by Claire Peate
I watched as he was received into the room like a celebrity, shaking hands and kissing the cheeks of everyone assembled: a word here and laugh and slap on the back there. I looked to see how Neil had taken the arrival of his boss/owner. He looked crushed.
“This is a nice place,” I said in an effort to bring my friend back from the unhappy place I’d put him in by talking about the café. Maybe if I hadn’t pried so deeply then he wouldn’t be so intent on drowning in bubbly.
“Yeah,” Neil looked about blearily, “yeah it’s l-lovely. It’s goddamn lovely.” He held on to the bar. “And good for Claude that’s what I say! He’s wanted to do this for so bloody long, and now he’s finally got the chance.”
“What did he used to do before opening the bistro?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t putting my foot in it again. Tonight there seemed such a fine line between taking an interest and mortally wounding Neil.
“The man was a policeman! Would you believe. Lucky the minimum height thingy was relaxed ’cause he’s such a shortarse. Don’t know how he ever caught the crims. Probably bit their kneecaps or something.” His hand slipped from the bar and he staggered down.
“Look, Neil, maybe I should walk you home.”
“I bet,” he pulled himself back upright, “I bet Claude managed to nego … neg … ” he tried the word out before slowing down to pronounce it properly, “Net-o-tiate a better deal with Eustash Foxsh than I got. What do you think? Do you think he’ll get to keep the profits from this place? You can’t fuck a p-policeman around can you? Wonder what Eustch got in return? Why doesh he want to do Claude? It’ll be the police connection won’t it? Yeah. Eust wants the p-police connection.”
“Why?” I cut into his mumblings and he slapped a hand on his mouth.
“No. Don’t say. Don’t say anything will you? All hush. All hush hush!”
“Oh my God,” I said, as much to myself as Neil. “It really is all Eustace isn’t it?”
Neil frowned at me and tried to put a finger to his lips.
“I mean I had a suspicion that he was involved in some way. It’s the bay trees – they’re like a calling card for him aren’t they? They’re a sign!”
“Edda, I—”
“I thought he was a controlling man with the gardening: changing things on the surface of Brockley but actually, actually he’s imposing himself onto the neighbourhood isn’t he? Does he own all these new businesses around here?”
“Really Edda. D-don’t.” Neil scooped a handful of canapés off a passing tray.
“But I’m on to something aren’t I? I am aren’t I? Admit it.”
“Yes,” he muttered, shooting a nervous look across the room at the man himself. “That’s estate agents for you,” he hiccupped, looking like a man on the brink of changing his mind and talking at last. “The place becomes vacant, or should I say vacated eh? Eh?” He made to tap his nose but missed. “And Eustace is in like a shot. I mean. He only wants the best doesn’t he? For Brockley. He wantsh it to be Greenwich. He’s always going on. About Greenwich. You know. Greenwich thish, Greenwich that. Sometimes, you know, I think he really hatesh Greenwich. Has this enormous chip. On his shoulder. You know. Eust grew up in Brockley didn’t he? Went to this p-posh school in Greenwich or was it Blackheath? Anyway, one of the two. So, I bet the posh kids, man, I bet they slated him for coming from Brockley; I bet it was a right shithole in those days.”
I thought about Babs and what she would have said to Neil about that.
Nothing, probably. She just would have socked him.
“So you think Eustace is trying to make Brockley into Greenwich by guerrilla gardening?”
“Fuck yeah!” he wobbled and clutched onto the bar again. “And the rest.”
“You mean by buying up all the shops he can lay his hands on and making them into Greenwich-style businesses?”
Neil threw his head back, “A ha! A ha ha ha ha! You’ve got it there haven’t you? Buying. Taking. Buying. Take take take. Clever old Eust eh?” He laughed again and then leapt skywards as Eustace clamped a heavy hand on his shoulder.
I hadn’t seen him make his was across the room either and I felt my heart race at the sight of him. How much of what Neil had said had Eustace heard?
