Portobello

by Ruth Rendell

  'You can only ask him,' Gemma said when she and Lance were lying in his bed, having a post-coital glass of Soave. Uncle Gib was attending the baptism (total immersion in a disused storage tank) of two new members. 'When d'you reckon on doing it?'

  'The old woman goes away on August eight and she's not back till the twenty-first but I don't want to leave it too long. How about the fourteenth? It's a Tuesday.'

  'What's with Tuesdays, then?'

  'It's a weekday,' said Lance incomprehensibly.

  'I'll ask him, shall I? He may be doing his community service. It's cleaning graffiti off tube trains. But I'll ask him, see what he says.'

  'You know what you are? You're an angel, you are.' This show of emotion soon led to renewed lovemaking and it was another hour before Gemma left, making her way down the Portobello Road just as Uncle Gib turned out of it into Raddington Road.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Believing that her visit to Joel Roseman would cancel the appointment she had made to see him at twelve noon, after her morning surgery, Ella was preparing to leave. She had a fitting for her wedding dress at 1.30 and she hoped to have lunch with Eugene first.

  Clare, the receptionist, put her head round the door: 'Mr Roseman is here, Ella.'

  Ella sighed. Her instinct was to say she couldn't see him but of course she must. She sat down again behind her desk.

  He was once more wearing sunglasses. 'I walked,' he said. 'I walked all the way. And in broad daylight. Aren't you proud of me?'

  Those were the words a mother might be gratified to hear from her small son. She smiled. 'It's a long way, Joel. You mustn't overdo it, you know.'

  'It's very bright today. The light hurts my eyes.'

  She stopped herself saying the obvious. If he sat and lay all day in the dark, what did he expect? 'Still, it seems you're feeling better. I've been in touch with the care agency. They can find someone for you. She'll come in the early evening and stay overnight. Get your breakfast for you if that's what you'd like.'

  'I don't like,' he said.

  She lifted her head and looked at him for the first time for a long while, looked properly. She saw how long his hair had grown since he returned home. It hung down on his jacket collar, unwashed, unkempt. He looked as if he had stopped washing altogether and stopped changing his clothes. 'Joel, you shouldn't be alone. You need someone to look after you. Not a carer, more than that. Will you let me speak to your mother? Explain to her how much you need looking after?'

  'She hates coming. She's afraid of Mithras.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'People are afraid of mad people and she thinks I'm mad. Maybe I am. I'd be better if Mithras would go away. I can't sleep any more. Not at night I can't. Will you give me sleeping pills?'

  I'll give you the sort you can't overdose on, she thought but didn't say aloud, and took out her prescription pad. 'I'd still like to speak to your mother.'

  'Pa might answer.'

  'That doesn't matter. I'll talk to him.'

  Joel shook his head, not to deny what she said, but apparently in doubt that she knew what she was talking about. 'You want the phone number?'

  'Please.'

  She wrote it down, she passed him the prescription. 'That's enough for one week. I shall speak to your parents. Meanwhile, you must tell Miss Crane everything you've told me. Tell her on Friday and you should tell her I've recommended a carer.'

  He stared at her, pushed one hand through his greasy hair. 'I don't want a carer. I said. I want you.'

  'Well, you've got me. I'm your doctor.'

  'I want you to come and live in my flat.'

  She flinched, recoiling back into her chair. It was disconcerting, not being able to see his eyes.

  Perhaps he read her thoughts for he took off his glasses and sat there blinking at her. 'I'm not talking about sex. I don't do sex.' He twisted the glasses in his fingers and looked down. 'If you don't like my place, Pa would buy us a house. There's lots of money. We could live anywhere you like.'

  She was silent, feeling despair combined with a terrible desire to laugh, a desire she suppressed. She said in a cool quiet voice, 'That's not possible, Joel.' She held out her left hand, showing him the diamond on the third finger. 'I'm engaged, you know that. I'm getting married in October.'

  'Engagements can be broken.'

  'Not mine.' Amusement was turning to anger. She controlled it, spoke in a brisk voice. 'Now, you'd better go home in a taxi. You shouldn't walk any more. I'll speak to your mother or your father, and I'll talk to Miss Crane too.'

  It wasn't her job but she called the taxi company Eugene sometimes used. It would be there in ten minutes. She was longing to escape. As it was, she had no time to do more than meet Eugene and tell him – well, that she couldn't meet him for lunch. Joel could very well wait for his taxi in reception but bringing herself to tell him so was too much for her. They sat in silence while she went through a stack of papers on her desk, papers she had been through before. Just when she thought she ought to say something to him, he said, 'I saw a newspaper this morning. I don't often see a newspaper. There was a bit in it about how they've found how to breed schizophrenic mice.'

  'Really?'

  'If they have delusions, these mice, what do you think they hear? Strange squeaks telling them to do bad things? Telling them to kill other mice? What about hallucinations? Do you think they see sabre-toothed cats, big as tigers?'

  He began to laugh. She thought she had never heard him laugh before. The receptionist put her head round the door and said Mr Roseman's cab had come.

