Kensington Heights

by Leslie Thomas

  ‘Absolutely.’ Savage allowed himself a smile. ‘I made all the arrangements and I think it’s worked out very well.’

  ‘Until this incident,’ said the doctor. Carefully he read through the document again. ‘When did you realise why you went to the cemetery?’ he murmured. ‘The reason?’

  ‘At the end. When I went back and saw Henry Barnard’s grave. Then I remembered it.’

  ‘When we allowed you to go to Sergeant Barnard’s funeral it was a calculated risk,’ recalled Fenwick. ‘We were amazed you remembered him, considering your general loss of memory, your blotting-out of everything, because he died of his wounds some time after the incident.’

  ‘I remembered him,’ said Savage. ‘Irene took me to the funeral and she brought me back here. But after that it had gone from my mind.’

  ‘The impression must have remained somewhere deep down,’ shrugged the doctor. ‘That’s what I would expect. So when these men beat you up in the train it’s not altogether surprising that you found your way back to the cemetery. Your house is in the Aldershot military area, and the railway goes through Shuffley, the military cemetery, so it’s all in the same area, on the same line. In your state after the attack on you in the train you subconsciously recognised Shuffley. When you went to Sergeant Barnard’s funeral you were hardly in a state to know anywhere.’

  ‘Anyway, the whole business the other day scared me,’ admitted Savage. ‘That’s why I got it all down on paper.’

  ‘The police had already informed us,’ said Fenwick.

  Savage sat back in surprise. Fenwick said: ‘They were in contact with us the next day.’

  ‘Just to make sure I wasn’t dangerous.’

  ‘Exactly. So you blacked out and ended up charging into a lot of tramps waiting for cups of tea.’ He did not smile. ‘It brought back the canteen and the business in Northern Ireland.’

  Savage nodded: ‘I thought they were going to be ambushed. It was madness.’

  He realised what he had said. Fenwick grinned sympathetically. ‘It was something that happened,’ he assured. ‘Nobody was hurt. It was a temporary aberration, brought on by trauma. Going to your house and seeing Irene there probably upset you more than you realise. Then the fracas in the train. It triggered the whole thing. Then you drank a lot of whisky. It probably won’t happen again.’

  ‘God, I hope not. You don’t think I should worry about it?’

  ‘I don’t think you should dwell on it. Tell me about the place in Kensington. What do you plan to do there?’

  ‘It couldn’t be better,’ said Savage, a change in his tone. ‘Just what I wanted. And I found it first time. If I had needed to traipse around London looking I think I might have found it impossible in the end. I’d have given up.’

  ‘It might have been difficult. But you seem fine now. You look different. I can’t believe you’re the same man who was here only a few months ago. All you did was read – as though the cover of the book was a shield. You would hardly speak. The only time I ever saw you come out of it was when you were working for those few days while they were refurbishing the army museum at Dorchester.’

  Savage wondered why he had said that. Did he know about the gun? Should he tell him now? Fenwick prevented him from doing so. ‘Have you made any friends?’ he asked.

  ‘Friends?’ Savage blinked. ‘Well, not really. I didn’t intend to be sociable. The more I’m by myself the better I like it. I want to be quiet. I’ve got a whole lot of books and now I’ve got my typewriter I’m going to start to put together this encyclopaedia.’ He appeared a touch embarrassed. ‘You know, the one I wanted to do when I was here. It’s about islands.’

  ‘I know,’ smiled Fenwick. ‘It was encouraged as a therapy.’

  ‘I’ve become very engrossed. I want to go ahead with it.’

  ‘That’s a good idea, I think.’ He looked up. ‘And what do you intend to do with it?’

  ‘Have it published.’ Savage leaned forward eagerly. ‘Doctor, no one has ever put together a book like this before. It might take years, but I don’t mind. Time is not a problem.’

  Fenwick thoughtfully said: ‘If I could coin a phrase, no man is an island, not even when he is writing a book about them. You ought to have some friends. Who have you got to know?’

  Savage thought. ‘Well, there are a few people who live in Kensington Heights, neighbours, but a lot of them are a bit elderly and reclusive anyway. There’s Mr and Mrs Tomelty, the caretaker and his wife, and Mr Kostelanetz, the man I’m renting the flat from, and Freddie Spencer-Hughes, the estate agent, and . . .’

  ‘I mean friends,’ insisted Fenwick. He glanced at the sheaf of papers is his hand. ‘Who is Jean Deepe?’

