Portobello Read online

  'Sure. Go ahead.'

  He kept his eyes fixed on her while she made her phone call. It seemed to her that it was darker in the room than it had been when first she came. Not much sun could penetrate this place but what there had been had gone, the sky clouding over. She told Joel she had made an appointment for him two days ahead in the afternoon.

  'I'd like to tell you about Jasper,' he said.

  'Perhaps it would be best to save that for Dr Peacock.'

  'And my pa. I'd like to tell you about him and why he hates me. You will come back, won't you? Just because I'm going to this Dr Peacock doesn't mean you won't be my doctor any more?'

  'Of course it doesn't, Joel. But I think you should come to me now you're better.' Anyone overhearing this would assume she was speaking to a boy of ten. 'We'll fix a time for you to come after my usual surgery hours.'

  She got up and he got up. Out in the gloomy hall, he said, 'Mithras is here. He didn't come in while you were with me. He's been waiting out here, over there in the corner by that thing, the thing like a tree where you hang coats.'

  Ella said calmly, 'Would you please switch on a light?'

  The sudden brightness made her blink. Joel covered his eyes with one hand. 'Dr Peacock will let me know how you get on,' she said. 'And you must let me know too.' She held out her hand. 'Goodbye for now, Joel.'

  'Goodbye.' He wasn't looking at her but at the corner where the coatstand was.

  He opened the front door for her, still looking away. The fresh air, the hazy sunshine, passing traffic, people, brought her back from something that was more than unease. Savouring her relief, she began the walk to Chepstow Villas. She had no patients this evening and Eugene had said he would be home early. It was a pity really that she couldn't tell him about her experience of the afternoon in that dreadful flat, hearing those dreadful things. But she couldn't, any more than a priest could disclose what was told him in the confessional.

  Several replies came to Uncle Gib's advertisement. Applicants were attracted by the low rent but all but one of them were repelled by the condition of the house, the bare and dirty rooms and, above all, the absence of a bathroom. The one who wasn't belonged in that class of people Uncle Gib described as beggars who couldn't be choosers. He was a young man from eastern Europe and he had a job washing dishes in a tiny café in the Portobello Road, nearly as nasty as the house in Blagrove Road. At present, he told Uncle Gib, he was sleeping on the floor of his friend's bedsitter.

  To him the top flat was a palace.

  'I toilet in garden,' he said, 'and wash in kitchen.'

  'Scullery,' said Uncle Gib, 'and only when I'm out, mind.'

  CHAPTER NINE

  Eugene considered the items for sale in the health food shop unappetising, the fruit bruised and the vegetables looking as if a slug might crawl out between the leaves. As for quinoa, whatever that was, and kasha, did normal people eat those things? But Ella, who had put her flat on the market and more or less moved in with him, wanted ginger and garlic and something called fenugreek for what she planned to cook that evening and this was the only place he knew for certain he could get them. Waiting to pay for his purchases, he was surprised to see stacked packs of Chocorange among the other sugar-free sweets on the counter. It was wonderful how he could look at them so casually, so lightly, almost as if it were mints or chewing gum he was seeing. Interesting, though, that here they were on sale in a health food shop yet while he was hooked on them he had worried a bit that the chemicals in them might be harmful.

  His mind went back to the time when he was running out of places where Chocorange could be found. How happy he would have been then, how overjoyed, to come upon a cache like this in such an unexpected place. But thinking about it, he realised that his favourites must also be used by diabetics and here he could see chocolate and biscuits for those who had a problem with sugar. Shop assistants in the past must have thought he was diabetic. Strange that he wouldn't have minded that at all. Was this because being an addict implied weakness of mind whereas to be diabetic meant only a pancreatic deficiency beyond one's control? It was an interesting question.

  He was almost inclined to put himself to the test. Buy a packet of Chocorange and airily suck one on the way home, knowing that he wouldn't require another all the evening. But, no. Better not. Not yet. He picked up a bar of diabetic chocolate instead and said he'd have that.

  'A great improvement on what they used to be, these sweets and chocolate, aren't they?' the girl behind the counter said in a friendly way.

