Portobello (24 page)

In the grim and gloomy living room the blind had been raised
and the curtains half drawn apart. In the increased light it was
possible to see how shabby the furnishings were, the only bright
and fresh object an amber glass vase on the table full of orange coloured
chrysanthemums. Had the day carer brought them or
even Wendy Stemmer?

Joel lay on the sofa. He wore dark glasses but had also spread
a black scarf over his face. He gave no sign of having seen or heard
her. She sat down in one of the chairs drawn up to the table and
asked him how he was feeling. To her surprise, after a long while,
he took the scarf off his face and sat up. Because he hadn't replied
she said it again, 'How are you?'

'Well enough.' His voice was low and lifeless.

'When you were in the hospital did they give you any tests? Did
they check your heart?'

'You think maybe I damaged it taking all those pills? They did
a lot of tests.' He spoke indifferently. 'They wouldn't have let me
out if there was anything wrong, would they?'

'I will check with them,' Ella said. 'Did your parents find the
carer for you?'

'Ma did.
He's
paying, I suppose. I don't want her. She opens the
curtains. She brings me food and drink and whatever.' He gave a
small unamused laugh. 'I think she's frightened of me – well, I
know she is. It's the shades and the scarf. Do I look frightening,
Ella?'

'Not to me.' She wondered as she said it if that was quite true.

Still wearing the glasses, he turned his gaze towards the corner
where hung the long mirror in a carved mahogany frame in which
the bronze face was reflected. And would have been reflected again
in the mirror behind it and again and again infinitely. Today the
room was too dim for anything to be seen in the glass but patches
of shine and dull shadows. Joel's face contorted as he seemed to
peer. He stretched his neck and concentrated, subsided with a sigh.

'I think he's gone. I really think so. Sometimes I hear a whisper
but I think that may be me imagining things. I haven't seen him,
not since I came round – after what I did, I mean. Do you want
to know why I did what I did?'

Ella could see nothing but she knew the reflections were there,
the faces half turned, the never-ending faces . . . Was Mithras also
there, though neither of them could see him? 'I don't think you
meant to kill yourself,' she said.

'No. No, I didn't. I'll tell you about it. I haven't told anyone, not
Ma or any of the people at the hospital.' He took off the glasses
and blinked as if, instead of a greyish dimness, the room were
flooded with brilliant light. 'Would you like something to eat or
drink? I've never asked you that before, have I? I don't think I've
ever asked anyone that before.' He had, once, and Ella remembered
the glass of water, but she didn't correct him. 'Rita's here
and she'll do it,' he said. 'She likes doing it.'

'I don't want anything, thanks, Joel.'

'I collected up those pills. It doesn't matter how. I don't go out
much but I went out and bought myself a half-bottle of vodka. I
liked the taste. They say it hasn't a taste but it has and I like it.
I could take to drink – shall I?'

She ignored this. As she had thought before, in any sustained
conversation he might begin by sounding adult but he gradually
became more and more like a child. 'Tell me, are you taking your
medication? The pills you get from Miss Crane, I mean.'

He nodded, turning his eyes once more to the mirror.

'Sure?'

'I promise, Ella. Shall I tell you why I did what I did?' It was
the second time of asking.

'If you want to.'

'Do you remember what I told you about having a near-death
experience? When something went wrong under the anaesthetic?'

She nodded, feeling suddenly cold in the warm close room. It
was fear she felt as shivers touched her skin, moving across her
shoulders and down her arms. Don't be silly, she told herself, get
yourself together. You're a doctor, you've been a doctor for fifteen
years.

He seemed not to notice her slight shrinking. His eyes were
turned away from her, his gaze far away on some other plane.
'Mithras,' he said, 'I wanted him to go. I brought him back with
me from that white city at the end of the river. I think maybe he
was one of the angels on the battlements. But no, that's not right.
They had wings and he didn't. I wanted him to go. He was getting
bigger, you see. No, I don't quite mean that. He was getting
clearer
and his voice was too. He never said anything terrible like I was
to harm someone but I kept thinking he'd start. I thought that if
he – well, went on getting bigger and louder and stronger he'd take
me over, he'd take this place over.

'I once saw a picture. It was an illustration for
Alice in
Wonderland
. I was only about eight or nine. Alice had drunk something
and it made her grow big. She grew huge till she filled the
house, she had to lie down, her arms and legs couldn't get through
the doors. I don't know why but that picture frightened me terribly.
I screamed when I first saw it and I couldn't get it out of my head.
That was how I was starting to feel about Mithras, that he'd get
so big he'd never be able to get out. He'd take me over, kind of
absorb
me. I knew I'd have to do something.'

