CHAPTER SIX
Although the front room of Uncle Gib's house was kept 'looking nice' and therefore its door never opened, the exception was when he held a prayer meeting. In preparing for selected guests from the Church of the Children of Zebulun, he went so far as to fill twelve very small glasses (of assorted shapes and patterns) with orange squash but not so far as to clean the room. Fortunately, most of the visitors to the house in Blagrove Road spent their time on their knees, for if anyone sat down on the horsehair sofa or one of the chairs, clouds of suffocating dust puffed out of the upholstery.
Normally calm and laid back, Uncle Gib became rather nervous on prayer meeting evenings and got through at least ten cigarettes in the preceding two or three hours. He was anxious to be rid of Lance before the first Child of Zebulun arrived. His own past was no longer of importance. Several years before, he had repented in front of the whole congregation, been named and shamed, called a lost sheep, bleating and wretched, at last been forgiven and received into the fold. Now, thanks to the infinite mercy of God, he was an Elder. Things were different for Lance, unregenerate shoplifter, mugger, mobile phone thief and batterer of the woman he had lived in sin with, taker of the Lord's name in vain and a no-good son to his parents. When you came to think of it – and Uncle Gib often did think of it – there was no commandment Lance did not regularly flout, except the one about not making a graven image. Nor, as far as Uncle Gib knew, had he yet killed anybody.
Lance must be well out of the place before six when the prayer meeting was due to start. Earlier in the day he had announced his intention of leaving the house at 'around six' and 'going to see a bloke about a job'. Uncle Gib didn't believe in the job or in any job connected with Lance but he felt his usual satirical rejoinder might be out of place. Lance might change his mind and stay at home. At twenty to six he had his eye on the minute hand of Auntie Ivy's family grandfather clock and was already beginning a nervous pacing. Lance had been up in his bedroom, sitting on the bed thinking about the money in no very systematic way and coming to the conclusion that the sum might be ninety pounds or a hundred and fifty-five and he was just going to have to guess. Gradually, his thoughts turned, as they often did, to Gemma, the girl whose eye he had blacked and tooth he had knocked out. He missed her and not just her TV set and her microwave. The walk to Chepstow Villas would take him very near her flat in Talbot Road. There was a chance she might come out on to her balcony to hang out her washing. Or she might be parking the baby buggy or, since it was warm and sunny, just sitting in one of the chairs opposite the one he used to sit in. After a moment or two, brooding on what he had lost, he went to the top of the stairs and traipsed slowly down them.
From there, just inside the open front-room door, he could see Uncle Gib pacing up and down, a cigarette hanging from his lower lip. This cheered him up. Even if he stopped for as much as five minutes under Gemma's windows, it still wouldn't take him more than twenty minutes to get to Chepstow Villas. If he was late the guy would just have to wait. Better to get his own back on Uncle Gib for all those starvation-level meals and the rat in the toilet and his poxy bedroom and the smoke. He went back upstairs and watched the minute hand on the imitation Rolex he had stolen from a man he mugged for his mobile, moving sluggishly towards six o'clock.
The grandfather clock chimed and when the sixth stroke died away Uncle Gib called out, 'Come on, you. Time you was on your way.'
Lance winced at that 'you.' This particular usage was the way Gemma had sometimes addressed him but with a loving or sexy note in her voice: 'Come on, you' when she was in bed waiting for him, for instance. Uncle Gib just sounded nasty. 'I'm on my way,' Lance called out. 'No need to lose your cool.' As he spoke, the letter box on the front door clattered. There was no bell.
A deep voice said, 'God bless you, Brother Gilbert,' and heavy footsteps sounded, making their way into the front room.
Lance started laughing. He couldn't help himself. Very slowly he got up off the bed, crossed the landing and paused at the top of the stairs. Once more, the letter box clattered. Lance descended two stairs as Uncle Gib came out of the front room to answer the door and, looking up, shook his fist at him. Another Child of Zebulun was admitted, this time a very old one with a white beard. Lance would have liked to say, 'Hi, Santa, how're you doin'?' to him but didn't dare. He might come back to find the front door bolted on the inside.
