The Taxi Queue (15 page)

‘Yes,' she said. ‘That's me.'

Serge had taken out his violin from its blue felt interior and had put it between his knees as if it were a cello. Laura had been watching him out of the corner of her eye. Now he began to grind the bow over the strings. ‘Stop that, Serge,' she said.

‘Is that your professional name?' the man asked.

‘It's my name,' she said.

‘Laura,' he said, but not addressing her, just saying the word – as if it wasn't anyone's name. He seemed perplexed.
He put the sheet in his back pocket. ‘Does anyone else teach here?'

‘No.'

‘No one called Kirsty?'

‘No,' she repeated. ‘Who's Kirsty?'

He shook his head. ‘I've somehow. I don't know . . .' he tailed off. ‘I mustn't take up any more of your time. You've been very kind.' He straightened up and put his hand out to her. ‘Richard Epworth,' he said, suddenly formal. She saw flecks of grey in his hair as he leant forward.

Serge had resumed the grinding, this time with the back of the bow. Laura put her hands over her ears.

‘I must go,' Richard Epworth said.

‘Wise choice,' Laura said. ‘I'll see you out.'

She went to the front door with him and watched as Richard Epworth went down the path and through the gate. ‘Good luck,' she called out. She didn't know why.

VIVIENNE BLEW THE
film of dust that the afternoon sun had made visible on the mantelpiece. Then she picked up the out-of-date At Home invitation propped up against the wall – Paula and Hartley asking them to lunch on Easter Sunday – and tore it in half.

‘Richard?' Vivienne said.

He was sitting on the sofa, tipped back, staring up at the ceiling. ‘I was tired that's all. It's been a long week,' he said.

‘We all have weeks,' Vivienne said.

Through the closed door of the living room Richard could hear the clucking voices of cartoon characters of a DVD the girls were watching in the kitchen. ‘I know, I know, it was all my fault. I've said so. But I was only twenty minutes late. Diane Whats-her-name, the coach, was there. The girls were fine.'

Vivienne hadn't reproached him when he first returned home from the tennis courts, choosing instead to have Saturday lunch in peace. Now he understood why she had shut all the doors.

‘That's the second time you've been late picking the girls up,' Vivienne said. She walked over to the waste-paper basket and dropped the two halves of the invitation into it.

‘When was the first, then? Tennis has only just started,' Richard said.

‘After Julian's party. I didn't say anything about tennis.'

Richard got up from the sofa and walked over to the window, nearly tripping over the stack of English holiday cottage brochures that lay on the floor.

‘I'll get rid of those. I keep forgetting about them,' Vivienne said.

‘It's not for another month or so, is it?'

There was no escaping Frances's seventieth-birthday weekend. Whatever good feelings Richard had had about it had dispersed. A cottage near the Cuckmere estuary in Sussex had been chosen and a deposit put down. He tried to visualise the silvery loops of the Cuckmere River snaking down to the sea, as if he were seeing it from a light aircraft or a vantage point high on the Downs. He tried not to home in on the ‘Lovely cottage, sleeps six'. He thought of driving alone along the motorway – a long, grey, straight stretch between hills – and that also helped.

‘The first weekend in June. You definitely can't get away on the Friday afternoon?' Vivienne said.

‘No. I've already told you. I've got a dinner to go to. I'll drive down later. There'll be less traffic.'

The neighbour who lived across the road was about to cut his hedge with an electric trimmer. Wearing a baseball cap, goggles and heavy leather gauntlets, Craig looked like a dangerous gnome. He caught sight of Richard gazing out and raised his free hand. Richard responded with a nod. The motor started up and Craig began to plane the fuzzy top of the foliage with even strokes.

‘Is Julian the boy who lives in that huge house at the top of the Hill?' Richard asked.

‘Yes. You remember going there, don't you?'

Richard winced. ‘Why didn't you talk about it then, if it bothered you? That was weeks ago. Why wait till now? That's what I can't understand about you, Vivienne.'

‘I wasn't bothered.'

‘Exactly.'

