Until It's Over (12 page)

‘No ambulance. No police. Don’t!’

He moved an arm from his head and clutched at me with his fingers.

‘Hang on, I’m going to call the others at least. One second, Dario. It’s all right.’

I picked up my keys and bounded back up the steps, opened the door and bellowed into the darkness: ‘Help! Pippa! Miles! Mick! Davy!’

I thought I heard someone groan, but that was it.

I hammered on Miles’s bedroom door and pushed it open, turning on the light and seeing Leah emerge from the covers like a mermaid coming out of the waves.

‘What –’ she began.

‘Miles!’

‘What’s up? Astrid? Astrid!’

‘Come and help
now
. It’s urgent. Dario’s hurt. Leah, get the others. We’re outside the front door. Come on!’

I left them, hammered at Pippa’s door and yelled her name again, then ran out of the front door, leaving it open so that the light fell on where Dario lay.

He’d moved now, and was sitting huddled on the bottom step, his face in his lap and his arms wrapped round his body. I sat beside him and put an arm around his shoulder. ‘If you can move, let’s get you inside.’

He muttered something unintelligible into his knees.

‘I really think I ought to call an ambulance.’

‘No!’

He half sat up as he said this and I gasped as I saw his face. One eye was closed, his nose was swollen and shapeless, and blood smeared his chin and ran in gobbets from his mouth. ‘Can’t see properly.’

‘Here, take my arm.’

‘Dario.’

It was Miles, and behind him I saw Davy, then Mel, in bright pink pyjamas, her hair in plaits.

‘Help me get him inside.’

Davy took one arm and Miles the other. Mel cooed and tutted beside them. Pippa appeared in boxer shorts and an old T-shirt.

‘Where’s Mick?’ I asked. ‘He knows about things like this.’

‘I’ll get him,’ said Mel, eagerly.

‘Have you called the ambulance?’ asked Davy.

‘No ambulance!’ gasped Dario.

‘What happened, mate?’

‘Nothing,’ said Dario, as he was hauled into the hall. Blood dripped on to the floorboards. Leah stood in the doorway of Miles’s room, watching. I saw her eyes widen as she saw the mess of his face.

‘Let’s get him downstairs,’ said Miles.

‘I can walk now.’ But he staggered. Davy steadied him and guided him down into the kitchen.

‘Hot tea,’ I said, and they lowered him into the armchair. ‘With sugar for the shock.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Mel, reappearing with Mick, who was wearing jogging pants and nothing else.

‘Whisky,’ said Miles.

‘You were beaten up, weren’t you?’ asked Davy, frowning with concern. ‘You really can’t just leave that, you know.’

‘I’ll be all right.’ But he was crying, his tears running into the blood. One of his teeth was missing, his ginger hair was plastered to his head. He looked about seven years old, scrawny, defeated and utterly woebegone. I squatted down and put a hand on his knee.

‘Oh, Dario,’ I said, and he wept harder. ‘Tell us.’

‘They wouldn’t stop,’ he gasped.

‘Who?’ asked Miles. ‘Who did this to you?’

I turned away and went to where Mel was making tea. I soaked kitchen towels in warm water and took the disinfectant from the cupboard underneath the sink.

‘How do you put up with us all?’ I asked her. ‘You must think you’ve wandered into a madhouse.’

She smiled at me shyly, her cheeks pink. ‘I like being with you. I never had a family of my own.’

‘My God, Mel! Is this your idea of a family? Hold on, Dario, I’m coming to clean you up a bit.’

Pippa and I washed his grazes and dabbed on disinfectant. Mick examined him to see if he’d broken anything. He howled and blubbered a bit more, held my hand, and repeated that nobody must know.

‘Was it Lee?’ asked Davy.

