Portobello Read online

  'I'll go and see him. I'll go today.'

  'Because, to be perfectly honest with you, doctor, I don't think I can carry on. I'm too scared. To tell you the truth, I get so's I don't know whether that Mith-person is real or not, and as for sleep, well, it's out of the question.'

  The flat was no longer in darkness. It was the first thing she noticed when the door was opened. She was aware of the unfamiliar light before she saw it was Joel's mother who had let her in.

  'Come along in, Dr Cotswold. It's good of you to come.'

  Outdoors it had been raining as usual, so the light was the faint greyish kind but to Ella it looked bright in here, showing up the thin film of dust that lay on all the dark polished surfaces. Joel was where he always seemed to be, on the lushly upholstered sofa, but huddled up in one corner. He was wearing sunglasses and had a dark-coloured scarf wrapped round his head. The blinds were halfway up, the curtains half drawn.

  'How are you feeling?' Ella said.

  She expected his mother to answer for him, perhaps briskly or with impatience, but Wendy Stemmer only shook her head. She had once, Ella could see, been a very pretty woman – pretty rather than beautiful – the kind of trophy wife rich men like Stemmer marry, with toothpaste advertisement teeth and long fingernails on unused hands. Time and perhaps the tragedy of her daughter's death had faded her so that she was like a rose that has been worn all day in a buttonhole, limp, starting to wither.

  Joel turned his head towards her.

  'My mother let the light in,' he said. 'She always does. She doesn't believe it hurts my eyes.'

  Nor do I, Ella thought, but still I wouldn't deny you the darkness you want. She had begun to wonder what she was doing there. It would have helped if Wendy Stemmer had offered her coffee or even a cold drink but she had sat down beside her son, half smiling at Ella as if she expected her to take charge, say something to fetch Joel out of his apathy, perhaps take his temperature or listen to his heart.

  'I understand you're not too happy with Linda,' Ella said at last.

  'Who's Linda?'

  Was he indifferent or had he forgotten? 'One of your carers.'

  'I don't mind her,' he said. 'It's her. She doesn't like it here. She wants it to be light all the time. You know I can't stand the light.' He got up, moving more quickly than she had ever seen before, pulled down the blind in one swift gesture and pulled the curtains across. Mrs Stemmer shook her head and pulled down her short skirt over bony knees. 'When it's light I can see Mithras.'

  'Now, Joel,' said his mother, in an almost jocular tone.

  Joel took no notice of her. 'When I can only hear him I think he's a figment of my imagination but in the light I see him and he's real.' He spoke in a very low voice. 'I can't stand it when he's real.'

  'He isn't real, Joel,' said Mrs Stemmer.

  'I've spoken to Miss Crane,' Ella said. 'She says it would help you a lot if you would take your medication. If you got into a routine of taking a pill every morning.'

  Joel made no reply. He got up and went out into the hall, trailing the scarf behind him like an infant with his comfort blanket. His purpose was evidently to pull down all the blinds his mother had raised and draw all the curtains his mother had opened, for darkness began to close in. Wendy Stemmer peered at Ella through the dimness and cast up her eyes. 'He's not having any heart problems, you know,' she said. She switched on one of the low-wattage lamps. 'The results of his scan were absolutely fine. There's actually nothing wrong with him any more.'

  But Ella thought how much worse Joel was now than when she had first seen him in the hospital. Then he had been just another more or less normal man recovering from heart surgery, while now… Joel came back, ignored his mother, gave Ella such a sweet and tender smile as to cause a tremor in the region of her heart. She remembered how he had asked her to come and live with him.

  'I've said it before, Joel,' she said. 'I don't think you should be alone here. Here or anywhere else. Linda won't come again. Noreen will and we can get you another carer.' She glanced at Wendy Stemmer who sat with her hands moving slightly in her lap, the gesture of someone growing impatient. 'But I don't think that's good enough. It should be someone close to you. It should be family.'

  'You,' said Joel. 'You come and live here.'

