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filthy slums, smoke-darkened factories and crowded sweat-shops stood side by
side with neat leafy squares where scrawny clerks and potbellied shopkeepers
asserted their social superiority. Now it is dark and squalid and silent.
Well-intentioned bureaucrats nowadays sent shop assistants home early, street
traders were banished, almost empty pubs sold highly taxed watery lager and
the factories were derelict: a textbook example of urban blight, with yuppies
nibbling the leafy bits.
Back in the days before women s lib, designer jeans and deep-dish pizza, Big
Henty s snooker hall with its ten-full-size tables, fully licensed bar and
hot food was the Athenaeum of Southwark. The narrow doorway and its dimly lit
staircase gave entry to a cavernous hall conveniently sited over a
particularly good eel and pie shop.
Now, alas, the eel and pie shop was a video rental club where posters in
primary colours depicted half-naked film stars firing heavy machine guns from
the hip. But in its essentials Big Henty s was largely unchanged. The lighting
was exactly the same as I remembered it, and any snooker hall is judged on its
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lighting. Although it was very quiet every table was in use. The green baize
table tops glowed like ten large aquariums, their water still, until suddenly
across them brightly coloured fish darted, snapped and disappeared.
Big Henty wasn t there of course. Big Henty died in 1905. Now the hall was
run by a thin white-faced fellow of about forty. He supervised the bar. There
was not a wide choice: these snooker-playing men didn t appreciate the curious
fizzy mixtures that keep barmen busy in cocktail bars. At Big Henty s you
drank whisky or vodka; strong ale or Guinness with tonic and soda water for
the abstemious. For the hungry there were toasted sandwiches that came soft,
warm and plastic-wrapped from the microwave oven.
Evening, Bernard. Started to snow, has it? What a memory the man had. It
was years since I d been here. He picked up his lighted cigarette from the
Johnny Walker ashtray, and inhaled on it briefly before putting it back into
position. I remembered his chain-smoking, the way he lit one cigarette from
another but put them in his mouth only rarely. I d brought Dicky Cruyer here
one evening long ago to make contact with a loud-mouthed fellow who worked in
the East German embassy. It had come to nothing, but I remember Dicky
describing the barman as the keeper of the sacred flame.
I responded, Half of Guinness ... Sydney. His name came to me in that
moment of desperation. Yes, the snow is starting to pile up.
It was bottled Guinness of course. This was not the place that a connoisseur
of stout and porter would come to savour beverages tapped from the wood. But
he poured it down the side of the glass holding his thumb under the point of
impact to show he knew the folklore, and he put exactly the right size head of
light brown foam upon the black beer. In the back room. Delicately he shook
the last drops from the bottle and tossed it away without a glance. Your
friend. In the back room. Behind Table Four.
I picked up my glass of beer and sipped. Then I turned slowly to survey the
room. Big Henty s back room had proved its worth to numerous fugitives over
the years. It had always been tolerated by authority. The CID officers from
Borough High Street police station found it a convenient place to meet their
informants. I walked across the hall. Beyond the tasselled and fringed lights
that hung over the snooker tables, the room was dark. The spectators - not
many this evening - sat on wooden benches along the walls, their grey faces no
more than smudges, their dark clothes invisible.
Walking unhurriedly, and pausing to watch a tricky shot, I took my beer
across to table number four. One of the players, a man in the favoured costume
of dark trousers, loose-collared white shirt and unbuttoned waistcoat, moved
the scoreboard pointer and watched me with expressionless eyes as I opened the
door marked Staff and went inside.
There was a smell of soap and disinfectant. It was a small storeroom with a
window through which the snooker hall could be seen if you pulled aside the
dirty net curtain. On the other side of the room there was another window, a
larger one that looked down upon Tower Bridge Road. From the street below
there came the sound of cars slurping through the slush. Bernard. It was a
woman s voice. I thought you weren t going to come.
I sat down on the bench before I recognized her in the dim light. Cindy! I
said. Good God, Cindy! You d forgotten I existed.
Of course I hadn t. I d only forgotten that Cindy Prettyman s full name was
Lucinda, and that she might have reverted to her maiden name. Can I get you a
drink?
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She held up her glass. It s tonic water. I m not drinking these days.
I just didn t expect you here, I said. I looked through the net curtain at
the tables.
Why not?
Yes, why not? I said and laughed briefly. When I think how many times Jim
made me swear I was giving up the game for ever. In the old days, when Jim
Prettyman was working alongside me, he taught me to play snooker. He played an
exhibition class game, and his wife Cindy was something of an expert too.
Cindy was older than Jim by a year or two. Her father was a steel worker in
Scunthorpe: a socialist of the old school. She d got a scholarship to Reading
University. She said she d never had any ambition but for a career in the
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