Free The Crack by Emma Tennant

corrupted, ran screaming over the grass to put an end to the pre-latency amusements.
    Waters took the opportunity to look warily around.
    What he saw was Hyde Park. Disbelievingly, he raised his binoculars. It was lucky, he thought with grim satisfaction, that he had had the presence of mind to grab them as he was swept from his Hampstead drawing-room.
    In the distance, by the armless Peter Pan statue, a pile of grey-flannelled nannies lay on the ground. Coroneted perambulators heaped behind them, the brightly polished wreckage gleaming in the sun. A handful of babies, their hair still neatly plastered to their heads and their scrubbed faces aglow with pleasure, crawled aimlessly round the bodies of their warders.
    There was no doubt about it. The ruined Albert Hall, splendid as the Coliseum, was clearly visible. Millionaire’s Row, untouched by the disaster, stood straight and unashamed. By adjusting the focus of the powerful binoculars, Waters could see the deserted Derry and Toms roof garden. He turned to Thirsk with a thin smile.
    â€˜So this is the other side,’ he remarked. ‘There doesn’t seem to be much originality of design.’
    Before Thirsk, who was in the process of realizing that Waters was less inane than he looked, had time to answer, agreat scream went up from his patients under the tree. Thirsk, distracted by the sound, decided that for the first time in his life he had better admit his error. It was clear that even he would be unable to contain Waters’s righteous rage.
    Harcourt, sensing that his master was about to come clean, trembled in his shoes.
    The screaming grew louder. Waters, the stronger of the two now, paid no attention to it.
    He pulled his son’s air pistol from his pocket and aimed at Thirsk. With a cumbersome gesture, Thirsk raised his great arms above his head.
    Then Thirsk was saved. Followed by the mob of screaming children, an extraordinary figure was running over the muddy banks of the Serpentine towards them.
    It was impossible to tell where the figure began and the mud ended. It seemed, in fact, to be the hideous mockery of a human being made entirely of mud; a living creation of the slime itself. The gun fell from Waters’s hand and he crossed himself. As it came nearer, the horribly realistic limbs gesturing in a mad parody of human communication, even Thirsk paled and stepped back, stumbling in the folds of his robe.
    But Thirsk was never slow to think. Regaining his composure, he faced Waters and spoke clearly and with contempt.
    â€˜Is it not clear to you,’ he enunciated as Harcourt gazed up at him with fear and admiration, ‘that this is the mirror image of the world we live in? That the people you see here, naked and savage as they are, are the reflections of ourselves? Dehumanized man laid bare: the other side of the self and other?’
    Waters, temporarily silenced by Thirsk’s conviction and brilliance, felt his tired mind atrophy as the events of the last twenty-four hours overcame him. Wasn’t it reasonable enough that the other side would be but the mirror of the side he knew? Was it possible in life to escape yourself by moving away from your environment? He knew well that man carries his ruin with him.
    The moving figure of mud ran to within a few feet of where they stood and collapsed in the element whence it had come. Awoman! Evil womanhood, dragging man down into the abyss since the beginning of time. Women symbolized by the primeval slime; all round her the fallen and ruined Garden of Eden. Woman crawling towards them like a serpent on its belly –
    With expressions of fastidious disgust, both Waters and Thirsk inched away from the spectacle. Only the children, their gay laughter animating the devilish landscape, pelted the creature with balls of mud and screamed alternately.
    â€˜Please,’ cried Baba. ‘Help me. I’m looking for Park Lane – I’m on my way to the Playboy Club to get