He was hungry and thirsty, and slipped into a hostelry. There weren’t many customers, just a group of four old men wearing cloth caps with mufflers tied at their necks, sitting at a table by a low fire, drinking beer as they concentrated on their rows of dominoes. Two of them looked up and nodded at Harry, the other two were absorbed in their next move. He tapped on the bar counter and a middle-aged man came out from a back room. ‘What can I get you?’ he asked, and Harry asked for a pint of stout.

‘Haven’t see you in here afore,’ the landlord commented as he pulled the pint to a creamy head and placed it on the counter.

Harry licked his lips; it looked like a good pint. ‘No, I’m not from round here. I’ve come job-hunting.’

‘Aye? Any luck?’ The landlord picked up the glass and lifted it to examine it, topped it up, and then handed it to Harry, who took a satisfying gulp.

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Yeh, wi’ Tannerson, if I can find my way back again.’

‘Ah, he’s a good boss, I hear. Everybody speaks well of him. But he expects a day’s work out of everybody.’

‘Fair enough,’ Harry said, and spying a slice of pork pie sitting on the counter under a glass cover he asked, ‘Is that pie goin’ beggin’?’

‘Here, have it and welcome,’ the landlord said. ‘It’s ’last slice.’

Harry was beginning to think that living and working in Hull was going to be all right after all. The landlord seemed happy to talk so he asked him if he knew of anywhere he could find decent accommodation.

‘You’ll want somewhere near to work, will you?’ the man asked. ‘If you’re working in Wincomlee you could try Trippett or Church Street, or mebbe Wilmington, it depends how choosy you are.’ His lips turned down. ‘There’re some slums you wouldn’t want to bring your bairns to in spite of ’cheap rent.’

Harry was getting worn down by the picture painted of poor housing; he thought there must be some decent places somewhere. He finished off the pie and the pint, thanked the landlord, said he’d see him again and left to do his own searching for a suitable house to live in.

He soon got lost in the midst of crowded courts and short streets that finished at brick walls, with no way out except to go back the way he had come. Many of these places were without drains or gutters and the courtyards or streets were awash with mud and debris.