Portobello (20 page)

'It's a goner,' he said aloud and then he heard the braying sirens
of fire engines coming down from Great Western Road.

It would be best, when they came, to find him a broken defeated
old man, feeble and helpless, shocked almost to death by the
destruction of his home. Carefully he lowered himself to the ground
and lay face-downwards, his bare feet on concrete, his head and
upper body among the shaggy grass and weeds. He heard them
come into the garden. Not through the house, that would have
been impossible, but by climbing over the wall that divided his
property from that of the people who had complained about the
rats.

Someone said, 'We'll want an ambulance for the old chap.'

A woman's voice next, her next door, he thought. 'How dreadful
for him. Losing his home like this. They can come in this way and
get a stretcher over the wall.'

The rats were forgotten, she was all sympathy and concern.
Uncle Gib stirred a little, aware after a few minutes that a paramedic
was kneeling down beside him. The heat from the burning
house was far from unpleasant, just what was needed, in fact, on
a night in this unseasonable August.

'Can you tell me your name?'

They always said that, he'd seen it on the telly. It happened in
nearly every instalment of
Casualty
. 'Gilbert,' he said in a quavering
voice.

Hoisted on to a stretcher, wrapped in nice clean blankets, he
took a look at his house or what remained of it as he was floated
expertly over the wall. It was as well to make sure the place was a
write-off, not that he could have done anything about it if it hadn't
been. To maintain the pathos and the drama, he whispered to the
kind paramedic, 'My whole life was in there, all my worldly goods.'

'Never you mind, Gilbert. You're all right and that's the main
thing.'

He was driven away at high speed to St Mary's Hospital, the
siren bellowing.

An hour after falling asleep Eugene woke up. The nearest
packets of Chocorange were in the guest bathroom on the
same floor. First dropping a light kiss on Ella's upturned cheek,
he tiptoed out of the bedroom and across the landing. Still inviolate,
the carefully hoarded packets sat inside their pink plastic
Superdrug bag in the bottom drawer of the cabinet in the spare
bathroom. He took momentary pleasure from looking at them, a
glossy orange and chocolate-brown, each one sheathed in clear
cellophane. So, he supposed, it must be for the druggie who
contemplates a carefully hoarded jar of ecstasy tablets or a slab
of hashish. The advantage to his habit was that it was harmless
whereas theirs was destructive, damaging and often deadly. On
the other hand, theirs was also glamorous, sexy and raffish while
his was – what? There was no use in thinking along those lines,
especially in the middle of the night. He put a sweet in his mouth,
restored the rest to the cabinet and wandered into one of the
spare bedrooms.

From there he could see across the gardens to the rear of
Elizabeth Cherry's house. It was as he had left it earlier, still, silent,
unlit. Street lamps gave enough light to see quite clearly at the
front and, here at the back, a wall lantern, permanently kept on
by the Sharpes as a security measure, shed a green radiance, half
masked as it was by fronds of jasmine and ivy leaves. There was
nothing to be done about it, one must indulge one's neighbours,
but Eugene disliked that lantern burning there all night almost as
much as he disliked Bathsheba. He could see her sitting on the
shelf that ran along the wall, her deep furry blueness turned to
emerald by the light, her cold eyes open and staring, themselves
like lamps. Why not have another Chocorange? He took a second
one out of the bathroom bag and walked softly into the bedroom
next to his own.

Chepstow Villas, the finest houses of this part of elegant Notting
Hill, slept behind their pillared walls, their exotic shrubs and their
trimmed hedges. White stucco, most of them, Georgian, which
really meant mid-Victorian, Italianate and the rare example from
the Arts and Crafts era, all bathed in faint moonlight. The street
was empty but for one incongruous figure. Plodding down towards
Denbigh Road was a young man with a backpack. Even in the
lamplit and moonlit dark, Eugene recognised that potato face and
shock of straw-coloured hair. He could actually remember his name
from the time he had sat in this house, nervous, not knowing what
to do with his hands, as he tried to make his potential benefactor
believe that he had lost ninety-five pounds.

What could he be doing here at this hour? He was walking in
the Denbigh Road direction, heading perhaps for Westbourne Park
Road and, ultimately, for the council housing in Wornington Road
or Golborne Road. It's nothing to me, Eugene thought. He's not
doing any harm. It's a bad way to live, searching for crime where
none exists, suspecting innocent people. What did he know to
make him think Lance Platt was anything but a harmless and somewhat
gormless youth?

