Dark Corners: A Novel Page 9

  Up to now, Tom Milsom had led a calm, steady, peaceable life. His job had been largely trouble-free. His wife loved and respected him, or seemed to. His daughter – well, she took his money, he thought bitterly, and for a flat she no longer even lived in. What did they think of him, the pair of them, for giving up an interest he had plainly enjoyed because two boys had hit him? Part of him never wanted to get on a bus again, even though it was not the buses’ fault. In fact he had not even been on a bus when the boys had attacked him. This line of reasoning sent him out of the house – though perhaps it was more the result of Dorothy plying the vacuum cleaner round the armchair he was sitting in.

  He walked about a mile, thinking it was good for him, then got on the number 139 bus. It was only then that it occurred to him he should have looked at London Bus Routes online. Perhaps when he got to Baker Street he could find a number 1. There was something fascinating, intriguing, about a bus numbered 1. It ought to be the best of all London buses. He asked the driver, who told him to stay on till Waterloo and pick up the number 1 there, which would take him to Bermondsey and Canada Water. Relaxing in the back of the 139 once more – there were several empty seats – Tom felt enormously better. He had always wondered what Canada Water was like, what Canada Water was, and now he would find out.

  The sun was shining; it would be light for hours. Nothing was going to happen today or on the days to come. The trouble with those two boys had been no more than a nasty incident. Luckily he hadn’t been much hurt and all was going to be well.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  NICOLA WANTED TO protect Carl from Dermot, but she didn’t tell Carl this. No matter how far emancipation had progressed towards equality, a woman might tell a man she wanted to care for him but she could not admit to him that she wanted to defend him from another man. Anyway, she seldom saw Dermot. If she heard him on the stairs, she kept inside the living room until the front door closed. They had met only once recently, in the hallway, she going out and he coming in, he from the pet clinic and carrying shopping, she on her way to buy something for an evening meal.

  ‘You’re living here full time again now, are you?’ he had asked. There were several ways of putting that enquiry, and Dermot’s phrasing was rather accusatory, the implication being that she shouldn’t have been. She would have liked to ask him if he had any objection, but Carl’s fear of Dermot was beginning to affect her too.

  ‘I am, yes,’ she said.

  He shook his head, the kind of gesture that implied wonder more than disapproval. ‘As I always say,’ he said, ‘it takes all sorts to make a world.’

  She said nothing about it to Carl. When she got back with the two ready meals and a bottle of rosé, her anger, which was considerable, had died down. Dermot was upstairs but silent apart from a burst of ‘Amazing Grace’ when he briefly opened his front door.

  Next day was Saturday, the weather improved, and he was out in the garden with the two deckchairs, though only one was occupied. He must have sneaked – as Carl put it – through the kitchen with them while Carl and Nicola were out.

  ‘You’ll have to tell him you don’t want him in the garden,’ said Nicola. They were in the bedroom, looking down on the top of Dermot’s head.

  Carl didn’t say anything.

  ‘You’ll have to, Carl. This is only the thin end of the wedge.’

  ‘I’ve already told him he can use the garden.’

  ‘Don’t you think that if he was going to tell anyone – I mean about selling that stuff to Stacey—’

  ‘I know what you mean. I think about it every day. It haunts me. I know what you were going to say. That if he was going to tell the newspapers or her aunt or her cousins or anyone, he’d have done it by now. But why would he? He has the perfect arrangement. He could tell them tomorrow or next week. It’s not something that gets easier for me, is it? The newspapers will send someone around here to interview me. He’s biding his time, as he might say. He’s waiting for someone or something to trigger it, and me telling him he can’t sit out in my garden might be just the trigger he needs.’

  The weather went on being nice, and Dermot sat out in the garden again the next day. Carl and Nicola knew he would, because he left the deckchairs out overnight. This, Carl said, was the thickening end of the wedge, or was it the further thinning? Dermot had gone to church, of course, carrying his Alternative Service book. Carl, like many atheists, disapproved of that work, preferring the Book of Common Prayer, and would have liked to say so scathingly to Dermot but was afraid. His tenant – could you describe someone as a tenant when they paid no rent? – returned at eleven thirty with the fat dark girl. They sat in the garden for an hour, then the deckchairs were vacated and soon a strong smell of curry permeated the house.

