A dark, dry night in London last week. A friend and I were at Angel tube station, waiting for other friends to turn up so we could go to dinner. The street as crowded as ever, as pedestrians and buses and cars jostled for space and people poured out of the station with anxious, expectant or tired faces, their hunched shoulders signalling the end of another day, and the waiting for the comfort or dullness of home. J., my friend, was feeling cold, so she decided to stay inside the station. I felt dog-tired, it had been a long day, so I decided to go outside and sit on a bench. Sat down, looking at a starless sky and the facade of a big building in front of me, brown brick, full of offices and shops and hidden histories behind the facade.

A cough, deliberate and measured. A voice, saying something indistinct. I looked up at a man, asked him if he'd said something. 'I said, excuse me', he repeated with a touch of impatience, and sat down slowly and heavily beside me. A working man, I guessed, wearing an old coat, down on his luck but proud of his respectability. He stank of booze, but looked sober and mild. Glasses, squinting eyes, a frail body, not tall, not well. Pulled a notebook out of a pocket and a pencil out of another, gazed for a while at the building before us, and began to draw it, in wavering, unsteady strokes.

'Are you an artist?', I asked, for want of anything else to say. He looked at me for a while, and said, in slow, deliberate tones, 'I'm a carpenter.' Looked at me a little longer, as though to decide if I was mocking him. Satisfied that I wasn't, he began to speak.

'I draw for fun, you see. After work I come here, or go somewhere else, and take out this' - gestured to his notebook - 'and I draw.' He paused for a moment. 'I like drawing', he added, with great emphasis, as though to convince himself as well as me. 'I'm sure you do, and you're very good', I gabbled, but he wasn't listening.

'My girlfriend.' Pause. 'She threw me out of me house. My own house, you see? I got no money, and she - she threw me out. We had a fight. She threw me out. Her house, that'ud be ok. But my own flat. And she threw me out.' I murmured something indistinct and sympathetic. He carried on, looking at my face as he spoke.

'Now I'm waiting for a bus. I need 80p to get to my mum's house, that's all I need. I'll get it too. Don't you worry, I'll get it. And I got what's most important, mate - I got me beer. Most important thing.' Drew a can out of his inexhaustible pockets, opened it and winked at me. 'Just need 80p to get to me mum's place, too far t'walk from here, but I'll get there. I'll be fine, mate.' Looked at me again, too proud to ask for the money, and defiant.

I scrabbled around in my pockets, drew out a few coins. 'Here you go.' He took it at once. 'Thanks, mate. You're a gentleman.' Yes I am. A gentleman, that's why I'm handing you three copper coins when I could have given you enough for the tube and a dinner. A gentleman, that's why I'm washed out here after walking around central London doing nothing and you're here washed out after a day's hard labour, and a fight at home. And then he began, and even before he began I think I knew what the conversation would get around too.

'Women, son.' Deep sigh, an angry frown creasing his brow. 'You know women....you can't tell them anything. Never', - he leaned towards me confidentially - 'never tell a woman things, you know, you learn that in this life. They can't take it. Some words - don't use them. They can't take it, they can't. And most of all' - his voice grew louder now - 'don't use the C-word. You know what I'm talking about, mate?' I did, but I didn't want to. 'The C-word, you see. C-U-N-T. Never call a woman that, even if she's one. They make your life hell.' He subsided, sank back in his seat. 'Threw me out of my flat, she did that, yes she did. But I'll be fine.' And what did you do to her? I wondered. What else did you call her, how often, how many times a day? What had she done, spoiled your dinner? Kept you waiting? Had a headache? What would you have done had she called you a sod? A fuckwit? A poof? I'm only asking, you see, I don't know, I don't know your life and I never will. Hers neither. But you think I can understand you because we both have pricks, don't you? What makes you think that? What if I get up and walk away right now? Thoughts tumbled around in my head like leaves in a storm. I'd have liked to have met her too, you know. Known what she made of being called the C-word. Known what you'd done to her, what she'd done to you, what the two of you've done to each other over the years, months, days, minutes. But I'll nod quietly at whatever you say, what can I do? Give you feminist training, when all you have is a beer and my charity in your pocket? And other thoughts too, pushing uneasily against these. I have more coins, you know. I can walk home from here, I can take the tube, I can take a bus, I'm about to go for a nice Thai dinner that you'll never be able to afford, and they'd throw you out of the restaurant even if you could. That's what I am, you know. And this is what you are - you should hate me, really. But you like me, don't you, because I'm giving you 80p? Or is it because I'm listening to you? Tell me, mate, when was the last time anyone listened to you? Tell me about me, tell me what I am, tell me what you make of me, I must be strange to you as you are to me. And those words again, now as though he's lashing himself with them. 'Can't call your woman a cunt, you can't. Remember that, mate. Lessons in life. Forget them and you're done for.' 'Your' woman?

The storm subsided. He muttered something again about looking out for yourself, and staying clear of women, and I kept a poker face, I didn't laugh, I didn't cry. And then he began sketching again, and the conversation turned into something totally different. He drew like a child, but a child who knows he can be good some day. A child who wishes, perhaps, that he had more time to draw, but they want him at work again today till late. Grateful that we'd moved to safer ground, I asked him if he had to draw much as a carpenter. A stupid question. You can research the history of labour, yes you can, but you know nothing, do you? And he knows you know nothing, and he's being patient with you. 'No, I draw 'coz I like it, you see. My job, they give you plans, you build to those plans. Don't draw for that, but for me.' But he likes me because I'm listening, I'm not running away. He doesn't know I'm mining him for experience, using him as to figure this city out, he doesn't and won't know I'm writing about him now.

