Thirteen Steps Down (20 page)

nonsense. Besides, Gwendolen, who never put on weight no matter

whatshe ate, liked something substantial for her tea. These people never

thought what a lot of trouble they were causing others.

She and Stephen Reeves had so much in common. Therewas no reason

to believe his tastes had changed. Gwendolen believed that people

changed very little, only pretended to as part of a showing-off campaign.

Stephen had loved his teas,sandwiches, and homemade cakes, especially

her Victoria sponge. When they met again, would she be capable of

makinga Victoria sponge for him? But the letter still had to be written,if

not today, tomorrow or the next day. The more she thought about

disabusing his mind of the impression he must have got of her, the more

awkward it seemed to have to explain to a man how she hadn't had an

abortion but was accompanying someone else who nearly had. And that

itself might appear reprehensiblein his eyes.

Perhaps she could find a subtle way of doing it. She could begin

practicing now and once more she took pen and paper.Dear Dr. Reeves ...

Why should the words "illegal operation"even have to be used? Dear Dr.

Reeves, I remembered something about our affection--no, that wasn't

right, it had been more whatthey called a "relationship" today--I

remembered somethingabout our relationship, yours and mine, after I

had posted my previousletter. That would do, that was quite good. And

she hadn'tcalled him Dr. Reeves for a long time before they parted.

DearStephen, After I had posted my previous letter I remembered

something about our relationship, yours and mine, which had slipped my

mind. The day before we met in your surgery where I went to consult you

about a minor ailment ... Should she put the date of that meeting?

Perhaps not ... about a minor ailment I did not comment on the fact that

we had seen each other the day before. Shec ouldn't know that he had

seen her, any more than she had seen him, he might have been miles

away and his desertion of her due to some quite other cause. But, no,

that couldn't be. He had loved her, she knew he had, no doubt continued

to love her but felt, in the circumstances, that she would make an

unsuitable wife for a medical practitioner. As indeed she would have if

she had done what he thought she had.

She glanced up at the time and it gave her a shock. Olive,with or

without her niece, would be here in an hour and she hadn't yet bought

the cakes. She couldn't even be sure she had enough milk. This letter

would have to wait till later or even until she had had a reply to the first

one.

For all Olive had said about her niece's passion for old Londonbuildings,

Hazel Akwaa showed little interest in St. BlaiseHouse. She turned out to

be a quiet well-mannered woman who drank her tea and ate a plain

biscuit in silence while Olive chattered. Olive wore black trousers with

bell bottoms and ared sweater patterned with fir trees and people skiing,

moresuitable for someone a third of her age, but her niece was in agray

wool dress with a valuable-looking gold necklace. WhenOlive introduced

her, Gwendolen had to ask her first to repeatthe surname, then to spell

it, it was so outlandish, it soundedAfrican. Gwendolen knew her Rider

Haggard from childhoodand thought she remembered a character from

She or King 'Solomon's Mines called Akwaa. Surely Hazel whatever-hername-had-been hadn't married an African?

"Would you like to see over the house?" Gwendolen asked when tea was

over. "There are rather a lot of stairs."

She expected the woman to say she wouldn't let a little obstacle like

stairs put her off, but Mrs. Akwaa looked far from enthusiastic. "Not

particularly, if you don't mind."

"Oh, I don't mind. I can go up there whenever I choose, of course. I was

going for your sake, Mrs. Akwaa."

"Hazel, please. I can see this lovely room from where I'm sitting and I

doubt if the rest of the house can be more beautiful than this."

Gwendolen was mollified by this gracious remark. She decided to

unbend a fraction. "And where do you live?"

"Me? Oh, in Acton."

"Really? 1 don't think I've ever been there. And how will you get home?"

Gwendolen made it sound as if her guest livedin Cornwall and she

wanted to get rid of her as soon as possible ."Not in an underground

train, I trust? You take your life in your hands using those."

"My daughter said she would come and fetch us at five-thirty. We shall

all go back to my home for supper."

"How nice. And would that be the paragon your aunt is always telling

me about?"

"I don't know about 'paragon,' " said Hazel Akwaa in nearly as cold a

tone as Gwendolen's. "I have only the one daughter. Her father and I

think she's very special but we are her parents, after all. Would you mind

telling me where your toilet is?

"Gwendolen smiled her tiny half-smile. "The lavatory is on the first floor,

the door facing you at the top of the first flight of stairs."

She decided, in Hazel Akwaa's absence, to tell Olive about the

woodworm. "I have just been up there to examine it again. I've sent for

Woodrid, but like all these firms today they mean to keep me waiting over

a fortnight before they'll come. I don't suppose the floor will collapse in a

fortnight." She gave asmall humorless laugh. "Do you happen to know if

woodworm smells?"

"I really don't know, Gwen. I've never heard of it smelling."

"Perhaps it was my imagination. I'd take you up and showyou only that

great-niece of yours is coming in five minutes."

Hazel came back, followed by Otto. "Your lovely cat rubbed himself

against me and when I stroked him he followed me down."

"Yes, it does seem to bestow its favors on some people," said Gwendolen

in the sort of voice that implied there was no accounting for tastes.

Watching outside Nerissa's house in Campden Hill Square, Mix was

rewarded by the sight of her coming out of her front door soon after halfpast four and getting into her car. This time she was elegantly dressed in

a honey-colored trouser suit and a large golden hat that she took off and

deposited on thepassenger seat. She drove past him down the hill,

slowing and turning her head briefly to stare at him. He was pleased.

She'll know me again, he thought.

He had one more call to make before going home. This was at a house

in Pembroke Villas, home of one of those rare clients who possessed a

treadmill and actually used it, if not daily, three or four times a week.