  That was too much for his mother. She almost screamed the words. 'You're mad, you really are, expecting your doctor to move in with you! What next? You've got a beautiful home with everything provided for you and no expense spared, I'm sure. You're perfectly well. You need work, you need something to occupy you and take your mind off your so-called troubles.'

  He nodded sadly, unperturbed. 'Yes, they are troubles. I call them troubles and that's what they are.' He sat down beside his mother, 'You see, Ma, I've got someone living with me. He's here now only I can't see him in the dark. If he would go away I should be all right, wouldn't I, Ella?'

  It was the first time he had called her by her given name in his mother's presence. Ella saw Wendy Stemmer's slight frown, the sharp glance she gave her son. 'I must go. Goodbye, Mrs Stemmer.' Not for anything would she say it had been nice to see this woman again. 'Joel, I'll see you very soon.'

  Lance had spent a lot of time in the past weeks speculating about what treasures he might find in Elizabeth Cherry's house. Credit cards or one credit card, a chequebook maybe, though what use a chequebook was these days to someone like him he didn't know. Maybe you could order something on mail order and send a cheque. He would have to find out. There would be jewellery and very probably more money. Perhaps a strongbox under the bed. He had heard tales of old folk who didn't trust banks and who never had bank accounts but kept all their money in cash, thousands and thousands, stuffed into socks or even pillowcases.

  If there was jewellery he'd flog it to the man called Mr Crown in Poltimore Road his Uncle Roy had recommended. Would it be best to get along to the man before he did the job and see how the land lay? Ask him, for instance, if it would be all right to go over there with his haul the next day? He'd ask his aunt's exhusband only he'd gone on his holidays to Lanzarote. There was a lot to learn when you got yourself into this kind of thing. If told of the proposed job in advance, what was to stop the man in Poltimore Road alerting the police? It would be a way of getting in good with them. Lance decided against it. If only he had a vehicle he could remove a few bits of furniture but if Dwayne wouldn't drive a getaway car he certainly wasn't going to come in with him on a job like this. Gemma's brother was already doing God knows how many days' community service for breaking into a car and stealing from it a computer and a leather coat.

  A long day lay ahead of Lance and nothing to do with it but think about the job ahead. He would have slept half the morning away but Uncle Gib's departure on the coach for Clacton woke him at seven, an hour Lance barely acknowledged as existing, one of the small hours, more or less the middle of the night. And Uncle Gib didn't leave quietly as any normal person would but yelled, 'I'm off. Don't you get up to no tricks, mind,' and slammed the front door behind him so that the house shook.

  The diesel throb of the coach's engine made a noise like half a dozen taxis. Lance tried to get back to sleep but couldn't. He understood, perhaps for the first time in his life, how an event planned for the evening ahead can send tentacles of anxiety creeping up through the day to clutch the mind at dawn. It was a revelation to him and when it became clear, at about eight, that the octopus grip wasn't going away, he got up. These August mornings should have been warm, the sun up but not yet strong, not the way they were this year, chilly and dark. Shivering, he mooched outside to what Uncle Gib called the privy and he the 'bog'. One thing to be thankful for, the rats had taken themselves off or, full of Warfarin, died underground. He washed himself at the scullery sink, something he wouldn't have bothered about a couple of months back. Fastidious Gemma insisted on cleanliness, even providing him with a bar of Dove soap. He thought of her fondly as he dried himself on a thin grey towel.

  The house in
Blagrove Road was the only dwelling place Lance had ever been in where there was no fridge. His nan had told him that when she was a child they didn't have one in their house but, apart from that, he had no experience until he came here of the fridgeless state and had never before seen a larder. That, apparently, was what this dark and damp-smelling cupboard was called. It was empty but for a shrivelled knob of black pudding and a cracked egg on a plate. Lance would have liked to break the place up, smash everything, the useless telly that had only got four channels, the laptop, which was so old it took ten minutes before a picture came on to the screen, the glass in the painting of Jesus holding a lantern and standing among a lot of weeds, the clock in its dark wooden case that didn't go, which had never gone as far as he knew, the dead plant, growing out of dust in a cracked china pot. He would have liked to smash it all but he didn't. He feared finding the place locked against him when he came back from the job at two in the morning.

