The Nick of Time

by Francis King

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered

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  Contents

  Francis King

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Francis King

  The Nick of Time

  Born in Switzerland, Francis King spent his childhood in India, where his father was a government official. While still an undergraduate at Oxford he published his first three novels. He then joined the British Council, working in Italy, Greece, Egypt, Finland and Japan, before he resigned to devote himself entirely to writing. For some years he was drama critic for the Sunday Telegraph and he reviewed fiction regularly for the Spectator. He won the Somerset Maugham Prize, the Katherine Mansfield Prize and the Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year Award for Act of Darkness (1983). His penultimate book, The Nick of Time, was long-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize. Francis King died in 2011.

  ‘One of our great writers, of the calibre of Graham Greene and Nabokov.’ Beryl Bainbridge

  Dedication

  To Laura Pope

  for gallantry

  Chapter One

  ‘It was as though God had sent him to me,’ Meg said to her sister Sylvia, about her first encounter with Mehmet. ‘ More like the Devil,’ Sylvia had thought but not said.

  Meg had been coming home from the Tesco at which her Nigerian neighbour Blossom worked with an irrepressible, smiling energy, her stubby fingers with their long, red-lacquered nails passing purchases speedily across and then no less speedily picking out the change from the till. ‘Do you want any help with the chair?’ Blossom had asked; and Meg had replied, as she always replied, ‘No, that’s all right, dear, I’ll be fine.’ She did not care, as she often complained to people, to be under an obligation. It was a matter of pride to manage on her own.

  But that day the chair had suddenly given up the ghost as she was about to move out on to the pedestrian crossing. A car had halted for her, and the driver, a middle-aged man with grey, untidy, shoulder-length hair falling over his jacket collar, had waited, turning his head from side to side, an expression of exasperation on his face, as he had deliberately avoided looking at this wretched lump of a woman who did not seem to know how to get her wheelchair to work. Oh, for Christ’s sake! Couldn’t that biddy who had begun to cross the road herself give the poor creature a hand? These days there was no solidarity between people, it was a case of everyone for himself. He had begun to wonder if he should not get out of the car and give the chair a shove. It was then that a tall man, his muscular shoulders tensed back and his large head thrust forward as though into a buffeting wind, had come striding down the pavement, halted, said something. Perhaps he would help …

  What Mehmet said, stooping down as though deafness were another of Meg’s disabilities, was ‘ You have problem, madam?’

  ‘Well, yes, I have.’ Meg’s crossness with the chair sounded like a crossness with him. ‘This bloody chair’s conked out again. It can’t be the battery. It was charged only yesterday. No, I lie, the day before yesterday.’

  ‘Not working?’

  What a stupid question! Of course it wasn’t working! Why else would she be stranded here, like a kipper on a fishmonger’s counter, with that car and now another car behind it waiting for her? ‘No, it’s not bloody working.’

  ‘I push then, madam. Yes?’

  ‘Yes.’ She all but added: ‘Yes, bloody push!’

  He pushed her up Kingsland Road and along Gordon Road and then into Melmount Terrace.

  ‘Now right at Flatt Road.’

  ‘Flatt Road?’

  ‘Yes, it’s an odd name for this road. It’s not flat at all. First it goes up, then it goes down, then up again. Like life. Except that life ends by going down, down, down. So where do you live?’

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘Nowhere? Do you mean you’re sleeping rough?’ He certainly didn’t look as if he’d been sleeping rough, with those well-polished shoes of his and those well-creased charcoal-grey trousers.

  He laughed. ‘Not yet. But maybe tonight. My landlord turn me out and so now I look.’

  ‘Turned you out! You mean today? Without any warning? I don’t know how it is in your country but a landlord can’t do that here. You ought to take advice. The Citizens’ Advice Bureau. Do you know of the Citizens’ Advice Bureau? There’s one – or there used to be one – in the high street, just next to that Ko-Hi-Noor tandoori place.’

  She had twisted round in the chair to look up at him. He frowned, bit his lower lip, shook his head. ‘Difficult, madam. Complicated.’

  ‘How complicated? I can’t see anything complicated about it. You’re within your rights to demand proper notice. Perhaps as a foreigner you didn’t realize that. But I’m telling you, as anyone else could tell you, being a tenant in this country, you have a right to proper notice.’

  ‘Difficult, madam,’ he repeated. ‘Very difficult.’

  She knew that he did not wish to discuss the matter, she would get nothing more out of him. Eventually she would learn to live with the resigned knowledge that he would never share more than a sliver of his life with her, whereas she would eventually come to share her whole life, such as it now was, with him.

  ‘This it?’

  ‘This is it. That porch needs repair and the whole shebang needs repainting but do the bloody Council care? Not on your life.’

  Meg, still sitting, faced out onto the street, as he effortfully dragged her chair backwards up the nine steps to the front door of the block. The door of her flat was too narrow for the chair and so, as she explained to him, she had to leave it either in the old coalshed in the basement or in the hallway to the block. When left in the hallway it had more than once been vandalized. Even worse than finding the cushion ripped with what must have been a penknife or jackknife and the rubbish of plastic containers, a half-eaten sandwich and two beer cans placed on it, had been coming on that insulting message FUCKING CRIPLE, sprayed on to the back where the battery was housed. Whoever sprayed that didn’t even know how to spell cripple properly. People of that sort were bloody ignorant.

