Kensington Heights

by Leslie Thomas

  There was a stirring and a grumbling from the pile of bodies. ‘They been ’ere once,’ complained another voice.

  Savage asked distinctly: ‘Anyone seen a girl called Korky?’

  ‘Piss off,’ came an echo from a box marked Daz.

  ‘Korky Wilson, Kathleen Wilson,’ Savage insisted. ‘I’ll pay.’

  A white hand was projected from below the truck followed by a riven face. ‘I see’d her.’ Until she spoke he could not tell the sex of the figure. He leaned eagerly towards her. ‘Where was that?’

  ‘Around today. Up till the match started.’

  The hand poked towards him insistently like a hungry fledgling’s head from a nest. He pushed five pounds towards it. The note was grasped voraciously. Nobody else shifted, only breathing moved them. ‘Then what?’ he asked gently.

  ‘There was some bloke what ’ad no ticket. He’d lost it or something. She went off with him to ’ave a drink.’

  Each pub he entered was blocked to the door; there were men still pathetically brimming with venom, cursing the goalkeeper, the referee and the wind. Once he had got in he had to push his way into the crowd. There were few protests; far worse things had happened that night. A frightened man was pinned over a pool table by two others. ‘It’s only a game,’ he was pleading. ‘It’s only a bloody game.’

  He went into six bars desperate in his search; he listened for her voice in the drone of the drinkers. He could not hear her. Once he tried asking a feckless-faced bartender if he had seen a long-haired young girl. ‘Wish I ’ad,’ grunted the youth moodily tugging the beer handle. ‘I’d ’ave ’ad ’er out the back.’

  Savage made a comment between his teeth and went again into the blustering night. The pubs were beginning to empty. Shoulders hunched, he trudged along the King’s Road. Where was she? What was she doing?

  He had walked a mile when, at last, a cruising taxi stopped at his wave. He asked to be taken to Kensington Heights but then changed his mind. ‘West London Police Station,’ he said. The wind banged around the cab. The streets were emptying, some already deserted, left to the weather and the night.

  A beleaguered gleam came from the police station. He settled the taxi fare and walked up the steps. A Black woman was mesmerised by a book in the waiting room; there was a youth curled up like a snail on one of the benches. Savage went to the desk. The sergeant shouted to the youth: ‘Hey, lad. I told you if you want to wait for him you’ve got to keep awake.’ The boy uncurled. ‘It’s not a ruddy doss house,’ the sergeant said to Savage.

  Savage had some vague notion of reporting a missing person. The sergeant saw his hesitation and asked what he wanted. Savage made up his mind: ‘I don’t suppose Miss Deepe is on duty, is she?’

  ‘PC Deepe,’ said the sergeant correctly. ‘She was here. She probably still is. She’s off at midnight.’

  As though she had heard her name Jean appeared from a door behind him. She looked tired. ‘Well,’ she breathed. ‘Look what the night’s blown in.’

  ‘Oh, hello,’ Savage said uncomfortably. Her uniform looked creased.

  ‘I wondered if I could have a word.’

  ‘Have a word if you like,’ she said off-handedly. The sergeant came from behind the desk and going over to the youth, again curled up, picked him up by one arm and led him to the door. ‘Have a kip out there,’ he said. The Black woman put down her book to watch but reopened the page and continued to read. ‘Harry,’ Jean called to the sergeant who had gone through the door behind her. ‘I’ll go in the interview room.’

  She said nothing to Savage but he followed her. Turning on a light switch in a side annexe she walked in ahead of him. She straightened a sagging plant which immediately sagged again. There was a table and three chairs. She sat on the edge of the table, her legs tucked one behind the other. ‘Sit down,’ she invited flatly. ‘What was it?’

  Savage sat on the wooden chair. ‘I’ve been looking for Korky,’ he said.

  Jean’s slim eyebrows rose. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh shit,’ she said. ‘Poor little Korky’s gone missing. There’s a surprise.’

  ‘I’ve come to report a missing person,’ he said, his tone and his eyes hardening. ‘If that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Of course it is, that’s the only reason we’re here. To find kids who will only sod off again the next day. It’s all part of the thrill of this job.’

  ‘Can I report her missing?’

  ‘All right,’ she said with barely contained scorn. ‘One minute.’

