by Francis King
Mehmet, next to Adrian, jerked his head aside in disgust.
Adrian said dryly: ‘You’re the first person I’ve ever seen dancing cheek to cheek with himself.’
Harry left first. At precisely ten-thirty the same Mercedes, with the elderly uniformed driver, appeared for him. It was such a long journey back to London, he explained to Adrian, who was helping him on with the pale-brown cashmere jacket that he had taken off because of the heat, and the next morning he had to see someone at Sotherby’s ‘bright and early – I must be both those things.’ At the door, he suddenly turned. ‘Oh, I’ve forgotten something!’ Adrian assumed that he was referring to a hat or stick, but he went on: ‘I must give your charming friend my card.’
‘I doubt if he is likely to buy any objet from you,’ Adrian said acidly. ‘But I’ll call him.’
To Adrian’s chagrin, Mehmet took the proffered card with obvious pleasure. He then stared down at it, smiling.
‘My showrooms and my house are in Cairo. I also have a small flat in Luxor for the winter. Please – come and stay whenever you wish.’
‘Thank you.’ Mehmet nodded, smiled.
‘I promise you a good time. Come. Do come.’
The cheek of it! Adrian’s lips were thinned as he once again opened the front door. He did not accompany his visitor out of the house but watched him, door still open, as though he feared that he might slip round to the back and purloin something.
Harry turned before clambering into the Mercedes. He raised a hand and waved: ‘Au revoir!’ he called in a French accent as faultless as his English one. ‘A bientôt!’
Without any response, Adrian slammed the door shut. Then he turned to Mehmet, who was standing behind him: ‘Well! The sauce of it!’
Mehmet merely grinned.
When, almost two hours later, Adrian had shut the door on the last of the guests, he moved over to Mehmet with a beam and outstretched arms. Behind him, tray at the ready, Igor was already creeping into the sitting-room, to collect the used glasses.
‘I was really proud of you!’
Mehmet was puzzled. ‘Proud of me?’
‘Yes, you were terrific.’
Then he heard a discreet clink of glasses and swung round. ‘Oh, Igor! Look, sweet, why don’t you leave that till tomorrow?’
Igor shook his head, his ponytail swinging. ‘ You know I never like to leave things.’
‘I help you,’ Mehmet volunteered, to Adrian’s amazement.
‘Oh, no, no.’ Adrian, for so long desperate for his increasingly drunken guests to leave, was now ravenous for sex. ‘Igor likes to be left on his own. Don’t you, love?’
Igor said nothing, as he began to empty one ashtray into another.
Upstairs, Mehmet went straight to his room. Adrian followed him, put his arms around his waist, and gave a sharp squeeze.
Mehmet moved away. ‘I sleep,’ he said. ‘Tired.’
‘Oh, but couldn’t we …? You don’t have to do anything,’ he rushed on. ‘ Just let me … Oh, please, sweetheart.’
Mehmet shook his head. ‘Tired.’
‘Oh, well …’ Adrian drew a deep sigh. ‘That’s disappointing, really disappointing.’ Mehmet having turned away, Adrian stared at his back intently, as though he might somehow be able to will him to change his mind. ‘Oh, never mind. There’s always another day – or another night. So – goodnight, sweetie.’
Mehmet pulled back sheet and blanket. ‘Goodnight.’
Adrian went to his own room and threw himself, still dressed, on to his bed. Well, there was nothing else for it, he would have to wank off. God, what a dreary way to end an evening!
Igor opened the gate for the car and then stood by it like a soldier, erect, hands to the seams of his ancient, soiled flannels, eyes straight ahead, spine rigid. Suddenly Adrian felt a sadness for him, his career over, no prospects ahead of him, no chance or even wish of finding a lover; but he knew that Igor did not feel any sadness for himself. He had opted for this life of solitary caretaking, gardening and minding of animals. Once he had had a Welsh collie and had clearly loved her; but when that dog was run over by a carelessly driven school bus, he had shown no desire to get another.