But he wouldn’t give names, and in the end we gave up. Mick lifted him like a baby and carried him to his room, where he laid him on his bed and Pippa and I put extra blankets over him. Mel plumped up his pillow and put her smooth little hand on his sweaty forehead. His sobs were little whimpers now, and then, suddenly, he was fast asleep, his mashed-up face peaceful at last.

It was nearly dawn before I got to bed that night. After Dario had fallen asleep, the rest of the household sat in the kitchen, drank whisky and talked, endlessly repeating themselves, about Dario. For that brief time our group was oddly companionable again, drawn together by the experience. One by one, people peeled away, until at last only Pippa and I were left at the table with our glasses.

‘I’m not really tired now,’ I said.

‘Nor me.’

‘Want a sandwich or something?’

‘Go on, then. We haven’t had a midnight feast for ages.’

I opened the fridge and peered inside. There wasn’t much in it. ‘I think it’s a choice between a cheese sandwich or a melted cheese sandwich.’

‘The second one. Comfort food.’

‘OK.’ I cut two thick slices of bread and put them in the toaster. ‘Pippa?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Sure – as long as it’s not for a loan. I’ve got an overdraft of eight hundred and twenty-seven pounds at the moment.’

‘Nothing like that.’ I spread butter on the slices, then sprinkled grated cheese on them and slid them under the grill. ‘Why do you sleep with so many men?’

Pippa gave a gurgle that could either have been merriment or dismay. ‘First Leah,’ she said. ‘Now you. You think I’m a slag.’

‘No, I don’t. It’s just that I’ve never quite got it. I’m not exactly saving myself for my wedding day, but hasn’t it got to mean something? It’s not like having coffee with someone… I don’t think I’m putting this very well.’

‘The cheese is ready.’

‘Here you are. It’s probably very hot. It’s just – well, there are so many of them. It’s a bit bewildering sometimes.’

‘Why not?’ she said lightly, and bit into her toast; strings of melted cheese clung to her chin. ‘This is perfect. Just the thing after a mugging.’

‘Is that it, then? Why not?’

‘I guess.’

‘Do you enjoy it?’

‘Enjoy?’ She paused with her toast half-way to her mouth and considered.

‘So?’

‘You really want the answer? Because it’s the one thing men really want. They might deny it, but no man – however moral, however married – will turn you down if you offer them sex.’ There was a silence. ‘Are you shocked?’

‘I was just thinking,’ I said. ‘I don’t know whether you love men or you have contempt for them.’

Pippa thought about it. ‘Can’t I do both?’

Chapter Sixteen

I only found out that we were going to have a sale when I arrived home in the evening and read about it on the large cardboard sign that someone had tacked on to the tree at the front.

‘House-clearance sale,’ it read in large letters. I recognized the paint as the deep green that Dario had been using to paint the upstairs hall, before he laid down his brush and went on strike. ‘Thursday 6 p.m.’ Underneath, in the bathroom’s stone blue, was written in a large, childlike hand, ‘Bargains!!!’

‘House-clearance sale?’ I asked Davy, when I went into the kitchen. He was sitting at the table failing to do the crossword, and I could see that someone had already started putting old pots and pans into cardboard boxes while piles of chipped plates, discoloured mugs, ugly vases, a broken toaster minus its plug and a food mixer that had long ago stopped working cluttered all the surfaces.

‘Apparently.’

‘But we still live here. We’re not moving for weeks yet.’

‘We’re not getting rid of everything. Just the things we don’t need and know we don’t want.’

‘We need plates.’ I stared around the room. ‘Those are my mother’s old teacups. You can’t just chuck them out.’

‘It was Pippa’s idea. She said we should liquidate our assets.’

‘What’s this?’

He peered at it, frowning. ‘I think it’s an old pasta-maker, minus the handle thing. It’s a bit rusty, isn’t it? And that’s the bottom half of an ice-cream maker. Dario couldn’t find the top.’

‘Right. Assets, Pippa said?’

Davy gave a little giggle. He’s one of the few men I know who giggles like a girl.

