Portobello (18 page)

Lance had given a lot of thought as to how he was going to get
into Elizabeth Cherry's house. This time she would have failed
to leave the laundry room window open. He had no hope in that
direction. To cut out a pane of glass, preferably from a larger
window than the one he had squeezed through before, was the
plan he had decided on. To this end he had bought the requisite
implement and been taking lessons in glass cutting from Gemma's
brother Dwayne. This operation was a lot more difficult than Lance
had supposed but once you got the knack it became quite easy
and by Monday he had no doubt he could remove a pane, without
cutting himself or making too much noise, in ten minutes.

Dwayne was now on bad terms with Feisal Smith and Feisal's
best mate Ian Pollitt. He fancied Fize's sister Soraya, a girl whose
beauty was striking in spite of its being largely covered up in a
hijab and long black gown, but Fize had taken exception to his
even speaking to her and got Ian to demonstrate with the knife he
carried exactly what he would do to Gemma's brother if any advances
were made. Dwayne had transferred his friendship to Lance and
offered to lend him the van but driving wasn't among Lance's
talents and there was no chance of Dwayne's affection extending
so far as to drive a getaway vehicle.

On the morning of Tuesday 14 August Uncle Gib announced
that this was the day of the Children of Zebulun's annual outing.
They were going to Clacton in what he called a 'charabanc'. It
would be the first time since Lance arrived in Blagrove Road that
Uncle Gib had left him alone in the house for a whole day.

'You mind your ps and qs,' Uncle Gib said. 'I don't want no
drinking and no women fetched round here. You see you shut the
front door when you go out. Hard, mind. Give it a push to see it's
properly shut. And keep an eye on that Romanian. He's not to have
a bunch of East Europeans round. Right?'

'Right,' said Lance, not really listening.

Uncle Gib left for the meeting point where the coach would
pick him up at nine in the morning. His worst fears were justified
when the driver told him there was to be no smoking on the journey.
But a sing-song was permitted and they started off with a favourite
hymn, 'If I were a butterfly'. When they got to the line 'If I were
a kangaroo, you know I'd hop right up to you', Uncle Gib was
asleep. He had passed the night worrying about going away from
home for a whole day, not being able to have a cigarette and eating
strange food.

When he woke up the coach was moving sluggishly into a car
park. It was raining and the place was already spotted with puddles.
Putting up umbrellas or rainhoods, the Children of Zebulun made
their way down towards a grey and glassy sea.

All that Ella knew of the two carers from the agency who
were looking after Joel was that they were called Linda and
Noreen. She supposed that they would be middle-aged or
older, so she was surprised when one of them arrived at the medical
centre just as her surgery was over, to see a small waif-like girl in
her twenties. No appointment had been made. Linda had come
on the 'off-chance,' as she called it, not sure that Dr Cotswold
would see her.

Ella told the receptionist that she could spare her visitor ten
minutes. It was some time since she had heard from Joel and
she had been thinking she must soon do something about him,
if only to check that having a carer with him overnight had been
beneficial.

'He told me you were his doctor, doctor,' Linda began. 'It was
no good telling the agency. It had to be you.'

'But what's wrong?'

'It's no good beating about the bush, is it, doctor? I'm scared.
It's very scary being in that place, let alone being with
him.'

'You mean Mr Roseman?'

'Joel, yes. I mean, no one told me he was mental. Mentally ill,
I should say. But he is. And that's scary, doctor. Not to you maybe.
You're used to it. But for the likes of me, caring for the disabled
is one thing. I've been with people so disabled you wouldn't
believe they could be alive, let alone move themselves about in
a wheelchair. But this is different. It's scary. If he just said funny
things I could take it. I mean, I'd ignore it. But he's got a person
he talks to. Not a real person, a sort of thing he imagines, and he
talks to it, he shouts sometimes.'

'Mithras.Yes, I know,' said Ella and then wondered if she'd said
too much.

'That's the name.' For the fourth time Linda said it was scary. 'I
try to let some light into the place. I mean, it's getting dark when
I get there so I turn on lights. That's the first thing I do. But Joel
won't have it. He gets in a state. I can have the light on in my
bedroom but if there's too much of it showing under the door he
knocks on the door and tells me to turn it off. I can't sleep, not
with him prowling about and talking to that Mith-creature.'

'I'm sorry,' said Ella, not knowing what else to say.

'He's supposed to be on tablets. I know he is, I've seen them.
But he doesn't take them. Well, they don't, do they, mental patients?'

'I'll go and see him. I'll go today.'

'Because, to be perfectly honest with you, doctor, I don't think
I can carry on. I'm too scared. To tell you the truth, I get so's I
don't know whether that Mith-person is real or not, and as for
sleep, well, it's out of the question.'

The flat was no longer in darkness. It was the first thing she
noticed when the door was opened. She was aware of the
unfamiliar light before she saw it was Joel's mother who had let
her in.