'What did you do?' she asked, although she guessed.

'I thought that if I had another near-death experience I'd go back
to that place, the river and the meadows and the city at the end
of it, I mean. I'd see all those white walls like castle walls and see
the angels walking there. And Mithras would come with me, he
would
, he'd want to because it was the only way for him to get
back there. And he'd stay. He'd be happy and I'd be free.'

'So you took the pills and the vodka to get yourself
near death
?'

'That's what I did. I told Mithras to come with me and he came,
I think he did, and when I started to leave again I think I left him
behind but I don't know. I didn't see the city or the river or the
sunshine, Ella. It was all dark with kind of moving shapes, vague
dark shapes moving in the dark. I talked to you out of the dark
and then I – then I sort of passed out. Now I keep looking for
Mithras but I can't see him and it's only in the night time that I
hear his voice. It's coming from a long long way off so I know he's
talking to me from the city.'

She sat quite still, feeling a kind of despair. There was nothing
to say.

'I went to all that trouble to take him back,' Joel said, 'but now
he's gone, I half want him back. I miss him.' He lifted to her an
abject little boy's face and met her eyes for the first time since she
arrived there. 'I'm so lonely, Ella.'

She reached for his hand but thinking this inadequate for his
great need, got up, sat beside him and took him in her arms.
Holding him, she felt his heart beating against her as if he were
more afraid than she was.

Once more they were out on the balcony, watching the
roadway. A crowd of gesticulating men ran about shouting
at the driver of an articulated truck, which had wedged
itself between a bendy bus and a concrete mixer. Lance's nan had
let him in before rushing back to her ringside seat, anxious not to
miss more than a minute of the sitcom currently being enacted in
the Harrow Road. Lance followed her out there. His hospitable
grandmother had already poured him a large glass of Pino Grigio.
Enthralled by the sight of the lorry driver landing a mighty punch
on the bus driver's jaw, Dave passed Lance the crisps without
turning round.

His nan leant over the railing and began yelling at the lorry driver.
'Give him another, mate! Them bendy buses are a menace! They
think they own the bloody road.' Spectators in the street turned
their faces upwards as one. 'Who d'you think you're looking at?'

'Cool it now, Kath,' said Dave, as police sirens sounded coming
closer. 'You calm down. We don't want no trouble.'

Lance looked at him admiringly. Dave seemed to be the only
one he had ever come across, within the family or outside it, able
to exert any sort of control over his nan. Two officers had got out
of their car and strolled over to the men who had moved into a
stand-off. Things quickly quietened down as the concrete mixer
was expertly reversed through a narrow gap and the crowd began
to dissolve.

Lance's nan, deprived of entertainment, sighed resignedly and
turned to him. 'So how's the world treating you, lovely?'

'I'm good,' said Lance with a hopeful glance at Dave.

Dave refilled their glasses. He shook the last of the crisp crumbs
into the palm of his hand, dropped the bag over the railing and
watched it float gently down into the street below. Then he turned
to Lance and smiled in an avuncular sort of way. 'You'll be wanting
to know what them bits and bobs fetched.'

'Rings and things and buttons and bows,' said his nan unexpectedly.

'The market's very dodgy.' Dave might have been talking about
the current state of the euro. 'There's like a world recession. Still,
I've done my best for you.' He pulled out of his pocket two dirty
and crumpled notes, a twenty and a ten. The twenty had a rent
in it mended with Sellotape.

Deeply disappointed, Lance stared. 'That all you got?'

'Didn't I say the market's dodgy? After I took my ten per cent
that's the best I could do. It's not like they was diamonds.'

Diamonds were exactly what Lance believed they were. In those
few moments, sitting on his nan's balcony, the light fast fading and
the air taking on an autumnal cooling, a metamorphosis came over
him. Uncle Gib, in one of his biblical phrases, would have said
that the scales fell from his eyes. His father might have said that
he began to grow up. He saw that the trust he habitually had in
people, in almost anyone, was misplaced. No one was going to do
anything much for him. They never had and they never would. He
was out on his own.

When his nan said the nights were drawing in and it was time
for them all to go down the Good King Billy, he got up and walked
through the doorway into the living room. But instead of waiting
to accompany them meekly to the pub – where he would have
been expected to spend a good half of his thirty pounds – he said,
not 'Cheers', but like someone three times his age, 'Goodnight,'
failing to add, as he normally would have done, the obligatory 'See
you later'. They were silent, apparently aware that all was not well.
He let himself out, went quickly down the stairs and out into
the street, turning in the opposite direction to the one that led
to the pub.

