The longer I sat the better I felt, and I suddenly urged myself to close the case and stand up. In my pocket were cigarettes and matches, and when I found that my feet weren’t yet ready for me, I smoked casually as if resting before my long journey down to the street. It was eight o’clock by my watch, and apart from feeling sick I wanted some breakfast, so with a good heave I was standing at last, ready to descend.
The air smelled good, smoky and full of petrol, the very stuff of life, as Gilbert Blaskin might have said. People were already going to work, and I wished them luck and a long run as I walked my case towards King’s Road. I found an eating place and stuffed myself back to health and strength on bacon and pancakes and coffee, soon feeling cocky again after my fright from Moggerhanger’s one-man execution squad. Opening my street map I wondered where I was going to live, what four walls, if any, I’d inhabit before the day was out. With two hundred and fifty pounds in the bank I was the king of kings — though not for ever. I thought of walking into a hotel, but would only do that at the last moment, if I couldn’t get anything but a slice of pavement before darkfall. With so few possessions my case wasn’t heavy as I walked towards Victoria, but I didn’t like being seen dragging it around. A man with a case looks like a traveller, or a thief, or someone too innocent to be out on the street. You can’t swagger and feel good with a suitcase. Even if it weighs nothing you’re marked off from the rest of the people into which you should be able to melt for cover if you feel like it.
So I dropped it in the left-luggage at the station and strode on through streets that hadn’t yet lost their freshness and interest. The market in Soho was out, an abundance of barrows lining the streets, now packed with mid-morning shoppers. I bought a Spanish newspaper, which I couldn’t read, and sat in an Italian place for a cup of black coffee, sipping it down between puffs at a cigar. Whenever I did a bunk or otherwise left anywhere, I always wore my best suit. Why, I don’t know, but it made me feel good when I had nowhere to go. And because it bolstered my spirit at such a time, it was also plain to me that I wasn’t feeling easy in such a state of homelessness, and that I had to get out of it quick. The sensible thing, in view of Moggerhanger’s hostility (I had no way of knowing whether this morning’s threat was only the beginning of it) would be to get out of town for a few weeks, so as to avoid being seen in the area where he owned half the clubs.
Yet I couldn’t tear myself away, and I’m glad I didn’t, because when I went into an Italian place for lunch (I was hungrier than usual when on the loose) I sat down and saw the back of a head farther up the room belonging to somebody who’d taken a small table all to himself, and it was of a shape that caught a snipe of recognition in me. I waited for him to turn, but he casually faced the other way as if not caring to show his face too openly. Sometimes he seemed on the point of doing so, out of boredom at looking at the wall, which was the only thing in front of him. For a second I saw a little to the side of his face, and his way of moving convinced me that I had seen that turnip-head before. All through the minestrone I plugged my mind in every place to bring back some memory with the label of a name stuck to it I searched all over the place, even going through every film I’d seen in the last ten years in the hope that some far-off face in one might lead me to the actual face I was trying to remember.
Thinking he’d never turn, I picked up my knife and dropped it, but too many other people were talking and eating around me, and he didn’t hear a thing. There was a rack by his side, on which hung a good-quality light overcoat, a hat, and a cashmere scarf. I looked down to eat when my veal came, but noted that he was ahead in his meal, and that the waiter was taking his coffee. Cigar smoke drifted above his head, which was now bent at the table as if he were reading a newspaper. He called for his bill, and the waiter treated him like a regular client who left good tips. I tried to catch some words, but they were lost. He stood for the waiter to help him on with his coat, and as soon as he half turned my heart jumped at the sight of him.
When I called his name, not too loud but only so that he would hear me, he looked in my direction as if I’d sworn at him. It was Bill Straw, the knowledgeable glutton who’d come down to London with me from the North. He wore a light grey suit, a silk shirt, and a small-knotted dark tie, and still had the cigar in his teeth. I remembered his face as having been prison-pale and unshaven, but now it was lean and tanned, and full of vigour so that he looked ten years younger. But there was no mistaking old Bill Straw, my erstwhile friend from back on the road.
He came closer, looked at me with his grey eyes, and smiled: ‘Well, my old flower, I thought you’d been swallowed up. It seems that long ago to me.’
‘Centuries,’ I said, shaking the offered hand. ‘Sit down and have some more coffee.’
‘I will,’ he answered, ‘If you’ll have a brandy — on me.’
‘You don’t look the same any more.’
‘I’ll never be like that again,’ he told me. Even his way of speaking had changed. A far-off look came into his eyes: ‘No, you’ll never see me as I was when you picked me up on the Great North Road.’
‘Not old Bill Straw,’ I said, too jocularly by half, because he flinched from it.
‘You want a bit of smoothing down,’ he said. ‘You’re too rough. And by the way I’m not Bill Straw, so do me a favour and forget that. I’m known as William Hay — to all my acquaintances and to my employers. It’s also written in my passport. I’m a company director by profession. This is just to get the record straight, though don’t think I’m not still a human being, because I am. I’ve succeeded in doing away with the life I had before coming to London this time. But I don’t forget you, because you helped me. I say,’ he said suddenly, with a bit of old mateyness, ‘you haven’t seen that June on your wanderings, have you?’
Over a couple of brandies I told him honestly all that had happened since we parted at Hendon on our way in. He was impressed at hearing that I’d actually succeeded in getting on the wrong side of Moggerhanger. ‘I know blokes who have nightmares about that,’ he said. ‘He’s dangerous, so don’t tangle further with him. You’d better take a few hints from me.’
‘You’ve done so well by the look of it,’ I said, ‘that it might not be a bad idea.’
He looked deadpan at this: ‘You are a bit green. Right from when you gave me that lift, and let me con you out of so much grub on the way down. I don’t know how you’ve survived this long. More by luck than experience, from what you’ve told me. But I suppose it’s about time you were taken in hand. You’d better bunk up at my place for a while. I kicked my umpteenth girlfriend out last night, so you can stay there till I get another one. I’ve got a flat over in Battersea. Small and quiet, but it’s convenient. You remember I told you on the A1 that I had a few thousand to collect from a job I’d done bird for? Thought I was lying, didn’t you?’
He laughed, and lit another Havana. ‘I wasn’t I’ve often told the truth to people who think that with a face like mine I can’t help but lie. An old trick. Well, it was stashed away safely for me, and what’s more it had been piling up interest the years I was in prison. A tidy sum of five thousand three hundred! Couldn’t believe such loyalty from the others. But I’d stood by them, you see, right through everything, and they knew it. So it’s still getting interest for me. Invested in good old British industry by a broker I was put on to, curling in as much as eight per cent. The fact was, I hardly needed to touch it, just three hundred to fit myself out, because I was put on to some very profitable work, just the stuff for the likes of me, because it takes me off the island, to the hot spots of the mainland, and a bit beyond at times. I won’t say too much yet, but I didn’t get this tan potholing in the Pennines. Still, I don’t forget somebody who helped me when I was down and out. Not me, not the new man nor the old. When you picked me up, I don’t know whether you knew it or not, but I was ready to die. I was done for and finished, inside and out, stomach and heart. I felt I was trudging towards the end of the world in that rain, with cars and lorries splashing me up as they went by, the cold eating into me so that I was snatched and perished.’