His mood more cocky than it had been for days, he walked quite jauntily along Raddington Road and into the Portobello. The block of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea social housing where Gemma lived was a little way south of here. Lance walked under the Westway and the train bridge, down Westbourne Park Road and Powis Mews. In Talbot Road he skirted the yellowpainted concrete wall, thickly defaced with red and blue graffiti, and, superstitiously, stopped himself looking up until he was directly under her balcony. If he didn't look she might be there. He closed his eyes, then opened them. The washing was on the line, including a T-shirt with pink roses on it – painfully familiar to Lance – the buggy was there and the chairs but no Gemma. Lance experienced such a wave of nostalgia and longing at the sight of that T-shirt that he had to hold on to the concrete gatepost. Tears came into his eyes. He rubbed them away with his fists and walked on down Leamington Road. Depression had returned and settled on him like a heavy black bag strapped on his shoulders.
The house in Chepstow Villas was semi-detached, a white stucco Georgian house, as estate agents would have described it, of three floors and a basement. Behind the wall and the gateposts with lions' heads on top of them was a large front garden full of flowering shrubs, some in full bloom. A flight of six stone steps ascended to the front door. Lance noted that to the left of the garage was a side gate, perhaps six feet high. He would note more of that sort of thing later.
The old guy who opened the front door was tallish and thinnish, but nowhere near as thin as Lance. Gemma said no one was. He had white hair and lots of it. Saying, 'Pleased to meet you,' in response to his, 'Eugene Wren. How do you do?' Lance thought how unfair it was, what a sign of filthy class differences, that this old fellow was wearing a brown suede jacket that must have come from one of those places in Bond Street and a real Rolex. When he got inside the house, into a sort of front room only it wasn't at the front, the unfairness of it was almost too much for him.
He had never seen anywhere like it. He didn't know places like this existed except on TV and those he'd never really believed in. When he'd seen them on Gemma's super-TV, he and she sitting side by side on her settee, she'd said to him, 'There's no places really like that. They make them look that way to get you to watch.' And he'd said, 'You don't reckon those Beckhams or Elton John have stuff like that in their places?' 'Well, they're billionaires, aren't they?' she'd said. 'They don't count.'
So was this guy a billionaire? The room dazzled Lance, the pictures, the furniture, the jugs and pots and statue things, the curtains, yards and yards of them trailing on the carpet, the satin cushions coloured like jewels, the little tables, the clocks, the books done in leather and gold, the crystal that a sunbeam turned to diamonds. He stood and stared, feeling a fool, wishing he hadn't come – then glad he'd come, determined to make the most of it.
'Do sit down,' said Eugene Wren. 'May I know your name?'
Lance sat. He lived in a world where no one used surnames. 'Lance,' he said and, when the guy looked puzzled, 'Lance Platt.'
He was no longer staring but looking about him. Those were french windows the sunbeam came through, ordinary glass windows without bars. Outside, the garden had a high wall round it, all overgrown with ivy and stuff, but there was a side gate, wasn't there?
'Now,' said Eugene Wren, 'I have a sum of money here for you. All you have to do is tell me the amount you lost.'
What with his disappointment over Gemma and the shock of this place, he'd forgotten about the money. 'Ninety-five,' he said.
The old guy smiled. 'Ah, then I'm afraid the sum I found in the street wasn't yours. Pity.'
Lance didn't know what to say. He didn't much care. Ninetyfive pounds or whatever it really was would be nothing to the rich pickings in this place. He got up. 'I'll be going then.'
Having nothing more to say, he said nothing, until out in the hall again, 'Cheers.' In passing he had observed the burglar alarm on the wall, the bolts on the front door. It closed when he was halfway down the path. The whole visit had lasted no more than six minutes.
