Portobello (7 page)

In the bottom drawer lay one Chocorange packet. Don't touch
it, he said to himself, leave it. He picked it up but knew before
he opened it that it was empty. Downstairs in the coat cupboard
in the hall, in the pocket of a coat or jacket, one might remain.
It had happened before when he ran out. Despising himself, he
went down to look and after grubbing about in pockets had failed,
on the floor of the cupboard he found a single dusty Chocorange
lying in the far corner behind an umbrella.

But instead of eating it, he saved it up. It would keep till the
morning and then he would have it after Ella had left for the
medical centre. It would be something to look forward to. He put
it into the pocket of his dressing gown and returned upstairs.
Worn out by his struggles, he crept quietly back into bed in the
pre-dawn dusk and, lying close beside Ella, one arm round her
waist, fell asleep at once.

Perhaps it was just as well, he told himself in the morning, that
the sweet had disappeared. He could have sworn he had put it
in his dressing gown pocket but it must have fallen out or he had
forgotten and put it somewhere else. Eating it would have been
a terrible mistake, taking him back four days and undoing all the
firmness he had achieved and all the conquering of a foolish habit
he had done. Better this way. And he did feel he was getting somewhere
at last. The temptation was easing, the craving less. It filled
him with jubilation.

Later, at the gallery, he announced his engagement to Dorinda
and Jackie, kissed them both and promised champagne to come.
No, they hadn't yet fixed a date for the wedding but it would very
likely be October. He took Ella out to lunch at the Ivy and afterwards,
at a jeweller's in Bond Street, spent an awesome (her word)
amount of money on an engagement ring with a large and perfect
solitaire diamond set in platinum.

Jon Henley, the
Guardian
columnist, had written a piece about
Uncle Gib in his daily diary. One of the Children of Zebulun
brought the paper round for him to see. It quoted his Agony Uncle
replies in the magazine and had a lot of praise for their out-andout
condemnation of pre- and extramarital sex. Uncle Gib was
over the moon, though he attributed the comments to God's efforts
rather than Henley's, and kept saying how his strict morality had
at last been recognised. But Lance wasn't so sure. He couldn't
have explained why, but it looked to him as if the diarist was
mocking Uncle Gib, sending him up, and didn't really think the
way he answered young couples' letters was the right thing to do
but was – well, something to laugh at.

But it made Uncle Gib stricter than ever. He gave Lance a lot
of pain by referring more and more often to Gemma and to Lance's
wickedness in hitting her, which he said would never have
happened if the two of them hadn't lived in sin. As if married
people never fought. He said he might write to Jon Henley and
tell him this was living proof of what immorality led to. And when
Lance tried asking him about receivers of stolen goods, just a
name or just a street number, just a hint, Uncle Gib said not to
be surprised if he came home one night and found the locks had
been changed.

The result of all this was that Lance didn't go back to White
Hair's place for several days. He went to Gemma's, though. The
weather had changed and grown cold, as unseasonably cold as
the previous weeks had been unusually hot. She wasn't to be
seen on the balcony with her baby and certainly not sitting in
one of the cane chairs. The third time he went a man was up
there, a young olive-skinned and very good-looking man with a
moustache, doing something to the railing with a screwdriver.
Just some workman, a council bloke, Lance thought, sent round
to do a bit of maintenance. But he went away with an uneasy
feeling. A council workman might look the same as a new
boyfriend and a new boyfriend might mend a railing. Why not?
When he'd lived there he'd often done little jobs for Gemma.
Thinking like that brought back his depression and he had to
spend money he couldn't afford on a couple of Bacardi Breezers.
Next morning, avoiding her flat, he went round to Chepstow
Villas.

He arrived outside the house just as White Hair was coming
down the steps, briefcase in hand, and had no time to hide himself.
But the guy didn't recognise him because he didn't notice him.
People like the guy didn't even see people like him except after
dark when they thought people like him were going to mug them.
He watched White Hair go off up the road towards the bus or
the tube or whatever work he did. Then, turning back, he saw
the steps had gone but he didn't wonder where they had gone or
how they had got there. He wasn't bothered. He had the key to
the side gate with him, though he feared that by now the guy
would have seen that the gate wasn't bolted. But he hadn't seen.
Or if he had, he'd done nothing about it. Lance unlocked the gate
and let himself into the garden.

