Portobello

by Ruth Rendell

  There, sitting on a wall in a street harmless now but once, long before his time, a notorious crime hotspot, he opened the wallet. No credit cards. She left that kind of thing to her husband. Three twenties and a fiver and, in the purse section where she'd almost broken the zip stuffing it with change, a lot of two-pound coins and one pound coins and fifty and twenty pences. She'd got too much of it to bother with the smaller stuff. He counted. With the notes it came to eighty-eight pounds all told. Not bad, might have been worse.

  He wandered down Bevington Road, pausing first to drop the wallet into a bin and then to buy himself a Mars bar and a packet of crisps, finally getting on a bus, from which he was immediately ejected because it was the kind you had to have a ticket for before you got on. Lance felt aggrieved. He had fully intended to pay his fare out of Mrs Red Jacket's change but they hadn't given him the chance. There was no justice.

  Ever since his bag-snatching he had been moving away from Uncle Gib's with no apparent purpose. But of course he had a purpose. A moth drawn to a flame, he was making for Gemma's place, for the flats with their balconies and black railings, their gardens full now of red flowers and purple flowers, and the graffiti-scrawled yellow walls that bounded them. After her visit to the hospital he no longer had that hopeless feeling that she would utterly reject him, clutch Abelard to her bosom as if he were one of those paedos, turn from him and slam the balcony door. Was it possible she would have him back? Give that Fize his marching orders and have him back? He'd have to make her believe he'd never smack her again, which was true, he never would. He'd tie his hands behind him, sit on his hands, before he'd touch her.

  He was outside the flat now, looking up at her balcony. She must have seen him for she came out. Overflowing with love, he gazed ardently at her. She put one finger to her lips, then mouthed silently, 'I'll come and see you,' and was gone. Back the way she had come, the door closed carefully behind her.

  Reuben Perkins and his wife Maybelle were paying a rare visit to Uncle Gib and being served tea in the front room. The two of them were the only people Uncle Gib ever made tea for. Even the Children of Zebulun, attending a prayer meeting, were given orange squash. Mr and Mrs Perkins were provided with tea and Garibaldi biscuits – they had to bring their own cigarettes – because Reuben was Uncle Gib's best friend and now no longer the Assistant Shepherd but the Head Shepherd himself. He and Uncle Gib were remarkably alike and could have been taken for brothers. Both were tall and thin, although Uncle Gib was taller and thinner, both had skull-like faces and a hungry deprived look, thin-lipped, their eyes suspicious and their noses sensitive. Perhaps they had started off looking quite different from each other but prison, the prison diet and each other's frequent company had brought about this similarity. Maybelle Perkins wasn't at all like Auntie Ivy who had been a handsome woman, but squat and round with a square face and frizzy ginger hair.

  Conversation, having exhausted the weather, house prices and the general moral decline in society, centred on Uncle Gib's recent tract on teenage single parents and his latest homilies to his correspondents in the church magazine. Both Perkinses approved, both marvelled at his wise advice and his literary skills. Maybelle, on her fourth fag, was commending him for telling a sixteen-year-old girl that if she took the morning-after pill she'd be a murderer and go straight to hell, when a key was heard in the lock and Lance came into the house. The front-room door was open and the fug pervaded the hall. Coughing ostentatiously, Lance stood in the doorway, intending to annoy because he felt so happy and at ease with the world. Neither of the Perkinses had ever met him.

  'This your nephew, then, Gilbert?' said Maybelle.

  'My late wife's great-nephew,' Uncle Gib corrected her. 'I'm giving him accommodation and his meals all found.'

  Maybelle didn't say 'out of the goodness of your heart' but her sweet smile conveyed it.

  'A poxy room and an outside toilet,' said Lance and he went upstairs, Uncle Gib's threats following him.