‘Hi, Astrid.’

I turned. Mel stood in the doorway, her soft brown hair falling over her face. She was wearing a green skirt and a sleeveless white top and looked fresh and eager. I smiled at her. ‘Hello there.’

‘I’ve just been down to the shops. I was going to make us an omelette. Do you want one as well?’

‘No, I’m fine. I’ll get myself something later.’

‘If you change your mind…’ She set down her shopping and rummaged among the boxes for a frying-pan.

‘What does Miles think about the sale?’

‘I’m not entirely sure that anyone’s told him. He’s not come home yet.’

‘I see.’ Suddenly there was a tremendous banging sound from overhead. It felt as though the ceiling might crumble at any minute. ‘What the hell’s that?’

‘Um.’ Davy pulled a wry face at me. ‘I think that might be Dario and Mick. Asset-stripping.’

‘Christ,’ I said. ‘But at least Dario’s cheered up. He was even boasting about being beaten up, as if it gave him some sort of street cred. Men, eh?’

‘Not this man,’ said Davy, wryly. ‘I’d leg it. Do you want to hear who’s called you today?’

‘Apart from journalists?’

He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. ‘Dr Hal Bradshaw and someone called Rachel Lembas, who’s a clairvoyant.’

‘I’ll pretend you didn’t give me the message.’ I watched as Mel broke two eggs into a bowl and began whisking with a fork. She had managed to create a tranquil domestic space in the mayhem of our crumbling household. There was a another violent bang from overhead, then a rude yell.

I went outside, into the lovely warmth of the evening, and walked into the garden to my vegetable plot. It was ridiculous, but the thing I felt saddest about leaving was this. I thought of the work I’d put into it, in the rain and the cold, and the idea that Miles and Leah would be the only ones to eat my lettuce, my beetroot and my broad beans filled me with sadness. I squatted and started to pull weeds out of the soil. I didn’t hear anyone, and only when a shadow fell over me did I look up and see Miles.

‘Hi,’ I said, and when he didn’t reply, just started gloomily down at me, I went on: ‘These are courgettes. They’re very easy to grow. You just have to keep the soil moist. Miles? Miles!’

‘What?’

‘What’s up?’

He sighed and lowered himself on to the grass beside me, not worrying about his lovely dark suit. He looked hot. Little beads of sweat prickled on his shaved head and there was a moustache of perspiration above his upper lip. ‘What should I do, Astrid?’

‘What should you do?’ I carefully eased a dandelion out of the earth, shaking its roots free of soil. ‘What do you mean, do?’

‘I mean,
do
. Should I tell everyone it was all a mistake and they can stay after all? Should I evict everyone right now? Should I chuck Dario out, at least, for making my life a nightmare at every turn? Should I tell Leah it’s all over between us? Should Leah and I go away and leave you here, in this house that’s turned into a kind of hell-hole? Should we all just–’

‘Stop there, Miles. Too many choices.’

‘Is it so wrong of me to want to live with just Leah?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Admittedly I’m tired of falling over bags of her stuff in the hall.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Miles. ‘We haven’t decided where to stow it. I’ll tell her to get it out of the way.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘And it’s not wrong.’

‘So what should I have done?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Should I never move on but always stay in some commune of perpetual adolescence?’

‘Is that what we are?’

‘Don’t you agree that the way Pippa, for example, has deliberately –’

‘I don’t want to take sides, Miles. I know that no one’s behaved terribly well. But that includes you. And Leah.’

‘Especially Leah,’ he said.

‘You can’t hide behind her.’

‘I used to love coming home but now I feel everyone hates me,’ he said.

‘I don’t hate you.’

‘Astrid.’ His voice became soft and tender.

‘No. Don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘You know.’

‘This thing with Leah. I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.’

‘Then unmake it, if that’s what you want. But don’t involve me. It’s not fair on her.’

‘She doesn’t worry about not being fair to you.’

