Portobello (19 page)

Tea was baked beans, more chips and green leaves that looked
like the weeds growing in the flower beds at Portobello Green.
Uncle Gib asked for a fried egg but they said they'd no eggs. That
was the sort of dump it was. Now, returning, all but he singing
lustily, they were coming into Ilford and he was longing to be home.
He'd get the coach to drop him at the corner shop where Golborne
Road turned out of the Portobello and buy himself half a dozen
eggs and some slices of Polish salami. And then he'd smoke all the
way on the walk home. The rain had stopped and the evening was
clear, cool and damp.

Lance was sitting in the kitchen when he came in, watching
Pierce Brosnan in
Die Another Day
on the television. He hadn't
expected Uncle Gib so early. Only just gone eight. Lance's idea of
a day out was one that started about three in the afternoon and
came to an end around two the following morning. Uncle Gib put
a carrier bag full of food down on the table.

Lance asked hopefully if he could have an egg.

'I left one for you on a plate. And a bit of pudding.'

'It was cracked, that egg, and it was off. A horrible pong it made.
A person could get fucking salmonella from that.'

'Don't you use that language here,' Uncle Gib said, but absently.
He was watching James Bond and lighting what was only his tenth
cigarette of the day.

Lance went upstairs. He had counted on spending the evening
in front of the television but that was out of the question with all
that smoke and Uncle Gib doing a running commentary on things
he disapproved of like sex and dirty words and girls' figures. He
was very hungry and he began to wonder if the old woman would
have left any food behind in her house when she went away. Tins
maybe and something in the freezer, which he could defrost in the
microwave. No chocolate cake this time, though. Even thinking of
it brought the saliva into Lance's mouth.

He checked on his equipment, taking everything he had put in
there out of his backpack to make sure. A see-through black stocking
he'd found in the Scope clothes bank – it had a ladder in it – to
put over his head in case anyone saw him, the glass cutter, a pair
of black cotton gloves nicked off a stall in the Portobello and a
torch, which must be Uncle Gib's, that he'd found under the scullery
sink. It actually lit up, which was a miracle. He would wear his
hoodie and he'd have to wear his trainers. They were the only shoes
he had.

When he had assembled everything and put it all back in the
bag he lay down on the bed, preparing himself for a long wait. He
must have dozed off for when he woke up it was dark and he heard
Uncle Gib climbing the stairs on his way to bed. It was just after
eleven. No longer hungry, the tension stifling appetite, he crept
down the stairs. The hall of Uncle Gib's house was unfurnished
but for a wooden chair, long ago painted pea green, on which
reposed the lid of a tin once containing Auntie Ivy's favourite mint
humbugs. In it, for it was in use as an ashtray, lay, still smouldering,
Uncle Gib's last cigarette of the day. Lance stubbed it out,
cursing under his breath.

Then he let himself out of the front door, closing it behind him
as quietly as he could.

They had been to the theatre to see
St Joan
at the National.
It ended rather late and it was after eleven when the taxi
brought them home. The driver passed Elizabeth Cherry's
house and Eugene, knowing she was away, glanced at its windows.
'Just to see that everything is all right,' he said to Ella.

Looking at her house wouldn't tell us, she thought. She didn't
say it aloud but he guessed. 'All right,' he said, laughing. 'Burglars
aren't going to hang out a sign saying "Occupied". We'll go home
and then I'll just walk round there. She gave you a key, didn't she?'

'She gave her key to Susan. She always does.'

He knew very well that Ella hadn't a key. After all, Elizabeth
had been away a week. He wanted ten minutes on his own so that
he could eat a Chocorange. The craving had come on him just as
they were leaving the theatre.

His habit made him lie to her all the time. 'It's remembering
our own burglary that makes me anxious.'

'I know, darling,' she said.

It was hateful to him that she trusted him while he deceived
her, but that didn't stop him picking a Chocorange out of the
packet as soon as he turned the corner. Oh, the blessed relief of
it after those hours of abstinence in the theatre! Lights were on
in most houses, including Elizabeth Cherry's, but it went out as
he approached and Susan came out of the front door. They both
laughed at the small coincidence.

'Everything all right?' Eugene pushed the Chocorange behind
his back teeth with his tongue.

'Everything's fine.'

'No emaciated children eating chocolate cake?'

'Nothing like that,' said Susan. 'Goodnight.'

'Goodnight, Susan.'

Back in Chepstow Villas Ella had opened a bottle of wine. She
poured herself a glass and gave him one. She showed him the bill
she had prepared to send to Joel.

'I've never done one before. As you know, I don't charge the
other private patients.'

'No, perhaps you should. But it's excellent, darling.'

'His father will pay it but I think it would be more polite and
– well, kinder, to send it to Joel, don't you?'

'Yes, of course. What does Father do?'

'He's a hedge fund manager, whatever that is. He's very rich and
grand.'

It was the eve of her fortieth birthday. Ella wondered if Eugene
would remember. But of course he would. He always remembered
her birthdays and the anniversary of the day they had first met, as
he would in the future remember the date of their engagement
and then their wedding.

