It was some evenings later when Ned, preparing his meal in the red brick shelter, heard a confused murmur of voices outside; at once he grew alarmed and crouched in a corner but, after a few moments, he realised that the shouts and calls were not directed against him but were coming from the far side of the little park. He peered out of the entrance and saw a group of children jumping and shrieking in a circle: two or three of them had sticks which they were throwing at something in the middle, as their cries echoed against the walls of the church. Then Ned saw that they were surrounding a cat which was hurling itself in fear against one child and then another in order to break free, only to be caught and hauled back into the centre of the circle; it had scratched and bitten some of them but the sight of their own blood seemed only to have provoked more frenzy in the children who, in their joy and fury, were now smashing their sticks against the lean body of the animal. Their look of rage was terrible to Ned: he remembered it from his own childhood, which at this moment descended upon him again. And he knew that, if they became aware he was watching them, their rage would soon be turned against him: it was not unusual for gangs of children to set upon a tramp and beat him senseless, shouting 'Bogeyman! Bogeyman!' as they kicked or spat at him.
He left the shelter and hurried down the small path which led into Wapping Wall, not daring to look back in case he should draw the children's glances upon him. He walked beside the river up to Limehouse, and the damp wind unsettled him; when he reached Shoulder-of-Mutton Alley he could see an abandoned warehouse ahead of him but, in his haste to reach it, he fell and gashed his leg against a piece of metal which had been left on the waste-ground through which he now trod. He was tired and yet, when eventually he lay down inside the warehouse, he could not sleep. He looked down at himself and, suddenly disgused at what he saw, said out loud, 'You have dug your own grave and now you must lie in it'. He closed his eyes and, leaning his head against the rotten wood, he had a sudden vision of the world -cold, heavy, unendurable like the awkward mass of his own body as at last he slept.
And the years have passed before he wakes now, after a night in the same warehouse beside the Thames -although, during the night, he had returned to Bristol and watched himself as a child. The years have passed and he has remained in the city, so that now he has become tired and grey; and when he roamed through its streets, he was bent forward as if searching the dust for lost objects. He knew the city's forgotten areas and the shadows which they cast: the cellars of ruined buildings, the small patches of grass or rough ground which are to be found between two large thoroughfares, the alleys in which Ned sought silence, and even the building sites where he might for one night creep into the foundations out of the rain and wind.
Sometimes dogs would follow him: they liked his smell, which was of lost or forgotten things, and when he slept in a corner they licked his face or burrowed their noses into his ragged clothes; he no longer beat them off, as once he had, but accepted their presence as natural. For the dogs' city was very like his own: he was close to it always, following its smells, sometimes pressing his face against its buildings to feel their warmth, sometimes angrily chipping or cutting into its brick and stone surfaces.
There were some places, and streets, where he did not venture since he had learnt that others had claims there greater than his own -not the gangs of meths drinkers who lived in no place and no time, nor the growing number of the young who moved on restlessly across the face of the city, but vagrants like himself who, despite the name which the world has given them, had ceased to wander and now associated themselves with one territory or 'province' rather than another. All of them led solitary lives, hardly moving from their own warren of streets and buildings: it is not known whether they chose the area, or whether the area itself had callen them and taken them in, but they had become the guardian spirits (as it were) of each place. Ned now knew some of their names: Watercress Joe, who haunted the streets by St Mary Woolnoth, Black Sam who lived and slept beside the Commercial Road between Whitechapel and Limehouse, Harry the Goblin who was seen only by Spitalfields and Artillery Lane, Mad Frank who walked continually through the streets of Bloomsbury, Italian Audrey who was always to be found in the dockside area of Wapping (it was she who had visited Ned in his shelter many years before), and 'Alligator' who never moved from Greenwich.
But, like Ned, they inhabited a world which only they could see: he sometimes sat on the same spot for hours at a time, until its contours and shadows were more real to him than the people who passed by.
He knew the places where the unhappy came, and there was one street corner at a meeting of three roads where he had seen the figure of despair many times -the man with his feet and arms splayed out in front of him, the woman embracing his neck and weeping. He knew the places which had always been used for sex, and afterwards he could smell it on the stones; and he knew the places which death visited, for the stones carried that mark also. Those who passed in front of him scarcely noticed that he was there, although some might murmur to each other 'Poor man!' or 'Such a pity!' before hurrying forward. And yet there was once a time, as he walked by the side of London Wall, when a man appeared in front of him and smiled.
'Is it still hard for you?' he asked Ned.
'Hard? Now there you're asking.'
'Yes, I am asking. Is it still bad?'
'Well, I'll tell you, it's not so bad.'
'Not so bad?'
'I've known worse, after all this time.'
'What time was it, Ned, that we met before?' And the man moved closer to him so that Ned could see the dark weave of his coat (for he would not look into his face).
'What time is it now, Sir?'
'Now, now you're asking.' The man laughed, and Ned looked down at the cracks in the pavement.
'Well,' he said to this half-recognised stranger, 'I'll just be on my way now.'
'Don't be long, Ned, don't be long.'
And Ned walked away without looking back, and without remembering.
As he had grown older in the city, his condition had become worse: fatigue and listlessness now held him, as slowly all his expectations were lowered like a bird which falls silent when a cloth is placed over its cage. One night he had stood in front of an electrical showroom and had watched the same flickering images upon a row of television sets; the programme, perhaps designed for children, showed some cartoon animals scampering across fields, gardens and ravines; from their terrified expressions it was clear to Ned that they were trying to escape from something, and when he opened his eyes again he saw a wolf blowing the chimney off a small house. Ned pressed his face against the glass front, and mouthed the words as the wolf spoke them, 'I'll huff and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down!' All night these images swirled around his head, growing larger and more vivid until the sleeping figure was engulfed in them, and he woke the next morning bewildered at his own rage. He wandered through the streets crying, 'Get lost! Just bugger off! Get lost!', but his voice was often drowned in the roar of the traffic.
A few days later he began to scrutinise each person who passed him, in case there was one who might know or remember him, or who might even now come to his aid; and when he saw a young woman looking idly into the window of a watch-repairer's, he glimpsed in her face all the warmth and pity which might once have protected him. He followed her as she walked down Leadenhall Street and up Cornhill, Poultry and Cheapside towards St Pauls: he would have called out to her, but as she turned the corner of Ave Maria Lane she joined a crowd watching the demolition of some old houses. The ground shook under Ned's feet as he came after her and instinctively he looked up at the gutted interiors of the houses; their sinks and fireplaces were visible from the street as a great iron ball was swung against an exterior wall.