These were the murky effects: a dark yellow sky – like iodine – and brownish clouds, mounted in flat, extravagant, painterly puffs.
On Southwark Bridge, the lights in their trident-shaped lampposts had blinked on early.
‘It’s sand,’ said Putnam, looking up from his phone. ‘Saharan sand. It’s deflecting the shortwave light, apparently,’ he said. He waggled the fingers of his free hand to demonstrate.
More followed. Not just sand, but ash, too, from forest fires in Spain and Portugal; all this taken up by a hurricane. ‘I must have missed that,’ I said, swirling the ice around my empty glass.
‘Well, it’s a storm now,’ said Putnam. ‘Was a storm.’
‘I’m going to get another,’ I said. ‘Or shall we get some wine, maybe?’
‘Mm,’ said Putnam.
Putnam opened our second bag of salt and vinegar, then carefully split one seam and spread the crisps out a bit.
The phrase ‘It’s sand’ seemed to feature in several conversations outside the Anchor, where the terrace was filling up now, with the after-work crowd.
Some people took photographs. They walked to the railings and held up their phones. Others were less keen. I watched one young woman hurry past with a look of determined abstraction.
For my part, I found that funny, sallow atmosphere induced a peaceful sort of quiescence. Putnam and I didn’t say much. We drank, and ate our crisps. We had our own thoughts.
The snarling sound of a speedboat broke the spell.
‘Oh, poor ducks,’ I said.
‘One more?’ said Putnam, standing up.
He lurched to grab our empty bottle, then lifted our glasses deftly between the fingers of his left hand.
‘Inside, maybe,’ he said.
‘One more. Inside,’ he nodded.
‘Into the past,’ said Putnam.
‘Eh?’
He was bringing our drinks, through a low, black-beamed doorway.
‘We used to live in here, in nineteen eighty-four.’
‘Ah.’
‘Nicer then.’
‘Of course.’
He sat down next to me, on a stool at the window. We were in the ‘Craft Snug’, a nicely forsaken nook, I thought, with no other drinkers, and no music. Dark fridges stood behind an unmanned bar.
‘Who’s we?’ I said.
‘Eh?’
‘The we who used to live here.’
‘Oh. Well. My gang, really. The three or four boys in my year who weren’t totally sociopathic. This was our spot . . . I think I first came in here with Barry Pymer. We used to sit up there,’ he said, indicating the bar, ‘and do lines from The Waste Land at each other.’
‘Oh, excellent.’
‘Or Beckett, we loved. Bits of Auden . . .’
‘How old were you?’
‘Sixteen. Seventeen. A-level age . . .’
‘Now,’ said Putnam, leaning over to peer at the wall beside the sill. ‘Yes, that’s gone, too.’
‘What has?’
‘They used to have a high-water mark there. A brass strip. It showed where the river rose to in seventeen-whenever. Flooded the whole area, obviously. I remember I said to Barry, Well, we’d have been done for, wouldn’t we? He enjoyed that.’
‘What did happen to Barry?’
‘After school?’
‘Mm.’
‘He went to LSE. After that I heard drugs. After that I don’t know. He was a strange cove.’
‘How so?’
Here Putnam frowned. He picked up his glass and held it to his temple.
‘He was just very adult,’ he said, finally.
‘Was he one of the sociopaths?’
‘Well, perhaps. But not then, or not in the same way. He wasn’t going to hang you out of the window by your ankles, like some of those kids used to.’
‘Was he a Cockney?’
‘No, no. North London boy. His voice was theatrical. . . sonorous. He used to call you “dear boy” or “old chap”. That kind of thing. Affected, but not trying to hide that it was affected, if that makes sense.’
‘Yes, I can hear that.’
‘And his manner was the same. Weirdly debonair, for a teenager. You have to picture . . . He was quite short. And very thick-set. He had this great moon face. Always these gobs of sleep in his eyes . . . Not terribly prepossessing. But he used to sort of roll along, down the corridor, like this,’ Putnam said, and here he switched his shoulders, slowly and smoothly, to demonstrate.
‘Not the walk of a boy,’ Putnam said.
‘No, indeed,’ I said.
‘It was as if coming to school was just a jaunt for him,’ Putnam said. ‘He seemed to pass through the place on his own terms.’