  Lying on his bed, he gave himself up to thoughts of Gemma. She'd said she'd come and see him but why hadn't she said he could come and see her? Because Fize was there and for a while at any rate was staying there. Lance didn't like the idea of that and a cloud moved slowly across his clear blue sky. Nor did he care for the thought of Gemma who was so spotlessly clean and beautiful – she often had two showers a day – being entertained in this grotty room. He looked dispassionately around, taking it all in, the paintwork, fingermarked and filthy, the window so encrusted with grime that you wouldn't know it was something made to see out of. Grey net curtains with ragged hems hung limply against the dirty glass. The floor was covered in brown lino, curling at the edges where it met the skirting board, and the walls papered – where the paper wasn't peeling off – in a pattern of flowers and birds, all faded to a greyish-pink and barely distinguishable for what they were meant to be.

  He needed money. With money you could do anything and he thought vaguely how he could get someone to come in and paint the place, clean the window, find a woman to put up real curtains. Not for himself; for Gemma. Should he go back to Chepstow Villas and try his luck again? He still had the key to that side gate in his jacket pocket. But unless White Hair was a complete nutter he'd have not only bolted it by now, but barred his french windows as well. But what about the other house, the one in Pembridge Villas he'd escaped through? The place with all that bamboo stuff in the garden. Maybe he should go over there and check-up on a few things, like who lived there and when they went out and got back, if there was a dog or a burglar alarm. He could go now and on the way make that detour that led him past her place and perhaps he'd see her again…

  Elizabeth Cherry was talking to her neighbours through a gap in the ivy and honeysuckle and clematis armandii, which rambled thickly over the terrace at the ends of their gardens. She had known Eugene Wren for quite a long time now, Ella Cotswold was her doctor and it was through her that they had first met. She was reminding them of this fact, how Ella had been paying her a home visit when she had suspected pneumonia and Eugene had come in bearing a bottle of Bristol Cream sherry and some wild smoked salmon to tempt her appetite. The invitation to their wedding, which she had just received, had prompted it.

  'How kind, Gene,' she was saying. 'I'd love to come. Where will you be going for your honeymoon? Or is that a secret.'

  'No secret,' said Ella. 'Italy.'

  'Sri Lanka,' said Eugene.

  'I see. Well, one's on the way to the other. I must go in. I'm going round to my sister's later for a drink. You see how my life has become one mad round of amusement.'

  They laughed in a polite understanding way and Elizabeth went back into her house. She was just in time to answer the door to a young man with fair hair and an unmemorable sort of face who wanted to know if she needed a gardener, just for tidying up and mowing the lawn. Though eighty-one, Elizabeth performed these tasks herself quite adequately and wasn't too happy about the imputation that she needed help.

  'No, thank you. Good afternoon,' she said, disliking even more the way the young man seemed to be peering into her hall, looking this way and that, and taking in more than was good for him. Or perhaps more than was good for her.

  But when he had gone she thought, as Eugene had thought before her, that it was silly and verging on the paranoid to suspect every stranger of nefarious behaviour. He was just a poor boy who needed to supplement his probably low income.

  It was Saturday evening when Gemma arrived, the very time of all times when Lance calculated she couldn't possibly come. But there she was on the doorstep, looking more beautiful than ever in a diaphanous maxi-dress with low neck and puff sleeves, her long blonde hair piled on top of her head and a rose tucked among the curls.

  Lance was struck dumb with joy and longing. He could only gaze.

  'Aren't you going to ask me in?' She stepped briskly over the threshold without waiting for him to answer. 'My God, what a pong. You've not taken up smoking, have you?'

  L
ance found his voice. 'It's Uncle Gib. He gets through fags like there's no tomorrow.'

  'Probably isn't, for him,' said Gemma. 'Where is he, anyway?'

  'Gone to a senior citizens' social. They're mostly seniors at his church.'

  Gemma wasn't interested. 'Where's your room, then?'

  An hour later, sitting up in Lance's bed, they started on the bottle of Cava Gemma had brought with her. It wasn't until this point that Lance came round sufficiently from his state of bliss to enquire who was minding the baby.

  'Fize is. He's really taken to Abelard, says he's like his own son.'

  This, to Lance, was like a jet of cold water in his face and enough to wake him thoroughly from his euphoria. Sympathetically, Gemma poured him more wine. 'You're going to give him the boot, though, aren't you?' said Lance. 'Get rid of him and have me back?'

  'Ooh, I don't know, lover. Maybe one day. It'd be like awkward right now.'

