next as we were. On my second circuit beneath the stony-faced portraits of dead white men, I met the eyes of the little plastic dragon again.
I sat down on the edge of the desk. There was a portrait behind the mad-eyed dragon, all white whisker and tight waistcoat. A man in his late sixties, staring out disdainfully at all onlookers, a window behind him implausibly overlooking the Tower of London. One arm held some sort of yappy dog, whose misproportioned features suggested an animal incapable of holding still, especially for an artist. The other rested on the window sill, palm turned upwards, fingers pointing out to the city behind. I looked closer. I leant right in until my nose almost touched the rough canvas. There was a mark on the man’s hand. It was thin, almost lost in the gloomy shadows of the portrait, a tiny stroke of red across the wrinkled gloom of his flesh. It looked like someone had taken a scalpel and carefully carved a shallow red cross into his skin - no, two shallow red crosses. One was smaller than the other, nestling in the top left-hand corner that the first cross made. The cut looked fresh, no pale scar tissue, but neither was there a bandage and I couldn’t imagine the whiskered old man being in a hurry to make a big deal of his injuries. I looked back at the plastic dragon with the mad eyes, at the shield it held in its grip. A white shield with two red crosses on it, one smaller than the other, a sword more than a cross, painted into the upper left-hand corner of its big brother.
I sat cross-legged on Nair’s desk and went through the inevitable. I pulled the black mitten off my right hand and bit and tugged at the knot of the bandage until it came free. I unwound the white cotton, feeling fibres sticking and breaking against the bloody mess of my skin, and with almost no surprise and a good deal of regret, looked at the palm of my hand.
Two red crosses, one smaller than the other, had been carved very carefully by a Catholic graffiti artist into my skin.
I changed the bandage, set fire to the older, bloodier rags, and threw the ashes into the nearest bin. I pulled my glove back over my fist, threw cold water over my face and walked from Nair’s apartment as casually and calmly as if I was a gasman, come to take the reading.
We walked. Where didn’t concern us, and why didn’t even feature. We walked because we could walk. We walked through Lincoln’s Inn and down towards Middle Temple, through grand courtyards and tucked-away alleys, until we came to the Embankment. We walked along by the river, smelling it, watching the high tide rub against the old black stones, west until we came to Cleopatra’s Needle. The smell of greasy hot dog in a paper bag stopped us. We bought one with extra ketchup and, goo dribbling down our chin, kept on walking. We climbed the steps onto Hungerford Bridge, crossed it, trains rumbling noisily alongside, the river churning peacefully below. I stood in the middle of the bridge and turned my face towards the east and breathed in the smell of water, salt, seagulls and tourist boats. At the end of the bridge sat a beggar, huddled over in the cold, wrapped in jumper and duvet both turned the colour of the thin London dirt that billowed in dry winds. I gave him a couple of quid and got a dirty look from a couple waiting for the lift down to the street. We ignored them and trotted down the stairs to the flat square stones of the South Bank.
It was already past lunchtime, but the restaurants beneath the Royal Festival Hall, all shining glass disguising uninspired interior, were heaving. Jugglers competed with ice cream vans parked opposite the skaters who spun and twisted in the uneven concrete ups and downs around the pillars of the Hayward Gallery and National Theatre. I watched them for a while. Kids, average age maybe sixteen. Hoods and thick gloves against the cold, baggy jeans, greens and blues and blacks and dark reds, sports logos and battered old wooden skateboards with the edges splintered off. There wasn’t much room for impressive stunts - a few stairs, a few slopes, a few drains - but that didn’t stop them from throwing themselves at everything that got in