Dallas pulled a bottle from his coat pocket: Glenlivet, finest malt. Here we go, I thought. ‘Take off your coat,’ I invited him. ‘And I’ll get some glasses.’
I went out into the tiny kitchen at the back of my office. It was freezing in there. I found two clean glasses and returned to find Dallas hanging his overcoat next to my Crombie. I placed the glasses on the desktop. In the heat of the room they misted over immediately. Dallas unstoppered the bottle and poured two generous drinks. We raised our glasses. He toasted me with a big, greasy smile. ‘To crime,’ he said. I didn’t toast him back, just took a long swallow and felt the whisky run smoothly down my throat. If I’d known what was soon to happen I’d have choked.
Dallas left about an hour later, after we’d killed more than half the bottle. I watched him drive the Cadillac that was about the size of a small boat out of the street, in the rain that was coming down heavily again, and lose himself on the main road.
I sat down and tasted the liquor in my mouth. Cat and I regarded each other silently. I decided to leave my debt-collecting chore until the next day. The thought of paddling through Richmond right then left me cold.
I put the papers and the receipt book into my desk and rescued my book. I spent the rest of the afternoon alternately in Florida and dreaming about the butcher’s daughter. Nobody rang, wrote or called. It was to be one of the last peaceful afternoons I would have for a while.
2
I
spent the evening dallying with Edith House, or Eddie as she called herself. She was a great girl, but rather too intense for me right then. She was just one of those women you knock around with when there’s nothing better available. I know it’s a horrible thing to say, but she was a bit like an off-peak train ticket. I lay with her in my arms after we’d made love and watched a video on my new super stereo TV. I smoked a rare cigarette I’d pinched out of her handbag and drank some coffee. She’d nearly worn me out. She was the kind of woman who wanted to do everything at least twice. She fell asleep next to me and began to snore gently. I turned up the volume on the set using the remote control. It seemed to me that Edith had turned me up using the same sort of thing.
I gazed at Michael Caine chasing women across the screen and thought about my ex-girl-friend, Teresa. It was nearly two months since I’d seen her. I thought back to our last meeting. I’d met Teresa at six in the evening down in the Battersea boonies. I drove the Jaguar through the pouring rain across South London. She was sheltering in a shop doorway and waved when she saw the car. She dodged through the puddles and I pushed open the passenger door as she got close. She fell into the suicide seat and I leaned over and kissed her. Her response was somewhat cooler than I’d expected. I examined her face by the light from the headlamps of the passing cars. The drops on the windscreen dappled the dark skin of her face. For a moment I saw her as she would be as an old woman. I blinked and she was my Teresa again. Rain had caught in her fall of thick, black hair and made it shine as if it were full of diamonds. She gathered her coat around herself and shivered.
‘Nick, I want to talk,’ she said quietly.
‘Have you got problems?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she replied, and smiled a sad little smile. I knew she was going to give me bad news. I could feel it in the air. It hung between us, unspoken, but solid in the atmosphere.
‘What then?’ I probed.
‘I’m leaving,’ she said, not looking at me.
‘Leaving what?’ I asked, mystified.
‘Here, London.’
‘Where are you going, why?’
‘I’m going to live with my sister in Bristol, St. Paul’s. She needs help with her business – you remember, the restaurant she runs with her husband.’
‘Yes, I remember,’ I said. ‘But why?’ I asked again. The inside of the Jaguar felt cold even though the heater was running.
‘Nick, I’m a whore in London. Right now I’m a young whore, but none of us is getting any younger. Soon I’ll be a middle-aged whore, then an old whore. I don’t want that, and if I stay in this town, it’ll happen, sure as God made little green apples.’
I felt that she’d read my mind. ‘It doesn’t have to be that way,’ I protested. ‘I’ll –’ I didn’t finish.
‘What, Nick?’ she demanded. ‘What will you do?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied lamely.
‘Don’t make any promises you can’t keep,’ she said.
‘But why are you leaving me?’ I asked. I tried to keep the whine out of my voice, but I don’t think I succeeded.
‘I’m not leaving you. We were never together. When we started again last summer you had some problems. I helped you solve them. But I’m a prostitute. I sell my body every day. I can’t build a future with someone who knows that. The foundations would be too weak. I can see it in your eyes sometimes. The accusing look when you daren’t ask where I’ve been in case I tell the truth.’
She reached over and held my hand that gripped the leather steering-wheel. ‘In Bristol nobody knows what I do up here, except my sister. She’s told no one, not even her husband. He thinks I work behind the bar in a club. Sally’s begged me to give up the life. Now I’m ready. Perhaps I’ll meet a man down there who’ll take me on face value. I want to have children someday. Black children, not half-castes. Besides I’m scared. All this AIDS shit. It’s not just scare talk. I know girls who are HIV positive. They’re walking time bombs, and it’s not for me. I’ve got a little money and I’m going.’
