The next thing was to get two jackets on my back. The sleeve-lining of the second one tore, but they both fitted more easily than I expected. I put a pair of socks in each jacket pocket, and my razor and toothbrush in the lapel pocket. Finally I got into my overcoat, put a scarf casually around my neck, and pulled on woollen gloves. Over all, on top of my head, was a cap. The great problem was: how to move? I walked across the room like a wooden dummy, and fell down. I was so padded that it caused no real noise, but I was far from the bedrail and had no way of getting up. The doorknob was close, so I got a grip on that. I heaved slowly, going up the door like a great fly, and almost made it, when the knob came off and I fell back with it in my hands. This is a pretty kettle of fish, I thought, instantly checking my blind rage. The next nearest thing that caught my eye was the sink, which had strong-looking steel supports underneath it. I took off my gloves for a better grip. If this is life, I thought, then roll on death. The sweat of it seemed to be already pouring off me. I’d always thought of myself as being strong, but it was an impossible job to get back on my feet, which it was essential to do if I was to walk free and unfettered from that hotel. But I weighed enough to cause the sink to slowly ease itself from the wall and hang by a thread on its curving bars just above my head.
I slid back in despair, crawled around the floor like a dog that had lost its bone. By the bed I sat up, then swung myself on to all fours, then on to my knees, then, by using the good old faithful bed once more, I gradually escaped my dreadful impasse. I stood, free and upright. My gloves were on the floor, but with grandiloquent contempt I decided to forget them. In any case it might look more natural if I sauntered nonchalantly through with my hands in my pockets. But could I saunter? I could only walk like a monster newly created by its master, stiff and wooden, looking for some innocent to crush or strangle. This was no good, for I had to get myself out of that place looking more or less as I did every other morning.
I spent half an hour walking up and down the room, keeping the window open to get cold air in. The effort was awful. I felt as, if I had no limbs at all, as if they’d been shot away in war, and I was a hero who had been given artificial limbs of the crudest sort, but who with fiery indomitable courage was sweating out his life in order to walk and work normally with these limbs, only to get back into his fighter plane and shoot down more German bombers. It was a real man’s life right enough while I was doing this, and after the first ten minutes I was drawing in strength and self-control I never thought I had. What was London and all the world doing while I was locked in this totally absorbing struggle? I didn’t know, because only I was concerned in it. After twenty minutes I seemed to be getting close to my ordinary walk, but I still wasn’t satisfied. I wanted it to be more than good in case I was tempted into a too optimistic assessment of my skill. I could take no chances, and knew it was my insistence on this that separated me from the run of people who might by now have given up. Not only were part of my earthly belongings at stake, but my honour and self-respect had got involved as well, to such an extent that I’d never recognized them in this way before.
As a last gesture of bravado, when I was all set for a perfect going away, I picked up yesterday’s newspaper from the table, folded it under my arm, and strutted out. I whistled the crazy jig-like empty-brained tune that everyone else was whistling, locked my door, and stepped down the corridor. I hadn’t reckoned on the stairs, and felt my laminated interiors creaking and groaning like the timbers of an old ship as I took the steps as quickly as I could without capsizing. The manager at the counter greeted me in his usual friendly manner. ‘Off again, Mr Cresswell?’
‘A bit late today,’ I smiled, ‘but I had a report to write.’
‘It’s a hard life,’ he quipped.
‘Some have it harder,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back for dinner.’
‘Oh, I have a bill for you,’ he called as I turned to go out. ‘All made up.’
‘I’m off to the bank,’ I said. ‘Settle it when I get back.’
He smiled. ‘No hurry. Just ask for it.’ I laughed at his good nature, and he wished me good morning again. Then I dropped my newspaper.
I gripped my panic by the throat and forced it back. Because I was heavily enough dressed and must have weighed half a ton, I pushed it under the coat rack with my foot. ‘It’s yesterday’s, anyway.’
He hadn’t seen it: ‘What did you say?’ — looking up.
‘It’s cold this morning.’
‘Bitter,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a bad winter, they say.’
At the first stationer’s shop I bought sheets of brown paper and a ball of post-office string, meaning to reach a toilet where I could change, and make my surplus padding into a transportable parcel. It was later than ten when I stopped outside the Tube station, but Kundt was no longer there. He waited for no man, not Kundt, for time was precious to him. He was on his own ship and caught by a storm that made him sweat and that never let up. Every meaningful tick of time counted as he hatched and planned the delicate machinery of his gadabout life, which was probably wilder than any in London, so I knew I shouldn’t have him bothering me when I zombied in my crude way up to the station map.
I travelled as far as Leicester Square, and couldn’t sit down because of the crush of people. Neither could I get my arm up for a bit of helpful straphanging, so I was bumped around when the train stopped and started, and a man in a bowler hat swore I was knocking into him on purpose. ‘If you want a punch-up,’ I said, ‘follow me when I go out. If you don’t, shut your arse-tight mouth.’ He looked at me, but finally didn’t brace himself to taking me on, which is just as well, for I was so boarded up he could have pushed me over with one finger.
I came out of the gents carrying a big parcel and wearing my normal quota of winter clothes, feeling as if I were dressed in tissue paper. I shook and shivered and walked quickly, though I had nowhere to go. The double clothes had protected me, and now I was back on the Earth from Space, a babe unwrapped in the biting frost. I went into a phone box and dialled. A child’s voice answered: ‘Who is it?’
‘Put Bridgitte on,’ I said.
‘She isn’t here.’
‘Listen, Smog, this is you-know-who. Get her for me.’ I heard him laugh, and the phone clattered down. When Bridgitte came I asked what the score was for that night. ‘They’re staying in,’ she said, ‘so I can meet you somewhere.’
‘Make it the Cramborne, at six exactly,’ I said. ‘I’m having lunch with Mother. We’ve got to decide what to do about Alfie. He burned down the canning factory and sank his boat. It’s the straitjacket for him this time as far as she’s concerned, but I want to talk her out of it. I don’t believe in that sort of thing. By the way, I’ve changed my hotel. Mother came last night and made me leave. Said it was too sordid. I liked it, but what can you do?’
‘You have a marvellous life,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go now because Smog is kicking me. He’s pushing a hairgrip into a light socket.’ There was a click and our talk was over.
I breathed and walked better at having come back into the world as a thinner man. As I struggled in that small toilet to get my surplus off, it felt like being born, bringing the real meaning of freedom home to me. I regained a narrow contact with people who were also thin, and was able again to walk on the streets with reasonable speed and flexibility. I wandered into Soho, and passed by the Clover Leaf. I’d called there in the last month hoping to see a friendly familiar face in the form of Bill Straw, but there’d been no sign of him, and Straw by word of mouth seemed not to exist. Of course I hadn’t for a minute believed that to be his real name, because no man with such a past would be daft enough to give it. I supposed him to live, like myself, under the sky of his own flimsy lies, but only to make himself easy to know when he talked to other people. He used lies to explain himself, not to hide behind, and I knew that to begin such a process as this, one had to falsify one’s name.