Of the hundred people who had been invited, eighty-three had
accepted their invitations. The hotel on the river, licensed
for wedding ceremonies, was booked, the lunch menu scrutinised
(and frequently subjected to alterations) by Eugene, the flowers
lavishly ordered, the cars organised and, of course, every detail
of departure for the honeymoon and the honeymoon itself
arranged in advance. Ella had collected her wedding dress and her
'going-away' suit. Her own two suitcases were packed, as was
Eugene's.

'You want me to come over in case anyone comes back here?'
said Carli. 'I mean, serve tea or drinks or whatever?' She was plainly
anxious to feast her eyes on the guests and get a sight of Ella in
her wedding dress.

'No one will come back here, Carli. Not even ourselves. We
shall go straight from the hotel on our honeymoon.' Ella could see
no particular reason to tell Carli where that honeymoon destination
was or when they would be leaving from Heathrow. 'While
we're away perhaps you'd like to check-up on your – er, sweets
you've left in the drawers. There seem to be rather a lot of them,
even some in one of the bathrooms.'

The woman stared. 'My
what
?'

Her tone was belligerent. Ella felt she had herself perhaps been
too abrupt. 'I'm sorry, Carli. There's absolutely no reason why you
shouldn't keep your sweets in this house. Forget it.'

'I never eat sweets. Never. You're mixing me up with someone
else.'

Ella started to say there was no one else but she stopped herself.
Carli had been vacuum-cleaning their bedroom and she left her
to it, going back into the guest bathroom. The brown-and-orange
pack of Chocorange – for that, she saw, was its name – was still
there. Down in the drawing room, Eugene had put all her books
away as he had promised, neatly, precisely, according to author and
each one alphabetically. She had been kneeling there, in front of
the row of Forsters, when he had come in and shouted at, as he
thought, an intruder. But had he really believed the person on her
knees there in the fading light was a burglar? A bookish burglar
with a fondness for literature? It was extremely unlikely. And why
had he undertaken to finish the task she had begun?

She squatted down on the floor again and removed from the
shelf
A Passage to India
,
Howard's End
, two copies of
The Longest
Journey
,
Maurice
and
A Room with a View
. She put her hand inside,
feeling behind the remaining books, first to the right and encountering
more space, then to the left, her fingers coming in contact
with a plastic bag full of something. She pulled it out. The something
was a number of packets of Chocorange. She counted ten
of them. The bag in her hand, she began walking about the drawing
room, opening a tallboy, lifting the lid of a Chinese chest, pulling
out a drawer in a console table. A carved flange, which Eugene
perhaps believed concealed a secret drawer, yielded four packs of
Chocorange. Under some folded linen in the chest she found six
more. The house was full of the things. At the handsome lateeighteenth-
century wardrobe, which stood in the hall where they
hung their coats, she hesitated. The idea of going through a man's
pockets was repugnant to her – but surely that distaste would only
apply when the search was for letters or photographs? She opened
the wardrobe door and felt in the pocket of Eugene's raincoat,
which he hadn't worn much since the relentlessly wet summer
seemed to come to an end in the last days of August. No Chocorange
but a mass of the cellophane wrap covers with their distinctive red
taping, which had to be stripped off in order to reach the contents.
The pockets of a light linen jacket contained much the same
discarded wrappings.

After that Ella went all over the house causing Carli, who encountered
her in one of the spare bedrooms, to ask her what she was
looking for. Ella simply smiled and shook her head. By that time
she had found twenty-three packets of the things but she had left
them where they were, concealed inside drawers and cupboards,
some hidden in a spongebag. Those, she thought, he probably
intended to take to Como with him. This find made her look inside
his big suitcase, where she found another six in an inside zip
pocket.

That must mean he couldn't exist without them, not even on
his honeymoon.

Seldom did Lance have occasion to go into a pharmacy or what
Uncle Gib would have called a chemist's shop. He was doing
so this time at the request of his mother. She herself was too busy
watching repeats of
Cagney and Lacey
on ITV3 to go out and buy
the aspirins of which she regularly ate fourteen or fifteen a day but
had run out of, for she too was an addict in her own way. Lance
chose this particular pharmacy because he passed its window on
his way to visit Uncle Gib and it was the first one he had come to
since walking down from his parents' flat. His walk necessarily took
him down the Portobello Road and the sight of the stalls and small
shops full of delectable goods made him feel even more acutely the
lack of the means to buy them. Copies of designers' handbags, but
so much like the real thing as to be indistinguishable from them,
were everywhere this morning. A new shop had opened selling
home-made soaps whose strong, nostril-burning scents dominated
all the usual smells of bacon and cheese and doner kebab. They
made Lance sneeze but Gemma liked that sort of soap and the
'natural' bath essences the shop also sold. He'd like to buy them
for her even if they did give him an allergy. And he'd like to buy
that green lace tunic with the sequins and those black velvet harem
pants and that . . . It was no use. He was once more approaching
skint status, Elizabeth Cherry's three hundred pounds and the thirty
pounds Dave had produced nearly gone.

