‘So he can whip you?’ suggested her mother brazenly.
‘Shut up and stand up.’ Margo turned briefly to Savage. ‘Don’t take any notice of her,’ she pleaded.
‘I won’t,’ promised Savage desperately. ‘Let’s pull her to her feet’
Between them they manoeuvred her upright, so that she was sitting on the stair with her face folded forward. ‘You get one armpit and I’ll take the other,’ said Savage surveying the striped lump.
‘Where’s the bloody night porter?’ grumbled Margo. ‘He’s used to lifting things.’
As though answering the porter appeared from the lounge where he had been dozing. He buttoned his shirt and straightened his tie. ‘Left hand down a bit,’ he suggested measuring the situation. He moved forward as if it had all been part of his training. ‘If you get her upright, I’ll make sure she don’t topple.’
Savage decided to let him take charge. Neither he nor Margo had a clear idea of the plan but they hauled the slumped woman to her feet. She was a great weight. The porter kept moving his head from one side to the other, his eyes narrowed, as if overseeing some intricate stone-laying. Eventually he put his hand against the old lady’s stomach to finely balance her. ‘Right,’ he muttered. ‘Start hauling.’
They stumbled up one stair at the time, perspiring, winded, the old lady grunting each time her heels hit the edge of a step, and again when they set her down to rest. Like an experienced removals man the porter supervised.
They had almost reached the middle landing when there was an urgent hammering at the glass front door. It was raining and they could see a white oval pressed to the glass, a mouth shaped in a shout.
‘Bianca.’ Margo was panting on the top stair. ‘They’re locked out.’
‘I’ll open it,’ offered the porter. He made a deft check on the grandmother now lying at an angle, straightened her a fraction, then descended to the door. Efficiently he unlocked and unbolted it. Bianca, her hair hanging, her clothes wet, her face stark, almost fell into the lobby. ‘Mum, it’s that Korky!’ she howled.
Savage let go of the old lady, so did Margo, and she began bumping fatly down the staircase. ‘What’s happened?’ demanded Margo almost tripping over her. Like an afterthought she propped her mother with her leg. Savage knew he had gone pale. With difficulty he stepped over the recumbent woman. In the lobby Bianca was shivering, soaked and crying. ‘Oh, Mum, she’s terrible, Mum!’
Her overwrought face flew to Savage. ‘She’s dropped some acid. She’s gone mad.’
‘Where?’ demanded Savage so sharply the girl jumped. ‘Where is she?’
‘In the town, screaming around the streets,’ She faced him dramatically. ‘She thinks she can fly.’
He drove through the thick rain towards the limp lights of the harbour. As he crossed the bridge the wind howled around the car. He cursed as he drove. He was still wearing his pyjamas and dressing gown.
‘Bloody Korky,’ he cursed to himself. ‘Silly bloody kid.’
The streets were blurred, wet and empty. The car slewed and shrieked as he cornered into the main square. He braked and looked frantically around. Then he saw her. She was standing on a roof. ‘Oh, my God,’ he whispered.
She saw him at once. ‘Savage! Savage!’ she shouted. ‘Look, I can fly!’ She began to flap her arms and bend her knees. He fell from the car.
‘Korky! For God’s sake don’t!’ he shouted picking himself up. ‘You can’t fly! You can’t . . .’ His voice grated and fell. ‘Honestly.’ Again he slipped on the cobbles as he stumbled forward. Now he was directly below her. The wind was throwing up her skirt and making her hair fly. ‘Come on down, Korky. Please come on down.’
‘I’m going to fly down. I can fly. Look!’ She wagged her arms again. Her hair blew across her wild face.
‘No! No!’ he bawled. ‘Korky, don’t. You’d kill yourself. You can’t fly! Understand . . . You can’t fly!’
‘You never think I can do anything,’ she shouted in return. ‘I’m taking off now . . .’
He rushed forward, his arms spread so that he could attempt to catch her. But once more she paused and then dropped her arms. ‘You don’t love me!’ she called down.
‘Love you? Of course I do.’
‘Tell me then. Shout it to me.’
‘I love you!’
‘Will you marry me? Tell me you want to marry me. Go on! Ask me.’
