It was a lovely afternoon. He had vaguely intended a walk in the Park. But bright, clean Kensington, with its nursemaids and old ladies, so prim and cosy and well-to-do—no, Eric was still haunted by the memory of a Welsh village. The strangely compact blocks of cottages, like the keyboard of a piano, mounting the hill. The sombre and motionless headgear of the pits. Men lounging in groups at corners. The rain-drenched landscape. The grey sodden sky. No, he must do some sort of work. He’d go back to his rooms in Aldgate and write a few more pages of his report. Later, he might see how they were getting on with the new room at the Boys’ Club. And he’d promised his friend the probation officer to see if he could trace an ex-reformatory boy whom they’d got a job as boots in a commercial hotel and who’d disappeared. His uncle, who lived somewhere in the neighbourhood of Hackney Marsh, might know where he was.

Chapter V

V

EDWARD BLAKE stood for a moment at the corner under the lamp-post, swaying gently on his toes. Behind him, the Tiergarten lay inky black. Patches of snow gleamed bluish round the feet of the bare trees. In the Sieges Allee the lights shone brilliant and hard as diamonds upon the icy array of statues. It was much colder than the North Pole.

Edward didn’t feel the cold. He started forward again, his overcoat flapping loose around him, singing to himself. He was beautifully warm all over, and the thing which kept whizzing round in his head gave him a pleasant sensation of deafness which was in itself a kind of warmth, blunting the edges of the freezing outside world. For quite considerable distances he walked almost straight—then suddenly he made an erratic swerve, wandering to the brink of the roadway or stumbling up against the steps of a statue. Whenever he did this, he saluted or said: Excuse me.

Edward knew the statues well. Heinrich das Kind was of course his favourite, but Karl IV. was the one he really liked. Karl and he had something in common. Karl always looked as though he’d seen something particularly fetching on the other side of the road. When Edward reached him, he sat down for a little on the steps. Then he got up and wandered on.

“Well,” said Edward, aloud, but not addressing the statues, “here I am, you see.” For it had suddenly struck him—how queer; ten years ago I wasn’t allowed to come down this road. Now it’s allowed again. And in ten or twenty years’ time perhaps it won’t be allowed. How bloody queer. In 1919 we were going to have bombed Berlin. Mathematically speaking, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be dropping a bomb on myself at this very moment.