“Having fun?” he asked lightly. “It’s a splendid venue don’t you think? So imaginatively decked out; it’s exactly how I’d wanted it to be. A friend of mine did it. And he did the bookshop over the road. Have you been in yet, Edda?”
“No. No, I haven’t.” I said into my glass. The cold sobriety of Eustace was in sharp contrast to Neil’s ruddy cheeked drunkenness.
“Oh you should. It’s lovely, like a bijou version of Waterstones. Anyway, I won’t keep you – you were obviously deep in conversation. I’ll pop round to V-2, perhaps tomorrow Neil – maybe get a mid-morning cappuccino, what do you say?”
“Great,” Neil nodded, looking down at the floor and swaying.
“And Anja? Is she well?”
“Yesh.”
“Such a shame that she couldn’t be here tonight. Well, then, see you later, Edda.” Eustace leant over and slowly planted a kiss on my cheek before disappearing through the crowd to the other side of the room.
“I have to go!” Neil scrabbled for his coat that had slid off a bar stool and was being trampled into the floor.
“No!”
“Yes. Sorry. Edda. See you around.”
I watched as he clumsily tried to stuff his hands into the balled up arms of his coat and jigged to work them free.
“Here let me help you…”
“’s fine.” Neil pushed violently against the sleeves. “There I’m free.” And he was gone.
I looked across the room and saw Eustace with a hint of a smile on his lips, head turned to the door and watching Neil’s exit.
Vacant and vacated. Buying and taking.
There was a significant difference between the two words that Neil had used.
Eustace was obviously behind the estate agency and the transformation of the Petit Marché, but tonight Neil had let slip that Eustace was also behind the V-2 café and the Bistro. Now I was realising there were all the other businesses too: all the Farrow and Ball painted bay-tree touting shops had been acquired through him. Legitimately and otherwise.
I turned away from watching Eustace. Vacant meant the premises were empty and the new business was free to move in. Vacated – did that mean the old business was forced out to make way for the new business? Is that was Neil was implying? All these bistros and cafés and book shops, all these bay trees and Farrow and Ball painted signs, had there been a wholesale pushing-out of the old businesses?
What were the old businesses? I’d been in Brockley a few years, surely I’d remember.
I pushed my way through the spangled crowd until I was standing by the steamed windows. With my sleeve pulled over my hand I rubbed a circle in the steamed up glass and peered out into the darkened South London street.
The book shop opposite had been a kebab shop. The bistro I was in had been a rough pub, the florist’s on the corner had been a tatty convenience store, Fox Estates had been a betting shop and Booze Busters off-licence was now an antiques shop. I craned my head left and then right. I could count twelve bay trees in twelve identical pots chained with identical chain two to the front of each of the six premises.
Was Eustace really behind all of this? My fingers froze on the steamed panes of glass. Was this what Babs knew about Eustace: was this why she was so hesitant to talk about him? Not because he was a snob that wouldn’t sell her friend’s flat and didn’t want to know her sort of London, but because he was cold-bloodedly wiping old Brockley off the map and replacing it with his own cosmetically enhanced rival to Greenwich.
Hadn’t Babs said that the gangs in suits were more frightening than the gangs in hoodies?
My hand was shaking on the pane of glass.
“I hear Neil was off his muffin.” I felt Guy’s arm slip in around my waist. “Did you ply him w
ith champagne, Edda? Tut, tut, the boy can’t take it you know! These beach bums are more spliff heads.”
“Guy,” I turned to face him, wiggling to free my waist from his arm.
“Having fun?” he said.
I looked at him, the worse for wear, tousled and, I noticed, red-plumped kissed lips no doubt from the blonde with the thighs.
I smiled.
But I didn’t care one jot, not even a very small jot. In fact… “Guy, you remember you told me that you have to wait for the inspiration to come to you in order to paint?”
“Ye-es,” he looked at me from the top of his champagne glass.
“And that you have to search for the muse?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Well do you need the muse to embrace you while you enlarge family snaps on a photocopier?”