He's on to eyes now. 'I like drawing eyes. Not been drawing long, but I draw eyes, I like them, I paint them too.' There are two ways of drawing eyes, he tells me, see right here - a few jabs with his pencil and he's magically created an eye where there was blank white paper, and see right here again - the pencil moves again, shading an oval outline now, and we have an eye again. The irises, the pupils, the retina - he knows them all, and so does his pencil. He draws clumsily and not well, but he's doing magic, he's making things happen on this patch of paper that no one owns or rules but himself. Those hands set to work all day for the imaginations and profits of other men find their own zone of power at this time of evening, when he sits before tube stations and draws what he sees, drunk but steady, a steady hand, a steady eye. He's doing magic and he's proud of it. And despite myself I'm drawn in, we're talking about his art, he hasn't been at it long. 'But I'm getting better. I like it, you see.'

We're more relaxed now, though we've barely been speaking five minutes. 'Been a carpenter long?' I ask, conversationally. 'Thirty-two years', he replies. Seeing my eyes widen, he adds, 'Since I was a child, y'see. Used to help me dad, he was a carpenter too. Been carpentering since I was a child. I'm forty-two now, working for thirty-two years.'

'I'm a good carpenter', he adds after a while. The pride's quiet, but evident. The craftsman who works all day but is not just an eight-hour slave but also an artist, the man who's proud of what he does and creates, at work and in the evenings on his drawing-pad as crowds jostle in the city before him. 'I'm good at my work.' I'm sure you are. Are you the only one who knows it? Is there anyone who bothers to tell you that, even if they do know? Does that make you lonely? And then the conversation changes again.

'Thirty two years, yes. And I was in jail too, in the middle.' So he was in jail. Doesn't shock me much, I tell myself. Give me a few more years in Blair's Britain, and who knows, I may be mistaken for a Muslim and be slung in jail myself. 'How long?', I ask him. 'Ten years.' And then I ask, 'why were you in jail?' It seems natural to the conversation, flowing as it is, there are no secrets he wants to hold from me any more.

'For murder.' Casually, without a change of tone. Looks at me, without curiosity. Did my face change? I tried to make sure it didn't. 'Murder', he repeats. 'I killed someone', he says, unnecessarily. There's a pause, I don't know what to say. The smell of the beer's suddenly very strong. I look in his eyes, they're still mild and his frame's still weak. 'He was a burglar', he says, and leans back, as though exhausted.

What could I do? Strangely enough, I wasn't afraid of him - he wouldn't hurt a fly, I could see, though he'd killed a man and heaven knows what he'd done to his girlfriend, but at the moment he wanted to talk and wanted me to listen. But now I couldn't just get up and walk away, not once he'd told me this, because at some level, who knows, he may have been expecting me to do just that. Are we playing a game? Are we playing who-blinks-first? I latch on to his last comment. 'He was a burglar?' 'Yes, he'd have killed me if I hadn't shot first.' I look shocked. 'But then it's manslaughter - they gave you ten years for that? For self-defence?' He's pleased, I'm speaking a language he likes. He's been a convict, for Christ's sake, who knows the law better than him? Explains, with genuine, disinterested intellectual clarity, the British legal system's distinctions between murder and manslaughter to me, how he'd been tried for murder and got away with manslaughter, but still got ten years. Looks at me again, for the first time with curiosity. 'You're an Indian, aren't you? You'll be knowing about the British legal system, then.' Outwardly, I grin at him, 'yes I am.' Inwardly: now how the fuck do you know that? Next you'll be saying you know I'm researching the history of law! He doesn't, thankfully. He's remembering his days in jail. 'Learnt a lot there, mate. I had some good times, I had some bad times.' He coughs, loudly. I venture a question. 'Was it hard getting to work after coming out of prison? Did they make it hard for you?' He smiles, pretty much for the first time. 'Oh, I got around them.' That look of pride again. And why not? How many of your friends are on the dole? You got around them, and good for you too. My congratulations. But inevitably, other thoughts. Was he really a burglar? Did you want to watch him die? Did he try to kill you too, or were you making that up? Was there anyone else you ever killed?

I look up, and my friends are walking towards me. They look at us curiously, and wait politely for the conversation to finish. I end it clumsily, though part of me wants to stay. 'Er...my friends are here. I have to go. Nice meeting you, er...' Fucking hell, I don't even know your name. But you don't care. He looks up and sees three women. His views on women suddenly flash through my panicking mind. But nothing. He smiles, a bit weirdly but not unpleasantly. A beery drawl, now. 'Hello, girls.' 'Hello', they reply, tentatively. I hold out my hand quickly, and wish him all the best. 'Thank you, mate, it was good talking to you', he says, shakes my hand, and then I'm gone, we're off the road towards dinner.

I looked back once, and he was still there as we headed round a corner, head sunk into his drawing pad, his pencil sketching out buildings and faces and eyes, for the moment quite happy in his world. A working man, a murderer, a weak and frail person on a bench near a station, doodling, 80p in his pocket, an ex-convict, a small-built and short-sighted man waiting for a bus to come along to take him to his mum.