‘Christ! You got to get used to dat. Dese lodgin’-houses is full o’ thieves. In some houses dere’s nothin’ safe but to sleep wid all yer clo’es on. I seen ’em steal a wooden leg off of a cripple before now. Once I see a man–fourteen stone man he was–come into a lodgin’-house wid four pound ten. He puts it under his mattress. “Now,” he says, “any ——dat touches dat money does it over my body,” he says. But dey done him all de same. In de mornin’ he woke up on de floor. Four fellers had took his mattress by de corners an’ lifted him off as light as a feather. He never saw his four pound ten again.’

Chapter XXX

XXX

THE NEXT MORNING we began looking once more for Paddy’s friend, who was called Bozo, and was a screever–that is, a pavement artist. Addresses did not exist in Paddy’s world, but he had a vague idea that Bozo might be found in Lambeth, and in the end we ran across him on the Embankment, where he had established himself not far from Waterloo Bridge. He was kneeling on the pavement with a box of chalks, copying a sketch of Winston Churchill from a penny note-book. The likeness was not at all bad. Bozo was a small, dark, hook-nosed man, with curly hair growing low on his head. His right leg was dreadfully deformed, the foot being twisted heel forward in a way horrible to see. From his appearance one could have taken him for a Jew, but he used to deny this vigorously. He spoke of his hook-nose as ‘Roman’, and was proud of his resemblance to some Roman Emperor–it was Vespasian, I think.

Bozo had a strange way of talking, Cockneyfied and yet very lucid and expressive. It was as though he had read good books but had never troubled to correct his grammar. For a while Paddy and I stayed on the Embankment, talking, and Bozo gave us an account of the screeving trade. I repeat what he said more or less in his own words: