A Sight for Sore Eyes (21 page)

you haven't known me for years!' 'I've known you were somewhere, my perfect woman, waiting for my ring.' He laid his hands on her shoulders, tucking in his damaged little finger so as not to spoil the image. She looked at the ring, then at herself in the glass, then up at him. He kissed her. 'I can't take it.' 'Then I won't let you go. I'll keep you here.' 'But it's an engagement ring.' 'It's a lover's ring,' he said, and then she said she would take it and wear it. It was time for her to go home. He unwrapped the silk and let it fall in a pale shining heap on the floor. The awful clothes she intended to wear offended him. He would have liked to keep her naked, a living statue, for him to adore. But she put on the jeans and the shirt and a wool cardigan, the same one that she had worn when he folded back the sleeve and wrote his phone number on her wrist. He lifted her hand and admired the ring. It was dark now, after nine, and he wouldn't let her go on the tube alone. 'Couldn't you take me in your car?' 'I hate it,' he said. 'I never use it. I'm going to get rid of it and buy a small one.' So he went with her on the tube down to Bond Street and changed with her on to the Central Line and left her only when they were under the trees near her house. All the way, in the trains, he kept his arm round her, holding her close, and holding too the hand that wore the ring.

Chapter 24

Midnight was past by the time he got back. He tidied up the house, washed her wineglass and the plates and cups they had used, put the rest of the wine back into the fridge. It was careless of him to have left that silk lying in a heap on the front-room floor. The result would be creases he might have difficulty in eradicating. He folded the silk once and then once again and hung it over the bannisters. Lying in bed he thought about Francine as she had been, seated in front of his mirror, swathed in stiff silk, her reflected face looking gravely back at her real face. She must easily be the most beautiful girl in the world. A sight for sore eyes. Alfred Chance had once used that expression and it had stuck in his mind. About an object, though, not a person. It meant that looking at beauty took away pain and hurt, and made you better. Francine made him better and his eyes were sore when they couldn't feast on her. He had never seen anyone to touch her. But there must be changes made, in his life and hers and the way they were together, and in the places they lived in. For one thing, he wanted her with him all the time. And dressed the way he wanted her to be, not in that hideous denim, that blue cotton, those boots. He began to think, not of Alpheton now and the Joyden School, but of Gustav Klimt and the women he painted in glittering gowns of lame and sequins or velvet and fur, the jewels that hung in heavy ropes round their necks or supported swathes of their hair. He would like to dress Francine like a Klimt woman and decorate her with necklaces and bracelets and collars of pearls. And live with her somewhere beautiful, a fit setting for her. On that thought he fell asleep and slept late next morning. He was up and counting what remained of the advance payment he had had from Mrs Trent before he remembered that today was the day. Today, or this evening, was when he was going to do it. But still he counted the money and found that he had something under a hundred pounds left. There had been no more replies to his advertisement and he had decided not to re-insert it. He couldn't afford to advertise - or, for that matter, not to advertise. The Edsel, what he got for the Edsel, was his only hope. Surely prices must have risen in all the years since Keith had bought the car. Might it now be worth as much as ten thousand pounds? He filled a bucket with hot water, got his sponges and cloths and brushes, and went outside to clean it. Nige, who never went out to work these days but did it all from home on a computer and a modem and e-mail and things like that, put his head over the fence. Megsie had told him she'd seen Teddy's girlfriend and she was a real looker and next time she came round would Teddy like to bring her in for a drink? Teddy said, maybe. He thought Nige would go indoors again, but he didn't. A white cane garden chair was brought out of Mr Chance's workshop that they called the 'pavilion' and Nige sat down in it, enjoying the Indian Summer. Teddy was polishing the windscreen when a tap on the french window made him jump. His grandmother was standing in his room, looking out, wearing her red sugarloaf hat and with a heavy bag of shopping on either side of her. He hated her having a key, but she had had one since his mother died. For all he knew she had taken it off his mother's body, she was capable of that. He knew no way to get it from her. She opened the french window and came out. 'Keith not back yet, then?' she said. 'He's not coming back.' 'You'd think he'd want his car. What does he get about in? Relies on that motor bike, does he?' 'No, he doesn't,' came Nige's voice. 'He got Teddy here to sell that to one of our chums.' 'Who asked you to put your spoke in,' said Agnes under her breath. But Teddy thought she gave him a funny look. They went into the house together and Agnes insisted on going all over it, admiring the decorating he'd done since she was last there. She looked at the stone-coloured silk hanging over the bannisters and said there was a good chance her pal Gladys would run up a pair of curtains for him in exchange for him painting her outside toilet. On the arm of a chair in the front room she found a fine black hair, a good eighteen inches long. For someone in her eighties she had miraculous eyesight. 