Bars at the ground-floor front windows, he noted, and also at the basement window down a flight of iron steps. That side gate presented no problem. There would be other ground-floor windows at the back, most likely not barred. I wonder if he lives alone. No sign of a woman but what sign would there be? He, Lance, would have to keep some sort of watch on the place, something more easily done from a car or van. Now who did he know who would let him have a loan of a van? Gemma's brother? You must be joking, Lance thought, as he walked back in the direction of her flat.
She was there! She was standing on the balcony up against the railing, holding her baby in her arms. Lance wasn't the first man to be moved by the sight of the woman he loved holding her child close against her heart. He let out a low cry of anguish. Gemma heard him and looked down, retreating immediately into the flat and slamming the glass door behind her.
Well, that hadn't been so bad, Eugene reflected. A nondescript sort of young man, all skin and bone, fairish, potato-faced – but what did it matter? He sat down to wait for Ella, then, seeing there was still half an hour to go before she was expected, pulled open the drawer in the carved black oak table (Danish, circa 1790), a heavy drawer invisible when closed, and contemplated the three Chocorange sweets remaining in the last packet inside it. They were the last he would ever have or would he perhaps not have them at all? Was the strength of mind he had earlier been so proud of strong enough to help him throw them in the waste bin?
As often happened, when thinking about his habit, he made fresh discoveries about himself and about his addiction. Today's was that no matter how many of the things he ate in quick succession, he never got tired of them. He always wanted another one. And that wasn't true of all addictive substances. Take drink, for instance. If you drank too much you either passed out or were sick. Too many cigarettes made you nauseous or start coughing. As for those joints, two had been enough to make him float while things happened in his head that caused him to fear for his sanity. There was nothing like that with Chocorange. He just wanted more and more. Therefore he must stop. What he would do was throw away two of them and suck the third.
The last one, the last of all, he conveyed slowly to his mouth, then took the remaining two to the kitchen and dropped them, not directly into the bin, but into a plastic bag containing the outside leaves of a lettuce, several tea bags and some pâté past its sell-by date. Disposing of them like this among damp, unsavoury rubbish would be a sure way of stopping him retrieving them later. He tied the handles of the plastic bag together and dropped it into the bin.
Buy no more. It would be hard but he knew that already. Out of nowhere came a memory of running down supplies once before, of being alone here after all the shops were shut. A frantic search had begun, looking in all the unlikely places until – wonderful discovery, better than the first drink of the evening, almost better than sex – he had found an unopened packet in the bottom of the plastic bag he kept by him for taking to the shops. It was untouched, still sheathed in that ridiculous cellophane stuff which took such efforts, such tearing and biting, to rip off.
He heard Ella's key in the lock and made himself swallow the last sliver of Chocorange. The very last he would ever taste. In a few weeks' time it would be no more than a memory and, he hoped, a source of wonder that he had ever approached being hooked on a sweet. Ella was looking very pretty in a pink suit with a sort of frill round the neck, which seemed to be the fashion. Pink suited her. She put her arms round his neck and kissed him.
'You've been eating chocolate again, Gene.'
'My weakness,' he said.
'Yes, well, I'm as bad. And I had far too much lunch. How did you get on with your caller?'
He told her.
'You haven't sent that cheque to Mr Roseman yet, have you? Because if not I've got to go over to the Welbeck Nightingale in Shepherd's Bush some time tomorrow. A patient of mine is in there. Would you like me to take the cheque and give it to him? The post is so unreliable.'
Lance wasted no time. Having racked his brains for hours the previous evening, he could think of no one he knew who would lend him a car or van, so he began his campaign by going back to Chepstow Villas on foot. It was a bright sunny morning. The house opposite was clearly empty, no curtains or blinds at the windows, the front lawn uncut and a sold notice planted just inside the gate. Lance looked all round to check there was no one about. He slipped through the gateway of the empty house and squatted down behind a wall of solid stucco up to a height of about two feet with a row of small pillars and a coping on top of it. Squatting is very uncomfortable after about five minutes. So Lance sat on the ground which, fortunately, was bone dry, after an April of lower rainfall than any since records began. It was just after 8.30.
