'You greasy-assed Mexican pimps. Why don't you go back to your syphy cathouses where you belong?'
'That's telling them!' said a southern American voice.
'Go screw a mud puppy.... And if there's anything worse it's a murdering mick with a bomb in his suitcase.'
A suitcase by a table of Irishmen began to tick. Toby put money on his check. He lifted his wineglass to the table of Jews: 'You Jews is so warm and human. I offer to you that most beautiful of all toasts:
He was moving towards the door. 'You blacks got soul.' As he passed the Latin Americans, he twitched his hips. 'Que rica mamba.... When Irish eyes are smiling ...' In the doorway, Toby whipped his scarf around his neck and shouted back into the room with moving his lips, so it seemed to echo from every corner ...
He opened the door and heavy palpable darkness blew in with a reek of brimstone. He sprinted for the corner in a black cloud, his red scarf trailing out behind him like a burning fuse. Shouts behind him. Breaking glass.
Here was 44 Egerton Gardens. He opened the door with his key, slid in and shut the door, leaning against it. A blast outside, sirens, words in his head: 'Air raid ... the blitz.'
He felt his way to his room at the head of the stairs. As soon as he opened the door, the sound of breathing and the smell of sleep told him that someone else was there. He touched a shoulder.
'Hello, I'm Jim Everson. Hope you don't mind doubling up like this.'
'It's all right.' Toby stripped to his underwear and slid in beside him.
They lay there, listening to the explosions. The bombs seemed to walk in a leisurely way up and down Brompton Road. A smell in the room, not just of warm young flesh. It was a rank musky ozone smell, the smell of time travel.
Toby woke up in a dark cottage. Mother was not back yet. He was alone and very frightened. The cottage was in Gibraltar and he knew the floor plan in the dark.
He went from his room into the sitting room and looked into his mother's room. The bed was empty, as he knew it would be. The lights would not turn on. He lay down on her bed but the fear was there as well.
He went back to his room and tried to turn on the lights. None of them would turn on. Now even the light in his own room would not work.
He opened the cottage door and went out. Dawn light outside, but a heavy darkness lingered inside the cottage like a black fog. He resolved not to spend another night there.
Who would not spend another night there? He was two people—the boy who lived in the cottage and someone else.
He saw a boat. Durban to Gibraltar. A slim youth with yellow hair and brown eyes in a blue uniform and nautical hat was the first mate. Two officers and a crew of eight on the brigantine.
The boy's mother is back from the pub where she works as a barmaid. She is sprawled fully dressed on the bed in a drunken sleep. He looks around at the potted plants, a tapestry on the wall with a minaret, an ivory elephant, a glass mouse on a shelf. In the front room, a hot plate, a square yellow tea can with Chinese characters, a faucet dripping into a rusty sink. Two men are in the room: one a thin man in his thirties with a receding chin and a pasty face, and the other a priest with reddish hair and bloodshot eyes.
Slowly the boy takes inventory of the sleazy decorations, a brass bowl with cattails in it on the mantel of the non-functioning fireplace, a wobbly table with a tasseled lamp, three chairs, a couch, and an army blanket.
He is the boy, but also a concerned visitor, an uncle or godfather. He is preparing to leave. Outside the cottage is a steep weed-grown slope covered with Christmas rubbish and artificial snow. He hates to leave the boy there.
On the slope, a paper
