Dead Men's s Boots

I could have taken a taxi to the Charles Stanger clinic, but my pockets were almost empty and my bank balance was in the last stages of its historic decline. I had to husband my resources. So I took the Tube to East Finchley and walked.

There was good news even before I walked in through the gates: the sound of rhythmic chanting reached me on Coppetts Road as I went along the outer fence. I couldn’t make out any words, but chants are chants: on marches and sit-ins and occupations they all carry the same message, which is a variation on ‘You won’t move us/stop us/intimidate us/make us cut our hair and wear suits’.

The Breath of Lifers were clearly there for the duration: they’d put up tents and benders, and they were ambling between them like early arrivals at a rock concert. Some of them were cooking on portable stoves or the little disposable barbecue sets they sell in Sainsbury’s.

But when I finally located Pen in among the happy campers, she looked so tired and so low that I was dismayed. She seemed to be equally shocked when she got her first look at me, but she didn’t ask how my face came to look like a pound of raw chuck steak. The question would have carried too many messages she didn’t want to send.

‘So how’s it all going?’ I asked, with forced lightness, as we sat together on the crest of a tiny hill away from the main scrum of demonstrators.

Pen’s shoulders twitched in the merest suggestion of a shrug. ‘We’ve managed to hold them off so far,’ she said. ‘They almost got him last night, because we weren’t covering the kitchen entrance. Where they take food deliveries. It’s got its own car park and it’s way over on the other side of the building and we just weren’t thinking.’

‘But you’ve got it covered now?’

‘Oh yeah. We were lucky that the driver was an idiot: he didn’t think to switch off his headlights, so someone saw the van coming and we got there in time to head them off.

She tugged listlessly at the grass between her feet. ‘But it’s only a matter of time now. They’ve been trying to get a court order telling us to cease and desist. That magistrate up in Barnet –&nbËnbs217sp;Runcie – he’s bumped it up the docket somehow and they’re going to get a verdict tomorrow morning. Mulbridge must have slipped him a bribe or something.’

‘Not J-J’s style,’ I observed.