The Eavesdroppers

by Rosie Chard

  CHAPTER

  34

  I left work early the next day, tired of reading through Sammy Gringold’s tedious statistical analysis. Jean had given me an odd look as I passed her office and I glimpsed Wilson out of the corner of my eye as I brushed the coffee machine, and as I left the building I wondered briefly if I’d get into trouble, but no, I didn’t care.

  With my hands stuffed into my pockets I walked towards Covent Garden – land of scented soap shops and overpriced cappuccino. Yet on that day the air wasn’t filled with the perfume of lavender and vanilla but with the smell of a laundry somewhere close by. I paused outside the back entrance of a hotel and breathed slowly in, imagining the suds chugging and sheets spinning.

  I set off towards Covent Garden Tube Station at a brisk rate, took the Piccadilly Line until I reached the enamel-striped station at Holloway Road. Before I knew it I was standing outside Eve’s launderette, not daring to turn round and look in, such was the weight of premonition straddling my shoulders. I felt heat on my back from the interior as the door was opened, then closed. Opened then closed. Opened.

  “Mr. Harcourt.”

  The voice I knew well. The clothes dredged up a memory of a time before, but the face, oh God, the face. “Eve! Is that you?”

  The face smiled. A line of pus squeezed out from a fold of skin. “Yes.”

  “What . . . bloody hell, what happened?” I touched her arm, held my hand there.

  The smile withered. “Let’s go somewhere else . . . can we? And I’ll . . . tell you.”

  “Yes. Yes, let’s go.”

  Somewhere else was a greasy spoon halfway up the Holloway Road. Eve seemed unsure at first about entering, but it started to rain so we went inside and found a table in the corner.

  “I hardly recognised you,” I said.

  She squeezed out another smile. “I hardly recognise myself.”

  I waited for some elaboration, but it didn’t come. Eve fingered the menu.

  “Cup of tea?” I said.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  I got up and ordered from the counter. I watched steam rise from a teapot then turned round to look at Eve. Eve was gone.

  “Eve. . . .” I yelled at the door. “Eve!” I rushed over and picked up my coat – “Cancel the tea, sorry,” – and ran out of the cafe. Rain rushed into my eyes, up into my nostrils; the street blurred as I scanned it. Then I spotted her in the distance.

  She’d got quite far. A man, reeling from being recently knocked into, indicated her direction with a furious shake of his eyebrows. I scampered across the wet pavement. “Eve!” I bellowed. “Eeeve!”

  She had to stop. She had to show her bruised face again and tell me what happened. I ran and caught her up and lay my hand on her arm. “Eve, please wait.”

  Her cheeks were soaked when she turned round to face me. Rain or tears, the colour is the same.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why I was so stupid. I–”

  “Eve,” I said. “Let’s go to my place. We can talk there.”

  “Alright,” she said in a voice that was dead.

  We took the Tube in silence. I wanted a chance to think but it was hard not to listen to a man in a bedraggled and pungent Afghan coat giving the carriage his loud opinion on Londoners – “Even in moments of great excitement the people of London are thinking of their homes as the centre of their lives.”

  It was a teasing point, but I avoided dwelling on it by watching the woman opposite me who was looking for something lost in her bag, pocket after pocket, zip after zip.

  “People of London are scarcely human,” continued the bard. “They should be kept as far out of London as possible. . . .”

  I read the Tube map. I counted the stations between Epping and Ealing Broadway; I examined the skin on the edge of my thumb. Anything. Anything to avoid looking at Eve’s poor punched face. But the memory was there. Engraved into my mind like an inscription on a trophy.

  Eve wouldn’t take off her coat when we arrived at my flat, but she accepted a cup of tea, which she sipped painfully, perched on the edge of my sofa like a pigeon on a damp ledge.

  I sat opposite her and I took her hand in mine “Eve,” I said. “What on earth happened?”