The belt on the machine hadshifted on its rollers too far to the left and

Mrs. Plymdale wasn't strong enough, despite all her working out, to ply

the spanner and fix it herself.

Her house had a drive on which he could park his car. He

congratulated her on her adherence to exercise, adjusted the belt and

oiled the machine. But the belt really needed renewing and he advised

her to order a replacement now. The visit was completed in fifteen

minutes and he was free for the rest of the day. He drove home via the

Portobello Road, LadbrokeGrove, and Oxford Gardens, stopping on the

way to buy a half-bottle of gin, a bottle of red wine, and a frozen chicken

masala.

The late afternoon was very hot and the wind had dropped.He thought,

I wonder if they've started looking for that girl,that Danila, there's been

nothing in the papers so no one's told the police. He was afraid to find

out but at the same time he wanted to know. If Shoshana's Spa didn't

care, surely the people she'd rented that room from, surely they'd be

wondering. He turned into St. Blaise Avenue. Outside the house where

he lived, on a single yellow line, was parked a golden Jaguar. Funny, it

looked a lot like Nerissa's from here. But, great cars as they were, one

Jaguar was very much like another. That sharp-faced traffic warden he'd

spotted round the corner wouldbe down on its owner like a ton of bricks.

He couldn't help wishing he'd noted Nerissa's registration number but

he never had. There had seemed no point. He put his own car on the

residents' parking, locked it, and wentacross the street to the Jaguar.

Her large golden hat was lyingon the passenger seat. So the car was

hers. He lifted his eyes,turned around and came face to face with her. He

couldn't beI dreaming, it must be real ...

"Nerissa," he said, "it's wonderful to get to talk to you at last."She

raised her large black eyes to his but said nothing. She was standing

quite still, as if in shock.

"You're parked on a yellow line, Nerissa," he said. "The traffic warden

will catch you. Let me move the car for you,Nerissa."

"Miss Nash to you," said a voice from behind her. He had had eyes only

for her, he hadn't seen either of the other two women. They were the kind

who might have been invisible,and he never noticed them. The one who

had spoken said, "My daughter will drive her own car, thank you. She is

about to do so."

Nerissa smiled at him. It was such a radiant smile, sweet, kindly, and

forbearing, that he almost fell on his knees at her feet. "That was very

thoughtful of you," she said, got into the car and tossed the hat onto the

backseat. The window was wound down. "Bye, now."

The car disappeared around the corner just as the warden appeared,

almost running, documentation in hand. Mix stood for a moment on the

hallowed ground where the Jaguar had been, now occupied only by an

empty beer can, a strip of oilyrag, and a Magnum ice-cream wrapper.

The warden fancied himself as a wit. "Stay there and you'llget clamped,

sir."

"Ha, ha," said Mix.

He drifted toward the house. So much of what happened to him these

days had this dreaml ike quality about it. The dreamswere either glorious

like the most recent, or nightmarish. What had become of reality? Well, it

was real that he had spoken to Nerissa and--wonder of wonders!--she

had spoken to him. And she had been so nice, so charming. She had

called him thoughtful. If that old woman who said she was her mother

hadn't interfered she'd probably have let him move the car, would even

have got in beside him and let him drive her home. But the old woman

had interfered. Mix would have liked to knock her down and trample on

her. How could she be Nerissa's mother with that reddish-gray hair and

that pale dog-face?

The house was always quiet, but this afternoon it seemed unusually

silent. He began to climb the stairs. Nerissa wouldr ecognize him another

time. She would come out and speak to him, maybe invite him in for a

coffee. When that happened it would be his chance to ask her out. He'd

take her to that double-barreled Italian place with the funny name that

won the Italian Restaurant of the Year award. Luckily, he'd been able to

save a bit. He'd wanted it for one of those flat-screen TVs, but Nerissa

was far more important.

As he reached the top flight, thoughts of Reggie and his ghost invariably

drove out everything else. Even Nerissa hadn't sufficient power over him

to displace that. It was early, of course, but already dusk and the

passages up here were always dark. Sometimes he thought of shutting

his eyes when he got to the top and letting himself blind into his flat, but

he feared ahand touching him on the shoulder if he did that or a voice

whispering in his ear. Better to face up to it and look. No one was there,

nothing was there. Everything was as it ought to be. Or was it? Mix stood

still, trying to remember. He was almost positive he had shut the door to

the room where Danila lay under the floorboards. He knew he had

because he always did. It had never been left ajar like that in all the time

he'dbeen here.

Tiptoeing for some reason, he approached the door, thought that

flinging it open would be the best way but opened it stealthily just the

same. The room was empty and very hot. Sun blazed down on the glass.

A smell, not very strong but quite unpleasant, must be coming in

through the open window, only the window wasn't open. He crossed to it

and triedt o raise the sash but found this impossible, the sashcords

werebroken, one of them dangling. Some of the smells you got in London

were untraceable and seemed to make their way in through cracks in the

fabric of a house. He looked out of the window. The Indian man's guinea

fowl were huddled together on the roof of a low shed, watched by Otto on

the wall.

Closing the door behind him, Mix put his key into his own lock. Not

only a strange smell but strange music too. It must have started up while

he was in that room, the sort of music he had never been able to follow

or understand, while some people seemed to like it. He suspected they

didn't really like it but pretended to because it made them seem clever. A

piano, possibly two pianos, tinkled away while someone sawed at a

violin. Where was it coming from? No doubt, the old bat's bedroom. He

went into the flat, thinking about that girl under the floorboards.

Was he going to leave her there? He hadn't intended that at first. The

room next door was just a temporary resting place. ,He'd meant to put