summoned out of his reverie like this.
'Here you are, then.' The old man offered him a beat-up one from a beat-up packet.
'What? Oh. Oh - thanks. Thank you ' Momentarily taken aback by the offer, Dirk nevertheless accepted the cigarette gratefully, and took a light from the tip of the cigarette the old man was smoking himself.
'What you come hene for then?' asked the old man - not challenging, just curious.
Dirk tried to look at him without making it seem as if he was looking him up and down. The man was wildly bereft of teeth, had startled and matted hair, and his old clothes were well mulched down around him, but the eyes which sagged out of his face were fairly calm. He wasn't expecting anything worse than he could deal with to happen to him.
'Well, just this in fact,' said Dirt, twiddling the cigarette. 'Thanks. Couldn't find one anywhere.'
'Oh ah,' said the old man.
'Got this mad bird at home,' said Dirk. 'Kept attacking me.'
'Oh ah,' said the man, nodding resignedly.
'I mean an actual bird,' said Dirk, 'an eagle.'
'Oh ah.'
'With great wings.'
'Oh ah.'
'Got hold of me with one of its talons through the letter-box.'
'Oh ah.'
Dirk wondered if it was worth pursuing the conversation much further. He lapsed into silence and looked around.
'You're lucky it didn't slash at you with its beak as well,' said the old man after a while. 'An eagle will do that when roused.'
'It did!' said Dirk. 'It did! Look, right here on my nose. That was through the letter-box as well. You'd scarcely believe it! Talk about grip! Talk about reach! Look at what it did to my hand!'
He held it out for sympathy. The old man gave it an appraising look.
'Oh ah,' he said at last, and retreated into his own thoughts.
Dirk drew his injured hand back.
'Know a lot about eagles, then, do you?'
The man didn't answer, but seemed instead to retreat still further.
'Lot of people here tonight,' Dirk ventured again, after a while.
The man shrugged. He took a long drag on his cigarette, half closing his eyes against the smoke.
'Is it always like this? I mean, are there always so many people here at night?'
The man merely looked down, slowly releasing the smoke from his mouth and nostrils.
Yet again, Dirk looked around. A man a few feet away, not so old-looking as Dirk's companion but wildly deranged in his demeanour, had sat nodding hectically over a bottle of cooking brandy all this time. He slowly stopped his nodding, screwed with difficulty a cap on to the bottle, and slipped it into the pocket of his ragged old coat. An old fat woman who had been fitfully browsing through the bulging black bin liner of her possessions began to twist the top of it together and fold it.
'You'd almost think that something was about to happen,' said Dirk.
'Oh ah,' said his companion. He put his hands on his knees, bent forward and raised himself painfully to his feet. Though he was bent and slow, and though his clothes were dirt-ridden and tattered, there was some little power and authority there in his bearing.
The air which he unsettted as he stood, which flowed out from the folds of his skin and ctothes, was richly pungent even to Dirk's numbed nostrils. It was a smell that never stopped coming at you - just as Dirk thought it must have peaked, so it struck on upwards with renewed frenzy till Dirk thought that his very brain would vaporise.
He tried not to choke, indeed he tried to smile courteously without allowing his eyes to run as the man turned to him and said, 'Infuse some blossom of the bitter orange. Add some sprinklings of sage while it is still warm. This is very good for eagle wounds. There are those who will add apricot and almond oil and even, the heavens defend us, sedra. But then there are always those that will overdo things. And sometimes we have need of them. Oh ah.'
With that he turned away once more and joined the growing stream of pathetic, hunched and abused bodies that were heading for the front exit from the station. In all about two, maybe three dozen were leaving. Each seemed to be leaving separatety, each for his or her entirely independent reasons, and not following too fast the one upon the other, and yet it was not hard to tell, for anyone who cared to watch these people that no one cared to watch or see, that they were leaving together and in a stream.
Dirk carefulty nursed his cigarette for a minute or so and watched them intently as one by one they left. Once he was certain that there were no more to go, and that the last two or three of them were at the door, he dropped the cigarette and ground it out with his heel. Then he noticed that the old man had left behind his crumpled cigarette packet. Dirk looked inside and saw that there were still two bedraggled cigarettes left. He pocketed it, stood up, and quietly followed at a distance that he thought was properly respectful.
Outside on the Euston Road the night air was grumbling and unsettled. He loitered idly by the doorway, watching which way they went - to the west. He took one of the cigarettes out and lit it and then idled off westwards himself, around the taxi rank and towards St Pancras Street.
