Portobello (11 page)

'How did you get on with Dr Peacock?'

'I don't know,' Joel said. 'She just made me tell her about
Mithras coming back from hell with me and when I'd done she
made me tell her all over again. I thought she'd ask me about my
father. I thought they always asked people about their fathers.'

They were in Ella's surgery. She had been hoping to meet Eugene
for lunch but this would have to be cancelled. Joel, who clearly
had only a hazy idea of time, had been fifteen minutes late and
evidently intended to spend a long time with her.

'Perhaps you should ask Dr Peacock if you can talk about your
relations with your father.'

'I'd rather tell you.'

'Let me just make a phone call.'

Although it must have been plain to him that Ella was phoning
her fiancé to tell him she couldn't keep their lunch date and plain
too from Ella's responses that the fiancé was very disappointed,
Joel showed no sign of intending to curtail his story or even postpone
its telling. And when she put down the phone he launched
straight into it. 'I want to tell you because you're sympathetic. You
understand things. It happened like this, oh, years ago. I was
sixteen . . .'

'Just a minute, Joel. I have to tell you again, I'm not a psychiatrist.
I'm a doctor of medicine. I'm not qualified to practise as a
psychiatrist. You know that, don't you?'

'Yes, but someone told me that anyone can be a psychotherapist
in the UK, anyone. You don't need qualifications. And you're
a
doctor
and all those others aren't. Now, like I was saying, this
happened when I was sixteen . . . Are you listening?'

'I'm listening,' Ella said, keeping her sigh silent.

He began, speaking rapidly, giving the impression that if he
hadn't uttered it before – though maybe he had – he had rehearsed
the telling over and over very thoroughly. It had loomed large in
his life, it
was
his life. Later, as she turned it all over in her mind,
she wished more than anything that she could have told Eugene
about it. But she couldn't. Joel was confiding in her as his doctor
and that was all there was to it.

He had had a sister, he told her, ten years younger than himself.
Her name was Amy. They had just moved, his parents, Amy and
himself, from Southampton to a house in the Hampshire countryside
with twelve acres of land and a lake. From being rich, his
father had become a millionaire. When the move was taking place
Joel was away at school and, coming home for the summer holidays,
he saw Mossbourne House and its grounds for the first time.

'It was beautiful,' he said. 'I loved it. I'd never seen anywhere
like it. But I'll tell you something.' Joel looked to right and left and
then, rather diffidently, over his left shoulder. 'I'll tell you something.
That place at the end of the tunnel, that place I went to
when I died, that was hell but that was Mossbourne too. Those
white columns and the turrets, they were Mossbourne, and the
river – but not the lake. There's no lake where I went when I died.'
He shook his head ruefully. 'Hell is beautiful, you know. It's not
all ugly and burning up like those old writers said.'

Ella's office was light and bright and practical but suddenly it
seemed to have grown dark. She would have shivered if she hadn't
controlled herself.

'Go on.'

'You sound like Dr Peacock,' he said. 'My sister wanted to show
me all round the place. She had been there for three weeks by
then. She thought she knew all about it.'

Amy had taken him all over the grounds, sometimes holding
him by the hand. It was fine hot weather, the sun shining every
day. She led him into the wood and along the little stream. One
evening they saw an otter and there weren't so many otters about
then as there were now. She liked best to take a picnic and eat it
by the lake.

'I'm not supposed to go into the water unless Mummy or Daddy
are with me. Or you. Mummy says it's all right with you because
you can swim and she says you're a grown-up now. Are you a grownup?'

'Of course I am,' he had said.

'But you're not to keep me waiting because I'm
longing
to
go in.'

They put on swimming things and jeans and T-shirts on top, and
took towels along with the picnic. There were fish in the lake and
long green weeds trailing through the water like streaming hair but
it was clean and clear. You could see the round cream and golden
pebbles on the bottom. Joel was teaching Amy to swim. But it wasn't
the best place to learn. A swimming pool would have been better,
with steps to go down into the water, a shallow end and a deep end
and a bar all round its rim. He said he would take her to the pool
in Salisbury next time their mother drove in there. Meanwhile, they
bathed in the lake. The hot weather couldn't go on like this, perfect
every day, it must change soon, but it did go on. It got even hotter.