Passing Gemma's flats in the night time was something Lance
avoided doing. It was great seeing her on her balcony in daylight
hours but by night he couldn't help imagining her in there in bed
with Fize and that made him jealous and angry. In the Portobello
Road and Westbourne Park Road environs there were still plenty
of people about, many of them drunk, most of them young, a lot
of teenagers among them. It had been raining heavily in the early
evening but the rain had stopped. The dark air was damp and still,
the sky thickly overcast.

At the crossroads he went on down Ledbury Road, branching
off into that quiet, rich and select neighbourhood where he had
carried out his first burglary and planned to achieve his second.
No one was about. Dogs had been walked hours before, cats slept
in their baskets, cars on the residents' parking locked up, after
being emptied of everything young men like himself might steal.
Lights, dimmed by heavy, lushly lined curtains or slatted blinds of
rare rainforest woods, showed in one or two bedroom windows and
absent holidaymakers, prompted by a misplaced prudence, left
their hall lights on in a vain effort to deceive people like him into
believing them at home and on the watch.

The old woman's house and those next to it were in total darkness.
He studied the houses opposite, including the empty one
from which he had kept watch. It was still empty but not a light
or a glimmer of light was to be seen from its neighbours. The
owners were asleep, he thought, or away at their country homes.
Without attempting to sneak into the old woman's house, he walked
boldly up to the side gate, found it unlocked and let himself into
the back garden. There seemed no reason now not to use his torch
and he took it out of his backpack.

Not the same window he had squeezed through before. He
had nearly cracked an already cracked rib doing that, thank you
very much. Further along he found a larger sash window, which
was more suitable and, putting on his gloves, he got to work
straight away with his glass cutter. The job took longer, far
longer, than when he had operated on builders' junk yard
windows under Dwayne's tutelage. And all the time the little
wheel made its slow progress round the frame his hunger
increased. So near his goal – he almost had to remind himself
that he was here for money and jewellery, not food – he felt
sick and his stomach rumbled, making trickling and squelching
sounds.

The torch, which he had balanced on the sill of the next window
along, he jogged with his elbow and it fell to the ground. He picked
it up and put it back on the sill but it seemed to him that its light
had grown dimmer. As he reached the point on the frame where
he had begun cutting and eased the glass out into his hands, the
torch went out. It hadn't occurred to him to bring a replacement
battery. But he was in the house. He was standing up inside a
room he hadn't previously entered, a dining room with a long marble
table and high-backed chairs made of black wood. It didn't interest
him. He made for the kitchen, feeling his way in the dark. Once
there, although rather late in the day for precautions, he pulled
the black stocking over his head.

In spite of his age, it was unusual for Uncle Gib to wake up in
the night. He had slept in such uncomfortable circumstances
during the prison years that now to lie down in a real bed in solitude
and peace and quiet was a treat he hadn't yet got over. The
bliss of it sent him to sleep at once and his strong old bladder
seldom disturbed him. So it was a surprise and a disconcerting
one when he woke up at what he thought – he had no watch or
clock in his bedroom – must be well after midnight. It was pitch
dark and silent. Of course he had no bed lamp. He lay in the dark,
feeling what had wakened him, the stirrings, squeezings and sharp
recurrent pains of indigestion.

Uncle Gib never had indigestion. But then he never went out
anywhere to eat unaccustomed food as he had done the day before.
With growing distaste and increased pain, he reflected on what he
had been obliged to eat: fish, chips, multigrain bread, baked beans,
green leaves
, more chips. Thinking of it made its consequences
worse. He levered himself out of bed and switched on the light,
a central light that hung from the ceiling in a parchment shade.
The panacea for all ills was at hand. Uncle Gib reached for the
packet and the matches and lit a cigarette.

Perhaps it was the contractions caused by that first inhalation
that did it, but a sharp stabbing spasm caught at him in the depths
of the gut. Something must be done and now, immediately.
Barefoot, wearing pyjama bottoms and an ancient cardigan of
Auntie Ivy's, he raced down the stairs, dropped his cigarette in
the tin lid on the green chair and ran for the scullery. Getting the
back door unlocked nearly finished him but he made it to the
privy just in time.

Outside Uncle Gib's front door, Feisal Smith in a hooded jacket,
Ian Pollitt, in defiance of the weather wearing a red T-shirt
on which 'Porn Star' was printed in white, stood on the step, doing
their best to raise the letter box flap without making a noise about
it. They had made careful preparations for this undertaking. First
a couple of litres of petrol had been siphoned off from the tank
of the van Fize drove for his employers, into a bottle once containing
sparkling water. Ian Pollitt had helped himself to two squibs from
his teenage brother's stock for the forthcoming Guy Fawkes Day.
The bottle was contained in a cloth bag, one of the environmentally
friendly kind issued by shops to save customers from using
plastic carriers, and with it a box of matches.