The soundtrack from the DVD was suddenly louder. The
girls must have turned up the volume. There was a crackle, as of explosives, and then the clatter of falling rubble. The girls burst out laughing.

‘I offered to go to the garden centre. You said that there was enough lawn fertiliser in the shed left over from last year. It was just a question of finding it,' he said.

‘I did say that,' she agreed.

‘So there was nothing you wanted me to do. I went for a walk. It was a beautiful day. It
was
a beautiful day.' He glanced out again. Craig had started on the side of the hedge, was sweeping across it with diagonal strokes. The pavement was topped with a layer of leaves and Craig was ankle deep in them. Richard knew nothing about Craig. Only that he had a wife, Anne, twin boys and a vintage VW that was parked in the garage. Was there even the slightest chance that Craig would hang around outside a stranger's house, or, when the stranger generously and hospitably took him in, inform her that she had mistaken her own identity? He thought, on the whole, not. And John Henry North, Judge of the Admiralty, would he have done such a thing? The inscription on the monument was full, but somehow, although John North had been ‘Deplored by the Irish Bar, the Senate and his County', that particular unwise choice hadn't been part of the list.

‘And before Julian's party. Where were you then?' Vivienne said.

‘Somewhere similar, I suppose. I can't remember.' Richard was beginning to dislike the sound of his voice.

‘It's a good thing I didn't say yes to the “Our Families” DVD,' Vivienne said.

‘Say that again.'

‘I said, it's a good thing I didn't say yes to the “Our Families” DVD. Paula said Glen wants us to be in it.'

Richard couldn't see Vivienne's face. She was placing their used coffee cups on the tray. ‘You said no?' he asked.

‘No, I just didn't say yes.' She straightened up.

‘That's no bloody use with Paula. Who's eligible?'

‘People like us, I suppose. We're church members and we have children.'

‘So Paula and Hartley don't qualify?'

‘They're a couple, not a family.'

‘But they're happy,' Richard said. ‘Totally united, as far as one can see.' He glanced at Vivienne and saw that the remark was unwelcome. ‘Not like two halves of an egg, more like a double buggy,' he continued. But Vivienne failed to respond. Richard felt the weariness in his shoulders and his head, as if effort was needed to be held in place. He knew, in that moment, where his spine might protrude and cave in when he reached old age.

‘I'll tell Paula a definite no, then,' Vivienne said, her face poker calm, but her lower lip trembling in a disorganised way. ‘Do you think the girls
would
wander off on their own from the tennis courts? They said they were waiting by the entrance gate. Where would they go? They're basically sensible, aren't they?' Her expression had changed, was now beseeching.

‘Yes,' Richard said. ‘They're basically sensible. And I did pick them up, albeit late – and useless.'

Richard took a deep breath and leant forward to gather up the pile of brochures. They would be better off without the presence of so many English cottages set against blue sky. ‘Sorry, Vivienne,' he said.

THE HOUSE IN
Iverdale Road absorbed as much heat from the sun as a matchwood shack – only Kirsty's basement stayed tepid. It was as if the spec builders of the 1900s had skimped on a layer of bricks – or perhaps it was the design that was at fault; the room that fitted directly under the slate roof without an intervening attic. Even with all the windows open a draught was hard to come by. What came through the gaps was noise, day and night: faulty bus brakes that shrieked like hurt animals and the repeated whoosh of passing cars. There was no breeze to cool down the local infants and stop them from wailing – nor to disperse the intermittent stench from next door's drains.

Abe thought of his father skulking about on the bottom two floors. He imagined him stooping, half asleep, under the low basement ceiling, holding a spliff between his thumb and index finger, raising it to his mouth out of vagueness rather than for pleasure. He had assumed that Neil's choice of leaving the upper floors empty had come from laziness, combined with an ignorance of property values and ways of increasing them – even from an aversion to increasing value on principle. Abe didn't credit his father with making practical decisions but he had to acknowledge, in the present heat, that maybe Neil's choice of carelessly ignoring half of the house hadn't been so stupid after all. Abe found himself thinking of his father. Since giving up full-time work, he thought of him often. He had intimations of failure – sensing
what that might feel like – while anticipating that he had endless time and talent to ward failure off.