  ‘You heard from her?’

  ‘Yes. She told us of your escapade with the tramps and so on. Wanted our advice. She’s a police officer, I believe.’

  Savage nodded. ‘She is. I didn’t realise she had come through to you personally.’

  ‘She wanted to know the score with you. Is she a friend?’

  Savage looked doubtful. ‘I’ve hardly met her but I suppose she is. She got me out of trouble after the tramps business.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘Not really. There’s the lady in the library. I don’t know her name. She’s been friendly and helpful. But I don’t know . . . I’ve just not been looking for friends.’

  Fenwick folded the papers and pursed his lips. ‘You can’t live in isolation, not total isolation. You need a friend, Frank, an everyday friend.’

  Savage said seriously: ‘I’ll try and get one.’

  Six

  At ten in the morning by the clock which he had brought from his house, three weeks after he had first entered the apartment, Savage began writing his encyclopaedia. He had bought and borrowed more books and now had a huge Times Atlas of the World spread on the floor. He was cocooned there, mist falling away outside the window like a long cape. He felt better now, enclosed and more confident. A hesitation at sitting down at the typewriter had been pushed aside with the awkwardness of his first attempts at writing an outline of his intentions. Now, with an indrawing of breath, he placed his fingers on the keys and began, at last, to tap: ‘Admiralty Islands. Bismarck Archipelago, New Guinea. Tribal islands of . . .’ The clock ticked on the sideboard.

  The doorbell sounded. His head drooped and he remained staring over the horizon of the keys into the fog of upper London. He let his hands slide away from typewriter. Perhaps if he remained still whoever it was would go away. Again the bell rang. They knew he was in there. He almost spat. Then he got up from the desk, strode to the door and pulled it open. A group of mostly small people were outside. They were smiling and blinking.

  ‘Remember me?’ asked the man in front genially. He wore a dusty formal jacket. The heads of the others nodded unsynchronised in support of the enquiry. ‘I’m Bertie Maddison. We met the other morning when you were just coming in. I’m the musical one with the er . . . unusual wife. This is she.’

  A plump woman with sparse, rust-coloured hair held by combs, curtseyed.

  Bertie said: ‘Can we come in? We thought we’d welcome you although it’s been a while before we could organise everyone together.’ He displayed a half-empty bottle which he carried by the neck like a hunter holding a hare. ‘We brought our own amontillado.’

  Savage backed from the door. ‘I was . . . I was just . . . starting . . . working,’ he said.

  ‘He’s working!’ chortled Bertie marching in with his wife. The others, two old men and three women, trooped in behind him and quickly distributed themselves, the men remaining standing, the women claiming the chairs and the sofa. Savage saw a trail of talcum powder across the carpet. ‘Never waste time on work, I say,’ Bertie continued. A woman’s fragile hand reached out and tugged at his shirt. ‘He’s working,’ she said feebly. ‘He’s young.’ Her veined eyes lifted and she smiled a pale, understanding smile towards Savage.

  ‘We won’t keep you,’ promise
d Bertie. ‘Not for long. Perhaps we can just borrow some glasses.’

  Reluctantly Savage went towards the kitchen. He put some glasses on a tray and returned to the room.

  ‘Is there another bottle of amontillado?’ enquired someone. ‘There won’t be enough.’

  ‘It’s before noon,’ pointed out one old lady as if quoting rules. ‘Halves before noon.’

  ‘Quite right,’ acknowledged Bertie. ‘Half a glass each.’

  Savage had still scarcely spoken. He was given the final glass with a spoonful of clear sherry in the bottom and responded slowly to their toast. ‘We hope you’ll be very happy here,’ said Bertie sincerely. ‘Most happy,’ put in his wife.

  ‘Happy . . . happy . . . happy . . . happy . . .’ they murmured between them.

  ‘Thank you,’ responded Savage weakly. ‘All.’

  ‘These are the older inhabitants, the day shift,’ said Bertie with heavy reassurance. ‘The younger people, of course, have to go out to work.’

  One of the other two men encouraged him: ‘Tell him what you told us, Mr Maddison.’ He had a metallic grin.

  ‘What was that, Mr Prentice? About what?’

  ‘Oh, Wigmore Hall,’ snorted Maddison. He slapped Savage weakly on his shirt. ‘You wouldn’t want to hear all that,’ he said continuing nevertheless. ‘It was last night. Chopin recital. Pablo O’Sullivan. I tell you, I’ve shit better Chopin.’

