THE INFORMATION

Dispatches in North Islington. With his mack and his hangover and his book (a biography of William Davenant, Shakespeare's bastard: six hundred words by early next week), he embarked at Ladbroke Grove, changed at Paddington and Oxford Circus, and rode in the slatted light to Islington, whose streets he paced for fifty-five minutes, wringing his hands, until he stumbled upon a lone old man, walled in with information, a crofter in a cottage thatched with Frankfurter Zeitungs and El Paises and India Todays and many other journals daubed in exclamatory Farsi or Sanskrit. The old man told him that he no longer stocked the Sunday New York Times; only the daily. Pressure of space. Richard came home again. Haifa week later, when he had calmed down, he rang the London offices of the The New York Times: they told him to ring the distributors in Cheapside. He did so. They told him that such copies of the Sunday New York Times as came their way were subscription copies, though occasionally-true-there was a spare . . . Richard used all his charm on the young woman at the other end of the line. But the trouble was that he didn't have any charm, not any longer, and she told him he would just have to turn up on Monday morning on the off chance, like anybody else.

So began his weekly journeys to the warehouse in Cheapside, where they would typically pass him round from portakabin to van mouth to storage room and back again, before sending him on his way-to The Little Magazine, in fact, where in the dawn he would start subbing the book reviews over a papercupful of tomato soup. As well as a very bad reality, that papercupful of tomato soup was always a very bad sign . . . It was on his fifth visit that Richard revealed, to the assistant manager's intense sneer of puzzlement, that he didn't necessarily want a copy of that week's Sunday New York Times. Any Sunday New York Times would do. In full contrition Richard followed the assistant manager to another storage room, one never seen before, where any number of Sunday New York Timeses were lavishly and promiscuously heaped, along with countless Sunday Boston Globes, Sunday San Francisco Chronicles, and so on. Richard listed faintly on his feet. In the fever and vertigo he felt there was now an element of everyday incomprehension-at the sadness and grayness and dampness and deadness of disregarded newsprint; and at human profligacy and clamor. Christ, can't everyone shut up. Anyway, he cracked, and went for size. That day he came home with the outrageous bulk of the Sunday Los Angeles Times carefully cradled in his arms. It wasn't just bigger than the Sunday New York Times. It was much bigger.

Brown paper and a ball of string took about a week each to purchase and assemble. Then Richard was ready to move. That day he picked through the corpses of his old typewriters until he found one that was capable of saying, 'Dear Gwyn, Something to interest you here. The price of fame! Yours ever, John.'

On his desk lay another letter, smudged, crumpled: second-class. Nothing much gets affected by the second-class mail. You don't expect your life to be changed by the second-class mail. This letter said:

Dear Richard,

So then? No reply from the man. Well you said it, Dreams don't mean Anything. Gwyn Barry loves Belladonna, and Darko love's Belladonna but who does Belladonna love. She is deadley.

What about that 'jar.'

Yours, DARKO

How would you find out about a marriage? How would you find out? Because all marriages are inscrutable. I can tell you everything there is to know about the marriage of the Tulls (I can even tell you what their sheets smell of: they smell of marriage); but I don't know anything, yet, about the marriage of the Barrys. A close scrutiny of 'The Seven Vital Virtues, 4: Uxoriousness' would disclose, perhaps, that Demeter was less happy about everything than Gwyn-or less happy about being happy on TV But how would you find out? Richard, at his desk, fondling Darko's letter, fondling Demi in his thoughts, had a couple of ideas. Steve Cousins, in his Cosworth, had a couple of ideas too. But he was far more practical. Scozz was going to find out-he was going to find out something or other. And he was going to do it today: right now. First he had to fetch 13.

When he at last emerged, coming out between the pillars and walking solemnly down the steps of Marylebone Magistrates' Court, 13 had the proud, moistened, middle-distance stare of a man who believes himself to have been gravely and perhaps insupportably traduced. He alwayslooked like this on his way out of court, unless, for one reason or another, he'd got off. As Steve proceeded in the Cosworth down Edg-ware Road, in a series of short bursts and long waits, he glanced at 13's profiled face: too youthful, too rounded, for the stunned and bitter glaze it wore.

'What you get?' 'Six months suspended.' 'And?'

13 sighed and belatedly fastened his seatbelt. 'Fines.' Steve nodded. 13 drew in breath: he was about to give voice-and in the high style. His intention, plainly, was to speak not just for himself but for all men and women, in all places, in all times-to remind the human heart of what it had once known and had now long forgotten.

'The titheads,' 13 began, 'is like a gang. The Old Bill,' he went on, 'is like a gang. Hired by the government. When did it happen? It happened when they upped they pay-1980 or whatever. They saying: it's gonna get rough. Unemployment is it. Riots or whatever. You keep a lid on it and we pay you extra. Where's the money come from? No worries. We'll fine the fuckers.'

'Who've you been talking to?' 'No one. Common sense.'

Although he sounded amused or at least indulgent, Steve was in fact displeased. He kept trying to harden his voice and make his face go all blocked and reptilian-but it wasn't quite happening. Why? Coz Scozz was losing it? Or the old forms, the old rhythms, were just giving out . . . The reason for Steve's displeasure was as follows: 13 had kept him waiting. For ten minutes. They'd had words. 'Where you been?' 'Looking for the Coke machine. Fancied a Coke.' 'You spend half your fucking life in there. You know there's no Coke machine.' 13 just shrugged and said, 'Fancied a Coke.' Yeah: leaving his mentor and patron on a double yellow and on a block much frequented by people in uniform, under the shadow of a municipal construct which was really just a massive doorway. The stuff in Latin on the portals, it said: This Is the Way to Other Places …

'Know how much it costs to keep a bloke in nick for a week?' 'Go on then.'

13 told him. Jesus: like fucking Claridge's. And for that world, with its slops and slop-outs, its stalled testosterone. Labor-intensive: all those retarded parkies in their reeking serge. Security was expensive, and got more expensive quicker than other things. Super-inflationary, like weaponry and medical equipment. Though you'd think, with security,that some counterforce would bring prices down eventually, what with the incredible demand.

13 turned to him and said, 'Know what they should do with all that rucking money?'

'Go on then.'

'Buy you a mortgage. Buy you a mortgage. All that money locking you up where all you do is learn more of the same. Watching TV about antiques is it. Buy you a mortgage. You got your own house you stay indoors out of trouble.'

Until now 13's social analysis had found, in Steve Cousins, a reasonably sympathetic listener. There were lags of ninety who saw crime that way too: as guerrilla work in the class war. But 13 was leaving him here.

'Not much of a deterrent though, is it, Thirt?' said Scozzy. 'What kind of message is that sending? Don't break into a house. Or else we'll buy you a house.'

13 brooded for a traffic light or two. Then he said: 'What they don't get is rich people like being robbed.'

'Yeah? Why's that then?'

'Insurance! They in it together is it. Can't see what all the fucking fuss's about. They get it all back plus more and the insurance ups the premiums on the poor people. Simple as.'