  'But you said…'

  'My idea's much better. We'll have an affair, you and me. I'll come round here in secret. Won't that be great?' She looked around the room, curling her lip. 'I'll get this place cleaned up a bit. It's disgusting.'

  'It'll have to be Sunday mornings when Uncle Gib's at church.'

  'What's wrong with that? Mum'll have Abelard. She don't work Sundays.' Gemma brought her mouth to his in a long deep kiss. 'I've never had an affair,' she whispered. 'It's always been relationships everyone's like known about. Boring, really. This way'll be romantic.'

  Another hour later Lance heard Uncle Gib come in. They'd have to be very quiet getting Gemma down the stairs. Faintly he heard Uncle Gib singing 'Jesus Wants me for a Sunbeam' and then the television started. Gemma got up and slipped on her dress and shoes with remarkable speed. Her hair had come down and she left it to stream over her shoulders. It amazed Lance that a girl could get up to what they'd just got up to – three times too – and emerge looking like she was ready for a photo-shoot.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs as they put their heads out but it was only Dorian Lupescu on his way to the top floor. He nodded to Lance and Lance nodded to him but they didn't speak.

  'Who's that?'

  'Guy who lives upstairs.'

  'Hot,' said Gemma, casting Lance back into the depths.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ella was looking for the key to the side gate. She had checked the hooks in the garage where various keys hung and glanced into the shed at the end of the garden. Keys were also kept in a drawer in the kitchen but it wasn't among them. She asked Eugene.

  'In the lock on the gate.'

  'No, it isn't. And it's not in the garage or the shed, or with the other keys in the kitchen.'

  'It doesn't matter, does it? The gate's always bolted on the inside.'

  'Yes, but I don't like the idea of that burglar having it and I'm sure that's who's got it.'

  She wasn't quite sure. For a man with so many valuable possessions, Eugene was very careless about security. She hadn't been aware of this before she became engaged to him. It wasn't a character trait that affected their relationship. In the future she would see to the safety side of their living arrangements, so that was all right, but meanwhile where was that key? When she came to think of it, what was the point of the burglar keeping the key? He would know the gate would in future be kept bolted and expect bars to be put on the windows at the back of the house. Whatever Eugene might say, he had probably put the key in some unsuitable place in the house.

  If she couldn't find it, she'd have the lock changed. That was only prudent. With no surgery that morning, she waited till Eugene went off to the gallery and began to search the kitchen. That was where it very likely might be, dropped into one of the many drawers by an absent-minded man who wouldn't think twice about getting it mixed up with cutlery or microwave operating instructions or teacloths. But it wasn't among the knives and forks or lying on top of an oven glove. Ella did a good deal of tidying-up as she searched, always conscious of the fact, and very happy to be conscious of it, that in a few weeks' time this would be her home as much as it was Eugene's. She folded the cloths more neatly, put the cooking implements in a different section from the forks and spoons, and the knives in the empty knife block. Squatting down to search the unlikeliest of places, the area at the base of the oven where baking and roasting tins were kept, she took hold of a kind of flange to hoist herself up – really, she would have to join a gym; being stiff in the joints at her age was a disgrace – but found herself pulling open a drawer. A secret drawer – who would have thought it?

  It was empty but for two small orange-and-brown packets containing sugar-free sweets. Chocorange, they were called. Ella took a sweet out of the already opened packet and put it into her mouth. Rather nice. Probably left behind by Carli the cleaner, she thought. Carli was always on the lookout for things to satisfy her appetite but help her lose weight. Ella finished searching the kitchen but the key still eluded her. It looked as if changing the lock was inevitable.

  Eugene had sold two John Hugons bronzes, lovely things he was almost sorry to part with. They would have looked beautiful in his drawing room and Ella would have liked them. Leaving Dorinda in charge, he went off to have lunch with a woman artist, an exhibition of whose work, tiny paintings rich in gold, silver and copper lacquer, he was going to mount in the gallery. Lunch was to be at a restaurant in Knightsbridge and on his way he called in at Elixir and bought three packs of Chocorange.