  The train shot through the tunnel; it roared between the embankments, over the viaduct, between the fields with cows. I had bought a cheap Saturday return at London Bridge and was now leaning back in my seat, watching the Kent Stations flash past the window, reading the names, not reading the names, reading the names. My heart, an organ to which I didn’t usually pay much attention, was racing too, a disconcerting thumping, which, if I let myself think it, hurt. I’d never felt such an urgent feeling to be somewhere. To just get there, for God’s sake. And in all the rush, the breathy panic of hailing a taxi, the desperate fumbling to get the money out of my wallet, I had forgotten the most important thing. I had not told him I was coming.

  I got off the train at Lydd. The platform was still deserted and, unable to get a signal on my phone, I unfolded the map I’d sketched on the back of a serviette, and headed in the direction of the house. The oppressive flatness to the place I’d felt on my first visit was upon me. Flatness and sadness. Something about the stretches of yellow grass, and the light, an eerie mould of green and grey, gave me a funny, nervous feeling. Signs marked my route. Not traffic signs but fish signs, fixed to every surface that would take a nail: jellied eels, whelks, dressed crabs, local lobsters and fresh bait, all for sale. Who was buying these salty wares remained a mystery as I walked down the empty street, but I kept going, past a small rowing boat beached on the pavement, past an obscenely thin concrete fence until I reached number 21 Battery Road.

  This home didn’t want visitors. The grass in the front garden had turned to straw and only a handful of mournful daisies struggled through cracks in the tarmac drive. The house was a beige pebbledash bungalow, with lace-curtained windows and lichen growing on its roof. The only spot of colour was a blue gas canister that sat mournfully by the front door. Dust rose from the grass as approached the house and pressed the bell. No one answered and I waited, just me and the canister and the dead grass and the big mouldy sky.

  I licked the sore on my lip, trying to decide if it would be worth going back to the cafe. But glancing at my watch I realised it was almost five o’clock so I turned round and headed towards Lydd’s one and only pub.

  It was easy to find The Britannia Inn; the smell of fish and chips led the way and five minutes later I was walking across the forecourt and feeling even more unease as I glanced up at the St. George’s flag that flapped so disapprovingly at me. The empty flowerpots marking the entrance made me want to call my mother and ask what they meant. Funny how the cracked little pots felt more threatening than the nuclear power station that squatted broodily on the horizon. I crossed the threshold and sidled up to the bar, a welcoming collection of pump handles, liquor on a shelf at the back, red cash register, everything red, ice bucket, beer mats and a poster that read No Fokker Comes Close. I sat on a red velvet stool, ordered a pint of Bishop’s Finger and remembered the reason for my frightened heart.

  Eve’s story the night before had been breathy, but to the point. Words meant moving muscles and moving muscles meant pain so I asked her to keep it simple. It was simple. So simple it could be boiled down to three words: launderette, man, punch. The man had needed help on the domestic front. Of course he did, I’d agreed, everyone needs a bit of help on the domestic front from time to time. And then, she said, ‘I think I went too far.’ Everyone goes a bit far sometimes, I’d replied, tightening my mug in my fingers. Then her sore face muscles seemed to loosen and she told me the whole grubby story. The man hadn’t appreciated her leaflet on getting limescale off his taps. And Eve hadn’t appreciated that alcohol and limescale advice don’t mix and only noticed the smell on his breath after it was too late. But, no, it wasn’t as bad as it looked she’d kept saying and no, she hadn’t told the police. I took her hom
e after she’d drunk three cups of tea, only just resisting the urge to lead her across the road, and I lingered outside her house for over an hour, watching her window and feeling like a complete shit. Once home I spent a further two hours thinking, agonising, wondering what the hell to do. And, on top of the anxiety about Eve there was another worry beginning to gnaw at me. Perhaps Eve wasn’t the only eavesdropper still at work.

  The bartender had the knack of looking at my face while wiping the glass in his hand with a tea towel; there was something a little pervy in the way he rubbed.

  Loth to speak, I spoke. “So, what’s the story behind those big concrete things up by the gravel pits?” I said.

  Forget thirty-four, I was yet to reach twelve years of age beneath the weight of his gaze. “What big concrete things?”

  “Those sound mirrors. You must have–”

  “Never heard of them.”

  He continued to polish the glass. I took a swig of my drink; too late I noticed lipstick on the rim as I put it back down on the bar.

  “Want a top up?” he said.

