Portobello (13 page)

He lay down on the brown sofa to sleep again. The slats on the
dark-green blind were not entirely closed and thin strips of sunlight
gleamed in the gaps. He got up and remedied this by pulling the
cords as tightly as they would go. His action deepened the darkness
and he lay down again, savouring the silence and the gloom.
It occurred to him that this was very likely what death would be
with the added bonus of unconsciousness.

The paella stall was almost too much for Lance. He couldn't
afford to buy anything from it, any more than he could
afford to buy one of the sugar-dusted pancakes he had seen
on offer outside Magic City, the amusement arcade. But the circular
pans of steaming and bubbling prawns in golden sauce, green peas
and onions and chicken pieces, and another of gleaming saffroncoloured
rice as beautiful as one of Gemma's quilted and beaded
cushions, made him sick with longing. He forced himself to turn
away and concentrate on the true purpose of his visit.

The woman in the red jacket and the floral skirt spent a long
time looking at Lilla's window. Her companion, a man as thin and
weedy as she was fat, seemed to be urging her to go into the shop
where he would buy her jewellery. Their voices were loud and
Lance, in the middle of the roadway, could hear every word they
said. He moved closer. Few cars or vans come up or down the
Portobello Road, though plenty cross it, but here pedestrians wander
unthreatened, chatting, pointing, laughing in amazement. The
couple he had his eye on passed him, crossing the road, and homed
in on the stall where rings and brooches and long strings of beads
were on offer, at half Lilla's prices. The woman was carrying a red
shoulder bag, its flap, which fastened with a stud, left open. Lance,
who knew something about such things, reflected that this kind
of handbag was rubbish, as was the type with a zip. The only
reasonably safe kind was the old-fashioned sort like his nan had
the sense to carry, which closed with a clip over which a kind of
belt came down and and locked into a buckle. There was no way
a bag snatcher could get into that.

Before his encounter with Fize and his friends, he had experimented
with cutting into a bag with a kitchen knife. The knife
had been Auntie Ivy's and was one of several lying among forks
and sharpeners, and what Uncle Gib called a fish slice, in a
kitchen drawer. You had to work it in a crowded place. Lance had
picked the tube – not the tube here really, the underground, for
the trains from Edgware Road via Paddington to Hammersmith
run along the oldest line in London, passing Uncle Gib's house
almost too closely for comfort. Ladbroke Grove was the nearest
station to the Portobello Road but Lance got on at Westbourne
Park and in the rush hour. The train was loaded with commuters
at 5.30 in the afternoon, hundreds of them standing and crushed
together. He picked on girls with large bags slung over their shoulders
on short straps. These were the most accessible. Aiming for
the side of the bag and from the back as the train moved out of
Ladbroke Grove, he managed to cut a slit in it about six inches
long. The girl didn't feel a thing and no one noticed. The passengers
were all too tired and jaded after a day's work.

Lance wasn't tired. He'd done nothing all day except buy junk
food and eat it, and watch the telly. He slipped his hand inside
the bag and brought out a leather something that felt like a wallet
and another leather something, the kind of case people keep credit
cards in. It took nerve to remain inside the train after that but he
only had to stay until it pulled into Latimer Road. The girl got out
when he did but she hadn't noticed anything wrong with her bag.
It was an anticlimax and an unpleasant one when, trudging back
to the Portobello, he looked at his haul and found the thing he'd
thought a wallet was a pouch containing sunglasses and the case
he'd thought was for credit cards a kind of make-up with a sponge
inside its lid. He threw them away in disgust. Since then he hadn't
tried the trick with the knife again. Truth to tell, he was a bit afraid
of carrying a knife. Getting caught with a knife when you'd done
nothing with it but split a handbag, when you didn't mean to do
anything else with it, was a bit of a waste. His injured arm felt
heavy and sore, although the plaster had come off, and his ribs
ached.

The fat woman in red and her husband – Lance thought the
thin guy must be her husband as no man would be seen dead with
her unless he was chained too tightly to get away – were now seriously
studying the wares on show at the jewellery stall. Lance
knew the girl who ran it, although not her name, but he wasn't
too pleased at her 'Hi, Lance', uttered loudly and drawing
attention to him.