‘Korky . . . stop it . . .’
‘Ask me.’ She started flapping her arms again.
‘All right. All right. For God’s sake. Will you marry me?’
‘I’ll think about it.’
Then she vanished from the skyline. He heard her screeching. With a sick heart he ran to the side of the building thinking she might have jumped from there. It was an empty alley. He went frantically down it shouting: ‘Korky! Korky! Don’t!’ He reached the rear of the buildings. She was not there either. He ran across a yard and completed the oblong. Then to the front again. To his huge relief he saw her coming out of a door. ‘Korky! It’s me. Don’t be afraid.’
With a crazy laughing cry she was off. ‘Catch me, Savage! I can fly! I can fly!’
He pounded after her. He kept running. God, where was she going?
She was making for the harbour; her thin legs stretched, her arms flapping, she ran like an ostrich. She kept going, running and squealing along the side. He could not catch her. ‘Stop! Stop! Korky!’
She reached the rounded, projecting wall, at the mouth of the little port. He saw her clamber up the low parapet, spread her arms and, as he stood transfixed, horrified, a shout frozen in his mouth, plunge out of his sight with an ecstatic howl.
‘Oh please, don’t let her die,’ Savage mouthed as he ran. He reached the wall. The tide was high. She had vanished. He bawled her name and stared at the water. Then he saw her being swept along into the harbour on the dark flow, a blur just caught by the shore lights. Spinning around he ran along the wall. He realised how unfit he had become. He panted but kept going. When he was ahead of her he climbed on the parapet, threw off his dressing gown, measured the distance and jumped in feet first.
The abrupt cold and salty water knocked the breath from his lungs. He spat out the water as he surfaced. Then he saw she was only yards away. Summoning every sinew, using every bit of strength, every moment of military training still in him, he swam madly towards her. He would have to grab her first time or she would be swept away. He managed it. She struggled but then went suddenly limp and he caught her around her thin waist. Half-swimming, half-dragging, his breaths reduced to sobs, he got her to a mud bank. It was like a combat experience. He had to think logically.
The mud was thick, foul and oozy but a few inches below the surface it was firm. Stumbling, gasping, spluttering, and trawling her with him, he levered them both on to the mud. It stank. They rolled on it. His face was full of it. He tried to keep hers clear. She had the bland expression of someone sleeping innocently. He felt her chest. She was breathing. He collapsed panting on to the mud and thanked God.
A probing torch found them. There were people on the harbour wall above. ‘You all right?’ He waved weakly. ‘We’ll soon get you out. There’s a boat coming.’
It took almost half an hour. When they were back on the harbourside, thick with stinking mud, exhausted, and with Korky looking around fearfully but sanely, a policeman kneeled down by them and said: ‘Well, I never did.’
Twenty-Two
‘Heligoland: German island in the North Sea. In 1807 it was annexed by Great Britain. Stamps portraying the head of Queen Victoria were issued. It remained under British rule until 1890 when it was returned to Germany in exchange for the island of Zanzibar . . .’
‘I’ve come to say goodbye.’
She had let herself in with her own key which she now placed pointedly on the table beside the word processor. Savage stood up. She leaned and surveyed the entry. ‘Fancy that,’ she said. ‘Zanzibar. And I didn’t realise.’
&
nbsp; ‘Stop it,’ he said taking her hands. ‘And stop the “I’ve come to say goodbye” stuff. You’re only going downstairs.’
‘And in the next building,’ she said. ‘Miles.’
‘It will be better,’ he said.
‘I’ll get out of your hair,’ she sniffed. Her long face seemed to become longer. ‘You won’t have to bother to save me from drowning or anything.’
‘We’ll see each other all the time.’
‘Yeah, maybe we’ll pass in the corridor or meet up in the launderette.’ Her voice crumbled but he knew by now what she was like. ‘Like we did before.’
‘Korky love,’ he said. He embraced her in the way he always did, affectionately.
She pushed herself against him. ‘I’m ever so sad,’ she said. ‘I feel like crying.’
‘Don’t,’ he ordered tenderly. ‘We can’t, Korky. I’m not going to let this go on. I’ve tried to be like a father. And you’re a young girl.’ He changed the subject gently. ‘Is everything in the flat all right?’