'Come along in, Dr Cotswold. It's good of you to come.'

Outdoors it had been raining as usual, so the light was the faint
greyish kind but to Ella it looked bright in here, showing up the
thin film of dust that lay on all the dark polished surfaces. Joel
was where he always seemed to be, on the lushly upholstered sofa,
but huddled up in one corner. He was wearing sunglasses and had
a dark-coloured scarf wrapped round his head. The blinds were
halfway up, the curtains half drawn.

'How are you feeling?' Ella said.

She expected his mother to answer for him, perhaps briskly or
with impatience, but Wendy Stemmer only shook her head. She
had once, Ella could see, been a very pretty woman – pretty rather
than beautiful – the kind of trophy wife rich men like Stemmer
marry, with toothpaste advertisement teeth and long fingernails on
unused hands. Time and perhaps the tragedy of her daughter's
death had faded her so that she was like a rose that has been worn
all day in a buttonhole, limp, starting to wither.

Joel turned his head towards her.

'My mother let the light in,' he said. 'She always does. She doesn't
believe it hurts my eyes.'

Nor do I, Ella thought, but still I wouldn't deny you the darkness
you want. She had begun to wonder what she was doing there.
It would have helped if Wendy Stemmer had offered her coffee
or even a cold drink but she had sat down beside her son, half
smiling at Ella as if she expected her to take charge, say something
to fetch Joel out of his apathy, perhaps take his temperature
or listen to his heart.

'I understand you're not too happy with Linda,' Ella said at last.

'Who's Linda?'

Was he indifferent or had he forgotten? 'One of your carers.'

'I don't mind her,' he said. 'It's
her
. She doesn't like it here. She
wants it to be light all the time. You know I can't stand the light.'
He got up, moving more quickly than she had ever seen before,
pulled down the blind in one swift gesture and pulled the curtains
across. Mrs Stemmer shook her head and pulled down her short
skirt over bony knees. 'When it's light I can see Mithras.'

'Now, Joel,' said his mother, in an almost jocular tone.

Joel took no notice of her. 'When I can only hear him I think
he's a figment of my imagination but in the light I see him
and he's real.' He spoke in a very low voice. 'I can't stand it when
he's real.'

'He isn't real, Joel,' said Mrs Stemmer.

'I've spoken to Miss Crane,' Ella said. 'She says it would help
you a lot if you would take your medication. If you got into a
routine of taking a pill every morning.'

Joel made no reply. He got up and went out into the hall, trailing
the scarf behind him like an infant with his comfort blanket. His
purpose was evidently to pull down all the blinds his mother had
raised and draw all the curtains his mother had opened, for darkness
began to close in. Wendy Stemmer peered at Ella through
the dimness and cast up her eyes. 'He's not having any heart problems,
you know,' she said. She switched on one of the low-wattage
lamps. 'The results of his scan were absolutely fine. There's actually
nothing wrong with him any more.'

But Ella thought how much worse Joel was now than when she
had first seen him in the hospital. Then he had been just another
more or less normal man recovering from heart surgery, while
now . . . Joel came back, ignored his mother, gave Ella such a sweet
and tender smile as to cause a tremor in the region of her heart.
She remembered how he had asked her to come and live with him.

'I've said it before, Joel,' she said. 'I don't think you should be
alone here. Here or anywhere else. Linda won't come again. Noreen
will and we can get you another carer.' She glanced at Wendy
Stemmer who sat with her hands moving slightly in her lap, the
gesture of someone growing impatient. 'But I don't think that's good
enough. It should be someone close to you. It should be family.'

'You,' said Joel. 'You come and live here.'

That was too much for his mother. She almost screamed the
words. 'You're mad, you really are, expecting your doctor to move
in with you! What next? You've got a beautiful home with everything
provided for you and no expense spared, I'm sure. You're
perfectly well. You need work, you need something to occupy you
and take your mind off your so-called troubles.'

He nodded sadly, unperturbed. 'Yes, they are troubles. I call
them troubles and that's what they are.' He sat down beside his
mother, 'You see, Ma, I've got someone living with me. He's here
now only I can't see him in the dark. If he would go away I should
be all right, wouldn't I, Ella?'

It was the first time he had called her by her given name in his
mother's presence. Ella saw Wendy Stemmer's slight frown, the
sharp glance she gave her son. 'I must go. Goodbye, Mrs Stemmer.'
Not for anything would she say it had been nice to see this woman
again. 'Joel, I'll see you very soon.'

Lance had spent a lot of time in the past weeks speculating
about what treasures he might find in Elizabeth Cherry's house.
Credit cards or one credit card, a chequebook maybe, though what
use a chequebook was these days to someone like him he didn't
know. Maybe you could order something on mail order and send
a cheque. He would have to find out. There would be jewellery
and very probably more money. Perhaps a strongbox under the bed.
He had heard tales of old folk who didn't trust banks and who
never had bank accounts but kept all their money in cash, thousands
and thousands, stuffed into socks or even pillowcases.