The day was another scorcher and so, for the drive back to London, Adrian was wearing shorts. He took a hand off the wheel and repeatedly ran it over his own bare thigh. It gave him a buzz; it was almost as though the warm flesh were not his but Mehmet’s, now suddenly responsive to his touch instead of indifferent to it. He began to feel a growing excitation.
Mehmet had been sitting back with eyes closed. Adrian was not sure whether he was asleep or not. But then he sat up, opened his eyes, and said: ‘Adrian, I wish ask something. Important. Very important.’
Here we go, thought Adrian, removing his hand from his thigh and gripping the wheel. Money!
‘Yes?’ he said cautiously. ‘Ask away. Mummy’s listening.’
‘Adrian, I tell you something about myself. I am illegal here.’
‘Illegal!’ Adrian was alarmed. ‘What d’you mean?’
Mehmet explained. He had come illegally into the country, he had no work permit and, because of the lack of a work permit, it was very difficult to get any work. ‘But I want work, want very much.’
‘Yes, I see.’ But he did not really see. How was he expected to help?
‘I need passport.’
‘But what has happened to your own passport?’
In his halting English, Mehmet explained that he had arrived in England on a false passport. It had belonged to an Algerian with French nationality, about his own age and not unlike him in looks, whom he had met in a bar in Paris and who had then become a friend. He had had to give the Algerian money for the passport and he had had to promise to destroy the passport as soon as he had passed through immigration – ‘otherwise maybe I make trouble, big trouble for him, if passport found.’
Where was all this tending? ‘Yes, I see,’ Adrian said again. ‘But what exactly – what can I do?’
Mehmet went on to explain that he had a landlord who knew someone who was employed in the passport office. This man in the passport office – already, with a feeling of dread, Adrian knew what was coming – could provide Mehmet with a passport from some EU country. But, of course, he wanted money for that service. ‘I have no money. But you – you are my friend.’
Adrian frowned and tapped one hand on the wheel, as though he were beating out some rhythm audible only to himself. Then he said: ‘How much money does he want?’
‘Two thousand.’ Mehmet glanced sideways at Adrian. Then he said: ‘ Sorry, Adrian. But it is terrible for me – living illegal, no work, no National Health, nothing.’
‘Two thousand!’ Adrian whistled. ‘That’s a hell of a lot of money.’ Only the previous month, he had spent more than that amount on having a conservatory built, but that was different, that was really an investment for the time when he decided to sell the house, as he had sold other houses, always at a profit. But then the thought came to him, arresting and beguiling: Wasn’t Mehmet also an investment?
‘If I found illegal, I get deported. Then we not together,’ Mehmet said.
Again Adrian beat out the rhythm on the wheel. ‘Oh, God!’ There was a silence. Then, having reached a decision, he said: ‘Oh, very well. But are you sure this man can deliver the goods?’
‘Landlord say he is OK, very OK. Old friend.’
‘Well, I haven’t got the money on me, of course. And I can’t give you a cheque. For obvious reasons.’ It had suddenly struck him, like a blow to the solar plexus, that what he was about to do was highly illegal. ‘You must never breathe a word of this to anyone. Understand? Not a word, not a single word. Silence!’ He put a forefinger to his lips.
Mehmet nodded. ‘ OK. No problem, Adrian. You worry too much.’
‘Of course I worry,’ Adrian retorted peevishly. ‘I could go to gaol.’
There was a silence. Then Mehmet looked over to Adrian and said: ‘ When you give
this money?’
This importunity began to rile Adrian. ‘Well, not today. I’m far too busy. I have three important meetings one after the other. And then I promised to visit an old friend in hospital.’ This last was a fiction. In fact, he had to go to one of his canasta sessions with the fag hags.
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Possibly. Give me your number and I’ll ring you. Just as soon as I’ve got the money from the bank.’
‘I ring you tomorrow. What time?’
‘I don’t know what time. No, I’ll ring you. That’ll be best. I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow – it’s another day of rush. So I’ll ring you.’
‘But I think it better –’
It was a contest of wills. Adrian, who would never have got where he had but for his persistence, was persistent now. He wanted that telephone number, he was going to have that telephone number. Or else …
‘No. If you want the money tomorrow, then let me ring you.’ He opened the glove compartment and took out the pad and the biro that he kept there for the addresses and telephone numbers of hitch-hikers. He handed both to Mehmet, who took them reluctantly. ‘Write your number there.’