  In the hallway, she put out a hand. ‘Give me a hoist, there’s a dear. Once I’m on my feet I can manage.’ She scrabbled in her large, worn handbag and pulled out a bunch of keys, most of them to suitcases long since jettisoned or to flats long since vacated. ‘But open the door first. My crutches are just behind it – just by the spider, that thingummy where the coats and hats go.’

  He opened the door; but instead of going in for the crutches, he said: ‘I lift you, madam.’

  ‘Oh, no, no!’ She was appalled. ‘No need for that. I can ma
nage with the crutches. Mr Bagley usually gets them for me. We have a porter here, you know, very grand, Mr Bagley he is. I warn him what time I’ll be back and usually he hears me and comes up from his basement. I warned him today. I’m surprised he’s not here. I can ring for him, he never minds – that bell over there.’ She pointed.

  ‘I lift you. Why worry Mr Bagley?’

  He stooped and at once, before you knew it, she was up there, like a baby, in his arms. She let out a wail, then ordered ‘Put me down, put me down!’ If she had been able to do so, she would have kicked her legs in angry frustration.

  ‘Through here?’

  ‘Oh, very well. Yes, through there!’

  It was a small room, crowded with the overlarge Victorian and Edwardian furniture that had come to her as her half share on the death of her mother, a German who had married an English soldier met, while he was part of the army of occupation, in the immediate aftermath of the war. The other half share had gone to her sister, Sylvia, who had promptly decided – or whose la-di-da husband had decided – that it was ‘hideous’ and had therefore at once sold it for a song to some totter who advertised in their local rag.

  Mehmet wrinkled his nose. Meg knew why he did so. There was a sour smell in the room, as though milk had been spilled in it. Meg never noticed the smell, except for a few seconds after she had come into the flat following a period, however brief, out of it, but she knew from their expressions that other people did. ‘Here?’ he asked, indicating a vast armchair, with a soiled lace antimacassar draped over its back and a worn cushion, embroidered by Meg’s mother with a now almost invisible bunch of poppies, placed over the broken springs of its seat. As those springs dug into her bottom, Meg would experience a perverse comfort, even pleasure, which she could not have explained.

  ‘Yes, that’s my perch.’

  He lowered her gently.

  ‘I’m quite a weight. As I daresay you discovered. I used to be a mere slip of a thing – if anorexia had been invented then, people would have said I was suffering from it – but as soon as this bloody MS hit me, I began to put on weight.’ She wriggled, hunching up her shoulders and smoothing down her rucked-up skirt with her hands, as she settled herself. ‘I never stop eating now. It’s the boredom, not greed.’ She pointed to a packet out of which chocolate biscuits had spilled across the low table beside the armchair. ‘Look at those. I keep them there, a constant temptation. And then I munch and munch and munch.’ Her usually cheerful face darkened. ‘Well, what else is there for me to do? You wouldn’t believe this now but I was once well known – well, at any rate known if not well known – as a formation dancer. I appeared oh, three times in Come Dancing on telly. Latin American – that was my speciality. Here – what about a cup of tea? Or coffee? Foreigners often prefer coffee. It’s only Nes, I’m afraid, nothing fancy.’

  ‘I must go look for a room. When I see you, I go to Greek agent in the high street.’

  ‘Oh, keep away from a Greek!’ she cried out. ‘He’ll be sure to diddle you.’ Then, appalled, she asked: ‘ You’re not by any chance Greek yourself, are you?’

  ‘No, madam.’ He laughed.

  ‘No, I suppose not, not with that pale skin of yours. But that hair of yours makes you look a bit Mediterranean.’ Of Mediterranean appearance. They often used that phrase on Crime Watch when describing someone with that kind of thick, black, tightly-curled hair.

  He hesitated. ‘ I – I am Albanian, madam. Student from Kosovo.’

  ‘Albanian! Well, fancy that! Mr Bagley and his wife went to Albania for a holiday only a few months ago. But they didn’t really enjoy it. I don’t like to tell you that, seeing that Albania’s your country, but that’s the truth. They thought they’d found a bargain – they’re always looking for bargains, those two. Not much more than three hundred quid each for the week, all found. But the hotel was only half built, there was a main road just beneath their window, the lavvie was blocked, and both of them picked up some sort of tummy bug. Oh, and they said that their room smelt of sheep. Can you imagine?’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘Oh, I can’t remember.’ She paused, finger to lower lip, brows drawn together.’ Let me think. Shkoddy something. Something like that,’ she eventually got out.

  ‘Shkodra?’

  At first she was dubious, drawing her eyebrows together and pursing her mouth. Then she decided: ‘Yes, yes, that was it! Do you know it?’

