The Walking Dead

And Naylor had said what was obvious to him: 'We should all pedal a bit harder.'

By order of Lord Palmerston, at some date in the 1850s, the burial ground had been closed, the gardens had been laid out, a fountain built in the centre and the plane trees planted. It was the best place Dickie Naylor knew…God's truth, he'd miss it.

Charity did not come often to him, but on an impulse he took the half-emptied tobacco pouch from his pocket, laid it in the vagrant's lap and smiled. He wished him a good evening, and was on his way.

He padded into the outer office. The new carpets, from last year's refurbishment, muffled his footsteps. She was at his door.

Mary Reakes was not aware of him. She had, damn it; a colour chart in her hand. He could see it over her shoulder, the chart a client used to choose a decoration scheme. It showed squares of pastel shades, and he thought she'd probably end up daubing the cubicle in bloody magnolia.

'In a hurry, are we?' He tried the old acid but had never been good at it.

She didn't have the decency, he reckoned, to spin round and blush. It was as if he was sick with a plague, and the funeral people were round his bed, measuring him up.

'It's only six bloody days, can't you wait that long?'

She didn't do embarrassment. 'Thought you'd gone home, Dickie.'

'Well, I can tell you I'll be here to the last minute, last hour, last day of my employment. Then the reins will be passed and you can have your painters in, but not a minute before.'

* * *

An obsession with history dominated the life of Steve Vickers, and what delighted him most was the opportunity of sharing it with others — not a history of kings and queens, not the great cultural, political and social earthquakes of the United Kingdom's past:. history for him was the development of the town, Luton, that was his home.

'I am asking you, ladies, to look up and study the clock in the tower. Are you all with me?'

Disappointingly, only a dozen or so were, but if there' had been only three souls, he would have persisted with the tour.

'The tower above our town hail — yes, it dominates the main square, St George's Square — was built in 1935 and 1936, and opened by the Duke of Kent. I'll come to the clock in a moment but, excitingly, the building has a story of its own…'

He beamed around him. It was necessary, Steve Vickers believed, to share his enthusiasm if he was to hold an audience. The weather was cool, darkness settled over the building's roofs, but the rain had held off. Only two of his original party had slipped away. Not bad…A not ungenerous disability pension from Vauxhall cars' Research and Development Unit, after he had been invalided out with persistent migraine attacks, allowed him to devote his life to the town's historic past. Now he had with him a Women's Institute group from a dozen miles away, shivering but standing their ground.

'They had to put up a new town hail because the previous one was burned down by an angry mob. Yes, believe me, in this town a mob was sufficiently enraged to storm a police line — just where we're standing now — break down the main door and set fire to the building. Order was not restored until regular troops were brought in from Bedford…and that happened in 1919 and it was called the Peace Riot. Former soldiers, then demobbed, couldn't get work and the celebration of the armistice caused their fury. That day was probably the last on which significant violence hit the town — and long may the quiet last.'

He had heard, at his reference to the Peace Riot, a faint titter of amusement, sufficient to sustain him. The following Wednesday he was booked to escort a group from the Townswomen's Guild around Hightown, on the other side of the river, where the hat-making industry had been the country's largest a century ago. On the Saturday after that he would be back, early in the morning, with sixth-form students and any others who cared to attend, in St George's Square. Communicating raw history was a joy to him.

* * *

Through the car's passenger window, she saw a man bob his head as money was passed from purses.