‘Hullo there, Jumbo, what’s your headache this time?’
‘Sir, please, sir.’
‘Come on, Jumbo, out with it.’
‘Sir, there’s someone asking where you live, sir,’ said Roach.
Jim put down the bell.
‘What sort of someone, Jumbo? Come on, I won’t bite you, come on, hey… hey! What sort of someone? Man someone? Woman? Juju man? Hey! Come on, old feller,’ he said softly, crouching to Roach’s height. ‘No need to cry. What’s the matter then? Got a temperature?’ He pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve. ‘What sort of someone?’ he repeated in the same low voice.
‘He asked at Mrs McCullum’s. He said he was a friend. Then he got back into his car, it’s parked in the church yard, sir.’ A fresh gust of tears: ‘He’s just sitting in it.’
‘Get the hell away, damn you!’ Jim called to a bunch of seniors grinning in a doorway. ‘Get the hell!’ He went back to Roach. ‘Tall friend? Sloppy tall kind of feller, Jumbo? Eyebrows and a stoop? Thin feller? Bradbury, come here and stop gawping! Stand by to take Jumbo up to Matron! Thin feller?’ he asked again, kind but very steady.
But Roach had run out of words. He had no memory any more, no sense of size or perspective; his faculty of selection in the adult world had gone. Big men, small men, old, young, crooked, straight, they were a single army of indistinguishable dangers. To say no to Jim was more than he could bear: to say yes was to shoulder the whole awful responsibility of disappointing him.
He saw Jim’s eyes on him, he saw the smile go out and felt the merciful touch of one big hand upon his arm.
‘Attaboy, Jumbo. Nobody ever watched like you, did they?’
Laying his head hopelessly against Bradbury’s shoulder, Bill Roach closed his eyes. When he opened them he saw through his tears that Jim was already halfway up the staircase.
Jim felt calm; almost easy. For days he had known there was someone. That also was part of his routine: to watch the places where the watchers asked. The church, where the ebb and flow of the local population is a ready topic; county hall, register of electors; tradesmen, if they kept customer accounts; pubs, if the quarry didn’t use them: in England he knew these were the natural traps which watchers automatically patrolled before they closed on you. And sure enough in Taunton two days ago, chatting pleasantly with the assistant librarian, Jim had come across the footprint he was looking for. A stranger, down from London apparently, had been interested in village wards, yes, a political gentleman – well more in the line of political research, he was, professional, you could tell – and one of the things he wanted, fancy that now, was the up-to-date record of Jim’s very village, yes, the voters’ list, they were thinking of making a door-to-door survey of a really out-of-the-way community, specially new immigrants. Yes, fancy that, Jim agreed and from then on made his dispositions. He bought railway tickets to places: Taunton Exeter, Taunton London, Taunton Swindon, all valid one month; because he knew that if he were on the run again, tickets would be hard to come by. He had uncached his old identities and his gun and hid them handily above ground; he dumped a suitcase full of clothes in the boot of the Alvis, and kept the tank full. These precautions made sleep a possibility; or would have done, before his back.
‘Sir, who won, sir?’
Prebble, a new boy, in dressing gown and toothpaste, on his way to surgery. Sometimes boys spoke to Jim for no reason, his size and crookedness were a challenge.
‘Sir, the match, sir, versus St Ermin’s.’
‘St Vermins,’ another boy piped. ‘Yes, sir, who won actually?’
‘Sir, they did, sir,’ Jim barked. ‘As you’d have known sir if you’d been watching sir,’ and swinging an enormous fist at them in a slow feinted punch, he propelled both boys across the corridor to Matron’s dispensary.
‘Night, sir.’
‘Night, you toads,’ Jim sang and stepped the other way into the sick bay for a view of the church and the cemetery. The sick bay was unlit, it had a look and a stink he hated. Twelve boys lay in the gloom dozing between supper and temperatures.