  ‘He’s shit better Chopin,’ nodded one of the old ladies.

  ‘Anyway, cheers,’ said Bertie raising his glass once more. There was only a trace of sherry in the bottom, like a specimen in a test-tube. He swallowed it and licked his lips. ‘I’ll introduce you now,’ he said decisively but blinked at the assembly as though he had suddenly forgotten their names. ‘Well, everybody introduce yourselves to this gentleman, Mr . . .’

  ‘Savage,’ provided Frank. ‘Frank Savage.’

  ‘I’m Wilhelmina,’ said the tallest lady. ‘Blenkinsop.’ She shook hands coquettishly with two fingers of the hand in which she held her glass. ‘I am not married,’ she said. ‘I was once, for thirty years.’

  ‘I’m Miss Weiz,’ said a second woman, pushing herself towards him, her eyes fat and full. ‘From Prague I came. Have you ever been to Prague?’

  Savage admitted that he had not. ‘I will escort you there,’ offered Miss Weiz. ‘We will go in the summer time. I have many memories.’ Her soft hands, only hardened by her rings, enclosed his.

  ‘I’m Miss Cotton,’ said the third woman. ‘Do come and see me.’

  The group began to move towards the door. It was Wilhelmina who was leaving a trail of talcum.

  ‘I’m Percy Belfont,’ put in one of the old men. ‘You won’t see me again. I’m going to Antwerp to die.’ He smiled and waited. ‘I like Antwerp.’ The others ignored him. He went out shaking his head.

  ‘It’s nice to know your neighbours,’ said Bertie, the last to leave. ‘You never know when they might need you.’

  The group were waiting obediently on the landing for the everyday drama of the lift. ‘It’s mended now,’ said Miss Weiz sombrely. ‘It’s always breaking.’

  Mr Prentice glanced at them craftily and then swiftly sidled back into the room. ‘Have a dekko,’ he invited baring his metallic teeth. ‘I’ll show you. Come over here.’

  Unhappily Savage followed him. With a sharp twist of his head to get his bearings Mr Prentice plunged into the smaller bedroom. Its windows looked out over the well courtyard. ‘She’s right opposite,’ he beckoned. He turned, his eyes jolly. ‘She’s some girl. She advertises, they say. Miss Bombazine. Wears black.’ He peered from the window. ‘She’s got her curtains drawn,’ he sniffed disappointedly. ‘She would.’

  They left the bedroom. ‘From my place I can only see a bit of her legs,’ said Mr Prentice. His teeth clamped shut. ‘And then not always.’

  Thankfully Savage heard the lift clanking up. They went back to the landing. Some of the residents had descended. The remainder waited, fallen to patient silence, as though out of respect. It arrived and with agile courtesy Mr Prentice stepped forward and opened the door. The remaining residents shuffled in and between them managed to close the cage door. Their eyes, like the eyes of prisoners, looked out through the grille. The lift descended. Wilhelmina waved. ‘I’ll walk down,’ said Mr Prentice. ‘I still can.’ He shook hands gravely. ‘Royal Engineers, by the way. Explosives.’

  ‘Hello, is that Frank Savage?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  ‘This is Jean Deepe.’

  ‘Oh, Jean. Sorry I didn’t . . . Yes, fine. I wanted to telephone you to thank you for the trouble you took but I didn’t want to call the police station. Anyway, thanks.’

  ‘No problem. They didn’t press charges, did they?’

  ‘No. As I say, thanks.’

  ‘You must tell me about it some time. Are you settling down there?’

  ‘Yes, at last. I think I am. I’d no sooner begun work than a whole platoon of the residents arrived, the people from the other flats.’

  ‘I bet that was fun.’

  ‘They meant well. They’re all pretty old, they call themselves the day shift. Some have been here since the war. That was last Thursday and nobody’s bothered me since then.’

  ‘What gave you the idea to write about islands?’

  ‘In hospital.’

  ‘Oh, yes. The psychiatric hospital.’

  ‘Yes, Marshfield Manor. It was something I read there. I was trying to focus my life, my thoughts, and although I’ve never written anything before, I decided to give it a go. It’s more compiling than writing. I’ve got a lot of notes and it’s really a matter of putting them into shape.’

  ‘It sounds as if it’s going to take a long time.’

  ‘I hope so. I’ve done the first draft of the entry on the Admiralty Islands and I’ve just begun going through the notes on the Aleutians. It’s slow work.’

