Under St Martin-in-the-Fields Esmond had his feet attended to, after a short wait, by the regular chiropodist, whilst Felix washed his shirt and underpants in the launderette which spun perpetually under Wren’s calm and untroubled church. Then he took a shower and discovered how to work a spin-drier, surprised to find that he had not, as yet, met any smell, including his own, he found unbearable.
In a greasy-spoon café off Holborn, Esmond bought them both a cup of tea and a slice of toast. Felix, embarrassed by his lack of money, asked his host’s advice.
‘You either beg or you go without,’ Esmond told him. ‘In your position I wouldn’t go near the National Assistance, and I wouldn’t think you had much of a talent for stealing.’
‘I don’t know how to set about begging.’
‘You’ve done it before, haven’t you? In your work or in love. Everyone begs for something. You must be used to it.’
Felix thought about his propositions to Brenda. Were they begging? At any rate, they had been conspicuously unsuccessful.
‘Do it when the shows come out. The opera’s best. People feel guilty about going to the opera and all that money they’ve paid. Bit near Bow Street nick for you, however. Try the theatres in the Strand. They’ve got the new musical Anna Darling. I believe it’s loosely based on Anna Karenina. Wouldn’t go near it myself but it’s not a bad play to beg outside.’
In the evening when they were talking to an ageing Irishman who was preparing his bed and box for an early night in Great Turnstile Street, they heard drums and chanting and saw the yellow-robed Hari Krishnas advancing remorselessly towards them. ‘For God’s sake!’ Esmond gripped Felix’s arm. ‘Don’t risk the curry.’ So they retreated to the back door of Rules where two big steak and kidney pies were being prepared for the homeless. They each got a generous portion when Esmond told the chef that he was a patron of the place and had enjoyed his last supper there before he opted out of so-called civilized society.
The boy said, ‘You can sit here if you like. I’m not afraid of competition. Anyway, I think we’ll attract a different class of customer.’
He was good-looking, hollow-cheeked, deep-eyed, with long thin arms like a Blue Period Picasso. He sat cross-legged with a blanket over his knees, doodling on the cover of a paperback called The Economics of Poverty. His position was between two theatres in the Strand. Felix sat in his clean clothes in the shadows of a shop doorway. There was not much passing trade and he and the boy talked across the space between them for company. ‘What sort of customer do you hope to attract then?’ Felix asked.
‘Men, perhaps. Mostly men who’ll want to take me down a dark street.’
‘Will you go?’
‘Only if they put their money out first. Spent the night with an old bloke who showed me a fifty pound note, then kicked me out without a penny.’
‘Don’t you mind doing it with them?’
‘I won’t say I like it. You feel like a cut off the joint sometimes. That’s why they call it the meat rack.’
‘What’s the meat rack?’
‘Round Eros’s statue. Where the boys go who ain’t learnt their way about. You’re new about here?’
‘Quite new.’
‘I thought I hadn’t seen you. What’s your name then?’
‘Anton.’
‘What sort of name’s that?’
‘A Russian name.’
‘You Russian then?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Oh, right!’ the boy said as though he understood perfectly. ‘I get called Yorkie Bar on account I’m from the North. You can call me that if you like.’
‘Well, thanks. I just wondered’ – Felix was taking the last chance of the day – ‘if you happened to see a bloke called Gavin round here? Perhaps sleeping rough. Pale sort of person in a maroon anorak?’
‘Why do you want him?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact, people are saying he’s dead. But I know he’s not, you see.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I saw him last night. Down on the Embankment. After it had said in the paper he was dead.’
‘Why was it in the paper? Is he famous or something?’
‘Not famous. Just that. . . Well, I’m supposed to have killed him.’
‘Then I don’t know anything about him,’ Yorkie Bar said firmly. ‘I don’t know anything at all.’
Waiting for the theatre crowds to come out they chatted sporadically. Felix asked the questions. How long had Yorkie Bar been on the streets? Why did he start? What were his plans for the future? The answers were two years. Because his foster parents hated him, only wanted him for the money, and his probation officer wanted to trade a good report for sex. He supposed he’d go on as he was. It wasn’t a bad life so long as hairy old men didn’t take you home and cheat you. When Felix told him he was finding it pretty comfortable under the arches behind Shell Mex House, he said, ‘I wouldn’t use it. There is none of my age group down there.’