He was soon cursing the kind of people who don't need to leave for work until 9.30 or ten. What did that rich guy do for a living? Never having worked himself, Lance knew very little about other people's jobs. In a bank, he thought vaguely, or was he something called a stockbroker? He had no idea what this might be. Maybe the man didn't work at all. Maybe he stayed in all day. He was deciding this must be true, that the guy stopped in to guard all that stuff he'd got in the house, when the front door opened and the white-haired man emerged. He was dressed today in a dark suit, white shirt and a grey tie with some sort of pattern on it in purple. Lance thought the bag he was carrying was called a briefcase. And now he was in a dilemma. Should he follow him to find out where he went or take advantage of his absence to get round the back of the house? The latter option. White Hair wouldn't be carrying that case thing if he was just going down to the shops.
First, though, he tried ringing the doorbell. There might be a woman in there. Just because he hadn't seen a woman the evening before didn't mean the guy hadn't a wife or a girlfriend on the premises. He rang again, waited, listened at the letter box for a movement from inside. There was nothing. At the side of the house, the detached side, was a small barred window. He hoisted himself up, peered between the bars. He could see the hallway he had passed through on his extremely short visit. No one there, no movement. He tried the side gate. It had no latch but a handle that turned and it was a solid gate, made from some sort of hardwood. Of course it was locked or bolted on the other side. There was no way he could get over it without a pair of steps.
Lance walked down Chepstow Villas into Pembridge Villas where he soon turned right from where he calculated which garden of these houses backed on to the guy's place. A woman was staring at him out of a ground-floor window. He carried on walking until he came to the next cross-street. A house about halfway down was being renovated. Scaffolding covered the front of it and a sign in the front garden said, 'Williams and Dhaliwal, Specialists in Elegant Restoration'. However, Williams and Dhaliwal weren't working today, though they had left a good deal of their equipment about, including a pair of aluminium steps resting against the lowest bar of the scaffold.
People who see a man carrying a pair of steps don't assume he has stolen them. They suppose he is on his way to a building job. Without more thought, Lance picked up the steps, which were very light, rested them on his shoulders and set off back to old White Hair's. He put the steps up against the side gate, climbed up them, pulled them up after him and dropped down on the other side. Silence. No shocked yells. No cries of, 'What do you think you are doing?'
As he had thought, the windows at the rear weren't barred. No doubt White Hair thought that no one could get into that garden from the back and maybe he was right. The high walls surrounding it were covered in creepers, which looked to Lance like the prickly kind you couldn't climb up. Only a cat could climb them and one had, the stripy devil that had raked its claws across his fingers. From among the thorny leaves it stared malevolently at Lance, unblinking and perfectly still. Never mind. He wasn't going to climb any walls. Some awareness of danger kept him from going boldly up to the french windows. It was as well for him it did, for as he crept up to a small sash window to take a look inside, a roar, a crescendo of sound, held him frozen there on the paving. A vacuum cleaner. It was a Hoover starting up. Without going any closer, he could see a woman plying this machine up and down a carpet, like someone mowing a lawn.
This woman must have arrived while he was walking round the block looking for a way in. She had her back to him now but was about to turn round. He ducked down and went back on all fours the way he had come. How long would she be in there? Hours? There were no ground-floor windows on this side of the house so no possibility of her seeing him unless she came out into the garden. He undid the bolts on the side gate and turned the key, listening all the time to the rise and fall of the Hoover's bray. What to do with the steps? If he took them with him, where could he dump them? By this time he had moved them out into the front garden and locked the gate behind him. He was scared to take them back to where he had found them. In the end he slipped the key into his pocket and left the steps behind, leaning up against the house wall.
He'd go back again next day. After 8.45 when the old guy went out and before 9.30 when that woman came in. The chances were no one would notice the gate was unbolted or that the key was missing.