The Doorkeepers (2 page)

The landlord appeared behind the curved mahogany bar with a cigarette stuck to his lower lip, and one eye scrunched up against the smoke. “Your usual, Mr Mordant?” he said, reaching up for a bottle of Glenlivet malt whiskey.

“Thank you, Norman. And what would you like, Julia?”

“Oh, just something non-alcoholic for me. Maybe an orange juice.”

A television was flickering on a shelf behind the bar. The sound was turned down but Julia could see what was happening. Hordes of people in sarongs were pulling down barriers and burning British flags. More trouble in Burma.

They sat down at a small marble-topped table and Frank Mordant raised his glass and said, “Cheers, m'dear.”

Julia took a sip of her warm reconstituted orange juice and tried to smile.

Frank Mordant looked around. “This isn't a bad little place, you know, especially when it livens up a bit. You should come in here for Gold Cup day. Norman lays on quite a spread. Sandwiches, pork pies. That kind of thing. I call it my secret headquarters.”

Julia shook her head to show that she didn't understand.

“Well, all of us have to have somewhere, don't we?
You've
got somewhere, surely, even if it's only a cupboard?”

“I keep some stuff in a drawer, sure. My Walkman, you know, and a whole lot of photographs.”

Frank Mordant nodded. He took out a packet of Capstan cigarettes and tapped one on the table top. “I don't miss it, you know. Life's been much too good for me here.”

“Don't you miss anything, or anybody?”

“Oh, yes. I was married, you know, believe it or not. Pretty girl, Daphne, met her in Brighton. We had a daughter but she was a spastic and we had to put her in a home. Then I got into trouble with my car business. Cars, that was my line.”

He lit his cigarette and blew long funnels of smoke out of his nostrils. “There was a silly business over another woman, too. In the end, I thought, why not? Start all over again. Start afresh, if you know what I mean.”

Julia didn't have to say anything. She knew exactly what he meant. It was the chance to start over that had attracted her to stay here, too. She had been halfway through a TV production course at University of California at Santa Cruz when she had fallen for Rex Pittman, and she still couldn't think about Enya's
Orinoco Flow
without a shiver. That was the music he had played when they had first made love: the 48-year-old professional TV writer and the deeply impressionable 21-year-old student. “Whenever you hear this song, you're going to remember this night,” he had told her. But
here,
of course, nobody had ever heard of Enya.

It had all ended badly. Rex's neurotic wife Nessa had found out about Julia and deliberately walked through a plate-glass door at Julia's parents' house. Rex had left Nessa and taken Julia to Baja for a week. Swimming, talking, sailing, drinking tequila sunrises and making love. But in the end they had to go back, and when they went back they discovered that Nessa had critically injured their three-year-old son James by pouring scalding water over him. James died two weeks later, in terrible pain.

That was why Julia was here. Mostly, anyhow. It was a way
to begin her life all over again, where nothing and nobody could reach her.

Frank Mordant finished his whiskey and nodded toward her glass. “Fancy another?”

“No, no thanks. I really have to be getting home.”

“How is it, your flat?”

“Well, to be honest, it's far too big for just one person. Way too expensive, too. My landlady just put it up to £2.17s.6d a week.”

“I say. That's a bit steep, isn't it?”

“Yes, I know. But I don't know if I ever want to share again. I liked Mary, but I always felt like I had to be on my guard. I think she
suspected
me, you know – but of course she never knew what it was that she suspected me of.”

“I've got a flat here,” said Frank Mordant, quite matter-of-factly, blowing smoke, and nodding his head up toward the ceiling.

“You have a flat
here?
You mean
here,
over this pub?”

“That's right. I've had it for five years now. My secret headquarters. Sitting room, bedroom, bathroom. I suppose an estate agent might call it
bijou,
but I scarcely use it these days so it does for me.” He paused, and blew some more smoke, and then he said, “I was wondering, you know. Perhaps you might like to take it over.”

“What about you?”

