Portobello (5 page)

The only thing to do, then, would be to send a cheque for a
hundred and fifteen pounds to Joel Roseman at the Welbeck
Nightingale Clinic or the Bayswater address and hand over another
cheque for a hundred and fifteen pounds to the man who was
coming at 6.30. He could afford it, he would hardly notice it but
still he had begun to wonder why he hadn't gone to the police in
the first place. Leaving Dorinda to close up the gallery, he left in
a taxi for Moscow Road. There was no point in going there, Joel
Roseman must still be in hospital, but he was curious about this
man who had had a heart attack in the street not far from his own
house. Ludlow Mansions turned out to be what he expected,
Edwardian red brick with the usual turrets and cupolas protruding
from its slate roof, stone steps going up to double doors and inside
a gloomy hall with a porter sitting behind a desk. Eugene thought
of asking him for Mr Roseman and perhaps being told that he
hadn't been in hospital at all but was away on holiday or even up
in his flat, but he decided against it.

Another taxi took him to Spring Street. Eugene got there just
as the woman in the sari was turning the sign on the door from
'Open' to 'Closed'. It was a sign. The fates or his guardian angel
were helping him to give up. From the window he could see the
packets of Chocorange and Strawpink ranked neatly alongside
throat pastilles and indelicately close to condoms. He turned
away. Stopping cold turkey was the only way and, though already
craving a Chocorange, he congratulated himself on his strength
of mind. But 'cold turkey' was an unfortunate expression,
associated with hard drugs, and he wished he hadn't used it even
in his thoughts.

A taxi with its orange light on arrived just as he was back on
the pavement. Sometimes he thought London taxi drivers ought
to give him points for being a frequent fare like a frequent flier.
By this time he would be up for a free round-the-world trip. Home
now and prepare for the arrival of the nameless man.

Although the front room of Uncle Gib's house was kept
'looking nice' and therefore its door never opened, the exception
was when he held a prayer meeting. In preparing for
selected guests from the Church of the Children of Zebulun, he
went so far as to fill twelve very small glasses (of assorted shapes
and patterns) with orange squash but not so far as to clean the
room. Fortunately, most of the visitors to the house in Blagrove
Road spent their time on their knees, for if anyone sat down on
the horsehair sofa or one of the chairs, clouds of suffocating dust
puffed out of the upholstery.

Normally calm and laid back, Uncle Gib became rather nervous
on prayer meeting evenings and got through at least ten cigarettes
in the preceding two or three hours. He was anxious to be rid of
Lance before the first Child of Zebulun arrived. His own past was
no longer of importance. Several years before, he had repented in
front of the whole congregation, been named and shamed, called
a lost sheep, bleating and wretched, at last been forgiven and
received into the fold. Now, thanks to the infinite mercy of God,
he was an Elder. Things were different for Lance, unregenerate
shoplifter, mugger, mobile phone thief and batterer of the woman
he had lived in sin with, taker of the Lord's name in vain and a
no-good son to his parents. When you came to think of it – and
Uncle Gib often did think of it – there was no commandment
Lance did not regularly flout, except the one about not making a
graven image. Nor, as far as Uncle Gib knew, had he yet killed
anybody.

Lance must be well out of the place before six when the prayer
meeting was due to start. Earlier in the day he had announced his
intention of leaving the house at 'around six' and 'going to see a
bloke about a job'. Uncle Gib didn't believe in the job or in any
job connected with Lance but he felt his usual satirical rejoinder
might be out of place. Lance might change his mind and stay at
home. At twenty to six he had his eye on the minute hand of
Auntie Ivy's family grandfather clock and was already beginning a
nervous pacing. Lance had been up in his bedroom, sitting on the
bed thinking about the money in no very systematic way and coming
to the conclusion that the sum might be ninety pounds or a hundred
and fifty-five and he was just going to have to guess. Gradually,
his thoughts turned, as they often did, to Gemma, the girl whose
eye he had blacked and tooth he had knocked out. He missed her
and not just her TV set and her microwave. The walk to Chepstow
Villas would take him very near her flat in Talbot Road. There was
a chance she might come out on to her balcony to hang out her
washing. Or she might be parking the baby buggy or, since it was
warm and sunny, just sitting in one of the chairs opposite the one
he used to sit in. After a moment or two, brooding on what he had
lost, he went to the top of the stairs and traipsed slowly down
them.

From there, just inside the open front-room door, he could see
Uncle Gib pacing up and down, a cigarette hanging from his
lower lip. This cheered him up. Even if he stopped for as much
as five minutes under Gemma's windows, it still wouldn't take
him more than twenty minutes to get to Chepstow Villas. If he
was late the guy would just have to wait. Better to get his own
back on Uncle Gib for all those starvation-level meals and the
rat in the toilet and his poxy bedroom and the smoke. He went
back upstairs and watched the minute hand on the imitation
Rolex he had stolen from a man he mugged for his mobile, moving
sluggishly towards six o'clock.

