‘I did,’ he said.
‘Why? What have I done to deserve them?’
He smiled at me, indicating the other present. I was to take it inside and open it. He was sorry about everything that had happened. He hoped we’d be happy now.
The latter phrase, an echo of a Gilbert I wasn’t keen to remember, confused me. I took the flowers through to the kitchen and laid them in the sink. When I opened the present, I found myself looking at a tin of DIY stuff called Permafil. According to the instructions, this was ideal for stopping up holes in plasterwork, partitions, and other damaged surfaces. It needed minimal preparation and could take umpteen layers of paint. I looked up at the wreckage of my tatty old ceiling, wondering what this funny man was trying to tell me. Had he been listening to me and Gary this morning? Had he heard us talking about Brendan? About the shambles of my private life? Had he put two and two together and come up with an answer to why I was so suddenly back in residence?
I concluded that he had and I spent the rest of the afternoon perched on a chair, bunging layer after layer of Permafil into my hole in the ceiling. The stuff was putty-like and at first it just fell out but I managed to find a little piece of plywood to wedge in the gap and after that it was pretty easy. By six o’clock, with the help of the remains of the white emulsion, the ceiling looked as good as new.
Upstairs, I presented Gilbert with the tin.
‘Done,’ I said. ‘And thanks for the thought.’
Gilbert shook his head. I was to keep the tin. Just in case.
‘Just in case what?’
‘In case it happens again.’
‘But it won’t, will it?’
He returned my look and then - quite suddenly - burst out laughing. I was so totally unprepared that it made me physically jump. He put a restraining hand on my arm. To my surprise it felt warm and reassuring.
‘Keep it,’ he said again.
As I turned to go, I remembered the LP I’d found.
‘Tell me about that record of yours,’ I said. ‘Montparnassse. You never mentioned you were famous.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘You were,’ I insisted. ‘You were released. You were in the shops. You must have been. That’s where I found it.’
He shook his head.
‘I was a fool,’ he said, confirming what I’d learned about Palisade. ‘I thought you could take short cuts, you know, cheat. You can’t though. They won’t let you.’
‘Who won’t?’
He fixed me with one of his long, earnest stares. ‘Them,’ he repeated darkly. ‘Tu comprends?’
I didn’t understand, but it wasn’t something that bothered me any more. Leaving Doubleact, and Brendan, had been such an enormous bump in my road that every other obstacle just fell away. Real madness was Brad Pitt, I’d decided. Compared to him, and what he represented, Gilbert was sanity incarnate. He’d welcomed me back. He’d bought me flowers. He’d even, to my face, said sorry. If I was looking for a new start, and I was, then here was the opportunity.
I spent the weekend with my mum in Petersfield. I knew I’d been neglecting her since moving up to London but I’d always told myself it wasn’t my fault. To make amends, I took her across to Winchester and we spent an idle afternoon browsing through the shops. She has a passion for a tweedy kind of look and we managed to track down a rather nice skirt and jacket for her winter wardrobe. Even I liked it, which probably signalled the onset of middle age, and over a Hampshire cream tea my mother gave me the opportunity to take the thought a little further.
‘You’ve put on a bit of weight, dear. The rate you’ve been working, I somehow thought you’d be thinner.’
The waitress had just arrived with the cream tea. My mother wasn’t overfond of cream but strawberry jam had always been her favourite. I watched her loading the spoon.
‘I’m pregnant,’ I announced casually. ‘I meant to tell you.’
The spoon wavered over the waiting scone. Despite the size of me, she obviously thought I was joking.
‘Honestly,’ I said. ‘Seventeenth of December, to be exact.’
My mother was flabbergasted. She wanted to know everything. She never touched the scone. After I’d finished, she put a hand on my arm. Had my father been alive, all this would have been extremely difficult. As it was, mum was a brick.
‘It must have been terrible,’ she said. ‘You should have phoned.’