‘That’s her business.’

‘The things she says about you…’

‘I don’t want to know.’

‘If it wasn’t for Leah, we could go back to the way things were.’

‘For a clever man you really are stupid sometimes. Don’t you see that we can never go back to the way things were? That’s over, safely in the past. And don’t go blaming Leah for everything.’

‘How come you’re so wise and saintly all of a sudden?’

‘I’m not.’

He brushed some grass blades from his trousers. ‘By the way, what’s going on with Owen?’

‘Nothing. Not that it’s any of your business.’

‘I’ve seen the way you look at each other. Have you –’

‘Stop it, Miles.’

‘I don’t want to butt in. When does he get back from his trip, anyway?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, with studied indifference. ‘Thursday, I think.’ I knew very well it was Thursday. I lay in bed at night thinking about him, remembering the feel of his hands on my body, counting the hours to when we’d creep upstairs like thieves in the night and close the door and climb beneath the sheets, our hands over each other’s mouths so no one would hear.

‘He’s not good enough for you.’

‘I’m not doing this, Miles. Either help me pull out the weeds or bugger off.’

The evening of the house sale was warm and muggy, with an occasional heavy raindrop falling from the low grey skies. Dario and Mick had carried out two tables and arranged them in front of the house, and Pippa and Davy had both taken half a day off work to sort stuff out as well. Campbell sent me over to Stockwell in the afternoon and I didn’t get home until twenty to six, by which time it looked as if the entire contents of the house had been disgorged into the front garden. The tables were piled high with junk, and larger items – among which I made out an old bike, a couple of wooden chairs missing slats and a vast armchair with the stuffing spilling out, a nasty metal bookcase, a wooden lampstand, an old mattress, a fold-up canvas camp bed that looked as if it had been used in the First World War, a nasty oil painting whose glass was cracked. They were the desirable objects, I realized, when I saw what Dario and Mick were hauling out of the house now: a flimsy plastic bathtub with a crack running all the way down one side that we’d had in the cellar since we moved in; a roll of chicken wire, a rake whose teeth were almost all missing; a box of spare roof tiles; single wellington boots; half a fishing rod; the guitar Mick had trodden on ages ago and was now just a splintered wooden carcass with a few strings hanging off it.

‘Blimey!’ I said, as Owen staggered out, hauling a stained canvas bag. He’d returned from Italy that morning and when I’d got home from work he was entering into the spirit of the sale with a vigour that surprised me. ‘What’s that?’

‘A tent,’ he said. ‘It leaks. It’s always leaked. It leaks so badly that it’s like sleeping under a gutter.’

‘Right. But you can’t throw away Miles’s shoe rack. He uses it. Where are the shoes that go in it?’

Owen shrugged and tugged his tent past me, scattering bent pegs as he went. But then he stopped and gave me a look that turned my stomach to liquid.

‘Hi, Astrid,’ said Pippa, appearing in the doorway. Her hair was piled messily on top of her head and there was a smudge of dirt on her cheek. She glittered with energy. ‘If you want to get rid of stuff you’d better hurry. People are arriving in fifteen minutes.’

‘Nobody’ll buy any of this.’

‘Want to bet?’

‘Where’s Miles anyway?’

‘I think he and Leah are keeping out of the way.’

‘And Davy?’

‘He’s gone to get beer for all of us.’

I leaned my bike against the wall of the house and went over to the table. There were books (cookery books, novels, biographies, dictionaries, atlases, travel books, books about mathematics and economics, music and law, books that belonged to libraries and even schools); there were kitchen utensils, videos and DVDs, beaded cushions, a rug, a lumpy old duvet, ripped sheets, a mop, a hairdryer in the shape of a duck, a shoebox full of wind chimes, empty biscuit tins, and several packs of cards, which I was almost certain were incomplete.

‘These are nice.’ I bent over a small box of jewellery. ‘Are these yours, Pippa?’

