The Disappearance Boy (19 page)

He bent down and propped up the brightly coloured postcard on a tuft of grass at the foot of the stone, and then coughed to clear his throat.

‘Oh, and another thing …’

Reg has never talked about this – not ever, not about any of it. Not about the boys in the street, not about the Rigolettos, not about the man in the Bradford boarding house. This was 1953, remember; talking was hard. But now that the proper occasion had finally arisen, it seemed easy, as easy – and as odd – as pouring his mother a cup of tea. Perhaps it was the clearing of the air with Pam that had done it, or the news about the booking, or the weather, or even just the beautiful sound of that out-of-sight companion of his, descanting around Reggie’s half-laughing stumbles with its heartless, silver and unstoppable love song – or perhaps, like I said before, it was just time.

‘… The thing is, since we’re going to be here for another few weeks, I could do with a spot of advice. You know … about this somebody special I’m supposed to be looking for.’

He’s a bit embarrassed to be doing this, but he perseveres. As does the bird.

‘I mean, I can hardly go and stand on street corners just on the off-chance, can I? So I wondered if you could just drop me a hint. A hint of some likely spots to stand in. Or maybe you could give me a dream about him or something, so if he does just pass me on the street one lunchtime, I’ll recognise him. You never know, do you? Only not a pub, please, you know I can’t do that.’

Reggie knows this is all a game, and smiles again, properly this time – he knows there can be no reply, especially not out here in all this sunshine – but like I said, he’s enjoying himself. He waits a moment, giving his mum a chance to answer should she care to, and then carries on.

‘No suggestions? Oh well, I’ll just have to rely on him to hunt me down and introduce himself, won’t I?’

He pauses again, and his features slowly soften, in the way they sometimes do when nobody’s watching him, and his voice loses its edges.

‘No, he doesn’t have to be anything too lovely. Quite an ordinary one will do me. But nice eyes, and not too tall, if you can manage it. Not that beggars can be choosers, can they?’

His fingers tap gently on the stone, and the boot shifts.

‘No; no, you’re right. Best not to answer that one.’

He says it again, patting the stone absent-mindedly while he does it:

‘Best not.’

Apparently deciding that he’s had enough, or at least that he needs to think about something else for a moment, Reggie looks up for the first time to see if he can spot that bird. The sun is quite high, and he can see nothing but dazzle, so he wipes the back of his hand across his nose and stoops down to settle the postcard into its tussock of grass. He does it using exactly the same gesture that you or I would use to prop a note up against a vase of flowers on a bedside cabinet, something to be read after we’ve quietly left the ward. Satisfied that it’s firmly enough in place for the wind not to be able to steal it after he’s gone, he stands up and steps away from the stone, dusting off his hands.

‘Well …’ he says, ‘see you next week.’

The bird is silent for a moment.

‘Wish me luck.’

They can be full of false promises, those first warm days in May. The newly strong sun can make you sweat if you catch it full on your back – especially if you’re in a heavy tweed jacket, like Reggie always was – but the air can still chill you if it gets in under your shirt. That’s what it tried to do now, as Reggie limped off towards the gate, but he didn’t notice; as he hobbledehoyed his way down through the gate he stuck to his routine as always, and patted the penknife in his breast pocket twice undercover of its metallic shriek. As he emerged back out into the sun from under the bay trees, he stuck his hands in his pockets and started to whistle. It’s an odd sound for a cemetery, a cheerfully out-of-tune rendition of the slave’s chorus from
Aida
– but Reggie didn’t care about that any more than he did about catching a chill in May, and made it ring out as loud and brassy as he could.

Whenever that tune was running through his head, you could be sure that Reg was thinking about standing in the wings back in Wimbledon, and about the smell of coal tar soap and sweat on still-damp wool. They were bloody beautiful, those two brothers, especially the little wiry one, the one who always jumped second but flew highest. He could just see him now, in the lights, with the diamonds …

So maybe Reggie didn’t really want to meet someone ordinary after all, despite what he’d said to his mum.