  Carl and Nicola went out. They had a drink in the Prince Alfred around the corner. It was a fine old pub, much loved by Nicola and once loved by Carl. He loved it no longer; there was nothing that he loved.

  ‘Except you,’ he said. ‘I love you a lot. I really love you, but how can I marry you?’ He had never mentioned marriage before. ‘This torment will go on for ever, for the rest of my life. I know it sounds mad, but it’s true. I shall live in this house or another house and he will be there with me, wherever it is. He will never go and I can’t get rid of him. Sometimes I think I’ll kill myself.’

  Weeks had passed since Yvonne Weatherspoon had been to the pet clinic. Sophie was well and no injections were due, but a new event in the Weatherspoon household had taken place. Elizabeth had occasionally opened the French windows for the cat to go out in the evenings, and Sophie had stayed out until dawn, squealing under Yvonne’s bedroom window to be let in. This truancy had badly frightened Yvonne, and she was even more distressed when she saw that Sophie had a wound on her neck and a triangle of furry skin nipped from one of her ears. She had plainly been fighting with the Bengal next door.

  ‘This is what happens when you have your children home to live,’ Yvonne told Dermot the next morning, referring of course to Elizabeth, not Sophie.

  ‘You wouldn’t be without her,’ said Dermot in a sentimental tone.

  ‘There’s no question of that. Will Caroline be able to see me? Well, see her, poor darling.’

  ‘I expect we can fit you in. Sophie will have to have intravenous antibiotics.’ Dermot liked to display medical knowledge picked up from Caroline, Darren and Melissa without actually knowing anything about it.

  ‘I should have phoned first. I know that.’ Yvonne brought her face very close to his across the desktop. ‘But you see, if I did that, I thought you’d say no, maybe say there was no room for us.’

  ‘Not this time.’ Dermot smiled his toothy yellow smile. ‘Now here’s Melissa come for you. I’m afraid Caroline’s out on a call.’

  Left alone, and with no other pet-owners due until the afternoon, he let his mind wander on to Stacey Warren and the pills that Carl had given – no, sold – her. He mustn’t tell, he knew that beyond a doubt. It would be different if Carl had demanded the rent and threatened eviction, but it was unlikely that he would do that as he was too frightened.

  No one had ever been afraid of Dermot before, or not to this degree, and it gratified him to have caused someone this amount of fear without violence or even the threat of it. A shame really that he couldn’t have it both ways: not tell Stacey’s aunt or cousins, say not a word to the Ham & High, but drop a hint just the same to Carl as to how near to danger he had come and would come again. Of course the game would have to end at some point. He had no intention of being evicted. He would have to quietly resume paying rent. But not now. Not for a long time. For now he would keep the money, keep the fear up, and keep Carl exactly where he wanted him.

  Yvonne came back into reception with Sophie wearing a wide white collar designed to prevent her claws from tearing at her wound. In this purpose it was already failing.

  ‘I shall have to have a taxi back,’ said Yvonne. ‘I had to have one here. I couldn’t have Sophie wi
th me loose in the car.’

  Dermot would have told her it was against the law anyway, but he had told her that on numerous previous occasions. He called a taxi for her. ‘It’ll be up to fifteen minutes.’

  This was an opportunity too perfect to ignore. True, Sophie was whimpering, but this place reverberated and echoed to the cries and growls of animals. Yvonne was sitting down now, murmuring soft words to the cat. ‘You must be missing your niece, Mrs Weatherspoon.’ Dermot broached the subject with extreme politeness.

  Yvonne looked surprised. ‘Yes, well, of course. It was very sad.’

  ‘Indeed it was. More than that. Tragic really. Drugs are everywhere these days, aren’t they?’