  She left him in the room, sitting in the grim light, miserable, angry. She returned quickly holding a form and a pen and sat behind the table not looking towards him but staring at the form as though she had never seen anything like it. ‘Name?’ she muttered.

  ‘Mine or hers?’

  ‘Both. Yours first.’

  ‘Frank Inigo Savage,’ he said.

  ‘Address.’

  He recited the address. She wrote it deliberately.

  ‘Name of Person Reported Missing.’

  ‘Kathleen Wilson.’

  ‘Of?’

  ‘Same address.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘Vulnerable,’ she said flatly. She turned her eyes up to him. He could see she was holding back tears. ‘I don’t know how you could have done that,’ she said controlling herself. ‘You come around to my flat, we have dinner and I let you screw me . . .’

  ‘Jean,’ he pointed out. ‘We screwed each other.’

  ‘But, for Christ’s sake, I’m a human woman. Underneath this fancy dress, I hurt like anybody else.’

  ‘There’s nothing between Korky and myself,’ he informed her firmly. ‘Nor has there ever been.’

  ‘So why did you never call?’

  ‘When I got back that night, just as I told you, she was lying on the doorstep. She was very ill. Bronchial pneumonia. She’s taken more than a month to get over it. What was I supposed to do, kick her out? She could have died. I couldn’t think of anything else.’

  ‘And there’s nothing between you?’

  ‘Nothing. God almighty, she’s a kid. Not a very stable one either.’

  ‘You make a good pair.’

  He tightened his mouth. ‘Perhaps we do,’ he said.

  His shoulders pulled together against the darkness and the rain sweeping the streets, he trudged up towards the pattern of lit windows at Kensington Heights. It was a gradual slope but tonight it seemed a long way. Savage was angry with himself, with Korky, and with Jean Deepe. What the hell was he doing stumbling around looking for some wandering girl at midnight? He growled the question aloud. The coat-and-plastic-draped tramp who slept on the bench outside the library grunted.

  He let himself into the lower lobby. The lift was standing there open-mouthed, so, uncaring about the noise, he took it up. On the top landing Miss Bombazine was supporting a discoloured young man against the wallpaper. His head and his hair lolled. ‘He’s been sick,’ she complained but mildly. Savage stood aside as she manoeuvred her client into the lift. ‘The excitement proved too much for him,’ she muttered as she closed the grille.

  Savage watched the conveyance disappear and went towards his own door. It seemed a long time since he had been away. The wind was shrieking somewhere in the culverts of the building, whirling around the top of the lift shaft, howling in hidden holes. She would get bronchitis again.

  He went into the flat and without taking off his overcoat turned in the direction of the bathroom, unzipping his fly as he did so. Sharply he opened the door. Sitting in the bath, foaming with soap suds, was Korky. She was very drunk and a half-empty whisky bottle was standing on the floor. ‘I couldn’t get a job,’ she bleated. ‘So I came home.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he breathed. Then: ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘I’ve got a key. I had one made.’

  He attempted to sort out his reactions; gladness at seeing her, annoyance that she had run away, anger that she was smashed. Her fake f
ur was in the bath with her, pink and grotesquely half-floating like a drowned animal.

  The girl gave him no opportunity to add anything. Like a soapy, swaying mermaid she rose from the bath, the suds running down her pallid skin, her nipples like small red spots, her pupils rolling. She staggered as she made to step out of the bath, and involuntarily he moved to catch her. She clasped him and hung nakedly on to him, soaping his overcoat and the front of his sweater, and dangling against him as he endeavoured to prevent her sliding to the floor. ‘Stop it,’ he heard himself pleading. ‘Stop it, for God’s sake.’

  His foot caught the whisky bottle and it clattered over the tiled floor, spilling Scotch as it rolled. ‘Oh, Savage, don’t waste it,’ she howled. She made to rescue the bottle but slid through his arms. He grabbed at her slipping body but she flopped like a fish on to the floor. She got her fingers around the neck of the bottle. ‘Put it down,’ he ordered angrily. ‘Put the damn thing down.’

  ‘But you spilt it,’ she argued drunkenly. She could not focus him. ‘It’s good drink. Waste not, want not.’