One day they both went into the water in the morning and at
midday or a bit later they ate the picnic lunch they had brought
with them, quite a big lunch, half a cold chicken from the fridge
with bread rolls and butter and tomatoes, and a big piece of Brie
cheese and a chocolate cake and a box of shortbread biscuits.

'You can really remember all that?' Ella said.

'I remember everything about that day. Except the bit when I
was asleep.'

'You went to sleep? A sixteen-year-old?' She said it for something
to say because she could tell now what was coming and she wanted
to stop it or at least postpone it.

'I've always slept a lot,' he said. 'My mother says I was a very
good baby. I slept the whole night through from the time I was
born. I can sleep now – I only have to lie down and close my eyes
and I'm asleep.'

This time she didn't say, 'Go on.'

He was full of food and it was very warm. He lay down on a
blanket, meaning just to lie there and stare up at the blue sky, and
he told Amy not to go into the water. It was too soon anyway. It
was bad for you to go swimming straight after you'd eaten. She
was to wait for him, lie down and have a rest and wait for him.
They should give it half an hour. When he woke up she was gone.
Her clothes were still there in a heap but she was gone.

'I'd slept too long, you see, Ella.' It was the first time he had
called her by her given name. 'She must have got tired of waiting.
I was so frightened, Ella. I was in a panic. I ran up and down,
calling her. I picked up her clothes and looked underneath them
– mad, wasn't it? As if she could have been hiding underneath her
clothes. I was afraid to go into the water – I don't mean I was
afraid of the water – I was afraid of what I'd find. And I did find
it. I went into the water, I looked for her and I did find her. In
the end I did. I found her dead body. It was bleached so white
like she was made of bone, soft bone. And she was all caught up
in the weed and the reeds. I couldn't pull her out, not on my own
I couldn't. I went back to the house and told my parents. I had
to, though it was terrible. At first my father wouldn't believe she
was dead, he said I'd made a mistake, she couldn't be dead. We
all went down to the lake and he and my mother managed to pull
her out. When Pa knew she was dead I thought he was going to
kill me. My mother had to hold him back. She put her arms round
his waist and held on to him and told me to run away, to go into
the house.'

Ella was shaking her head, murmuring, 'How dreadful, how
dreadful.'

'I'll tell you the rest of it next time. He never spoke to me again.
I'll tell you about that next time I come here or you come to me.
You will come to me, won't you? I want to tell you the rest of it.
I can't tell you now. I'm so tired. There's nothing tires me so much
as talking about it.'

While he was in the hospital Uncle Gib never came near
him. Lance didn't expect it, he'd have been so surprised
to see him he'd have thought he was having a nightmare.
It was amazing enough when his mum came. He was all
over bruises, he had something wrong with one of his elbows and
two broken ribs. It was touch and go whether they removed his
spleen, or so he thought he'd overheard them saying but this might
have been something he remembered from watching
ER
. He didn't
know where his spleen was or what was the use of it but he was
relieved they weren't going to take it out.

The day before they discharged him something wonderful
happened. It was the last thing he'd have thought possible but the
only thing he really wanted. The ward was full of visitors except
round his bed. He had no one, which was normal, and when
Gemma came in he thought he was seeing things because all that
kicking and punching had done his head in. She was looking more
beautiful than ever, like Paris Hilton, in a sleeveless yellow dress
and silver sandals with four-inch cork wedges. He couldn't speak,
he just stared.

'I left Abelard with Mum,' she said. Abelard was the baby. 'How're
you doing?'

'I'm good. Going home tomorrow.You're the last person I thought
I'd see but it's great to see you.' He said it again. 'It's great.'

'Yeah, well, they hadn't no call to do what they did. I mean, that
Ian don't know his own strength. He gets carried away. I thought,
you know, I'll go over there and see Lance, it's the least I can do,
I mean, tell him I'm sorry and they'd no call to do that.'

'He don't know you're here, that Fize?'

'Do me a favour. You was jealous but Fize is an animal. He
reckons I'm round at Michelle's place and Mum won't say a word.'

'Gemma?'

'What?'