That window, the one on the right-hand side of the french
windows, was the focal point of his study. It consisted of sixteen
rectangular panes. He could break one of the panes but that would
do no good as this was a sash window without a handle and probably
fitted with pegs, one on each side, which constituted window
locks. Even if the sash were to be raised it would rise no higher
than six inches because of the locks. You couldn't get skinnier
than him but even he couldn't have squeezed through a six-inch
gap. How about the french windows then? There were four of
them and he could tell from their handles that all were openable.
His mind went back to the only occasion he had been in that
room. No bolts on those windows, he remembered, keys in the
locks but no bolts. If he had a stick or, preferably, an electric
screwdriver, could he push one of those keys through from outside?
The key would drop to the ground and then, using something thin
and flat, say one of those nail files Gemma used, perhaps he could
ease the key under the door and very carefully tease it . . .

The sound of a door slamming, the front door surely, sent him
retreating to the cover of a dense dark-green bush with flat white
bracts of flowers. Veiled in leaves, he could see into the room
without being seen. The woman he had seen earlier in the week
plying the vacuum cleaner had come in and now she dropped the
two bags she was carrying with a grunt and collapsed into an
armchair. Lance didn't stay to see what happened next. He let
himself out of the side gate, locked it after him and put the key
into his jeans pocket.

It was crazy, it was only tormenting himself, he knew all that,
but still instead of going back the way he had come, he took the
small diversion that led him along Talbot Road. No one was on
Gemma's balcony. No washing hung there and the chairs had been
taken indoors. But as Lance leant against the custard-coloured
wall with its red-and-blue hieroglyphics and stared upwards, he
fancied he saw a movement behind the glass door. He thought
he could make out two heads and though he could see no more
than blurred outlines, he was quite sure one of them wasn't the
baby's. Once or twice he had heard Uncle Gib use the expression
'a heavy heart' and now, for the first time, he knew what it
meant. His heart was heavy. It felt like a stone hanging inside his
chest and his muscles and his collarbone weren't strong enough
to hold it up. He would have liked to let it sink him, to lie down
on the pavement and give himself up to his grief.

But he plodded on his way, hunched inside his hoodie. Why
had he punched Gemma? It all came back to that, that was what
set it going. He wasn't the sort of bloke to smack a girl around
or he thought he wasn't. But that time . . . She had told him he
ought to get a job, any job, it didn't matter much what, so long
as he could stop being a Jobseeker. Not all those employers he
had interviews with could have rejected him, he must be setting
out to make himself unemployable on purpose. As for her, once
the baby was at school she'd get work, she'd be along at the Job
Centre the first day she'd dropped him off at primary school. As
things were, she didn't want Lance under her feet all day and
every day. It wasn't as if he'd babysit for her while she went to
the gym or had a coffee with one of her girlfriends. All he'd do,
she said, was sit about with the telly on like the lazy layabout
he was. It was when she said those words that he saw red and
punched her.

At first he thought he'd broken her jaw but it wasn't as bad as
that. Her eye went dark red and, when she'd sworn at him, she
put her hand up to her mouth, then held it out to him to show
the bloody tooth he'd knocked out. He was sorry at once, he said
he didn't know what came over him and he'd never do it again.

'Too right you won't,' she said. 'You won't get the bloody chance.
If you're not out of my house in fifteen fucking minutes I'm getting
Dwayne round here to put you out.'

Dwayne was her brother, an amateur heavyweight boxer and
rumoured to be a bare-knuckle fighter as well. Lance had got
out, though not before Dwayne had roughed him up a bit, and
eventually he had ended up with Uncle Gib. But the regrets never
ended. The funny thing was he hadn't lost his temper a single
time, not once, since then. He'd been a different man.

