and Peacocks deserted the wildflowers and made for the buddleia in the gardens of the houses of the Hill and Shelley Grove, and dusk brought out the Red Underwing and the Lime Hawk moths. The children thought the fields would always be there; they knew nothing of change. They played in the grass and the hedges, running home to Tycehurst Hill and Brook Road when the sirens set up their howling. Bombs dropped, but not here, not on Loughton, only one in the whole war. One day, when no siren had gone off for a week, a group of them, several of the Batchelors and Alan and Lewis, came upon a cave, a hole in the ground that looked like the entrance to a tunnel.
June 1944. School hadn’t broken up for the summer holidays and wouldn’t for another month. It stopped at three thirty in theafternoon and everyone had come home. The Batchelors, Robert and George and Stanley and Moira—Norman was recovering from chicken pox—all went out into the fields, and Stanley took Nipper on the lead. Alan and Lewis and Bill were already out there, sitting up in the hollow oak, in the broad, circular space where someone a hundred years ago must have chopped off the top of the tree and a dozen branches had grown up around it. In summer when it rained, you could sit in there and not get wet, protected by a canopy of leaves. It had been raining that day but was no longer, so Alan and Lewis came down and joined the others in their wandering up the slope on the other side towards the Hill. Would they ever have found the qanats if Moira hadn’t spotted a rabbit dive into the hole? Not one of the boys would even have noticed it, not even Stanley, the animal lover, not even Nipper, who had seen the Joneses’ dog on the pavement outside the Joneses’ house and begun plunging about on his lead, barking and growling. Stanley had to stay outside while the others went into the hole. Someone had to hold on to the dog. The Joneses’ dog was making such a racket that Daphne came out to grab it and drag it back into the house.
Inside the hole were steps, muddy and rain-soaked, cut out of the clay. Who had cut those steps? Who had made this place? They didn’t know. A passage led along under the field, under the grass and the wildflowers and through the tree roots. It was dark, but not so dark you couldn’t see each other or the tarpaulin roof, but you could tell you’d need candles in the night-time. The walls were just earth, but earth composed of ginger-coloured clay, the kind of clay their fathers complained about when they had to dig the garden. The seven of them, for Daphne Jones had joined them, saying Stanley had told her where they were, emerged into a wide, round area like a room that other passages led into. It was no secret garden, but it had certain secret-garden qualities. It was quiet. It would have been silent apart from the noise they made. It was still and welcoming. It was dark until you lit it.
“We could come in here,” George said. “We could bring food and stuff. It’d be good if it was raining.”
“It’d be good anyway,” said Alan.
“I’m going to explore,” said Moira, and they all went with her, discovering what passages there were and how deserted it was, as if no one had ever been there but to dig it out, dig steps down to it where they had come in, cover it up with tarpaulins, then had just gone away and abandoned it to the rabbits and the squirrels.
“Qanats,” said Daphne Jones, and qanats they became.
A S YOU GET OLDER , you forget names: those you studied with, worked with, lived next door to, the people who came to your wedding, your doctor, your accountant, and those who have cleaned your house. Of these people’s names, you forget perhaps half, perhaps three-quarters. Then whose names do you never forget, because they are incised on the rock of your memory? Your lovers (unless you have been promiscuous and there are too many) and the children you went to your first school with. You remember their
June 1944. School hadn’t broken up for the summer holidays and wouldn’t for another month. It stopped at three thirty in theafternoon and everyone had come home. The Batchelors, Robert and George and Stanley and Moira—Norman was recovering from chicken pox—all went out into the fields, and Stanley took Nipper on the lead. Alan and Lewis and Bill were already out there, sitting up in the hollow oak, in the broad, circular space where someone a hundred years ago must have chopped off the top of the tree and a dozen branches had grown up around it. In summer when it rained, you could sit in there and not get wet, protected by a canopy of leaves. It had been raining that day but was no longer, so Alan and Lewis came down and joined the others in their wandering up the slope on the other side towards the Hill. Would they ever have found the qanats if Moira hadn’t spotted a rabbit dive into the hole? Not one of the boys would even have noticed it, not even Stanley, the animal lover, not even Nipper, who had seen the Joneses’ dog on the pavement outside the Joneses’ house and begun plunging about on his lead, barking and growling. Stanley had to stay outside while the others went into the hole. Someone had to hold on to the dog. The Joneses’ dog was making such a racket that Daphne came out to grab it and drag it back into the house.
Inside the hole were steps, muddy and rain-soaked, cut out of the clay. Who had cut those steps? Who had made this place? They didn’t know. A passage led along under the field, under the grass and the wildflowers and through the tree roots. It was dark, but not so dark you couldn’t see each other or the tarpaulin roof, but you could tell you’d need candles in the night-time. The walls were just earth, but earth composed of ginger-coloured clay, the kind of clay their fathers complained about when they had to dig the garden. The seven of them, for Daphne Jones had joined them, saying Stanley had told her where they were, emerged into a wide, round area like a room that other passages led into. It was no secret garden, but it had certain secret-garden qualities. It was quiet. It would have been silent apart from the noise they made. It was still and welcoming. It was dark until you lit it.
“We could come in here,” George said. “We could bring food and stuff. It’d be good if it was raining.”
“It’d be good anyway,” said Alan.
“I’m going to explore,” said Moira, and they all went with her, discovering what passages there were and how deserted it was, as if no one had ever been there but to dig it out, dig steps down to it where they had come in, cover it up with tarpaulins, then had just gone away and abandoned it to the rabbits and the squirrels.
“Qanats,” said Daphne Jones, and qanats they became.
A S YOU GET OLDER , you forget names: those you studied with, worked with, lived next door to, the people who came to your wedding, your doctor, your accountant, and those who have cleaned your house. Of these people’s names, you forget perhaps half, perhaps three-quarters. Then whose names do you never forget, because they are incised on the rock of your memory? Your lovers (unless you have been promiscuous and there are too many) and the children you went to your first school with. You remember their