  Savage almost wrenched his overcoat from his back and threw it behind him into the sitting room. ‘Paddington!’ she suddenly screamed pointing towards the bath. ‘Don’t let Paddington get drowned!’ She lolled forward and caught the side of the bath with her soapy hand.

  ‘Paddington will be fine,’ he told her desperately. ‘He can swim.’ She appeared to believe him.

  ‘That horrible man, that Monty, or whatever-he-was-called, was sick on him,’ she moaned.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, more softly, encouragingly. He bent and put his arms below her wet, bare, armpits. Firmly he pulled her upright. She tried to kiss him but he turned her around, backside to him, and, his arms still locked below hers, attempted to ease her forward into the sitting room. At that moment a plastic bag came around the corner. Her gerbil emerged and headed for the spilt whisky. Savage tried to put his foot in the way. ‘Don’t,’ she howled. ‘You’ll step on him. He won’t drink much.’ She was half-sitting on the edge of the bath now. ‘He’s my family,’ she said pointing vaguely at the sniffing gerbil. ‘Him and Paddington.’ She began to cry dramatically. ‘I’m a poor, lost girl.’ Not for the first time he picked her up bodily and carried her into the bedroom. ‘Dry me, Savage,’ she moaned swaying as he attempted to stand her upright. ‘I’m all wet. I’ll get cold. I’ll be ill again!’

  Desperately he rolled her on to the bed. She was still hung with suds. She made a weak attempt to scrape them from her breasts. ‘My chest, my chest is getting cold,’ she complained. Savage with a muted oath left her and ran back to the bathroom. He picked up two towels. When he returned she had collapsed on to the bed, nude and soapy, her eyes closed, her legs spread out. He closed them briskly then rubbed her with the towel, her feet, her legs and her body. ‘Take it easy, Savage,’ she protested dreamily. ‘You’re skinning me.’

  He dried her and helped her get into her nightdress. He pulled the bedclothes back and coaxed her between the sheets. Her hair was still dangling lankly. He dried it as best he could. He thought that she had gone to sleep by that time. Breathing hard he stood back and surveyed her calm face. Once more she half-opened her eyes. ‘Thanks, Savage,’ she said lucidly. ‘I’ll look after you. And you’ll look after me.’ Her pink eyelids drooped. ‘We’ll look after each other.’

  Eleven

  Real spring came to Kensington, timidly at the start but with increasing confidence and resolve, greening the trees and prompting flowers in the pots and parks of the neighbourhood. Widening spaces of blue spread over the roofs and sunlight warmed windows. People tried sitting outside pubs and cafés. Traffic fumes increased, ducks were to be seen strutting among the cars in the streets, itinerants began to gravitate from their shelters.

  In Kensington Heights people stood at their windows to observe the spring, some of the elder inhabitants marking off another winter survived. Casement windows and the doors of narrow balconies were opened a few inches so that the residents could sample the warmer air; some even decided to venture out into it. The business people went and came, morning and evening, as they did whatever the month. Miss Bombazine ordered a new mattress.

  The gerbil, sensing the shifting season, scrambled from the guts of the sofa to the floor where he squatted preening himself as though expecting a guest.

  ‘Even night-time animals know about the spring,’ said Korky observing the detailed ablutions. ‘He needs a mate. He’s getting all clean for nothing.’ She turned to Savage. ‘You think I need a boyfriend, don’t you?’

  He made a face. She continued: ‘Then you’ll be the one who’s sorry.’ She put on his stern voice: ‘Where’ve you been? Who you been with? What have you been doing?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say any of those things,’ responded Savage calmly. He returned to the upright typewriter on the desk near the window. He had reached the Cayman Islands. ‘West Indian group, 150 miles west-north-west of Jamaica. Formerly salt panning, and the hunting of turtles, now banking and offshore finances. Some tourism . . .’

  Korky watched over his shoulder and said: ‘Salt panning.’ She gave another sniff. ‘You’d be jealous as hell.’

  They laughed. Their domesticity was more settled; they had solemnly shaken hands and made a pact, a bargain. She would remain in the apartment until she had an assured job and could make her own arrangements for accommodation. ‘And we’ll always be friends,’ she said stoutly.

  ‘Always friends,’ Savage said.

  She had closed her slim hand on his. They had faced each other for a moment and then turned away. ‘I’m going to buy a paper,’ she had told him resolutely. ‘I am going to find a . . . position.’

