Portobello (29 page)

His night passed in a series of strange dreams, one following
fast on the other, and each more bizarre than the last.
Ghosts came into these dreams and reptiles, figurines
from the gallery that came to life and walked about while Ella
wandered among them, more beautiful and far less sweet and good
than she was in life. Chocorange (or Oranchoco) laid mosaically,
paved the floor like a cocoa-brown giant's causeway. The dream to
wake him up, shivering under his piled blankets and two duvets,
was the mermaid in the fishpond. This was no goldfish bowl but
water and weeds behind a glass wall as in an aquarium and the
mermaid with her golden scaly tail, beating against the glass, had
Ella's breasts and Ella's face.

He sweated, soaking the bed. When Carli arrived in the morning
he asked her to change the sheets while he shivered in the next
room, wearing a dressing gown with two blankets draped shawllike
over his shoulders. A jug of water and two bottles of the
sparkling kind were brought up to him. He wanted a bath but was
too weak to attempt it. Dr Irving arrived at lunchtime, though he
hadn't given advance warning of his coming, bringing with him the
Evening Standard.

'Where's that lovely fiancée of yours? She not looking after
you?'

Where anyone else would have said they'd split up, Eugene said,
'We are no longer engaged.'

'Oh, dear, I'm sorry to hear that. Very sorry. I may as well take
your temperature now I'm here.'

Eugene submitted to this. His temperature turned out to be a
hundred and one. 'Or something around thirty-eight, I suppose, if
you go in for all this Celsius rubbish. I don't suppose you've got
much appetite?'

'None,' said Eugene.

'Won't do you any harm not to eat. You can do with losing a
pound or two. I brought you the evening paper.'

'Thanks.'

Eugene buried his face in the pillows and the doctor went away,
saying, as a parting shot, though Eugene hadn't asked, 'No good
me giving you antibiotics when it's a virus you've got. Keep drinking
the old dihydrogen monoxide, ha-ha.'

Later on Eugene picked up the paper but it was only a glance
he gave it, enough to see that yet another young man had died in
London after being stabbed. Not far from here, maybe half a mile
away. He dropped the
Standard
on the floor and gulped down
another half a bottle of water. Carli would come back again in the
morning.

He felt horribly alone. Tossing and turning, collapsing miserably
into a sweaty heap, he dreamed again of Ella but this time she
was dancing in a club with a man Eugene had never seen but
whom he somehow recognised as that Joel Something who was
the real owner of the hundred and fifteen pounds. They were
dancing cheek-to-cheek and it was a slow waltz. He woke up
groaning, but there was no one to hear him.

When she contemplated the empty shelves, Ella made up her
mind that the books that had filled them were lost to her
for ever. And, in a strange way, she wondered if she ever wanted
to see those particular books again. They would only remind her
of that otherwise happy evening when Eugene had come home
and found her about to discover his secret hoard of those wretched
sweets. Now she asked herself why she had ever confronted him.
She was a doctor – couldn't she recognise the signs of a habit such
as his? Had she no understanding how deep such obsessions went
with a person as secretive and sensitive as he? Apparently not and
now she was paying the price for it.

Almost for the first time since she became a GP she was wishing
she had no need to go to work today. If only she could stay here
in bed, turn over and perhaps go back to sleep. It was just first
thing in the morning that she really felt able to sleep soundly and
she recognised this as a sign of incipient depression. The female
characters in those books she had left behind at Eugene's, how
different they were from her and from most women today. They
could stay in bed all day if they wanted to, daydreaming of their
happiness or quietly nursing their sorrows. What else had they to
do? Women now had to go back to work and carry on resolutely,
soldier on, as if nothing had happened.

She got up, showered, dressed, picked up the newspaper off the
doormat. Not so much in it about the Notting Hill murder as there
had been in the
Standard
last night. The deaths of young men by
violence had become almost commonplace. Talbot Road, Notting
Hill. She had patients there but not this Feisal Smith. For once
there was no eulogy from a relative, no bereaved parent saying he
was the best son a mother or father ever had, the kindest, his
future the brightest. Briefly, she wondered about Feisal Smith,
knifed on a stone staircase, then she forgot him.