So the time passed quietly until the theatres emptied. A group of girls out on an office party dropped a shower of pound coins on to Yorkie’s blanket. An anxious-looking man in spectacles, who reminded Felix of himself, passed by hurriedly, his face carefully averted, and then stopped, wrestled with his conscience, lost, and gave Felix three pounds twenty p, all in small change. He put the money in his pocket and, feeling the weight of it against his leg, felt ridiculously secure again. A Rolls pulled up and was parked by a chauffeur who was playing loud country and western with the window open. He looked across the pavement at Felix and Yorkie with amused contempt.
And then the pavement was full of legs, feet and chattering voices. Felix found his arm irresistibly lifting, his hand held out like a cap or a begging-bowl. From time to time he heard himself say, ‘Can you spare a bit of change?’
Yorkie only grinned modestly, cast down his eyes and his blanket was heavy with contributions. A group of young men in blazers stretched tight across muscly shoulders came out of Anna Darling, found an empty Coca-Cola tin in the gutter and fan off dribbling and kicking it across the street, their girlfriends laughing as they followed. A man with a red face and suspiciously dark hair came out with a girl who looked not much older than Yorkie Bar. He was complaining loudly, ‘Whoever heard of a darkie playing Vronsky? Should’ve asked for our money back!’ As he pushed his way towards the Rolls the girl, lagging behind, opened her handbag and sent a five pound note fluttering down towards Felix. It gave him the same feeling of unexpected joy as when he got a good notice for a book.
Felix was calling across to the girl, who was being helped by the chauffeur into the back of the now silent Rolls, ‘Thank you, lady. Good luck! God bless you’ – words which he thought appropriate to such an occasion – when he saw something which made him retreat again into the shadows, lowering his head as he stuffed the note into his pocket. Brenda Bodkin had cried at the end of Anna Darling and Paul, who had only agreed to go because ‘someone wanted to do a musical of Budding Groves’, clearly despised her for it. Now she paused, looking at Yorkie Bar. ‘Don’t dream of giving them anything,’ Paul told her. ‘Drug money. That’s all it is! Every penny’ll go on crack.’ Brenda allowed him to pull her to the edge of the pavement where he was shouting for a taxi. But she was shocked to have seen one of her best-known authors, certainly the one who loved her most, begging in the shadows of a doorway. She also knew he was wanted by the police. For the moment she kept quiet about it.
By the end of the evening the score stood at Yorkie Bar twenty-nine pounds, Felix eleven pounds forty p. Felix felt his alcohol content had sunk to a dangerous low and realized he hadn’t had a drink for two days. With his new-found wealth he invited Yorkie to join him in a pub. There were moments, and this was one of them, when he felt that his new way of life was, in itself, a hiding-place, and he had no need to keep his face in the shadows. Yorkie led him down a dark street between the Strand and the Embankment and into a pub called the Garden of Eden in which he was, appa
rently, well known. Felix bought them lagers and stood surveying a scene which was, living quietly in Coldsands, unusual to him.
The pub was an old one, with frosted patterns on big mirrors and threadbare plush, which had been invaded and taken over by a new world. Humming neon lights exposed the cracked ceiling and peeling plaster, the bar throbbed with heavy metal and bleated with flashing Space Invaders. The clientele seemed to go in for bright yellow hair, cut short, pierced noses and ears, leather trousers, caps which might have been worn by storm troopers, tight shorts and patent leather boots. They yelled greetings or abuse at each other and quarrelled in comers. As Felix stood drinking with Yorkie, he saw a young man leaning on the bar, apparently alone, looking at him with particular interest. His hair was cut into short bristles at the side and flat as a table on the top of his head. He wore a black T-shirt with BASIL written on it in green phosphorescent script, white jeans and purple boots. His face was decorated with designer stubble and a single earring. What was unusual about him, in those surroundings, was that he wasn’t looking at Yorkie with desire but at Felix with what was clearly suspicion. Felix’s fragile sense of security was shattered as he gulped what was left of his lager and, forgetting to say goodbye to Yorkie, moved quickly to a door marked Gents.