‘I remember he went through a phase of reading The Times in the morning. In the common room. Smoking, of course, as we all did. But the way he did it . . . You’d think, The fuck’s he up to? Checking his shares? Seeing how some coup he’d fomented was coming along? He used to spread the paper out, as if he were surveying a battlefield map. Newspapers were big in those days.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Later it was the FT. I remember him getting very beady with the FT. Sucking on his cig like this,’ Putnam said, and here he mimed an exorbitant toke. ‘And peer-ing. Like some ghastly old lag, ransacking the plans of a bank vault! Yes, he was a real shapeshifter, was Barry. A real puzzle. In here, he was suavity itself. Legs crossed, wrist bent back,’ (again Putnam demonstrated a smoking style) ‘like Harold Pinter or something.’
‘But you were friends.’
‘We were. Friends and allies, briefly.’
‘Because of English?’
‘Because of English,’ Putnam said. And here he smiled – a kind smile, for his younger self – before he picked up his glass and took another slow, helpful sip.
‘I don’t know if it mattered to Barry in the same way it did to me – you know, books, poems, plays, all that – but he responded to it. He got it. And you look for that at that age, don’t you? Or I did.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘We all did.’
He continued:
‘He was very pleased with this place. Couldn’t wait to bring me. The first time, I remember, he said, “Of course, two hundred years ago, we’d have been sharing this snug with a certain literary personage.” Oh yes, I said. “With a certain Johnson!” he said. With Samuel Johnson? I said. “Doctor Johnson to you,” says Barry, “Doctor Johnson to you, eh!” – you know, pointing at me.’
‘And then what? Drifted apart?’
‘Yes, I’d say. Well, Barry didn’t stick with one thing for long.’
‘Bit of a Mr Toad?’
‘Yes. That’s well put. There was a lot of restless energy there, with Barry. I’m not sure it mattered what it was discharged on. The next thing was, he was play-ing the agent provocateur.’
‘At school?’
‘Yes, at school. He got into communism. Poetry fell to politics. Or to politicking. Suddenly he was waving Mao’s Little Red Book around. He came in with stacks of them, from some shop in King’s Cross. “Hope everyone’s read this, eh?” Few weeks later, he joined the NF! I remember him chuckling away about having gone out with them at the weekend. You know, for a bit of football-adjacent thuggery.’
‘Oh Lord.’
‘Whether he was actually putting the boot into people . . . I can’t see that, somehow. But I’m afraid he did like bovver. Or being around bovver. And the drugs, too, of course. Amphetamines. So that was a different scene again. As I say, the what of it wasn’t really the point. I remember him in the debating society, later. He was incredibly good at that. All the gestures, too. Very committed!’
‘Like Mussolini?’
‘I was going to say Oswald Mosley.’
‘Yikes.’
‘Mm.’
‘Was he gay?’
‘Was Barry gay? No.’
‘OK.’
‘Well, look, who knows. He gave every appearance of not being gay, if that means anything. There was that same element of performance, with women, that’s true. But that was just him.’
‘We were sitting up there one day,’ Putnam said, again nodding at the bar. ‘When he leant over and said, “You like girls, Ed, eh?” I said, Well, yes. “Got a couple of girls coming over on Saturday. Fancy joining, eh?” Christ, he had a dreadful laugh,’ Putnam said. ‘This low chuckle. Something between a chuckle and a leer. It sounded all wrong.’
‘But you went.’
‘Yes, I went. To Wood Green, which is about as far as you can get from Kew. I must have set off about 5pm, in my Saturday night gear.’
‘Which was?’
‘Oh, white Levi’s. Paisley shirt. Splash of Paco Rabanne. I remember this big old house. No parents in sight. He had a sister, I think. No sign of her either. Just Barry. Also wearing a very loud shirt, as I remember.’
‘He had invited some girls?’
‘He had. Well, women, really. Sort of shop-girl types. Maybe nineteen, or twenty. I stood up when he showed them in. I was polite even then. But they both just glared at me. I mean, who knows what they thought was going on. I remember them sitting there, handbags on their laps, while Barry got busy at his dad’s drinks cabinet. “Cocktail, ladies?”, “Top-up, old boy?” I did try to make conversation. But they were quite hostile. My one, quote-unquote, was mute. Barry’s one was just the opposite – full of pert remarks. “Trying to get us drunk, are you?”, “Wouldn’t you like to know”, “Didn’t your mother teach you not to stare?” Barry seemed to love all that. He was chuckling away. The whole thing was insane. It was like we’d been given four different scripts.’
‘What happened?’
‘Well, nothing happened, for about half an hour. Then Barry said he had something to show his one upstairs. I don’t know if I was expected to pounce then, on the other one.’
