Portobello

by Ruth Rendell

  Not the same window he had squeezed through before. He had nearly cracked an already cracked rib doing that, thank you very much. Further along he found a larger sash window, which was more suitable and, putting on his gloves, he got to work straight away with his glass cutter. The job took longer, far longer, than when he had operated on builders' junk yard windows under Dwayne's tutelage. And all the time the little wheel made its slow progress round the frame his hunger increased. So near his goal – he almost had to remind himself that he was here for money and jewellery, not food – he felt sick and his stomach rumbled, making trickling and squelching sounds.

  The torch, which he had balanced on the sill of the next window along, he jogged with his elbow and it fell to the ground. He picked it up and put it back on the sill but it seemed to him that its light had grown dimmer. As he reached the point on the frame where he had begun cutting and eased the glass out into his hands, the torch went out. It hadn't occurred to him to bring a replacement battery. But he was in the house. He was standing up inside a room he hadn't previously entered, a dining room with a long marble table and high-backed chairs made of black wood. It didn't interest him. He made for the kitchen, feeling his way in the dark. Once there, although rather late in the day for precautions, he pulled the black stocking over his head.

  In spite of his age, it was unusual for Uncle Gib to wake up in the night. He had slept in such uncomfortable circumstances during the prison years that now to lie down in a real bed in solitude and peace and quiet was a treat he hadn't yet got over. The bliss of it sent him to sleep at once and his strong old bladder seldom disturbed him. So it was a surprise and a disconcerting one when he woke up at what he thought – he had no watch or clock in his bedroom – must be well after midnight. It was pitch dark and silent. Of course he had no bed lamp. He lay in the dark, feeling what had wakened him, the stirrings, squeezings and sharp recurrent pains of indigestion.

  Uncle Gib never had indigestion. But then he never went out anywhere to eat unaccustomed food as he had done the day before. With growing distaste and increased pain, he reflected on what he had been obliged to eat: fish, chips, multigrain bread, baked beans, green leaves, more chips. Thinking of it made its consequences worse. He levered himself out of bed and switched on the light, a central light that hung from the ceiling in a parchment shade. The panacea for all ills was at hand. Uncle Gib reached for the packet and the matches and lit a cigarette.

  Perhaps it was the contractions caused by that first inhalation that did it, but a sharp stabbing spasm caught at him in the depths of the gut. Something must be done and now, immediately. Barefoot, wearing pyjama bottoms and an ancient cardigan of Auntie Ivy's, he raced down the stairs, dropped his cigarette in the tin lid on the green chair and ran for the scullery. Getting the back door unlocked nearly finished him but he made it to the privy just in time.

  Outside Uncle Gib's front door, Feisal Smith in a hooded jacket, Ian Pollitt, in defiance of the weather wearing a red T-shirt on which 'Porn Star' was printed in white, stood on the step, doing their best to raise the letter box flap without making a noise about it. They had made careful preparations for this undertaking. First a couple of litres of petrol had been siphoned off from the tank of the van Fize drove for his employers, into a bottle once containing sparkling water. Ian Pollitt had helped himself to two squibs from his teenage brother's stock for the forthcoming Guy Fawkes Day. The bottle was contained in a cloth bag, one of the environmentally friendly kind issued by shops to save customers from using plastic carriers, and with it a box of matches.

  The porn star was calm and truculent as usual. Fize, on the other hand, was scared stiff or, rather, scared to the point of trembling. Through his head wandered thoughts of losing his job and losing Gemma, not to mention incurring the wrath of his mother and grandfather. But it was too late to back out now. He was more afraid of Ian's contempt than of any other possible retribution. His hand shook as he tried to raise the letter box flap. It caused a good deal of noise, a creak and a clatter, making Ian swear at him and shove him aside with his elbow. They listened but all was still and silent inside the house.

