Portobello (10 page)

Though he unlocked and opened the door very quietly, the
burglar alarm still went off. The chances were it wasn't the kind
that summoned the police, only frightened the intruder. He was
made of sterner stuff. He moved quickly round the room, scooping
up stuff into his backpack, ornaments, statuettes, pretty things he
couldn't identify, glass and silver, and from the top of a cabinet,
evidently dropped there by the girlfriend, a gold necklace set with
green stones. All this took about two minutes before he was back
once more in the garden, the french window secured behind him
and the key in his pocket. White Hair would change the lock, of
course, but there was no harm in giving it a go.

He dared not go back through the gateway. There were signs
that the neighbours were getting excited by the braying of the
burglar alarm, which was just as audible outside as indoors. Voices
were raised. A woman somewhere in the front said loudly that she
was going to phone the police and someone else said it was probably
a false alarm. Lance began to feel trapped. He padded down
the path towards the wall at the end of the garden where he
detected a sturdy-looking trellis supporting the dense thickets of
creeper. It was as good as a ladder. The lights were still on in the
garden next door but no one had come out. In the distance he could
hear voices raised in an argument over what, if any, action to take.
Gaining a foothold on the trellis, he began to climb up, his hands
already scratched by the creepers, which were a lot more thorny than
ivy. As he swung his right leg, then his left, over the top of the wall,
the side gate opened and a man and a woman came into White Hair's
garden. Lance swore. He should have locked that gate. But the people
hadn't seen him. He hung on to the top of the wall on the Pembridge
Villas side, watching them through the leaves, and he nearly laughed
out loud when he saw them glance at the locked french windows,
their glass intact, mutter something to each other, turn and go back
the way they had come.

His hands sore and bleeding, he let himself drop on to the soft
ground below. The house whose garden he was in looked unoccupied.
No lights were on. The people who lived there might
have gone away for the holiday weekend too or just be asleep. He
could still hear the rising and falling howl of White Hair's alarm
but now, quite suddenly, it stopped. The silence that followed it
was broken only by the sound of a big expensive car purring its
way towards Westbourne Grove. Lance found he could creep along
towards the road at the back of the thickly planted border where
the shrubs were tall and where, within a few yards of the house,
a forest of bamboo took over. Its stalks were twice his height and
they sheltered him until he reached these people's side gate, a
wrought-iron door, easily climbed though hard on his sore hands.
Within thirty seconds he was out in the street, all his difficulties
behind him and surely a small fortune in his backpack. He was
particularly pleased with the necklace, which he was already telling
himself was gold with emeralds.

It was past 11.30. The streets here were silent and empty. He
seemed to be alone, a solitary man in a hoodie with a heavy backpack,
but when he looked over his shoulder he saw someone far
behind him. It was no one he recognised. All he could be sure of
was that it was of the male sex. The cafés and wine bars and pubs
of Westbourne Grove were busy, brightly lit and noisy. It had been
a fine sunny day so there had been tables out on the pavements
and people were still out there drinking and some eating a late
supper. It was then that he saw a man he thought was Fize, leaning
against a pub wall talking to another Asian, but he showed no
interest in Lance, seemed not to see him, though the deadline for
bringing the thousand pounds would be up in ten minutes' time.

He passed the corner of Gemma's street and after that, perhaps
because there were no pubs and no cafés and the only place still
open was an all-night Asian grocer's, quiet returned. A group of
men about his own age were running along the opposite pavement
but they disappeared down a side turning. The Portobello Road
lay ahead of him and a few hundred yards further north, Raddington
Road and Uncle Gib's place. But here there was no one and
nothing, the place dark but for the occasional street lamp. From
a single forlorn little all-night shop a feeble yellow glow spread out
on to the pavement. He would have liked a bit of noise, he was
used to it, even a radio playing softly, a human voice. But the only
sounds were in the far distance, almost unheard, the murmur of
London half a dozen streets away.

Quite suddenly, two men appeared from nowhere, walking
abreast and coming towards him. They moved slowly, looking in
his direction, looking at
him
, a black man and a white man.
Somewhere, perhaps from a shop in the Portobello, a clock struck
midnight, twelve sonorous strokes. Lance looked for a side street
but there wasn't one, only an alley like a trap, and when he looked
over his shoulder, thinking by then of turning and running, he saw
Ian Pollitt approaching, his tread soft and measured as if he had
all the time in the world.