‘Nothing to say, mum.’
‘It doesn’t matter. That’s what I’m there for. Now then, what are you going to do?’
The question, I realised at once, was a declaration of intent. Without a job, things could get just the teensiest bit tricky. I’d be needing help. Lots and lots of it.
‘You can move back,’ she decided. ‘It’ll be nice to have a baby around.’
I fought the urge to laugh. The thought of landing my mother with an infant was a joke. The thought of landing her with me was even funnier.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said airily. ‘It’s lovely of you to offer but I’m sure things will work out.’
‘Work out where ? Where will you be ?’
‘In London.’
‘That same place? That flat of yours?’
‘Of course.’
‘But I thought you told me you were trying to sell it? Get rid of it?’
I refilled our cups, desperately trying to remember how much I’d told my mother about the problems at Napier Road. As ever, she saved me the trouble.
‘That neighbour of yours upstairs. Mr Gilbert.’
‘He’s fine.’
‘But I thought… ?’
‘No.’ I shook my head firmly. ‘He can be a bit odd sometimes, a bit funny, but no… he’s perfectly harmless. Nice man, actually. And talented, too.’
I told her about the flute music and finding the LP. She quizzed me further but when I told her the name - Gilles Phillippe - it meant nothing.
‘How old is he?’
‘Forty-five?’ I guessed. ‘Fifty?’
‘Was he married?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Does he work at all?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
She pressed me with more questions, and the fact that I was able to tell her so little made me feel slightly ashamed. If I was really going to stay in Napier Road then I’d make it my business to find out a great deal more about the man I shared the house with. That, I thought, would be a real challenge, a chance to play Sherlock Holmes and keep my brain cells alive while the nights drew in and yours truly got fatter still.
My mother, newly indignant, was asking again about the baby’s father. So far, I’d only mentioned his name.
‘This Brendan,’ she began. ‘You say he’s run out on you?’
‘Not exactly. It’s mutual, really.’
My mother was looking grave. I suppose I should have spared her the news but I didn’t see the point. The last seventy-two hours, since I’d talked to Andi on the phone, had hardened me a great deal. Nothing good ever comes from hiding from the truth. I told her Brendan was married.
‘And did you know that when you… you know…’
‘Oh yes, his wife was my boss.’
‘Julie!’
My mother looked round, horrified. There were obviously limits to her sympathy and I’d just breached them, though I had a shrewd feeling that bad news is better swallowed whole. Let’s get this over with, I thought. Then we can be friends again.
‘He left her for me,’ I told her. ‘We lived together for a couple of months then he…’ I shrugged,’… went back.’
‘Went back where?’
‘To his wife.’
This time I laughed out loud. If anything, the news that Brendan had abandoned his mistress for his wife was even more shocking.
‘How could he
?’ she said. ‘What kind of man does that?’
‘I don’t know. But he did.’
‘Did you love him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Badly?’
I think she’d got the wrong word but, although she hadn’t meant to, she’d rather summed me up.
‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘Badly’s about right.’
Afterwards, she insisted on a tour of Mothercare. It felt hugely presumptuous to be looking at nappies and baby gear when we were still months away from December but I took it as a vote of confidence and we left with a bag full of Pampers and a rather sweet Babygro that my mother had fallen in love with. She’d wanted to buy a teddy, too, but I’d spent most of the previous evening rummaging in bedroom cupboards, looking for my own, and I was determined to pass it on.
Being at home made me realise what a magical childhood I’d enjoyed. With my father away at sea most of the time, the credit for that had been almost entirely due to my mother and as the weekend slipped by I became more and more conscious of how my little piece of news had drawn us together. I don’t think my mother was hurt by my decision to try and cope alone. On the contrary, I think she may have been quite relieved. But by the time she dropped me at Petersfield station on Monday morning, we were closer than we’d been for years. At last we had something in common, something to look forward to, something to protect.