  Fize managed to fish the bottle out of the bag and passed it to Ian, its cap starting to come unscrewed. The bottle, and now both men and the bag, reeked of petrol. Ian took off the cap and thrust the bottle as hard as he could through the letter box with a mighty shove. It had been Fize's intention to follow this up with a lighted squib, which would ricochet into the fountain of petrol, but there was no need to use it. They heard the bottle smash and something inside the house, seemingly already prepared, ignite it with a roar. Suddenly the whole house seemed to explode into light, every window brilliantly lit. A fierce flame streamed out towards them through the open letter box.

  They jumped back, staring at each other, then they ran, pounding down the street, through the covered market and out into the Portobello Road.

  Sliced bread from her freezer he put directly into her toaster and, while he waited, pulled the black stocking off his head. He ate the toast layered with strips of butter he shaved off a block of Lurpak. The Brie was very ripe but nothing wrong with that. He ate half a pound of it with Branston pickle. Then, spooning peach halves from a can, he made his way upstairs. All the jewellery he could find he scooped into his backpack. In a couple of her handbags he found a five-pound note and another five pounds in change. Getting down on his hands and knees, he scrutinised the floor under her bed, the floor under the beds in the spare room, and the next spare room and the next. No strongboxes and no stockings crammed full of notes.

  Back in her living room, opening the desk, he saw that one of the credit cards was still there. He helped himself to it along with her chequebook, though he had doubts how this would ever be of use to him. Three plastic bags contained foreign money. Lance couldn't remember ever before seeing US dollars, Canadian dollars and euros but they were money, weren't they? They could be changed into real money at those places outside Paddington Station he'd passed by without much noticing them. He'd notice them now. The best of the haul was undoubtedly the jewellery, destined next day for Poltimore Road.

  He no longer needed the torch. His eyes were used to the dark. He rather liked the darkness, the way it hid him. Why not have some more to eat while he had the chance? No one had seen him. No one had a clue he was in here. The roads were empty, the neighbours asleep. He had taken the peaches from a cupboard where a shelf was full of tins: more fruit, beans of various kinds, soup, and fancy rubbish like artichoke hearts and asparagus. Lance helped himself to a can of tomato soup, heated it up in a saucepan, made more toast and settled down at the kitchen table to have a second supper. Strawberry ice cream, also from the freezer, would do for afters. A clock on the kitchen wall told him it was five past two.

  When the sound of it reached him, the huge bursting roar, Uncle Gib knew at once what it was. A bomb or some such thing had been pushed through his letter box and the cigarette he had left in the tin on the green chair had set it off. Immediately he thought of Lance and Lance's pals. Barefoot and wrapped in the brown cable-knit cardigan, he padded out of the privy to look through the kitchen window, which gave on to this narrow strip of concrete. As he did so the flames were just licking the doorway from the hall and within seconds they streamed through, intense yellow flames, which roared through the kitchen and poured into the scullery. He turned his gaze upwards and saw behind the window of Lance's room dense eddies of black smoke. The window was open at the top and the smoke billowed out as currents of fresh air fed the fire.

  It was a little to Uncle Gib's credit that he told himself Lance couldn't be in there as he must be responsible for this conflagration. He had no doubt what was the better part of valour and, with one backward glance at the flames engulfing his home, he ran down the garden through the rain-soaked bushes and stinging nettles, to the shed in the corner where his garden met that of his neighbours. On the other side loomed the flyover with its cargo, even at this hour, of traff
ic tearing east and west. There, side by side, inside the shed, the door of which had long fallen off its hinges and got lost, stood the two chairs, one missing a leg, the other intact. Uncle Gib sat down in the chair that had all its legs and found he was trembling all over. It had been a shock.

  But the spectacle before him was worth looking at. By this time Lance's window had split open and flames and smoke were spilling out, curved flames like waves in an orange sea, but waves that hissed and roared, licking the windowsills of the room above. The fire itself had reached there before them or the smoke had. Inside the closed window he could see dark clouds of it, still and thick.

  It didn't occur to him to call anyone or attempt to phone the emergency services. Someone else would do that. In the midst of his wonder and astonishment he remembered that he had insured his house, had filled in the form, sent the cheque and received confirmation of his cover. It was wonderful, it was much better than trying to sell the place. With relish he stared at the window frames, the woodwork, the bricks and stone facing of his house beginning to glow red from the heat generated within.

