Soothed after a while by the new and reasonable Miriam, Felix gave her money to go out and buy a Chinese takeaway for three, in which might be included six cans of beer and a bottle of sake. He stifled a phrase which floated disconcertingly into his mind: ‘The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast.’
The light faded outside the uncurtained windows; Mirry switched on two lamps with plastic, art-deco patterned shades which gave the chaotic room an almost festive appearance. She lit joss-sticks in a jam jar on the mantelpiece which wafted Felix back to his first days at university. The television was taken off the bed and turned on in a comer of the room, where it glowed and burbled, a meaninglessly talking light. The food in the silvery cardboard dishes gave off a strong smell of monosodium glutamate. Ian, dressed in striped pyjamas, said the Chinese dinner was cool and ate solidly. Felix drank three beers and most of the bottle of sake as his anxieties dwindled. After a while Ian went to bed. Mirry followed to say good night to him and when she came back Felix stood and said he ought to be going.
‘It’s late,’ she said. ‘And you’re a bit pissed, quite honestly. Also, those coppers might be waiting for you.’
‘I suppose they might.’
‘Why not stay? You can decide what to do in the morning.’
‘No room.’ He looked down at the pile of jumble which was her bed.
‘I’ll make some room.’
She worked at it, moving armfuls of her clothes and dumping them on chairs or beside the television. He lay down in surprising comfort and she lay beside him. He closed his eyes and felt he was back, years before Huw Hotchkiss’s beach party, to the time when he had smelled incense and tried to stretch out in too small, inconvenient beds, in lodgings or halls of residence, and stumbled on unforgettable excitement and suddenly revealed happiness. Miriam was undressing him with the efficiency of a nurse and then she changed character as she pulled the sweater over her head. He had expected, even feared, dirty bra straps but her small breasts were free, her body was white, without any individual smell to it. Her face was near his, her eyes full of what seemed to be genuine concern. Deliberately and with unexpected pleasure, he did what he might or might not ever have done before. Then they both fell asleep.
An hour later he was awake with a dry mouth and a headache. He turned over, disentangling himself from the embrace of the sleeping Miriam, and looked at his watch, surprised to see it was only a quarter past ten. He found himself staring at the bright light of the portable television. A grey-haired, handsome woman he recognized was standing outside Paddington Green police station talking to reporters: ‘Our inquiries have led us to believe that Gavin Piercey was receiving death threats,’ she said in the gentle but enthusiastic tones of a headmistress announcing the results of the sixth form relay races. ‘We are still looking out for a man we believe can help us with our inquiries. We should be able to name him shortly. No further questions!’
Felix crawled out of the floor-level bed and switched off the television, causing Miriam to turn over, almost woken by the sudden silence. He stood motionless until she was sleeping securely again and then dressed and let himself out of the flat, stifling the feeling that he ought, in some way, to have said goodbye to Ian.
As he turned the dark comer to reach the last flight of stairs, he could see, lit by a weak bulb in a clouded glass, a tall, bald-headed man with a shorter companion. The shorter had his finger on the lift button and the taller was angrily telling the empty space that fucking twelve-year-old yob vandals had fucked up the lift. On the dark stairway Felix froze again like one of Sleeping Beauty’s attendants. And then with a furious rattle and a jolt the lift unexpectedly arrived and yawned open, as though to disprove the charge of criminal damage against minors. As soon as the men had been carried away, Felix left the building and, setting off towards the World’s End, broke into an unaccustomed trot.
If the Furies were after him; if, at the whim of the Gods, the bald man and the man, as Gavin would have said, casually dressed, had gone to search for him at the World’s End, they couldn’t be in Coldsands. So surely, at least, he was safe to go home, to make plans, to collect his thoughts. In the house where he had been a child, where he could have a bath and sleep in his own bed, get up early and look out as the sun rose over the unconcerned sea, he would be able to discover a sensible course of action, as he found consistent behaviour for the characters in his books. The worst that could happen to him would be that he’d have to lose a pile of cash to satisfy PROD – the advance on a new novel perhaps. If he was really up against it, he could find money for Ian as he’d had to find it to keep his mother, silent and smiling, in the Evening Star Rest and Retirement Home.