  The cat, satisfied that the torture was over and might not recur, had fallen asleep. Yvonne sighed, shook her head. ‘I’m glad to say neither of my children ever took them.’

  Dermot didn’t believe her. ‘You’re lucky,’ he said, seeing the taxi arrive. ‘It’s worse, I would think, when someone one trusts – a so-called friend – gives or even sells such horrible substances to one’s loved one.’

  The seed was planted. Yvonne smiled vaguely, said he was right and allowed him to carry cat and cat box out on to the pavement. She would remember what he had said, he thought, but he had given nothing away. If things continued as they were, he need reveal no more.

  Meanwhile, Sybil had become quite a useful tool. She liked sitting in the garden, as her parents had nothing like it in Jerome Crescent. From what he gathered, there was nothing much in Jerome Crescent that Sybil liked. The previous Sunday, as they’d walked back together to Falcon Mews, she’d asked him if she could do some weeding. She put her request humbly and with a lot of excuses because she was afraid of offending him.

  ‘Good idea,’ he said.

  ‘You won’t have to ask Mr Martin, will you?’ She always called Carl Mr Martin.

  ‘Good gracious, no. We’re the best of pals. He’ll be grateful.’

  So while Dermot slumbered gently in his deckchair the following Sunday afternoon, placing the Observer open on his face to protect it from the sun just as his grandfather used to do, Sybil pulled up nettles, campions and docks and dug out their roots with a trowel.

  From the bedroom window, Carl looked down on them. Getting your garden weeded wasn’t exactly something you could object to. But surely they could have asked? Besides, taking what Dermot would undoubtedly call a liberty would just lead to another. First the deckchairs; now that girl was digging up his garden. What would be next? He had suggested to Nicola that Dermot’s next move would be to take over one of Carl’s own rooms. No doubt that would soon happen.

  But something else did. Not a takeover, but an interference in his personal life.

  ‘Been wining and dining, have you?’ Carl and Nicola had just come in from dinner in Camden with Carl’s mother, Una.

  Carl didn’t reply. He expected Dermot to go upstairs, but his tenant said, ‘Could I come in for a minute? I’ve got something I want to say to you.’

  Taking over the second bedroom, Carl thought, that was what it would be. He opened the living room door and Nicola went through to the kitchen. ‘These things are always awkward, aren’t they?’ Dermot smiled with his lips closed. ‘But I’m not easily embarrassed.’

  ‘What did you want to say?’

  Nicola had come back into the room. She had a glass of water in her hand.

  ‘Well, it’s unfortunate, but it’s something that must be said. You were living alone when I first came here, Carl, but now you’re living with this – this young lady. Miss Townsend. This isn’t right. It is in fact far from right. I’m not old-fashioned, I’m a progressive kind of cove, but there I draw the line. I don’t call it living in sin, that would be to go too far, but it is – to put it plainly – wrong. Now I’m sure you’ll agree with me when you think about it.’

  Nicola drank the water, all of it down at one gulp. She said afterwards that now she knew the meaning of ‘stupefied’.

  ‘How about you living with that woman you bring to the house? That’s different, is it?’ Carl asked.

  ‘Ah, very different, Carl. We don’t live together, you see. I have just come back from taking Sybil home to her parents in Jerome Crescent.’ Dermot nodded sagely. ‘Well, I’ve said my piece, got it off my chest, and I suggest that when you think about it, you’ll find I’m right.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘WHERE’S JEROME CRESCENT?’

  It was three fifteen in the morning and Carl hadn’t slept at all. Nicola was fast asleep, but she woke up when he asked the question a second time and even more loudly.

  She turned over in bed. ‘What?’

  ‘That woman Sybil lives there.’

  ‘Carl, I have to go to work in the morning.’

  ‘I don’t know why I’m asking,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter. Go back to sleep.’

  He thought he would never sleep again. He lay there for a little while, maybe ten minutes, and then got up and went down to the kitchen. The house was as silent as if it had been a cottage in a country lane.