‘Find out about that neighbour of yours,’ she sang out as the train drew slowly away. ‘But no more falling in love, eh?’
My quest, as I liked to think of it, for the real Gilbert began with a major windfall. It was Friday of the same week. The weather had broken with a vengeance. Big, fat clouds had been building over London since mid-morning and by three in the afternoon it was practically dark. The lightning, when it came, brought the rain sheeting down. Out shopping, I sheltered under the canopy of the supermarket until it stopped. Cars and buses had their lights on. It might have been ten o’clock at night.
I was home, soaking wet, an hour or so later. My shopping included a couple of items for Gilbert and I was putting them on his stairs when I saw the note on the doormat. It was written on the back of an envelope, backward sloping handwriting, a little smudged from the rain but perfectly legible. ‘Gillie… ‘ it read. ‘Mama’s back home in one piece. Best give me a ring. 0831 306708 (new toy!!). Yrs. Tom.’ I lingered in the hall for a moment or two, reading the message again. Was this Gilbert’s father? Favourite cousin? Whoever it was certainly sounded like family. I fumbled rather guiltily in my bag and made a note of the number. 0831 meant a mobile phone. Hence, presumably, the comment about the new toy. I returned the envelope to the mat and let myself into my flat.
Since I’d come back from Petersfield, at my mother’s insistence, I’d invested in an answering machine. She was sick of ringing an empty flat and after such a lovely weekend, I thought an electronic message pad was the least I could offer.
The little window on the top of the machine told me a message was waiting. I dumped the shopping in the kitchen and returned to the front room. The moment I respooled the tape, I recognised the voice. It was Brendan. ‘Lovely to hear you, Jules,’ he began. ‘Since when have you had one of these?’ He paused for a cough here and I wondered whether he was back on the Camels again. Then the voice returned. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I know I’m the last guy in the world you want to see just now but I’ll be in Latino’s at half past eight tonight. If, just if, big if, you could be there, I’ll know there’s a God in heaven. I love you, believe it or not.’ The message came to an end and I was left standing by the phone fighting the temptation to go through the message again. What I wanted to feel was anger. How dare he call like this and invite me out? After everything that had happened? And just say I went? Just say I joined him at that table at Latino’s, the one we’d practically rented, right at the back, beneath the rubber plant, what then? Would he apologise? Tell me he’d made a big mistake? Tell me we could wind the clock back and pick up where we’d left off? And just say I was foolish or pathetic enough to believe him? What then?
I shook my head, genuinely angry now, not that he’d phoned but that he’d so cleverly ambushed me with all these questions. He knew me inside out. He’d set me a little trap, baited with contrition, and he was probably over at Doubleact now, sprawled behind his desk, visualising exactly this scene. My big mistake, I realised, was ever letting him inside my head.
Nikki was at home when I phoned her. I told her I needed moral support. I told her I’d bought a present for the cat, and something ultra-yummy for her, and how would it be if I came over for the evening? A couple of hours later, after yet another visit to the supermarket, I was safely inside Nikki’s flat. The cat demolished the offcuts of salmon, we gorged ourselves on a huge chocolate gateau, and when Nikki suggested I stay the night, no one could have been happier than me. The last thing on my mind before drifting off to sleep was Brendan. If he’d been silly enough to turn up at Latino’s, I hoped he was still there, sat alone at our table, pining. Stupid man.
I was home by nine next morning. Nikki dropped me off on the way to work. Inside the door, I found a letter with my name on it. I opened it in the hall, recognising Brendan’s handwriting. Inside was another cheque and one of the lovely paper coasters Latino’s have printed specially. The cheque was for £500. On the coaster, above a single kiss, Brendan had written ‘Missed you.’
