Junction X (8 page)

“Of course. And I’m at the club tonight.”

“Oh?”

“I did tell you,” Valerie said, heading for the stairs. “It’s the presentation for the Junior Tournament and you know how that bores you. I didn’t even get you a ticket. Can’t you go to Phil’s?” By the time she’d finished the sentence, she was half way up the stairs.

I put Mary down with a swift kiss, and ran up after Valerie, following her into the dressing room, ignoring the calls of “Well, can we have a stick insect or not?” from both of the children.

I sat backwards on a cane chair and leant my head on the back of it. “What was that about, downstairs?” My stomach was in knots, but I kept repeating to myself, it’s all right, it’s all right. If she’d discovered anything about Phil, she’d not be so calm. Valerie may look like a swan, all calm frigid beauty, but her temper can be as sudden and as violent as the worst winter gales.

It was her smile that made me feel safe, finally. It was teasing, and although I could tell she was annoyed, it was almost as if she were playing a part, a wife showing resigned tenderness at her husband’s insensitivity. She glanced at me in the mirror, a sharp glittering barb of a look. “I don’t know what you’d say if I went and spent that amount of money without discussing it with you first.”

“Oh,” I said. “The Sands.”

She finished putting mascara on and looked at me hard then, still without turning round. “Yes, of course The Sands, darling.” The endearment was automatic, or it sounded it. “What else did you think I meant?” When I just shrugged and looked away, she laughed. “What else are you keeping from me?”

I wish I could say that I blushed, but I was too well-practised, and so kept an even gaze, meeting hers. “Nothing, of course. Oh, apart from all the bodies.”

“I just wished you’d mentioned it, that’s all. It’s not like you to go and spend that amount of money.”

“How—”

“Claire.” She brushed her hair, doing something that teased the back of it up on the back of her head. “Of course, I pretended I knew all about it, but I’m fairly sure she knew I was lying. I didn’t know you were even considering joining. I was thinking of getting the children violins.” I shuddered inwardly at the thought of that as she stood up and opened a wardrobe. “Clear off, Ed, there’s a dear. I’ve asked Ann McKewen to come over at seven to sit, so you needn’t stay in and eat humble pie.” She kissed me on the top of my head and I grinned.

“It was an impulse thing. There was a lot of whisky. I only went to see what it was like.”

“Dear Ed,” she said. “Trust Phil to lead you into temptation.” I felt those icy fingers again, this time on the back of my neck, but it seemed to be a dismissal; I’d lost her attention.

I stopped at the door and looked back. “Really? Violins?”

She didn’t answer.

I escaped to my study and got changed. I felt exhausted. For a horrible second I’d really thought she had found out about Phil and the relief, as it flooded through me, made me weary. I pulled on my sweater and I considered going to The Sands, but didn’t really fancy it. I would be welcomed, I was sure, but hard drinking during the week wasn’t a good idea for someone who had to stay alert in his job, and I shied away from seeing Phil again so soon for some reason.

So I spent some time with the children. They sat around the table while I made a sandwich, and we discussed the merits and otherwise of stick insects. When the sitter arrived, I left them with an unsatisfactory (for them) “We’ll see.”

It was pure impulse and a memory of Albert Charles’s assertion that the train set would be ready in a day or so that pulled me to the house next door, and before I could think twice, I was knocking. It wasn’t until after I knocked that I wondered if they were the sort of people (like us) who preferred to have people they didn’t know particularly well ring in advance. It took Sheila’s smiling face to reassure me.

I grinned. “I’m not disturbing you?”

“Not at all,” she said, and stood aside to let me in.

“Thanks. Wasn’t sure if I’d be interrupting your dinner.”

“Not a bit of it. We eat early during the week.” She pushed open the sitting room door. “Albert? It’s Mr. Johnson.”

“Oh, God, Sheila. It’s Ed, please.”

Albert put down his paper and stood to greet me. He was wearing a shirt with no tie. “Sherry, Ed?”

I shook my head. “I won’t stop long. I’m being the nosy neighbour tonight. I was wondering if the train set was ready. I’ll go down the club for a beer later.”

Albert smiled. “Just about.” He moved to the door and called. “Alec? Alec! Come down a moment!”

There was an awkward silence as we waited and, never being able to stand such things, I asked, “Any plans to decorate?”

Sheila glanced at Albert and he answered for her, “No. I don’t think so, not yet, we like it as it is, really.”

I felt awful. I smiled and nodded and muttered something about Claire’s taste being good, but I was suddenly aware that they probably couldn’t afford it. The silence descended again, and I was beginning to wish I’d had that sherry just to have something to do with my hands when I heard the bump of someone jumping down the stairs and Alec arrived in the doorway.

His face was clouded, and apart from a glance at me—swiftly removed—he didn’t really look at anyone. He was wearing a black T-shirt which looked brand new and a pair of jeans that had seen better days. A pair he’d probably had a while, as they were as tight on him as on any young peacock strutting through London these days. His hair had probably been neatly cropped around his ears from the term before, but the summer growth gave a rebellious wave to the ends, paler where it curled than where it lay flat against his head. His feet were bare. It was something that I was to get used to. He wore shoes only when he had to.

His mother sighed and I glanced at her. “You could have put slippers on before coming down. What will Mr. Johnson think?”

“
I
didn’t know Mr. Johnson was down here. You didn’t say.”

