Now he could see his destination, on the far side of the main road. He couldn’t go straight to it, though a path led across grass to a gap in the railings. He’d been tricked by these paths before: they led you onto the main road and abandoned you there, on the wrong side of the railings, without a pavement. Sometimes he thought that the planners had faked those paths to teach people to obey without questioning.
He had to follow the walkway, a dried-up valley of concrete which plunged beneath the road. The tunnel was treacherous with mud and litter; the walls were untidy webs of graffiti. All the overhead lights had been ripped out. He stumbled through, holding his breath; the place smelled like an open sewer.
On the far side he clambered up concrete steps. Fragments of glass squeaked and cracked underfoot. Nearly there now. But did the name on the wall before him refer to the entire block? And where was 81?
He hurried beside the pebble-dashed wall, past displayed rooms. He peered through passages that opened between flats. There it was, at the far side of an inner square of concrete: an L-shaped flat, exposed at both ends by passages. Once before he’d found himself on this side of the main road, and had determined to see where Mr Fearon lived. The location reminded him of his own.
He made for the flat. Somewhere there was a faint metallic screeching. He was beneath the concrete stairway to the upper flat, and ready to knock on the door, before he saw that this wasn’t 81 at all. He recoiled, disoriented. Then he saw that the corners of the square were identical. He’d simply mistaken the corner – but none of the flats was 81.
He could feel his nerves tightening like a net. Had he come too far, beyond the territory whose name he’d read on the wall? There must be dozens of places in the concrete maze that looked just like 81. A dread which he’d tried to suppress was creeping into his thoughts – that sometime, perhaps in fog, he would come home and be unable to distinguish his own flat.
Anonymity surrounded him. The muffled screeching persisted, scraping at his nerves. That was the only sign of life here: the voice of a machine. What kind of machine? A bacon-slicer – no, not quite. Suddenly he remembered that he’d heard such a sound on Boaler Street, in Mr Fearon’s shop.
He limped towards the sound. Beyond one passage was a square, which seemed indistinguishable from the square he was leaving. From a corner flat came the screeching. He had to approach close before he could read the number, on an oval plaque smaller than an egg: 81. He hadn’t strayed from the right path for long.
He knocked, knocked louder. The screeching faltered, and failed. After a while the blue flowers on the plastic curtains stirred, and an old face peered between them. The flowers sagged back into place; the face reappeared, blurred and surrounded by separated blobs of its flesh, in the frosted glass of the door. At last the door opened.
The old man gripped the doorframe, both barring the way and supporting himself, and glared a challenge. Did he think Horridge was a complaining neighbour? He was silent for so long that Horridge wasn’t sure he recognised him. Could this face really have been Mr Fearon’s before it had shrunken inwards so? Then the old man said “You’re Frank Horridge’s son.”
It didn’t sound like an invitation to enter – more like the solution to an annoying problem. A frown joined his stare, urging his visitor to come to the point. Horridge had hoped to ask him a favour in memory of Boaler Street, but hadn’t expected him to be so crabby. He could only say like any other customer “Could you cut me some keys?”
The old man looked suspicious. Had he forgotten how Horridge knew he cut keys? At last he grumbled “I’m not supposed to do that, at home, you know.” But he relinquished the doorframe and turned his back on Horridge, who ventured to follow him.
In the main room the overhead light blazed. Dusty tassels dangled from the lampshade. Bluish daylight seeped through the curtains. Mr Fearon pulled back a shabby screen to reveal his cutter’s tools, as though he had been hiding them from the portrait of Christ on the wall, gazing out of the glittery rays of his halo. The business seemed furtive – but Horridge refused to be made to feel like a criminal. What he was doing was right and necessary.
He took out the moulds. He had a moment of panic: suppose they had been squashed out of shape in his pocket? At first he’d protected them with the cards that bore the photographs, and now they were wrapped in newspaper. He unwrapped them and handed them over.
The old man hardly glanced at them. “These are for your flat, are they?”
“ Yes, of course. I made these impressions a long time ago, in case I ever lost my keys.”
“ It’s the first place I’ve seen round here with two Yale locks in it.”
Horridge felt as though a steel trap had sprung in his belly. “I like to keep my bedroom locked.” His polite determinedly unoffended tone sounded guilty to him.
“ You don’t want to go locking interior doors. If you have burglars they’ll only break the locks and cause more damage.”
That was none of his business. Though his body felt tightly entangled in nerves, Horridge refused to answer. After a while the old man stared hard at the moulds. “What kind of clay is this?”
“ Just some that I used to play with.”
He hadn’t anticipated that question; his lie was jerky, nervous. But his reference to the past seemed to mellow Mr Fearon. “Aye, those were the days,” the old man said. “It was a good street. You knew everyone then. Not like this bloody transit camp.” The sense of shared memories made him friendlier. “All right, I’ll make your keys for you. I’ll whiz round to you with them tomorrow. Whereabouts do you live?”
Nobody must know where he lived, not now.
The skin of Horridge’s face felt as though it were shrinking. “If it’s all the same to you,” he managed to say between stiffening lips, “I’ll wait for them.”
“ Well, it’s not the same to me at all. It’s a damned long job, son. Did you know that?”
“ No, I didn’t. I’m sorry.” Before the old man could win the conversation, he added hastily “It’s urgent, you see. I can’t get into the house without it.”
“ You’ll just want the front door key, then. Which one is that?”
Oh God. God, no. Could the old man see the sweat exploding all over Horridge’s body? “I won’t be able to get into my bedroom either,” he complained.
“ You’re in a bad way, aren’t you?”
Unsure what the comment referred to, Horridge didn’t dare answer. “All right, I’ll do it now,” the old man sighed at last, shaking his head. “Just you wait there and don’t start getting restless. This is going to take longer than you think.”
He plodded behind the screen, and drew it closed behind him. Eventually he emerged, bearing some object which he concealed from Horridge, and trudged into the kitchen. Horridge heard the flare of gas, and its monotonous breath, sometimes interrupted. After a considerable time Mr Fearon pottered back. The screen creaked shut.
His comings and goings seemed to dawdle on for hours. Each time he appeared he made some remark, as though he’d spent the interval thinking of it. “I suppose you still miss your father. Always good for a laugh, old Frank.”
“ There aren’t many like him these days.”
“ Brought you up single-handed and looked after you when you had the accident, with never a word of complaint.”
Horridge could only agree inarticulately; he felt at the mercy of the old man’s goodwill. Once Mr Fearon said “Getting much work?” Perhaps he was growing senile. And once, to Horridge’s dismay, he said “Just keep your ears open for the door. I’ve got someone coming for keys.”
The cramped room, the old man’s small sounds which Horridge could neither ignore nor interpret, his infuriating slowness, his secrecy which preyed on Horridge’s imagination – everything reminded him of life with his father. His hands moved restlessly, neither quite opening nor becoming fists: he felt he was a puppet of his nerves. When the metallic shrieking began, it seemed to drill deep into his teeth. At least it meant that the ordeal was almost over, for the old man soon emerged with two keys. Horridge clasped them gratefully. “How much do I owe you?”