Chapter Text
My route to the barber that day took me past my old bank — the City and Suburban, in Sloane Street. I was badly in need of a trim but had put the thing off for want of funds. It was that same want that barred me at present from reopening my old account. Even if I had possessed such funds as could justify something as grand as a bank account, I doubt they would have let me across the threshold. Not after I had helped—
I could not help stopping in front of the building. Its towering brick edifice was as it had always been, and would always be; red brick dulled by the city smog, high windows barred with cold iron, guards stationed at the entrance. All was as it was before. It was I who had changed into an unrecognisable form. This sagging, soiled thing I had become was not fit to pass through those doors again.
This was the life I had led for the past ten odd years; though the doors stood open, they were even so shut fast against me, and I had not the tools to pry them open and demand my place inside. I hadn’t the skill, I wasn’t like—
The guard on the left turned his eye of judgement upon me. In my rumpled togs, with my hair and threadbare moustache grown out to the point of shagginess, I can only imagine the pitiful picture I painted in their eyes. Yet a pitiful man could yet a dangerous man become — he gestured meaningfully with his head and so on I limped down the street.
Upon the pavement, laid with reverent care, I left my memories of miracles behind me.