Under The Net - Iris Murdoch [74]
archway. 'Leave it to me!' said Hugo. He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a small object. 'Belfounder's Domestic Detonator,' he said. 'Invaluable for shifting tree roots and clearing rabbit warrens.' The object ended in a point, which Hugo plunged into the base of the wall. Then he brought out a box of matches. In a moment there was a fierce sizzling sound. 'Stand back!' cried Hugo. A sharp explosion followed, and like magic a hole about five feet in diameter had appeared in the wall, through which in the early darkness we could see a ragged field scattered with corrugated-iron sheds and bounded by a low fence and a Bovril advertisement. Beyond it was the railway. As I took this in Lefty had already passed us and like a circus dog going through a hoop sped gracefully through the hole, and we could see him a moment later leaping the fence and diminishing across the railway lines under the twinkling red and green lights. Quick! ' said Hugo to me. But something else was happening. The shock of the explosion must have dislocated something in the fabric of the city. For now suddenly the whole structure was beginning to sway and totter in the most alarming fashion. I looked up and saw as in a dream the brick and marble skyline vacillating drunkenly while there was a slow crescendo of cracking and splintering and rending. 'Damn, that's torn it!' said Hugo. 'It's all right,' he added. 'It's only made of plastic and Essex board.' We seemed to be surrounded by shouting policemen. In the distance I could see columns heeling slowly sideways, and triumphal arches crumbling and sagging and finally collapsing like opera hats. There was a menacing sound like an earthquake tuning up. For a moment I watched petrified; then I turned towards the hole in the wall. But it was already too late. Directly above us the wall began to lean inwards. To see what looks like fifty feet of solid brickwork descending on you is an unnerving sight, even if you have been told that it is only made of plastic and Essex board. With a sickening roar it began to fall. I threw Mars to the ground and hurled myself down, one arm clutching the dog and the other protecting the back of my neck. Next moment, with an apocalyptic clatter, the whole thing was on top of us. The world blacked out and something struck me violently on the shoulder. I had made myself so flat I almost bored into the earth. Somewhere the shouting and the splintering continued. I tried to get up but something was pinning me down. I became panic-stricken and struggled madly, and then I found myself sitting up with the remains of the wall, in pieces of various sizes, scattered round me. I looked about wildly for Mars, and soon saw him crawling out from under a pile of debris. He shook himself and came towards me with nonchalance. No doubt his film career had familiarized him with incidents of this kind. We surveyed the scene. All was changed. The whole of Rome was now horizontal and out of its ruins an immense cloud of dust was rising, thick as a fog in the glare of the lamps. In the arena, like a formal picture of the battle of Waterloo, stood a mass of black figures, some mounted on horses, others standing on top of cars, and others on foot marshalling into neat groups. A voice was saying something blurred through a loud-speaker. The foreground looked more like the moment after the battle. The ground was strewn with legless torsos and halves of men and others cut off at the shoulders, all of whom, however, were lustily engaged in restoring themselves to wholeness by dragging the hidden parts of their anatomy out from under the flat wedges of scenery, which lay now like a big pack of cards, some pieces still showing bricks and marble, while others revealed upon their prostrate backs the names of commercial firms and the instructions of the scene shifter. As I shook myself free I saw Hugo rising like a surfacing whale and thrusting his monumental shoulders through the wreckage as if it had been cardboard. He rose to his feet, showering the fragments to right and left. For an instant he was outlined