Lance stood still. He didn't know what else to do. The black
man was the first to close with him. He walked right up to him,
the way no one ever does unless they mean something bad, and
kneed him in the groin. When Lance doubled up with the pain of
it and sank forward on to his knees, Ian Pollitt pulled him up and
punched him on the chin. Lance tried to cover his face with his
left arm while he hit out with his right. They both attacked him
then, along with Fize who had appeared from somewhere, pulling
the backpack off him and flinging it half across the roadway,
punching his head and shoulders. When he was down, past getting
up again, one of the white ones kicked him hard in the small of
his back. The others followed suit, a heavy kick to the stomach
from one of them and from the other's heavy boots struck what
he felt might have been his kidneys. He was only dimly aware
when they left him of them all kneeling round his backpack, pulling
it open, some objects flung out and others stuffed into pockets.

The Asian man emerged from the all-night grocer's when Lance's
attackers had gone. He phoned for the police and an ambulance
and, sitting beside him on the pavement, waiting till they came,
stared in wonder at the shattered glass, the battered silver and
broken statuary scattered across the roadway.

Ella had confessed to leaving the necklace Eugene had given
her for her thirty-ninth birthday on top of the cabinet in
the drawing room. She had been wearing it with her trousers
and sweater, decided it was too 'dressed-up' for a drive to Sussex
and taken it off, meaning to put it in her suitcase. Eugene was
never cross. All he said was, 'Never mind, darling. These things
happen. I'll buy you a nicer one for your fortieth.'

He was more concerned about his netsuke animals, which the
burglar had also taken, and the Nymphenburg porcelain the police
had found smashed on the corner of the Portobello Road. All of
it had been stolen, it seemed, by a bunch of thugs who had finished
off their spree by beating up an innocent young man on his way
home after a harmless evening out. The police had been rather
severe with Eugene, scolding him for leaving his french window
key in the lock and not bolting his side gate. He had been so sweet
to Ella that she didn't say she'd told him so.

The pleasures of the weekend were still with her when she
walked into the medical centre on Tuesday morning, but she was
brought down to earth by the news that Joel Roseman had made
an appointment to see her at twelve noon after her morning surgery.
He was
physically
much better. The receptionist said he laid stress
on the word.

* * *

Joel's mother visited him every day. He asked her if his father
objected, if she was defying his father, spending so much time
with him in this flat but she said no, adding ingenuously that
Morris didn't mind how often she saw their son so long as he didn't
have to. Sometimes she suggested a walk in the park under the
trees that stand in a long row parallel with the Bayswater Road,
but Joel wouldn't unless it was after dark, so mostly she sat with
him in one of the gloomy rooms and talked to him fretfully about
his solitary life, his lack of a girlfriend or, indeed, any friend. One
day he told her about his near-death experience, though leaving
out the part about bringing Mithras back with him. When he said
he had found not heaven, but hell at the end of the tunnel, she
began to cry.

He tried to reassure her. 'Hell is beautiful, Ma. It's a bit like
the park but without so many people.'

After she had gone, driving the Bentley back to Hampstead
Garden Suburb, he sat gazing at the endlessly reflected bronze
heads. They made the flat appear enormous, Julius Caesar,
Augustus, Tiberius and all the rest. They were all the same man,
all the same copy of an ancient ruler, dead two thousand years.
As he stared at their hard mouths, aquiline noses and sightless
eyes, Mithras returned. Joel couldn't have said how he knew Mithras
was present because most of the time he was invisible, yet Joel
knew he was there as surely as he had known his mother had been.
It was as if he had some extra sense, which no one had ever named.

He felt Mithras's presence rather like a perpetual touch, as if
his visitor had laid a hand lightly on him and rested it there. At
the same time he felt that if light could be admitted to the place,
bright white light flooding the flat, Mithras would become truly
visible, as clear as any human being, for he had come from a radiant
gleaming place. But Joel was too afraid of the light to take such a
radical step. He felt it might blind him, literally destroy his sight.
Besides, he was unsure whether he hated Mithras's presence or
loved it. He sat somnolent in the living room or reclined on the
brown velvet sofa for hours on end, not reading or listening to
anything or watching television, sometimes falling into a doze. One
afternoon he had decided to resume his infrequent habit of taking
himself alone to the cinema. Wearing his blackest sunglasses, he
set out to see
The Lives of Others
but when he was halfway there
he felt a dizzying sensation he thought might be the start of a panic
attack and he turned back towards home. The very fact of heading
for home, his dark sanctuary, calmed him.