The porn star was calm and truculent as usual. Fize, on the
other hand, was scared stiff or, rather, scared to the point of trembling.
Through his head wandered thoughts of losing his job and
losing Gemma, not to mention incurring the wrath of his mother
and grandfather. But it was too late to back out now. He was more
afraid of Ian's contempt than of any other possible retribution. His
hand shook as he tried to raise the letter box flap. It caused a good
deal of noise, a creak and a clatter, making Ian swear at him and
shove him aside with his elbow. They listened but all was still and
silent inside the house.

Fize managed to fish the bottle out of the bag and passed it to
Ian, its cap starting to come unscrewed. The bottle, and now both
men and the bag, reeked of petrol. Ian took off the cap and thrust
the bottle as hard as he could through the letter box with a mighty
shove. It had been Fize's intention to follow this up with a lighted
squib, which would ricochet into the fountain of petrol, but there
was no need to use it. They heard the bottle smash and something
inside the house, seemingly already prepared, ignite it with a roar.
Suddenly the whole house seemed to explode into light, every
window brilliantly lit. A fierce flame streamed out towards them
through the open letter box.

They jumped back, staring at each other, then they ran, pounding
down the street, through the covered market and out into the
Portobello Road.

Sliced bread from her freezer he put directly into her toaster
and, while he waited, pulled the black stocking off his head.
He ate the toast layered with strips of butter he shaved off a block
of Lurpak. The Brie was very ripe but nothing wrong with that.
He ate half a pound of it with Branston pickle. Then, spooning
peach halves from a can, he made his way upstairs. All the jewellery
he could find he scooped into his backpack. In a couple of her
handbags he found a five-pound note and another five pounds in
change. Getting down on his hands and knees, he scrutinised the
floor under her bed, the floor under the beds in the spare room,
and the next spare room and the next. No strongboxes and no
stockings crammed full of notes.

Back in her living room, opening the desk, he saw that one of
the credit cards was still there. He helped himself to it along with
her chequebook, though he had doubts how this would ever be of
use to him. Three plastic bags contained foreign money. Lance
couldn't remember ever before seeing US dollars, Canadian dollars
and euros but they were money, weren't they? They could be
changed into real money at those places outside Paddington Station
he'd passed by without much noticing them. He'd notice them
now. The best of the haul was undoubtedly the jewellery, destined
next day for Poltimore Road.

He no longer needed the torch. His eyes were used to the dark.
He rather liked the darkness, the way it hid him. Why not have
some more to eat while he had the chance? No one had seen him.
No one had a clue he was in here. The roads were empty, the
neighbours asleep. He had taken the peaches from a cupboard
where a shelf was full of tins: more fruit, beans of various kinds,
soup, and fancy rubbish like artichoke hearts and asparagus.
Lance helped himself to a can of tomato soup, heated it up in
a saucepan, made more toast and settled down at the kitchen
table to have a second supper. Strawberry ice cream, also from
the freezer, would do for afters. A clock on the kitchen wall told
him it was five past two.

When the sound of it reached him, the huge bursting roar,
Uncle Gib knew at once what it was. A bomb or some such
thing had been pushed through his letter box and the cigarette he
had left in the tin on the green chair had set it off. Immediately
he thought of Lance and Lance's pals. Barefoot and wrapped in
the brown cable-knit cardigan, he padded out of the privy to look
through the kitchen window, which gave on to this narrow strip of
concrete. As he did so the flames were just licking the doorway
from the hall and within seconds they streamed through, intense
yellow flames, which roared through the kitchen and poured into
the scullery. He turned his gaze upwards and saw behind the window
of Lance's room dense eddies of black smoke. The window was
open at the top and the smoke billowed out as currents of fresh
air fed the fire.

It was a little to Uncle Gib's credit that he told himself Lance
couldn't be in there as he must be responsible for this conflagration.
He had no doubt what was the better part of valour and, with
one backward glance at the flames engulfing his home, he ran
down the garden through the rain-soaked bushes and stinging
nettles, to the shed in the corner where his garden met that of his
neighbours. On the other side loomed the flyover with its cargo,
even at this hour, of traffic tearing east and west. There, side by
side, inside the shed, the door of which had long fallen off its
hinges and got lost, stood the two chairs, one missing a leg, the
other intact. Uncle Gib sat down in the chair that had all its legs
and found he was trembling all over. It had been a shock.

But the spectacle before him was worth looking at. By this time
Lance's window had split open and flames and smoke were spilling
out, curved flames like waves in an orange sea, but waves that
hissed and roared, licking the windowsills of the room above. The
fire itself had reached there before them or the smoke had. Inside
the closed window he could see dark clouds of it, still and thick.

It didn't occur to him to call anyone or attempt to phone the
emergency services. Someone else would do that. In the midst of
his wonder and astonishment he remembered that he had insured
his house, had filled in the form, sent the cheque and received
confirmation of his cover. It was wonderful, it was much better
than trying to sell the place. With relish he stared at the window
frames, the woodwork, the bricks and stone facing of his house
beginning to glow red from the heat generated within.