“I just do.” She lifted the second bottle fully out of her pocket and saw his eyes fix on it. “Come on, get up and talk.”
He hesitated only for a moment, then shambled upright. He had difficulty straightening his body after its night on the cold pavement, and flinched with muscular pain as he pulled the packed newspaper out of his greatcoat. “Not talk here,” he said cunningly. “Don’t want the others to see.”
He took another long, surreptitious swallow from his bottle, then, with elaborate precaution, hid it in his coat pocket. “Where d’you want to talk?”
“There’s a café over there. Do you want to go in? I’ll buy you some breakfast.”
He grimaced. “Not food. Can’t eat food early in the morning. Can’t eat it much any time. Over-rated stuff, food.”
“Shall we go through there?” Mrs Pargeter pointed to the gates into Embankment Gardens.
He nodded. “You give me the other bottle?”
“When we’ve talked, yes.”
She felt safer with him walking ahead of her. As he started off, she glanced across the road to Truffler Mason. She gestured with her head towards the gardens. He gave an almost imperceptible nod, and started moving in the same direction himself.
Mrs Pargeter followed the malodorous figure ahead of her in disbelief. She knew Rod Cotton to be in his early forties, and yet the figure ahead shambled like something out of a geriatric ward. What could have happened in six months to reduce a resident of Smithy’s Loam to this?
He hobbled to the nearest bench inside the gates, and slumped on to it. A smartly overcoated man with a bowler hat, already sitting there, registered the tramp’s approach, and moved briskly away to the other end of the gardens.
Mrs Pargeter sat down, as close to her quarry as her tolerance of his acrid smell allowed. He took the bottle out of his pocket, transferred it to his plastered hand and, again with a precautionary look around, unscrewed it and took another drink. Only about a quarter of the contents remained. He looked at her greedily. “The other bottle.”
Mrs Pargeter retained her cool. “When we’ve talked…” she said firmly, and then, timing it carefully, added the isolated monosyllable, “…Rod.”
Only a flicker of recognition crossed his face. “Who’s Rod?” he asked.
“You are.”
“No.”
“You are Rod Cotton.”
He shook his head slowly, as if suddenly it had become very heavy. “No, I’m no one. I don’t exist,” he said, slurring more than ever.
“You are Rod Cotton,” Mrs Pargeter persisted. “I know you are.”
A pathetic cunning came into his eyes. “Who was Rod Cotton?”
“Rod Cotton was a man in his early forties, married to Theresa, living at ‘Acapulco’, Smithy’s Loam. Until six months ago, he was a Sales Director with C,Q,F&S.”
He gave a twisted smile. “I don’t look like a Sales Director of anything, do I?”
“No, you don’t now, but –”
“I don’t look like anything. And do you know why? The answer’s because I’m not anything. I have no money, no home, no wife, nothing.”
Yet again Mrs Pargeter asserted quietly, “You are Rod Cotton.”
Another slow shake of the head. “There is no Rod Cotton. The Rod Cotton you describe was rich, successful. There’s no Rod Cotton to fit that description now.”
This, Mrs Pargeter reckoned, was as near as she was going to get to an admission of identity. “Do you still call yourself Rod?” she asked gently.
There was a snort of laughter. “I don’t call myself anything. I am no one, so I have no name. When the police move me on, I have no name. When I go into the hostels, I have no name.” He waved his plastered arm. “When I fall and end up in hospital, I have no name.”
The bottle was once again at his lips, and this time the contents were drained completely. A little trickled down the side of his chin and a panicked hand moved up to save this last dreg. He reached his hands out towards Mrs Pargeter. “The other bottle.”
“No. Not until you’ve told me what I want to know.”
He slumped back, disgruntled, against the bench.
“Look, you are Rod Cotton, aren’t you?”
“Give me the bottle and I’ll be Marlene Dietrich, if you like,” he replied with a cracked laugh.
“I want to know two things, Rod…”
“Oh yes.”
“The first is – what’s happened to you in the last six months?”
“What’s happened to who?” he asked deviously.
“What’s happened to Rod Cotton?”
“Ah, him.” He spoke as if referring to some mythical figure from another civilisation. “What’s happened to him?” He paused, trying to reassemble his scrambled thoughts. Then he launched into a rambling explanation.
“What happened to him was that he couldn’t cope with failure. I think. He never failed…or so I heard. He passed exams, he got jobs, he was offered other jobs, he made money…He didn’t fail…”
The rambling petered out. Mrs Pargeter filled the silence. “So, when he lost his job, he didn’t know how to set about looking for another one…?”
“He knew how…” The tramp halted. “He knew how, but he couldn’t…”
“You mean mentally he couldn’t? He couldn’t adjust his mind to the idea?”
The wild head nodded slowly. “He waited. He had a little money, the redundancy money…He thought something would happen. He couldn’t go out and tell people. He couldn’t admit…”
“He couldn’t admit that he’d failed?” She got no reaction to that. “Which was why he invented the new job, the job up North?”
There was no direct reaction to this question, either, but the tramp suddenly started out on another monologue, as if broaching a new subject.
“He stayed around at home for a while, waiting for it all to be all right, waiting for the phone to ring with the new offer, new job…He passed the time with drink, with drugs…the phone didn’t ring. He went away, just to get away. Went to hotels, nice hotels…flash the Gold Card, pay for the hotels…Then the hotels don’t take the Gold Card. Redundancy money running out. Smaller hotels…nastier hotels…Bed and breakfast…But,” he said suddenly, as if quoting something he found very funny, “you don’t need bed, you don’t need breakfast. To find yourself, you have to get away from material things…”
“Is that what Theresa said?” asked Mrs Pargeter gently.
He didn’t confirm this, but let out a grunt of laughter. “Somebody said it, certainly. What they didn’t say, though, was that to lose yourself, you have to get rid of material things, too. Rod Cotton…if that’s the name of the person you’re talking about?…he got rid of material things. Got rid of bed, got rid of breakfast. Don’t need a bed.” He turned the empty whisky bottle eloquently upside-down. “Don’t need much for breakfast.”
Again he reached towards her for the second bottle. Mrs Pargeter shook her head firmly.
He hunched his shoulders and sank back into his greatcoat. “It doesn’t take long,” he mumbled. “Doesn’t take long to get back to a state of…” He fumbled for the word. “…a state of nature? A state of nothing, a state of not being. It’s all just a sort of shell. Money…Gold Card…job…jacuzzi…take it away and there’s nothing in the middle…Oh yes, you build up a network of money, of greed, but when you slip through the network…you go into free fall…free fall…”
The mental effort of this long speech seemed to have exhausted him. Or maybe it was the half-bottle of scotch. He mumbled incomprehensibly. Then the mumbling triggered a deep, deep cough, which shook his fragile frame.