  ‘I been there. My auntie live there. I am surprised your – your friends not happy there. Town very beautiful. Castle, Rozafat castle, very beautiful. One day I want to go back. See beautiful castle again.’

  ‘Well, maybe they were unlucky,’ she conceded. ‘ Or maybe they weren’t interested in castles. You know how it is. When you go abroad, it’s all a matter of luck. Well, for the matter of that, all life is a matter of luck. Isn’t it?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Now come on – let’s have that tea or coffee! Do you think you can make whatever you prefer? Then I won’t have to struggle. Because it is a struggle – worse luck. I’m having one of my bad spells. It’s strange, I’m nearly always worse in the autumn. I get these cramps all the time – it’s either the cramps or the aches.’

  As he got the tea, she shouted out directions to him, while at the same time peering at the television screen, on which an obese elderly man and an emaciated young one were exchanging camp insults as they flounced around in a demonstration of how to make Boeuf Stroganoff. She had pointed at the set and told him to ‘ be a dear and press that button over there’ before he had gone into the stifling little kitchen, its sink brimming with the crockery and cutlery that would be washed the next day by Fiona, the cheerful home help.

  ‘Let it stand a little. I don’t like the gnat’s pee that my sister and brother-in-law favour. You don’t mind it strong, do you?’

  He shook his head, smiling in bemused tolerance.

  She took the teacup from him, when she had eventually decided that the tea had brewed long enough. She sipped and nodded: ‘Fine. Just as I like it.’ She reached out for a chocolate biscuit, replaced it and then picked it up again. ‘I shouldn’t but it’s less harmful than a fag. That’s my other addiction, cigarettes. D’you smoke?’

  ‘Sorry. Yes.’

  ‘You look too healthy to be a smoker. I sometimes wonder whether I caused my MS with too much smoking. But the doctor told me that’s out of the question.’ She munched at the biscuit. Then she said: ‘Well, I suppose he must know. He’s not an ordinary doctor, not my usual one, but this specialist, a Chinaman. I see him at University College Hospital every two months. He must get sick of seeing me. I certainly get sick of seeing him.’

  ‘Another cup, madam?’

  ‘Please.’ Then, as he took the cup from her, she said: ‘Oh, do stop all that madam business. You’d think I was running a knocking shop. Call me Meg. I’m Mrs Towling – if we have to be formal – but just call me Meg, as everyone does.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Towling. Meg,’ he corrected himself with a laugh.

  ‘And you are?’

  He pointed to himself. ‘ Me?’

  ‘Your name. What do I call you?’

  He hesitated. ‘Mehmet.’

  ‘Just Mehmet?’

  Again he hesitated. ‘Mehmet – Ahmeti.’

  ‘Mehmet.’ She savoured the word, as she had been savouring the chocolate biscuit. ‘I like that. Somehow it suits you. Don’t you think it suits you?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I think it does. I don’t know why.’ She put down her teacup. She looked closely at him, taking in the elegant arch of the eyebrows above the long-lashed black eyes, the slightly hooked nose, and the fleshy, almost pouting lips. ‘Are Albanians Christians then? Forgive my ignorance.’

  ‘Some. Most Muslim.’

  ‘And you?’

  He again pointed at his chest. ‘Me?’ Then he nodded. ‘As little boy, I am cut.’ He made a gesture of manipulating scissors with his right hand and laug
hed.

  ‘Cut?’ She frowned for a second, then joined in his laughter. ‘Oh, I see. Yes.’

  ‘But I am not real Muslim. In my country people say ‘‘Ku ështe shpata, ështe feja’’. That mean ‘‘Where sword is, there religion is.’’ Religion bad, bad.’

  ‘Oh, not always! You can’t say that.’

  ‘In my country, yes. Always. Always bad. Make trouble. That is why leave.’

  For a while she pondered, gazing at the worn kelim at her feet. Then she jerked up her head.

  ‘Now what are we going to do about you?’

  ‘Me? About me?’

  ‘Where are you going to live?’

  ‘I find something. I always find something.’

  ‘You mean – you’ve had this problem before?’

  ‘Sometimes. Two or three times. Landlords here …’ He put his head on one side, smiled at her. She noticed for the first time that one of his eye teeth was broken. Pity. His smile was otherwise so attractive.

  ‘Oh, I know, landlords can be villains. And the worst, I’m sorry to say, are the foreign ones. The Council gave a Kurdish refugee and his wife a flat upstairs – much nicer than this one, four rooms, a balcony, lavvie separate from bath. And now – believe me or not – they’ve become landlords themselves and there are seven, yes, seven other people living there, all Kurds of course. A complete ramp! Someone should tell the Council. But of course no one does. And if someone did, the Council wouldn’t take a blind bit of notice.’

  There was a silence, as she held another biscuit in a hand, now to suck and now to gnaw at it, like a child. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said at last.

  He leaned forward. The light, which was necessary in the dark little room even on an afternoon of autumn sunshine, glinted on his hair. His hands were clasped together and she noticed, with satisfaction, that they were clean and uncallused, the nails well tended, and that on the fourth finger of the right he wore a large ring. One could see at once that his background was good.