I felt desolate and petulant. ‘There’s whores in Bristol too, you know,’ I said. ‘Who says you won’t go back on the game down there?’
‘Once a whore, always a whore, eh Nick? Is that it? You see what I mean. I knew you felt anger under all that bullshit liberated talk.’
All of a sudden I felt like the little shit I was. Teresa had been a good friend for years, and now she wanted something better for the future, I was acting like a spoilt child. I could see the tears streaking her face. ‘Tess.’ I said softly. ‘I’m sorry, please forgive me. I just wanted to hurt you.’
‘You succeeded.’ She sniffled. I leant over and held her and smelt her perfume.
‘I hope you find happiness,’ I said. ‘I really do. When are you going?’
‘On New Year’s Eve.’
‘Soon come,’ I said.
‘There’s a little time,’ she said.
‘So tonight we celebrate a new start for you,’ I said. ‘Food and wine. Will you stay with me?’ I asked almost shyly.
‘That’s my Nick,’ she said. ‘The little boy lost who expects all women to mother him. If only you were, perhaps we could have made it together. But you’re not a little boy lost, are you? There’s a streak of coldness that runs through you like a steel bolt.’ I must have looked surprised at that new tack. ‘It’s true,’ she went on. ‘And it’s not something I like to explore very often. It’s a loveless place where your dreams have withered and died. I try to ignore it as much as possible, but it intrudes into our relationship sometimes and distances you from softness and kindness. Look at that business last summer. How many men could have done what you did?’
I couldn’t answer. I knew she was right.
‘I think the only person you really care about is yourself,’ she continued.
‘Oh, Tess,’ I said with a deep sigh. ‘Don’t you think I know it?’
‘Nick,’ she said. ‘Now it’s my turn to be sorry. It’s our last night together and we’re both screwing up. Can we start again?’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘Friends?’ she asked.
‘Forever,’ I replied.
We ate at the Malean, our favourite Chinese restaurant opposite Norbury Police Station. It was a subdued meal but we managed to work our way through sweetcorn and crabmeat soup, prawns in chilli sauce, shredded duck, stir-fried vegetables and noodles fried with bean sprouts. Plus two bottles of Wan Fu Chinese wine and a couple of Irish coffees each. After the meal and a chat with the ladies who run the place I drove us back to Tulse Hill, splashing through the windswept streets to home.
We made love in a desultory way. Not particularly passionately or particularly tenderly. I think we both faked orgasms. I know I did.
When I woke up next morning at eight Teresa was already dressed. I peered at her from under the duvet. ‘Bit of a rush isn’t it?’ I asked.
‘I think I’d better go, I’ve got lots to do.’
‘No goodbyes?’ I asked.
‘I would have woken you.’
I believed her; dozens wouldn’t.
‘Come and see me,’ she invited, and placed a card by the telephone, on the table next to me. ‘This is the address.’
‘I’ll try,’ I said. I knew I wouldn’t.
‘I’ll give you a call,’ she said. I knew she wouldn’t.
‘Tess,’ I said, ‘don’t go.’
‘Don’t ask,’ she said, and bent down and kissed me briefly, then left. ‘Bye,’ she said, just as the door closed behind her. I said nothing in reply. I got up, made some tea and went back to bed to watch breakfast TV.
I still miss her.
The video finished and Eddie moaned and rolled over. I switched back to the regular channels but they were all closing down. I got up and cleaned my teeth, then I went back to bed but didn’t sleep for hours.
3
W
hen I woke up the next morning the rain had stopped and a watery sun fought with the clouds for domination of the sky. Eddie split in a cloud of Poison and a new BMW that her daddy had bought her out of the profits of his sausage shop. I ate breakfast alone in a draughty café with only the
Daily Telegraph
crossword for company.
I sat around the office all morning thinking about the sort of person who could afford a Bentley Turbo.
Eventually I put on my Crombie and schlepped over to Richmond just after twelve. I’d agreed to take the job and I couldn’t settle without my conscience nagging until I’d at least tried. I found Hillside Close just as a solid bank of grey cloud cut the sun out of the sky.
It was no slum. It stank of money, just the sort of place a retired pop star would live. The Close was maybe a mile long and as far as I could gather backed directly on to Richmond Park. The houses were huge and set well back of the road. The grounds of ‘The Chimneys’ started when the Close petered out in a muddy half-circle of crushed stone and gravel. A wall of dark red brick reared up from behind a muddy ditch. It was just as J.R. had described it, at least twenty feet high, topped with vicious looking broken glass, and the only entrance I could find was a rusty iron gate fastened by heavy locks and bolts that looked as if they hadn’t been opened for years. There was no bell or any other way to communicate with the house to be seen.