He was out of sight now and on the horizon there was something
more interesting to look at. A red glow like a sunset – but
the sun going down in a black sky? It was a fire. And a big one,
someone's house on fire. As he gazed he heard the sirens of fire
engines braying in the distance. He listened to the bray changing
to a wail and then, finishing his sweet and rinsing his mouth under
the tap, he went back into his bedroom.

Ella was sitting up in bed. 'Are you all right, Gene?'

'I'm fine. I was looking out of the window and who d'you think
I saw go by? That pudding-faced boy who came here after that
money I found in the street.'

'Well, the streets are free to all.'

'And there's a fire at the top of the Portobello Road.'

'Come back to bed.'

'You look so lovely sitting there.' Eugene took her in his arms.
'It's half-past two so it's your birthday now,' he said. 'Many happy
returns of the day, darling.'

It was almost dawn. The street lights had gone out and the
sky was no longer quite dark. The woman from next door
and her husband were standing outside in Blagrove Road. If
they hadn't been there and hadn't spoken to him, if the street
had been empty and stripped of everything familiar, Lance would
have thought this was a dream. The nightmare unreality of the
sight broke over him the moment he turned the corner; something
that should have been there, was always there, as unchanging
as the Westway, as the Earl of Lonsdale, was no longer there,
was gone. Or half gone, unalterably destroyed. It was like those
pictures you saw on the telly of places in Baghdad or Afghanistan
where a bomb had fallen. All that remained was a blackened ruin,
a wall standing here, half a wall there, glassless windows like
potholes, and on those walls the old paper still clinging, halfburned
pink roses and faded butterflies peeling off. He stared,
silent and aghast.

The woman looked at him as if he were a ghost, taking a step
backwards, putting her hands up to her face.

Then, 'Thank God you're all right,' she said, her tone heartfelt,
her smile wide. It was rare for anyone to show so much joyful
relief at the sight of him. For a moment he thought she was going
to throw her arms round his neck.

His voice came out weak and thin. 'I've been out,' he said. 'I've
been out for hours.' Now he wondered why he'd stopped for so
long at an all-night open pub to spend the old woman's money on
vodka and beer chasers.

The husband looked at him, looked at what remained of the
house and back at him. 'If it wasn't you, who was it they took
away? The one they found dead up at the top?'

Mistaking Lance's expression, his eyes staring, his mouth hanging
open, for the beginnings of grief, the woman said, 'Not your uncle,
dear. He's all right. Just gone to the hospital for a check-up. There
was a young chap. We thought it was you.'

Oh, my God, Lance thought. Oh, my God. His sense of the
unreality of it all deepened. The air smelt of burning. At his feet
lay pools of black water and yellowish foam, and in the foam floated
the picture of Jesus holding a lantern. Inside the shell of the house
he could see his own bed, a black skeleton laden with black rags,
stark against the dirty floral wallpaper. Higher up, what had once
been a mattress hung over the edge of the charred and broken
floor . . .

'He wasn't burnt,' the husband said, evidently trying to dispense
comfort. 'He died from inhaling smoke. That's what they said.'

'You don't look well yourself. You've gone white as a sheet.
You'd better come into our place for a bit. I'll make us a cup of
tea.'

Lance couldn't speak. This must be what they meant when they
talked about shock. Whatever he may have said about shock in
the past, he had never really known it till now, never known its
power to numb and deaden. He looked blankly at this couple,
these neighbours, as if he had never seen them before, as if their
words were no more than the twittering of birds. He looked at the
concrete supports of the flyover. Perhaps nothing so overawed him
as the sight up there of police notices and the absence of a single
moving vehicle. They had closed the carriageway because of the
fire.

Dawn was breaking. The eastern sky over Kilburn and Maida
Vale had turned a pale and gleaming grey. Without a word to the
woman and her husband, he turned and walked away. His feet
seemed to move mechanically without his taking thought or even
moving them himself. It was automatic, this slow trudging, his
mind empty, his steps taking him down the Portobello Road, past
the closed shops. His backpack bumped against his spine. An allnight
café was open, a couple of men inside drinking tea. Another
one stood outside smoking. Lance went on, past the Electric
Cinema, past the houses painted ice-cream colours, down into
Notting Hill Gate. There in a shop doorway, resting his head on
a black plastic bag of rubbish, he curled up and fell instantly
asleep.

