Walter’s mates anxiously awaited his arrival, none more than Alice, who couldn’t wait to hear about Noam as she practically doted on the hermit. She considered him a determining factor in her destiny so the least piece of news about him made her sit up. Walter was occasionally late to their evening meetings in The White Harte; his arrival time depended upon consignments of meat from the slaughterhouse.
When the figure of the butcher appeared, larger-than-life, behind the frosted glass pane of the barroom door, Jason spotted him first, and said: “Hey up, look what the tide’s washed up!” Walter’s ebullient form drifted over to the corner table, his rotund face beaming at his friends. His arrival gave the group a fillip, bringing good cheer to rare moments of gloom. Not that they were gloomy