'Who's been here, then?' 'My girlfriend,' said Teddy and, liking the sound of it, said it again. 'My girlfriend.' For some reason that stuck Agnes as uproarious and she started laughing. 'You take her about in that car, do you?' she said. 'I'm driving it down to Keith in Liphook tomorrow,' said Teddy coldly. 'Right,' said Agnes. 'I thought something must account for you cleaning it. You're not famous for doing things for other people unless there's anything in it for you. He paying you, is he?' Teddy got rid of her as soon as he could and returned to polishing the Edsel. At lunch-time Megsie came home, bringing four other yuppies with her, and they all stood about in the garden drinking Buck's Fizzes and calling over the fence every five minutes for him to join them. ('Leave that old Edwin, why don't you?' as Megsie put it.) Cleaning the car thoroughly took Teddy all of three hours and he still, naturally, had done nothing about the interior of the boot. In the afternoon Francine phoned him on her mobile. They had made no arrangement to see each other that day, but they would meet again on Friday. He hadn't much to say to her, the things his head was full of were not for her to hear and the things she had to tell him, about her stepmother and some job her stepmother didn't want her to take, didn't interest him. But he loved the sound of her voice. He could have listened to it all day even if it had been speaking a foreign language. If he got a sizeable sum for the Edsel maybe he could find a place for them with the money. Rent a flat in some nice place, a flat with gorgeous rooms in it like the ones in Orcadia Place. He imagined a drawing-room with glass doors giving on to an Italian garden, surrounded by evergreen trees with dark-green pointed leaves, tubs on the paving stones full of lilies and cypresses. A stone seat, a round pond with goldfish, bronze dolphins whose spouting mouths made a fountain. Francine would sit on the seat in her white Fortuny dress, trailing one hand in the clear water... At seven in the evening he phoned Harriet Oxenholme. The answering machine replied, Harriet's voice uttering a bare sentence, none of your detailed or facetious stuff, but simply repeating the number and saying, 'Would you like to leave a message?' He would not. He was satisfied that she had gone away. It was necessary to wait till it was dark, but not till the midnight hours. One terrible difficulty remained and one uncertainty. Should he open that boot and look inside before he left? Or wait until he was up in the mews behind Orcadia Place? He understood now that in some half-unconscious part of his mind, some subliminal region, he had been asking himself that question all day. Under the fantasies of Francine and the Italian garden, under the plans for selling the Edsel and finding a place for him and her to live, had lain that question. If he opened the boot lid here, there was always the possibility of Nige and Megsie looking out of an upstairs window and seeing th~ contents. Perhaps, of course, seeing no more than the plastic bag, a grey shiny thing tied up with masking tape. But would a smell be released? That was what he had to think of, the chance of a smell. If Nige and Megsie would only go out, he would be safe to do it, but he knew they weren't going out. Throughout the course of the afternoon, the Buck's Fizz drinking, the comments on the Indian Summer and eventually the alfresco eating of deep-pan pizzas, he had several times heard them say they intended to put their feet up and watch their Trainspotting video. He dared not open that boot with them only yards away. But to go to Orcadia Place without knowing what he would find when he eventually opened it? His imagination, always powerful, pictured for him a sodden mass, something like the contents of a drain he had once seen when walking past roadworks, grey, wet, like mud vet full of sticks and stones. There might be powerful acids in a body that could eat through plastic. It was eight months now since Keith had died. In the end he made a decision and at ten, when their lights showed him that Nige and Megsie were in their front room, watching their video, he got into the driver's seat of the Edsel and turned on the ignition. He had to make several attempts before the engine would fire and he realised that cars had batteries and batteries could go flat. Still, it was all right. He reversed out of the carport, turned and emerged through the double gates into the street. A nasty moment was when the curtains parted in the front-room window next door and Megsie waved to him. He waved back, making a sort of salute. Not for the first time he wondered what it was those two wanted of him, why did they seem to like him when he had repulsed every overture they made? The night was dark and moonless, but bright up here with white and yellow chemical light. He drove down one of the roads that border Gladstone Park and there, with open space and shady trees on one side and houses fairly distant on the other, he parked and got out of the car. No one was about. Most of the houses were well lit but some only had lights on in upstairs rooms. He walked to the back of the car