Chapter 2
That Friday, the 9th of November 1979, right the day we were going to meet that strange Mr Winningoes, as we had soon to discover, I followed him on the wide tree-lined roads. On the sidewalks, the leaves, fallen during the night, had formed a thick and soft carpet, on which George seemed to walk with special pleasure.
It was a colorless day, one of those typical London winter days where the diurnal light maintains the same slim intensity, from mornings to evenings, and the night comes up suddenly unexpected, when the pale and smothered reverberation of the sun, behind a thick blanket of clouds, has concluded its almost invisible cycle.
It blew a fresh and light breeze. But the wind, from time to time, became impetuous, and by means of violent gusts seemed to push us, like for joking or as if it wanted to encourage us to go straight ahead. And courage was exactly what we really needed, as our search of a job was becoming a serious and weary problem.
“I don't recognize the London's gone times anymore” George had told me, not later than the former evening, coming out from one of the many jobs agencies we had uselessly visited.
I followed him on his march, absorbed in the noise that our own footsteps produced on the leaves. The rhombus of an auto dissuaded suddenly my attention.
”Where are we going to?” I asked him.
” We will try to go this way along” he answered turning slightly back his head. “This way through we will rejoin the Maida Vale. There are plenty of job’s agencies up there.”
George knew a lot better than I that area, as he was living since a longtime. He had taken that one-room flat where we were living together, with a girl, now got back to Italy, like he fleetingly told me, not without a shade darkening sadly his eyes and I did not dare to ask him more of it. We walked silently. Sometimes we crossed some hasty passing or perceived, almost more than hear it, as a fleeting apparition, a car or a motorbike whose noise was spaced out slowly, as absorbed and diluted in the immensity of the surrounding silence.
We walked around and after an indefinite time, that desert of dry leaves seemed to stop against an iron handrail.
I brusquely handed at it, gasping and excited for the march and for a strange emotion that had suddenly pervaded me. From my point of observation, tall brushes of trees hid the horizon and I could only see, slightly swaying in the void, a green poster with the write “Winpey “in red- block dark characters.
I felt a pleasant excitement throughout my body. A feeling that immediately was of lightness. A desire to let my body flow in the air, toward that poster, flying the sky.
-” Let’s go down these steps”.
The George’s voice dissuaded me from my thoughts. As we went down the stairway, the view, under of us, revealed its real contours. That poster, that seemed like suspended in the air, was the summit of the tall pylon of a crane that laid in the center of an immense housing estate.
I watched again toward that write and noticed that it was hacked against a loaded leady sky with no change of tonality. A dark and heavy vault until my eyes could see.
”Are we in the morning or in the evening, George?” I did seriously.
”What difference does it make?!” he answered almost in a mocking way “However there seem that some people are working over there. Let’s go and see.” He added turning to a serious tone back.
We reached the site fence. Through the interspaced tables that bounded we saw numerous working machines: diggers, shovels, concrete mixers, kneaders, all laying like dead animals, in the most total silence.
"Are you sure there are some people working here? I can't see anybody."
George gave a look through the tables too, a little bending on them.
"They might be stopping for one of the so many "tea-times" English people like to do. Let’s look for the entrance and then we will see."
To find the access of the yard, that occupied a wide place in the center of a crossroad, we walked along his perimeter. The entrance was exactly on the opposite side. We entered.
Between working machines and shovels, heaps of sand and piles of sacks of cement, bricks, lumbers, irons and utensils, we noticed a small cottage of red plate, that was almost in the centre of the building yard. We were approaching there when a small door was opened out of the shed.
"Hello boys!" A gentleman said sorting out " Can I help you?"
His voice was cordial and happy. It seemed he was talking to well known persons.
" Is there any need of some workers?" - George did him without preambles and also laughing. We stopped a little closer and so I had the opportunity to better observe him: he looked quite a lot peaky, making a net contrast with the strong black of the hair. He dressed with elegance a brown suit on a white shirt with a red and black cravat.
" I would not mind at all " the man replied in the former jovial tone -" but our firm assumes only through the agency. Now I will give you the address so you can go and see there. There are good hopes. Follow me in to the office, please" he spurred us, seeing we were so undecided.
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