Getting It Right (16 page)

‘When shall I see you again?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘We must make a plan.’

‘Well, if you give me your telephone number, I’ll ring you.’

‘Haven’t got one.’

‘Your address, then.’

‘Oh no! I can’t do that.’

‘Well, I expect we’ll meet.’

‘Tell me your telephone number.’

Ashamed of having just lied to her, he gave his home number. She licked her finger and wrote it on the extremely dusty bonnet. ‘I must say, you don’t sound very keen about seeing
me,’ she said and, not for the first time in the evening, she sounded humble rather than sulky.

‘I think I’m just a bit tired,’ he said: ‘as you said earlier, it wasn’t exactly a relaxing party. Well – cheerio, and thanks again for the lift.’

‘That’s okay.’

‘You get back in the car: you really do look cold.’

‘Yes.’

He walked across the road and up to the fence by the flats where his bike was chained. He felt her watching him while he undid the padlock and got on to the bike. When he wheeled it round back
into the road, he saw that she had got into the car but hadn’t moved off. He started the bike, waved to her and set off . . . It was a one-way street, so he had to go round the block, and he
realized that she was behind him. There were lights at the main road, and he tried to remember whether she would be able to turn right there – back to London. He would give her a final wave
as he turned left . . .

The lights were green, and there was no barring of a right turn but she didn’t turn right – she followed him. Perhaps she didn’t live in London after all: perhaps it had
actually been on her way to take him to Whetstone? Well, he’d turn right at the next lights and go the back way home – that way she
couldn’t
be going.

She followed him. With a gasp of nervous rage, he accelerated; if she thought she could play some silly game tracking him, he’d simply leave her behind and then she’d be lost –
and serve her right. He roared down the wide suburban road: it was set on either side by large, detached houses now for the most part dark – its only disadvantage being that for some way, at
least, there were no turnings off it. The road curved gently downhill and a quick look behind him confirmed that she was out of sight. It occurred to him that if he simply stopped the engine and
wheeled his bike inside one of the Edwardian drives she would rush past him and he would lose her . . . But his bike was much faster and he was losing her anyway and owners of whichever drive he
might choose might come out and ask what he was up to . . .

As the corner became sharper, the road narrowed: the houses ceased and on one side there was a high brick wall, on the other a wooden fence bounding some waste land advertised on a hoarding as
an industrial site. The T-junction was less than half a mile away and, once he reached it, she would have no way of knowing whether he had gone right or left . . . He began to enjoy the fresh night
air and the feeling of freedom. He could put down tonight’s adventures to experience. This made him wonder briefly whether possibly most of the things that happened to people that were
remotely outside their everyday experience were really only satisfactory in retrospect, but before he had time to consider this rather depressing possibility, a sign heralding road works signalled
his luck running out. Sure enough, the road became a single lane and the temporary traffic light on its tripod was red . . . He stopped. It was impossible to see whether anything was coming from
the other direction and the thought of flouting the red light occurred to him only as something he could not conceivably do. He waited while nothing came through and the light continued to be red.
Just as he was wondering whether the signal had broken down, or did not operate at night, he heard a car behind him and knew it was the Mini . . .

She drew up on his left and pulled down her window. ‘I nearly lost you,’ she said. There was a kind of gaiety in her reproach that he found infuriating.

‘I can’t see why you’re following me. Because that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?’

‘Well, in a
way
I am.’ She said it as though with the utmost liberality she was conceding a doubtful point.

‘Why are you?’

‘I thought perhaps you might put up with me – put me up for the night. I’ve got nowhere to stay, you see.’

‘What do you mean “nowhere”? You must have somewhere!’

‘I haven’t! I haven’t anywhere at all! Unless you count the Mini.’

‘What would you have done if you hadn’t met me?’

‘
I
don’t know. What’s the point of asking that? Look – the light’s gone green. Let’s talk when we get to your flat. Let’s go.’