With extreme slowness, Mehmet wrote it. ‘ I hope that right. I do not remember well.’ He pushed pad and biro back into the glove compartment. ‘You promise?’
‘I promise. When you know me better, you’ll realize that, if I say I’ll do something, I always do it.’
As they reached Vauxhall, there was suddenly a cloudburst. The leaden sky cracked open and the rain sluiced down. Now, Adrian thought, he would be able to find out where Mehmet lived, in addition to having his telephone number. ‘God, what a downpour! You’ve got no mac or umbrella, have you? And I haven’t got a spare. I’d better drive you home.’
‘No, no. Thank you. You have many, many business. Leave me by Underground, please. No problem.’
‘Oh, no. I can take you home. I can’t let you out in this.’
They had stopped at a traffic light, just by the entrance to Westminster Station. Then, all at once, Mehmet was opening the door. ‘I go, I go! Station near here.’ He leaned across Adrian and snatched his bag off the back seat. Shouting ‘Goodbye, thank you!’, he leapt out of the car and disappeared down into the station.
Chapter Sixteen
Pipe in mouth, Sylvia’s husband Paul put his bald head round the door. ‘Hello, Meg! I didn’t realize you were here.’ Of course the stuck-up bugger realized. He must have known what Sylvia was up to when she took the car that morning. Sylvia told him everything. ‘How are things?’
‘She saw a new man today,’ Sylvia answered for her. ‘Very young, like a precocious schoolboy. But he seemed to know his stuff. The older ones have the experience of course, that stands to reason, but the younger ones know far more about all the latest advances. He’s put her on to a new drug – Betaferon, I think that’s what it’s called.’
‘Splendid, splendid! Well, let’s hope it does the trick.’ Never ill himself, Paul hated to hear of the illnesses of others. It was as though he feared that even to hear the word ‘cancer’ ‘arthritis’ or ‘Parkinson’s’ could infect him. ‘Well, if you’ll excuse me, Meg, I must get back to struggling with our tax returns. All this self-assessment seems to be designed to cause one the maximum torture. See you!’ At that he was gone. Meg knew that he would not join them for lunch. On the excuse that she did not want to interrupt his work, Sylvia would carry a tray to him.
‘I can’t think why he won’t employ an accountant. I suppose that, now that he’s retired, he’s glad of something to occupy him.’
Meg thought: I wish I had the money to need an accountant to keep an eye on it for me. ‘ He’s lucky,’ she said, in a tone of grudging admiration. ‘He doesn’t look his sixty-two years, does he? I’ve never known him to have a day’s illness.’
Sylvia quickly put out a hand to touch the wood of the table beside her. ‘It’s in the genes,’ she said. ‘All his family live to be a hundred – or thereabouts.’
‘Pity our genes weren’t better.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I have my aches and pains but I’ve never had a really serious illness, have I? And you didn’t have one until this wretched thing hit you.’
Sylvia attempted to put an arm round Meg’s waist to support her when they moved into the dining-room, where she had laid out the M & S sandwiches and pots of yogurt for their lunch. But Meg said sharply: ‘I’m OK, OK.’ It was odd: she never minded Mehmet helping her, but she hated it when Sylvia did.
‘You sit yourself down and I’ll just take Paul up his tray. He’d have liked to join us, but once he gets his teeth into something …’ Meg knew that she was lying; he wouldn’t in the least have liked to join them. Sylvia vanished into the next-door kitchen, where she placed two cartons, one containing a chicken curry and another pilau rice, into the microwave for Paul. ‘Would you like apple juice or orange juice?’ she called out, having switched on the microwave and opened the refrigerator.
‘To be frank with you, dear, neither. What I need is a stiff vodka.’
‘Oh, do you really think …? I can’t help feeling that you ought to cut down on the drinking.’ Sylvia appeared in the doorway between kitchen and dining-room, a carton of orange juice in one hand. ‘It can’t be any help, not in your condition.’
‘You make it sound as if I was an alcoholic. I don’t drink as Dad used to drink. Come on, Sylvia! Why not pour me a shot?’
