Geoff Nicholson - Bleeding London

In Cambridge Avenue I came across a disused church constructed from sheets of corrugated iron, with a sign on the tower that said ‘T. S. Bicester’. I had no idea what that meant, but there was another sign on the door, a sort of wanted poster, asking for people to come along and help with the Willesden Sea Cadets. The T.S. stood for training ship (not Thomas Steams), and there were two circular holes in the doors meant to look like portholes.

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In Golden Square there was a man carrying a pair of torn toms. He went into a phone box, made a call and started talking to someone at the other end of the phone and I heard him say, “Hey, I’ve bought some torn toms, listen.” And he played the torn toms down the phone to his friend.

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I was in Roman Road, Bethnal Green, not that far from where Judy used to live; still does for all I know. Judy — the best sex, the wildest sex, pure London sex, I always think of it as.

I’d done my ten miles and it was beginning to rain, so I felt free to bend my rules and go into the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood to take shelter. Inside I was struck by how many of the exhibits were miniaturizations of London. There was a nineteenth-century peep show, a large black box with a tiny eyehole into which you peered and saw the Thames Tunnel, made up of receding planes of paper figures and arches; a pedestrian tunnel then, a train tunnel now, I think.

There was a German model of the Monument and its surrounding buildings, printed on paper to be cut out and constructed. There was Buckingham Palace printed on thick wooden blocks as a backdrop for toy soldiers.

There were also various board games involving London, some very obscure, some as familiar as Monopoly. I’ve never understood Monopoly. The London it refers to seems to bear no relation to the London anybody knows. There’s a story, almost certainly apocryphal, that Waddington’s, who were based in Yorkshire, sent a secretary down to London on a daytrip. She wandered around and jotted down the names of places she saw almost at random, and these names were used on the board.

I don’t see how this can be literally true. It would be a pretty arduous daytrip that took in Whitechapel Road, the Old Kent Road, the Angel, as well as Bond Street, Whitehall, Park Lane, Fleet Street, plus all the train stations. Still, the sense remains that Monopoly was devised by someone who didn’t have much of a grasp of London geography. There are plenty of those about.

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Park Lane, Hackney, a wide ugly road, cars jammed in tight, a derelict pub, boarded-up windows that burglars or squatters have unsuccessfully tried to break into. There was an old lady walking along the road: blue beret, a short rain coat, a flowered skirt. Suddenly she lifted up the hem of the skirt and reached underneath for her slip, which she then raised to her face and blew her nose on, good and hard.

Nearby an ugly, uncared for three-storey building and by the door a plaque announcing that this was the Dickens Hotel. The plaque was the shiniest, cleanest, most polished thing in the whole street. I wonder what kind of people stay at a hotel in Park Lane, Hackney. Maybe sad people who come down to London from Yorkshire and don’t have much of a grasp of London geography.

It was eight in the morning and Mick Wilton was in the cold, shared bathroom of the Dickens getting himself washed and shaved, when he heard a light tread outside, footsteps walking along the corridor in the direction of his bedroom. He’d left the door unlocked since, with the exception of his gun, Mick owned nothing that anybody would wish to steal. The gun, however, was not a thing he left lying around in his room, not even while washing and shaving. It was now tucked into the waistband of his trousers and he couldn’t help feeling its presence. He listened to the intruder arriving at the door of his empty bedroom, knocking once and immediately entering.

Mick wiped the foam from his half-shaved face, moved the gun to his pocket and touched it for reassurance, then he silently left the bathroom to return to his bedroom. The door was open a couple of inches. He couldn’t see round it and no sound came from behind but he knew someone was inside. He took a deep breath then sharply kicked it wide open and charged into the room, ready for most things, but in the event quite unprepared for the sight of the housecoat-clad landlady setting something down on his bed.

She spun round, startled and terrified. The blue, quilted housecoat flapped open to reveal more chest than Mick wanted to see, and the landlady’s newly made-up face gawped at him open-mouthed and wide-eyed. Then the shock evaporated on both sides. It was only her. It was only him. The bathos of the moment produced apologies from each of them, hasty and mutually unfelt, and the landlady said, “I was only bringing you your post.”

She pointed towards the thing she had placed on his bed, a neat, brown-paper package; harmless-looking, but Mick’s alarm returned. Who would send him a package? How many people even knew he was here?

“It’s got a peculiar rattle to it,” the landlady said. “Why don’t you open it?”

But Mick would not touch or even investigate the package until she had left the room. When, with some reluctance, she had gone, he picked it up cautiously. It was light and not solid and as he shook it gently he could hear the contents rattle together. The sound was dry and brittle, unthreatening. Once Mick had removed the brown paper he was not too surprised to find that the package contained a jigsaw puzzle. That was pretty much what it had felt and sounded like. But who the hell would be sending him jigsaws? Who would be sending him anything? He searched the wrapping and found a sliver of paper, a compliment slip from the London Particular with a note that read, “Something to do in the evenings besides watching second-rate videos.”

A part of him felt insulted. OK, he realized she thought she was smarter than he was, but did she really need to rub it in like this? What kind of idiot, what kind of child, did she think he was that he’d want to play with a jigsaw? He was about to toss the present away disdainfully when he looked at the box for the first time. It didn’t contain a picture as such, no rural English scene with thatched cottages and a duck pond, instead it showed a highly detailed map of London. He still thought it was a pretty stupid present but at least he could now see the point of it, the joke.

Grudgingly he opened up the box and looked at all the myriad pieces of London meshed together inside, pieces that were asymmetrical yet with a reassuring sort of regularity; distant and diverse parts of the city fragmented and brought into improbable contact. He picked out a couple of pieces at random; on one completely green piece he saw the word Crystal (of Crystal Palace), and another piece, entirely blue, part of Barn Elms Water Works. He let them drop back into the box and they left a few filaments of cardboard dust on his fingers.

He looked at the lid and checked the dimensions of the completed puzzle and saw that it would be much too big for any of the flat surfaces in the room. Having so recendy felt insulted he now felt oddly deprived. He wanted to make a start. Regretfully he placed the lid back and gently put the box away in a drawer of the bedside cabinet. He left the brown paper on the floor, but he took the compliment slip, reread it, then folded it carefully and put it in his wallet.

As he left the Dickens a little while later, the landlady was in the hall, dressed now, obviously waiting for him yet wanting the meeting to appear accidental.

“It’s always nice to get presents, isn’t it?” she said, and Mick couldn’t disagree.