His body had become a companion which seemed always about to leave him: it had its own pains which moved him to pity, and its own particular movements which he tried hard to follow. He had learned from it how to keep his eyes down on the road, so that he could see no one, and how important it was never to look back -although there were times when memories of an earlier life filled him with grief and he lay face down upon the grass until the sweet rank odour of the earth brought him to his senses. But slowly he forgot where it was he had come from, and what it was he was escaping.

In Hartley Row he could find nowhere to sleep and, as he crossed a bridge to escape from the lights of the town, a car swerved to avoid him: he fell backwards against an iron hand-rail and would have toppled into the river if he had not somehow found his balance. When the dust had cleared he unbuttoned his trousers and, laughing, pissed by the roadside. The adventure exhilarated him and he took the spherical compass out of his pocket and in an impulsive gesture threw it in a wide arc away from him; but he had gone only a few yards along the same road when he retraced his steps to find it. At Church Oakley he contracted a slight fever and, as he lay sweating in an old barn, he could feel the lice swimming in the unaccustomed heat of his own body. At Blackwater he tried to enter a pub but he was refused admission with shouts and curses: a young girl brought out some bread and cheese, but he was so weak that he vomited up the food in the yard. At Egham he was standing on a wooden bridge, staring down at the water, when he heard a voice behind him: 'A travelling man, I see. I like to see a travelling man'. Ned looked up, alarmed, and there standing beside him was an elderly man carrying a small suitcase: 'We are all travellers,' he was saying, 'and God is our guide'.

He had his arms outstretched, palms outward, and as he smiled Ned could see the slight protuberance of his false teeth. 'So don't despair, never despair' -and he looked wistfully down at the water -'Don't do it, my friend'. He knelt down on the road and opened his suitcase, handing Ned a pamphlet which he stuffed into his pocket to use later as the material for a fire. 'You will reach your destination, for God loves you,' and he stood up with a grimace. 'For your sake He might let the sun turn back in its course, and let time itself travel backwards.'

He looked down at his trousers, and then brushed the dust off them.

'If He cared to, that is.' Then, as Ned still said nothing, he looked towards the town: 'Any chance of lodgings there, is there?' He walked on without waiting for a reply, as Ned, too, travelled forward through Bagshot and Baker-bridge until he reached the suburbs of the city.

And after a few days he arrived in London, by way of the unlucky Isle of Dogs. He had heard that there was a hostel in Spitalfields and, although he was not clear in which direction he should travel, somehow he guided himself towards it: he had, after all, the old spherical compass still in his pocket. And so he found himself walking down Commercial Road, and perhaps he was also muttering to himself there since a young boy ran away from him in obvious fright. His legs were stiff, and his feet aching: he might have hoped that the earth would swallow him, but the sight of the church ahead of him drew him forward since he had come to understand during his wanderings that churches offered protection for men and women like himself. And yet as soon as he reached the steps of the church, and had sat down upon them, he was once more seized with apathy and with an aversion for any action or decision. With his head down he gazed at the stone beneath his feet as the solitary bell tolled above him: anyone who came upon him unawares might think he had been metamorphosised into stone, so still he seemed.

But then he heard a rustling somewhere to his left and, looking up, he saw a man and woman lying with each other beneath some trees. A dog had once tried to mount him when he was walking through a field: he had hit it several times with a large stone until eventually it had run away, bloody and yelping. And now he was once again filled with the same rage as he screamed out incomprehensible words to the couple who, on seeing him, sat up and stared without rising to their feet. A plane passed overhead and at once his fury disappeared; he would have resumed his silent contemplation of the cracks and hollows in the stone beneath his feet if someone, alerted by the sudden screaming, had not been walking towards him from the street.

The setting sun was in Ned's face, and he could not see clearly, but he assumed it was a policeman and prepared himself for the customary dialogue.

The figure approached him slowly, not altering his pace, and now stood at the bottom of the steps looking up at him; and his shadow covered Ned as he asked his name.

'My name is Ned.'

'And tell me, Ned, where do you come from?'

'I come from Bristol.'

' Bristol? Is that so?'

'So it seems,' Ned said.

'It seems you're a poor man now.'

'Now I am, but then I was in trade.'

'And so how did you come to be here?' the man asked him, reaching out to touch Ned's right cheek with his finger.

'I don't know how I came to be here, to tell you the truth.'

'But do you know how you are?'

'I'm weary, Sir, very weary.'

'So where are you going to now, Ned?'

He had forgotten that he had come to find the hostel: 'I don't know,' he answered, 'Anywhere. One place is as good as another when you're roaming. I might go and then again I might come back.'

'You're like a child, I see.'

'I might have become one, Sir, but I'm nothing really.'

That's sad, Ned. All that I can say is that's sad.'

'It's sad, to say the least.' And Ned looked up at the darkening sky.

'It's time, isn't it?'

'It's certainly time,' Ned said.

'Time, I mean, for you to be on your way again. This is not the place for y ou.'

Ned remained silent for a moment: 'And where shall I go to?'

There are other churches,' he replied. This one is not for you. Go towards the river.'

Ned watched the man, who pointed southward and then walked slowly away. He got up, suddenly cold, but as soon as he moved away from the church his weariness left him and he went back in the direction from which he had come -along Commercial Road, across Whitechapel High Street, and then down towards the Thames and Limehouse, all the time rubbing the spherical compass in his pocket.

This was an area haunted by other vagrants, most of them suspicious and solitary, and as he passed them he looked for those signs of degradation which tramps always recognise in each other -he wanted to see how much further he would have to fall now that he, too, had entered the great city.

He stopped at Wapping, by the corner of Swedenborg Court, and saw a church rise up beside the river -was this the place which the figure had pointed to, saying 'there are other churches'? The experiences of the evening had left him wounded and alert, so that now he looked fearfully around; he could hear the sigh of the river upon the mudflats, and the confused murmur of the city behind him; he gazed up at the human faces in the clouds, then he looked down upon the ground and saw the small whirlwinds of dust raised by the breeze which came from the Thames and brought with it also the sound of human voices. All of these things turned around him for ever, and it seemed to Ned that it was no longer he who was watching and hearing them: it was someone other.

He found that he was walking by the back of the Wapping church towards a park which adjoined it; here also protection might be gained and, as he hurried past the blackened stones, he caught sight of a small brick building in a far corner of the park. The place was now clearly abandoned although, as Ned approached it, he could see the letters M SE M OF engraved above the portal (the others had no doubt been obliterated by time). He peered in cautiously and, when he was sure that no other tramp was using it as a shelter, he passed the threshold and sat down against the wall; at once he began to eat some bread and cheese which he had taken from his pocket, looking around ferociously as he did so. Then he began to examine the rubbish which had been left here: most of it was familiar enough, but in one corner he found a discarded book with a white cover. He put out his hand to touch it and for a moment drew back, since the cover seemed to be protected by a sticky wax. Then he picked it up and noticed that over the course of time the pages had curled and clung together although, when he shook them, a photograph fell upon the ground. He gazed at if for a while, making out the features of a child, and then placed it in his pocket before he began painstakingly to separate the pages, smoothing each one down with his hand before he tried to read it. He concentrated on the words and symbols which were written here, but the print was now so smudged and overlaid that much of the book was quite unintelligible: he saw a triangle, and a sign for the sun, but the letters beneath them were unfamiliar. Then Ned looked out, gazing at the church, thinking of nothing.