  “No thanks.”

  The man slapped what to me seemed an overly wet cloth across my part of the bar, but as he turned back to the pumps I thought of something. “Don’t know a bloke called Raymond Watt do you? He loves round here – I mean lives round here.”

  “Never heard of him.” The man reached up and pulled a fresh glass from the rack above the bar. “Not many blokes with a name like that loving round here.”

  “Right.” There weren’t many people I couldn’t read, but this man, not a morsel. “I’ll be off then.”

  “I’ll listen out for him.”

  “Pardon?”

  “That Watt bloke. I’ll listen out for him.”

  “Yeah, right . . . I don’t actually live round here . . . but, thanks.”

  The path was rougher than I remembered and even though I’d worn what my mother called ‘sturdies’ the pebbles felt greasy beneath my feet. I slipped a couple of times and once fell over completely, feeling foolish in spite of being alone. A duck watched me though. From the safety of a reedy enclave he looked at me as if I had something important to say.

  “Watcha, mate,” I said. “Bet you’ve seen some stuff.”

  The duck didn’t reply, he just dipped his beak into the water and shook a slimy looking bundle of weed down his throat.

  I walked up to the first mirror, hovered in its shadow then strolled towards the long wall. The long listening mirror seemed bigger than I remembered and recent spalling had left little piles of concrete chips at its feet. I stood at one end with my back to it, my spine pressed against its face. I closed my eyes. I could hear the wind and I could hear the sound of the reeds rubbing together. I also fancied I heard the sound of an aeroplane coming but I didn’t, just the wind and the grass. Everything seemed simple here, but my life wasn’t simple. It was complicated and I was in trouble. We were in trouble. I wanted someone to blame. I urgently needed an unwitting patsy at whom I could point my now shaky finger and say, he did it. But I couldn’t. The unholy mess was all my fault.

  As I opened my eyes I noticed a flash of red out of the corner of my eye. A woman, no, a couple, stood by the water at the far end of the long listening wall a couple of hundred yards away. Their backs were towards me. They seemed to be looking at something in the water. Then the man turned to the woman and whispered in her ear. “I’ll never smile again,” he said.

  EVE took a bottle of antiseptic out of the bathroom cupboard. Then she picked up a piece of cotton wool, dropped some liquid on to it and dabbed her face. It hurt. Of course it hurt, her mother always said antiseptic had to hurt. Otherwise it wasn’t working. She held her breath and dabbed again. It was hard not to cry. Tear salt was an antiseptic too, but it stung her skin. How it stung.

  She went into her bedroom, sat on the bed and thought about Mr. Harcourt. He hadn’t been cross with her. No, he’d held her hand and looked deep into her eyes. He’d stared hard at her puffed-up old face. His shoulder had even touched hers. She was the one who’d got cross. In spite of the sting in her face she had told him not to tell anyone what had happened. In return she was never to go to the launderette ever again.

  She smoothed her hand across her eiderdown, the sound of her mother’s hand, tucking her in. The silence of the room seemed to beat in her ears. But there was no silence. As she squeezed her eyelids shut she absorbed the sounds moving in the room: the rustle of pleats unfolding on her knee, a whistle of air within the hairs of her nose, and the hum of the fridge through the wall. And another hum, lower, further away. She couldn’t remember if it had always been there.

  She stood up and went along the landing into her box room. It was cold in there, always left unheated to save on the heating bill. There were more boxes than she remembered, stacked on shelves from floor to ceiling and the labels, she noticed for the first time, looked shabby. The piles of out-of-date leaflets, crisp with cold, suddenly overwhelmed her, tax, eviction, debt, domestic abuse, mental illness, redundancy, marriage guidance, pensions, benefits, personal injury. She sat on the chair by the door and more salt stung her face. Something for every person’s dilemma, but nothing for her.