‘I never wear them any more,’ she said airily.

‘Some are lovely. You can’t sell these beads.’

‘I can.’

‘I’ll buy them.’

‘We’re supposed to be getting rid of things, Astrid!’ said Dario.

I stopped him and examined his face. He was still bruised and swollen, his speech muffled. ‘How are you doing?’ I asked.

‘Fine.’

‘You should be taking it easy.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I need to do this.’

Davy arrived, carrying a bag bulging with cans, which he started handing out. I took mine and went into my bedroom, to see if there was anything I could throw out. But while Pippa’s room is like an Aladdin’s cave, mine is rather minimalist. I sat on my bed and stared around, realizing how little I owned.

I heard footsteps bounding up the stairs, and then they stopped. There was a knock at my door. ‘Who is it?’

‘Me. Owen.’

Oh.’ I got up from my bed and ran my fingers through my hair. ‘Come in.’

The door opened and Owen entered, pushing it shut behind him.

‘I brought you something.’ He held out a little box. ‘From Milan.’

‘For me? I don’t know what to say. Thank you.’

‘You have to open it.’

‘Right.’

I pushed up the lid and there was a pair of small silver earrings, round and with spokes, like two tiny bicycle wheels. ‘You’ll spot a connection.’

I unhooked the earrings I was wearing and put them on. ‘What do you think?’

‘They seem good,’ he said. ‘But what do I know?’ There was a pause. ‘I’d better go. Things to carry.’

There were already about a dozen people clustering round the tables. I didn’t recognize most of them. It sometimes dismayed me: I’d been living in the house for years but most of the people who lived in the street were still strangers.

I walked up to the tables and looked at the detritus of our lives together, now being pawed over by our neighbours. Soon it would be scattered and we would scatter with it.

Pippa and Dario were unpacking some clothes from a box and draping them over one end of the table. I walked over and picked up a long flowery skirt and ran my fingers through the soft fabric. ‘Some of this stuff really isn’t bad,’ I said. ‘Why are you getting rid of it?’

Pippa gave me a challenging look, which seemed to suggest I didn’t understand the ways of clothes and fashion. ‘I’ve got a rule,’ she said. ‘Every so often I go through my stuff and if I find something I haven’t worn for six months, out it goes, however much I think I like it. Because if I’m not wearing it, there must be something wrong.’

‘Well, I haven’t seen you wear any of this,’ I said. ‘I’m not exactly in the money at the moment but I might pick up a couple of things. How much are they?’

‘A fiver each,’ said Dario.

‘Really?’ said a voice from behind me. I looked round and saw a flamboyantly dressed woman with long dark curly hair. ‘All of it?’

‘Priced to sell,’ said Dario.

The woman sorted eagerly through the clothes, cramming dresses, skirts and blouses under her arm. Her eagerness was contagious, setting off a frenzy among the other women who were gathered around. I still had the skirt in my hand and I managed to grab a beautiful black Victorian-style top with a lace collar. Everything else was gone in seconds and the women of Maitland Street and beyond were frantically proffering bundles of banknotes at an almost alarmed Dario and Pippa. I handed over my own ten-pound note and took my haul back to my room, squeezing past Mick who was manoeuvring a standard lamp out of the door.

‘Are there any lights left?’ I said.

‘It’s summer,’ said Mick.

By the time I re-emerged, word had got round and the crowd of customers had grown quite large. The only item of clothing left was an army greatcoat that had been left by a previous tenant. But there was still plenty to fight for. People were paying money for objects that we would have had trouble persuading the dustmen to take away. Dario had priced the non-functioning toaster at fifteen pence. An old man offered him five and Dario told him he had a deal. I was rather touched by the idea of our crap toaster being lovingly repaired and having a new life making toast for him. It was like a horse finally reaching an animal sanctuary after a lifetime of grinding toil. Only the handleless pasta machine stood untouched, unbought and unloved.