Johnson thought, was like a damn great bunker
… and he reckoned it bloody needed to be. Past mums pushing brats in buggies, and kids on a block's corner – maybe it was the sunshine, but he rated the numbers of the kids as smaller than usual, but that would be the sunshine because the kids were night workers.
He heard the rumble of many voices and – God's truth – laughter in the Amersham.
They were at the bunker wall. One window set in it, covered with thick wire mesh.
'You heard me, Mr Johnson? Just watching, brief, and not talking, ever. We're the past and he don't need us.'
'I heard you… See nothing, hear nothing and know nothing, that's me.'
He peered through the wire and the sounds – yelling, shouting, laughing – belted him, and Ivanhoe Manners's mouth was close to his ear.
'It's the kids he's getting on his side. Now it's basketball, earlier it might have been football, later it'll be the pool tables. See him, he's a natural. Me, I'm too old for them, and you. He's not that much younger than me, or you, but it's like he's lost years. There's more kids now, playing basketball with him, than I ever seen. .. You know what? Like now, he's always in shorts and his T-shirt has no sleeves. Why? Look there, the little pucker marks on the right thigh and shoulder. They're top credibility with the kids, bullet scars. Two bullet-holes, hardly healed over, they win respect – I didn't hear where he got them, or how…
They don't know he was ever here, like he came out of nowhere. That enough for you?'
They walked away, left a basketball game behind a window.
Tony Johnson said, 'I'll see you around, Ivanhoe…
Like you said, best left alone, because we're the past and of no use to him. Good to see him standing, finding himself. Look after yourself.'
He went to his car.
He knew where Malachy Kitchen had been, and the hell of that place, and the price paid… and he wishec those who had put the man there could have stood with him, on tiptoe, and peered through a wire mesh. and seen a man born again.