As he went, his watcher moved to join Yorkie Bar. There followed a brief conversation during which Basil asked after Yorkie’s health, said he had seen him begging earlier (but didn’t intend to report it) and who was the newcomer to the area? Yorkie gave him what details he could of Anton, including the fact that he seemed very keen on finding some guy called Gavin who wore a maroon anorak. He remembered that particularly because Anton had told him that it was put in the papers that this Gavin had been knocked off by someone, perhaps him.
‘Sounds as though he’s a bit daft!’ was Basil’s comment.
‘That’s what I thought,’ Yorkie Bar agreed. ‘I mean, what’s the sense in going around looking for blokes that are dead?’ Basil was particularly interested in this information and bought Yorkie another lager, after which he stood watching the door of the Gents, waiting for Felix to emerge.
Felix didn’t emerge. When he got through the door he had found himself in a passage with a staircase leading down to the porcelain from which came cries of anger and delight. A door from the passageway led into the public bar, a bleak, unpopular area of the Garden of Eden, in which only a few late-night cleaners, about to go on duty, were drinking Guinness. Felix walked by them and out of the pub door, leaving Basil wondering if he hadn’t passed out or shot up in a cubicle.
Felix walked into Villiers Street and down towards the river. As he arrived on the Embankment at Hungerford Bridge, he saw an extraordinary procession moving inexorably towards him. In the lead strode Peggy, her hair standing out like a nest of serpents. She marched, as though she were a guard with a red flag before an antique train, in front of what was undoubtedly a moving hospital bed, its iron frame shaking and groaning as its castors hit the road or mounted unsteadily on to the pavement. In it, a very old woman, with long white hair, was sitting bolt upright and shouting. The moving bed was being pushed by the giant Dumbarton, beside whom Esmond in his bobble hat trotted enthusiastically. Awaiting their approach Felix knew what had happened. They had sprung Flo from hospital.
As the impressive cortège approached him, Peggy screamed, pointing, ‘That’s him, Flo! Him what told lies about knowing you. So he could sleep in your quarters!’ Felix stood amazed at the sudden wave of hatred from the wild-eyed woman who had spread out Flo’s sleeping-bag for him. But Flo, like some ancient queen arrived by chariot, pronounced a final judgement, shouting, ‘Get away with you! We don’t know you! You’re not welcome any more round Shell Mex!’
‘Nothing I can do about it.’ Esmond was beside him and apologetic. ‘You could try top of the steps across Blackfriars Bridge. Used to be quite decent. Haven’t been there lately.’
‘That’s right. You go down under the bridge. We don’t want you round us! On we go, Dumbarton. And if he don’t move, run him over!’ The bed lurched forward and Felix moved out of the path of the approaching juggernaut.
When Flo and her bed had been settled in her favourite spot at the end of the arches, and Peggy and Esmond were enjoying a smoke before getting their heads down, Basil arrived. He was greeted by Peggy as a friend who’d always done his best to protect the respectable and elderly people sleeping in Shell Mex, and only issued a summons for begging after countless warnings – or when his wife told him he’d never make it as a sergeant if he didn’t get the layabouts off the streets.
‘I hear you had a newcomer sleeping here, Peggy? Middle-aged and going thin on top, that’s how he was described to me.’
‘We had an intruder. Put it that way.’
‘Does the name Anton mean anything to you?’
‘Nothing at all. It means absolutely nothing,’ Esmond assured him.
‘Does the name Gavin Piercey mean anything to you?’
‘Sorry, can’t help,’ Esmond said.
‘You say this man was an intruder?’
‘He wanted to sleep in Flo’s place,’ Peggy told him.
‘Only when she was away.’ Esmond was trying to be reasonable. ‘Anyway, you helped him sleep there.’
‘He thought he could lie his way in.’ Peggy’s eyes were blazing and a thin column of smoke emerged from each nostril.
‘Flo wasn’t having it. Flo told me he was a liar.’
