He went to banks and bureaux de change to change his handfuls of copper coins to brass pounds. The tellers were not happy, though they grudgingly obliged. He ranged further and wider, trying not to revisit banks and bureaux too often so as not to make a nuisance of himself and therefore become memorable.
He paid to have a shower in the executive suite at Victoria Station and washed his hair for the first time in nearly a month. He looked at the gaunt, bearded stranger staring out at him in the mirror, as he combed his hair back from his forehead, and was struck by the strength of the conflicting emotions inside him: fierce pride at his resilience and resourcefulness; bitter self-pity that he should have ended up like this. Yes, I’m free, he thought, but what has become of me?
Clean, in his mismatched pin-striped suit, with newly purchased, fairly shiny, black lace-up shoes (_£i from a thrift shop), he went back to the triangle and collected Mhouse’s flip-flops. He wanted ordinary, civil contact with another human being (preferably female). In the last few days hundreds of people had given him tiny sums of money, some had even exchanged kind words, but he was more and more grateful to Mhouse for her suggestion of the Church of John Christ
— the church had been his salvation, literally — even in her fury she had somehow been thinking of him, he thought, and he wanted to thank her and keep his promise to return her shoes. She would be surprised, he reckoned — and maybe even touched — that he had honoured it.
He took a bus to Rotherhithe — another small inching up the ladder of civilisation — and stepped out at The Shaft. He wandered around the estate’s three quadrangles before he recognised the area where he had been mugged (the graffiti being the aide-memoire)
— he saw the trashed playground and the stairs beneath which he had Iain unconscious. An old woman, trailing a shopping trolley behind her with a wobbly wheel, came slowly towards him and as she reached him he asked if she knew someone called Mhouse.
“What unit?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I can’t help you, darling,” she said, shuffling off.
He wandered deeper into the estate. He felt inconspicuous — a shabby, creased, bearded presence in cast-off clothes, like most of The Shaft’s male denizens. Two enquiries later secured Mhouse’s address — Flat L, Level 3, Unit 14—and he climbed the stairs to her walkway, feeling a little nervous and apprehensive, almost as if he were on a date.
He knocked on her door and after a pause heard her voice saying, “Yeah? Who is it?”
“John 1603,” he said — and of course she opened the door.
He held up the flip-flops.
“Brought them back,” he said.
♦
There were two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen-diner and a living room in Mhouse’s flat. There were no carpets or curtains and very little furniture: two mismatched armchairs, some cushions and a TV in the sitting room, two mattresses on the floor in the bedroom she shared with Ly-on. The kitchen had a stove but no fridge. In the other bedroom were some cardboard boxes filled with clothes and random possessions. Most odd, Adam thought, was the rubber tubing and electric cables that were fed through an empty pane of the casement window in the kitchen. This provided running cold water in the kitchen but not the bathroom. There was electricity in every room, however, wires snaking out from a cuboid structure of stacked adaptors on the kitchen floor. Mhouse brought Adam a cup of very sweet tea — she hadn’t asked him if he wanted it sugared.
“Ly-on, you sit on floor,” she said to the little boy who was watching the TV. He moved off his armchair obediently and sat on a winded cushion in front of the screen. He moved slowly, lethargically, as if he’d just been woken up. Adam took his seat and Mhouse sat opposite.
“That’s my son,” she said. “Ly-on.”
“Leon?”
“No, Ly-on. Like in the jungle. Like in lions and tigers.”
“Right.” Adam now remembered her tattoo: ‘Mhouse’ and ‘Ly-on’ on the inside of her right forearm. “Good name for a boy.”
Ly-on was a small boy, almost a tiny boy, with a large, curly-haired head and wide brown eyes.
“Say hello to John.”
“Hello, John. You come mummy to take going?”
“We’ll go for a walk tomorrow, darling.”
Adam noticed that although Ly-on was small and in no way fat he had a distinct pot belly, like a beer-drinker’s.
“You still in Chelsea, then?” Mhouse asked.
“Moving around a bit,” Adam said, cautiously. Mhouse had been his only visitor to the triangle, as far as he knew.
“How you like the church?”
“I think it’s…wonderful,” Adam said, with sincerity. “I go there most nights. Haven’t seen you for a while.”
“Yeah. I try to go, but, you know, it’s difficult, what with Ly-on.” She scratched her right breast, unselfconsciously. She was wearing a cap-sleeved white T — shirt with ‘SUPERMOM!’ across the front and cropped pale-blue denim jeans. She curled herself up in the armchair and tucked her feet under her. She was also small, Adam realised, a tiny child-woman — maybe that was why Ly-on was so small himself.
He looked down at him and saw the boy was now stretched out on the floor as if he was about to go to sleep.
“You get to your bed, sweetness,” Mhouse said and the little boy rose slowly to his feet and weaved off to the bedroom. “He’s just had his supper,” she said. “He’s tired. And I’ve got to get off me bum and get working. No, no, you stay there. Finish your tea. I’ll just go and get changed.”
Adam sipped his too-sweet tea and channel-hopped on the remote control. She seemed to have an interminable number of channels on her TV. When she came out she was wearing white shiny plastic zip-up boots, a mini-skirt and a red-and-black, tight satin bustier that pushed her small breasts up above the lace trim like round balls. Her make-up ‘was vivid: red lips and black eyes.
“Going to a party,” she said. “On a boat on the river.”
“Fabulous,” Adam said. “You look great.”
She looked at him sideways, quizzically. “Are you joking me?”
“No, seriously. You look great.”
“Thanking you, kind sir,” she said, rummaging in her handbag for keys. Adam looked at her hard cleavage and smelt the pungent chemicals of her scent, finding her suddenly extremely sexually desirable — recognising the simple efficiency of her outfit and the messages it was designed to send to people — to men. There was something impish, elvish about her — if you could imagine a sexually alluring imp, Adam thought — and her thin, hooded eyes added to this otherworldly effect.
She paused at the door. “You signing on?”
“Ah, not yet,” Adam said. “But I am making a bit of money, these days.”
“Tugging?”
“What?”
“On the game. Selling your arse?”
“No, begging.”
She thought, frowning. “I got a spare room here, you know. If you want. Twenty a week. Seeing as we go to the same church, like.”