The grandfather clock chimed and when the sixth stroke died
away Uncle Gib called out, 'Come on, you. Time you was on your
way.'

Lance winced at that 'you.' This particular usage was the way
Gemma had sometimes addressed him but with a loving or sexy
note in her voice: 'Come on, you' when she was in bed waiting for
him, for instance. Uncle Gib just sounded nasty. 'I'm on my way,'
Lance called out. 'No need to lose your cool.' As he spoke, the
letter box on the front door clattered. There was no bell.

A deep voice said, 'God bless you, Brother Gilbert,' and heavy
footsteps sounded, making their way into the front room.

Lance started laughing. He couldn't help himself. Very slowly
he got up off the bed, crossed the landing and paused at the top
of the stairs. Once more, the letter box clattered. Lance descended
two stairs as Uncle Gib came out of the front room to answer the
door and, looking up, shook his fist at him. Another Child of
Zebulun was admitted, this time a very old one with a white beard.
Lance would have liked to say, 'Hi, Santa, how're you doin'?' to
him but didn't dare. He might come back to find the front door
bolted on the inside.

His mood more cocky than it had been for days, he walked quite
jauntily along Raddington Road and into the Portobello. The block
of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea social housing
where Gemma lived was a little way south of here. Lance walked
under the Westway and the train bridge, down Westbourne Park
Road and Powis Mews. In Talbot Road he skirted the yellowpainted
concrete wall, thickly defaced with red and blue graffiti,
and, superstitiously, stopped himself looking up until he was directly
under her balcony. If he didn't look she might be there. He closed
his eyes, then opened them. The washing was on the line, including
a T-shirt with pink roses on it – painfully familiar to Lance – the
buggy was there and the chairs but no Gemma. Lance experienced
such a wave of nostalgia and longing at the sight of that T-shirt
that he had to hold on to the concrete gatepost. Tears came into
his eyes. He rubbed them away with his fists and walked on down
Leamington Road. Depression had returned and settled on him
like a heavy black bag strapped on his shoulders.

The house in Chepstow Villas was semi-detached, a white stucco
Georgian house, as estate agents would have described it, of
three floors and a basement. Behind the wall and the gateposts
with lions' heads on top of them was a large front garden full of
flowering shrubs, some in full bloom. A flight of six stone steps
ascended to the front door. Lance noted that to the left of the
garage was a side gate, perhaps six feet high. He would note more
of that sort of thing later.

The old guy who opened the front door was tallish and thinnish,
but nowhere near as thin as Lance. Gemma said no one was.
He had white hair and lots of it. Saying, 'Pleased to meet you,' in
response to his, 'Eugene Wren. How do you do?' Lance thought
how unfair it was, what a sign of filthy class differences, that this
old fellow was wearing a brown suede jacket that must have come
from one of those places in Bond Street and a
real
Rolex. When
he got inside the house, into a sort of front room only it wasn't at
the front, the unfairness of it was almost too much for him.

He had never seen anywhere like it. He didn't know places like
this existed except on TV and those he'd never really believed in.
When he'd seen them on Gemma's super-TV, he and she sitting
side by side on her settee, she'd said to him, 'There's no places
really like that. They make them look that way to get you to watch.'
And he'd said, 'You don't reckon those Beckhams or Elton John
have stuff like that in their places?' 'Well, they're billionaires, aren't
they?' she'd said. 'They don't count.'

So was this guy a billionaire? The room dazzled Lance, the
pictures, the furniture, the jugs and pots and statue things,
the curtains, yards and yards of them trailing on the carpet, the
satin cushions coloured like jewels, the little tables, the clocks,
the books done in leather and gold, the crystal that a sunbeam
turned to diamonds. He stood and stared, feeling a fool, wishing
he hadn't come – then glad he'd come, determined to make the
most of it.

'Do sit down,' said Eugene Wren. 'May I know your name?'

Lance sat. He lived in a world where no one used surnames.
'Lance,' he said and, when the guy looked puzzled, 'Lance Platt.'

He was no longer staring but looking about him. Those were
french windows the sunbeam came through, ordinary glass windows
without bars. Outside, the garden had a high wall round it, all
overgrown with ivy and stuff, but there was a side gate, wasn't
there?

'Now,' said Eugene Wren, 'I have a sum of money here for you.
All you have to do is tell me the amount you lost.'

What with his disappointment over Gemma and the shock of
this place, he'd forgotten about the money. 'Ninety-five,' he said.

The old guy smiled. 'Ah, then I'm afraid the sum I found in the
street wasn't yours. Pity.'

