The Taxi Queue (16 page)

‘Which house?' Kirsty asked.

‘My house. In New Cross. We have all had to leave.'

‘It's really late, Luka,' Kirsty said.

‘I'm sorry. I have been travelling all day to far parts of London, taking my boxes, my possessions, to various houses for safe keeping,' Luka said.

‘Couldn't any of those people put you up – the ones you took the boxes to?' Kirsty asked.

‘No. That is impossible. These are cousins of people my mother knows in Zagreb.'

Abe admired the way Luka said ‘no'. The word, stripped of limp, English negativity, had real intent behind it. Luka seemed more foreign than when he had last seen him. Abe couldn't understand how that had come about. Surely the longer a person spent in a place, the more acclimatised they became? Yet Luka, having seemed like a real Londoner previously, now put up resistance to blending in. His black hair projected defiantly outwards but his body had shrunk into itself. His English was odd. He made a special pocket of air around himself that was not London air.

‘What about Eugen? Can't you stay with him?' Kirsty asked.

‘He has gone back to Croatia,' Luka replied, giving Abe a sidelong look of reproach.

‘Oh Luka, you must be able to find somewhere else?' Kirsty said. After her initial questions she had caved in. Luka would interpret this as a ‘yes'. Understandably. Abe would do the same himself.

Luka put the bag down on the floor. ‘Where shall I sleep?' he asked.

‘I'll leave you two to it,' Abe said.

A FEW DAYS
later Kirsty called Marlene to tell her what had happened. ‘This doesn't surprise me. But you'll cope, Kirst. You always do. Have you been to New Cross to check out the story? Call Zoë or Leanne. How transparent of Luka to talk of repossession,' Marlene said. ‘He could easily have used one of those legal words that has no meaning.'

Kirsty had been clear about Luka's sleeping on the sofa.
That
she hadn't been feeble about – and had got the instruction in immediately by showing him into the living room on the night he arrived and handing him the sleeping bag. He had a new job as a relief porter in a private hospital. No questions had been asked about his employment status but because the place was at the end of a long suburban lane, miles from a tube station, he had had to buy a second-hand bicycle to get to and from work. There were now two bikes in the narrow hall, Luka's and Declan's, and hardly room to get past. ‘Don't you do enough wheeling with the trolleys?' Abe said. ‘This place looks like a fucking bicycle shed.' Kirsty imagined Luka wearing surgeon's green scrubs – though that wasn't what porters wore – pushing bed-bound patients in and out of cavernous lifts. All week he had been asleep when Kirsty left for work in the morning. She walked past the closed door in the hall and went straight out to the street, feeling as if she were the lodger, checking out of her own guest house. When she returned in the evening the living room door was still closed, but at that time of day
she opened it and went in. She wandered around, trying to maintain right of way, like a rambler following an old path along the edge of a field. She drew the living-room curtains fully and let in the light. Luka's clothes were in the zip-up bag. A pillow and a folded sleeping bag were placed on top of it in a forlorn pile.

Kirsty looked about dispassionately, as if the room were no longer hers. She remembered the rolls of the dust that used to collect in the corners and round the legs of the furniture, like dry ice blown on to a stage set. They had gone – cleaned up in an early zealous burst – together with Neil's derelict props: crockery and empty bottles used as ashtrays. But the furniture remained. Kirsty stared at the battered-looking sofa. It seemed to have aged further, used as a bed. The creases in the Indian cloth that covered it were in permanent pleats. Having been shut up for hours on end with Luka inside, the room had regained its former mustiness. She could smell that someone had slept there, but also Neil's old druggy, alcoholic smells – weed, cigarettes, Nag Champa, wine, whisky – which she had thought her housekeeping and open-windows policy had done away with for ever. The feelings Kirsty had had as a child, of being a stranger in the house, of not belonging, came back to her. She didn't feel quite at home. Picking up the indistinct sound of voices on Abe's television, coming from upstairs, she wondered if she would have recognised Neil's voice if she heard it again.

