“What set did they send down? It seemed very heavy for him to carry about.”
“It’s the kind Mayfly used in the war, sir, that’s the beauty of it. The old B2 in the waterproof casing. If we’ve only got a couple of weeks, there doesn’t hardly seem time to go over anything else. Not that he’s ready to work it yet—”
“What does it weigh?”
“About fifty pounds, sir, in all. The ordinary suitcase set. It’s the waterproofing that adds the weight, but he’s got to have it if he’s going over rough country. Specially at this time of year.” He hesitated. “But he’s slow on his Morse, sir.”
“Quite. Do you think you can bring him up to scratch in the time?”
“Can’t tell yet, sir. Not till we really get cracking on the set. Not till the second period, when he’s had his little bit of leave. I’m just letting him handle the buzzer at present.”
“Thank you,” said Haldane.
Thirteen
At the end of the first two weeks they gave him forty-eight hours’ leave of absence. He had not asked for it and when they offered it to him, he seemed puzzled. In no circumstances was he to visit his own neighborhood. He could depart for London on Friday but he said he preferred to go on Saturday. He could return Monday morning but he said it depended and he might come back late on Sunday. They stressed that he was to keep clear of anyone who might know him, and in some curious fashion this seemed to console him.
Avery, worried, went to Haldane.
“I don’t think we should send him off into the blue. You’ve told him he can’t go back to South Park, or visit his friends, even if he’s got any. I don’t see quite where he can go.”
“You think he’ll be lonely?”
Avery blushed. “I think he’ll just want to come back all the time.”
“We can hardly object to that.”
They gave him subsistence money in old notes, fives and ones. He wanted to refuse it, but Haldane pressed it on him as if a principle were involved. They offered to book him a room but he declined. Haldane assumed he was going to London so in the end he went, as if he owed it to them.
“He’s got some woman,” said Johnson with satisfaction.
He left on the midday train, carrying one pigskin suitcase and wearing his camel’s hair coat; it had a slightly military cut, and leather buttons but no person of breeding could ever have mistaken it for a British officer’s coat.
* * *
He handed in his suitcase to the checkroom at Paddington Station and wandered out into Praed Street because he had nowhere to go. He walked about for half an hour, looking at the shopwindows and reading the tarts’ advertisements on the glazed notice boards. It was Saturday afternoon: a handful of old men in trilby hats and raincoats hovered between the pornography shops and the pimps on the corner. There was very little traffic: an atmosphere of hopeless recreation filled the street.
The cinema club charged a pound and gave him a predated membership card because of the law. He sat among ghost figures on a kitchen chair. The film was very old; it might have come over from Vienna when the persecutions began. Two girls, quite naked, took tea. There was no sound track and they just went on drinking tea, changing position a little as they passed their cups. They would be sixty by now if they had survived the war. He got up to go because it was after half past five and the pubs were open. As he passed the kiosk at the doorway, the manager said: “I know a girl who likes a gay time. Very young.”
“No thanks.”
“Two and a half quid; she likes foreigners. She gives it foreign if you like. French.”
“Run away.”
“Don’t you tell me to run away.”
“Run away.” Leiser returned to the kiosk, his small eyes suddenly alight. “Next time you offer me a girl, make it something English, see.”
The air was warmer, the wind had dropped, the street emptied; pleasures were indoors now. The woman behind the bar said, “Can’t mix it for you now, dear. Not till the rush dies down. You can see for yourself.”