  Eugene had lost the argument and lost it with good grace. It's too early to go to Sri Lanka in August, Dorinda told him. You go to India and neighbouring countries in January. Surely he remembered when the tsunami was. Why did he think all those holidaymakers were in south-east Asia in midwinter? So Eugene gave in and they fixed on Lake Como.

  It was two months away. He had more or less resigned himself to the impossibility of giving up his habit in those seven or eight weeks. Like a smoker, like an alcoholic, he had cut down. This was achieved, as cutting down usually is, by making sure that he carried none of his fix about with him, kept none at the gallery – it too had once contained caches in secret drawers – avoiding streets where purveyors of Chocorange had their premises and responded to his craving by having a glass of water. But he had never passed a whole day without a suger-free sweet and he still kept eight packs in their plastic bag behind the Forster novels in his bookshelves, and three more in a drawer in the spare bathroom cabinet. These were not to be touched, certainly not ever to be looked at or checked on. They were his emergency supplies for use if, for instance, he broke his leg and was housebound or got the flu. It was a measure of how Chocorange was driving him mad that he thought seriously of such eventualities as a smoker might lay in four or five packs of cigarettes and a drinker his bottles of vodka. But how much more dignified than his were their addictions!

  They were recognised and in their way accepted. Alcoholism might be something to be a bit ashamed of but people with a forty-a-day habit regularly talked to journalists about their indulgence and, with a laugh, conceded they 'must give up one day'. He imagined being interviewed as a gallery owner about to hold an exhibition of a promising young artist's work (as indeed he was to do next month) and saying in answer to the (no doubt impertinent) questions about his private life that he was fiftyone years old, lived in Notting Hill, was about to marry a beautiful and charming general practitioner… and was hopelessly addicted to a particular flavour sugar-free sweet. He couldn't pass a day without sucking the sweets. The whole thing was impossible. It was beyond measure ridiculous. To coin a doubly appropriate phrase he would never use, it sucked.

  Of course he would never say such a thing to a journalist or anyone else. As with the secret alcoholic and his covert drink pushed to the back of the fridge shelf when his wife walked in, his gin which looked like water when no ice or lemon was added, he could never allow anyon
e else to know. If he encountered Elizabeth Cherry in the street or saw George Sharpe over the garden wall, the Chocorange he was sucking was surreptitiously slipped into the tissue he kept in his pocket solely for that purpose. And even that prudent move distressed him. It was such a waste. He still had to decide how to handle his addiction while on his honeymoon. Total denial was impossible. You were supposed to enjoy your honeymoon. But he and Ella would be away for two weeks and the idea of being deprived of his fix for a whole fortnight didn't bear thinking of. He hated the idea of those Customs people, or whoever it was X-rayed and searched one's checked baggage, finding eight chocolate-brown-and-orange packs, say, inside one of his suitcases. He couldn't imagine denying himself his sugar-free sweets but he could well picture the faces of those officials staring at their screen, shaking their heads, laughing at the chav who wanted his sweeties in a luxury Italian hotel.

  But he would have to take them if he was not to suffer deprivation. Only vaguely aware of what withdrawal symptoms might be, he nevertheless thought he had them. He had his own kind. Finishing the modest lunch he was eating in a bistro in the Haymarket – Ella had phoned to say she couldn't make it – he had begun to feel the craving that came to him most acutely when he had been eating something savoury. His mouth went dry. Drinking water only served to bring him another manifestation of his longing – a need for some sweet but sharp flavour on his tongue. The waitress had brought him two very small biscotti with his coffee. He ate them disconsolately.

  Beginning one's packing at least a week before one went on holiday was a habit Elizabeth Cherry's mother had instilled in her some seventy years before. You spread a sheet on the bed in one of the spare rooms, laid your suitcase on the sheet and began. Her mother hadn't used suitcases but a cabin trunk made of thick, polished, brown hide, lined in silk and with cedar wood hangers. It was immensely heavy even before there was anything in it but that didn't matter as you never carried it yourself. Porters did that, it was their job. Elizabeth used one modest case and a carry-on bag but she still spread out the sheet and laid her luggage on it. Whenever she bought something wrapped in tissue paper she saved the paper for her packing. A sweater or blouse was laid flat on one sheet, another laid on it before it was folded and a third on top. Then all was placed inside the case. Shoes were put inside plastic bags. She prided herself on not taking too much. If what she took with her turned out to be inadequate, she reasoned, she could always buy something. She never did.

  The packing done, she opened the drawer where, in envelopes, she kept foreign currency. Since the widespread use of the euro, the number of envelopes had much decreased. She would need euros and, as she would be passing through Switzerland, Swiss francs. This drawer was visited no more than twice a year and it always surprised her. How had she collected so many US dollars? Nearly five hundred? She couldn't remember how it had come about that such a lot had been accumulated. And there were far more euros than she wanted to carry on her. Better take one of the credit cards from the desk downstairs for use in a cash machine. It was years since she had been to Canada yet here were more than three hundred Canadian dollars. They could stay where they were, as could the American money.

