Then they gave him some old clothes, which he liked. They weren’t such bad people, even if they did talk about him as though he wasn’t there. One of them even smiled at him; a burly man with a grizzled beard. Smiled as he would at a dog.
They were odd clothes he was given. Either too big or too small. All colours: yellow socks, dirty white shirt, pin-stripe trousers that had been made for a glutton, a thread-bare sweater, heavy boots. He liked dressing up, putting on two vests and two pairs of socks when they weren’t looking. He felt reassured with several thicknesses of cotton and wool wrapped around him.
Then they left him with a ticket for his bed in his hand, to wait for the dormitories to be unlocked. He was not impatient, like some of the men in the corridors with him. They yelled incoherently, many of them, their accusations laced with obscenities, and they spat at each other. It frightened him. All he wanted was to sleep. To lie down and sleep.
At eleven o’clock one of the warders unlocked the gate to the dormitory, and all the lost men filed through to find themselves an iron bed for the night. The dormitory, which was large and badly-lit, stank of disinfectant and old people.
Avoiding the eyes and the flailing arms of the other derelicts, Steve found himself an ill-made bed, with one thin blanket tossed across it, and lay down to sleep. All around him men were coughing and muttering and weeping. One was saying his prayers as he lay, staring at the ceiling, on his grey pillow. Steve thought that was a good idea. So he said his own child’s prayer.
“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look upon this little child, Pity my… What was the word?
Pity my — simplicity, Suffer me to come to thee.”
That made him feel better; and the sleep, a balm, was blue and deep.
Quaid sat in darkness. The terror was on him again, worse than ever. His body was rigid with fear; so much so that he couldn’t even get out of bed and snap on the light. Besides, what if this time, this time of all times, the tenor was true? What if the axe-man was at the door in flesh and blood? Grinning like a loon at him, dancing like the devil at the top of the stairs, as Quaid had seen him, in dreams, dancing and grinning, grinning and dancing.
Nothing moved. No creak of the stair, no giggle in the shadows. It wasn’t him, after all. Quaid would live ‘til morning.
His body had relaxed a little now. He swung his legs out of bed and switched on the light. The room was indeed empty. The house was silent. Through the open door he could see the top of the stairs. There was no axe-man, of course.
Steve woke to shouting. It was still dark. He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep, but his limbs no longer ached so badly. Elbows on his pillow, he half-sat up and stared down the dormitory to see what all the commotion was about. Four bed-rows down from his, two men were fighting. The bone of contention was by no means clear. They just grappled with each other like girls (it made Steve laugh to watch them), screeching and puffing each other’s hair. By moonlight the blood on their faces and hands was black.
One of them, the older of the two, was thrust back across his bed, screaming: “I will not go to the Finchley Road!
You will not make me. Don’t strike me! I’m not your man!
I’m not!”
The other was beyond listening; he was too stupid, or too mad, to understand that the old man was begging to be left alone. Urged on by spectators on every side, the old man’s assailant had taken off his shoe and was belabouring his victim with it. Steve could hear the crack, crack of his blows: heel on head. There were cheers accompanying each strike, and lessening cries from the old man.
Suddenly, the applause faltered, as somebody came into the dormitory. Steve couldn’t see who it was; the mass of men crowded around the fight were between him and the door.