by J. S. Monroe
She pushed some hair out of my eyes. “What stops you going with someone else?” she asked. I never gave her an answer, never said that I loved her. The old rules had returned. Instead, I just let the rhythm of my lungs lull her to sleep.
13
The next, morning I rose early. I felt sharp, optimistic, unlike the day, dawning stillborn outside. A mist hung over the common, diluting the colours of the cars parked along the road. A boy was see-sawing up West Side on his bicycle, weighed down by an orange shoulder sack. I thought of the Thames, its different light and rhythms, and washed I was on the barge.
I rummaged around in the cupboard and found a blue and white stripey shirt. It was far too big for me but I put it on and went downstairs (no tie – it was the weekend after all). The Sunday Times and The Mail on Sunday were smudged across the hall doormat, photos of the march covering the front pages. I looked for myself, spotted Leggit but couldn’t see my own shaved head. In the old days, we used to go back to The George for Sunday lunch, cut out our photos and stick them behind the bar.
There was no mention of a death in a South London pub. Perhaps Walter was lying.
I made Charlotte a mug of coffee and knocked on her door. It was seven-thirty and I wanted to impress, make amends. Silence. I went in, expecting to find her asleep. The room was empty, no evidence at all that anyone had been there. The bed was made up, unslept in, and her bags had gone.
Downstairs I walked around restlessly, frustrated. I checked the sitting room in case anyone was on the sofa, but I was alone. She would come back, I was sure of it. Annalese and I used to walk out on each other regularly. I wandered through to the kitchen. This was going to be my home, where I would return from the tube station every night, Monday to Friday. I wanted to get on, find out about tomorrow, where I was going to work, what I was expected to do. It felt surprisingly exposed for a safe house, large bow windows looking straight out on to the street. I imagined Leggit trying to sell the place: “Safe as houses, safe houses are.” I knew they would beat him badly and he would resist, which would only make matters worse.
*
Charlotte finally turned up at twelve o’clock, hostile and unforgiving, weighed down with three Tesco bags of shopping.
“You’ve not been arrested then?” she asked, walking into the kitchen and putting the bags on the beech sideboard. I was at the table, reading. She went over to the sink window and opened it. I had smoked the best part of a packet.
“It’s been a quiet morning,” I said, not looking up. “Trashed the neighbour’s Audi, torched the corner shop.”
She glanced at me briefly and began to unpack the bags: freshly squeezed orange juice, Ecover washing-up liquid, Basmati rice, red pesto, courgettes, beans, onions, tofu, no meat as far as I could see. Perhaps we had a future together, after all.
“A Fool and His Money by Martin Baker,” I quoted, reading from the cover of the book I was holding. “High Finance, Low Living – Understanding Financial Markets and Those Who Work in Them.”
She wasn’t playing ball. I sat there, looking at her shoulders, broad as a swimmer’s. Without care she would be fat, but her limbs were toned, athletic. Somehow it seemed appropriate that the first and only time we had touched was when she had locked my neck in a stranglehold. Much less ambiguous than a handshake.
“You still on for it, then?” I asked, stubbing another cigarette into the ashtray.
“Unfortunately. ”
“It could be fun, living together. Our first home, and in Clapham, too.”
She said nothing. A plastic bottle of toasted sesame oil toppled out of one of the bags and fell to the floor. She picked it up wearily, too tired to curse. I noticed her eyes were moist.
“What made you come back, then?” I asked, more softly.
“I was given little option.”
“Blackmailed you as well?”
“Not exactly. There was no one else.”
“I’m very keen. Up at seven. Even brought you coffee.”
She still wished I wasn’t there, so I got up and went into the sitting room. Walter had bought some CDs, recommended listening, he said, for foreign exchange dealers. I dropped a disc into the tray, watched it slide inside and turned the volume up. I then stood in the doorway, waiting for her reaction.
“Bruce Springsteen’s greatest hits,” I said, raising my voice above the music. “One of my favourites, apparently. Crap, isn’t it?”