  She put on her earphones and left. He had brought the Walkman for her. She wore them like a bonnet out of doors, the repetitive thump, thump of the base sounding as she went along the pavements, although she never discussed the music, she barely mentioned it, and when she sang it was in the aimless way she had always done. No tune, no song, was recognisable. Even when they went out together she sometimes wore the earphones. They would march a yard apart, eyes ahead, her long skinny legs striding to the pop beat. But she never listened to it indoors. ‘I don’t need it here,’ she had explained. ‘There’s nothing else to do when you’re walking or sitting on the Tube.’ Her young face turned to him. ‘You never mind if I sing though, do you, Savage?’

  ‘It depends how much you sing.’

  ‘Not all that much. I’ve got a terrible voice.’

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  She insisted that he go with her to purchase the new clothes she needed. He sat with his habitual unease in shops while she tried on dresses, skirts, tops and shoes. Under the scrutiny of shop staff and the sniff of manageresses he nodded as she displayed her acquisitions.

  ‘Him and a kid like that,’ grunted a cash-desk woman when they had gone from the shop.

  ‘He’s a bit dishy,’ muttered a young assistant. ‘I wish I had him.’

  Her attempts at finding work were more successful than retaining it. ‘That poofy Percy!’ she raged returning from her third day at Percival’s Divine Hair, Kensington High Street. ‘I’ve had enough!’

  ‘You left?’ He was unsurprised.

  ‘Left? No, hell, the bugger threw me out. Physically. Me! Out of the door. Him and that lard-faced Angela. It took two of them.’

  ‘What happened?’ He was mildly making tea. It was five o’clock and springtime bright outside their window.

  ‘That grungy dye stuff they use.’ She sulked. ‘It gets everywhere.’

  ‘Where did it get?’

  ‘Over some old dear’s legs.’ Her eyes warmed at the memory, her face began to quiver, her hand went to her mouth. ‘She had purple legs, Savage. Accidentally I tipped it over and she went screaming around the shop with purple legs.’ She could not subdue her laughter. ‘Christ, you should have seen her.’

  ‘That,’ said Savage handing her a cup of tea, ‘I imagine
is that.’

  ‘You imagine right.’ She drank some tea and going into the kitchen, returned with a handful of chocolate biscuits. She piled them precisely, one on top of the other, and bit into them simultaneously. ‘But something good came out of it.’ Her mouth was full. Her eyes went to him. ‘I got myself a boyfriend.’

  He looked up from his tea. ‘Who?’ he asked. ‘Who is it?’

  She regarded him carefully over the edge of her cup. ‘You know him, Savage. He’s called Freddie. He works at the estate agent’s at the bottom of the hill.’ She had one of her moments of mimicry. ‘Oh, come Easter then the entire house market will be booming, my love.’ Her voice reverted to normal. ‘He rented this flat to you.’

  ‘How,’ sighed Savage, ‘can you say he’s your boyfriend? You’ve only just met.’

  ‘Half an hour ago. For me, that’s all it takes. He was coming out of his office when I was charging up the street effing and blinding about the old woman and her purple legs and getting the push. We more or less collided.’

  ‘You think he was attracted to you?’ Now he regarded her teasingly.

  ‘Attracted? Aw, come on, Savage. His eyes were burning, mate. He’s good looking.’ An edge of doubt entered her voice. ‘Isn’t he?’

  Savage surveyed her. She was taking off her new red coat. Her fake fur had become a bed for the gerbil, out on the balcony of the side window. ‘Fancy,’ she had said happily. ‘Paddington and John sleeping together.’ She unbuttoned the coat. Under it she was wearing a denim skirt and an inky blue top which displayed the shape of her small, pushy breasts. Her face remained slim but her skin had become soft and her eyes lively. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was your type,’ he mentioned. ‘But if you think so . . .’

  ‘My type? Savage, I thought you’d be over the moon. He’s got a car. Well, he did have a car. He’s been disqualified but he’ll get his licence back in a year. At the moment he rides a bike. And he’s got a flat.’

  ‘A flat tyre?’

  They laughed. ‘A flat flat,’ she answered cuffing him. ‘Oh, Savage, he’s a bit of a posho but he’s quite nice really. I might give him a whirl. I’ve never been out with a bloke who has a suit.’