“Ed, please,” I interrupted, recognising the first signs of trouble through years of family radar. “Mr. Johnson makes me sound like I’m a hundred and two.” I suddenly wanted to say something like “Why should he wear shoes if he doesn’t want to?” But he wasn’t my son, and I’d probably have said the same to John if he’d come down barefoot—so why did it seem different for Alec?

“Ed’s here to see the layout,” Albert said. “Why don’t you take him up and let him see what we’ve done?”

“All right.” He shrugged and turned away, trotting up the carpeted stairs leaving me no recourse but to hare off after him.

Although every house in The Avenue is different, they follow the basic pattern: sitting room, study, kitchen, dining room, then bedrooms and bathrooms depending on the size of the house. But it was the attics that people loved about them. They’d been built when most people still had servants and they’d have lived at the top of the house. Such things were long gone. Some people, like us, filled them with the detritus of living: broken rackets and toys, boxes of old curtains and unwanted gifts, but some had converted them into large spaces as bedrooms, studies and for other uses. As Alec led me up the final wooden flight of stairs, his bare feet on a level with my eyes, I was reminded that our attic was a project I’d long been meaning to address. He pushed open the narrow door and led me in. I couldn’t help but laugh in amazement at the incredible array of track and terrain which took up nearly the entire floor of the house.

Alec’s face darkened. “It’s not a toy, you know.”

I’d hurt his feelings, and he’d completely misinterpreted my reaction. I moved to stand next to him. “No. No. I didn’t mean anything other than…wow!” He smiled then, for the first time since I’d met him and it changed his face completely. “I’ve never seen anything this big except in Hamley’s.”

He grin got wider. “I suppose I’m used to it. But I always think it could be better.” He moved crab-wise around the side of the room. It was the only way you could move, as, except for the two narrower ends of the room, the boards that supported the train set came within about eighteen inches of the walls. “What I’d really like is a garden layout, but with our weather it would be difficult, Dad says.”

“You could certainly do with more space,” I said, moving around in the opposite direction to examine the rest of the table that I couldn’t see from where I was. There was a papier-mâché mountain in the centre of the room, with tunnels in four places, and over in the far corner, I found a miniature port terminus with unloading apparatus and even a small barge affixed to a flat blue painted wharf. There was so much to see I almost forgot about Alec’s presence, and it wasn’t until a few minutes later that I worked my way back around to where he was tinkering with the underside of an engine.

“This must have taken you years.”

He looked sideways at me and the side of his mouth turned up. I couldn’t help but smile back. His smile really was infectious, and up to that point, I’d never known what that meant.

“Pretty much.”

“Did your Dad have this before you?”

“He had some of the track, and the engines. This one’s one of the first ever Dublos. He had it in a cardboard box for ten years.” He shook his head.

“I know a man who buys toys—you know, dolls and models—for investment,” I said, watching his fingers manipulate the screwdriver; they were long and brown and agile, like a pianist’s. I’d noticed a piano downstairs and I wondered if he played. “He just puts them in a trunk in the loft. He doesn’t even unseal the box.”

“Ruins their value to take them out,” Alec said, without looking up. “But for me, it’s using something beautiful that’s what makes it valuable. My mum’s got plates—some posh china—wrapped in tissue in packing cases. She got it for her wedding and she never uses it. Not even at Christmas. What’s the point of that?”

I nodded. Valerie was the same; she had things for “best” too. “Some people were like that about sitting rooms, too, not long ago.”

He laughed. Just the sound of his laughter made me smile; it was rich and uninhibited. He even closed his eyes when he laughed. For all that he had seemed shy on first impression, he wasn’t at all.

“Our last place was just like that. We lived in the kitchen, and only went into the parlour when we had visitors. It used to smell horrible—all damp.”

The door opened and Albert arrived, interrupting our laughter, so I never got a chance to say anything.

“Well, what do you think?” Albert said.

“I was just telling Alec how impressive I found it.”

I was going to say something else, but I looked over at Alec and his face was shut down again, and expressionless. He put the train on a shelf and started moving track around.

“When we’ve got the electricity sorted out, I’ll give you a knock,” Albert said. “There’s a problem somewhere. But no worries, eh, son? We’ll get it worked out.”

“Yeah.”

“I should go,” I said, “Sheila will see me out. I’ll leave you to get on.” I stopped at the top of the stairs. “Alec,” I said, and he looked at me properly for the first time. “I’ve got an engine…in a box…” I smiled, and he echoed me like a secret shared. “Perhaps you could come over on Saturday and tell me something about it? If it’s any good, perhaps it would be better being used than in a box.”

“Well, that’s kind. Isn’t it? Now, say thank you, Alec.” Albert said. But Alec didn’t. He just smiled and as I walked down the stairs, I could hear Albert telling him off for not being polite. I remember thinking that I hadn’t noticed; he’d seemed perfectly nice to me.

Chapter 6

Alec didn’t come that next Saturday, and I couldn’t blame him. I reasoned he wasn’t interested in being forced to socialise, and I made a mental note to drop the engine in next door when I found time. The weekend afterwards I was out in the garden with Valerie, being given my orders. The children were out, off swimming with friends and Valerie was explaining to me what she wanted done with the land beyond the three plum trees. I was mentally cataloguing it away in order to explain it all to Tyler, our gardener, when he came next. She was quite capable of dealing with him herself, but while she designed the shape and style, she always considered the manual labour in the garden to be my domain, although I hardly knew a snapdragon from a dahlia and rarely lifted a hose.

So she told me what she wanted done, I told the man, and the man did the actual work. Oh, I would wander out from time to time and sweep a path free of leaves or snow, or wander around with a bucket, looking important, but that was about it.