The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon [59]
But after a few seconds they looked like this
because there were too many and my brain wasn't working properly and this frightened me so I closed my eyes again and I counted slowly to 50 but without doing the cubes. And I stood there and I opened my Swiss Army knife in my pocket to make me feel safe and I held on to it tight.
And then I made my hand into a little tube with my fingers and I opened my eyes and I looked through the tube so that I was only looking at one sign at a time and after a long time I saw a sign that said and it was above a window on a little shop.
And a man came up to me and he was wearing a blue jacket and blue trousers and he had brown shoes and he was carrying a book in his hand and he said, “You look lost.”
So I took out my Swiss Army knife.
And he said, “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa,” and held up both his hands with his fingers stretched out in a fan, like he wanted me to stretch my fingers out in a fan and touch his fingers because he wanted to say he loved me, but he did it with both hands, not one like Father and Mother, and I didn't know who he was.
And then he walked away backward.
So I went to the shop that said and I could feel my heart beating very hard and I could hear a noise like the sea in my ears. And when I got to the window I said, “Is this London?” but there was no one behind the window.
And then someone sat behind the window and she was a lady and she was black and she had long fingernails which were painted pink and I said, “Is this London?”
And she said, “Sure is, honey.”
And I said, “Is this London?”
And she said, “Indeed it is.”
And I said, “How do I get to 451c Chapter Road, London NW2 5NG?”
And she said, “Where is that?”
And I said, “It's 451c Chapter Road, London NW2 5NG. And sometimes you can write it 451c Chapter Road, Willesden, London NW2 5NG.”
And the lady said to me, “Take the tube to Willesden Junction, honey. Or Willesden Green. Got to be near there somewhere.”
And I said, “What sort of tube?”
And she said, “Are you for real?”
And I didn't say anything.
And she said, “Over there. See that big staircase with the escalators? See the sign? Says Underground. Take the Bakerloo Line to Willesden Junction or the Jubilee to Willesden Green. You OK, honey?”
And I looked where she was pointing and there was a big staircase going down into the ground and there was a big sign over the top of it like this
And I thought, “I can do this,” because I was doing really well and I was in London and I would find my mother. And I had to think to myself, “The people are like cows in a field,” and I just had to look in front of me all the time and make a red line along the floor in the picture of the big room in my head and follow it.
And I walked across the big room to the escalators. And I kept hold of my Swiss Army knife in my pocket and I held on to Toby in my other pocket to make sure he didn't escape.
And the escalators was a staircase but it was moving and people stepped onto it and it carried them down and up and it made me laugh because I hadn't been on one before and it was like something in a science fiction film about the future. But I didn't want to use it so I went down the stairs instead.
And then I was in a smaller room underground and there were lots of people and there were pillars which had blue lights in the ground around the bottom of them and I liked these but I didn't like the people, so I saw a photo booth like one I went into on 25 March 1994 to have my passport photo done, and I went into the photo booth because it was like a cupboard and it felt safer and I could look out through the curtain.
And I did detecting by watching and I saw that people were putting tickets into gray gates and walking through. And some of them were buying tickets at big black machines on the wall.
And I watched