Alms for Oblivion Read Online Free PDF Page A

attention to him. Whether he intended to or not, he was blocking our exit between
bench and table.
    “Do not go down that road, young man. Playing is the primrose path to perdition.”
    Peter made to go forward but the other put his hands out and shoved against his chest. For an old man, he was strong. My friend stepped back sharply and would have fallen if I hadn’t been
there to prevent him.
    “You shall not join those saucy stinkards. I shall save you despite yourself.”
    I sighed. We weren’t going to get out of the tavern without a tussle. Then I grew angry with this insolent person who interfered with honest citizens going about their lawful business. I
looked towards Tom Gally. If he was at all friendly with this strange being then surely he’d step in to save us from his company. Gally, however, continued to look down his index finger as
though we were providing him with entertainment – or easy targets.
    Now help came from an unexpected quarter. The boatmen, who’d also lost interest in their card game to follow the argument, now rose from their table and moved towards us. Without a word,
the foursome split into twos on either side of our tormentor and picked him up bodily, as if he was a piece on a chess board. Still without speaking they carried him towards the door of the
ale-house and then through it in a sideways shuffle. The door closed. There was a pause. I waited for noises off: the thumps, the yelps, the oaths. But none came.
    The boatmen reappeared with looks of barely concealed satisfaction. I hoped they hadn’t harmed him, too much. Surreptitiously I looked for marks of blood. There were none. Perhaps
they’d just given him a good talking-to. The leader, a broad-shouldered fellow, raised his hand and twining together his index and middle fingers, said, “Players and boatmen.” The
others nodded behind him in silent agreement.
    I nodded too but it took me a moment to realize what he meant. That players and boatmen were eternal friends, surely not; but that the interests of players and boatmen were as interlinked as his
fingers. We depended on them (to ferry our patrons across the river), they depended on us (to attract those patrons across the river in the first place). Even so I was surprised, not so much by
their action – watermen always enjoy flexing their arms, in or out of their element – as by their near-silence. Your average boatman is as full of filthy words as his bilges are of
Thames water.
    Nodding again to our rescuers, Peter Agate and I made our way out of the Goat & Monkey. I noticed that Gally followed us with his gaze out of the door but didn’t otherwise acknowledge
any of what had passed. I hoped that by this time the pale-faced old man would have vanished into the fog, to lick his wounds. There was no sign of him in the dirty air that enveloped us. There was
no sign of anybody at all on this ghostly afternoon. We might as well have been going blindfold or, more fancifully, walking on a thoroughfare in the clouds.
    Perhaps Peter felt this too because from time to time he grasped me by the arm or I grasped him, as if each of us was fearful of getting lost. In fact I could have found my way through this
stretch of town on a starless night, as I had done on many occasions. With the river to our right we paced beyond Paris Garden and along Upper Ground in the direction of Barge House Stairs, the
closest crossing-point to our destination. Our footsteps echoed unnaturally loud. As we neared the Stairs I was pleased to hear the muffled chime of church bells and to pass other shadowy human
shapes in the fog as well as the occasional cart and clomping horse.
    The steps were deserted. It was low tide and I sensed rather than saw the presence of the water below. I wondered whether the constant to-and-fro traffic across the river had been interrupted by
the fog, before deciding that the ferries were doubtless working to their usual principle: that when you wanted one,