Lance didn't know what to say. He didn't much care. Ninetyfive
pounds or whatever it really was would be nothing to the rich
pickings in this place. He got up. 'I'll be going then.'

Having nothing more to say, he said nothing, until out in the
hall again, 'Cheers.' In passing he had observed the burglar alarm
on the wall, the bolts on the front door. It closed when he was
halfway down the path. The whole visit had lasted no more than
six minutes.

Bars at the ground-floor front windows, he noted, and also at
the basement window down a flight of iron steps. That side gate
presented no problem. There would be other ground-floor windows
at the back, most likely not barred. I wonder if he lives alone. No
sign of a woman but what sign would there be? He, Lance, would
have to keep some sort of watch on the place, something more
easily done from a car or van. Now who did he know who would
let him have a loan of a van? Gemma's brother? You must be joking,
Lance thought, as he walked back in the direction of her flat.

She was there! She was standing on the balcony up against the
railing, holding her baby in her arms. Lance wasn't the first man
to be moved by the sight of the woman he loved holding her child
close against her heart. He let out a low cry of anguish. Gemma
heard him and looked down, retreating immediately into the flat
and slamming the glass door behind her.

Well, that hadn't been so bad, Eugene reflected. A nondescript
sort of young man, all skin and bone, fairish, potato-faced
– but what did it matter? He sat down to wait for Ella, then,
seeing there was still half an hour to go before she was
expected, pulled open the drawer in the carved black oak table
(Danish, circa 1790), a heavy drawer invisible when closed, and
contemplated the three Chocorange sweets remaining in the
last packet inside it. They were the last he would ever have or
would he perhaps not have them at all? Was the strength of
mind he had earlier been so proud of strong enough to help
him throw them in the waste bin?

As often happened, when thinking about his habit, he made
fresh discoveries about himself and about his addiction. Today's
was that no matter how many of the things he ate in quick succession,
he never got tired of them. He always wanted another one.
And that wasn't true of all addictive substances. Take drink, for
instance. If you drank too much you either passed out or were
sick. Too many cigarettes made you nauseous or start coughing.
As for those joints, two had been enough to make him float while
things happened in his head that caused him to fear for his sanity.
There was nothing like that with Chocorange. He just wanted more
and more. Therefore he must stop. What he would do was throw
away two of them and suck the third.

The last one, the last of all, he conveyed slowly to his mouth,
then took the remaining two to the kitchen and dropped them,
not directly into the bin, but into a plastic bag containing the
outside leaves of a lettuce, several tea bags and some pâté past its
sell-by date. Disposing of them like this among damp, unsavoury
rubbish would be a sure way of stopping him retrieving them later.
He tied the handles of the plastic bag together and dropped it into
the bin.

Buy no more. It would be hard but he knew that already. Out
of nowhere came a memory of running down supplies once before,
of being alone here after all the shops were shut. A frantic search
had begun, looking in all the unlikely places until – wonderful
discovery, better than the first drink of the evening, almost better
than sex – he had found an unopened packet in the bottom of the
plastic bag he kept by him for taking to the shops. It was untouched,
still sheathed in that ridiculous cellophane stuff which took such
efforts, such tearing and biting, to rip off.

He heard Ella's key in the lock and made himself swallow the
last sliver of Chocorange. The very last he would ever taste. In a
few weeks' time it would be no more than a memory and, he hoped,
a source of wonder that he had ever approached being hooked on
a sweet. Ella was looking very pretty in a pink suit with a sort of
frill round the neck, which seemed to be the fashion. Pink suited
her. She put her arms round his neck and kissed him.

'You've been eating chocolate again, Gene.'

'My weakness,' he said.

'Yes, well, I'm as bad. And I had far too much lunch. How did
you get on with your caller?'

He told her.

'You haven't sent that cheque to Mr Roseman yet, have you?
Because if not I've got to go over to the Welbeck Nightingale in
Shepherd's Bush some time tomorrow. A patient of mine is in there.
Would you like me to take the cheque and give it to him? The
post is so unreliable.'

Lance wasted no time. Having racked his brains for hours the
previous evening, he could think of no one he knew who would
lend him a car or van, so he began his campaign by going back to
Chepstow Villas on foot. It was a bright sunny morning. The house
opposite was clearly empty, no curtains or blinds at the windows,
the front lawn uncut and a sold notice planted just inside the gate.
Lance looked all round to check there was no one about. He slipped
through the gateway of the empty house and squatted down behind
a wall of solid stucco up to a height of about two feet with a row
of small pillars and a coping on top of it. Squatting is very uncomfortable
after about five minutes. So Lance sat on the ground
which, fortunately, was bone dry, after an April of lower rainfall
than any since records began. It was just after 8.30.