  'It's a goner,' he said aloud and then he heard the braying sirens of fire engines coming down from Great Western Road.

  It would be best, when they came, to find him a broken defeated old man, feeble and helpless, shocked almost to death by the destruction of his home. Carefully he lowered himself to the ground and lay face-downwards, his bare feet on concrete, his head and upper body among the shaggy grass and weeds. He heard them come into the garden. Not through the house, that would have been impossible, but by climbing over the wall that divided his property from that of the people who had complained about the rats.

  Someone said, 'We'll want an ambulance for the old chap.'

  A woman's voice next, her next door, he thought. 'How dreadful for him. Losing his home like this. They can come in this way and get a stretcher over the wall.'

  The rats were forgotten, she was all sympathy and concern. Uncle Gib stirred a little, aware after a few minutes that a paramedic was kneeling down beside him. The heat from the burning house was far from unpleasant, just what was needed, in fact, on a night in this unseasonable August.

  'Can you tell me your name?'

  They always said that, he'd seen it on the telly. It happened in nearly every instalment of Casualty. 'Gilbert,' he said in a quavering voice.

  Hoisted on to a stretcher, wrapped in nice clean blankets, he took a look at his house or what remained of it as he was floated expertly over the wall. It was as well to make sure the place was a write-off, not that he could have done anything about it if it hadn't been. To maintain the pathos and the drama, he whispered to the kind paramedic, 'My whole life was in there, all my worldly goods.'

  'Never you mind, Gilbert. You're all right and that's the main thing.'

  He was driven away at high speed to St Mary's Hospital, the siren bellowing.

  An hour after falling asleep Eugene woke up. The nearest packets of Chocorange were in the guest bathroom on the same floor. First dropping a light kiss on Ella's upturned cheek, he tiptoed out of the bedroom and across the landing. Still inviolate, the carefully hoarded packets sat inside their pink plastic Superdrug bag in the bottom drawer of the cabinet in the spare bathroom. He took momentary pleasure from looking at them, a glossy orange and chocolate-brown, each one sheathed in clear cellophane. So, he supposed, it must be for the druggie who contemplates a carefully hoarded jar of ecstasy tablets or a slab of hashish. The advantage to his habit was that it was harmless whereas theirs was destructive, damaging and often deadly. On the other hand, theirs was also glamorous, sexy and raffish while his was – what? There was no use in thinking along those lines, especially in the middle of the night. He put a sweet in his mouth, restored the rest to the cabinet and wandered into one of the spare bedrooms.

  From there he could see across the gardens to the rear of Elizabeth Cherry's house. It was as he had left it earlier, still, silent, unlit. Street lamps gave enough light to see quite clearly at the front and, here at the back, a wall lantern, permanently kept on by the Sharpes as a security measure, shed a green radiance, half masked as it was by fronds of jasmine and ivy leaves. There was nothing to be done about it, one must indulge one's neighbours, but Eugene disliked that lantern burning there all night almost as much as he disliked Bathsheba. He could see her sitting on the shelf that ran along the wall, her deep furry blueness turned to emerald by the light, her cold eyes open and staring, themselves like lamps. Why not have another Chocorange? He took a second one out of the bathroom bag and walked softly into the bedroom next to his own.

  Chepstow Villas, the finest houses of this part of elegant Notting Hill, slept behind their pillared walls, their exotic shrubs and their trimmed hedges. White stucco, most of them, Georgian, which really meant mid-Victorian, Italianate and the rare example from the Arts and Crafts era, all bathed in faint moonlight. The street was empty but for one incongruous figure. Plodding down towards Denbigh Road was a young man with a backpack. Even in the lamplit and moonlit dark, Eugene recognised that potato face and shock of straw-coloured hair. He could actually remember his name from the time he had sat in this house, nervous, not knowing what to do with his hands, as he tried to make his potential benefactor believe that he had lost ninety-five pounds.