But then, as he sat on top of a bus creeping along the King’s Road on a late summer evening, where crowds were standing outside the pubs, drinking, laughing, quarrelling and sitting on walls, where drivers were trying to back into impossible parking spaces outside bistros and a man with a shaven head was leading a taller man on a chain and dog-collar, Felix remembered that his present difficulties couldn’t be solved by a hefty slice of a publisher’s advance. ‘I don’t think it was because of Ian,’ Miriam had said when he told her about the Furies, ‘I think it was because of Gavin.’
Gavin. Everything started and ended with Gavin. Gavin had sent him the tape and dogged his footsteps on his book tour. Gavin, found dead in a car with his head battered in, was still pursuing him. The police were looking for a man who could help them with their inquiries, and men from whom the police sought assistance were soon, Felix knew, in serious trouble. What had the policewoman with literary leanings said on the television news? ‘Our inquiries have led us to believe that Gavin Piercey was receiving death threats. . .’ Could she believe that a novelist without a stain on his character, once described as the Chekhov of Coldsands-on-Sea, would utter death threats to a publisher’s rep who was, as he had constantly shown, a devoted admirer of that novelist’s work? The idea was absurd. Did it become less absurd because the novelist, after drinking champagne in a London club, had been led into a fatuous conversation about a contract killing with an elderly solicitor who fed himself on brains?
For a moment he wondered if he shouldn’t go straight to Paddington Green police station and seek an interview with the headmistress. But then his thoughts, straying irresponsibly, wandered to his message on Gavin’s answering machine: ‘If you won’t withdraw your story at once, I shall be compelled to take steps to silence you.’
He hadn’t said that, had he? That wasn’t an accurate quotation. But then he was afraid he had said exactly that. Well, if he had, could such words be construed as a death threat by the porcelain-faced Chief Inspector? When he asked himself this question the disloyal voice within him answered, Let’s face it, that’s exactly what she thinks. Looking round, he thought the woman with beads and a long nose, sitting on the other side of the aisle, was staring at him curiously. He picked up the sports page of the paper which had been left on the next seat and held it to hide his face all the way to Victoria Station.
The lights seemed unnecessarily bright when he stood waiting to buy a ticket for Coldsands. He slapped what he thought was the breast-pocket of his jacket to make sure he had money and realized that he had no jacket, no wallet and no credit cards. He was wearing the clothes he wrote in, dressed as he was when he left the house, it seemed a lifetime ago, to buy the Meteor – blue shirt and sweater, suede shoes and grey corduroy trousers. It was his habit to keep his credit cards in his wallet, his bank notes in the back pocket of his trousers, his change in his trouser pocket and his cheque book in the top left-hand drawer of his desk. He now remembered that he had paid for his ticket to London with money because entrance to his house was barred by the Furies. He had given his last wadge of notes to Miriam for spare ribs, seaweed and beer, Peking duck, sweet and sour pork, mixed vegetables and sake. Now all he had in his trousers were four pound coins and two fifty ps.
Felix’s father had a minimal influence on his son. H
e failed to pass on to the young Morsom his reverence for golf, bridge, cricket commentaries, the Conservative Party and the South Coast Bank. He did, however, give him one piece of advice
Felix respected: ‘If you want to telephone or pee while out, always go to the best hotel. Don’t use the same facilities as the great unwashed. Telephone kiosks and urinals are much the same to them. When in need slip into the Princess Beatrice Hotel or somewhere similar. Treat yourself to the best. The hall porter will respect you for it.’ Felix came up the black marble stairs that led to the Station Hotel, keeping as far as possible in the shadows and walking quickly with his face turned to the wall. He chose a stall far away from the only other inhabitant of the Gents and then slipped quickly into the telephone box in the hall. He put in fifty p, because he didn’t want to ask the hall porter for change, and rang Brenda Bodkin’s number.
It rang five times and Felix was about to put the phone down when a voice, male and Australian said, ‘Yep?’