In the evenings they sat in front of Auntie Ivy's black-and-white
television set. Lance found the telly soothing, it didn't much
matter to him what was on, though he drew the line – when he
was in a position to draw the line – at documentaries. They
reminded him of school. The great drawback to watching was
Uncle Gib. He chain-smoked. He talked through every programme,
especially the sexy ones, and they were mostly sexy or violent or
both. Uncle Gib called everything disgusting or ungodly and,
puffing away, said it was liable to bring fire from heaven down on
Channel Four and he was particularly incensed by what Lance
liked best, girls with not many clothes on. The two of them sat
on Auntie Ivy's sagging mock-leather sofa, its seat cushions cracked
and wrinkled like Uncle Gib's face, while Lance stared in silence
and Uncle Gib fidgeted about, sometimes shaking his fist at the
screen and shouting, 'Harlot!' or, 'You wait till the Day of
Judgement.'

Lance's favourite sitcom had just begun when the letter box
rattled. Uncle Gib went off to answer it. It was his house, as he
often said, and he wasn't having Lance answering
his
door. Lance
was watching the female lead, a beautiful girl mysteriously wearing
a bikini in the living room in the depths of winter, trying to persuade
her dad to let her boyfriend stay the night, when Uncle Gib came
back with two men, one of whom Lance recognised at once as
the guy with the moustache he had seen on Gemma's balcony.
The other man had a red face and quite a belly on him, though
he was young, no more than twenty-something. 'Ian,' he said. 'Ian
Pollitt. This here's Feisal Smith but you can call him Fize.'

Lance got up. 'What d'you want?'

'My mate and me, we've come here to tell you,' said Ian Pollitt,
staring at Lance the way a policeman might.

This seemed to be the signal for Uncle Gib to switch off the
telly. He turned back to Lance, said, 'I don't know what this is
about but don't think I'm going. This is my house and I'm staying
to hear what he's got to say.'

'Suit yourself,' said Fize. 'I'm not bothered.' It was the first time
he had spoken. He had a funny accent, not like the Indians but
not English either.

'Sit down,' said Uncle Gib with the nearest to graciousness
he ever got. 'Make yourselves at home.' His cloudy old eyes were
glittering with malice. 'Any friends of my nephew's are friends
of mine.' He poked two cigarettes out of the packet. 'Want a
ciggie?'

Ian Pollitt took no notice. Fize shook his head. From his jeans
pocket he fetched something in a small plastic bag. 'You know
what this is?'

Lance did. He had seen it before, though in a bloodstained
condition. It was Gemma's tooth. Dry-mouthed, he nodded. Uncle
Gib looked at the tooth, did a double take and jumped to his feet,
throwing up his hands. Fize watched him, apparently with
sympathy, and at last he sat down, patting the seat beside him
and smiling quite pleasantly.

'It's like this,' he said when Uncle Gib had joined him, looking
up at Lance, 'Gemma's a very good-looking girl, as you know. Now
she's got a horrendous great gap in her mouth, thanks to you.
You'd agree with that, wouldn't you?'

'Don't matter whether he does or not,' said Pollitt.

Again Lance nodded. It was Uncle Gib who spoke. 'He'll agree
all right. He knows what he's done.'

'Now Gemma's been to the dentist and he says she needs an
implant, that's what he called it, an implant, and that don't come
cheap. Now Gemma's a single parent and she don't have that kind
of money.'

'What kind of money?' Uncle Gib was relishing this. Lance
could see he had difficulty in suppressing his laughter.

It was Pollitt's turn to speak. 'The dentist said he'd do it as
economical as what he could but it'll still be a grand. One K, if
you get my meaning.'

Lance found his voice with difficulty. 'A thousand pounds?'

'Right. You got it.'

'But I haven't got it,' Lance said. 'Where am I to get a thousand
pounds? I'm signing on.'

'You should have thought of that before you smacked a young
lady in the mouth.'

'Me and Gemma,' said Fize, 'we're not unreasonable, we'll give
you till Saturday.'

Pollitt intervened again. 'Next Saturday, that's May twenty-six.
By midnight, mind. That's the deadline.You can bring it round to
her place, you know where it is.'

Lance nodded, dry-mouthed.

'Don't think her and Fize haven't seen you stalking her, hanging
about outside at all hours.'

'I haven't got no money,' said Lance.

'Get it off this gentleman then,' said Fize politely. 'He's a property
owner, isn't he? He's got to be loaded.'