‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Good luck to you, too.’
‘It’s been nice talking to you. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye.’
He watched her walk away. She walked energetically. Her blonde hair rose and fell with the energy of her walking. He put his case down. He was acting very strangely. Really very strangely indeed. What on earth had prompted him to wish her good luck like that? He went back over the encounter in some detail and shook his head. He almost didn’t recognise himself.
Suddenly a crowd of people spilled towards him across the concourse. Though startled, he stood his ground. They flowed round him as if he was part of the station. He had never seen so many people in one place. And every face lifted anxiously to the departures board as if they expected to read the news of some personal tragedy there. So many people and yet they all had different noses, eyes, hair. It seemed extraordinary to him that no two people looked the same. And another thing. He didn’t recognise anyone. He had never seen so many strangers. For a moment he, too, looked anxious. Then he became exhilarated. The turmoil. The din. The anonymity. He could blend with the crowds, he could move about unobserved, no eyebrows raised, no questions asked. It suited him perfectly.
Outside the station he flagged down a taxi. The driver took him to a dark street lined with stunted trees. Somewhere between Queensway and Notting Hill Gate, it was (Peach had been following the route in his A — Z). He paid the driver, and the taxi rattled away again towards the main road. He stood on the pavement, his suitcase in his hand. He looked up. The Hotel Ravello. It’s not exactly The Ritz, the driver had told him, but Peach had imagined worse places.
He climbed the steps and pushed the door open. A bell tingled. He found himself in a narrow hallway. A rectangle of plastic-coated card had been tacked to the wall. RECEPTION, it said. The arrow underneath indicated a doorway to the left.
‘Hello?’ he called out.
He walked up a short passage and peered into an office. Beyond the office lay another, darker room, separated from the first by a frosted-glass partition.
‘Hello?’ he called out again.
An Arab appeared. He had the watery strained eyes of somebody who watches too much television. His complexion was yellow on the surface, grey underneath. A few buttons on his shirt had popped undone, revealing the wrinkled socket of his navel.
‘Yes?’
‘I would like a single room,’ Peach said.
‘How many night?’ The Arab spoke in a monotone. The words came automatically. He probably said them in his sleep.
‘Just the one.’
The Arab produced a register. ‘Sign here.’
Peach stooped and wrote George Highness in a confident scrawl. A merciless smile passed over his lips. That’s the closest he will ever get to leaving the village, he thought.
He pushed the register back across the counter, received a key in exchange.
‘Third floor,’ the Arab said. ‘Check out before midday.’
Peach nodded. He would be gone long before then.
As he climbed the stairs the décor deteriorated. Handprints on the walls. Scratches, patches of damp, graffiti. It certainly wasn’t The Ritz.
His room had a flimsy hardboard door. The number, chipped gilt, dangled on a single screw. He turned the handle and walked in. Green carpet. Faded orange bedspread. Massive dark wardrobe. Chair. Gas-ring. Ashtray. He closed the door, put his case on the bed, and walked into the bathroom. He ran the cold tap and splashed some water on to his face. He dried on a threadbare towel that said, incongruously, GOOD MORNING. Stepping back into the bedroom, he took off his jacket, loosened his tie, and unlocked his case. He was travelling light: a pair of striped pyjamas, a washing-bag, a diary, a bus-map, binoculars, a Thermos of Hilda’s homemade minestrone soup and half a dozen ham sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil. He crossed to the window and raised the sash. Then he settled on the chair and ate four of the sandwiches one after another. Even though the sandwiches were very good indeed (nobody made ham sandwiches like Hilda), his face registered nothing. He was thinking. The city made a sound like distant applause.
After gulping down a cup of minestrone, he reached for his diary. He thumbed through the pages until he found the number he was looking for. He moved to the bed and picked up the telephone. He dialled with nimble precise rotations of his index-finger. The number began to ring.
Somebody answered. A voice said, ‘Eddie here.’
Peach blinked once, iguana-like. His lidded eyes fixed on the wall opposite. ‘Eddie, this is Mr Pole speaking. Moses’s foster-father.’
‘Mr Pole. What can I do for you?’
What indeed, Peach gloated. He wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. An orange smear: minestrone.
‘I’m sorry to bother you, Eddie, but I seem to have mislaid Moses’s new address. I wondered if you could possibly — ’
‘No problem, Mr Pole. Hang on a moment.’
Because, until today, the world had always been inaccessible, Peach had always listened to telephone voices very carefully. He found he could often construct a picture of the person he was talking to. Sometimes a face. Sometimes a body too. Sometimes the room they happened to be in. He tried to picture Eddie now, but saw a dog instead. A white toy dog. He gritted his teeth.
‘Mr Pole?’
‘Yes?’
‘You can reach him on 735–8020.’
Peach pulled his pen out of his breast pocket. ‘735 — ’
‘8020,’ Eddie said.
‘I see. And do you have his address by any chance?’
‘I don’t know his proper address, but the name of the club where he lives is The Bunker. He probably told you that, didn’t he?’
‘The Bunker. That’s right, I remember now,’ Peach lied.
‘If you address a letter to The Bunker, Kennington Road, London SEII, I’m sure it’ll get there.’
Peach scribbled frantically.
‘OK, Mr Pole?’
‘Thank you very much, Eddie,’ Peach oozed, as only Peach could. ‘You’ve been extremely helpful.’
Good old Eddie, he sneered as he rang off. What a fool. What a dupe.
He walked to the window. Anticipation started the motor in his lower lip. It began to slide in and out, a smooth action, almost hydraulic. This city was putty in his hands. He could shape it at will.
He was developing a knack for these phone-calls. Only a few weeks before, he had called the Poles in Leicestershire. A woman had answered.
‘Yes?’ Her voice had stretched the word out, making it sag comfortably in the middle like a hammock. He saw a plump woman with fussy hands. A roast in the oven. A couple of spoilt cats.
‘My name’s John,’ he had said. ‘I’m an old friend of Moses’s. I haven’t seen him for years, and I’ve been trying to track him down.’ A bit of truth makes a better lie.
‘Well — ’ and Mrs Pole had given the word two syllables when one would have sufficed — ‘the last we heard he was moving to some sort of discothèque, but I’m afraid he hasn’t given us the exact address yet. I’m terribly sorry.’
Faced with her vagueness, he had become doubly precise. ‘Could you tell me where Moses was living before? Perhaps they’ll know.’
‘That’s right,’ Mrs Pole had said, as if he was participating in a quiz-game of which she was the mindless compère.
Eventually she had given Peach Eddie’s address and telephone number. She explained who Eddie was. A nice boy, she called him, even though she had only spoken to him once. The woman was plainly a nincompoop.
‘I do hope you find Moses,’ she had finished up. ‘An old friend, are you?’