“You’ll disturb the neighbours,” she said, still not looking up.
I switched it off and returned to the door, resting my hand halfway up the frame.
“Fancy a sherry?” I asked. She continued to ignore me. “Perhaps a quick snifter at the Pitcher and Piano?”
Finally she snapped, smacking a tin of tuna on the sideboard. She turned and looked at me with contempt, standing there in my ill-fitting shirt. “I’ve just come from seeing Martin’s wife,” she said coldly. “His widow.”
“How is she?” I asked casually. I was going to ride this one, stay above it.
“Distraught. Confused.”
She shouldn’t have married a copper, I thought, but I managed to restrain myself.
“I’ve also read the Business section of The Sunday Times, found out how much dosh everyone is making.”
She wasn’t impressed. I snatched up the papers and went through to the sitting room, littering the floor with loose adverts as I went. I didn’t know why I bothered. (I hadn’t bothered, in fact. I had only read the Business section’s headlines, and discovered Sport on the back, where there was a report about crowd trouble at the Millwall game.)
I stared out of the sitting room window on to the common, and watched two women jogging together, trying to work off the previous night. They were barely running, stuck in the mist. I warmed my legs on the radiator and looked at the dresser beside me. Sure enough, there was a sherry decanter, hidden behind some bottles of red wine. I picked it up and held it to the light. The liquid was dark and old, but still clear. I removed the top, sniffed, and took a sickly swig. No wonder she had refused. I heard her climbing the stairs, move around in her room, turn on the TV. Every small creak in the ceiling was annoying. Our beautiful relationship wasn’t going to last.
*
It was late in the afternoon and we were driving across Tower Bridge. Our car wasn’t new, but it ran well. A fading red Golf GTI with a sun-roof and central locking doors. Charlotte changed down into second gear, braked. There was a police roadblock ahead. Six months earlier the red and white barriers had been dismantled completely. Now they were back, just in time for Christmas, looking festive.
“Don’t say anything,” she said, drawing up alongside a policeman. Head hanging in the window, he peered at me, then at the back seat, where there was a 1992 Collins Road Atlas of Great Britain, a red envelope folder and the pink middle section of an Evening Standard. Charlotte had her purse on her lap and was removing what looked like a library pass.
“I’ll need to see the boot,” the officer said. Charlotte held the pass close to the policeman’s face, confident as a hypnotist. “I’ll still need to take a look. Sorry, orders.”
He stepped away to let her open the door. “Bloody busybody,” she muttered under her breath.
“You weren’t insulting a police officer, I hope,” I said.
She got out without looking at me and opened the boot. I adjusted the rear mirror and watched. The policeman nodded in my direction, talking, taking time. After two minutes, she climbed back into the car.
“What was all that about?” I asked.
“Have a guess.”
“Me?” I said innocently.
“What was it like when you had some hair?”
“Worse.”
We drove through the blockade, passed the humourless officers. I put a foot on the dashboard, flicked down the sunguard and looked in the mirror.
“I was beginning to quite fancy myself.”
“You look like a convict.”
; Fenchurch Street was empty, deserted, not how I remembered it at all. There was nowhere to hide. I could see plenty of side streets, narrow and darkened by tall buildings, but where did they lead? Dead ends were trouble. I felt cornered, surrounded. I wondered how I had avoided arrest when we’d stopped the City. (The police had vanned over four hundred of us that day.)
“That’s your office,” Charlotte said, pulling over in Gracechurch Street. “When you get off the tube, turn right and walk down Lombard Street, just over there. Your office is on the corner.”
“Is that it?” I said, disappointed. “It looks like a boring bank.”
“It is.”
“Do we get out? Go in?”
“You haven’t got a pass. Everyone has passes.”
“So what do I do tomorrow?”
