When the hunger clock struck he burnt offerings of sausages, in a pan bought from a junk market for sixpence. An orange, or a banana sandwich, satisfied for dessert. There was ample cash for food, and though the shopfronts of London were lavish with temptations, especially to someone living alone, he didn’t eat more than was needed, or snack between meals. Walking everywhere kept him thin.
An hour passed, blank, musing, contented, pleasurable to be on his own, footsteps along the street not even causing him to wonder where they were heading, nor care, since they could have no connection with him. Laughing to break the spell, he cleared the table except for the red enamelled mug of scalding tea, whose handle was bound with post office string, otherwise it was too hot to lift with softening fingers.
Two hundred pounds in his account was enough for idling away without anxiety. When down to his last fifty he would scout for work, as if the novel was already dead and buried. A month was to elapse before copies could be in the shops, and he refused to rely on earning more. The ever wise Isaac had told him there were always jobs going in London, but Herbert decided that if nothing interested him he would go back in the army and do some work or other. Standing at the window, mug in hand, fag in the other, he optimistically felt that the more uncertain the future the more promising it would be. In no way would he take on work that dirtied his hands.
Hungerford footbridge was his favourite way into the West End. Clouds lifted from the wide expanse of water, a long way up the sky above the City and St Paul’s. Excursion boats of late summer tracked in and out from Charing Cross pier. Responsible for no one but himself, he felt as rich as if all he could see belonged to him, as if he had rented it out and was waiting for the leases to fall due. If he stood on the balustrade and opened his arms to fly he wouldn’t have to fight against the crowds to get from point to point, though among the mob he felt both his personalities merging into one. More people looked at him than they ever had in the runnels of Nottingham, as if by some magic he had become unique enough to be noticed.
In a fortnight he would have to pass himself off as the unregenerate Bert Gedling, so had better get even more firmly back into the old pit-prop guise or it would be a case of the impostor of the age being out on his arse. Meanwhile he could give in to the luxury of being Herbert Thurgarton-Strang, the only way to tolerate anonymity in a conurbation of eight million.
Dusk was the time of doubt and loneliness. Gedling told him not to be mardy, while Thurgarton-Strang scorned to be influenced by such failings. He wrapped up complimentary copies of Royal Ordnance to Isaac and Mrs Denman, as well as one to Archie (not forgetting another to his parents) as careful with each bundle as if they were packets of sugar in the days of rationing.
The Jaffa-orange of the landlord’s bulb gave little light, so he changed the wattage for a hundred, which spread a satisfactory whiteness over the table and outlined every inked word of his letters. Glenny called in to collect the rent at half past nine on Thursday evening, as if he had a girlfriend in the neighbourhood, or was trying to dodge the income tax man. ‘Settling in, Mr Gedling?’
‘Yes. Suits me fine here.’ Glenny sat in the best chair of the two, so there was no option but to ask: ‘Would you like coffee?’ To Herbert’s surprise he said yes, as if raking in rents was his only social activity. He dashed some Nescafe into a glass. ‘Do you have many properties to call at?’
Glenny seemed to like the question. ‘Half a dozen round here. It keeps me going. What would I do otherwise? I started my life as a porter in the markets.’
‘Milk and sugar?’
He did.
‘You’re a bit of a dark horse, aren’t you?’
Herbert couldn’t fault the man’s direct style. ‘I worked in a factory up North for ten years.’
‘Looking for something different now?’
‘I might be.’
He sipped his coffee. ‘You been in the army?’
‘I did three years, some of it in Cyprus.’
‘I suppose that’s where you got that decoration on your cheek?’ Glenny, a big man, tilted the chair, but came forward when a crack sounded somewhere in it. ‘Do you want to do some work for me?’
‘Doing what?’
‘Getting in the rents.’
‘Is that all?’
Glenny coughed. ‘There’s one or two undesirables I need to deal with.’
‘Sounds good.’ Life was scattered with signposts, the right or wrong one lightly followed. He saw himself as an ex-service thug with his own gang, hired by anyone who needed rough stuff to increase assets or further their careers. Any reinforcements he could get by asking Archie and a few others down from Nottingham. The picture wilted. ‘The only thing is I’m waiting to hear about another offer. Comes up in a fortnight.’
Glenny shook his head, disappointed. ‘Shame. Let me know if you think about it and change your mind.’ His laugh was dry. ‘You’d be good at it, especially with that scar.’
Herbert liked the villain. ‘Thanks for the offer.’
He turned from the top of the stairs and grinned. ‘And thank you for the coffee. And I don’t mind you using that hundred watt bulb.’
Motoring lessons were advertised in a shop window on Walworth Road for a pound an hour, and he booked half a dozen, to practise driving around London. After the first session the instructor guided him over the river and into the thick of it. ‘You’ve got the knack, pal.’
‘All I want to know is how to pass the test,’ Herbert said sharply, stuck behind a post office van in High Holborn.
‘Oh, don’t worry about that. You should get it first time.’
Thanks to Archie, but he wanted less talk and more knowledge. ‘We’ll see.’
‘I know a nice car for sale, an Austin. Only a couple of hundred. You could practise all you liked, then.’
‘Without a licence?’
‘Get an international driving permit from the AA, then you can say you’re on your way abroad if you get stopped by the law.’
‘No thanks.’
Between motoring practice he walked up Villiers Street by Kipling’s digs, across the Strand with a wave at friendly Nelson to his left, a white atoll of cloud in an otherwise blue sky. Adept at artfully dodging buses he jinked through Lamb Passage (careful of his head) on to Floral Street, and cut up into Long Acre. Idleness, the freedom to do as he pleased, which he had been wanting all his life, gave a spring to his step by the post office, a different walk than after absconding from school and sending the missive to his parents.
Coming out of the National Gallery, with its vacuous and self-satisfied faces of the famous dead, he dropped a well-deserved sixpence to the bony old man in a blue beret chalking portraits on the flagstones. Brilliant colours delineated Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth, Nelson, Wellington, Disraeli and other great personages, each powdery base to be washed away in the next downpour.
In Lyons on St Martin’s Lane he sat down to the fuel of pie and mash, glancing from behind his News Chronicle at elegant office girls out for lunch. Isaac had told him with a laugh that you had to be wary of saying good day to a pretty girl in London in case you were accused of being a white slaver about to needle her with drugs and bundle her off to South America. Herbert wouldn’t approach them anyway, whether from reticence after so long in the Midlands or because he was still uncertain as to who or what he would finally turn out to be. He only knew that he liked looking.
‘Don’t you know me, then?’ a woman called, when he was on the street and wondering which direction to go in next. The voice jerked his heart. He had heard it before, though this time the accent was different, the tone in no way vitriolic or accusing. She faced him. ‘You should.’