All Fall Down by Jenny Oldfield Page B

asleep. The street was dark, his lamps hooded. Only the road immediately in front of his wheels was visible, though shapes of pedestrians might loom out from the pavement and he would jolt upright, his attention sharpened for a few seconds before it lapsed again.
    â€˜Thanks for the memory, Ba-bu-bu-bu-bu – boom.’
    Rob found his way without having to think, along the Embankment in its dull wartime guise of blacked-out Ministry buildings, shadowy archways and the black mass of the river shifting silently under Waterloo Bridge.
    Suddenly he slammed on his brakes. The women in the back lurched and squealed, the cab slewed sideways.
    â€˜Bleeding idiot!’ Rob fought for control. The road was greasy, he wouldn’t be able to stop. A man was there, caught in his headlights. Someone else tried to grab him and pull him out of theway. Just in time, the swaying figure veered sideways, forearm up to shield him from the impact, torn coat flying open in the wind.
    â€˜Christ!’ Rob’s wheels locked and squealed. For a second he thought he must have hit him. The women were deadly quiet. As they skidded to a halt and the engine cut out, he swung open his door and stepped out. A second tramp was hauling the inert body of the first clear of the road. ‘Did I catch him?’
    â€˜Just clipped him, I think.’ His job done, the rescuer wanted to shuffle out of the limelight.
    â€˜Is he dead?’ Lorna recovered first and came to stand by Rob.
    â€˜Dead drunk more like.’ Getting over the shock, Rob was more annoyed than anything. ‘Leave him be.’ Lorna was trying to turn the unconscious tramp face-up and loosen his filthy woollen scarf. Rob turned to get some sense out of his companion. ‘Where does he live?’
    A shrug, a noncommittal shrug.
    â€˜Nowhere.’ Rob’s hands were deep in his jacket pocket. ‘Marvellous, ain’t it?’ He was all for leaving him where he was, there on the pavement.
    But the two young girls in his cab had turned into would-be Florence Nightingales, along with Loma. They piled out onto the pavement. ‘Poor old thing, look at the state of him. Ain’t there nowhere we can take him?’ they appealed to the hero of the moment. Meanwhile Rob looked on, while Loma tried to right the victim and Dorothy sat scornfully by, her lip curled, a fresh cigarette between her fingers.
    â€˜Dunno. You can leave him there if you want.’
    â€˜But you know him, don’t you? There must be somewhere we can drop him off.’
    â€˜Me? No, I was just passing.’ Perhaps it struck the second tramp there was something in this new role of hero, however, for he stopped making as if to wander off into the night and thought again. ‘I don’t really, what you might call, know him. Not by name or nothing.’
    By now the inert victim was stirring. Lorna succeeded in tipping him onto his back. His cap fell forward over his face.
    â€˜Mind you, I do know there’s someone in Bernhardt Court what keeps an eye on him if he’s in a real bad way.’
    â€˜Who?’ The girl in the red dress seized on this.
    Rob turned impatiently and walked back to the cab.
    â€˜Someone in a pub up there.’ Their informant struggled to remember. ‘No, it’s gone. But it’s definitely Bernhardt Court, a pub somewhere there.’
    â€˜Let’s take him up there. We can’t leave him in this, state.’
    â€˜Who’s paying?’ Rob wanted to know.
    Dorothy met his gaze. ‘Don’t look at me. I’m like you, I want my bed.’
    The girls wailed in protest, then turned to the coherent vagrant. ‘You could take him!’
    â€˜Not me. I ain’t got two brass farthings.’
    But there was no stopping them in their mission of mercy. The flame-haired girl hailed another cab, then Red Dress opened her purse. ‘Here’s two bob.’ She handed a florin to the tramp. ‘We’ll