  But leaving the house with all the money he possessed in his pocket, just under four pounds, he met on the doorstep the woman next door on hers. Knowing her slightly – she was the one who had complained about the rats – he couldn't resist giving speech to his feelings. 'This place is a fucking disgrace, a shithole. It wants pulling down. Destroying is what it wants till there's fucking nothing left.'

  Probably not knowing what answer to give, the woman said, 'Oh, dear.'

  Shaking his head, Lance went out into Aclam Road and made his way through the second-hand clothes stalls down to the Portobello to buy the cheapest breakfast he could find.

  'Summer suns are glowing over land and sea,' sang the Children of Zebulun. 'Happy light is flowing, bountiful and free.'

  It had been raining ever since they left Clacton and for some time, sporadically, before that. Uncle Gib hadn't enjoyed himself. But he had known he wouldn't. He didn't like being away from home, he had had too much of it in the past and had gone only because it was his duty as an Elder. The food was the trouble, for one thing. Fish and chips in a café and he had always hated fish. At least he'd been able to have a fag out on the pavement.

  Dodging the showers, they had walked along the front. More or less recovered from what the doctors had told him was an ITA or Transient Ischaemic Attack, Reuben Perkins stumbled along, talking monotonously about the crime that had come to the Essex coast, something called 'gang culture', binge drinking and crystal meth, whatever that might be, for sale on every street corner. There was no evidence of any of that during the daylight hours. The only people about were very old, sitting in shelters with sticks and Zimmer frames beside them, and very young girls wearing clothes that showed everything they'd got, tripping along arm-in-arm and falling over their high heels. One or two of the old people waved their hands, fanning the air, when his cigarette smoke wafted over to them. Uncle Gib fixed them with his steely eye and they turned away, defeated.

  Tea was baked beans, more chips and green leaves that looked like the weeds growing in the flower beds at Portobello Green. Uncle Gib asked for a fried egg but they said they'd no eggs. That was the sort of dump it was. Now, returning, all but he singing lustily, they were coming into Ilford and he was longing to be home. He'd get the coach to drop him at the corner shop where Golborne Road turned out of the Portobello and buy himself half a dozen eggs and some slices of Polish salami. And then he'd smoke all the way on the walk home. The rain had stopped and the evening was clear, cool and damp.

  Lance was sitting in the kitchen when he came in, watching Pierce Brosnan in Die Another Day on the television. He hadn't expected Uncle Gib so early. Only just gone eight. Lance's idea of a day out was one that started about three in the afternoon and came to an end around two the following morning. Uncle Gib put a carrier bag full of food down on the table.

  Lance asked hopefully if he could have an egg.

  'I left one for you on a plate. And a bit of pudding.'

  'It was cracked, that egg, and it was off. A horrible pong it made. A person could get fucking salmonella from that.'

  'Don't you use that language here,' Uncle Gib said, but absently. He was watching James Bond and lighting what was only his tenth cigarette of the day.

  Lance went upstairs. He had counted on spending the evening in front of the television but that was out of the question with all that smoke and Uncle Gib doing a running commentary on things he disapproved of like sex and dirty words and girls' figures. He was very hungry and he began to wonder if the old woman would have left any food behind in her house when she went away. Tins maybe and something in the freezer, which he could defrost in the microwave. No chocolate cake this time, though. Even thinking of it brought the saliva into Lance's mouth.

  He checked on his equipment, taking everything he had put in there out of his backpack to make sure. A see-through black stocking he'd found in the Scope clothes bank – it had a ladder in it – to put over his head in case anyone saw him, the glass cutter, a pair of black cotton gloves nicked off a stall in the Portobello and a torch, which must be Uncle Gib's, that he'd found under the scullery sink. It actually lit up, which was a miracle. He would wear his hoodie and he'd have to wear his trainers. They were the only shoes he had.