The morning he was due to see Dr Peacock, the psychotherapist,
Mithras spoke to him. Joel couldn't see him, hadn't seen him
for several days, though he had felt the touch of his hand, but he
heard his voice. At first he wasn't sure who it was or where it came
from. Sometimes, though the walls were thick and this dark shadowy
place well-insulated, sounds could be heard from his neighbours.
They were loud-voiced people who often moved their furniture
about and once or twice had given noisy parties. But this voice
was soft, persuasive and almost seductive.

He knew this was human speech he was hearing, but for a while
he couldn't make out the words, only that the rhythm of what was
said was the rhythm of English. Then, quite clearly, he heard it
say, 'She will ask you if you hear voices.'

Joel said nothing. He lay back and closed his eyes, wondering
as he did so why human beings have the ability to shut off their
vision but no mechanism for doing the same for hearing. On his
way to Dr Peacock he went into a pharmacy and bought himself
some earplugs made of wax, though he was beginning to feel he
would have no need to use them.

Dr Peacock said nothing about hearing voices. She said very
little. She was a white-haired woman, the hair copious and long,
with the face of a Russian ballet dancer and the barrel-shaped
body of a bricklayer. The suit she wore was charcoal-coloured linen,
the trousers tapering and the jacket like a mandarin's. Joel expected
a couch and there was one but not for him. Dr Peacock reclined
on it while he sat in an armchair.

The psychotherapist had a high-pitched voice with the slight
lisp of a camp vicar in a comedy show. Joel found it rather hard
to believe she was a woman. She asked Joel to tell her why he had
come and Joel told her about his heart operation, his near-death
experience and Mithras. When he paused or hesitated Dr Peacock
said, 'Go on,' and when he had told her everything in detail Dr
Peacock said, 'Tell me again.' It reminded Joel of police interrogations
he had seen on television when the investigating officer asks
the suspect to repeat his story in order to catch him out in a lie.

At the end of the second recounting, the psychotherapist asked
him who he thought Mithras was but soon after Joel had begun
talking about him, Dr Peacock said time was up and she would
see him next week. Joel had, perhaps naively, supposed that after
even a single session he would begin to feel better about things
but he didn't. He put on his dark glasses and walked slowly to a
bus stop, not knowing or much caring which buses stopped there.
One came but it was the kind where you have to have a ticket or
a pass before you board and the driver turned him off.

'You have to get off,' the driver said. 'It's no use arguing. I don't
make the rules.'

This unnerved Joel and he hailed a taxi. The people in the streets
all seemed to be staring at him, sitting alone in the back. They
stared at him, he thought, with resentful eyes or, worse, with savage
glares, and children made faces. One little boy stuck out his tongue
and Joel put his face in his hands. He hadn't enough money on
him so he got the driver to take him to a cash dispenser. Three
men were ahead of him. They all seemed to know each other and
began to whisper together, one of them turning round to eye him
before going back to their conversation. This was what happened
when he exposed himself to the light. He felt uncomfortable,
wondering if they meant to attack him. But nothing happened, he
got his money and was soon at home.

His living room, which until then had always seemed rather too
dark, nearly as dark as the rest of the place, was now too light for
him. He settled that by pulling down the dark-green blind to its
fullest extent. The grey dimness of a wet afternoon now prevailed
and, reclining on the sofa in much the same attitude as Dr Peacock
had taken up, he phoned Dr Cotswold. Or tried to phone her. The
voice he got was the receptionist's, which said she was with a
patient but she would pass on his message and ask her to call him
back. The call didn't come for almost an hour, the longest hour
Joel thought he had spent for years. And when she did phone,
though Joel had supposed Dr Peacock would have given her a
careful report by now, she knew nothing about what had happened
during his visit.

Would she come and see him? He had a lot to tell her.

'Today won't be possible,' she said.

'Tomorrow, then.' When she didn't answer immediately he said,
'
Please.
'

'I think you should come to me, Joel. Shall we say 12.30 when
my last patient will have gone?'

'I
will
be your last patient, won't I?'