He was so stunned by her improvidence that he did as she suggested. He needed anyway to get away from her – even for a few minutes – to think about what on earth he could do. Mrs
Lamb’s reactions to a strange girl turning out to have spent the night at Plantagenet Road were unknown, the only thing he could be sure of was that they would be unfavourable and prolonged.
She would dislike the whole idea, largely on the grounds that it had never happened before – a key reason with her for hostility. Her (possible) random objections began to bombard him;
accusations of seduction,
rape
, even of being in love, of wanting to get married, of leaving his nice home . . . And everything he might say back could only make matters worse. Nowhere
else to go? Why not? What sort of girl could she be if she had nowhere to go? What sort of house did he think 206 Plantagenet Road
was
? Did he think that, every time he went to a party, he
could bring back anyone he fancied bringing back? (Another of Mrs Lamb’s less comfortable delusions was that, if something that she did not like happened, it was going to go on happening: she
was a great thin end of the wedger.) His father would be of no help. He would fill his pipe with obsessive care, wink in a weakly conspiratorial way to Gavin out of Mrs Lamb’s presence, and,
if they were alone together for longer than a wink, say there was no accounting for taste and wonder what the world was coming to. And anyway, if she stayed tonight, how was he to get rid of her
tomorrow? Sunday! He couldn’t escape by going to work. And there was family lunch with Marge – she’d
have
to go: he couldn’t possibly take her to that.

As he halted by the war memorial while a night lorry thundered up the main road, he suddenly realized a possible escape route.
She
didn’t know that he lived with his parents: she
clearly thought he had a flat on his own. Once she realized that he had neither the freedom nor the privacy for this sort of venture, she’d go away to wherever it was that she must surely
have secretly in reserve. Thank God he
did
live with his parents – if he had got a place of his own, he’d have no excuse, and things would be much worse. Once she realized
about Mrs Lamb . . .

Gavin was rattled; he was tired as well; a good many experiences of the evening had been entirely new to him, and some of them had been unpleasant: but for much or most of this, his intelligence
would have told him that Mrs Lamb was not somebody it was easy for a stranger to appraise. He had had a lifetime’s practice of his mother’s responses to practically everything, but this
really only meant that he didn’t think her particularly eccentric – assumed more or less that she was much like everybody else’s mother, and, that being so, of course Minerva
would understand that a sudden visit was out of the question. Some sharper instinct, however, prompted him to stop a few doors away from No. 206 (where he could see that all lights were out), and
this turned out to be well advised.

He parked his bike at the kerb as the Mini drew up behind him, and went over to her.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid I didn’t make this clear to you, but I don’t have a flat or anything of my own: I live with my parents . . .’

‘How extraordinary! Do you like it?’

‘It’s all right: fine. But I’m sure you see it makes a difference.’

‘I bet it does. My things are in the the boot, and it’s a bit tricky getting it open.’ Before he could stop her, she sprang out of the car, and began tugging at the boot
handle. He followed her.

‘What I’m trying to say is that I really can’t have you to stay. It’s not my house, you see.’

She stopped trying to turn the boot handle and put the ignition key into its lock. ‘Must be locked. I’m sure they won’t mind. Not just for one night.’

‘They would. I’m telling you they would.’

‘You promised!’

‘I didn’t! You said, “Let’s talk about it.”’

‘If they
knew
I was absolutely destitute! If they knew I had nowhere else to go!’

‘They wouldn’t understand that. And honestly, you
must
have somewhere.’

To his intense alarm, she sank to her knees in the road, and still hanging on to the boot handle burst into loud childish, wailing sobs.

‘How can you be so – you don’t know what it’s like!’ she wailed at what seemed to him the top of her voice.

‘Oh – don’t make so much
noise
!’

At once she subsided into a choked sob, but went on crying quietly which made him feel much more worried about her and much worse.

‘I’m
cold
! Nothing’s turning out right! I don’t know what to do!’

The boot suddenly opened and she fell back against his knees. He stooped to help her and she threw her arms round his legs. ‘Oh, do help me. Honestly!’