‘It’s all right, I suppose,’ she said morosely, still close to him. ‘There’s not much room. Hardly room to swing a gerbil around. And there’s no balcony for John either.’
‘Winter is coming on.’ He eased her slight frame away from his chest.
‘Oh, right. Glad you reminded me,’ she sulked. ‘I’ll be warm and cosy down there. There’s no room to be cold.’
‘It’s a good rent,’ he reminded her.
‘Fifty quid. Yes, I suppose. But it’s only till she gets back from Australia. And I’ve also got the job of keeping her old man outside the door. Mind, that shouldn’t be any bother. He’s a weedy thing according to her.’ She smiled mischievously. ‘You should be able to deal with him.’
‘Call me when you need me.’
‘Oh right. I’ll scream from the other building. You’re sort of on tap as a rescuer anyway.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Nothing.’
‘It means something or you wouldn’t have said it.’
Korky regarded him accusingly. ‘You’re keeping an eye on the police lady?’
‘I was.’
‘You phone her, don’t you?’
‘Not now. She’s sorted out her situation, I think.’
She leaned forward with a gleam of expectancy. ‘What about that dodgy solicitor she was tied up with?’
‘You seem to know a lot about it.’
‘I get to hear bits and pieces . . . things about people.’
‘Mr Kostelanetz sometimes gets his information wrong. That’s why he packed in being a spy. It’s none of your business anyway.’
‘All right,’ she said with sharp finality. ‘Here’s your front-door key. Have it back. Don’t mix it up with hers, if you’ve still got it. I just hope that when I’m screaming for help because Mr Longbottom has turned up from Australia and is raping me, she doesn’t send out an SOS at the same time.’ Turning briskly she made for the door.
He said: ‘Korky, come on, that’s a bit unlikely.’
‘Goodbye,’ she whispered at the door. She was wearing a black sweater and a short grey flannel skirt with black stockings and ungainly shoes. She smiled wanly. ‘Forever.’
After a brief, bereft, wave she went out shutting the door sharply behind her. The bell rang immediately. He sighed and opened the door. ‘Sorry,’ she said stooping and poking her head halfway in. ‘I didn’t mean to bang your door.’
‘I’m sure you didn’t. Don’t worry about it.’
‘I’m going to a seance,’ she started again. ‘At Wilhelmina’s. They’re every week now. Freddie is coming.’
‘Freddie? Ah, Freddie. Good. You’re seeing Freddie again?’
‘Just friends,’ she shrugged. ‘He’s not as exciting as Wilhelmina’s ghosts. Or Mr Prentice and his bangs. He does the explosions for her. He knows about bangs. And she has a big Chinese bloke who pops up in a sort of tablecloth. He’s been dead two hundred . . .’ She made a face. ‘Sorry, you’re working. I forgot. What was the place called?’
‘Heligoland.’
‘Yes. Heligoland. If I can think of anything to put in it I’ll let you know. I’ll come up.’
‘Thanks.’
‘And if anything goes wrong with the word processor just call me. Mrs Longbottom’s left the phone on and I’ve promised not to ring Zanzibar or anywhere. I’d better give you the number.’
‘You did yesterday.’
‘Well, if you have trouble ring.’
‘All right, Korky, I will.’
‘Goodbye again. Savage, I love you.’
‘Goodbye, Korky. I love you too.’
She moved to him again. He held her and patted her. ‘But we’ve got to do this. It would be a disaster. It’s not the thing for you. Or me. We’ve got to realise that.’
‘Tell me again you love me.’
‘I love you,’ he repeated. He released her.
She gave a small sniff and went out.
He closed the door quietly but with a sense of finality. He heard her crashing the doors of the lift. By the time he was sitting in front of the screen again his smile had gone. ‘Heligoland,’ he muttered. Who the hell cared about Heligoland? Who would care that it was annexed by Britain in 1807 and returned to Germany in 1890 in exchange for Zanzibar? He grimaced at the screen. Good old Heligoland.