Mrs Khan was her first patient, a highly articulate little girl
with her this time. Her rapid translation of her mother's detailed
symptoms made Ella think she had a future before her as an
interpreter, especially when the child remarked as they were
leaving that she spoke Bengali as well and was learning Chinese
at school.

'Then make sure you don't miss too many days,' Ella couldn't
resist saying.

The next to come in was the most glamorous on her list. She
always looked as if about to step on to a catwalk. This morning
Gemma Wilson wore a black satin trouser suit and she announced
that she was in mourning for her partner. 'I expect you've seen
about him in the paper,' she said. 'The guy what got stabbed on
the stairs. It was me as found him, me and Abelard, only he was
asleep and he never saw a thing.'

'Gemma, I'm so sorry. What a dreadful thing to happen. How
is Abelard?'

'He's fine. He's with Mum. Like I say, he never saw a thing.
The thing is, Ella –' it had never occurred to Gemma to call her
Dr Cotswold '– the thing is I can't sleep and it's wearing me out.
I close my eyes and all I see is pictures of my partner laying there
in a pool of blood. Can you give me like sleeping pills?'

'Yes, of course I will, Gemma. I'll give you enough for two weeks.
It's very easy to get into a habit of taking them and we don't want
that.'

She began writing the prescription. Gemma smoothed the sides
of her new piled-up coiffure with long white fingers tipped with
gleaming black nails, another feature of her mourning. 'The fact
is,' she said, 'I've been through a lot lately. I mean, there's Fize
getting himself knifed and then there's my lover – I mean, my
real
lover, Lance Platt – banged up for a crime he never done. It's all
taken its toll.'

'I'm sure it has,' Ella said absently, unsurprised by Gemma's
recherché love life. That name Lance Platt rang a bell. Wasn't that
the man who had tried to get Eugene's hundred and fifteen poundfind
for himself? The man who had been charged with arson and
murder?

'That's him,' said Gemma, 'only he never done it. One in the
morning it happened and he wasn't even there.' It occurred to her
just in time that she had better not say just why he couldn't have
been there. 'He couldn't sleep – like me – so he went for a walk.
He was like out for his walk up your way, Ella, when they was
burning down that house. It's not fair, is it, if he gets sent down
for years and years for something he never done?'

'Well, no, of course it isn't. It would be very wrong.'

Ella said goodbye to Gemma and to come back if she was still
having trouble sleeping after a fortnight. That had been her birthday,
her fortieth, the night the house in Blagrove Road burnt down.
She hadn't minded about being forty then because she had Eugene,
she was going to marry Eugene, and he had been so lovely to her,
coming back to bed and wishing her that delightfully old-fashioned
many happy returns of the day. They had made love and she had
been so happy and . . . Her next patient came into the room and
Ella, with a silent sigh, asked him what the trouble was.

The crowd that streamed up the Portobello Road from Notting
Hill Gate station and off the number seven bus were mourners,
not shoppers. They were on their way to the funeral of their
Shepherd. 'Oh, come all ye faithful', the sign on the little purple
church welcomed them. It was left to Gilbert Gibson to conduct
the service, as the Senior Elder now Reuben Perkins was gone.Tall
and emaciated, he presented a finer figure in the pulpit and while
speaking the eulogy, than poor Reuben would ever have done, for,
as all models know, the thinner you are the better you look when
robed in a flowing gown. Uncle Gib spoke about the years when
he and Reuben had 'worked together' and laid particular emphasis
on the kindness he personally had received when Reuben and his
wife had taken him in after his own house had burnt down.