“It’s all been taken care of. Just turn up at reception. Someone will be there to meet you.” She glanced across at me, worried. “I’m sure I don’t need to say this, Dutchie. But you can’t tell anyone what this is about. You know that?”
“Mum’s the word,” I said, a finger at my lips.
We parked in an NCP and wandered the deserted roads, up Lombard street, down Cornhill and Leadenhall. I said little, let teacher do all the talking. She showed me the Bank of England, which I had seen before, and the LIFFE building, which I hadn’t. Pret A Manger, she said, would become a part of my life. The City liked sandwiches. The shops were all closed and the police presence was considerable. I behaved myself. Whenever we were stopped I kept my eyes averted, but probably looked more shifty than ever.
We paused for lunch, Charlotte suggesting a hotel near Tower Bridge. She used to go there with her parents, she said, which seemed an odd reason to be returning with me. We walked via the car to pick up the red folder from the back seat.
“What’s that anyway?” I said.
“I was hoping you would ask.” Her face melted into a smile for the first time that day. She tucked the folder under her arm and turned to me. “This is your life, Dutchie.”
I sniffed and walked towards the exit shaft. Boring bitch.
*
The bar at The Thistle Hotel was surprisingly dark for a room with a large expanse of plate glass along one side. Perhaps it was the mahogany furniture, or the crimson carpets. Still, the view was good: Tower Bridge was just outside, stocky, half-buried, a dark sky fermenting behind it. We were early for Sunday lunch and had the run of the place. The waitress, however, insisted on directing us to a small table by the window, next to the only other customers, a Japanese couple. They smiled nervously. The mother called to their child, who was looking at a model of a nineteenth-century schooner in a glass cabinet near the stairs.
Charlotte was in polite mode, pushing a plastic basket of bread in my direction. My life lay on the table between us. She had done well today, given the circumstances, I had to concede that. But then so had I. Both of us wished we were elsewhere.
“Are you happy with the name Douglas?” she began.
“It’s what my old man called me when I was ignoring him.”
“But you will turn around if somebody says it?”
“Depends who it is,” I said, grinning.
“You ought to know this by tomorrow,” she said crisply, trying to restore order. She took a single sheet out of the folder and gave it to me. I got the impression she lived in fear of being taken in. “It’s all the important dates in your life,” she said. “A CV if you like.”
I took it casually but was intrigued. The list bore little resemblance to the one I had written at the service station: 1982–1985, attended Sherborne. That was the same. From then on it was pure fantasy, nightmare: 1986–1988, a crammer in Oxford; 1989, travelling around Europe; 1991–3, Trinity College, Cambridge; 1994–97, Audit Commission; January 1998 joined Jensen Klein Abrahall.
“There’s a list here of what O and A levels you passed, but no one’s going to ask.”
“I did alright in my O Levels.”
“I know. We’ve kept them the same.”
“Physics. That was my favourite.”
“Mine too.”
I looked at her, smiling, making an effort. She must have been headgirl.
“Our Physics teacher, he was crap, a joke,” I went on. “He let me wander around on top of the benches at the back, blowing things up, starting little fires.”
“You were expelled, weren’t you?”
“I chose to leave.”
“Why?”
“They wouldn’t let me mix my own drugs.”
“Seems reasonable enough. Where did you go?”
“All over the place. Bath, Bristol, Hackney.”
“And Cambridge? You mentioned you had been there once.”
“Yeah. I went to a college ball.”
“Really? Which one?” Her eyes lit up.
“I’ve no idea. There were lots of bastards poncing about in bow-ties.”
“You didn’t enjoy it then.”
“Oh no, I had a great time. Ruined everyone’s evening.”
She fell quiet, fingering a piece of bread.
“I didn’t look in your room. There should have been some clothes.”
“This shirt, a couple of ties.”
“And you’ve bought a suit.”
I nodded.
“You’ll need more. Shirts, socks. It’s important you wear a different tie every day.”
“You’re joking, aren’t you?”
“We’ll go shopping after lunch.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Does it matter?”
