Portobello (31 page)

She walked ahead of him into the drawing room but hesitantly
as if she had never been there before. At a loss for words, he simply
gazed at her. Like him, she had lost weight and, like him, she
looked distraught, disorientated, shattered. He closed the door,
opened it again and ran out into the hall where he bolted the front
door, came back, his hands spread in a despairing gesture.

'What are you doing?'

'I don't know. Shutting you in, I think. Making you my prisoner.'

She did the only thing which, at that moment, could have made
him happy. She began to laugh. A moment of stillness passed and
then his arms were round her and she was pressed closely against
him.

'I have been the most monstrous fool,' he said, 'but I don't think
I've done anything against the law, have I?'

'Against the law? Oh, I see. Me asking you to go to the police,
you mean.' She pulled him on to the sofa and, still holding him,
told him about Lance Platt, and the fire and Gemma.

'Oh, yes, I saw him,' Eugene said. 'It was your birthday, it was
one o'clock in the morning. And what's more I saw the first flames
go up from that burning house at the same time. I'll go to the
police tomorrow.'

'Let's go now, Gene.'

'Oh, my darling, anything, anything you want, we'll go anywhere
as long as you'll promise to come back here with me and never go
away again.'

Neither of them, then or later, said a word about sugar-free
sweets, though next day when he had left for the gallery Ella
searched the house and satisfied herself that no more had been
bought to replace those she had burnt in the garden. She went
through the pockets of all his coats and jackets, finding nothing
but laughing at the thought of hunting for Chocorange where
another woman might look for love letters.

But that evening Eugene unbolted the door, they put on coats
it was too mild to need and walked hand in hand across the
Portobello Road past the Earl of Lonsdale, along Kensington Park
Gardens and so to Ladbroke Grove where stands the imposing and
rather grand police station.

The presence of Lance Platt in Chepstow Villas on the night
of 14 September was never connected with the theft of
Elizabeth Cherry's jewellery. No one told him why not and
enquiring about it could lead to no good. It wouldn't only be sticking
his neck out. Elizabeth's insurance company had paid up and Ella,
the only person to be told about it, had completely forgotten that
aspect of Gemma's story.

As soon as his alibi was accepted and he was released from prison,
Lance moved in with Gemma. She nagged him so much about his
work-free state that this time, instead of hitting her, he got a job.
At the next interview he was offered as a Jobseeker he behaved properly,
answered politely and said thank you very much when offered
a position as assistant in a cut-price hardware shop in the Portobello
Road. The owner pays less than the minimum wage, which is illegal,
but he tells Lance that if he doesn't like it there will be plenty of
people from Romania and Bulgaria who will.

A new house has been built at the end of Blagrove Road but
Uncle Gib, as he had foreseen, has never moved into it. After
waiting a decent interval of six months, he and Maybelle were
married in the church of the Children of Zebulun and held their
reception in the Fat Badger. Uncle Gib has become the new
Shepherd of the Children of Zebulun and is deeply respected by
his congregation. The pressure of work is heavy and he has had
to give up his Agony Uncle activities but much of what he used
to say he preaches about from the pulpit. The new house has a
bathroom on each floor and each floor is let as a separate flat. The
area is prestigious and Uncle Gib charges accordingly. He tells
prospective tenants, demurring at exorbitant rents, that if they don't
like the heat to get out of the kitchen.

Instead of the elaborate affair Eugene once wanted, he and Ella
were married very quietly with her sister and his brother as
witnesses, the bride wearing what the local paper called 'a simple
afternoon dress'. Ella's baby is expected in August, her due date
is the fifteenth, her forty-first birthday, that historic date that gave
Lance his freedom.

Joel Roseman has become Mithras and seems to be happier in
his new identity than he ever was as himself. He lives with his
parents in Hampstead Garden Suburb where Morris Stemmer
treats him with kindness and consideration, and Wendy's attitude
to him is one of timorous love. Joel's father could perhaps never
have been reconciled to the son who let his daughter drown but
Mithras is a different person, sunny-tempered, even playful. He
loves the light and keeps his own bed lamp on all night. His parents
have got over the embarrassment they used to feel when he talks
about the city from which he is a wistful exile, its towers glittering
in the sun, its wide boulevards and its white walls on which angels
sit and gaze at the broad shining river.

Undine in a Fishpond
has lost its attractions for Morris Stemmer
since his son came back in his new avatar. He tried to sell it back
to Eugene but Ella's husband was unable to afford the exorbitant
price he was asking and eventually got elsewhere. Anxious about
the coming birth of his child, Eugene succumbed and bought a
single packet of Oranchoco in the Golborne Road pharmacy. It
lasted him a fortnight, he threw the last two sweets away and has
had no compulsion to buy another.

The Portobello Road changes very little. There is talk of
Woolworths disappearing and a tower block of flats with car
park going up in its place, rumours too of arcades scheduled to be
converted into mewses to satisfy the demand for more houses.
Some say the pubs are to be renamed because no one knows who
the Earl of Lonsdale was, still less the Prince Bonaparte, and those
wanting change favour that cliché name the Slug and Lettuce. But
there are always rumours and mostly they come to nothing.

On Saturday mornings the young pour out of Notting Hill Gate
tube station and off the number seven bus and the number twentythree,
on their way to spend their week's wages at the stalls and
in the shops, on soap and beads and pashminas and herbs and all
the perfumes of Arabia. To sit at the pavement tables drinking
cappuccinos and lattes and Chardonnay. The old people come with
their shopping trolleys because they have always come, because,
if you live around there, the Portobello Road is where you do your
shopping. The graffitists come and the pickpockets and the serious
thieves. Prudent shopkeepers pull down metal grilles over their
windows before they go home for the night.

And in the deep of the night all is silent while the centipede
street draws breath and prepares for another day.