With a sigh, Sylvia did as she had been asked. But she made the vodka a tiny one, before splashing in some tonic, followed by three ice cubes.
Soon, the two women were munching their sandwiches. By the time that she was on her second drink, Meg’s cheekbones were flushed and her eyes had lost the dull, dead look that they had acquired in the course of an interminable wait at the hospital. Sylvia leaned forward to ask the question that she invariably asked at each of their meetings.
‘Tell me, dear. I meant to ask you. What’s the rent position?’
‘The rent position? Well, it’s where it always was.’
‘You mean – he still hasn’t paid you?’
Meg bit into her sandwich. Then, mouth bulging, she shook her head. She chewed, swallowed. ‘ He pays in dribs and drabs. But the problem is, the weeks go by and, instead of catching up, he falls more and more behind.’
‘I really think you should give him the push.’ Sylvia had repeatedly given this advice. ‘I mean, it’s not as if you could afford to be a philanthropist.’ She saw a look of vague bewilderment on her sister’s face. ‘ You’re not a charity,’ she said. ‘ Things are hard enough for you as it is, trying to make ends meet, without your losing money on him.’
‘I couldn’t do without him.’
‘Yes, you always say that. But with more help from the Social Security people I’m sure you could.’
Meg shook her head. ‘He’s like a nurse to me. That Fiona’s got a good heart and we get on fine. But she’s always in a hurry – the kids, that husband of hers always coming or going, mostly going, the other people she visits. Without Mehmet …’
Sylvia pursed her lips and sighed. They were constantly having this conversation. It got them nowhere. ‘Well, it’s your own business,’ she said.
‘Then why do you keep shoving your nose into it?’ Meg wanted to ask. But she was feeling too tired for any unpleasantness.
It was good to be home again, even if, with the window open, there was that thump-thump-thump, like a magnified heartbeat, from the hi-fi of the flat on the first floor across the yard, and, with the window shut, one could hardly breathe in this heatwave. She envied Sylvia the quiet and coolness of Highgate. Even when they were children, Sylvia had always expected the best and had always managed to get it. She would never be the one to be struck down with something like MS.
Oh, fuck! She had forgotten to ask Mehmet to buy her her five Lucky Dips. She had stacked the five pound coins on the kitchen table to remind her to do so, but somehow, in the rush of getti
ng ready for the hospital – clean knickers, just in case, a dress that Fiona had clumsily ironed, since she now had so much difficulty in handling the iron herself – they had failed to do so. The night before she had had a dream that she had won the lottery and she and Mehmet had gone away on a cruise, eventually to find, to her joy and his chagrin, that the purser was none other than her Eric. She often dreamed of winning the lottery and even more often of Eric, but this was the first time that she had dreamed of the two together. Could that have some special meaning – an omen?
Soon she fell asleep, her head lolling sideways in the chair, so that her tight, reddish-brown curls fell across her forehead, and her mouth was agape. This time she did not dream.
Mehmet’s return roused her. Always, when he returned after she had been on a visit to the hospital, the first thing that he would say after greeting her was to ask how she had got on. But this time, without any preliminary, he announced: ‘Good news, Mamma! Very good news!’ She could see that he was bursting with joy.
She rubbed at an eye with the back of a hand. Her hands worried her now, they were not merely getting more and more useless but they looked so ugly in their swollen limpness. ‘What news?’
‘Wait, wait, wait!’ He had been carrying a carrier bag when he had entered and now, stooping down to it, he produced a bottle of champagne. ‘The Widow,’ he said. Meg had no idea what he was talking about but, when he held the bottle aloft over his head, she knew from the cork that it must contain champagne or at least one of those fizzy wines that always gave her an acid stomach.
‘What’s that for?’
‘My good news.’ In the same rush he fetched down two tumblers and then got some ice from the refrigerator. Immediately after that the cork of the bottle popped and shot across the room. ‘Oh, mind Mr Teddy!’ Meg cried out in alarm for the pale-blue teddy bear seated on the mantelpiece. Then, grinning, Mehmet was splashing the champagne over the ice.