The service was well attended, for Reuben had been popular
and a good turnout was gratifying to Maybelle who invited thirty
people back to her house for drinks and canapés. Uncle Gib played
host, handing round the food and replenishing wine glasses while
telling those guests who didn't already know it the tale of the
wedding at Cana. When they had all gone and Maybelle was doing
the washing up, he sat down at his computer to reply to the latest
spate of letters from readers of
The Zebulun
. For almost the first
time an email had come to which he could give an approving and
encouraging reply.
I see no objection
, he wrote,
to you being joined
in Holy Matrimony with the lady of your choice. Second marriage is
permitted to a widower and widow. Nor need age be a bar. Remember
that eighty is the new fifty so eighty-four is only middle age these
days. Why not propose to her today?

The next one he replied to was from the usual immoral applicant.
Uncle Gib made short work of her, telling her that deceiving
her husband into believing he was the father of her new baby
would bring hellfire down on her and the innocent child. But
his mind wasn't on it. He wasn't able to summon up his usual
invective; his thoughts were still involved with his previous
correspondent. Why shouldn't the advice he had given apply
equally to himself?

Carli came in most days and when she couldn't she sent her
sister Vicki. There was little for them to do beyond changing
his sheets and replenishing his water jug, for Eugene had no
appetite. His temperature went up every evening in spite of the
aspirins he swallowed to maintain it at 98.4. After about a week,
when he staggered into the bathroom to have a bath – he was too
weak to stand up in the shower cabinet – he weighed himself and
found he had lost five pounds. Once this would have pleased him
hugely but now he was unable to summon up enthusiasm for
anything.

But in the morning he managed to eat two small squares of
marmite toast, which Vicki brought him, and that evening found
it possible to swallow a scrambled egg. Next day he had a needful
telephone conversation with Dorinda and later on Dr Irving arrived,
saying breezily that he was obviously on the mend and becoming
positively jovial when Carli appeared with two glasses of sherry on
a tray. The taste of the Amontillado no longer made Eugene feel
sick when he sipped it and after the doctor had gone he ate a slice
of chicken breast and a small roast potato.

He came downstairs in his dressing gown. Both girls had gone
and wouldn't return till next morning. Sitting in front of the mock
but realistic-looking coal fire, he thought how miserable it was to
be alone and how desperately he missed Ella who should be sitting
opposite him, telling him about her day and talking about their
coming wedding and their future together. He could still only walk
slowly but he had managed to come downstairs, so he could make
it over to the bookshelves. It was one of her books that he picked
up and read on the flyleaf,
To Ella, on your sixteenth birthday, with
love from Daddy.
With bowed head he closed it. He had never in
his life felt quite so low and sad.

Two weeks after he had first succumbed to this flu or virus or
whatever it was, he went back to work, taking a taxi rather than
attempting to walk. The gallery had gone on perfectly well without
him and Dorinda had sold two watercolours. He sat at his desk
and Jackie brought him cups of tea. The great effort he made not
to fall asleep failed but still he made it until five. It was a start
and next day was much better. On the Friday evening he took
Dorinda out to dinner, ate very little and wished all the time it
was Ella sitting opposite him. In the taxi taking him home he
thought back to that day when he put off asking her to marry him,
when he had actually asked himself if he wanted to get married
at all. Had he been out of his mind?

Another empty lonely weekend, made rather emptier and lonelier
because his health had returned and he was beginning to feel
well again. He poured himself a glass of wine before sitting down
to eat the sandwich he had made for his lunch but, even in his
semi-alcoholic days he had always disliked drinking alone. It passed
the time, he thought, maybe it would send him to sleep for half
the afternoon.

The dreams we have in the daytime are often more vivid and
more lingering than those of the night. He was fitter and stronger
in the dream than in life, marching along Westbourne Park Road
towards the Portobello in search of a pharmacy. In search of
Chocorange or Oranchoco. At some point he remembered that
there was a pharmacy in Golborne Road and it was for this that
he was heading, although as is the way of dreams, especially daylight
ones, the place he was aiming for was no longer to be found where
it should be. Golborne Road had vanished and a great lake had
taken its place, its shores paved with the dark-brown oval lozenges
but magnified to the size of rugby balls. A mermaid surfaced and
began to sing and beckon to him like the siren she was. He turned
from her and ran, waking himself up.