“Wh—”
“Does the mood have to be right before you trace the image onto canvas using carbon paper? I was just wondering, because the painting by numbers thing you’ve got going doesn’t seem to tally with all that crap that you spout about being a true artist.”
“What are you trying to say, Edda?” Guy struck a pose.
“Well, I’m trying to say what I’m trying to say. You’re not an artist are you? You convert photographs into paintings by enlarging them and copying their outlines. That’s not the same as interpretation and inspiration is it?”
“There’s a lot more to it,” he downed his drink in a single draft, “than someone not of an artistic bent could ever understand.”
“Like how to remember if number 3 was Cooking Apple Green or Lulworth Blue? You don’t even get to choose the colours do you? That’s decided for you by your client. It’s hardly Rosetti or Millais is it?”
“What’s wrong with you, tonight, Edda?” he said through tight lips.
“Nothing.” I grabbed my coat from the bar stool, heart pounding but completely ecstatic. “Goodbye, Guy.”
And I fled, champagne-headed and with heart pounding, running through the empty Brockley streets, one less convert to the Eustace Fox cause.
“ROBERT!”
An amorphous shape spasmed on the bed. “What the—” Robert thrashed around, fighting in the dark with the duvet.
“I’m sorry! Don’t be scared it’s me! Look I’m going to turn on the light.”
“What? No! Don’t argh! Bloody hell, Edda, what the bloody hell are you – what time is it?” Robert, hair all over the place, leant over to his watch and stared at it blearily. “It’s one in the morning, Edda!”
“I know. I’m sorry.” I perched on the edge of the bed. “Can we talk?”
He fell back onto the pillow, tousled and pyjamad and – the feeling hit me walloped me in the stomach – more desirable to me than Guy would ever be. And then came the realisation that I was acting like a complete prostitute, spending the afternoon in bed with one man and then lusting after another, full of canapés and champagne sitting on his bed at one in the morning.
Oh well… Now was not the time for fretting about moral niceties.
“Robert, listen, Eustace Fox is running Brockley! He’s got this whole empire thing going on around us!”
Robert groaned and sat up. “You’re not going to go away, are you?”
“No! You have to hear this.”
“I don’t have to hear it, Edda.”
“Oh, please.” I flopped down beside him, breaking every landlady rule in the book.
“Edda, can we talk tomorrow?”
I turned to face him on the pillow. “It is tomorrow.”
“Later,” he said, a touch ominously.
“That was very ominous.”
“I’m very tired.”
“OK,” I propped myself up, “But can I just say that I’m sorry. I’m really sorry for being such an idiot earlier.”
He ran a hand over his eyes and yawned. “Look, Edda, can we talk about it tomorrow morning?”
“Yes. Let’s. Let’s talk tomorrow.” And then I leant over and kissed him on the mouth. And fled out of the room, turning out the light before I could see Robert’s expression.
“Oh bugger!” I whispered to Finley, a few minutes later, slopping out Forest Friends Meaty Pieces into his bowl. “Bugger, bugger, bugger. Fin: I’ve really messed up.”
Twenty-two
We had a good routine to Sundays. Robert would be up at around nine. He’d go out to Mr Iqbal’s, to pick up the Sunday papers, and then on returning he’d put a pot of coffee on and settle down at the breakfast bar. At which point I’d emerge from my bedroom, barmy-haired and dressing-gowned, and help him read the papers and assist in the drinking of the coffee. Sometimes on those Sunday mornings we hardly talked – just grunted a hello and then sitting side by side we buried ourselves in the papers. Other times we’d discuss the news, although we didn’t always see eye to eye on what we classed as news… I cannot believe the Government’s bringing in the new legislation on pensions/Yes but look at these plastic pink jodhpurs do you think I should buy plastic pink jodhpurs? As a rule he liked the bits of the papers that were large and had pictures of graphs and cross looking middle-aged men in them. While I liked any bits that were on glossy paper and had pretty pictures in them, mostly of shiny things to buy. We argued over the property section.