Frank Mordant shrugged. “As I say, I scarcely ever use it. Only when a wave of nostalgia comes over me. I've got a bit of stuff up there but you're quite welcome to use it, too. A color TV with a video recorder and a stereo system and a pile of CDs. Do you like Abba? I used to love Abba.
Dig it, the dancing queen
… Those were the days. Oh, and a deep-freeze, too. Not a big one, but it's got fish fingers in it, and pizza, and some chicken balti, too.”

Julia couldn't help smiling. “I thought you were so acclimatized. Your accent, you know, and the way you dress.”

“Oh, I am. But you know what it's like. If you want to live here happily, you have to edit things out of your mind, and
after a while you begin to think that perhaps they didn't happen at all. That stuff upstairs … that's just a little reminder that I'm not dreaming, after all.

He stood up and patted his pockets to find his keys. “Why don't you come and take a shufti at it? It's a jolly sight nearer to work than Lavender Hill, and I'd only charge you £1.15s.0d a week.”

“I'm not sure …” said Julia. “I've already made quite a few friends in Lavender Hill.”

“Nonsense, you can make friends anywhere. Personable young lady like you. There's no harm in taking a look, is there?”

Julia glanced toward the landlord. He was polishing pint glasses and watching her with a dull, fixed stare, the cigarette still hanging from the side of his mouth, as if he wanted to remember her for ever. “Well … all right then,” she agreed. “But then I must get home.”

Frank Mordant's flat had a separate front door at the side of the pub. It was painted maroon and it had no number on it, only a small bronze knocker in the shape of a grinning imp's head. Frank Mordant gave it a
rat-a-tat-tat
and said, “Cornish piskie. It's supposed to bring you luck.”

Inside, there was a damp coconut mat and then a steep flight of stairs. Frank Mordant switched the light on and said, “Good exercise, stairs. Up and down here a few times a day and you won't need to worry about jogging.”

“I don't jog, not any more. People used to stare so much.”

“Yes, I suppose they would. Here – watch your step at the top here, the carpet's loose.”

At the top of the stairs there was a small brown-wallpapered landing with two doors leading off it. A damp-rippled reproduction of Damien Hirst's
Chinese Lady
hung at an angle between them, and one of them bore a ceramic plaque saying The Smallest Room.

Frank Mordant unlocked the other door and led the way into a narrow corridor. On the left there was a small kitchenette with a gas water-heater and fitted cupboards in lime-green Formica. It was obvious that he didn't use the flat very often: there was
a stuffy, sour, closed-in smell, and all of the dried herbs in the spice jars that hung on the wall had faded to pale yellow.

“Needs a woman's touch, really.”

The sitting room was surprisingly large and light. It had a high ceiling and all the walls had been painted white and the light gray carpet wasn't luxurious but it was fairly new. There was a plain couch covered in black cotton fabric and a large brown 1930s armchair. A large television stood in one corner of the room, as well as a video player and stacks of labeled videotapes. There was a video camera, too, tilted on top of a tripod.

“A few pictures on the walls,” Frank Mordant suggested. “Scatter cushions, that kind of thing. You could really make it quite homey.”

A plain white calico blind covered the window. Julia went over to it and tried to release it, but it was fastened to the window frame with thumbtacks. She lifted an edge of it and peeked out. It looked right over Chiswick High Road, still crowded with buses and cyclists and homegoing cars.

“Want to see the bedroom?” asked Frank Mordant. “The bedroom's nice. Only had it redecorated in September.”

He opened the door that led to the bedroom. It was just large enough for a double bed covered with a pink candlewick bedspread, a wardrobe and a chair with a leatherette seat. The walls had been stippled with pale blue distemper. Over the bed hung a fan-shaped mirror with two picture postcards stuck in it, and on the pillow lay a defeated-looking golliwog.

“Well …” said Julia. The flat wasn't as seedy as she had expected it to be. Frank Mordant was right: one or two colorful pictures would make the whole place look much more welcoming, and she could cover that deadly black couch with the sunflower-patterned throw she had bought from Habitat. Living here would save her more than one pound a week on rent, and nearly as much as that again on bus fares.