  When he had assembled everything and put it all back in the bag he lay down on the bed, preparing himself for a long wait. He must have dozed off for when he woke up it was dark and he heard Uncle Gib climbing the stairs on his way to bed. It was just after eleven. No longer hungry, the tension stifling appetite, he crept down the stairs. The hall of Uncle Gib's house was unfurnished but for a wooden chair, long ago painted pea green, on which reposed the lid of a tin once containing Auntie Ivy's favourite mint humbugs. In it, for it was in use as an ashtray, lay, still smouldering, Uncle Gib's last cigarette of the day. Lance stubbed it out, cursing under his breath.

  Then he let himself out of the front door, closing it behind him as quietly as he could.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  They had been to the theatre to see St Joan at the National. It ended rather late and it was after eleven when the taxi brought them home. The driver passed Elizabeth Cherry's house and Eugene, knowing she was away, glanced at its windows. 'Just to see that everything is all right,' he said to Ella.

  Looking at her house wouldn't tell us, she thought. She didn't say it aloud but he guessed. 'All right,' he said, laughing. 'Burglars aren't going to hang out a sign saying "Occupied". We'll go home and then I'll just walk round there. She gave you a key, didn't she?'

  'She gave her key to Susan. She always does.'

  He knew very well that Ella hadn't a key. After all, Elizabeth had been away a week. He wanted ten minutes on his own so that he could eat a Chocorange. The craving had come on him just as they were leaving the theatre.

  His habit made him lie to her all the time. 'It's remembering our own burglary that makes me anxious.'

  'I know, darling,' she said.

  It was hateful to him that she trusted him while he deceived her, but that didn't stop him picking a Chocorange out of the packet as soon as he turned the corner. Oh, the blessed relief of it after those hours of abstinence in the theatre! Lights were on in most houses, including Elizabeth Cherry's, but it went out as he approached and Susan came out of the front door. They both laughed at the small coincidence.

  'Everything all right?' Eugene pushed the Chocorange behind his back teeth with his tongue.

  'Everything's fine.'

  'No emaciated children eating chocolate cake?'

  'Nothing like that,' said Susan. 'Goodnight.'

  'Goodnight, Susan.'

  Back in Chepstow Villas Ella had opened a bottle of wine. She poured herself a glass and gave him one. She showed him the bill she had prepared to send to Joel.

  'I've never done one before. As you know, I don't charge the other private patients.'

  'No, perhaps you should. But it's excellent, darling.'

  'His father will pay it but I think it would be more polite and – well, kinder, to send it to Joel, don't you
?'

  'Yes, of course. What does Father do?'

  'He's a hedge fund manager, whatever that is. He's very rich and grand.'

  It was the eve of her fortieth birthday. Ella wondered if Eugene would remember. But of course he would. He always remembered her birthdays and the anniversary of the day they had first met, as he would in the future remember the date of their engagement and then their wedding.

  Passing Gemma's flats in the night time was something Lance avoided doing. It was great seeing her on her balcony in daylight hours but by night he couldn't help imagining her in there in bed with Fize and that made him jealous and angry. In the Portobello Road and Westbourne Park Road environs there were still plenty of people about, many of them drunk, most of them young, a lot of teenagers among them. It had been raining heavily in the early evening but the rain had stopped. The dark air was damp and still, the sky thickly overcast.

  At the crossroads he went on down Ledbury Road, branching off into that quiet, rich and select neighbourhood where he had carried out his first burglary and planned to achieve his second. No one was about. Dogs had been walked hours before, cats slept in their baskets, cars on the residents' parking locked up, after being emptied of everything young men like himself might steal. Lights, dimmed by heavy, lushly lined curtains or slatted blinds of rare rainforest woods, showed in one or two bedroom windows and absent holidaymakers, prompted by a misplaced prudence, left their hall lights on in a vain effort to deceive people like him into believing them at home and on the watch.

  The old woman's house and those next to it were in total darkness. He studied the houses opposite, including the empty one from which he had kept watch. It was still empty but not a light or a glimmer of light was to be seen from its neighbours. The owners were asleep, he thought, or away at their country homes. Without attempting to sneak into the old woman's house, he walked boldly up to the side gate, found it unlocked and let himself into the back garden. There seemed no reason now not to use his torch and he took it out of his backpack.