A military convoy went by, trucks and trailers hauling light artillery, the guns’ snouts muzzled. Owain drove on, passing an elderly Levantine woman in black robes who was diligently sweeping the pavement outside a redbrick mosque.
I was veering between floods of my own memories and Owain’s life. Almost by rote I tried to will myself back to Tanya, but it was halfhearted. For once I was relieved to escape my own turmoil, and intrigued to know where Owain was going.
He turned the Land Rover down a broad street. In the near distance the rusting cranes of Millwall Docks could be seen over the tops of shoebox apartment blocks, rank upon rank of them, raised during the 1960s and ’70s to house the influx of refugees from the Caribbean and the Middle East. Their breezeblock and concrete facades were dilapidated and sometimes bomb-damaged, reinforcing rods poking out of broken beams, shattered rooms laid bare to the elements. The roadsides were dotted with gutted vehicles, while sagging power lines had been jury-rigged to any available eminence. Despite this, the area had an air of colourful defiance. Walls were daubed and over-daubed with ancient posters, insignia and exhortations in Arabic, Turkish, Greek, all of which suggested a determined vibrancy, an insistence on sheer existence.
There were few people on the streets, and those in evidence halted and watched with a protective stillness as we drove past. To Owain, it was a little like entering a disputed frontier zone. This had long been a non-European settlement area, many of its inhabitants originally employed as merchant navy auxiliaries before emancipation allowed their conscription into the armed forces. With the docks no longer functional for half the year they were largely left to their own devices.
Owain pulled up outside a Victorian apartment building that looked as if it had once been something municipal. He checked the address on his sheet of paper and switched off the engine.
Neat ranks of black refuse sacks were stacked like body bags on both sides of the steps leading up to the front entrance. The apartment was located on the ground floor. Owain crossed a bare foyer and rapped on the door. Music was playing somewhere, tinny but energetic, a hectic oriental reel.
The place smelled of bleach and rancid drain water. Behind the thick glass of the door’s window hung a faded union flag in the Jamaican colours of green, yellow and black. Ten summers before the Civil Affairs Ministry had instituted a vogue for such ethnic adoptions in order to boost immigrant morale, along with parades and organised celebrations of multicultural life. It had proved popular while the weather remained good.
Owain knocked again. There was no reply. He hadn’t expected any, but it always paid to check.
He went outside and clambered up on the sacks to peer in the front window. Blackout curtains were drawn, but through a crack he could see that the room had been emptied.
He heard footsteps, and a dark-skinned man in his thirties came out of the main entrance, hobbling down the steps. He wore an old flak jacket zipped to the neck and a tank commander’s cap, its padded ear flaps dangling.
“The Clarksons,” Owain said to him. “Any idea where they might be?”
The man almost came to attention.
“Gone,” he said after a moment. “Major, sir.”
He was stick-thin, hollow-cheeked, some of his front teeth missing. An ex-serviceman, probably invalided out.
“Know when?” Owain asked.
“Just after midnight. New Year’s Eve.”
“That’s pretty precise. See them go, did you?”
“Heard it to start with. A big CHAP with a trailer for their stuff. They were out and gone in an hour.”
CHAP was shorthand for a Chariot All-Purpose vehicle, a workhorse transporter. “Did they say where?”
“Nobody knew anything in advance. Maybe not even them. But the younger boys were ripe for it, I can tell you that. Made enough racket to wake the whole street.”
“They were shouting?”
“Whooping with delight.”
“So it wasn’t a forced evacuation?”
The man was starting to look wary. “I’m just telling you what I saw. We were all taking a look, thinking maybe Santa was making a late delivery.”
There was a silence before the man said, “Is it a wedding?”
He was obviously referring to Owain’s uniform.
“Something like that. You didn’t see or hear anything else?”
A shake of the head.
“He was a friend of mine,” Owain said.
“Santa?”
Owain made the sound of a laugh. “Maurice.”
The man looked doubtful. He looked as if he was waiting to be dismissed.
I was standing in front of a mirror in navy pyjamas, rinsing my hands at the sink. A male nurse waited at the doorway, in charge of my wheelchair.
“What time is it?” I asked him.
“Quarter past three,” he said without looking at his watch.
I was losing time as well as space. How long ago had Tanya delivered me back to the hospital?
I dried my hands with a paper towel. The nurse looked impatient and bored. He was young, with a wispy moustache.
“Any news from my wife?” I asked him, as casually as possible.