If there was jewellery he'd flog it to the man called Mr Crown
in Poltimore Road his Uncle Roy had recommended. Would it be
best to get along to the man before he did the job and see how
the land lay? Ask him, for instance, if it would be all right to go
over there with his haul the next day? He'd ask his aunt's exhusband
only he'd gone on his holidays to Lanzarote. There was
a lot to learn when you got yourself into this kind of thing. If told
of the proposed job in advance, what was to stop the man in
Poltimore Road alerting the police? It would be a way of getting
in good with them. Lance decided against it. If only he had a
vehicle he could remove a few bits of furniture but if Dwayne
wouldn't drive a getaway car he certainly wasn't going to come in
with him on a job like this. Gemma's brother was already doing
God knows how many days' community service for breaking into
a car and stealing from it a computer and a leather coat.

A long day lay ahead of Lance and nothing to do with it but
think about the job ahead. He would have slept half the morning
away but Uncle Gib's departure on the coach for Clacton woke
him at seven, an hour Lance barely acknowledged as existing, one
of the small hours, more or less the middle of the night. And Uncle
Gib didn't leave quietly as any normal person would but yelled,
'I'm off. Don't you get up to no tricks, mind,' and slammed the
front door behind him so that the house shook.

The diesel throb of the coach's engine made a noise like half a
dozen taxis. Lance tried to get back to sleep but couldn't. He understood,
perhaps for the first time in his life, how an event planned
for the evening ahead can send tentacles of anxiety creeping up
through the day to clutch the mind at dawn. It was a revelation
to him and when it became clear, at about eight, that the octopus
grip wasn't going away, he got up. These August mornings should
have been warm, the sun up but not yet strong, not the way they
were this year, chilly and dark. Shivering, he mooched outside to
what Uncle Gib called the privy and he the 'bog'. One thing to be
thankful for, the rats had taken themselves off or, full of Warfarin,
died underground. He washed himself at the scullery sink, something
he wouldn't have bothered about a couple of months back.
Fastidious Gemma insisted on cleanliness, even providing him with
a bar of Dove soap. He thought of her fondly as he dried himself
on a thin grey towel.

The house in Blagrove Road was the only dwelling place Lance
had ever been in where there was no fridge. His nan had told him
that when she was a child they didn't have one in their house but,
apart from that, he had no experience until he came here of the
fridgeless state and had never before seen a larder. That, apparently,
was what this dark and damp-smelling cupboard was called.
It was empty but for a shrivelled knob of black pudding and a
cracked egg on a plate. Lance would have liked to break the place
up, smash everything, the useless telly that had only got four channels,
the laptop, which was so old it took ten minutes before a
picture came on to the screen, the glass in the painting of Jesus
holding a lantern and standing among a lot of weeds, the clock in
its dark wooden case that didn't go, which had never gone as far
as he knew, the dead plant, growing out of dust in a cracked china
pot. He would have liked to smash it all but he didn't. He feared
finding the place locked against him when he came back from the
job at two in the morning.

But leaving the house with all the money he possessed in his
pocket, just under four pounds, he met on the doorstep the woman
next door on hers. Knowing her slightly – she was the one who
had complained about the rats – he couldn't resist giving speech
to his feelings. 'This place is a fucking disgrace, a shithole. It wants
pulling down. Destroying is what it wants till there's fucking nothing
left.'

Probably not knowing what answer to give, the woman said, 'Oh,
dear.'

Shaking his head, Lance went out into Aclam Road and made
his way through the second-hand clothes stalls down to the
Portobello to buy the cheapest breakfast he could find.

'Summer suns are glowing over land and sea,' sang the Children
of Zebulun. 'Happy light is flowing, bountiful and free.'

It had been raining ever since they left Clacton and for some
time, sporadically, before that. Uncle Gib hadn't enjoyed himself.
But he had known he wouldn't. He didn't like being away from
home, he had had too much of it in the past and had gone only
because it was his duty as an Elder. The food was the trouble, for
one thing. Fish and chips in a café and he had always hated fish.
At least he'd been able to have a fag out on the pavement.

Dodging the showers, they had walked along the front. More or
less recovered from what the doctors had told him was an ITA or
Transient Ischaemic Attack, Reuben Perkins stumbled along, talking
monotonously about the crime that had come to the Essex coast,
something called 'gang culture', binge drinking and crystal meth,
whatever that might be, for sale on every street corner. There was
no evidence of any of that during the daylight hours. The only
people about were very old, sitting in shelters with sticks and
Zimmer frames beside them, and very young girls wearing clothes
that showed everything they'd got, tripping along arm-in-arm and
falling over their high heels. One or two of the old people waved
their hands, fanning the air, when his cigarette smoke wafted over
to them. Uncle Gib fixed them with his steely eye and they turned
away, defeated.