Still no one seemed to take any notice. He muttered 'Cheers',
the term that served equally as a 'hello' and a 'thank you' with him,
and edged closer to the woman in red. She was holding up a long
string of black and white beads, which she suddenly put down and
began rummaging in her bag. Lance thought she was reaching for
a purse or wallet but no, she evidently left paying for things to her
husband. Out came a pack of Benson and Hedges and a lighter.
The strain of shopping was too much for her without the stimulus
or sedative effect of a cigarette. Another one smoking those stinking
things! Just wait till July first when they ban it for ever, he found
himself muttering under his breath, you'll know what it's like to
have the filth slap a hand on your shoulder then. But would she?
Wasn't this an open space where they could kill themselves with
the things as much as they liked?

She was putting the cigarettes and the lighter back in the bag
now and, no-brain that she was, leaving the flap hanging open.
She held up the black and white beads to the girl who'd spoken
to him, said she'd have them. Lance slipped his hand inside the
bag, drew out a large heavy wallet and shoved it into the pocket
of his jeans. Just as he'd thought, the man was paying for the necklace,
asking her if she'd like a pair of earrings to match. Lance
stepped back, turned and stared into the window of the cheese
shop, as if entranced by the Jarlsberg and Roquefort on offer. The
heavy wallet made a grotesque bulge in his jeans like he'd got a
hernia. One of Uncle Gib's religious pals had a hernia, which gave
him a small belly on top of his large natural belly. Slowly, pausing
to glance at stalls he'd seen a hundred times before, Lance walked
up the Portobello until he could safely turn into Golborne Road
away from spying eyes.

There, sitting on a wall in a street harmless now but once, long
before his time, a notorious crime hotspot, he opened the wallet.
No credit cards. She left that kind of thing to her husband. Three
twenties and a fiver and, in the purse section where she'd almost
broken the zip stuffing it with change, a lot of two-pound coins
and one pound coins and fifty and twenty pences. She'd got too
much of it to bother with the smaller stuff. He counted. With the
notes it came to eighty-eight pounds all told. Not bad, might have
been worse.

He wandered down Bevington Road, pausing first to drop the
wallet into a bin and then to buy himself a Mars bar and a packet
of crisps, finally getting on a bus, from which he was immediately
ejected because it was the kind you had to have a ticket for before
you got on. Lance felt aggrieved. He had fully intended to pay his
fare out of Mrs Red Jacket's change but they hadn't given him the
chance. There was no justice.

Ever since his bag-snatching he had been moving away from Uncle
Gib's with no apparent purpose. But of course he had a purpose. A
moth drawn to a flame, he was making for Gemma's place, for the
flats with their balconies and black railings, their gardens full now
of red flowers and purple flowers, and the graffiti-scrawled yellow
walls that bounded them. After her visit to the hospital he no longer
had that hopeless feeling that she would utterly reject him, clutch
Abelard to her bosom as if he were one of those paedos, turn from
him and slam the balcony door. Was it possible she would have him
back? Give that Fize his marching orders and have him back? He'd
have to make her believe he'd never smack her again, which was
true, he never would. He'd tie his hands behind him, sit on his
hands, before he'd touch her.

He was outside the flat now, looking up at her balcony. She
must have seen him for she came out. Overflowing with love, he
gazed ardently at her. She put one finger to her lips, then mouthed
silently, 'I'll come and see you,' and was gone. Back the way she
had come, the door closed carefully behind her.

Reuben Perkins and his wife Maybelle were paying a rare visit
to Uncle Gib and being served tea in the front room. The two
of them were the only people Uncle Gib ever made tea for. Even
the Children of Zebulun, attending a prayer meeting, were given
orange squash. Mr and Mrs Perkins were provided with tea and
Garibaldi biscuits – they had to bring their own cigarettes – because
Reuben was Uncle Gib's best friend and now no longer the Assistant
Shepherd but the Head Shepherd himself. He and Uncle Gib were
remarkably alike and could have been taken for brothers. Both
were tall and thin, although Uncle Gib was taller and thinner, both
had skull-like faces and a hungry deprived look, thin-lipped, their
eyes suspicious and their noses sensitive. Perhaps they had started
off looking quite different from each other but prison, the prison
diet and each other's frequent company had brought about this
similarity. Maybelle Perkins wasn't at all like Auntie Ivy who had
been a handsome woman, but squat and round with a square face
and frizzy ginger hair.