I prowled around looking for a break in the wall, but it just kept going. I wasn’t about to struggle through some neighbour’s thorn hedge and follow the wall as I had a shrewd suspicion that if I walked for an hour I’d just get back to where I started. I also had a shrewd suspicion that anyone who saw me would swiftly call the Old Bill, and that I didn’t need. No, whoever owned this pile liked his privacy, as it appeared did most of the residents of Hillside Close.
I peered through one of the narrow gaps between the bars of the gate and saw an overgrown drive flanked by dozens of evergreen bushes. The drive disappeared round a curve and into what appeared to be a small wood. I couldn’t even catch a glimpse of a building through the trees. I looked down at my coat which had given me little change from a monkey, then up at the top of the gate and figured that I was on a hiding to nothing with this particular little bit of debt collecting. I was just about to give the whole thing the elbow and go home when I saw a movement just where the drive curved out of sight. For a moment I thought I was imagining things, then a small figure appeared through a gap in the trees before vanishing again. As I kept watching I saw someone in a shapeless blue coat wandering towards the gate. Whoever it was didn’t notice me and kept coming. As the figure got closer I saw that it was an elderly woman in a duffel coat, galoshes and a woollen hat, carrying a gardener’s basket. I let her get to within ten feet of where I was standing before I made my presence felt. I tapped my car keys on the lock and half-said, half-shouted a greeting. ‘Good afternoon.’ It came out like a bark.
She’d been looking up at the top of one of the evergreens and spun round with surprising agility. ‘I hope I didn’t startle you,’ I went on.
‘Not at all,’ she said calmly. ‘Are you a friend?’
‘I’m sorry?’ I replied.
‘Of my son’s,’ she said.
‘Sure,’ I lied.
‘Good, we don’t get many visitors – in fact none at all these days. Who exactly are you a friend of?’
She wasn’t as soft as she looked.
‘McBain.’ I stabbed a guess.
She smiled. ‘Good, you look like a friend.’
‘That’s nice.’ I smiled. I was getting to like the woman. ‘Can I come in?’
‘I don’t know – are you expected?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘You’re sure you’re a friend?’
‘I’m not an enemy.’ I replied, and I wasn’t. All I wanted was a bit of cash.
‘All right then.’ Now I don’t know how I expected her to open the gates. With a set of rusty keys on a massive ring I suppose. But I got a surprise. The old lady pulled a radio transmitter from her basket, pointed it at the gate and pushed a button. The rusty locks clicked back gently, the bolts slid smoothly out of their sockets and the gates swung quietly open on oiled hinges.
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Mark’s up at the house.’ I walked through the open gates and the old lady shook my hand. I felt like a rat, conning her. ‘I’m Mark’s mother,’ she introduced herself.
‘My name is Sharman,’ I said, ‘Nicholas Sharman.’
‘Do you think I should cut the trees back?’ she asked.
I looked at the evergreen forest. ‘It’s a big job,’ I said. ‘Do you have any help?’
‘Not any more,’ she said. ‘There used to be ever such a nice man came in and did the gardening, but I think he’s dead now.’
‘I’d leave it if I were you,’ I said. ‘Maybe until the spring.’
‘Do you think it’s going to snow?’ she asked, ignoring my advice.
‘It might,’ I replied.
‘Would you like some tea?’ She seemed only to ask questions.
‘I’d love some,’ I replied.
‘I’ll make you some, come up to the house – it’s not far, but perhaps you could take my arm: I’m not as young as I used to be.’
‘No one is,’ I said. I tucked her hand, which felt as fragile as a baby bird, under my arm and we walked together up the muddy drive.
I couldn’t begin to imagine how much ground ‘The Chimneys’ stood in. I’m a city boy and acres mean as much to me as a microwave oven would to a Cro-Magnon man. But it was big, and being situated where it was it must have been worth a small fortune, even though it seemed to be neglected. The drive went on forever and I wished I’d invested in a pair of wellies as the two of us picked our way through the puddles. The old lady was good company and pointed out some interesting varieties of luscious plantlife as we went. In its heyday, and in the summer, the gardens must really have been some sight. I told her about the roses I’d used to grow, and it was a pleasant walk even though the clouds were getting darker and the temperature was falling.
Eventually the house came into sight. It was some sweet hacienda, even if it was a little large for my taste. If I’d had a couple of football teams to lodge, I might have been interested, though. It was gabled and domed and cupolad and pantiled and timbered and everything else you might expect. It was also neglected and ramshackle and looked like it might fall down at any moment. Especially the chimneys after which it was named. There were a good score of them, but no two seemed to be upright.
The massive front door was standing open and on the paved porch, which was about the size of the average double bedroom, was one of the biggest men I’d ever seen. He was leaning against the door frame with his arms folded and his legs crossed. On his bearded face was an expression of bored patience as if he was used to waiting. When he saw me he came upright in one smooth motion and bounded down the ornate steps towards us.