  Eugene agreed. He even said that the Chocorange were delicious, as good as the 'real thing', and he marvelled at himself for discussing his former addiction so openly. But of course what he was discussing was his mythical diabetes. The time might even come when he could talk freely about his habit, laugh ruefully about it, the way other people did about their past alcohol or drugs dependency.

  It had been a lovely day and was going to be a fine warm evening. Warm enough for them to eat their dinner outside? Eating a square of diabetic chocolate, he went into the garden via the french windows, testing the air temperature. Ella would have to decide. In spite of their greater distribution of subcutaneous fat, Eugene had noticed that women seemed to feel the cold more than men. It was while he was reflecting on this anomaly that he glanced towards the side gate and saw that it wasn't bolted. Carli must have unbolted it to let the gardener in and out, and then forgotten to bolt it again. But wasn't it rather absurd to keep a gate bolted when it was already locked? His neighbours were paranoid about the security of their homes. The couple with that crosspatch cat, Bathsheba, had bars on all the ground-floor and basement windows, and no fewer than three separate locks on their front door. That sort of thing fuelled people's fear of crime and did not, in fact, discourage burglars who only looked on fortress mentality as a challenge.

  The diabetic chocolate wasn't at all nice. It had a dry dusty taste. He would eat no more of it.

  The Bank Holiday weekend was coming up and he was taking Ella away for two days on the Saturday to Amberley Castle in Sussex. It would be a short but luxurious holiday. He had booked a medieval but state-of-the-art-refurbished room with a four-poster bed. Spoiling Ella, he had decided, was to be an ongoing feature of his marriage and he intended to get into practice. Carless himself, he was renting a car, and although this meant a horrible drive through south London, Ella could sit beside him, taking her ease and, at least for the second part of the journey, enjoying the view.

  While they were putting suitcases into the boot, he told her about his newly formed decision to be less security-conscious. 'Prudent but not too prudent,' he said. 'For instance, I shan't be bolting the side gate. All that would happen is that I'd forget to unbolt it and then the gardener can't get in. I shall lock and bolt the door into the area, of course, see all windows are shut and put on the alarm.'

  'Will you leave a couple of lights on?'

  'I really think that only attracts their attention, darling. I mean, if you were a burglar – impossible, I know, but try to imagine – what would you think if on a bright sunny day like this one you passed a house with lights on? You'd either think the householder was mad or they'd gone away, much more likely the latter.'

  Somewhere in Sussex, after the South Downs had come into view, he asked her if she had seen Joel Roseman again.

  'He's become a patient, a private patient.'

  'Is there something wrong with him, then?'

  'Well, he has had an operation on his heart,' said Ella. 'Isn't the sunshine lovely, darling? I really think this is the most beautiful time of year, don't you?'

  'You mean you mustn't talk to me about your patients' ailments,' said Eugene, laughing. 'Darling, I entirely understand.'

  Uncle Gib was as good as his word. He wasn't going to lend Lance a thousand pounds. 'It wouldn't be a loan,' he said, wreathed in smoke at the breakfast table. 'You pass on cash to a bloke what's out of work and it's not a loan, it's a gift. And I don't feel lik
e giving you no gifts.'

  Lance didn't argue. He doubted if Uncle Gib had a thousand pounds, though this wasn't the first time they had had this conversation. Lance fell back on it, opening the subject afresh, each time other people refused him. He had tried his parents and they didn't argue either. They laughed. He had to be joking. His mother already owed eight thousand on her Visa card. He tried his grandmother, his mother's mother, who was still several years under sixty, the women in his family giving birth while in their teens. She had a job, managing a launderette, and was looked on by her friends and descendants as practically an intellectual, but if she had a thousand pounds she wasn't lending it to Lance. Nor were her other two daughters, Lance's aunts, or his uncle, the ex-husband of one of them, who had won ten thousand on the lottery. But Uncle Roy came in useful. When he had refused Lance's plea, he gave him the name and address of a receiver of stolen goods in a street just off the Holloway Road.

  Robbing the bloke with the white hair was now Lance's last resort and once more it seemed feasible. In spite of all his preliminary work in Chepstow Villas, he had almost given up the idea of actually breaking in because he had nowhere to take the stuff he nicked. Now he had Mr Crown at 35 Poltimore Road, N7.