I let myself into the flat, glad I’d spent the night at Nikki’s. The last thing I needed just now was a late-night doorstep confrontation with Brendan. Trying to cope at arm’s length - letters, phone messages - was bad enough. Face to face, I just didn’t know how I’d react. I circled the flat with water for my plants, wondering just how long Brendan would sustain this little campaign of his. His attention span was notoriously short - one of the reasons he’d done so well in television - and real life without yours truly was obviously a tougher proposition than he’d expected. Life doesn’t come more real than Sandra and I was curious to know just how much rope she’d be allowing him. She knew Brendan better than anyone, better - certainly - than I did. Was she really silly enough to let him out for the evening? Or might they both have been waiting in Latino’s?
To either question, I knew I didn’t really want an answer. Between us, Nikki and I had agreed that icy indifference was by far the best tactic. Rekindling an old affair, especially one as intense as this had been, was one of the worst ideas in the world, and my sole responsibility just now was to turn my back and walk away. The fact that I missed him didn’t matter. The fact that he could easily do it again - more damage, more hurt - most definitely did. Not only that, of course, but there were now two of us to think about. After what he’d done to me, would I really be daft enough to trust Brendan with my baby?
The phone began to ring. I looked at it for a long time, wondering whether it was wiser not to answer it, but the machine took over and the caller’s voice came on at the end of my message. It was Nikki, bless her. She wanted to know whether I was OK. She wanted to be sure I hadn’t weakened. I picked up the phone. I still had Brendan’s cheque in my hand.
‘He keeps giving me money,’ I told her. ‘Poor fool.’
Next morning, the builders arrived. They came in a battered old van and thumped up and down the stairs, carrying stuff in. I watched them from the front room, wondering what Gilbert could possibly be up to. On the side of the van it said ‘Hackney Construction’.
Pretty soon afterwards, the house began to shake. The hammering went on and on. Alarmed, I went out into the street, looking up at the roof. A hole had appeared amongst the tiles, halfway between the guttering and the top ridge line, and as I watched, one of the guys appeared, head and shoulders through the gaping space. He peered around him, testing the tiles with his hand, then he began to pull them away, one by one, letting them slide down the roof. The tiles were heavy and one of them shattered on the low front wall. I stepped back, shouting at
him to stop, and he looked down, seeing me for the first time. He yelled a cheerful apology and disappeared inside. A minute or so later, Gilbert stepped out through the front door. He was terribly, terribly sorry. He hoped I hadn’t been frightened. Maybe it would be better if I came back inside.
He took my hand and I followed him into the hall. What I really wanted to know was when the work was going to stop. Pregnancy, I’d noticed, makes you very aware of your physical security. The simplest things begin to matter a very great deal. Were the guys upstairs replacing the whole roof? Was it leaking? Or was there some other problem?
Gilbert shook his head, unusually voluble.
‘Good Lord, no. It’s a little panel they’re making me, a window, a porthole if you like. They’ll be doing one or two other things, too, but nothing terribly fancy. Just some floorboards up in the loft and a light or two, and a couple of bits of insulation. Just enough to give me a bit of comfort up there.’
‘You’re making another room? A proper conversion?’
‘Oh, no, no.’ He shook his head again, emphatic. ‘Just a perch, that’s all.’
The thumping had started again. One of the china ornaments on the hall table was threatening to topple over. I moved it, just in case.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why do you need a perch?’
‘I’m installing an observatory,’ he said at last. ‘I thought I’d mentioned it.’
The building work carried on all day. My knowledge of the lease was pretty sketchy but I thought, at the very least, that I should have been consulted about something as major as this. The guys upstairs looked like cowboys. What would happen if they wrecked the roof and it all went wrong? Were we insured? Could we claim damages? And what about the local authority people? Weren’t you supposed to get planning permission for something this big?
At lunchtime, I phoned poor Nikki again. One of her many virtues was a worldliness I lacked. She seemed to have been living in flats for most of her life. What, I asked her, should I do?
‘Talk to the landlord,’ she said at once. ‘Before it goes any further.’
Nocturne Page 19