'Did they – I mean, that lot, did they get enough dosh from all
that stuff they took off me – I mean, the necklace and stuff – like
to pay for your tooth?'

For answer, she inserted one long white finger, the nail lacquered
lemon yellow, into her mouth, pulled back a gleaming peachcoloured
lip and showed him her flawless incisors and molars. 'It's
a temporary for now but Mr Ahmed'll be putting the permanent
one on soon as it's been made.'

'That's good,' Lance said. 'I'm really glad. That's all I nicked that
stuff for. It wasn't for myself.'

Gemma smiled at him quite fondly. 'Oh,
you.
You was my tooth
fairy, Lance, only you don't want to be so free with your fists.
Specially round women. Now I've got to get over to Mum's and
pick up Abelard. Shall I come and see you when you're back in
that dump with old what's-his-name?'

It was a strange part of the world, the edge of Kensal, where the
Portobello Road squeezed under the train line and the Westway
and, wandering on, passed the Spanish convent before coming
close to the suburban line and turning sharp right to become
Wornington Road; a street of stalls and shops and stalls in front
of shops, and especially on Saturdays, that space between was
crammed full of people. American visitors, tourists from India and
Japan, white-skinned white-haired housewives who lived in the old
council flats and had done since they were girls, and had always
shopped down the Portobello, hippies from the sixties, old now
but still wearing robes and strings of beads, their long grey hair
tied back in a pony tail, and the young, hundreds and thousands
of the young, wearing a different uniform from their flower power
grandparents but still a uniform, jeans and T-shirts and boots,
unisex gear, distinguishable only because the girls had breasts and
the boys carotid cartilages.

The shops sold meat and fish and cheese and bread and flowers,
and junk of every possible provenance and description. The stalls
sold junk too and plenty of things that weren't junk, prints and
watercolours, good jewellery and bad, umbrellas, handbags, hats,
leather jackets, lampshades, masks, fishnet tights and miniskirts,
mirrors and fire screens and cigarette cases and long white gloves.
The young ones could buy things unknown to their flower power
grandparents: star fruit and custard apples, amaranth flakes, wild
rice, aubergines striped like dahlias, samphire, chorizo and Chinese
cabbage. The hallucinogenic fungi had been banned a couple of
years before but certain herbs in innocuous-looking cellophane
packs did the job just as well.

Some of the stallholders kept up a running commentary on what
they had for sale, kept it up for hours, the street cries of the twentyfirst
century, and their voices never grew hoarse. One of them was
shouting the virtues of a cigarette substitute with a battery inside
it which produced a red light and tasted of cloves but could be
used – hardly smoked – in any pub or restaurant or enclosed space.
As the Portobello climbed and dipped northwards and passed the
old Electric Cinema, the decoration of shops and adornment of
stalls became more colourful and bizarre, as if an army of graffitists
or students of Banksy had been called in to make this the
brightest market in London. One or two of them had painted whole
sides of buildings with Caribbean festivals or medieval ladies with
unicorns and knights on gold-caparisoned white chargers. Bright
green and scarlet and acid yellow, orange and turquoise and, more
than anything, a rich violet.

When the houses were built around the top of the Portobello,
'road' was a classier name than 'street'. And the houses are becoming
classy again, tall ones divided into flats, smaller ones, the size of
Uncle Gib's, smartened in ways that would be unrecognisable to
their early owners. New front doors, new windows, discreet
cladding, window boxes, bay trees in tubs – anchored down because
this place is rich in crime – driveways off the street for cars.
Curtains are gone; these windows have blinds and when these are
raised you can see right through the house to the rear garden
beyond. All the front rooms and dining rooms have been knocked
into one through-room and the garden revealed has gum trees and
spiraea and fremontodendrons – for this is twenty-first-century
Britain where everyone has luxury and no one has any money. They
have spent it on their homes and their holidays as it comes in, and
keep on spending it. All except Uncle Gib. His house is almost in
a state of nature, a unique original Victorian dwelling, circa 1880.
If they had any sense, the Royal Borough of Kensington and
Chelsea, on whose northern border this is, would buy it off him,
titivate it a bit and open it as a nineteenth-century museum.