Conversation, having exhausted the weather, house prices and
the general moral decline in society, centred on Uncle Gib's recent
tract on teenage single parents and his latest homilies to his correspondents
in the church magazine. Both Perkinses approved, both
marvelled at his wise advice and his literary skills. Maybelle, on
her fourth fag, was commending him for telling a sixteen-year-old
girl that if she took the morning-after pill she'd be a murderer and
go straight to hell, when a key was heard in the lock and Lance
came into the house. The front-room door was open and the fug
pervaded the hall. Coughing ostentatiously, Lance stood in the
doorway, intending to annoy because he felt so happy and at ease
with the world. Neither of the Perkinses had ever met him.

'This your nephew, then, Gilbert?' said Maybelle.

'My late wife's great-nephew,' Uncle Gib corrected her. 'I'm giving
him accommodation and his meals all found.'

Maybelle didn't say 'out of the goodness of your heart' but her
sweet smile conveyed it.

'A poxy room and an outside toilet,' said Lance and he went
upstairs, Uncle Gib's threats following him.

Lying on his bed, he gave himself up to thoughts of Gemma.
She'd said she'd come and see him but why hadn't she said he
could come and see her? Because Fize was there and for a while
at any rate was staying there. Lance didn't like the idea of that
and a cloud moved slowly across his clear blue sky. Nor did he
care for the thought of Gemma who was so spotlessly clean and
beautiful – she often had two showers a day – being entertained
in this grotty room. He looked dispassionately around, taking it all
in, the paintwork, fingermarked and filthy, the window so encrusted
with grime that you wouldn't know it was something made to see
out of. Grey net curtains with ragged hems hung limply against
the dirty glass. The floor was covered in brown lino, curling at the
edges where it met the skirting board, and the walls papered –
where the paper wasn't peeling off – in a pattern of flowers and
birds, all faded to a greyish-pink and barely distinguishable for
what they were meant to be.

He needed money. With money you could do anything and he
thought vaguely how he could get someone to come in and paint
the place, clean the window, find a woman to put up real curtains.
Not for himself; for Gemma. Should he go back to Chepstow Villas
and try his luck again? He still had the key to that side gate in his
jacket pocket. But unless White Hair was a complete nutter he'd
have not only bolted it by now, but barred his french windows as
well. But what about the other house, the one in Pembridge Villas
he'd escaped through? The place with all that bamboo stuff in the
garden. Maybe he should go over there and check-up on a few
things, like who lived there and when they went out and got back,
if there was a dog or a burglar alarm. He could go now and on the
way make that detour that led him past her place and perhaps he'd
see her again . . .

Elizabeth Cherry was talking to her neighbours through a gap
in the ivy and honeysuckle and clematis armandii, which
rambled thickly over the terrace at the ends of their gardens.
She had known Eugene Wren for quite a long time now, Ella
Cotswold was her doctor and it was through her that they had
first met. She was reminding them of this fact, how Ella had
been paying her a home visit when she had suspected pneumonia
and Eugene had come in bearing a bottle of Bristol Cream
sherry and some wild smoked salmon to tempt her appetite. The
invitation to their wedding, which she had just received, had
prompted it.

'How kind, Gene,' she was saying. 'I'd love to come. Where will
you be going for your honeymoon? Or is that a secret.'

'No secret,' said Ella. 'Italy.'

'Sri Lanka,' said Eugene.

'I see. Well, one's on the way to the other. I must go in. I'm
going round to my sister's later for a drink. You see how my life
has become one mad round of amusement.'

They laughed in a polite understanding way and Elizabeth went
back into her house. She was just in time to answer the door to
a young man with fair hair and an unmemorable sort of face who
wanted to know if she needed a gardener, just for tidying up and
mowing the lawn. Though eighty-one, Elizabeth performed these
tasks herself quite adequately and wasn't too happy about the imputation
that she needed help.

'No, thank you. Good afternoon,' she said, disliking even more
the way the young man seemed to be peering into her hall, looking
this way and that, and taking in more than was good for him. Or
perhaps more than was good for her.