Bill, Bingo and Bram 4

Bill was in actual fact, not so much a man of the world, as a man of Basford and Hartshill, but here was a life lived in an extraordinary richness of simplicity, a wealth of minute experience and also, I always felt, a whole ocean of experience that only Bill knew of, with which he sat at night in his back room alone, and unpacked secretly like a cut glass set, and repacked again before morning.
I felt that there was more to Bill than he ever let on.

When we first moved into Victoria Street, our arrival was marked by two things.
One - within minutes , I was ordered to fetch my mother a packet of cigarettes.
Norman Bettany, the owner of the small grocer's next door one, sporting grey shop coat and brilliantined（梳理头发） hair, shook my hand and said,

"Welcome to Basford"

It was the sort of gesture I can't imagine receiving now.

Two - Bingo, the dog who had lived in our house with its previous occupants, started to pay us unannounced and traumatic（外伤的） visits. This gave Bill an opportunity to demonstrate his way with dogs.

Bingo had already left us a fair memorial to his former guardianship of the house in the form of scored scratch marks at paw level on the outside of the kitchen door - which opened on to the yard. It was from here a few days after unpacking most of our belongings, that we heard scratching and desperate grunting and moaning. When the window was checked, there once again was Bingo, a refugee from his own destiny, seeking a way back to what he knew and was sure of.

The first time, we had little clue as to Bingo's demeanour（行为） when he discovered that his territory, and that of his master and mistress, was now under the occupancy of an invading force, who would deny him what he still saw as his legitimate home.

In short, Bingo turned exceptionally nasty. When he saw our heads pop up in the window frame, instead of the reassuring features of his owners, he had an expression of bewilderment（困惑，迷乱） . His eyes, if ever a dog could do this - became wide with shock and incomprehension, which, as he was approached, festered（溃烂） into vicious disappointment, bile and acrid（辛辣的） resentment.