19

A spot of good luck for the new act
, Mr Brookes had said, pushing the little red jeweller’s box across the table at the Metropole. Then he’d flipped it open and showed her the little gold cat for her charm bracelet curled asleep inside it, and that had been lovely – really lovely, actually. She’d enjoyed the drinks, too, and she’d enjoyed the sex again, even when he grabbed her wrists and slammed into her a little harder than she usually liked; seeing him take the precautions out of his wallet and put them on the bedside table this time had been a nice touch as well, making her feel properly taken care of – but despite all of this she still hadn’t been able to spend the whole night with him. Something about the thought of taking that early-morning walk home again with all its sunlight and staring front doors and windows was dreadful, and it had made her suddenly swing her legs off the bed and start reaching underneath it for her shoes. He’d looked a bit surprised when she’d asked him where was the best place to find a taxi in Hove at this time of night, but as she’d said, no hard feelings; she just didn’t feel quite ready to start waking up with somebody regularly.

She hadn’t enjoyed not telling Reggie. She’d felt bad about not saying anything before the matinee on Saturday, and even worse after the third house when Brookes had popped in to ask her out for that second drink and then Reggie had turned up for the laundry two minutes later when she was getting her face on. She hated lying to him, white lies or not, and knew she was going to have to tell him sooner or later. Once that was done, she thought, she was probably going to feel better about the whole business.

On Monday afternoon, she’d dropped in on Mr English at the stage door – just for some company, really. Mr Brookes’s plans had all sounded so urgent that the hiatus while he was away up in London caught her rather by surprise. They’d had a nice chat through the stage-door window about whose radio was going to be brought into the building on the big day so that they could follow the ceremony backstage, and she duly admired the rather yellowing newsprint wedding-day picture of the happy couple which he’d dug out from somewhere and pinned up in pride of place over his keyboard. Elizabeth looked very young in all her wedding satin and lace, and Philip very Greek and handsome with his gold stripes and high chin – and hair just like Mr Brookes, she noticed. November 1947 … that would have been about the time she did her first stint at Murray’s, and that man with the flat in Bayswater had bought her her very first charm for her bracelet. The little gold Eiffel Tower, it had been – but then he’d never taken her to Paris after all.

Looking up at the royal couple, her arm on his, she couldn’t work out if all that was a long time ago, or last week. And she still couldn’t work out why she’d said yes to that second drink, the one at the Metropole. Her mouth had been so close to shaping a
no
, but the sound just hadn’t come out for some reason.

On Tuesday, she met up with Reg at the pictures. The afternoon newsreel was all about the royal coaches doing their rehearsal for the procession down the Mall – honestly, the big day was all over everywhere now, like a rash – and the sight of schoolchildren wagging paper pennants at a big empty gilded box as it trundled past ought to have made her laugh, but instead it left her feeling uneasy. Who’d told them all to grin like that at the plate-glass windows as they slid past? It made her think about the cabinet, and Mr Brookes; he’d left a message saying that he’d be back down on the six o’clock, and now, as the empty coaches swayed round a corner and off down the Mall, her mind kept straying to his face. The message had ended
See you at 8, Teddy
, and knowing the piece of paper was in her bag was giving her that underwater feeling again, the feeling she always had when the doors clicked shut, of things doing themselves, instead of her doing them. What did it mean, if you said yes three times in a row?

After the film, which was all sailors and the war, and which she hadn’t much enjoyed at all, they had a cup of tea and a fag, and then when they were leaving the tea shop Reggie mentioned how odd it was knowing they wouldn’t ever be doing the old act again. Pam asked him how long it would take her to forget the moves, and Reg laughed and told her that your body never forgets something that gives it bruises. That remark almost made her blurt everything out, but standing together on a sunny street corner didn’t seem either the time or the place, and she decided to leave it. After all, there’d be no point in upsetting the apple cart if this was all just a flash in the pan. So to speak.

Before they parted, Reg asked her again if Mr Brookes had dropped any hints about the new routine beyond the quick changes he’d mentioned. He’d been thinking about it, he said, and wished he knew a bit more about what they were going to be up against. Quickly remembering that she wasn’t supposed to have seen Teddy since leaving the theatre on Saturday night, she said that he hadn’t – which was true, more or less. She’d ribbed him briefly about it when they were in the taxi back to his place, she recalled, asking him whether he was going to at least tell her the title, but he’d just tapped his nose and said that that was for him to know and her to find out. At the time, she’d laughed, the way you do after a couple of proper drinks, but now, she didn’t see why he couldn’t just have come out and told her.