  ‘I’d like to read it some time.’

  ‘I’ll show it to you.’

  All his grown life he had looked and acted like a soldier and now he knew that he had become careless. He had not shaved that day and he was wearing an old denim shirt underneath an army pullover, creased grey flannels and canvas shoes. He poured himself a Scotch, which he did not even want, and consciously made himself carry the glass into the main room. It was nine o’clock in the evening. Picking up the television channel control he flicked it on, watched flatly for a few minutes and then switched it off.

  He went to his desk facing the folds of the closed curtains and picked up the file containing the work he had done so far. He read the latest sheet. ‘Aleutian Islands. Bering Sea. A string of about seventy volcanic islands, extending more than a thousand miles from the mainland of Alaska, south-west of Anchorage, almost to the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia . . .’

  He read to the end and sighed. Who would be interested? He went to the books, piled haphazardly on the table in the corner and spilling on to the floor and carpet. The solid atlas was at the base of the pile. He pulled it out like a flat slab and hoisted it to the desk. At random he picked Easter Island from the index. Easter Island . . . Easter Island . . . He turned the large pages and finally opened the atlas fully so that the patterned blues of Capricorn almost covered the desk. There the island lay, alone and famous in the sea, discovered on Easter Day, also called Isla de Pascua and Rapa Nui, lying just under the Tropic. His eye ran over the expanse of ocean across the desk. To the south-east was Juan Fernandez Island, where the real Robinson Crusoe, Alexander Selkirk, had been marooned, and there was Fanning and there was Palmyra, in the Line Islands known to the whalers of New England before the Panama Canal was dug; here the Phoenix Isles and there the Tuamolu Archipelago, Pitcairn and, standing aloof, waiting like a butler, Henderson. Clipperton, the speck where a whole colony of human beings was once forgotten for years, and running out far into, deeply under, the Pacific, the Clipperton Fracture. Then Mid-way . . . Guam . . .

  Sav
age’s finger traced the line of the fracture out into the paper ocean, then he followed the outline of the Marquesas and Tahiti in the flamboyant Society Islands, called by Cook after the sober Royal Society in London. He had never been to any of them. In the hospital he had found a worn and torn atlas dating from Victorian times and had borne it to his bed. Its contours, its bays and seas, its islands, its mysteries had helped to begin to stabilise his mind and his life. Sometimes he would close his eyes on his confined hospital room and wonder what the people in the Celebes or the Ionian Archipelago were doing at that moment. He could almost see the roofs of their houses.

  His eye lingered on the spread map, his whisky untouched, the room safe and silent, the walls guarding him. From beyond the curtains came the dulled sounds of traffic. From the pile of books he picked out Forrester’s Navigation Charts: South Pacific. Sitting in the armchair he opened it and for an hour read about the sea passages, shoals, dangerous reefs and reliable anchorages of Micronesia.

  It was midnight when he went to bed. He lay in the dimness, a fringe of city light filtering around the curtains, waiting for sleep. It came only briefly. Music woke him and after a few moments he got out of bed and followed the sound. It stoppped almost at once as if someone had realised it was too loud. He walked into the second bedroom and in the opposite window he saw a naked woman. Miss Bombazine.

  Her body was starkly white, her hair black and heavy, her breasts hung forward as she adjusted the window catch. She gazed out for a moment as if idly wondering if anyone had seen her. Then she retreated into the lit room and the curtains were drawn.

  Savage sat on the empty, single bed. Sex was one of the things that seemed to have walked away, gone, escaped from his life. Like love. Perhaps one day, in some way, it would come back; something had to. Some time.

  He returned to his own bed. Under it was the sub-machine gun; he felt its stock with his bare toe. With the same toe he eased it out from below with the guilt of someone harbouring an obsessive vice or secret. He pushed it away again.

  As he was returning to sleep he heard a sound. Someone was trying his door. Alarmed he sat up and his hand dropped towards the gun below the bed. He fumbled and found it. They were coming in. They had a key. He watched through the aperture of the bedroom door as the outer door opened. Three men entered. Savage moved like a soldier. He slid from the bed and lifted the sub-machine gun in the same movement. He reached his bedroom door in two strides and switched on the sitting room light. Revealed in the glare were three short, wide men, one carrying a cricket bat. They blinked and backed away in the sudden light. ‘Stay where you are,’ said Savage with real menace. He pretended to cock the empty gun. ‘Or I’ll kill you.’