‘Were you still being polite?’
‘No, no. I’d given that up. We both sat in blessed silence and I thought about something else. I did what my father used to do, and made a sort of visor for my eyes, with my hands. I had my own thoughts.’
‘Until?’
‘Well, five minutes later, there was a tumble of foot-steps, the door opened, and there was Barry’s date. “Come on, Sheila, we’re going.”’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Yes. So they’re off. And out in the hall I find Barry swaggering down the stairs.’
‘Still chuckling?’
‘I’m sure he was. But what I remember is the look on his face. This truly appalling expression. A sort of bash-ful, butter-wouldn’t-melt smirk. “Can’t win ’em all, eh?”’
‘Did he say that?’
‘Well, words to that effect. “Misjudged that one, old boy, eh?”’
‘And that was that.’
‘That was the end of that soirée, yes. I don’t know what I’d imagined. But at the time, well, one was open to life. You sort of said yes to whatever came up.’
‘Or you did.’
‘Or I did. Yes. That’s true.’
‘Is your school still there?’ I said.
‘It is. I get a newsletter now and then.’
‘Was it very rough?’
‘Christ, yes. And not just the kids. It was a shock, at first.’
‘Poor little Putnam.’
‘Well, yes,’ Putnam said, with a blink; he would allow that.
‘But I had to make a go of it,’ he said. ‘And actually, in a way, I liked it. It was so different. It made me feel grown-up. You know, grit. Grime. Walking up Stamford Street with lorries thundering by. The buildings were black. I remember these soot-furred fanlights. From a century of cargo steamers and packet boats. Factories . . .’
‘And what about here?’
‘Well, there was none of that,’ Putnam said, indicating the Wagamama opposite, ‘and it was pre-Globe, of course.’
‘And post-Globe,’ I said; I couldn’t stop myself.
‘Yes, yes, OK,’ said Putnam.
‘A lot of these streets had been flattened,’ he said.
‘Into the past,’ I said.
‘Mm,’ said Putnam. ‘We off?’ he said.
We were, down breezy Clink Street, past Pickford’s Wharf, with a new tincture in the air now. The streets felt like a shadowy set.
‘You do know,’ Putnam said, ‘that the original Globe was further back from the river.’
‘I’m sure I did,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid I was being facetious. I’m sorry.’
‘Mm,’ said Putnam. ‘Well, that’s your choice.’
‘I’m not sure it is, you know. But I take your point. I don’t like it, believe me. I’d like to squeeze it out of myself, drop by drop . . .’
We walked down Cathedral Street, then Tooley Street, and there was Putnam’s office. You could see in from the corner, just about: strip lights, the back of a computer screen. I could see Putnam’s bookshelves and one corner of his corkboard, covered with postcards he’d pinned there.
‘Coast clear?’ he said.
When I’d first sat down at the pub, I’d noticed that Putnam’s eczema was back. I felt bold enough now to nod at the crusted plaques on his hands and wrists.
‘That looks sore,’ I said.
‘Mm,’ he said, frowning.
He stretched his fingers out.
‘Is quite sore,’ he said.
He turned his hands over and looked down at the palms, which were also encrusted, and split.
‘Christ,’ I said. ‘Ouch.’
I stepped back and again looked up at the office window.
‘He really is the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t he?’ I said.
‘Taking,’ Putnam said, and he gave me a meaning look as he said it.
‘He’s got nothing to give,’ he said.
‘I know,’ I said.
‘You think he’s got something to give, do you?’ Putnam said, unpleasantly.
‘It was just a figure of speech,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I was being . . .’
‘Facetious, yes. OK,’ he said.
As he took out his key card he said,
‘This junction was bombed.’
‘Right here?’
‘Mm. Where you are, more or less. Yes, you’d have been done for,’ he said.
‘September nineteen forty,’ said Putnam. ‘I had a photo by my desk for years. Stunning picture. Just a section of wall still standing. There,’ he indicated, ‘in a sea of rubble and scorched timber. This black wall. And then this pilaster rising up. Like a cross on an altar. A sort of abstract cross. A modernist cross. Fulgent dust cloud above. Chap on a ladder. Another chap with his hands on his hips. Both in, you know, steel helmets . . . Now, where did that go?’ he said, as the door buzzed behind him. ‘I’m going to look for that . . .’ he said.
__________________________________
From The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley. Courtesy of New York Review Books. Copyright © 2026 by Gwendoline Riley.