Helping the police with their enquiries brought Uncle Gib a
lot of pleasure. It was a new experience for him to find
himself, so to speak, on the right side of the law. Neither the detective
sergeant nor the detective constable who spoke to him seemed
to know anything of his past history. To them he was simply an
elderly householder, respectable, innocent, hard done-by, who had
suffered the misfortune of having his home destroyed by an arsonist
and murderer. By the time they came to interview him at the
Perkinses' it was known that the fire had been started deliberately
and that its victim was Uncle Gib's Romanian lodger.

The hospital had kept him in only until the afternoon following
the fire. They had asked him if there was anyone they should
notify and he had told them to phone Reuben and Maybelle
Perkins. Within the hour both were at his bedside, overflowing
with sympathy while not making any direct offer of accommodation.
The first thing Uncle Gib did was borrow Maybelle's
mobile, get the nurse to bring him the phone book (Business
and Services edition) and call his insurance company. That out
of the way and the assessor due to come next morning, he
informed the Perkinses that he would be staying with them for
the foreseeable future. They had brought him a copy of the
Evening Standard
in which the fire was the lead story and the rest
of their visit passed in speculation as to how the newspaper had
got hold of a head and shoulders photograph of Dorian Lupescu.
No one mentioned Lance until the police did. Or, rather, until
Uncle Gib did when the police talked to him.

'My late wife's great-nephew,' he said in answer to their question
about the occupants of the house. 'Lance Platt's his name.
There's no knowing where he was. Keeps very late hours, he
does.'

'Have you any idea where he is now, Mr Gibson?'

'Not a clue.' Uncle Gib held out his cigarette packet to the two
policemen and, when his offer was refused, lit one himself. The
worst part of his few hours in hospital had been nicotine deprivation.
'He never tells me where he goes. I took him in out of the
kindness of my heart when his mum and dad wouldn't have him
no more. That was after he'd broke a woman's jaw he was living
in sin with.'

'Can you tell us where he works?'

Uncle Gib laughed, then told them not to make him laugh. 'He's
on the benefit, isn't he? What else?'

He gave them Lance's parents' address. They weren't his relatives
but Auntie Ivy's. Not knowing Gemma's address or, come to
that, her name, he described to them where she lived. They couldn't
miss it. All they had to do was follow the graffiti. 'He's got aunts
and uncles all over the place,' he said with relish. 'Mates too, the
same sort as he is.'

If Maybelle Perkins was dismayed at finding herself saddled with
Gilbert Gibson as a non-paying guest, she gave no sign of it. It
was many years since he had slept in such a clean well-appointed
bedroom, if he ever had, or eaten at such a neat well-laden table.
Maybelle made a special journey to the Portobello Road and the
Spanish grocer's to buy his favourite chorizo.

The police came back and told him that as a result of 'information
received' (from the woman next door but they weren't
divulging that) they knew that Lance Platt had said that Uncle
Gib's house was 'a disgrace' and 'a shithole' that needed destroying.
Did he know anything about that? Uncle Gib disliked his former
home being referred to in these terms. It reflected badly on himself
and might damage the rosy picture the police had of him. Angrily,
he said that Lance was a liar and he personally had heard him say
he resented Dorian Lupescu having the top flat because it was
superior to his own accommodation.

Only when he had moved in with Gemma, now more than a
year ago, had any householders actually welcomed Lance into
their home. His parents had turned him out, eventually Gemma
had shown him the door, Uncle Gib had taken him in only because
having him there was lucrative. So when he had presented himself
at his nan's, dirty, unkempt, exhausted, instead of putting her arms
round him and promising him supper at the Good King Billy, she
unlocked her front door in silence and pushed him in ahead of
her. Like most members of a large extended family, particularly
those who are employed and in possession of a home, she lived in
mild dread of her relatives wanting to move in with her.

A Community Support officer had moved Lance off the Notting
Hill Gate shop doorstep at nine in the morning. Five hours' fitful
sleep had gone some way to healing the shock he had suffered,
though it partially returned as he trudged up Ladbroke Grove,
barely noticing the rather grand and elegant police station as he
passed it. Who had set fire to the house? Where was Uncle Gib?
He shook his head violently in answer to these questions and
passers-by thought he was drunk. It took him a while to remember
he had money, enough certainly to buy himself breakfast and take
transport somewhere.