Sometimes it crossed her mind that she and Abe were there under false pretences and that someone with a better claim would ask for the property back. She imagined a man watching a CCTV screen in a faraway room, idly looking at them – not with sinister intent, but simply looking, killing time, until the moment came to pull the plug on them. Since moving in, Kirsty had received several calls on the land line from people who asked to speak to Neil. Mostly they were cold callers who wanted to inform Mr Rivers that he had won a trip to the Caribbean or to persuade him to change his
telephone provider. On one occasion it had been a woman called Dido and another time a woman with an actorly voice who wouldn't give her name. Kirsty had had to tell these people that Neil had died. The conversations had left her shaky. Neither of the women she had spoken to had known that Neil had a daughter.

Kirsty went down to the basement and saw Luka through the kitchen window. He was propping up the post in the garden fence, always in the same spot of shade, bare-chested, smoking his sprouting roll-ups – looking as miserable and proud as if he were waiting to be shot for a matter of honour. Kirsty found it hard to describe to herself how she felt when she saw him there. Every evening it was the same feeling, which administered a shock, like a jolt from a recurring dream and didn't increase or lessen as the week went by. It was as if someone had planted a full-size tree which she hadn't ordered or chosen, but which she knew for certain was impossible to dig up without either killing the tree or wrecking the garden.

Kirsty had to take a deep breath before going out to join him. Having said ‘hi', she picked up her small garden fork and worked in the shade cast by the shadow of the house. After being stuck in the shop all day, she liked kneeling on an old blanket and grubbing about in the flower bed she had made. The plants were only a few inches high, but they were trusting, wanting to live. Presumably they would have preferred to be somewhere else, a royal park or a sprinkled garden, but they were doing their best. The weeds were tall and tough. Angled and trapped against stones, they failed to come out whole. The thwarted life force seemed to knot and push the stems up thicker, even while she tugged at them. Kirsty prised out the stones embedded in the soil, like nuts in hard toffee, and found more lodged in the layer underneath. They scraped against the fork. She could see Luka's feet out of the corner of her eye but the rootedness that she had observed in him through the kitchen window seemed more
tolerable at ground level. She sensed that he was happy to watch her and after a time she forgot that he was there. When she stood up to stretch her legs, she broke the silence to ask about the hospital. Luka described his duties but left out the smells and pathetic sights. ‘Is it all right dealing with sick people, hour after hour?' she asked.

‘It is best to be well,' he said. ‘Like you and me.' Luka smiled as if the thought of their health gave him pleasure.

The calm ended when Abe appeared. Then Kirsty would have preferred large dogs around the place. The two men took up too much space and played a territorial game of pretending that the other had no right to be there. Abe talked non-stop and Luka was the silent statue – but it was the same game. Kirsty didn't know whether she was supposed to be referee, spectator or prize.

AS SHE HAD
warned, Paula did not return to London in time for Prayer Clinic on 3 June. She rang Vivienne at midday from a restaurant in Picardy. The weather was glorious. The restaurant had a Michelin star. She and Hartley hadn't even started on what they'd ordered, although the waiter had brought round
flamiche
– an upmarket kind of leek tart – as an appetiser. She said she could see lunch taking rather a long time and then Hartley would need a snooze in a field, before driving on to the Channel tunnel. That would take them until, say, six o'clock at the earliest and they still wouldn't have left France. Vivienne sighed when she put down the phone.

She arrived at Hilly's flat at about six thirty. A few of the group were already installed. Cushions had been set out in a circle on the floor and, although it was sunny outside, the blinds had been pulled down and tea lights had been set out in saucers and placed around the room. Hilly had no piano but Jennifer Patterson had brought her son's recorder along. Another woman, Dawn, who was fairly new to the group, was singing along to it, as she went round lighting the tea lights with a taper: ‘'Tis the gift to be simple,'tis the gift to be free. 'Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be. And when we find ourselves in the place just right, 'twill be in the valley of love and delight.'