‘Oh, is Brenda there?’
‘Brenda’s shot through. What can I do for you?’
‘Well . . . It’s Felix Morsom.’
‘Bloody hell! Not the Felix Morsom?’
‘Well . . . A Felix Morsom.’
‘Not Felix Morsom, the novelist extraordinaire?’
‘I’m a novelist. Yes.’
‘Not Felix Morsom, well-known pen-pusher who does book signings?’
‘I do. Yes. Sometimes.’
‘And shoots off round the country with Brenda?’
‘That’s right. You could say.’
‘Just tell me one thing, Mr Morsom.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Is Brenda Bodkin a good fuck?’
His instinct was to try to laugh it off but his laughter sounded hollow. He said, ‘I honestly wouldn’t know.’
‘No, I didn’t think you would.’ The phone was disconnected and purred loudly.
Felix sat in an armchair in the comer of the lounge. A waiter came up to him and he ordered a large brandy which cost him four pounds. He drank it, fingering the last coin in his pocket, and then, unusually exhausted by fear, alcohol and love, fell asleep.
He dreamed that the bald policeman was standing over him, wearing some kind of ornate uniform and shaking him by the shoulder, and then he saw, more clearly, that it was the hall porter saying, ‘I’m sure you don’t want to stay here all night, sir. We can’t have that, you know.’
‘No, of course not. Thank you for waking me.’ Felix wondered if this were all part of his dream.
‘You’re travelling, are you, sir?’ The porter was not completely bald but had strands of black hair fixed across his skull. He had small, beady eyes and, Felix thought, a cruel mouth. He smelled of boiled sweets.
‘Yes, of course, I’m travelling. Thank you. Thank you very much.’ He didn’t believe he was completely awake when he walked back down the stairs, although he could hear his footsteps echoing across the station and the rumble and clatter of a distant truck. Far away in the shadows someone was whistling.
He stumbled over a pile of newspapers stacked outside a shuttered bookshop and looked down to see his own face peering over the title of the Meteor and read: ‘NOVELIST’S LOVE-CHILD. SEE CENTRE PAGES’. He pulled until he extricated a copy from the tight string and, still unsure if he wasn’t half-asleep, crossed to a table in front of a dark cafe and opened the paper, the first thing he had ever stolen in his life. The faces stared up at him as though in a dream: Ian and Miriam, himself as a boy, himself ten years ago and himself now – the author portrait from the back of his book. There was even the barbecue snap, dark and blurred, reproduced and captioned THE BEACH LOVE-IN WHERE THEY MET. He remembered the broken downstairs window of his house and that he had never looked to see if anything was missing from his box of photographs. He read:
Prestigious novelist Felix Morsom, once nominated for the Booker Prize, refuses to acknowledge and support his love-child. ‘When will Daddy come to see me?’ ten-year-old Ian asks mum, Miriam Bowker, 30, who is desperately trying to make ends meet on National Assistance and part-time waitressing. The truth in Felix’s life is a great deal more colourful, it seems, than his highbrow fiction.
Felix didn’t feel called on to read further. Lucasta’s story seemed no longer important. What turned his dream into a nightmare was the face of the man Detective Chief Inspector Cowling wanted to help her and this would be pushed through the country’s letter-boxes and seen by millions on their way to work. He folded the paper neatly and went in search of the nearest rubbish bin.
He got rid of the Meteor and straightened up. About fifty yards away a man was standing in a pool of light by an empty platform. Although still young, his hair was receding. He had a pale face and metal glasses perched on a girlishly turned-up nose. As Felix watched the man moved away into the shadows.
Felix was as sure as he could be of anything that what he had seen was the living Gavin Piercey.
Chapter Twelve
‘A Mr Felix Morsom is ringing you from a call-box and wishes you to accept the charge.’
‘What?’
‘Will you accept the charge?’
‘Yes?’ Septimus Roache, his hair standing on end and his eyes swollen with sleep, had straightened up in his bed, wearing the sort of striped flannel pyjamas which were obligatory in the school dormitory where he had once been happy. His Yes? was a question meaning I’m here and bloody well explain yourself, can’t you?, not I’ll pay for the call. However, the result of it was a click and an urgent and excited voice.
