He stopped outside a yellow tent. A crude picture of a dwarf in a jester’s cap and bells had been painted on to the canvas. Bold red letters bellowed: THE WORLD’S SMALLEST MAN! ONLY THREE FEET TALL! THE MOST AMAZING AND UNIQUE EXPERIENCE! BRING A MAGNIFYING GLASS! Somewhere to hide while he got his breath back, collected his thoughts. He paid his 50p and ducked under the canvas flap.
The world’s smallest man was watching Star Trek on TV. He was sitting in his own specially constructed lounge. All the furniture and fittings had been built to scale: a miniature sofa, a miniature lamp, a miniature clock — even the TV was miniature. Nothing separated him from his visitors — no bars, no sheets of toughened glass — and yet he didn’t seem to be aware of them. He sat in his miniature armchair with his legs crossed, watched his programme on his miniature TV, and drank from a miniature tea-cup which he replaced, gently and precisely, on its miniature saucer after each mouthful.
For a moment Peach lost touch with his surroundings. Staring down at this little man (he really was very small), he felt neither shock nor pity, only a kind of recognition. The world’s smallest man must, from time to time, have thought about escape. Perhaps he had even succeeded in escaping. But then, Peach’s fantasy ran on, he found himself in a world in which he had no place. A world that overlooked him, trampled him. A world that couldn’t help mistreating him because it was so big and he was so small. So he returned to his yellow tent and his miniature lounge. It wasn’t exactly private, but if he concentrated he could imagine that he was alone. He could train himself to ignore those prying eyes, those personal remarks. It was a life.
Peach checked his watch. 8.24. If he wasn’t in a taxi in twenty minutes he’d be done for. He used a buxom middle-aged couple to cover his exit from the tent and darted into the shadows beside the rifle-range. He saw the West Indian standing on the steps of the merry-go-round, white tie loosened, hands on hips, eyes scanning faces. He shrank against the damp green canvas. The whang! of pellets hitting metal ducks resounded in his ears. Sweat registered on his body as a series of cold patches.
He peered out again, watched the West Indian pass his fingertips almost absent-mindedly across his stomach. He smiled from his hiding-place. It had been a textbook punch. Nine inches. Pure Joe Louis. And fast, so fast the West Indian hadn’t even seen it coming. Not bad for an old man.
He began to work his way round the back of the rifle-range towards the road. As if on a parallel track, the West Indian also moved north. The next time Peach looked for him, he saw him leaning against a yellow fence, his scowling face switched on and off by sparks from the dodgems. A second man stood next to him. This second man wore a parka adorned with various military insignia. He must have been seven feet tall. His face a wasteland and cold, so cold, despite the light bleeding from a string of red bulbs above his head. Peach shivered.
8.47.
Only fifty yards now separated him from the metal fence. Beyond the fence, the road. He waited for the two men to turn away, then he lowered his head and ran. The music, the screaming, the gunfire, dwindled. He heard only the rasp of his own breathing as he struggled through the clutter of machinery and cables. Trees added to the confusion. Once he gashed his shin on the jagged head of a tent-peg, but he didn’t falter. He scaled the fence, cleared the pavement, teetered on the kerb. A truck lurched forwards with a vicious hiss as its air-brakes eased. He saw a yellow light and waved frantically. He didn’t dare look round.
The taxi curved towards him through the traffic. He scrambled in and slammed the door. ‘Victoria,’ he gasped. ‘Quick.’
The driver accelerated away. ‘In a hurry, are we?’
8.58.
The taxi turned north at the traffic lights, and Peach glanced behind him for the first time. No sign of the giant or the West Indian. He leaned back against the seat. His leg hurt. He could feel the blood trickling down into his sock.
Orange lights splashed over his face. ‘Never again,’ he murmured. ‘Never again.’
He wound the window down.
Air.
Every time the taxi stopped at a set of traffic lights, the driver pulled out a harmonica and began to play tunes that Peach remembered from the thirties and forties. Peach was suddenly overwhelmed by the sense of being somewhere strange, somewhere foreign yet magical, somewhere utterly incongruous. In his exhaustion he had become a tourist.
The driver caught his eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘Don’t mind, do you, guy?’
‘Not at all,’ Peach said. ‘It’s delightful. Very soothing.’
‘Soothing?’ The driver squinted over his shoulder. ‘First time anyone’s ever called it that.’
They both laughed.
The taxi rattled up on to the dreary skeleton of Vauxhall Bridge. It was only then that Peach realised he had left his case in that café on Kennington Road.
*
9.09.
Too late to turn round and go back. Too late, too dangerous. He took a swift inventory of the contents. Pyjamas, washing-bag, A — Z, a Thermos flask, one stale ham sandwich. Nothing that couldn’t be replaced. And, more to the point, nothing that betrayed his identity. After all, it could easily fall into the wrong hands (the West Indian’s, for instance). Thank God he had transferred his diary to his jacket pocket.
The taxi pulled up in front of Victoria Station at 9.21. Peach handed the driver a handsome tip.
‘That’s for getting me here on time,’ he said, ‘and for the music.’ And for saving my life, he added silently.
‘Cheers, guv.’ The driver leaned across and looked up at Peach. Light skated off the thick lenses of his glasses. His teeth angled back into his mouth like a shark’s. ‘You ought to slow down a bit, man your age. You’ll kill yourself. Take my word for it.’
Peach promised to take things easier in the future. It was a promise he intended to keep.
He caught the train with two minutes to spare.
He shared the carriage with a soldier, unshaven, hollow-cheeked, smoking. Just the two of them. Saturday night, Peach remembered. Not many people left the city on Saturday night.
The train shifted tracks on its way out of the station. A sound like knives being ground. Once over the bridge it gathered speed, shedding the lights of the city the way a meteor sheds sparks. The soldier slept, using his kit-bag as a pillow.
At Haywards Heath Peach climbed out. He had to wait twenty-five minutes on the draughty platform.
He sat on a bench and gazed at the initials, the messages, the obscenities, that had been carved into the thick green paint.
He stared into the darkness where the silver rails met. Sometimes the coloured lights of the fun-fair whirled through his mind like bright cars in a nightmare.
The local train stopped at every station on the line. This time he was alone in the carriage.
At 11.22 he handed his ticket to a yawning guard and walked down a long flight of wooden steps to the car-park. A breeze lifted and dropped the leaves of a tree, and he thought of the girl with the blonde hair. His bicycle lay where he had left it. He hauled it back up the mud bank, a twig twanging in the spokes. He switched on the front and rear lights, swung himself on to the saddle, and rode away.
Trees built a dark cathedral over the road. The moon slid out from behind a cloud and the gaps between branches turned into windows. Hedges rustled like a priest’s vestments. Birds mumbled in the undergrowth. The air was cool, peaceful, sharp with sap. Peach pedalled slowly, his left leg aching. It was almost as if the day had never happened. He was conscious of moving from a garish dream into calm familiar reality.
He approached the village from the south-west. He caught a glimpse of the lights of Bunt across the fields to the right. He passed the phone-box the brigadier had used in 1945 after Tommy Dane’s bomb blew up. Shortly after crossing the boundary into New Egypt he was blinded by the beam of a torch.