  His intention had been to resist temptation. His intention was always to resist temptation, although the phrase 'phasing out' he had abandoned. Lately, he had been seriously cutting down, largely the result of having Ella with him most of the time. Saturday and Sunday had passed without a single sugar-free sweet but on Monday he had eaten several on his way to the gallery and three more while Dorinda was out at lunch, almost returning to his usual pattern. Just one pack remained in the secret drawer, four in the spare bathroom cabinet and two in the drawing room. The cache behind the E. M. Forsters must stay there untouched. He envisaged a time when he was over this, when it was all behind him and he could, with ritualistic pleasure, take that bagful and drop it in the waste bin on the corner of Pembridge Road.

  But that time wasn't yet. The craving had been very sharp this morning. He was also hungry. The breakfast he had eaten was inadequate to satisfy him until lunchtime but if he ate twice as much, which he would have liked, he'd start putting on weight again. Chocoranges were a substitute for real food. He had brought a full pack out with him, eaten two sweets on the way, two more surreptitiously, telling Dorinda he had a sore throat, and now three more on his walk to Elixir. He knew that if he didn't replenish his by now meagre kitchen, bathroom and drawing-room stocks he wouldn't be able to resist breaking into the store in the plastic bag behind the books. And somehow doing this seemed to him to signify the beginning of the end. What he meant by 'the end' he wouldn't have been able to say, but it included such concepts as 'downfall', 'crack-up' and total abandonment to a loved, yet hated, habit. The Chocorange sweets in that bag were sacrosanct, never to be touched. So he could persuade himself that buying three more packs in Elixir was a prudent measure, postponing or avoiding altogether the final weakness. And now he had the three in his briefcase, he need not be careful to restrain his consumption of the sweets in the pack he had brought out with him. In spite of the one he had put into his mouth before entering Elixir still remaining there as a sliver between the side of his tongue and his back teeth, he helped himself to another whose rich creamy taste was so much stronger and more delectable than the fragment that had once been as delicious as the newcomer. Philosophising as he often did on the nature and constituents of his addiction, Eugene considered what makes a habit and what a dependency and, concluding that in his case the former had finally become the latter, entered the restaurant where he ordered a sherry to take away the taste and the smell of chocolate. It was a reversal of the accepted order of things. Instead of chewing a sweet to disguise the smell of al
cohol when he opened his mouth, he was drinking alcohol to hide the smell of a sweet on his breath.

  The house opposite the one with the bamboo was up for sale. The owners had moved out, removing curtains and blinds from the windows. Lance sneaked round to the back where he tried the handles of the back door and a glass door, which opened out of a living room. Both were locked but he had known they would be. Telling himself that no one cares much if you break a window in an empty house that's going to be sold, he picked up a large flint which, with a hundred like it, formed the border of a circular flower bed. He took off his jacket, wrapped it round the flint and slung the wrapped stone against a glass pane in the back door. After that, he pushed his hand through the gap he had made, unlocked the door and let himself in. He made very little noise and what he had made had apparently gone unheard by neighbours.

  Inside, all was empty and forlorn. A large wooden crate served him as a seat by the front-room window. From there he could watch the house opposite. It was only then that he asked himself precisely what he was looking for. The old woman to go out? Suppose she was out already? The house had no garage and there was no car on the short driveway. But she was about a hundred years old and people of that age often didn't have cars. Lance had been on the watch for no more than five minutes when the rain began. It started as a drizzle, then became torrential, creating a sort of fog through which nothing on the other side of the street was discernible.

  Like most summer rain – of which there had been a great deal lately – the shower lasted no more than ten minutes. It cleared and the sun came out, blazing on the wet pavements. That made him think of Gemma who'd been complaining that this weather she couldn't get her washing dry. Fize had promised to buy her a tumble dryer but so far he hadn't done anything about it and meanwhile it was always bloody raining. She had come round twice more to visit Lance in Blagrove Road, though the first time there had been very little time for the affair aspect of things as she'd spent two hours cleaning his room, taking down the curtains to get them washed and changing the sheets. But the second time… The only alloy in Lance's happiness had been another encounter with Dorian Lupescu on the stairs. Gemma had made no comment on his appearance but Lance hadn't liked the look on the Romanian's face, his eyes rolling and his lips pursed up as if for a silent whistle.