  Remember to close all the windows, she told herself. Not that she had opened any with all this rain falling daily. The child who had got in and eaten the cake might come back. Window locks might be a good idea but arranging for these to be fitted would have to wait until after she came back. How about her jewellery? She only thought about her jewellery when she was about to go away on holiday. The rest of the time the two bracelets and the eternity ring her dead husband had given her, her mother's rings and heavy gold chain, remained in the jewel box and were never looked at. But the evening before going away for two weeks she worried about them. They were insured, after all. Every time she went away she considered taking them all with her. But considering was all she did. Imagine the nuisance going through security, that arch thing you walked through beeping so that some grim-faced woman in uniform searched you. Imagine putting them all in one of those plastic trays so that everyone could see exactly what you'd got. No, best leave them where they were. They had always been all right and they would be this time.

  No mention was made of the jewellery when Elizabeth went next door at six o'clock to remind her neighbour to water her house plants and take in any parcels that might arrive at number 25 in her absence. As she always did when Elizabeth called, at any rate after four, Susan said she was just about to have a small sherry and would Elizabeth join her. Elizabeth was fond of sherry, a civilised drink that seemed to be fast disappearing from all but the drinks cabinets of those over seventy, and she sat down.

  When told that Elizabeth was going to Salzburg and Budapest, Susan asked if she would be meeting her 'friend' en route. Elizabeth said she would, but at Waterloo for the Eurostar, not at an airport. Like everyone else, Susan assumed that Elizabeth's friend was a woman and she never enlightened them nor did she say that holidaying with a woman would hardly be her idea of fun. She merely nodded and smiled when Susan referred to the friend as 'she'.

  'It's very kind of you to do this. I doubt if there will be any parcels. The most important thing is to water the maidenhair fern every day. But I know you won't forget,' which was a nicer way of putting it than, 'Please don't forget.'

  'Have a lovely time,' said Susan after a second small sherry had been drunk by each of them.

  Elizabeth was due to leave the house very early for a flight which went from Gatwick at eight and she slept badly, as she always did the night before starting her holiday. The alarm was set (unnecessarily) for five and at ten to she dreamed that the child came into the house as he did last time. No, not quite as he did last time. She was standing at the window in the half-dark and she saw his thin little body squeeze itself out of the mouth of the drainpipe and pull itself up on to all fours. A child of seven or eight. He scuttled across the area of flat roof and skylight, and slipped in through the casement she had left open in her bedroom. Except that she had no casements and no flat roof. This realisation woke her. She switched off the alarm and went into the bathroom to have her shower.

  The blonde in a rather too short beige jersey dress introduced herself as Joel's mother – 'Call me Wendy'. The dress was very plain but decorated with a good deal of gold jewellery, diamonds on her fingers and on her ear lobes. She was very polite to Ella and very pleasant. It was hard to tell whose side she was on in the family quarrel. She spoke of it as if a father refusing to see his son for years on end but paying for him to live in comfort was quite normal behaviour. Joel, she said, must pull himself together. There was no reason why he should remain in his flat. If he wanted company and attention he could go into a hotel for a while. His father would be content with that. As for her, she couldn't possibly move in with her son. 'No, doctor, it's out of the question. I can't leave my husband because my son needs a servant.'

  Wendy Stemmer had come to the medical centre. Ella had expected her to refuse her request to come and had been surprised at her acquiescence, reluctant though it was. She looked wonderingly at her surroundings as if she were in some far country she was surprised to be visiting, then said, 'I lived in Notting Hill as a girl but not around here of course.'

  Ella could think of no answer to that. 'I could find a carer for Joel,' she said.

  'Yes, that seems a good idea. I don't know how much these people charge but you could have the bills sent to my husband.'

  'Is there a possibility of him coming to see me?'

  'Oh, goodness, no. He's at the office.'

  Ella had long ago learnt that women of Wendy Stemmer's kind, when speaking of a husband's absence at work, always say he is at the office. As if, she thought, there were only one office in the world or only one of importance.

  'I see. Leave it with me. I'll see what I can do and get back to you.'

  Later, she phoned an agency. It called itself Caregivers Inc. in the American way, could offer Ella Noreen or Linda, bo
th thoroughly reliable kindly women. Whichever one came would stay in the flat from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. The cost staggered Ella but she wasn't paying. Joel's father was and he never seemed to mind what things cost so long as he was paying for his son's absence from his life. She phoned Mrs Stemmer and then Joel, and told him, half expecting him to say he didn't want anyone staying overnight so that she would have to cancel the whole thing and think again, but he agreed to the presence of Noreen or Linda, his tone limp and indifferent.

  'I won't have to make up beds or anything like that, will I, Ella?'

  'She'll do that.'

  'I wish it was you coming,' he said.

  It was her afternoon off, no calls to make, no evening surgery. She went to Knightsbridge, clothes shopping for Como, telling herself that she was walking there because at last after all the rain it was a fine sunny day, not to help her lose weight. Too many of her patients moaned continually about the pounds they had put on and their increasing waist measurement. If she really meant to reduce her ten stone to nine she should have done something about it months ago, not when her wedding dress was half made. The sun made her feel cheerful. Eugene liked her the way she was and that was what mattered. She bought a long dress in darkblue lace to wear in the warm Italian evenings.