Vivienne sat down on a tapestry cushion and waited for everyone to arrive and settle. Jennifer Patterson carried on
playing and Dawn sang quietly. She had now joined the circle on the floor.
‘When true simplicity is gained
, to bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed. To turn, turn, will be our delight, till by turning, turning, we come out right
.
' Hilly had left the door of the flat ajar so that people could walk in without using the doorbell. Shoes were left by the door. The tradition was that there were no greetings, though nearly all the women smiled as they entered. Eventually, when most of the cushions were occupied, Hilly shut the front door and sat down herself. Jennifer brought ‘Simple Gifts' to a close. There was silence.

This was the part of the evening that Vivienne liked best, after the music had ended and before anyone spoke. The room and the candles and the faces arranged themselves in an impersonal pattern. There was a freedom in the moment that promised nothing. She was reluctant to disturb it; to unleash goodwill into the silence. Wasn't there something coercive even about goodwill – the need to manipulate, to change? She let the minutes pass without any precise sense of time and, since no one fidgeted, for a little longer still. She heard the lift called to the next floor of the building and then descend. She opened the session with a short prayer and offered the meeting to Jesus.

They began with Becky, who had an eating disorder. She was the daughter of one of Hilly's friends. Then Dawn's parents, who had recently retired and were getting on each other's nerves. Ross, who had the rare cancer, and his wife Julia. They progressed through illness, divorce, financial difficulties. There was an underside to life even for prosperous people. Some of the information given was quite specific and first names were used. Vivienne felt unsure about some of the petitions relating to third parties – whether they weren't a betrayal of trust. She herself, at a previous meeting, had prayed for her next-door neighbour, Lynette, the one whose husband had left. Even as she had spoken she had regretted it. She had thought that she should have changed the name
and some of the details but that had seemed wrong too – to give Jesus inaccurate data. Though, of course, He knew it all anyway. He knew everything.

Gaps eventually opened up between prayers. At this stage certain women spoke for the sake of speaking and it was better to call a halt before that happened. On the other hand there might be someone in the circle who had been summoning up the courage to give voice to a particular problem. Vivienne waited. In two days' time she would be in Sussex. She hadn't revisited the subject of Richard travelling down separately. His diary had accumulated even more dinners. He was out at one now. She thought of him, standing by the window during what she thought of as their quarrel after he had kept the girls waiting at the tennis club. She had tried to read his profile; the eye on the visible side of his face moving, scanning the sky – for what she didn't know. A rescue helicopter, perhaps.
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
The advice seemed not to apply to her enquiries, or at least not to the finicky questions she had asked Richard. Vivienne was prepared to believe that other people managed things better. Paula, for instance, at that very moment returning from Normandy, would have known what to say to Hartley. She would have launched into the conversation in total confidence and in no time they would have been laughing together.

Vivienne cleared her throat. She had to recall all the people they had prayed for and name each one again. She decided that when she reached the end of the list, she would add Richard, out at his business dinner. It seemed to her that she hadn't been quite fair to him, resenting that he hadn't taken time off on Friday. She was lucky he was coming to Sussex at all. She felt renewed sympathy for Richard and suddenly – quite separate from the sympathy, sharply disconnected from it – a queasy feeling of love. The silence continued. Vivienne realised that she should speak, should probably have spoken some minutes earlier. She began the closing
prayer, but something obstructed her train of thought. For the first time since she had been married, it occurred to her that Richard might not be where he said he was. As she said ‘Heavenly Father', the words ‘business dinner', which for her entire life she had regarded quite neutrally, stuck in her throat. Vivienne stopped in mid-sentence and swallowed hard. She saw Richard's hands resting on a white tablecloth and another woman looking at them. She raised her head and glanced around the circle. She saw Bellsie opposite her, her billowing skirt spread round her, concealing the cushion. Her eyes were wide open, reflecting the candlelight and she was looking at Vivienne with compassion.