Alan Moore - Jerusalem

Today, St. Mary’s Street was empty save a scroungey-looking dog. Freddy passed on, not for the first time he reflected, to the top of Castle Street where he turned left and headed down to where the flats were now.

It was when Mary Jane made that remark about what she got up to at the Dragon — the Green Dragon on the Mayorhold — which was where the lesbians gathered. As unwelcome as the thought of it had been, it had set Freddy off, set him off thinking about sex again. That’s why he’d eyed the barmaid down at the Black Lion. To be quite honest sex was a frustration and a nuisance now as much as anything, but once it came into his head it rattled round until he’d satisfied its nagging voice and all its wearying demands. Now that he thought about it, though, it had been much the same for him while he was in the life. It wasn’t fair of him to blame his circumstances now for all the things that made him feel fed up. He’d had a fair shake, Freddy thought, all things considered. No one was to blame but him for how he’d handled his affairs, and he could see that there was justice in the way he’d ended up. Justice above the streets.

He was just thinking that he’d not seen any of that area’s clergymen around as yet today, the brothers or whatever they preferred to call themselves, when who should there be struggling up the street towards him than one of that very lot: a stout chap looking hot under his robes and all of that lark, making hard work of an old sack what he’d got across his shoulder. Freddy had a little chuckle to himself, thinking that it was more than likely nicked church candle-sticks or the collection plates or else the lead from off the roof inside the sack, it looked that heavy.

As they neared each other, the old priest chap lifted his flushed, sweating face and noticed Freddy, giving him a big warm smile of greeting so that from the offset Freddy liked the man. He looked like that young actor off the telly who played Fancy Smith in Z-Cars , only older, how he’d look if he were in his fifties or his sixties, with a beard and all grey hair. Their paths met halfway down the bit between Horsemarket and the path or ramp or stairs, whatever it was called, that led into the houses there, the flats. Both of them stopped and said hello politely to each other, with this ruddy-faced old Friar Tuck chap having a great rumbling voice and something of an accent Freddy couldn’t place. It sounded a bit backwards, like a country accent could if you weren’t used to them, and Freddy thought the bloke might be from Towcester or out that way, with his thees and thys.

“It is a hot day to be out, I was this moment saying to myself. How goes the world with thee now, my fine, honest fellow?”

Freddy wondered if this chap had heard of him, his nicking all the loaves and pints of milk back in the old times, and if all this ‘honest fellow’ stuff was just a parson’s manner when he took the mickey out of someone. By and large, though, he seemed a straightforward sort and Freddy thought that he should take him at face value.

“Oh, it looks like a hot day, all right, and I suppose the world goes well enough. What of yourself? That bag of yours looks like a burden.”

Setting his rough sack down on the ground with a small groan of gratitude at the relief, the parson shook his wooly head and grinned.

“God bless thee, no … or if it is it’s not a burden I begrudge. I have been told I am to bring it to the centre. Dost thou know where that might be?”

Freddy was stumped just for a moment, thinking that one through. The only centre that he knew of was the sports and recreation centre, where they played the billiards there halfway down Horseshoe Street, where Freddy would be going later on if all were well. Deciding that must be the place that the old feller meant, Freddy proceeded to give him the right directions.

“If it’s where I’m thinking of, then you must turn right by that tree along the end there.” Freddy gestured to the end of Castle Street. “Go down that way until you reach the crossroads at the bottom. If you go straight over and you carry on downhill, it’s on your left across the road, just halfway down.”

The old boy’s face, already bright with sweat, lit up to hear this news. He must have walked a long way, Freddy thought, dragging that sack. The Holy Joe thanked Freddy thoroughly, he was that grateful to hear that the billiard hall was only down the street, then asked where Fred himself was bound. “I trust that your own journey is towards some pure and godly ending” was the way he put it. Freddy had been thinking that he’d go down in the dwellings just off Bath Street and give Patsy Clarke a poke for old times’ sake, but it weren’t right to say that to a man of God. Instead, Freddy made out that he’d been off to see an old mate, an old pensioner who’d not got any family, down at the bottom end of Scarletwell Street. This was true enough, though Freddy had originally intended to go down there after his regular rendezvous with Patsy Clarke. Ah, well. It wouldn’t hurt to have a change from the routine. He wished the stout priest well, then set off at a jaunty pace, straight past the opening of Bath Street flats and down to Little Cross Street. On the way down, Freddy paused and looked back at the clergyman. He’d lifted up his sack again and had it back across one shoulder, staggering off up Castle Street towards Horsemarket, leaving quite a trail behind him. Everybody left a trail, Freddy supposed. When he’d been in the life, that’s what the rozzers always told him when they caught him, anyway.

He could have doubled back to Bath Street flats once the old chap was gone from sight, but that would make him feel dishonest after what he’d said. No, he’d go on down Scarletwell, where they’d be glad to see him. Truth be told, they were the only ones still living down there, when it came to seeing Freddy, who would make the effort. Realising that you couldn’t get down Bristol Street without a lot of difficulty these days, Freddy went instead up Little Cross Street to where it joined Bath Street on the flats’ far side, then turned left and went on down Bath Street to its bottom as it veered round to the right and into Scarletwell Street.

He was in a sort of fog as he rolled round the corner to his right, and passed the place where Bath Row had run down to Andrew’s Road once, years back. There was just the opening to the garages, near where Fort Street and Moat Street had once been. As he passed by it, Fred peered down the tarmac slope that led to the enclosure, a rough oblong that only the closed grey garage doors looked onto. Something of an oddity for blokes of his sort, Freddy didn’t hold with premonitions and the likes of that, but there was something down there, down them garages where Bath Row’s terraces once were. Either there had been something happen there a long time back, or there was something going to happen there. Suppressing the first faint ghost of a shiver he’d felt in a long time, Freddy carried on to Scarletwell Street, crossing to its other side there at the bottom, down below Spring Lane School’s playing fields. You could still see some of the cobbles of the jitty mouth, where it had run behind the terrace down on Andrew’s Road, but it was pretty much all gone. It looked to Freddy as if the thick shrubs down at the bottom border of the field had pushed into the space where once the jitty was, with their black foliage covering its smooth grey stones. At least, Fred thought they were still grey, but almost everything down here was grey or black or white to Fred, like an old photo where its all clear and the light’s just right but there’s no colours. Freddy hadn’t seen a normal worldly colour now in forty-something years, as people who still made a living judged such things. The colour-blindness was just part of his condition. Freddy didn’t mind it much, except with flowers.