“Present tense,” Marty commented.
Halifax went on as though he hadn’t been interrupted. “He used to come in here personally, before his lady wife died. Then he stopped coming. He still bought the fruit. Had somebody come and pick it up for him. And at Christmas, there was always a check for the kiddies. There still is, come to that. Still sends money for them.”
The wasp had alighted on the back of his hand, where the sweet juice of one fruit or another had dried. Halifax let it have its fill. Marty liked him. If Halifax wasn’t willing to volunteer the information Marty wouldn’t be able to bully it out of the man.
“Now you come here and tell me you’re a friend of his,” Halifax said. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? People have friends who’d cut their throats.”
“His more than most.”
“True. So much money, so few people who care about him.” Halifax had a sad look. “Seems to me I should keep his hideaway secret, don’t you? Or else who can he trust in all the world?”
“Yes,” Marty conceded. What Halifax said made perfect and compassionate sense, and there was nothing he was prepared to do to make him rescind it.
“Thank you,” he said, cowed by the lesson. “I’m sorry to have kept you from your work.” He made his way back toward the shop. He’d gone a few paces when Halifax said: “You were the one.”
Marty pivoted on his heel.
“What?”
“You were the one who came for the strawberries. I remember you. Only you looked different then.”
Marty ran his hand across several days’ growth of beard; shaving was a forgotten craft these mornings.
“Not the hair,” Halifax said. “You were harder. I didn’t take to you.”
Marty waited somewhat impatiently for Halifax to finish this farewell homily. His mind was already turning over other possibilities. It was only when he turned back into Halifax’s words that he realized the man had changed his mind. He was going to tell. He beckoned Marty back across the yard.
“You think you can help him?”
“Maybe.”
“I hope somebody can.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“I’ll tell you. He rang the shop, asked for me. Funny, I recognized the voice immediately, even after all these years. He asked me to bring him some strawberries. He said he couldn’t come himself. It was terrible.”
“Why?”
“He’s so frightened.” Halifax hesitated, looking for the right words. “I remember him as being big, you know? Impressive. He’d come in the shop and everyone would part for him. Now? Shrunk to nothing. Fear did that to him. I’ve seen it happen. My sister-in-law, same thing happened to her. She had cancer. Fear killed her months before the tumor.”
“Where is he?”
“I tell you, I went back home and I didn’t say a word to anyone. I just drank half a bottle of Scotch, straight off. Never done that in my life. I just wanted to get the way he’d looked out of my head. It really turned my stomach, hearing him and seeing him that way. I mean-if the likes of him’s scared, what chance have the rest of us got?”
“You’re safe,” Marty said, hoping to God the European’s revenge wouldn’t stretch as far as the old man’s strawberry supplier. Halifax was a good man. Marty found himself holding on to this realization while staring at the round, red face. Here is goodness. Flaws too, no doubt: sins by the armful perhaps. But the good was worth celebrating, however many stains the man had. Marty wanted to tattoo the date of this recognition on the palm of his hand.
“There’s a hotel,” Halifax was saying. “It used to be called the Orpheus, apparently. It’s up the Edgware Road; Staple Corner. Terrible, rundown place. Waiting for the demolition squad, I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“He’s there alone?”
“Yes.” Halifax sighed, thinking of how the mighty had fallen. “Perhaps,” he suggested after a moment, “you might take him some peaches too?”
He went into the shop and came back with a tattered copy of the London A to Z Street Atlas. He flicked through the age-creamed pages looking for the appropriate map, all the while sounding his dismay at this turn of events, and his hope that things might still turn out well. “Lot of streets been leveled around the hotel,” he explained. “These maps are well out of date, I’m afraid.”