‘Look,’ he said gently, ‘you must have somewhere. You must have
come
from somewhere. Where were you last night?’

‘In hospital. It was so horrible I left. I truly couldn’t bear another minute.’

‘Are you ill, then?’ His alarm was fanning out; there was beginning to be nothing about her that he could regard with equanimity. Ill! She might be dying for all he knew. If she
stayed the night and
died
! How could he be so callous! He tried to imagine what she must be feeling, and felt so frightened that he couldn’t feel anything else at all.
‘
Are
you ill?’ he repeated. She looked up at him and he saw that her neck was streaked with tears running down into the red cheesecloth.

‘
No-
o!’ She said it as though he had asked the question hundreds of times and she was fed up with answering it . . . In the boot were two tattered plastic carriers stuffed
with what looked like washing. ‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with me.’ She ran her wrist and the back of her hand across her nose and said: ‘I just want to get out my
sweater. I’m just freezing to death.’ She burrowed in one of the carriers and pulled out an Aran sweater – greyish, even in the street light. ‘I could make you some
scrambled eggs if you like; I put onion in them; people tell me they’re delicious.’

‘No thanks.’ The thought of his mother smelling onions cooking in her own kitchen in the middle of the night made the back of his neck feel cold.

‘Well, what do you want me to do?’ She’d extracted one of the carrier bags and shut the boot again and now faced him. The sweater, which was not only dirty, but far too large
for her, made her look like a fisherman waif.

‘If you’ve really
got
to spend the night here, you’ll have to be really quiet and do everything I say. And no giggling or crying either.’

‘I’ll be as quiet as a mouse. Although on linoleum they sound as though all their bootlaces are undone – not quiet at all. But I see what you mean,’ she added hastily,
seeing his face.

‘What about that parrot?’

‘He won’t make a sound either. You open the door while I get him out.’

‘No, I’ll take him. This isn’t my house. I live a few doors down.’

‘That was rather scheming of you.’

She was a fine one to talk. He made no reply.

The parrot cage was heavy and tended to rotate when he picked it up by the ring on top and he felt rather than heard the creature shifting inside. He had to put it down twice: once to open the
gate, and then to get the latchkey in the lock . . . He switched on the hall light and turned back to Minerva who was standing so immediately behind him that he almost fell over her. ‘Shut
up!’ he hissed. Her answer to this was to take off her shoes, kicking them somewhere into the dark front garden. Even when she was trying, she seemed to get everything just wrong.

Ever since he’d given in about her staying, he’d been desperately reviewing possibilities and discarding them. He
wouldn’t
put her in his own room, because it was his
– and private. He couldn’t put her in the lounge, because either of his parents might – just
might
– wake up in the night, fancy a cup of tea and go down and find
her. There was a spare bedroom – that had been Marge’s – but his mother kept that in such a state of shut-up suspension that he didn’t feel equal to finding bed linen and
removing furniture from off the bed where it was kept so that the floor was easier to polish. It would have to be the ground-floor room – the spare lounge or best sitting room – also
kept in wraps against the few days in the year when it was used, but further away from his parents’ room, and since there wasn’t a bed in it, he couldn’t be expected to find
bedclothes. He opened the door to this and switched on the light. The suite was covered with polythene sheeting, the blinds and curtains were drawn and the room smelled of rubber (the under-lay of
its new and frenziedly geometric carpet). Gavin motioned Minerva inside and shut the door. He dumped the parrot cage as gently as he could and moved briskly to the three-seat sofa and peeled off
the polythene.

‘This is where you’ll have to sleep, I’m afraid.’ He almost whispered, to keep her quiet.

‘Okay.’

‘I’ll get you a blanket.’

‘I could manage without one. It smells quite warm in here, but funny. Rather like a new car,’ she added appeasingly.

‘I’d better get you one. You stay quiet till I get back.’

‘Could I use a loo, do you think? If I don’t pull the plug?’

He looked sharply at her, to see if she was taking the piss out of him, but she wasn’t. It had been an honest suggestion.