  Upstairs, two floors up, Dermot would be asleep, deeply asleep in bed, without worries, at peace. He probably drank cocoa or Ovaltine at bedtime, and the mug it had been in would be on his bedside table. There would be a bin for the washing in his room, and before he went to bed he would drop his clothes in it. Things would be like that every night, night after night, unchanging, on and on, while he, Carl, wandered wakeful around the house, growing poorer and poorer, eventually going on the dole or benefits or whatever it was called. For him things would never change, but they would change for Dermot, who would marry that Sybil and have children with her. He’d get a better job, flourish, and one day seek him out, and he, Carl, would be a wretched broken creature in rags, in a shabby, dirty room, and Dermot would offer to buy the house from him. Offer him half the price the other houses in Falcon Mews fetched because he could …

  You must stop this, he told himself, you will drive yourself mad. But what did you do when you were caught in a trap as he was? You had to decide which was worse (or better): to be utterly disgraced, your name all over the papers, your writing career ruined, to be interviewed and photographed as the man who sold poison to an unsuspecting young girl and brought about her death; or to escape that by giving up all you possessed, your only means of making a living. He couldn’t see a way out. It was one or the other.

  He went into the living room, took a bottle of gin, the only spirits he had, and swigged what remained of it, about a glassful. As he swallowed it, he thought, I am mad, I am crazy, I shall be ill, and he lay down on Dad’s sofa, staring at the ceiling and breathing like someone who had run a race. If he ever had another book published and it was ever reviewed, the journalist would refer to him as ‘the disgraced author Carl Martin’.

  The gin had its effect, swinging the room around, deadening him, knocking him unconscious. Nicola found him four hours later and lay down beside him, holding him in her arms.

  Old Albert Weatherspoon, who had been Elizabeth and Gervaise’s grandfather, used to say that two women could never share a kitchen. It was just one of his many misogynistic maxims, and Elizabeth would have been the first to rise up in wrath at such an instance of sexism, along with his other sayings, such as that women made bad drivers. But having lived at home with her mother for a couple of months, she was ready to admit that two women could never share a house.

  ‘If you’d known that Gervaise wasn’t going to live in Pinetree Court but was going to announce plans to go off to Cambodia, would you have given the flat to me instead of him?’

  ‘You’d got a home and a husband. How was I to know that you and Leo would split up? There was no warning.’

  ‘How could there be a warning? When you’re in a relationship, you don’t tell everyone that although things are all right now, they may go wrong in a couple of months’ time, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t lived like you do, jumping about
from one man to another.’

  ‘I can’t stay here, I do know that,’ said Elizabeth. ‘We have a row every day. And as for that cat, I’d drown it if I could get near it without being torn to pieces.’

  ‘Don’t you lay a finger on my sweet lamb.’ Yvonne stood up, quivering. ‘You can do as you like with the flat. I don’t want it. But I don’t want any trouble. Remember that.’ She considered for a moment. ‘I’d be quite pleased if you could get rid of that Lizzie woman. Milsom, she’s called. I know she was a friend of Stacey, but it can’t be right that she’s still living there. It was your brother who told her she could. Amazing what a pretty face can do, isn’t it?’

  ‘Pretty?’ said Elizabeth. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Yvonne was almost as anxious to get rid of Elizabeth as Elizabeth was to move. Although Sophie was obviously capable of defending herself, Yvonne was afraid her daughter might find a way of doing her real harm. Both Elizabeth and Sophie were free to wander about the house at night, and Yvonne began having bad dreams of her daughter putting poison in the cat’s dish.

  So Yvonne went to Pinetree Court to speak to the concierge. He knew who she was, and would have much preferred her as the occupant of the flat. As far as he was concerned, she was the owner of what he called ‘the property’, and the sooner she moved in, the better. Yvonne could understand this. A handsome, obviously wealthy woman in the prime of life – she would never call herself middle-aged – was a more suitable occupant than a twenty-four-year-old. That it would actually be her daughter who would be living there wasn’t his business, she thought. She would like the lock changed – could he arrange that? Of course she understood that changing the locks on the entrance to the whole block would not be possible.