  It was already Saturday, the day on which he had to take the money to Fize. He had been unable to keep away from Gemma's flat and had been back there on two occasions. This would be the third and his plan was to offer her and Fize all his week's benefit on account, accompanying it with the promise that the rest would be in their hands by, say, Tuesday. At any rate, he would get to see her, with luck actually be in the same room with her. But as he came up to the block where she lived, he spotted Fize on her balcony with the baby on his lap, apparently feeding him with something out of a bowl. Fize hadn't seen him but Lance lost his nerve, crossed the street and, putting his hood up and hunching his shoulders, hurriedly walked on down Leamington Road and into Denbigh Road.

  Still in hoodie disguise, he saw in the distance White Hair putting stuff into the boot of a car. Lance recognised him with no difficulty. He had a woman with him that he had never seen before, a woman in a trouser suit with dark curly hair. It looked as if they were going away somewhere. More than likely, seeing it was the Bank Holiday weekend. People like them, rich and comfortable and worry-free, people who'd never have a problem finding a thousand pounds, always went away at holiday weekends, while he was stuck for ever in a dump full of smoke and rats.

  He hung about on the corner, pretending to read yet another one of those lost cat notices, the stripy one – apparently called William – having gone off somewhere on a jaunt. If they'd been offering a reward he might have looked for the missing cat but they weren't. And maybe not, he thought, remembering his scratched hand. Those two, White Hair and his woman, had disappeared into the house. Lance walked about a bit, sat on a wall, got off again when the person who owned the place came out, went back to the corner where the lost cat notice was. They had come out again. White Hair opened the car door on the passenger side for the woman, then he got in and drove away. Lance let them get out of sight before moving slowly towards the house they had just left. Pity he couldn't go in there now, but it would be better to leave it until after dark. He wasn't going back to Blagrove Road and Uncle Gib. He'd go to his nan's in Kensal. Though she'd refused him a loan, she'd said she never saw him these days and how about coming round to her place, the launderette closing early on account of it was the Bank Holiday weekend, and she'd cook him dinner or, more likely, take him down the Good King Billy for a beer and a Ploughman's. He might get a shower too in her nice clean bathroom.

  Pity it got dark so late. Lance could tell his nan wanted rid of him round about six but it was still broad daylight, the sun shining as bright as at midday. She'd told him twice her boyfriend was coming over, and they'd be going to the dogs at Walthamstow and he should be on his way. Lance felt uncomfortable. She'd given him fish and chips in the pub and two pints of Stella, and tea and crisps when they got back home and he knew he was outstaying his welcome – but where to go until it got dark? It was the story of his life, nothing to do for most of the time and nowhere to go. At last, when his nan had got herself up in a miniskirt and white leather jacket and turquoise-blue shades, and Dave arrived, Lance got up and said he'd better be off. They saw him off the premises, all over him now he was on his way.

  Though he'd come on the bus, he walked all the way back to Chepstow Villas to save the fare, making his usual detour to pass Gemma's flat. A light was on inside, the door opened a crack and Gemma put her head out. Had Lance been given to that sort of thing, when he saw her come out he might have said to himself, Romeo-fashion though slightly paraphrasing, 'But, soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Gemma is the sun.' However, she didn't appear to have seen him, for she leant against the railing gazing up the road in the opposite direction. He walked on, trying to think about the task ahead. Suppose those two, White Hair and his girlfriend, had only been out for the day? No, you don't take suitcases if you're only going to Richmond or Maidenhead. It was still light but, though he wasn't much for noticing what the sky was doing, he could see from the red glow when he looked behind him that the sun had set. Back to sitting on a wall, then. He'd walked so far he was exhausted, not to mention getting hungry again. A bit more time was used up by his buying a pie, a piece of fruit cake in a see-through pack and a Mars bar, which he ate trailing along Westbourne Grove. Once, when he looked behind him, he saw in the distance a man who reminded him of Fize but, as far as he was concerned, one Asian looked much like another.