‘Not your sort was he, Peggy?’ Basil was understanding.
‘You can say that again! Did you mention something about Gavin?’ Peggy was making an effort to remember.
‘Gavin Piercey. Bloke who got himself murdered.’
‘Gavin. Yes. Now I come to think about it, I feel sure he mentioned him. Murdered, did you say? Anyway, he was still looking for him.’
‘You know where he is now?’
‘Blackfriars Bridge steps. Esmond sent him there to sleep.’
‘That right, Esmond?’ Basil turned to the retired supermarket manager but Esmond had gone off, as fast as he could trot, in the direction of Blackfriars. Basil took the mobile phone out of the back pocket of his jeans and dialled a number. When he had finished his conversation with Detective Sergeant Wathen he put away his phone and looked into the shadows under the distant arches. ‘Fuck me!’ he said, ‘if that’s not a hospital bed you’ve got there.’
‘Donated to us by the Sisters of St Agatha,’ Peggy told him. ‘We are very saintly girls!’ Constable Basil didn’t believe a word of it but he had more important things on his mind.
Esmond had set out to give a warning. Although he hadn’t greatly admired The End of the Pier, he felt that Felix had been unfairly treated by Flo and Peggy, who had broken the firm rule of the colony of sleepers at Shell Mex, which was not to give out any information, even to such friendly and sympathetic members of the police as Constable Basil Bulstrode of the Homeless Squad.
Esmond had seen the mobile in Basil’s back pocket and knew that he could be swiftly in touch with more powerful and less humane members of the force. Moreover, he had taken to Felix, he felt they hit it off, and he had enjoyed spending an otherwise fruitless day showing him round the street-sleepers in London, and thought he had made a friend with whom the next few years of anonymity could be pleasantly spent. So he was trotting along towards Blackfriars, fully intending to find Felix and tell him to get as far away, and as quickly, as possible.
Then he saw a cheerful crowd of young men with their laughing girlfriends coming down the steps to the Temple Station. He remembered that he had treated Felix on a few occasions during that day and had earned nothing. A crowd who’d enjoyed a happy evening ought to be good for a quid or two. He took a quick detour, stood at the bottom of the steps, held out his hand and said, ‘Can you spare a bit of change?’ The whole transaction would be over in a minute.
It was, in fact, over very quickly. Esmond heard someone shout, ‘Give him change, shall we? Let’s all
give him change!’ He was surrounded, overwhelmed, by a sea of faces, most of them laughing. He heard a girl’s voice and felt a heavy weight, which seemed to fall from a great height on to his chest and forced him to his knees. Feet were kicking him, trampling him. He was lying on the ground, stretched out as though he were going to sleep, and then he felt a shuddering pain inside his head and he was falling into darkness. He heard someone shout, ‘Good night, Charlie!’ and then silence.
His attackers had had a great night out. Starting with dinner and plenty of drinks at the Strand Palace, then Anna Darling, the musical, with a lot of whisky in the interval, finishing off with drinks in the Crow’s Nest before they went for their train. Meeting Esmond was just a bit of fun and everyone ought to join in keeping beggars off the streets. They were in a high mood as they got into the tube and ignored one of the girls who insisted on sitting alone at the far end of the carriage and cried softly to herself.
Chapter Sixteen
The first thing Felix heard as he started up the steps near Blackfriars Bridge was a dog barking. It was a sharp, angry bark, which seemed to be the product of a dog infuriated by life and eager to bite by the throat, and shake to death, any passing stranger. And then, as he climbed the stairs, he got a great waft of the smell he dreaded, which had made him shamefully sure that he could never have followed Chekhov into the cholera wards and the penal colony. It was the sharp, acrid smell of urine, over which hung the sweet, clinging odour of shit, mixed on this occasion in a cocktail which included stale sweat and mouldering carpets. He was about to see those street-sleepers whose lives were far removed from those of the middle-aged patrons of Shell Mex House, and whom even Constable Basil couldn’t tolerate because, as he used to say, of ‘their habit of defecating over the side of their staircase, regardless of the safety and comfort of passers by’.
Felix in the Underworld Page 12