He could not imagine what it would be like without her. No more take-aways, no more disappearances, no more searching, no more finding, no more tuneless singing, no more oblique conversations, no more gerbil, no more explaining to the police why he was in his pyjamas floundering in a muddy harbour after midnight. As they had travelled home in the train she had grumbled: ‘I don’t get why they made such a bloody opera. Is there some law against swimming in your pyjamas?’
‘There’s probably some law against girls trying to fly,’ he grunted. His backside was bruised where he had hit the water. She had only been sick.
‘Anyone can make a mistake,’ she complained. ‘It’s unbelievable what that acid does.’
‘Good job the police didn’t take it any further.’
She said: ‘They couldn’t prove anything.’
The train had gone through Basingstoke. ‘I used to live near here,’ he said.
‘I know. You and Irene. You had a thatched house. That must have been good. I’d like to live in a house with a thatched roof.’
‘They’re difficult to fly from,’ he said looking from the window.
‘Shut up. I’m not going to do that again. Never. It could be dangerous.’
He was amazed at how quickly his life became monotonous again. The solitude, the privacy he had sought, the reason he had tried to barricade himself so loftily at Kensington Heights, seemed to get more protracted by the day. The fading autumn light hung around for hours and the evenings and nights were long. When it rained it rained all day. He even tried going to the cinema. He sat alone in the dark then bought a take-away on the way home, ate it in front of the late television news, then went moodily to bed. His encyclopaedia was slowly growing, the pile of printed pages thickened each dogged day; he began to make faces and gestures at the unresponding screen. He missed her in a way he had never missed anyone.
‘I wondered,’ he said to her when he went to Mr Furtwangler’s shop, ‘if you would like to do some work for me.’
‘What sort?’ It was odd seeing her among the elderly books, the entrenched shelves, the pyramids of papers, the old man sitting obese and content in his background chair. She had a talent for making people happy.
‘I would really like some more of those bits and pieces you used to add to the entries in the encyclopaedia,’ Savage suggested.
‘Like a sub-contractor.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. We could agree a fee for each one.’
Korky said: ‘What are you doing in these parts anyway? It’s a long way from home.’
Defensively he said: ‘I was just going to the British Museum. To the library
.’
Mr Furtwangler stirred in his chair. He did not appear to have noticed Savage. ‘Rosamunde,’ he called between several coughs. ‘Sir Gerald is coming. I see him crossing the street.’
She called back: ‘I’ve got his books, Mr Furtwangler, I’ll just get them.’ She performed a small pirouette. ‘Sir Gerald Gosling-Clarke,’ she announced to Savage leaving him standing among the unkempt shelves. ‘Yes, Sir Gerald. Glad to see you.’ Her voice came over the shelves. ‘Tennant, Central Africa. Burne on Tribal Rites and Ferrier, Louis Ferrier, that’s the right one, isn’t it? I thought so. It’s the second volume. They’re all ready.’
Savage moved sideways towards the door. A fair-haired, brown-faced man in a good tweed suit was standing inside it. Mr Furtwangler moved to greet him and seemed surprised that Savage was also there. He did not look at him closely and he did not seem to recognise him. ‘I will come to you in a few moments,’ he promised. ‘Please look and see.’ His hand, pale and podgy, indicated the shelves. He smiled towards his customer and Savage went out into the street.
He had nowhere to go and it was two hours before he saw Mr Furtwangler emerge from the shop and walk nodding away. Twenty minutes later Korky appeared and locked up. He strode quickly around a corner so that he almost collided with her coming in the opposite direction. ‘Twice in one day!’ she exclaimed. ‘We can’t go on meeting like this!’
‘I just came out of the library,’ Savage said lamely.
‘Did you see the books you needed?’
‘Oh, yes, fine.’
‘How many?’
‘Books?’ He grimaced. ‘Three . . . or four. Four.’
She regarded him sagely. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘Yes, that’s a good idea.’
She led him around another Bloomsbury corner to where there was an old fasioned café with marble-topped tables and thick china cups. ‘I didn’t think there were any places left like this,’ said Savage.
‘Stephen Stevens, you know, my friend from the publishers, I come in here with him sometimes. He daren’t have a proper drink because his mother smells his breath when he gets home.’ She looked directly at him. ‘He’s still interested in seeing your islands encyclopaedia.’
Kensington Heights Page 29