He could hear very little in the flat; with the windows shut, not
even more than a faint hum from the traffic. He fetched the earplugs
he had bought and, working the wax with his fingers, moulding
two cone shapes, he inserted them into his ears. The peculiar
silence that descended was unlike normal quiet but made him feel
rather as if he were being smothered. He had to make a conscious
effort to breathe but gradually the feeling went and he appreciated
his new deafness. Now he was enclosed, sightless and without
hearing, and he fell asleep. When he woke, two hours later,
remaining in his dark cocoon, he found himself thinking about
what he would say to Dr Cotswold next day. He would tell her
about Amy, about his father and what had divided them so terribly
and irrevocably.

The netsuke lion and the monkey had turned up. Much to
Eugene's gratification and gratitude, a shopkeeper in
Westbourne Grove had found them in the gutter and handed them
in at the police station. He wanted to reward Mr Siddiqui but the
shopkeeper refused his offers and said being able to return these
valuable objects to their owner was reward enough. A Crime
Protection officer had made an appointment to come round to
Chepstow Villas and advise Eugene on sensible measures that
should be taken to make his house more secure.

'Keeping a light on in the garden, I expect they'll say,' said Ella,
'and putting bars on the french windows and making sure the side
gate is bolted on the inside. Where's the side gate key, by the way?
I can't find it.'

'Oh, God, I've no idea. That will be something else they'll bully
me about, no doubt.'

'They won't bully you, darling. They're only being helpful.'

'If you say so, Ella. I shall hate having them poking about the
place. Shall we talk about something else? Like our wedding?'

This had been provisionally fixed for October and since neither
of them had been married before, why not have a church wedding?

'I'd prefer something quiet,' Ella said. 'Church would be a big
affair, wouldn't it?'

'But I'd love a big affair. With me in a morning coat and you
looking beautiful in a white frothy dress like a meringue and masses
of flowers and all our friends and relations there. And a big lunch
somewhere grand. Where shall we go for our honeymoon?'

'Italy?'

'Well, I was thinking of Sri Lanka,' said Eugene.

The robbery had been a setback. If his life had proceeded in
tranquillity, everything pleasant and anxiety kept to a minimum,
he was sure he could have kept up his abstinence. He
had
kept
it up throughout their weekend and if he had drunk rather more
than usual, so had Ella, and there had been something sweet and
companionable about saying, 'I really mustn't have another one,
darling,' yet having one just the same, and she replying, but with
a laugh, that they must watch it or they would both be on their
way to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Then they had come home to discover the burglary. From the
first moment of being aware of the loss of his netsuke he had
felt on his indrawn breath an urgent desire for a Chocorange.
He needed it for comfort when he saw what was missing and,
though he made light of it to Ella, remembered the large sum of
money he had paid for the gold and peridot necklace. It was
Sunday, nowhere was open – well, nowhere in the vicinity that
sold the things. If Ella hadn't been there he would have been off
to a Tesco or a Superdrug. The temptation, the longing, would
have been too compelling to resist. Instead, he had had to suffer
a worse deprivation than he had known at any previous time of
Chocorange shortage. He craved, he longed. Secretly – but how
secret was it really? – he took sips of whisky throughout the
evening until he dared take no more.

The only way to handle it, he decided next morning, a hangover
throbbing at his temples, was not to
think.
No thinking, just doing,
and doing meant walking swiftly down to Elixir the moment they
opened and stocking up with five packets of Chocorange. The relief
was so great that he went on not thinking. No self-reproach, no
recrimination, just abandonment to this wonderful solace. Next
day he replenished his stocks in the kitchen drawer by a visit to
the shop in Spring Street and the day after that up to Golborne
Road. Packets inside plastic bags went into the bottom drawer
of the cabinet in the guest bathroom and another lot in the
drawing-room bookcase behind the novels of E. M. Forster. Far
from troubling him, he laughed with delight when he counted
twenty-two packets carefully stowed away for the future.

Euphoria lasted four days. On the fifth day, after asking himself
(while Ella slept) if he was going mad, he resolved that this couldn't
go on.

It was no use saying, as he had yesterday, that he would never
be without them again. He must be without them. With the wedding
set for October, he had four months and a bit to begin the phasing
out. For phasing out was the way. His mistake had been this cold
turkey business. If he had been gradually giving up, when he came
back from his weekend away, there would have been, say, half a
packet in the house and he could have allayed his stress by sucking
one that evening and another perhaps in the night. That was the
way. If the worst came to the worst he could just go away on his
honeymoon with a single packet of Chocorange in his baggage to
tide him over. Easy. Why, he might even have conquered his habit
before that. Nothing, he told himself, sucking his twelfth of the
day, could be more likely.