Reggie, meanwhile, had rather enjoyed his two spare days. The Monday had been fresher, but just as warm. Breakfast had been good, the breeze had been slicing the tops off the waves all along the front on his way into town, and the rest of the day seemed to get nicely filled up with a visit to the library and then a hunt to see if any of the corner shops or Woolworths had anything worth totting up the last few sugar points in his ration book for. Tuesday morning had been enlivened by five minutes spent watching a very respectably built young man brushing up a poster for the new show at the Aquarium in just his vest, and then there’d been the sailors at the Essoldo with Pam in the afternoon. After their tea in the cafe – featuring a not at all bad buttered teacake, he must say – he’d found himself wandering up to the Clock Tower by way of the windows at Hanningtons, all red and white and blue and special offers. Ignoring the woman with the gesturing stumps – she looked ridiculous, he thought, now that the sun was out – he’d loitered in a shop doorway on the corner of the Queen’s Road and scanned the crowds just for the hell of it. He felt as if that last conversation with his mother had given him a secret to keep in his pocket alongside his penknife, and a good one; now, whenever he spotted a suitable candidate for scrutiny, he smiled to himself straight away instead of waiting until they’d walked past to stab a quick stare at their retreating backs. If you’d have seen him on one of those two days – suddenly diverting himself down past the steps of the Liberty Ballroom, for instance, or ducking down a side street to get a better look at someone when his errand really should have taken him straight on – then I think you would have noticed a new spring in that distinctive fall-and-catch stride of his. It wasn’t so much that Reg wasn’t still keeping his head down and dodging – he was – but rather that his gait didn’t look anywhere near as angry, either with himself or the pavement. When he was mounting a kerb, for instance, the lurch sometimes threatened to become a positive leap. He even let himself be caught grinning at the occasional delivery boy, and once – even – at a uniformed policeman.

On Wednesday, having looked in early with Mr English and found out that they would be starting work with Mr Brookes onstage at twelve noon sharp, Reggie checked his sewing box and discovered that he was low on both dress pins and tailoring chalk. He wanted to be able to get to work on the new rigs as soon as they arrived, so off he set. Cutting left, left and left again from the stage door brought him quickly round to the main entrance of Hanningtons, and he went up the step and plunged straight in.

There were two sets of stairs that Hanningtons’ customers had to negotiate on their way up to Haberdashery on the second floor; the first was the main staircase just inside the entrance, all would-be grand oak panelling and redundant bits of carving, and the second was a smaller and steeper set which you reached by turning left, cutting through Ladies’ Wear and making a sharp right at the entrance to the Tea Room. This second set wasn’t really steep enough to present Reg with any major problems (no more than the stares of the assistants in Ladies’ Wear had been as he scuttled past them), but he had been hurrying and whistling not particularly gently through his teeth as he went, and so when he got to the first landing he needed to pause for a moment to get his breath back. The view from the banister was down into the Tea Room, and while he rested he enjoyed how smart the chequerboard of white tablecloths looked, all starched and ready for custom. It was early in the day, and apart from the palms in their big brass pots the place looked more or less empty.

But it wasn’t. She was sitting quietly by herself, right over on the far side of the room, with her back half turned and one hand resting on the cool white cloth in front of her. Pamela. Pamela, but different. Pamela, transformed.

20

No gentleman required
; that would have been the caption if she’d been a picture in a magazine. Very straight-backed and solitary she looked – it was one of those ones where the photographer has gone for simple black and white and told the model to think about nothing. Although the bevelled and frosted glass of the window next to her table was opaque, Pam was holding it in her turned-away gaze exactly as if she could see through it to whatever was on the other side. A spray of white carnations and maidenhair fern gave a touch of class to the still life set in front of her, and as Reg watched she lifted her elegantly braceleted hand off the cloth and reached for her bag. She turned out of her pensive three-quarters profile, and Reg saw with a slight shock that she was wearing not just her usual powder-and-slash but a full pale daytime make-up, vividly and carefully drawn. She lit a cigarette, waved her match out in three deft strokes and picked a fragment of tobacco from her bottom lip. There was just the one china cup in front of her.