upstairs by the ticket booths, just to see how much damage it would do. But I wisely considered that at ground level it might draw some unwanted attention from passers-by.
But down here…
Dynamite!
‘Calm yourself, Tyler,’ I told myself. ‘It’s only dynamite.’
Only!
But I did calm myself down. And I had a good think. Where should I place this dynamite? Lowest point in the station seemed favourite. But surely I was there now. On the track, then? Sounded good. Whereabouts?
So many questions!
‘Right in the middle,’ I said to myself, and my words echoed up and then down the ancient platform.
I took myself, my rucksack and my torch and my dynamite along that platform until I had reached roughly the middle. And satisfying myself that this was roughly the middle and that I was now having a very exciting time, I laid down my rucksack and shone my super-torch onto the track. A rat scuttled by and I didn’t like that. But I did have the dynamite. So how much to use? How powerful was dynamite? How many seconds would I have to make away to a place of safety once I’d lit the fuse? How far was a place of safety?
Too many questions.
‘In answer to the first question, how much to use,’ I said in a whispery tone, ‘I have twelve sticks, so let’s say, well…’ And I counted on my fingers and made that thinking-face. ‘Six?’ I said. Yes, six sounded like a nice round figure. If there was a lost city below, then six sticks of dynamite should be able to blast a way through to it.
Six it was, then.
I fished out another five. And by the megawatt light of my most excellent torch, bound them together with a length of ACME Patented Climbing Cord. Cut to length with my multi-blade Swiss Army knife.
I got my rucksack back onto my shoulders, then took from my pocket my brand-new ACME Ever-Lite Varie- Flame lighter and thumbed it into flame. I figured that to light just the one fuse would probably be enough. And this I now did. Noting the wonderful fizz as it lit and all the pretty sparks.
And then I tossed the bundle of dynamite sticks down onto the railway track and took to my heels at the hurry-up. And if it was interesting, from a detached point of view, just how fast you can run when pursued by policemen firing guns at you, it was equally, if not more so, interesting to note that you can run even faster when faced with the possibility of being blown to pieces by dynamite.
So to speak.
I legged it up that platform and up those steps and all the way back to the ticket booths above. And I flung myself down into one of those booths and assumed that foetal position Fangio had favoured earlier in the day and I switched off my torch and covered my ears and held my breath and waited.
And I won’t draw things out. I reckon it couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds later when that dynamite went off. And it wasn’t deafening where I was, all huddled. But there was a terrific woomph! and a terrible shudder, as of an earthquake starting up. And then there was the dust. And I hadn’t really allowed for the dust. Or given the dust a moment’s thought. Even imagined that there would be any dust.
But that dust came rushing up the stairs and suddenly the darkness was a stifling darkness. A choking darkness. A fatally asphyxiating darkness.
And I coughed and croaked and spluttered in this lung-filling darkness and it was pretty horrible, I can tell you.
And I don’t know whether I passed out or not. But I do recall switching on my torch and finding myself looking like a grey snowman. And having to empty my nostrils and cough up clouds of dust. And then do a lot of manic pattings to restore myself to a measure of sartorial elegance.
‘I must remember in future about the dust,’ I said. In a hoarse and baritone voice. ‘But let’s go and look at the damage.’
And I descended once more to the platform of Mornington Crescent East (discontinued usage). And, shining my torch all around and about, declared that it was a mess.
It was now a most untidy platform, all smothered in great boulders and rocks and everything velvet with dust, and I steered my way between the boulders and rocks to view the epicentre of the concussion.
And shone my torch down into a very large hole indeed.
It was a real humdinger of a hole.
A veritable pit-shaft.
And as I flashed my flashlight down, I thought I discerned amongst gentle twirling risings of dusts a certain degree of twinkling.
And as I looked and as I saw, certain words came to me.
From my memory. Words I had once read in a book about the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. And of how Howard Carter had knocked a small hole through the wall of the tomb and shone his torch inside.
‘What do you see?’ Howard had been asked.
And he said, ‘Wonderful things.’
59
And thus did I descend into the abyss.
Upon braided cord, secured by a chrome carabiner and employing certain belay devices, shock-absorbing lanyards and polyester webbing.
A veritable sight to behold.
But no one beheld me as I lowered myself carefully down. Down, down to where I beheld the beauty of sparkling gold. For sparkling gold there was a-plenty. My big mega-candlepower torch, affixed to my person with the appropriate chest harness, cast its brilliant light across burnished walls and dazzling glittering spires. I was above the city of Begrem, which, it appeared, was enclosed within a monstrous cavern. One that now had a dirty great hole in its ceiling. Happily I had not skimped upon the braided cord. And I had gone for the best-quality ACME nail- clamp-pseudo-sprockets, so the pulley-wheels whirred upon frictionless bearings as I went abseiling down.
To land in some central plaza, surrounded, it appeared, by buildings of the Byzantine persuasion. There was much in the way of helmed and hipped roofs, Palladian-style minarets, fluted in the Isabelline fashion. Lancet windows were in evidence, but also Diocletian, in the clerestory regions. And there were cusps and cupolas and flying buttresses a-plenty.
And so on and so forth and suchlike. So, a somewhat eclectic collection of archaeological styles. To say that I was entranced would be to severely underplay the emotions that were whirling all around and about within me.
I had found it. I had actually found it. It actually existed.
I had dreamed of this moment. When I had lain there in that hospital bed, I had dreamed of finding Begrem. I had pictured myself strolling amongst its ruins, picking up this golden gewgaw and that. Tossing them into my rucksack. Returning to the surface in glory.
And now I was here. And I felt desperately lonely. All of a sudden, I did. It just swept over me. I was all alone here in this lost city, and no one knew of it. Mr Ishmael, he knew of it. But he wouldn’t know that I was here now. Nor my family, nor any one of the few friends that I had. I was totally alone. And I really hated it.
But I did love it, too. Being here. Incredible.
I disconnected myself from the braided cord, unclipped my torch and flashed it all around. And the gold of the buildings twinkled and glittered, and then I saw something more.
And I switched off my torch. Because there was light here, here in this sunken realm, a soft effulgence that seemed to swell from the very golden buildings themselves. It was so unspeakably beautiful that I sank down to my knees and, lacking any words that could be said, I had a little cry.
And then I pulled myself together. And took myself off to explore.
There was quite a lot of rubble on the central plaza, all blown down by the force of my explosion above, and I have to admit that it did somewhat sully the golden cityscape. And that made me feel rather guilty, because this place had lain here hidden from the eyes of man for centuries and now I had arrived and littered it up and made