‘Mr Roache, I’m sorry to call you so early.’
‘It’s bloody near two o’clock in the morning.’
‘Felix Morsom here. You remember giving me lunch at your club?’
‘Look, if you just want a friendly chat, piss off. Write me a thank you letter.’
‘You remember I was in a spot of trouble?’
‘Spawned a bastard? Nothing much to boast about. Most authors could do better.’
‘No. This is rather more serious. It seems I’m wanted on a charge of murder.’
There was a pause. Septimus switched on his bedside light and put on a thick-framed pair of reading glasses. Now he could see better, he felt he could hear. ‘That is most interesting,’ was what he said.
‘I think I’ve got a defence.’
‘Everyone, however unattractive,’ Septimus assured him, ‘has got a defence of some sort. If not, they can be given one.’
‘The man I’m meant to have killed was found beaten to death in his van in Bayswater.’
‘Which man?’
‘Gavin Piercey.’
‘I think I read something. . .’
‘Well, I just saw him get on to a bus.’
Septimus was silent, struck dumb once again by the inability of clients to dream up defences which have anything more than a snowball’s chance in Hades.
‘You saw,’ he said, ‘the deceased man, whom you may be suspected of doing in, getting out of a bus?’
‘On to a bus.’
‘When?’
‘This morning. Five minutes ago.’
‘An early riser. Up with the lark. How did he die?’
‘His head was beaten in with some blunt instrument. Apparently there were also wounds to the face.’
‘This character you saw getting on to a bus, this ghost, this revenant, this resurrection specialist, did you see his face?’
‘For a moment I did.’
‘Horribly injured?’
‘Not at all. He looked, well, perfectly normal.’
‘So you have woken me at this ungodly hour for the pleasure of telling me you’ve seen a miracle?’
‘I could have sworn it was Gavin . . .’ Felix sounded less certain.
‘I suppose’ – Septimus’s voice was icy – ‘there’s some sort of biblical authority for what you’re suggesting? Where was this?’
‘On the Embankment.’
‘Hardly the road to Emmaus.�
��
‘But if it was Gavin, I mean, surely I’d have a defence?’ Felix had, at best, a sketchy knowledge of the law.
‘It’s been a miracle to get some people off.’ Septimus never thought it necessary to talk about law to clients. ‘But I’ve never had to rely on a miracle as a defence. You’d better come into the office. I’m always there by nine thirty.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘I might be caught.’
‘That’s bound to happen sooner or later.’
‘Not till I’ve got the evidence.’
‘What’s the evidence?’
‘Gavin Piercey.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘I told you. On the Embankment. There are some people here getting fed.’
‘At the Savoy?’
‘No. Near the Savoy. I’ll call you later.’
Felix was gone. Septimus put down the phone, then lifted it, dialled another number and left a short message. Then he looked at the sleeping face of a boy only known to him as Yorkie Bar, whom he had attracted by the simple expedient of waving a fifty-pound note through the car window outside the Golden Pavement amusement arcade on his way home from the club. Septimus thought that he had never seen such innocence as there was in the face of the sleeping Yorkie, a look as pure as that of the child Septimus when he first shivered in his striped flannel pyjamas in the icy dormitory at the school from which he had never completely recovered.
‘Gavin!’ Felix had called out to his persecutor, a man who was certainly dead, as though to an old friend, the person who, most in the world, he would have wanted to meet in the small hours of a morning on Victoria Station. And then a porter, driving a long chain of swaying, rattling trucks, turned to stare at him and he shrank into the shadows.
Felix had the idea that the figure, the spectre, the double or even, perhaps (and this was his single hope), the living Gavin, had left the station. He found himself running, something he hardly ever did, but it had been a night of physical exercise. He was panting, gasping, muttering ‘Gavin’ and occasionally shouting it. In the entrance hall he passed a little posse of cleaners who looked after him as though he were mad, a sleepless Englishman driven crazy by loneliness and fear.
Felix in the Underworld Page 9