and stood looking at the boot lid. In those moments he was there he asked himself if even now it might be possible just to ditch the Edsel, drive it somewhere out in the country and dump it in a wood or on the edge of a field. Who would know whose car it was or whose the body in its boot was? But it wasn't as easy as that. Megsie and Nige would know. His grandmother would. Miracle Motors would. The police would enquire of the car dealers, of all London dealers in that kind of car, if not of the others. And, anyway, if he dumped the car he wouldn't be able to sell it and get his five, or maybe ten, thousand pounds. He put the key into the boot lock and turned it. His hand rested for a little while on the chrome clasp of the boot lid just above the number plate. Then he opened it quickly. He shut his eyes, lifted the lid and opened his eyes. Nothing was changed. Inside the boot it looked exactly the same as it had when he closed the lid eight months before. As far as he could tell in the not very strong light. He had been consciously not breathing in, or, rather, breathing only through his mouth. Now he drew the air in through his nostrils. There was no smell, nothing. He began to feel sick, nauseous, even though there was no smell. He bent over a little, approached nearer, and then there came to him, as if from a far-distant charnel house, borne on a gust of wind, a faint dreadful breath. Quickly he closed the lid. He locked it. He got back into the car and drove off towards the Edgware Road. The Edsel attracted a lot of curious or admiring glances while he was stopped at lights. Someone crossing the road behind him, weaving his way through the cars, slapped the boot lid with the flat of his hand. A shudder ran through Teddy. From Hall Road he turned into the mews. Here the street lamps were the old-fashioned kind, up-ended lanterns on black-painted iron posts, and there were only two of them. As far as he could tell, all the garage doors were shut and all the gates. Two cars only were parked. It was Saturday night and people were either out or had gone to their places in the country. He parked the Edsel with its rear end up against the double doors of the Orcadia Cottage garage. Climbing over the gate or the wall to unbolt the gate would be easy, but he dared not take the risk. It was one thing to be seen pulling a bag of something out of a car boot and moving it in through an open gateway, quite another to be caught in the burglar act of climbing a wall. Still, the unlikelihood of his being seen at all gave him confidence. No windows overlooked this part of the mews, the flats were over garages a good fifty yards away. The only people likely to see anything would be drivers of cars coming home or the drivers of these two parked cars, come to fetch them. Carrying Keith's toolbag, a torch and a walking stick that had been his grandfather's, he walked round to the front of the house and let himself into the front garden by the wrought-iron gate in the wall. Once inside, he or anything he did couldn't be seen from the street. Unfortunately, it was impossible to get from this front garden into the back yard without passing through the house. He had been almost sure of this last time he was there and now it was confirmed. Inside the enclosed garden it was quite dark. No lights were on in the house. The myriad leaves that covered it hung still and dark, but each, it seemed, with a tiny surface gleam. He looked up to see if any windows were open on the upper floor, when a light coming on in the porch over his head gave him a fright. All the leaves suddenly became acid-green. He waited for the sound of running feet, the door to be thrown open, but there was nothing. Then he understood that the light had been on a time-switch. Another had come on inside one of the downstairs front rooms. Did she have an alarm system? He thought he remembered a keypad on the hall wall. She was scatty enough to have one and not use it. She was feather-brained enough not to have turned the key in the higher of the two locks on the door. The light was a help to him. It would ensure he made very little noise. He closed his eyes, remembering the layout of the door on the hall side, the shape of the square-headed knob whereby the door was opened, the position of the letter-box and, above all, that there was no second interior box covering its opening on the inside. Slowly and very carefully, he inserted the walking stick, hook end first, through the letter-box. When it and his forearm were fully pushed through, he bent his arm round and felt with the hook for the knob. The hook tapped against the woodwork, then caught on the knob. He pulled the walking stick towards him, the lock clicked and the door came open. Dropping the stick on the floor inside, he picked up the toolbag and went in. As he had thought, the suitcases were gone. She was gone. The place was very silent and quite warm. She was the kind of person rich enough to leave the central heating on while she was away. Now what to do first? Unbolt that gate or explore the cellar? Well-off as he must be, Simon Alpheton didn't throw his money about when it came to choosing a restaurant. He never had, Harriet remembered. Still, she had supposed that the acquisition of wealth would have changed his habits. La Ruchetta sounded all right, though she had never heard of it before, and the Old Brompton Road was all right, so long as the place you were going to