But all they had done was send a Pest Control officer round to
deal with the vermin. Far from all wanting a rat of their own, as
Uncle Gib had suggested to Lance, the neighbours had complained.
The Pest Control officer sniffed, poked about in the outside toilet
and shook his head at the state of the kitchen. 'This place needs
a spot of attention,' he said, adding unwisely, 'if you ask me.'

Uncle Gib said what he always said to visitors who criticised,
'I'm waiting for the builders to start next week,' and then, because
he wasn't going to have any ratcatcher finding fault with his arrangements,
'and I don't ask you. You want to mind your own business,
which is clobbering vermin.'

He felt so pleased with this put-down that he went about the
house after the man had gone, singing 'Jesus Wants me for a
Sunbeam'. He hummed it now, threading his way among the
ambling tourists and the slouching young, past the shop that sold
venison and guinea fowl, and the stall that sold Persian perfumes:
'A sunbeam, a sunbeam, I'll be a sunbeam for Him.' No one took
any notice of him, this tall emaciated old man with his Voltairean
face and his fluffy white hair singing hymns as he bounded along.
Eccentricity is the norm in the Portobello Road.

At one of the last stalls he stopped to buy eggs and at almost
the last shop, next to the one where, in the previous week, he had
bought a second-hand single mattress for the new tenant, slices
of mortadella and chorizo and a piece of Double Gloucester. Uncle
Gib ate only eggs and sausage-style meats and cheese, and not
much of that. With a scornful glance at the stall displaying cigarette
substitutes, he put his purchases in the old pink plastic bag
he carried everywhere with him and which had seen many such
outings since it started life in Superdrug. Saving the environment
suited Uncle Gib. He had lived frugally long before global warming
became an issue.

So sharp right and then right again down to the bottom of
Blagrove Road. The Pest Control officer hadn't done much beyond
poisoning the rats with Warfarin (or so Uncle Gib supposed) but,
approaching his house, he seemed to see it as somehow refurbished
and smartened up by this vermin-cleansing operation.
Hygiene had been effected and, what interested him most, at
absolutely no cost to himself, so he let himself into his house, right
up against the Westway and the Hammersmith and City Line, in
a cheerful frame of mind. This soon changed. Like an animal,
which without seeing or hearing or even smelling the intruder,
immediately knows when someone else has entered its home and
is present there, Uncle Gib sensed that he wasn't alone. He lit a
cigarette before he went upstairs.

Lance's bedroom door was shut. Knocking on doors was a courtesy
unknown to Uncle Gib who opened it wide and stood on the
threshold.

'I'm back,' said Lance.

'I can see that. I'm not blind.'

Lance had a cast on his left arm, which was in a sling, and a
wide strip of gauze held in place by plasters on the side of his
head where the hair had been shaved away. Making no comment
on his injuries, Uncle Gib stared searchingly at the cast and the
plasters, then cast up his eyes as if expecting some heavenly visitation
or judgement.

'Is there anything to eat?' said Lance, coughing at the smoke.

'You can have an egg and a bit of sausage. If you want any more
you'll have to fetch it in yourself. Missed your slave, did you?'

Uncle Gib went downstairs and Lance shifted his position on
the bed – his ribs ached – not too dismayed because he was
thinking about Gemma and thinking too that, when all was said
and done, he would have been a highly successful burglar but for
the intervention of Fize and co. Perhaps, when he was better, he
would try again.

Above his head he could hear Dorian Lupescu moving about.
He hadn't yet encountered him and didn't want to. That top flat
should have been his, not handed over to some immigrant or whatever
he was. The man had moved in while he was in hospital and
Lance was sure this had been arranged on purpose so that he
wouldn't be there to tell Dorian about the inadequacies of his flat,
complain about the missing table and give him an account of the
sighting of the rat. Still, when he had accomplished a successful
burglary he'd be able to move out and leave Uncle Gib and the
Romanian (as that, apparently, was what he was) together on their
own. He'd shake the dust of this place off his feet for ever.

The footsteps upstairs continued, followed by a swishing sound
as if a mattress were being dragged about on a dusty wooden floor.
Lance rolled over on to his front and went back to sleep.