all, most of their bodies gutted in the Blitz.
A voice said, “Spare some change?”
A beggar with a big beard sat in the doorway of a recruitment firm, dark eyes staring up at us. I fumbled in my pocket, found nothing, dug into my satchel, felt the desire to keep on walking, the rhythm briefly broken, found my wallet, found the £30 I carried inside, handed it over.
“Cheers,” said the beggar.
“Any time,” I replied, and kept on walking.
A few doorways later and a voice said, “So you like to walk?”
It was the same voice.
It was the same beggar.
“Sure,” I replied, and kept on walking.
By the bolted metal door round the back of a photocopy shop, he was still here, knees huddled up to his chin, blanket pulled over his shoulders. “It’s the new thing, you know. Walking,” he said.
“No it’s not. In the old days people used to walk all the time.”
“Yeah . . . but that was because it was walk or sit behind a shitting horse in a flea-infested coffin smelling of sawdust and widdle.”
“You may have a point, although I imagine that most of the early modern period smelt of sawdust and widdle regardless of your means of transport.”
There was a long brick warehouse ahead, its back turned to the street, no doorways for the beggar to sit in. That bought me a few more moments to gather my thoughts, and sure enough, sat in the next doorway past that, there he was again, lighting a fag.
“You know,” he said, “it’s amazing it took until 1865 for some bright spark to build a proper sewerage system.”
“Antheaps,” I replied. “Or wasps’ nests. With a small nest, you don’t have to worry. It’s got to be big before you wonder if it’ll fall off the tree.”
“Someone’s been using metaphor on you, right?”
I had to wait two more doorways to reply.
“Yup.”
“Sounds to me like a paddle full of shite.”
“You’ve got to admit it has a certain chaotic something. London burnt down in 1666 and everyone went, whoopee, let’s rebuild! A golden city! But look what happened. Chaos and fluster. Everyone was so eager to live in this golden city that they didn’t even have time to build it.”
Goswell Road. Nowhere for a beggar to sit on the junction of the Goswell Road and Clerkenwell Road, just two staring dragons in a traffic island. I waited, leaning against the traffic lights. They changed. I crossed, still heading west. There were very few doorways on this side; a pub ahead, but it was occupied by a group of scruffy trendies in carefully slashed jeans sharing a bottle of wine. I kept walking. An art studio of some kind presented a low, grubby doorway.
The beggar said, “Can I make a suggestion?”
“You’ve got an agenda, right?”
“Sure.”
“OK. Suggest away.”
“Don’t do the walk. Don’t get inaugurated.”
“Why not?”
Art studio to chippy; he was in the door between that and the strip club pretending to be a pub.
“You want to be Midnight Mayor?”
“No.”
“There you go!”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Sure it is. You be free.”
I kept on walking.
He wasn’t in the next doorway.
Or the one after that.
He’d had his say.
We kept on walking.
Keep moving. If you keep moving you might just manage to leave thoughts behind, you might get it done before they catch you.
Keep on walking.
Come be me . . .
Aching right hand.
We be light, we be life, we be fire!
What would Jesus do?
We sing electric flame, we rumble underground wind, we dance heaven!
I like walking. Each step is a thought without words, a thought without words is a thought without blame, without retribution, without consequence.
Come be we and be free . . .
I think he did it to control you, to bind you, to curse you with his office.
. . . we be blue electric angels!
Mr Mayor.
“Mr Fucking Mayor.”
I looked up.
Kemsley’s face was a badly peeled tomato, grilled at a high heat and left to sag. You couldn’t look like that and be alive, and there was no way the Kemsley I had seen a few hours - maybe a day? - ago was up and walking. No way he’d be here, just to talk to me. I skirted south towards Holborn Viaduct, and he fell into step beside me. Boarded-up butchers’ shops, renovated Victorian ironwork painted green, red, gold, with the little dragons guarding the city wall, the shields, twin red crosses on a white background, one cross smaller than the other, one cross a sword; Domine dirige nos, the motto of the city, everywhere, once you looked,