‘What hotel do you propose to put up at?’
Being laughed at encouraged him to more openness, whether the man was a nark or not. ‘I’m not on the run, if that’s what you mean. I’m seventeen, and want to get a job. As soon as I’m eighteen, though, I’ll enlist.’
Isaac was appalled at what the war had done to the young. ‘Why do you want to do that?’ A tinkle of broken glass came from further down the hall, and a woman’s scream was followed by such male effing and blinding as made Herbert turn his head, though slowly, to look. The smack of a fist on flesh sounded even over shouts and laughter, and a burly man in evening dress frogmarched a capless glaze-eyed soldier out on to the pavement. ‘There’s always a bit of that going on,’ Isaac said, ‘with so many women on the loose. And you know what soldiers are. But the doormen are very good here at dealing with it.’
Herbert turned to his drink as if nothing had happened. ‘The army will take care of me for a few years. I need to learn how to kill properly.’
Isaac laughed in such a way that Herbert wondered if he had asthma, knowing what it sounded like because Dominic had a touch of it when he first came to school. ‘You don’t have to learn a thing like that. Necessity will tell you, if ever you need to. In any case, who would a nice young chap like you want to kill? There’s been enough of that going on in the last five years.’
‘My parents, for a start.’
‘They seem to have made a good job of you.’ His thin lips curved even more in amusement, as if to say: who the devil have I got here? ‘You should be grateful.’
‘They packed me off to boarding school from India when I was seven.’ The laughter at some jokester further down the bar diminished. Herbert, not knowing the right thing to say, or even what he really believed before this sceptical old man, said whatever came to mind. ‘I’d have been quite happy staying where I was.’
‘I wish my parents had been able to send me to such a place. I left a hellhole of a school at thirteen to work on a market stall. And then I fought my way up, if you can call it that. Anyway, the best thing you can do is take my advice, and never blame your parents for anything. Whatever you think they did, it wasn’t their fault. And whatever they did do can’t be altered now.’
‘Really?’ Herbert hoped his attempt to resist an outright sneer would be obvious to the most imperceptive, or so Isaac surmised. The silly kid’s trying to seem more adult by blaming his deficiencies and troubles on his parents.
Two half-pints, and the ever biting famishment, not to mention tiredness, made him grip the brass rail to stay upright, while trying to show interest in whatever other rubbish the little man had to say.
‘I was a printer for much of my life. Now I’m retired, and live on my own. Why? Well, I like it that way, that’s why. I’ve got a couple of beehive rooms up one of those narrow streets across the square, and as I can see you’re in a fix you’re welcome to come back and sleep on the floor. I won’t be the perfect host and offer my bed, because I’m sixty and need it myself.’
Herbert knew he should say no, thank you very much, it’s awfully kind, I must be getting on, but he put himself into the hands of this stranger because he was too much starving and done for to know what to do or where to go next.
Stars spun over the sky; he looked at pavements and tarmac to get his equilibrium settled. ‘It’s not good to drink on an empty stomach,’ Isaac said. ‘Certainly not Nottingham ale.’ He led the way up the stairs of a damp-smelling decrepit building of offices and store rooms, turning from the landing to say: ‘I’ve told you my full name. What’s yours? And I don’t want an alias, either.’
The question signified a Rubicon that would have to be crossed sooner or later, a turbulent river for Herbert after his determination to follow the Caged Birds code of concealment, but he had blabbed plenty in the pub so he decided that a little more truth wouldn’t get him turned over to the law. Trust was laziness, a deadly sin, but even so he answered: ‘Herbert Thurgarton-Strang.’
‘One of them?’ Isaac worked his keys at the lock. ‘We’ll have to find you a shorter monicker, otherwise the blokes in the factory will make your life a misery.’
‘I’m not going to have anything to do with a factory.’
‘You’ll want a job won’t you?’
Herbert followed him into the small room. The old man’s brain must have been working overtime. ‘Well, yes, I suppose I do. Or I well might.’
‘You’ve got problems, and I’m wondering what to do with you. Anyway, Thurgarton-Strang, in the meantime, I’ll cook us some chips.’ He took off his hat, overcoat and scarf. ‘I’ve got spuds, fat, and a loaf of bread, so you won’t go to sleep on an empty stomach, which it looks like you’ve got with that bony face. There’s tea and milk as well but, alas, no sugar.’
‘That’s awfully kind of you.’ His speech sounded clumsy even to himself, as if he had landed in a foreign country with an obsolete phrasebook. ‘Very kind I must say.’
‘Kind is a word you don’t have any cause to use,’ Isaac said with a wry smile. The smell of paraffin, soap and dampness pricked Herbert’s nostrils. The old cove was helpful, but as domineering as a teacher, especially when he went on: ‘Maybe I succumbed in a weak moment in asking you to come back here, though I always respond to an attempt at generosity. Unless it was a subtle ruse of yours to treat a stranger to a drink out of your last few bob.’ He looked at Herbert, as if holding a new penny up to the light. ‘But I hardly think so, if I’m any judge of character.’
The walls were mainly bookshelves, with a table close up, and two chairs of the sort used in canteens. A second room through an archway, little more than an alcove, contained a bed and a chest of drawers. ‘It wasn’t a ruse,’ Herbert said, ‘I can tell you.’
‘Sit down, then, and don’t be offended — while I get to work.’ He filled a kettle and saucepan at a tap on the landing, and Herbert drew out a book to find that half was in a script he hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t Greek or Hindustani, but whatever it was suggested that Isaac, though only a printer, might be something of a scholar, and not so lowly and simple as he had thought at first. A smaller curtain in a corner covered his larder, and in a few minutes the room was pungent with the smell of frying. He must be lonely though, to do what he was doing so well, cutting spuds into chips for someone he had just met. ‘I’ve even got a pat of butter for our bread. It’s a lucky night. Every man should be able to cook, otherwise he’s no man.’
Herbert sat down to the most welcome meal of his life. ‘It’s marvellous,’ starvation diminishing with every mouthful.
Isaac ate daintily for a man in such accommodation, and Herbert saw the skullcap on his bald head as something to keep off the chill. ‘Which you are too young to feel with your black thatch,’ Isaac said, when Herbert politely mentioned it. ‘It may well be marvellous grub, but I’ll burn in hell, if there is such a place, for eating a mixture like this. However, necessity knows no bounds, with which I’m sure the sagest rabbis would agree.’
‘Why shouldn’t they?’
‘Well, my son, I’m Jewish, and this fat is not what they would call kosher, though I get it when I have to.’
‘Kosher?’
‘Ritually clean, to you.’
Herbert guided a piece of bread around the plate with his fork to mop up the fat. ‘Why shouldn’t you eat it?’
‘That — is a very long story. Very long indeed. You’ll have to bury yourself in Leviticus to find out.’
Herbert felt himself to be what people meant by intoxicated, and that the beer was responsible. He was also drunk with freedom and food, for on standing up the room seemed to be without walls, and he hoped he wasn’t going to faint. After being locked in all his life he belonged nowhere at the moment, no rules or walls surrounding him. Every nerve tingled with a mixture of relief and trepidation, but on the whole it was good, even better than he would ever have thought good to be. Acting out of his own will, Fate had led him to this funny old chap who for one night anyway had given him a place to sleep. What more did he need? He’d never had the chance to bump into such a person before, and all he had heard from his father about his sort was a slighting comment on one who had kept a store in Simla. How strange and wonderful life was! He sat down and said, as if to flatter him for his generosity: ‘I’ll bet you have lots of interesting stories to tell.’