By eleven at night the air had cooled a little, but Abe left the portable electric fan running. He picked up a solitary banana from the bowl on the table and began to peel it. He had eaten the end of a loaf earlier. Now he felt hungry. He went through to his kitchen and opened one of the cupboards. There was a selection of vitamins in brown bottles, also some small jars; chilli flakes, curry powder, coriander seed, mixed herbs. He had tea, coffee, a tin of tomato puree, a packet of basmati rice. Abe shook the rice packet. Empty – like his bank account. He aimed it at the sleek Swedish bin.

Abe had started sharing the shifts at Karumi with his friend, Shane, working a few afternoons a week. The pay was fairly basic. His boss made a lot of the fact that the employees could have treatment at fifty per cent but as Abe didn't have tendonitis, sciatica, trapped nerve or any kind of back, neck or joint pain, this wasn't much of a perk. The Japanese-exercise-equipment idea, which had seemed poised like a Hokusai wave ready to break, was now more of an outgoing tide. Neither the keyholder of the storage facility in Barking, where the equipment was allegedly housed, nor the head man in Dorset returned their calls. On weekday mornings, when Kirsty struggled in to central London in the rush hour, Abe took himself off to the park. The trees, heavy with leaves, made interlocking pools of shadow down the main path and straggly roses had begun flowering in the formal beds. Abe chose a tree that stood by itself – a copper beech – and lay beneath it, catching up on the sleep that eluded him at night. The sleep was weird; not really restful. He dreamt, on one occasion, of dancing a slow sexy dance with the man who worked at the checkout of the local Costcutter. This was an unhurried, memorable dream, not spoiled by the furtive knowledge that in reality the man was charm-free. Mostly they were short napping dreams about work, being late, fighting muggers. Through half-closed eyes, Abe was
aware of the park characters who sat on benches and walked between the shrubs, muttering to themselves. They left him alone in his own private shadow with his head resting on his T-shirt.

Abe finished the banana and lit a cigarette. Sometimes he thought that he would be forced back into marketing. He couldn't doze his life away. The part of his brain that was used for work had moulded to marketing ways. No one had told him how careful you had to be about your first career choice – that there might be divorce proceedings but certainly not annulment. He could write the marketing job ads in his head. There was no need to buy a newspaper and turn to the appointments.
An outstanding opportunity to make a major contribution to a growing business with a highly satisfied customer base
. He played around, shuffling words.
A growing opportunity to make a highly satisfied contribution to a major business with an outstanding customer base.
He could see the layout of the imaginary application form; the creepy section headed
Is there anything else you would like to tell us about yourself?
No, was the answer. The pages of the A4 notebook he carried around with him remained blank.

At about midnight Kirsty's doorbell rang. As the bell box was placed high in the hall, the sound carried all the way up the house. After a few seconds it went again; insistent this time, as if the person outside was leaning on the button. Abe went out to the top landing. ‘Shut the fuck up,' he said. He switched on the light, leant over the banister rail and looked down the well of the house, but there was no sign of Kirsty. He came clattering down the front stairs. A pale face was pressed up against the glass of the front door. Minicab drivers were face-pressers, especially if they'd come to the wrong address. Friends generally weren't. Abe opened the door, prepared to slam it straight back. Luka was on the doorstep. ‘Where is Kirsty?' he said.

‘No idea,' Abe said.

‘I'm homeless,' Luka said. The ‘h' at the beginning of the word emerged guttural and melancholy from far down his throat.

‘You'd better come in,' Abe said.

Luka stepped inside. Kirsty came along the hall just then, fresh out of the bath, making wet footprints on the floor. She stopped when she saw Luka and pulled the belt of her kimono tight round her. ‘Luka. What are you doing here?' she asked.

‘He's homeless,' Abe said, shutting the door.

Luka stood holding a large zip-up holdall in front of him with both hands. The bag was heavy and hung sagging a few inches from the floor but he didn't put it down. ‘My house has been repossessed by the landlord's mortgage company,' he said.