London for ever - 19

One of these was the "black giant". 

He was a tall, thick Jamaican, always wrapped in a heavy gray coat; he was constantly turning the length of the square, scratching his curly, woolly head, or his back and legs and never saying hello to anyone. 

Once, and it  was the only one, he came up to ask me for an ice cream.

 I served him a cone with some cream on it. He maybe thought  I was expecting the money, because he attacked me with a load of arrogant phrases, in his incomprehensible Jamaican dialect. His eyes were red and swollen. 

After the first series  of insults he gave a tremendous bite to that poor ice cream, swallowing  almost half of it. Then, seeing that I had remained impassive, he still uttered some bad words, with less conviction than before and went away. 

I hoped so much that I never had anything to do again with that energumen, at least  for fear of his undesirables guests. 

But as I saw him, in the distance, resume his scratching all over his body, I realized that there was no danger: the fleas were very fond of him.

19. to be continued...