  What could he be doing here at this hour? He was walking in the Denbigh Road direction, heading perhaps for Westbourne Park Road and, ultimately, for the council housing in Wornington Road or Golborne Road. It's nothing to me, Eugene thought. He's not doing any harm. It's a bad way to live, searching for crime where none exists, suspecting innocent people. What did he know to make him think Lance Platt was anything but a harmless and somewhat gormless youth?

  He was out of sight now and on the horizon there was something more interesting to look at. A red glow like a sunset – but the sun going down in a black sky? It was a fire. And a big one, someone's house on fire. As he gazed he heard the sirens of fire engines braying in the distance. He listened to the bray changing to a wail and then, finishing his sweet and rinsing his mouth under the tap, he went back into his bedroom.

  Ella was sitting up in bed. 'Are you all right, Gene?'

  'I'm fine. I was looking out of the window and who d'you think I saw go by? That pudding-faced boy who came here after that money I found in the street.'

  'Well, the streets are free to all.'

  'And there's a fire at the top of the Portobello Road.'

  'Come back to bed.'

  'You look so lovely sitting there.' Eugene took her in his arms. 'It's half-past two so it's your birthday now,' he said. 'Many happy returns of the day, darling.'

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It was almost dawn. The street lights had gone out and the sky was no longer quite dark. The woman from next door and her husband were standing outside in Blagrove Road. If they hadn't been there and hadn't spoken to him, if the street had been empty and stripped of everything familiar, Lance would have thought this was a dream. The nightmare unreality of the sight broke over him the moment he turned the corner; something that should have been there, was always there, as unchanging as the Westway, as the Earl of Lonsdale, was no longer there, was gone. Or half gone, unalterably destroyed. It was like those pictures you saw on the telly of places in Baghdad or Afghanistan where a bomb had fallen. All that remained was a blackened ruin, a wall standing here, half a wall there, glassless windows like potholes, and on those walls the old paper still clinging, halfburned pink roses and faded butterflies peeling off. He stared, silent and aghast.

  The woman looked at him as if he were a ghost, taking a step backwards, putting her hands up to her face.

  Then, 'Thank God you're all right,' she said, her tone heartfelt, her smile wide. It was rare for anyone to show so much joyful relief at the sight of him. For a moment he thought she was going to throw her arms round his neck.

  His voice came out weak and thin. 'I've been out,' he said. 'I've been out for hours.' Now he
wondered why he'd stopped for so long at an all-night open pub to spend the old woman's money on vodka and beer chasers.

  The husband looked at him, looked at what remained of the house and back at him. 'If it wasn't you, who was it they took away? The one they found dead up at the top?'

  Mistaking Lance's expression, his eyes staring, his mouth hanging open, for the beginnings of grief, the woman said, 'Not your uncle, dear. He's all right. Just gone to the hospital for a check-up. There was a young chap. We thought it was you.'

  Oh, my God, Lance thought. Oh, my God. His sense of the unreality of it all deepened. The air smelt of burning. At his feet lay pools of black water and yellowish foam, and in the foam floated the picture of Jesus holding a lantern. Inside the shell of the house he could see his own bed, a black skeleton laden with black rags, stark against the dirty floral wallpaper. Higher up, what had once been a mattress hung over the edge of the charred and broken floor…

  'He wasn't burnt,' the husband said, evidently trying to dispense comfort. 'He died from inhaling smoke. That's what they said.'

  'You don't look well yourself. You've gone white as a sheet. You'd better come into our place for a bit. I'll make us a cup of tea.'

  Lance couldn't speak. This must be what they meant when they talked about shock. Whatever he may have said about shock in the past, he had never really known it till now, never known its power to numb and deaden. He looked blankly at this couple, these neighbours, as if he had never seen them before, as if their words were no more than the twittering of birds. He looked at the concrete supports of the flyover. Perhaps nothing so overawed him as the sight up there of police notices and the absence of a single moving vehicle. They had closed the carriageway because of the fire.