Awaiting the departure of his plane which left late at night, but sure somehow already that he wouldn’t be on it, Frankie went out into Stepney to have a drink: both because his Mahometan host didn’t keep alcohol and Frankie disapproved of Indian hemp (well, just didn’t like it), and because he was determined, even at the risk of being caught, that he wasn’t going to hide from anyone: be very careful, yes, and use his loaf, but not lose his self-respect by lurking.
In Stepney the licensing hours, though their existence is politely recognised, are dexterously evaded in a number of cordial speakeasies: where after the club below has closed at the well-regulated hour with much clanging of bolts and ritual cries of, ‘Last orders, please!’ selected guests proceed to upper rooms to eat, drink, embrace their girls or gamble. To such an establishment Frankie now repaired and was soon ensconced beside a whisky bottle in a second-floor room, and in the company of various citizens of the outlying countries of the British Commonwealth of nations.
Here his meal of chicken-and-peas was interrupted by an insistent summons, from the proprietor, to a public call-box insalubriously situated beside an appalling bi-sexual lavatory. The voice at the far end, agitated and thus more incomprehensible than usual, was that of the excellent Bengali: who told him ‘one law man’ had called at the house just after he’d left and made enquiries concerning him; that he, the Bengali, had revealed absolutely nothing and the law man had now departed; and that Frankie must take ‘well care’ not to return to the house as ‘the eye’ was certainly put upon it; and finally – in a torrent of the most urgent assurance – whatever happened he, Frankie, could absolutely rely on him, the Bengali, to safeguard all his property and hide it: as he had already done with his packed travelling bag by stuffing it, the very moment he’d heard the untoward soft knock, inside the communal dust-bin out the back.
Frankie expressed thanks and assured his friend of his total belief in his integrity (he meant this). He then hung up and without returning to the festive communal room went quickly downstairs to the street. At the door he tapped himself to check on the presence of his passport and his money: the luggage, such as it was, could be abandoned.
He set off through the Stepney streets but in an easterly direction. What they’d be expecting him to do, he calculated, was go to the west end of the city to an air terminal. Instead he’d make for London docks, try to get a ride or even stow away, and if he failed travel overland to an eastern port and reach the Continent of Europe. Ships, after all, were his affair and more reliable. Diagnosing thus he saw again, approaching on the further pavement and this time on night duty, the young officer who had arrested him, earlier on, over the absurdity of the bag.
In their feeling for persons they have succeeded in convicting, the officers of the Force fall into three chief types. There are those who feel that any convicted person is a ‘client’ who should return from time to time for treatment: if you do harm to a man, you should prove how right you were by harming him again. Then those who feel in an almost friendly fashion, well, he’s done his lot, good luck to him, he’s stale stuff now, let’s look round for someone else. And then those (a very minor group) who just feel nothing in particular: it was ‘a case’.
Unfortunately the officer now approaching Frankie belonged to category one; and recognising his former victim (though regretting that on this occasion he didn’t appear to be carrying a suspect bag) he crossed the road obliquely (and warily, too), his boots sounding like metal (as was indeed the case), and there he stopped a few feet from the pavement by which Frankie was advancing, in as safe-and-sound a position as seemed possible for the encounter.
But this time Frankie knew the danger; and approaching steadily as if he saw nothing untoward, he suddenly hurled all the small change in his pocket at the copper’s face, turned abruptly down one of the eighteenth-century courts which in this section of Stepney intricately abound, and loped off fairly silently yet at considerable speed. A whistle blew, a torch shone, and feet came clanging.
Without much difficulty Frankie outwitted his pursuer by entering, while still some way ahead, one of the bombed buildings which, a generation after the end of World War II, still rot and crumble in the capital; and there he settled himself quickly down upon a pile of fairly comfortable rubble and abandoned furniture that lay timelessly dissolving in a distant corner.
‘Fuck off!’ said a voice.
Quite unaware, Frankie had stumbled on what was to the detritus of the floating population of the borough, their trysting-place; and the position he had selected within a few feet of those who in more pastoral surroundings might be described as a ‘courting couple’. This couple clearly wanted to get on with their courting without uncouth interruption.
‘Take it easy, mate,’ said Frankie softly. ‘I got to stay here a moment.’
The male – who by his tones and truculence Frankie observed to his dismay was drunk – repeated, ‘I said, fuck off. You got no respect for privacy?’
Frankie risked a throw. ‘You a seaman like I am?’ he said.
‘No!’
It would be a landsman. Frankie tried again. ‘You like a pound-note, mate? I got to stay here a while – it’s a bit urgent.’
From the rubble and his invisible (though audibly grunting) consort, the erotic landsman rose like an angry phoenix. ‘Now, look!’ he cried very much too loud for Frankie’s liking. ‘Just make away or I have to thump you.’
Frankie got up, biting his rage, said, ‘Okay, mate,’ and started slowly towards the light. Unwisely from every point of view the landsman tried to help him on his way with a parting shove. Consequently both men stumbled, and several hundredweight of miscellaneous London ruins and garbage collapsed with a resounding, thudding clatter.
A bit bashed on the head and dazed, Frankie staggered up knee-deep in obstacles as several lights came on in surrounding buildings, accompanied by cries and sleepy murmurs. As he struggled to the exit a torch shone blank-flash in his face – a startling experience at the best of times. Ten minutes later, filthy and rather battered, he was lodged in the adjacent headquarters of the Force where an interested sergeant was examining his passport and several envelopes crammed with currency.