She came back into the living room. She found Frank Mordant tinkering with the video camera. He swiveled around like a floorwalker in a department store and wrung his hands together.

“What do you think, then? It's really quite cozy, isn't it?”

“It doesn't get too noisy, does it, with the pub downstairs?”

Frank Mordant shook his head. “I won't lie to you, there
is
a bit of a racket at closing time. Car doors slamming, everybody saying goodnight, things like that. But it doesn't last for long. And here's the secret ingredient.” He knelt down and lifted up one corner of the carpet. “Underfelt, double-thick, almost completely soundproof. I had it laid so that I could play my music as loud as I liked. You could scream your head off in here and nobody would hear you.”

Julia took another look around. “It's interesting … I'd like to think it over, if I may.”

“Of course. Take as long as you like. Before you go, though, there is one thing you might like to consider.”

He went to the kitchenette. She didn't know whether she was supposed to follow him or not, so she waited. She lifted the edge of the blind again, and looked down into the street. The road was noisier here than her terrace in Lavender Hill, but she didn't really mind the background jostle of traffic.

“Do you know which bus—?” she began; and then she was suddenly aware that Frank Mordant was standing right behind her. She hadn't heard him, hadn't even sensed him approaching.

Without a word he clamped a thick white cloth over her nose and mouth, as thick as a muslin diaper. It reeked with a pungent, chemical smell – a smell that seared her nostrils and burned her eyes. She gave a panicky snuffle and breathed it in. She staggered against him, tried to struggle, and managed to snatch at his wristwatch. But he kept the cloth pressed firmly against her face, and as she tried to pull away from him the room tilted on its end and the floor came toward her like a dark, silently slamming door.

Julia was woken up by a penetrating white light shining in her eyes. Gradually she opened her eyes a little wider, but the light dazzled her so much that she closed them again. Her head was throbbing and there was a biting, astringent taste in her mouth. She felt chilled, and weak, as if she had the ‘flu, and she was conscious of something harsh encircling her neck.

“Ah, coming round,” said Frank Mordant's voice. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

She opened her eyes again. She was lying on a prickly woolen blanket on the floor and Frank Mordant was looking down at her with a grin. Somebody else was looking down at her, too – a suntanned man with very white hair.

“Got us a beauty this time, Frank,” said the suntanned man. “Done yourself proud.”

Frank Mordant knelt down beside Julia and helped her up into a sitting position. She felt sick and the floor was slowly rising up and down like the deck of a car ferry. She put her head down between her knees and it was only then that she realized that she was naked.

She looked up, woozy but startled. Frank Mordant was still grinning at her as if she were the victim of a huge practical joke.

“What have you done? What have you done to me?” Covering her breasts with her arm, she tried to get up, but she lost her balance and fell sideways. As she fell, the harsh thing around her neck almost choked her and she reached up to pull it free. Except that it wouldn't come free. It was a thick rope, tied around her neck in a noose.

She tried again to climb to her feet, and this time she
managed to get herself into a kneeling position. “What's happening?” she gasped. “What are you trying to do to me?”

Frank Mordant took hold of the loose end of the rope and pulled it. Immediately, it tightened around Julia's neck, and she looked up. The rope ran through a large hook fixed in the center of the ceiling.

She stared at Frank Mordant in disbelief. Apart from him and the white-haired man with the suntan, there were three other men there, standing in the far corner by the television. They were all middle-aged, wearing respectable suits. A dark-skinned, languid-looking man with a hooked nose. A heavily built man with bushy gray hair. A smaller bespectacled man, who must have been Thai or Malay.

Three spotlights had been arranged around the room so that they shone directly on Julia. And the video camera was now tilted on its tripod so that it was facing toward her, too. There was a smell of hot light bulbs and alcoholic breath, and a taut, expectant atmosphere.
Yours in anticipation, Frank Mordant.

Julia's head was completely clear now, and she looked at the men and the spotlights and the video camera with increasing horror. She felt almost absurdly weak, and completely defenseless, and she was so frightened that her lower lip was juddering and she couldn't speak clearly.