Keeping Bad Company Read Online Free

flat that she was willing to let to the right person.
     
    I foresaw a problem in that. As you’ll have gathered, few people would consider me ‘the right person’ for anything, much less to have lodging under the same roof. Any lady librarian of advanced years, and certainly any known to Alastair, would, I imagined, be rather fussy about the company she kept and fussier still who lived in her basement flat. I knew Alastair had put in a good word for me, but I wasn’t counting on it being enough.
     
    Still, worrying what she might think of me was jumping the gun. Without money one can do nothing and I had to establish my financial position before I approached the librarian. Without much optimism. I set out for the council’s benefits office. If I could at least persuade the woman I’d be able to pay the rent, it’d be something. Though what poor old Alastair and the lady librarian might consider a reasonable rent, would probably fall way outside my budget. I was undergoing one of my frequent jobless spells.
     
    It was a quiet morning when I got to the benefits office, just a student with his head in a book, an out-of-work dancer, and a man with a cardboard box on his knees. The box was bound with string and had airholes punched in it. From time to time, a scrabbling sound came from inside it.
     
    The student’s number was called first, so off he went and I sat talking to the dancer who’d been out of work because of medical problems. She had consequently got behind with the rent and received notice to quit. She told me all about her stress fractures and asked me whether I thought she ought to accept a job she’d been offered abroad.
     
    ‘Some of these overseas dancing jobs are a bit dodgy,’ she explained. ‘When you get there, the sort of dancing they want isn’t the sort of thing I trained for.’
     
    I commiserated, knowing how hard it is to get a living from the performing arts, but suggested she check out the job offer carefully.
     
    The student had gone off in a huff. It was the dancer’s turn at the counter and that left me with the man with the cardboard box. By now, he was talking to it in a furtive whisper. I had to ask what was in it. I’m human.
     
    He was happy enough to untie the string and open it up. It turned out to contain a large white Angora rabbit with pink eyes. It wouldn’t have surprised me if the box had been completely empty or held an old boot, because you meet a lot of people like that out on the streets.
     
    ‘I’ve got to leave the place we’ve living at,’ he explained. ‘It’s got a rule, no animals. Plain stupid, I call it. I mean, it’s not like a rabbit is a dog, is it? Winston’s got his own little hutch and everything. I keep him clean. He don’t smell. Cats is worse than rabbits. Cats go roaming around. Winston don’t do that. But the landlord’s downright unreasonable. He reckons if he lets me keep Winston there, next thing he’ll have to allow pet snakes and things what more rightly oughta be in the zoo. So we’ve got to go. I mean, I couldn’t part with Winston. He’s all I’ve got.’
     
    Winston twitched his nose and crouched quivering in his box. He looked like a nice enough rabbit, as they go, but it was a depressing thought that anyone could be left with no living friend but a rabbit. Whenever I get too smug about my own lack of strings attached, I try to remember people I’ve met like this.
     
    The man leaned towards me, his face creased in worry. ‘I never leave him behind when I go out. I always bring him with me in his box like this. He don’t mind. He’s used to it. There’s people living where I am now that I wouldn’t trust if I left Winston all alone. When I came back, I’d find the kids had got him out of his hutch, taken him round the back somewhere, and chucked him to a couple of dogs for a bit of fun. I’ve seen a couple of dogs with a good grip, one either end, tug a small creature like Winston here, clear in two.