  At last it was dark and there was no street lamp directly outside White Hair's house. The dense trees in the pavements and the front gardens of Chepstow Villas helped to darken the place. Lance was so certain White Hair would have bolted his side gate after all this time that he was surprised when it yielded as he turned the key. There were lights on in a garden next door, the kind that glow green, half hidden among the bushes, but none here. It was very dark and there was no moon. Lance went up to the french windows and peered at the keyhole. As he had hoped, neither White Hair nor his girlfriend had taken the key out after they had locked the door. He could see the tip of its shaft inside the hole. Poking it through would be a skilful business, best taken slowly, because if it jumped out when he pushed at it with the screwdriver he had brought with him it might easily jump away from the door and land inches away on the carpet. And that would be the end.

  His eyes had become accustomed to the lack of light. He could see the keyhole quite clearly and no longer regretted not bringing a torch. Very carefully he prodded at the end of the key, felt it move, then wobble, teeter on the edge of the keyhole and as he just tickled it with the screwdriver's tip, drop straight down surely no more than an inch in from the bottom of the door. Lance had brought a strip of thin card with him in his backpack. He slipped it under the door, which he could now see must have been a full centimetre above the carpet edge. It was then that his difficulties began. He told himself he must be patient. If he got into a state, if he lost his cool, he would make a mess of it and perhaps only push the key away, further into the room. At his fourth attempt, he felt the card slide under the key. By tilting the card very slightly upwards, he began to move it towards the bottom of the door. He lost it and had to start again. Very slowly he pulled the card backwards, praying it wouldn't catch on the base of the door and stick. It didn't. He couldn't remember a moment he'd been so happy since Gemma kicked him out, as he was when he saw the brass shank of the key – to himself he called it a golden key – ease its way out and into his waiting hand.

  Though he unlocked and opened the door very quietly, the burglar alarm still went off. The chances were it wasn't the kind that summoned the police, only frightened the intruder. He was made of sterner stuff. He moved quickly round the room, scooping up stuff into his backpack, ornaments, statuettes, pretty things he couldn't identify, glass and silver, and from the top of a cabinet, evidentl
y dropped there by the girlfriend, a gold necklace set with green stones. All this took about two minutes before he was back once more in the garden, the french window secured behind him and the key in his pocket. White Hair would change the lock, of course, but there was no harm in giving it a go.

  He dared not go back through the gateway. There were signs that the neighbours were getting excited by the braying of the burglar alarm, which was just as audible outside as indoors. Voices were raised. A woman somewhere in the front said loudly that she was going to phone the police and someone else said it was probably a false alarm. Lance began to feel trapped. He padded down the path towards the wall at the end of the garden where he detected a sturdy-looking trellis supporting the dense thickets of creeper. It was as good as a ladder. The lights were still on in the garden next door but no one had come out. In the distance he could hear voices raised in an argument over what, if any, action to take. Gaining a foothold on the trellis, he began to climb up, his hands already scratched by the creepers, which were a lot more thorny than ivy. As he swung his right leg, then his left, over the top of the wall, the side gate opened and a man and a woman came into White Hair's garden. Lance swore. He should have locked that gate. But the people hadn't seen him. He hung on to the top of the wall on the Pembridge Villas side, watching them through the leaves, and he nearly laughed out loud when he saw them glance at the locked french windows, their glass intact, mutter something to each other, turn and go back the way they had come.

  His hands sore and bleeding, he let himself drop on to the soft ground below. The house whose garden he was in looked unoccupied. No lights were on. The people who lived there might have gone away for the holiday weekend too or just be asleep. He could still hear the rising and falling howl of White Hair's alarm but now, quite suddenly, it stopped. The silence that followed it was broken only by the sound of a big expensive car purring its way towards Westbourne Grove. Lance found he could creep along towards the road at the back of the thickly planted border where the shrubs were tall and where, within a few yards of the house, a forest of bamboo took over. Its stalks were twice his height and they sheltered him until he reached these people's side gate, a wrought-iron door, easily climbed though hard on his sore hands. Within thirty seconds he was out in the street, all his difficulties behind him and surely a small fortune in his backpack. He was particularly pleased with the necklace, which he was already telling himself was gold with emeralds.