Bag of Weasels. Chapter 25

I said I needed to take a stroll; I had to get away from Ralph and his calling. I left him and walked round and round in ever-wider circles, treading out a mazelike route that would take me to the edge. It was a ponderous luck-safe approach and it gave me time to think before I brushed up against the last brick limits. At the end of my intricate meander, having picked through soot and round wreckage, I served myself up at the entrance to the char-black cupboard room, site of Flea's recent expulsion.
It was cold and quiet here, out of time and space, hard to believe Banksy, Ralph and the strange collective were carrying on at my back somewhere, and that the street lay just in front.
I stepped in.
"Evening,
I jumped back startled, stumbled and tripped, and just missed falling back through the doorway, thumping into the wall instead. Sitting under his hat on a rickety old kitchen chair in the shadows was the old man who'd spun me his tale at the fireside.
"You off then? he asked all familiar, between bites at a steaming something he held wrapped in a brown paper bag.
I was furious at his sudden appearance - my plans to slip away unnoticed were now scuppered - but I thought it best not to say so, and I regained some composure.
"What are you doing sitting here in the dark?
"Just wanted to see you off, that's all. Bon voyage. Mind how you go. That sort of thing.
"Who says I'm going? I snapped, "nobody knows. Not even me, til now. How could you know?
He laughed, deep and throaty, and I glimpsed the shadows filling the cracks in his face, turning them to wide black canyons.
"I've told you once; I've done it all before, when you were still in your dad's sack. I've walked the lines and walked them back so many times I am part of it. Or it's part of me, I forget which way. Either way, I know what's been and I know what's coming, and I know you're on your way Sunny boy.
He took another bite out of his bag wrapped dinner, then held it down by his feet.
A dog slipped out from behind the chair and plunged its snout into the proffered bag. At the same moment I felt something nuzzle my leg and there behind me was another one, two, three hounds with ears pricked, heads cocked at odd angles, curious and keen.
"Sight hounds, said the old wanderer, "Want to take one with you?
The dog at his feet wagged its tail at the prospect, and he laughed at this.
"When you come back, don't forget us. I'll be around somewhere, and so will that old bat in there¦
"Come back? Why would I come back? What old bat? His grand assumptions and second guessing were wearing me out.
"The old bat you came in with.
"Who, Banksy?
"Banksy. Yes, if you like.
"You know her?
"We've met, on occasion. She's older than me, been around a long time. Knows her onions, she does.
He heaved himself off his chair and stepped over to me. I was surprised to see he only came up to my shoulder, but he was rock-like, his lines and creases glacier-worn.
"You crack on, it's all waiting for you out there. I've got things to talk about with Banksy, or whatever she calls herself this time round.
And with that he trudged off into the building, leaving me with the dogs.
Although his unexpected appearance meant there would be a witness to my departure, his odd words and behaviour did me the final favour ' I was now dead set upon stepping out of this hocus-pocus place. Too much was going against the grain. I couldn't get a handle on it, I was losing touch with my own way of living. It may have been that I would have run before, long before I'd arrived here, but I felt I'd been spellbound. Now though, I'd been drawn in too long and I was getting stretched. Never stay in anything long, and if I don't like it then run. Get out. That's what was the way.
But just for a moment, I had felt part of this something.
And that was a problem in itself: I'd come to believe that anything I was part of had to be a made up thing, a fucked'up aspect of me. I was part of nothing, not even myself: I was fragmented on a good day. It was like a natural law: my natural state was to be in bits. This coming together could not be right.
Time enough. Sick beyond my caring and none to care but me, I crept across to the iron doorway, none to see but dogs, who came and stood with senses quickened, ears pricked up and eyes questioning. Would they howl out my leaving? They watched still as I slipped between the iron and brick, and padded down the drizzly street, where rain-made lakes drowned the kerb and bounced streetlight orange over the dark facades.