But today I was up at six in the morning. By seven I was showered, coiffed and made up, dressed casually yet attractively, perched neatly at the breakfast bar with the Sunday papers that I’d been out to buy myself. I was pleased to note that enormous vats of ghee had appeared in the Petit Marché again along with some of the exotic Caribbean and Eastern European foods that had always formed a staple of the Brockley Mini Mart. Cracks had started to appear in Eustace’s carefully managed world.
“Edna, it is very early for you. Robert is ill?” Mr Iqbal asked with concern as I’d handed over a small fortune: the last time I had bought the Sunday papers they had been about seventy pence.
“I thought I might get the Sunday papers this week.”
“Well, I am sure he will like the rest. He is working too hard at the moment isn’t he?”
Was he? How rubbish was I that I didn’t even know. I made a mental note to ask him about his work: as soon as I’d told him my news of course … “Yes he is working hard,” I said.
“And would you like to buy this organic muesli bar, young Edna? It says it’s packed full of free range nuts and wholegrain.”
When I got home I divided the papers into two piles: dry news and glossy fluff. I straightened the piles and pushed Robert’s pile in front of his stool and mine in front of my stool. I made a pot of coffee. I poured it away and made a better pot of coffee. I drank a mug of it, then another mug of it, ate my organic muesli bar and felt rather ill. I flicked through my glossy fluff magazines. I checked my hair. I ate the second muesli bar. I made another pot of coffee and I wondered: where was Robert? Why wasn’t Robert coming down? I checked my watch. It wasn’t even eight o’clock. Urgh. There was still an hour to go before it was his usual time to get up.
I stared at my reconstructed Valhalla plate and my heart sank as I remembered kissing Robert last night. Why had I done that? What good would that have done? I still hadn’t worked out what I was going to say when he came down and I so wanted to tell him my news. I wanted to jump on his bed and scream, Wake up! I want to talk to you about Eustace Fox! but I didn’t dare to go into his room again. Because maybe, since the incident late last night, he’d dug out his old cricket bat and was now sleeping with it under his pillow in the event that I launched myself on him again.
And I didn’t want to call Beth. Because she was so out of touch with what was going on it would take half an hour to bring her up to speed, by which time she’d have lost interest or have something she had to do. Like give birth.
“Oh, bloody hell!” I threw down the stupid magazines, chucked the bad coffee down the sink and stormed outside, grabbing my hatchet and gardening gloves. I had an inner anger that was making my hands shake and hac
king away at the back garden was the only way I could think of working it off. Because hey – it’d worked for the front garden.
I stood in the morning light, panting slightly, still angry, but determined not to ravage the wilderness at the back of the house to the same extent that I’d ravaged what had been the wilderness at the front. I could vent my anger by taming, trimming, cutting. There would be no hacking this time. No slashing.
“Crikey, Edda...”
“Robert!” I threw the hatchet down onto the heap of cuttings. “Hi!”
“What have you done?”
“I’ve been gardening.”
“Edda, you’ve completely decimated the back garden.”
“Have I? Have I really?” I turned to look back on my early morning’s work with fresh eyes. “Oh, crap, I have haven’t I? Damnit. I didn’t mean to.”
“What happened to the Rowan tree?”
I peered round the garden. “It’s there. By the heap of hedge cuttings.”
“You hacked down the rowan tree? That thing was a beast.”
I shrugged. “I had a lot of coffee this morning. And I had things to think about. Anyway,” I turned back to him, “how are you? Are you OK?”
“I’m fine. You have stuff in your hair, you know. Clippings. Twigs.”
“Oh. Pants!” I reached up and pulled vegetation from my hair. I had been so immaculate at seven that morning and now, I checked my watch, at a quarter to ten I was dishevelled and tramp-like. “Look, Robert,” I said, flinging the twigs from my up-do, “I’m really sorry about last night.”
He looked at me slightly askew. “Which bit?”
“What do you mean?” I said, coyly. Perhaps he couldn’t actually remember the last bit …