He hadn't seen Gemma since the night of the fire. But he had
heard from her. The postcard she sent him was the first missive
that might be called a letter he had ever had. It came to his parents'
address, which she must have remembered from when he first met
her. The postcard was a picture of the late Princess Diana with
the infant Prince William. It said,
How are you? I hope OK. I miss
you. Abelard says to say hi. Lots of love, G.

He turned into Golborne Road and there was the pharmacy on
his left. The man standing at the counter he recognised at once
as White Hair, the rich git who was the owner of all that stuff he'd
nicked and lost when Fize and his mates attacked him. Lance
would have expected White Hair, if he had been in that shop at
all, to have been buying expensive perfume for his girlfriend or
maybe a new electric shaver. Instead, he was in the act of paying
for three packs of sweets the assistant was just putting in a paper
bag. Lance didn't expect to be recognised and he got a shock when
White Hair turned round, gave him a curt nod and said good afternoon.
For a moment Lance thought he must know him in his
burglar's identity. Then he remembered trying and failing to claim
the money found in the street. He muttered a 'cheers' in return
but by that time White Hair had gone, taking his sweets with him.

Lance bought his mother's aspirins and began the walk back to
Kensal Road where his parents lived. But before he reached it he
recalled his mother telling him that Uncle Gib had moved in with
those god-botherers, the Perkinses, in Fermoy Road. Lance didn't
know the number but he had no difficulty in finding the house.
Where its neighbours each had a laurel bush in their front gardens,
the Perkinses had a sign proclaiming
Jesus Lives!
. Lance rang the
bell.

There was no response. He rang again. This time he was aware
of a flicker across the corner of his eye on the left side. Someone
had twitched a curtain in the bay window. Then he noticed a
narrow gap between the front door and its frame. The door wasn't
shut but very slightly ajar. Expecting some kind of trap, he gave it
a very cautious push. It swung open silently and, stepping over the
threshold, he found himself in a narrow hallway.

Framed texts on the walls told him that the better the day the
better the deed and that if he honoured his father and mother his
days would be long in the land. There was no one about but an
ashtray on the windowsill full of stubs of a familiar brand was
evidence of Uncle Gib's presence in the house. The silence was
disconcerting. Lance belonged in a generation that feels uneasy
unless there is a perpetual murmuring of voices or throb of pop
in the background. But having come here and made his way in,
he wanted to see Uncle Gib. He wanted to tell him the truth about
where he had been that night for Uncle Gib had been a burglar
himself once. He might be angry, he would call him a no-good
sinner, but he would understand and he would know Lance couldn't
have been responsible for burning his house down.

Someone must be at home. They wouldn't have gone out and
left the place open like that. Lance put his hand to the knob on
the door on his left and turned it slowly clockwise. The door opened
silently and he crept in. Afterwards he hardly knew why he hadn't
screamed but he hadn't. Perhaps he'd been fascinated as well as
horrified by what lay on the table. He'd clapped his hand over his
mouth and advanced – tiptoeing for some reason – up to the body
of Reuben Perkins.

The former Shepherd of the Children of Zebulun lay in state,
the lower part of his body covered by a white sheet, his head resting
on a white pillow. His hands were folded across his chest. The third
stroke he had suffered had killed him but the second had twisted
his mouth, pulling down one corner. Death had erased this distortion
and Lance saw a noble face, more like a Roman emperor
than an old lag. This was his first corpse, the first he had ever seen.
So this was what it was like when you were dead. The eyes were
closed, the eyelids white as the rest of the face. Very tentatively he
put out one finger and touched Reuben Perkins's forehead. It felt
cold, more marble than skin, the texture like touching the translucent
surface of one of Gemma's candles.

A footfall in the hallway brought him back to reality. Then four
people came into the room, elderly men and women he had never
seen before. Uncle Gib and Mrs Perkins and another woman
followed them. They crowded round the corpse, too absorbed in
staring, head-shaking, and muttering what a saint the dead man
had been, what a loss his death was, to notice Lance. But now
was no time to speak to Uncle Gib. He slipped quietly out of the
room as another group of mourners arrived, come to view the body.