London Bloody London by Michael Avallone

Author:Michael Avallone [Avallone, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-07-05T22:00:00+00:00

THE BLOKE IN STOKE-NEWINGTON

□ It was like visiting one of the poorer sections of the Bronx, Brooklyn, or Queens. I'd expected Tudor homes, spires of old churches, English gardens, and cozy tea shops. I got a jolt and a let-down. Stoke-Newington, give or take a tree or a copse of bushes and some ivy, was a narrow, twisting area of stone buildings looking like apartment houses, grocery stores, bars, and candy shops all utterly drab and time-worn. The bars didn't look like pubs, the candy stores weren't the "sweet shops" they should have been, the grocer's was the typical American plate-glass window with overcrowded, poorly-arranged shelves. The streets and the building facades were as unwashed, paint-peeling, and grimy as the most poverty-stricken section of Harlem. There was no English countryside town flavor at all. Even our cabdriver seemed as if he were looking down his nose at our destination. I somehow sensed that if you said you came from Stoke-Newington, a native Londoner would immediately catalogue you as a member of the poor working class. It was a very dismal burg, all in all, a good distance past the historical beauty of Old London. A great gap clearly existed between this outer-reaches suburb and the somehow more fresh, modern appearance of the old city. Stoke-Newington wasn't even what they like to call "shabby genteel."

It was downright pitiful, by the standards of the Seventies.

Torin Bird told the driver where to stop. That seemed to be the main street of the town. The thoroughfare was a winding, downhill sort of road with hardly enough room for two lanes of traffic, but they managed it all the same. I marveled at a big red bus navigating the choked street and checked the passersby. Housewives with baby carriages—prams, they'd call them—and solitary men stalking along, looking blissful and contented in spite of being doomed to live in such squalor.

"We'd best leave off here," Torin Bird whispered to me in a low tone. "The building is only another square off and I suppose we ought to make our approach as unobtrusively as possible."

"Good thinking. You'll make an 007 yet, Torin."

I paid the driver his new pence rates, adding a forty-pence tip because it had been such a long haul, and he smiled his surprise, not expecting a Stoke-Newington fare to have the price. Grinning very toothily, he drove off, leaving me and Torin on the sidewalk. The sun had pierced the overhead haze it had been battling all day. Bright sunlight flooded the sidewalk. It only made Stoke-Newington look worse.

"Well," I said, "I wouldn't expect to see the Marble Arch around here. This must be a very old town."

"Oh, that it is, sir. They had bombings and all during the war. There's a great deal of old people living here now. Pensioners and the like. You won't find very many Nannies here, Mr. Noon. The younger people aim a lot further than Stoke-Newington."

"Sounds like a perfect spot to hide Cursitor. Lead on, Torin. And please remember.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.