One street funnelled him into space, a view across rubble that a few months ago had been a populous ghetto of back-to-backs and narrow streets. He lit a fag, to shock absorb the sight of all these acres cleared of people, smashed down and dragged to bits. It wasn’t unpleasant, this Stalingrad of peace, and he’d heard that a start was one day to be made on this triangle of three main roads now with heart and guts scooped out.
He walked into space, few paces taking him across a clearly marked street plan on which as a kid each moss-dewed corner and double-entry had seemed miles from each other, different nations and tribal zones locking their arteries in handshakes of tumultuous life. You could still see the sockets from which lamp-posts had been tugged out like old dandelions and stacked ready for transport to the melters. He thought of going home immediately to Nancy, swinging on his heels this minute. But he rejected the impulse, unwilling to go back there like a bat into hell. Streets in all directions had been clawed and grabbed and hammered down, scooped up, bucketted, piled, sorted and carted off. Where had the people gone? Moved onto new estates, all decisions made for them, whereas he also wanted to uproot himself but must make his own moves, create something positive from the irritating mists of discontent — a freedom which he thanked and cursed at.
He crossed towards real streets, hoping to find a pub. But these streets too were down for demolition, nearly all empty. One or two still had people living in them, isolated houses encased in ruin and desolation. It must have been strange to live there, waiting for the dark ceremonious smash before the dawning of some new house nearer to fresh air and fields. Two up and two down, they were finished after eighty years of life. Many had doors and windows off, smashed in destructive joy by kids, and Frank walked into one, the living-room piled with planks and bedticks, shattered glass and slates, bricks and the heaped throw-outs of family living. He looked over the panels of a half ripped-off door, towards sombre backyards of taps and lavatories. From the fireplace a large rat blinked — though didn’t move. ‘Robert the Rat,’ he said aloud, ‘your number’s up. They’re coming for you.’ The half brick flew from his hand, but the rat clawed a way up the chimney, unharmed.
On the next street corner was a pub called The Rising Sun, which he thought at first to be untenanted, but a few Saturday morning people had already gathered there when he pushed his way through to the bar. It was a clean, cheerful sort of pub, customers mostly elderly. He unclipped a pound: ‘Pint of mild, mate’ — his call over loud since he wasn’t used to being served straight away. He also wasn’t a regular at this dying beacon among the ruins, and all the stares of the old men were on him. He leaned against the bar and stared back, thinking: ‘Christ, am I going to be like that in twenty years? Not if I know it. But maybe I don’t know it. Not much I don’t.’ They turned from his thoughtless eyes, back to low talk and dominoes, the comfortable vacancy of a half empty glass. He put his drink down after one medium sip.
In over ten years he had formulated certain rules about drinking beer. For example, he wouldn’t drink bad beer, and to cut down the chances of this he would never be the first at the bar for a drink when the pub opened its doors, wily enough to let some other get that hop-spit-and-a-sawdust down his unsuspecting gizzard. He often left a pint, walked out after one swallow if it tasted the slightest bit off-centre. Too many pals, himself included at one far-off time ago, had come to work on Monday suffering more from a couple of pints than some men did from a sling-down of forty. You couldn’t be too careful. And this fancy bottled beer they were always trying to shove at you had more heartburn in it than any of the draught stuff. As far as beer in tins was concerned, excuse me while I commit suicide — no, don’t wait, just turn your back. But the worst of all, bottled or not, was warm beer, and that’s what this pint of mild was that had just been dished up.
He invited the publican over. ‘This ale’s rotten. It’s warm,’ he told him. Everyone stopped what they were doing, and stared again, that concentrated stare kept by the old or finished for a member of the encroaching young, or a plain enemy with the expression of friend on his face. He slid it towards him: ‘It’s rotten. Taste it. Warm as Monday’s suds.’
‘You must be mistaken,’ the publican said. ‘My beer’s never rotten.’
‘Taste this, then.’
‘I have, friend, I taste every barrel before it’s put on.’
‘A young ’un like that don’t know what ale is,’ an old man-called, while the others chuckled comfortably.
‘Still,’ Frank said to the publican, surprised at the tense atmosphere over a matter nearly always rectified in willing silence, and quickly. ‘Still, whether you tasted it or not, that ale’s rotten, and so would my guts be if I drunk it. Warm ale once gave me the colic for a week.’
The publican’s face grew redder. ‘That’s about the tenth time you’ve called my ale rotten. It ain’t rotten.’
‘It’s warm though, and that’s the same to me. So how about changing it?’
‘I’ll do no such thing.’ He smacked one-and-six down on the counter. ‘Clear out.’
‘You soon know where you stand in this place. I expect it’ll be flat on its face next week.’ He took the pint jar, slow, mechanical, absent-minded almost, a black feast for all staring eyes, including the publican’s, and emptied its ale onto the floor: ‘I don’t drink warm suds,’ he said. ‘You should have changed it.’
Frank realized that he, in any case, ought not to have splashed out the beer with such deliberation, ought simply to have left it and walked out — or maybe knocked it accidentally with his elbow while turning from the counter. ‘Get the police,’ a voice called above the muttering cauldron of advice.
‘Set into him,’ someone else cried. ‘He don’t belong here.’
He walked unmolested as far as the door. On his way there he observed a good fire going in a side parlour, horse brasses above every shelf, regulation dartboard on the wall, coloured prints of horse races in black-bead frames, as well as the usual sick, dog, children, blind and ex-soldier collection boxes along the bar. The publican caught him by the arm. ‘Come back, you bleeder.’ Grey eyes, pupil and retina, glazed into one unseeing pint-sized point, were beamed onto him: The publican thought Frank was drunk, even though he seemed to carry it rather well. ‘You’re coming back. I want your name.’
Frank’s hand was on the door. People closed around to make themselves part of a climax. He looked at the publican’s concerned, determined face that hadn’t bargained for trouble this Saturday morning: he wore a blazer with an Air Force wing badge on his lapel, and a Marks and Spencer’s old school tie of black and red pattern. ‘Come and clean it up.’
‘Ar, that’s right,’ ran the chorus, ‘that’s just.’
Frank wanted to hit the man for suggesting he was the sort that would wipe up some mess, especially one that he had made. A bastard like that had never done a real day’s work in his life, he thought, as his fist stamped into him, causing a startled cry as the publican fell into the not so old man who had called out: ‘Ar, that’s right. That’s just.’
He was back in the street of empty houses, running along it and holding his fist, shoes crunching over smashed slates, kicking against half bricks and rotting woodlumps. The publican’s gang weren’t far behind, and he expected nothing less than lynching if they caught up. At great speed he ran into the same house, along the hallway and back into the living-room. By the fireplace he trod on the startled rat before it had time to shift, but it had scattered up the soot-banks and into the chimney before the publican’s boots squashed all life from it.