“You’re very maternal.”
“I’ve got my instructions. It’s nothing else.”
“I won’t fuck up.”
She glanced at the Japanese couple and smiled.
“I’m sure you won’t, Douglas.” Her face was full of doubt though, her eyes compressing fractionally inwards.
“Dutchie.”
“You were close, you and Annalese, weren’t you?”
I said nothing.
“Finding her killers is not going to bring her back, you know that?”
“Keep the advice, thanks.”
“It won’t.”
“But it’ll make me feel better, won’t it?”
I stuck my feet out into the room and looked at my ridiculous shoes. Policeman’s shoes. The man in the suit shop had conned me.
“Is that why you are doing this, for her?” she asked. “Or are you doing it for yourself?”
“Queen and country. Let’s go.”
“But we haven’t finished.”
“Bollocks to that. Come on.”
*
We drove to Marble Arch, avoiding Oxford Street at my request. She felt bad for not remembering and I savoured her guilt. Resolutely, Marks and Spencer had kept its flagship store open on Sundays, despite the bombing campaign. Security was tight and people were queuing down the street. I seemed to be frisked longer than most. Charlotte was searched too, her library card cutting no ice with the stocky women in their brown shirts and peaked caps.
“Take this and find yourself some suit shirts, ties, whatever you need,” she said, handing me a basket. “I recommend you choose things which don’t need ironing. I’m certainly not going to do it for you.”
The last time I had been to Marks and Spencer was with my mum.
“Can’t I come with you?” I asked, pleading.
“I’ve got to buy a few things. I’ll meet you back here. Twenty minutes?”
With that she was gone, lost in the dense crowd. I looked around, felt my back pocket. I still had money left over from my suit purchase, but it seemed a pity to use it.
Upstairs in the menswear department I chose the most offensive striped shirts I could find: pink and white, green with pyjama-blue stripes and white collars. The ties were not much better. I went for patterned Italian silk, hand-painted English, anything so long as it looked expensive and clashed. Once my basket was full, brimming with patterned socks and boxer s
horts, I went upstairs to the lingerie department to have a scoot around. I watched a couple of young Arab women, faces covered, holding up some designer briefs. Then I spotted Charlotte behind them.
“It’s alright, I’ll stick with boxer shorts,” I said. I had approached unnoticed, and was standing at her shoulder.
“God, you gave me a fright,” she said, putting down a three pack of high-legs and moving on.
“Aren’t you going to buy them?” I asked, looking at the packet.
“You must be joking. They’re thirty quid.”
“Go on, treat yourself.”
“I see you’ve done alright. Let’s pay and get out of here. It’s so crowded.”
As she walked towards the cashier, I hung back. I had already worked out that the only camera in the department was trained on the over-stretched cashier desks. The nearest security guard was picking his spots in bathroom accessories. In one deft movement I placed the packet up my jumper, in between my ribcage and upper elbow, and walked after Charlotte.
She paid for my basketload and for some tights, a cream blouse and some woollen leggings, using a card which she held out limply.
“What’s that? Another library pass?” I whispered.
“It’s my M&S account card.”
“No spooky discounts, then?”
“No.”
“You know Stella Rimington’s now on the board of Marks and Spencer,” I said. “Funny thing, that.”
“Why? She was very good at running a large department.”
“Oh come on. That’s not why she got the job. Remember that fuzzy photo? The only picture the newspapers had of her? She was carrying an M&S plastic bag. Talk about coincidence. They’ve been employing her for years.”
*
Outside in Orchard Street I didn’t offer to carry Charlotte’s bags as we made our way to the car. There were still people queuing and it had begun to drizzle. It must have been like this during the war – wondering whether you would get blown up before you reached the front of the bread queue or on the way home. As we walked back along the line of people, I looked at them with their Burberry coats, two-tone golfing umbrellas, sensible shoes (I could talk) and Liberty shawls. Douglas would soon be queuing with them.