  CHAPTER

  35

  Victoria Station looked bashed up by the time I got off the train – bins overflowed with coffee-stained cups and weary commuters were perched on every horizontal: benches, tops of suitcases, the hard bases of roof columns. The flowers at the florists were closed and there was a sense that something had happened, something that had dirtied the floor and left a faint whiff of the office in the air. The concourse was still pockmarked with stragglers and their possessions: suitcases on wheels, magazines in plastic bags, hands in pockets, hands holding newspapers. A clump of bodies parted effortlessly as a lone commuter stopped to think, tweaked his chin, rubbed his neck and then moved on again. Anybody would have been able to tell I was a Londoner the way I navigated the platform so easily, nipping through the space behind the coffee cart, shortcutting, trimming my route, walking as the crow would fly. I rushed down into the Tube station, clackety clack, clackety clack, and sank into a seat, warm in the tunnel, relaxed in my body, yet busy in my mind. I couldn’t find Raymond. I couldn’t find Raymond. I had to find the eavesdroppers.

  The street lamps were out when I reached the front of my building and I cursed the keyhole as I tried to insert my key. Once inside I went over to the window and looked out. The building opposite sat hunched. It was wrapped in sheeting, all over sheeting, yet somehow seemed different, like a monster that had changed position in the night. Still in my coat, I went back down the stairs, opened the front door and walked over to the building site. But site wasn’t the right word any more. The building had almost filled its plot – I realised this as I paced round the back of it. Even the slivers of remaining ground were filled with bits of unfinished building: concrete columns with rebar poking out and internal brickwork with rough mortar joints. And wheelbarrows. Everywhere there were wheelbarrows. But still, however many positions I tried in the street, I couldn’t see the shape or full extent of it.

  “Oi, you!”

  I turned to see a man approaching. His eyes were fixed on me and he was rolling up a coat sleeve in a parody of annoyance.

  “What are you doing here?” he said as he reached me.

  “Looking.”

  “What are you looking at?”

  I disliked the duh that James insisted on using in times of blinding obviousness, but it seemed to be bubbling up from my throat. “Du . . . building.”

  He placed his feet more firmly on the pavement. “At eleven o’clock at night?”

  I pointed towards my window. “I live opposite.”

  Even in the low light I could see his lips tighten. “We don’t like people looking at night.”

  “Who are we?” I said.

  He cleared his throat. “My employers.”

  “Who are your employers?”

  “It’s a co
n . . . conglomerate.”

  “No name then?”

  He cleared his throat. “It’s a security company. We do security.”

  I glanced at his jacket. It could have graced the shoulders of a bailiff or a debt collector with a dubious resume. “Seriously, what is the name of the company?”

  ‘I can’t divulge.”

  Divulge. Coming from this man’s mouth the word sounded faintly obscene. “I see.”

  He cleared his throat yet again. “You need to move on.”

  I sighed and moved on. I couldn’t be bothered to be bolshie, but I felt annoyed. I crossed the road, my feet slapping the ground in a way that said ‘in my own time’ and then stopped at the entrance to my building and looked back. The man had gone. The building looked black, blacker than the night sky behind it. I closed my eyes and listened. A sound came towards me. The hum. Louder than usual, right inside my head. Starting to get on my nerves. I put my hands over my ears. The hum carried on.

  I was uncertain what time I opened my eyes the next morning. I felt it was early but the light in the room was the bright white of daybreak. I left my bed bad-tempered, troubled by the vague necessity of having to get dressed and brush my teeth, and I showered to the tunes of the radio but didn’t sing-along. I skipped breakfast, drank a glass of water, pulled on my coat and went down to the street.

  I remembered the pleasure my rounds had given me only a few weeks earlier, the little buds of pride I’d felt as I observed the eavesdroppers at work, the thrill of imagining what they might discover. Now I was the spoilsport policeman, the saddo who no longer encouraged my team with sound bites and rousing spiels but checked that they were no longer at work.

  Violet first. The windows of the cafe were steamed up when I arrived. I tried to peer in but all I could see were vague outlines and occasional movement as the shapes wriggled, grew and then shrunk. But suddenly, just as I was wondering if I dared go inside, the palm of a small hand appeared in front of my face and wiped a circle in the condensation. I stepped back and waited, but nothing appeared in the opening so I stepped forward and looked in. Violet sat at a table in the corner of the room. Just an innocent coffee, surely? Then I looked down at her hand and saw a pencil held between her fingers. Shit. Shit. Shit.