Working for one's living was so rare in Lance's family that he
had forgotten his nan had a job. He waited for her, sitting on the
floor outside her flat until she came home. Gaining experience by
then of spending time on doorsteps, he ate the coronation chicken
sandwich he had bought on the way, drank from the can of Cobra
and fell asleep again. It was nearly five when his nan arrived and
he had only been inside ten minutes when she sent him out to
buy takeaway for their supper. She put a note into his hand. 'Don't
lose the receipt,' she said. 'I'll be wanting the change.'

Talking of change, it was a funny thing how people you thought
you could rely on became quite different people almost overnight.
His nan had been lovely to him that day she'd bought him fish
and chips and it was only a couple of weeks ago. But the fact was
she'd changed in those ten minutes he was in the flat. She'd changed
when he'd told her about Uncle Gib's house and that he'd nowhere
to go. It would serve her right if he didn't go back with the Thai
green curry but went off and threw himself on the mercy of his
mum and dad. Only it wouldn't be a punishment, she'd be
pleased.
He began to feel very low, sinking down to rock-bottom.

There was only one bedroom and that one was hers. He had to
sleep on the sofa. That would have been all right if it had been a
soft sofa with proper cushions but hers was covered in shiny and
very slippery red leather. At some point in the night he slid off on
to the floor. His fall woke him and he could hear his nan and her
boyfriend laughing in the bedroom and some old country music
from the seventies keening through the wall. In the morning she
gave him what she called an ultimatum. He had never heard the
word before but he soon knew what it meant.

'You'll have to go, Lance. Dave's thinking of moving in and there's
not room for three. You can stay one more night and then you'll
have to be on your way.'

As it happened, Lance never had another night on those slithery
red cushions. He hardly anticipated it because by this time he
confidently expected that the sale of Elizabeth Cherry's jewellery
would make him a rich man. It was all there, safe in the backpack
he had carted from one end of Notting Hill to the other and up
to College Park. Once more he intended to carry it, this time across
north London to Holloway and Poltimore Road. Then he remembered
the foreign money. There was a place down the Portobello,
for some reason called 'cambio', someone had told him exchanged
money. Did that mean they'd change this stuff into real pounds?
It did. He was amazed, as much as anything because he had guessed
right. They gave him just under three hundred pounds for the notes
in the three plastic bags.

Now, at the tube station, there was no need to lower himself
to the ground and wriggle, snake-like, under those two grey padded
doors which only opened when a ticket was inserted in the slot
or touched to the circular pad. He had money and he felt quite
virtuous when he spoke to the man behind the ticket window.
The machine was too complicated for him. The house in Poltimore
Road was found without trouble. It was in a street a lot like
Uncle Gib's but not smartened up so much and like Uncle Gib's
it had no doorbell, only a knocker. Lance knocked. A very thin
dark girl answered and when Lance asked for Mr Crown, said,
oh, you must mean Lew, and that he was away on his holidays.
He'd gone to Corsica and wouldn't be back till Sunday week.
Lance had no choice but to return to College Park and his nan's
flat. It was a blow but things weren't as bad as they might have
been.

By the time his nan came home he had packed up the jewellery
in newspaper and two plastic bags, securing the lot with
elastic bands. The postmen dropped elastic bands all over the
streets when they'd delivered the letters, so finding a couple of
them wasn't a problem. Worse than chewing gum, his nan said
it was. He handed her the package he'd made and asked her to
look after it for him while he found somewhere to stay. This
request seemed to touch her heart for she smiled for almost the
first time since he'd arrived and said she was sorry to turn him
out. She might be sorry but she didn't stay he could stop on. The
package would be safe with her, she promised, and she didn't
ask what it was.

The two of them were watching World Athletics Highlights from
Osaka, when the police came. His nan didn't want to switch off
but they told her to in no uncertain terms. 'In case you're wondering
how your uncle is,' the detective sergeant said, 'in case you've been
worrying, he suffered a serious trauma but he's on the mend. He's
staying with some very caring friends of his who know how to look
after him.'

'There's no need to be sarcastic,' said his nan.

They ignored her.

'Poor old boy,' said the detective constable unnecessarily. 'Now
maybe you'd like to tell us where you were between 11 p.m. and
1.30 a.m. on Tuesday night. Tuesday, 14 August, that is, through to
Wednesday, 15 August.'