shed all its glazing, it was rayed by huge irregularly

slanting cracks, springing from door- and window-corners. It was dark; the

darkness stank; the air was dry and dried out the mouth, the gullet, the

guts of Godwin Harpinshield so that like a desiccated sketch for a reed

pipe he sang unbearable chants of delicious agony to the basso continuo

of the falling bombs and the rising shells and the tormented city.

Transfixed by the experience, he was a collected butterfly on the stark,

bare mounting board of time.

A flare, or a flash from reflected searchlights, lent a gleam of whiteness

to the world. Abruptly he saw a child clearly in the maw of the sandbagged

entry: skeletally thin limbs poking out from a cotton nightdress much too

small for her, peaked on her rib-ridged chest by fistlike breasts achieving

the status of a nipple/knuckle, an O-wide mouth and O-wide eyes, obviously

screaming . . . but the sound was drowned out by other and more awful noise.

Now the building adjacent was alight from basement to attic and the flames

created a blowtorch roar, the hiss of a dragon closing on his virgin prey.

So much oxygen was being sucked from the air, it was growing hard to breathe.

Calm, Godwin assessed his chances, surveying the piles of rubble. The odds

were bad but not prohibitive. Decision reached, he darted forward with the

erratic, jinking run of a rugby three-quarter, treating the obstacles as

though they were only opposing players. And the wall to the left, and then

the wall to the right, began to buckle, dislodging bricks clunk, clunk .

"Stop!" howled the warden following Godwin. And, invoking the most powerful

charm he knew: "Stop, sir !"

Godwin paid no heed. His leg was hurting worse at every step, but it would

last long enough. Greer rushed toward him. He seized her in both arms,

spun around and fled back the way he had come, carrying her as lightly

as a mere football. Only twenty yards to the corner . . . ten . . .

The shock of yet another bomb, falling a street or so away, was too much

for the wall of the burning tenement. It opened brick-dribbling jaws at

first-floor level, sliding, grinding, settling in a torrent of sparks,

a wave of flames.

"Hurry!" the warden screamed, and Godwin lunged forward as though

hurling his body across a goal line, the child thrust out before him

at full stretch. He was not quite fast enough to save himself. A chunk

of masonry hit him on the right arm, and he heard as much as felt the

bones snap. But before pain wiped away consciousness he was able to

register that he had saved the little girl, who could, he now realized,

be no older than ten. She was staring at him by the flamelight with huge,

dark, somehow hungry eyes, as though to eat the very image of her rescuer.

She was there also, with her mother and sisters and baby brother, in the

crowd that lined the pavement to watch heroes arriving for the following

week's royal investiture. The high iron railings before the palace yard

had been taken away to build fighters, but loyal citizens would not have

dreamed of venturing uninvited into the grounds.

It was curious, Godwin thought as he marched smartly forward at the

calling of his name and gave an awkward salute