Fuck me,’ muttered the man with the cricket bat. ‘Look at that shooter.’
The middle man nudged him as though to restrain his language. ‘We . . . was just wanting to see Mr Kostelanetz,’ he said haltingly.
‘Is Mr Kostelanetz in?’ asked the third. ‘By any chance?’ He moved his head sideways and grinned ingratiatingly. They were all in their forties, seedy and unfit. The one with the cricket bat had a big paunch, the middle man was hairless and the third appeared short-sighted. He tried to focus on Savage. None could believe the gun. The bald man wiped the top of his head with his hand and said: ‘Anybody can make a mistake.’
‘Net practice,’ mumbled the man with the cricket bat.
‘Mr Kostelanetz doesn’t live here any longer,’ Savage told them. ‘I do.’
‘Very sorry, guv’nor,’ said the bald man. He turned towards the door. Savage snapped at him to stop and pointed the sub-machine gun at his chest. The man trembled visibly. ‘Throw the keys you got in with on that armchair,’ ordered Savage. All three were sweating, eyes shifting, hands fumbling. The middle man tossed the keys on to the cushion of the chair.
‘Right,’ said Savage. ‘Take your trousers off.’
Together they stared at him. ‘Get them off,’ he repeated.
‘What for?’ asked the bald man timidly.
‘We only wanted to give Mr Kostelanetz something,’ said the man with the bat, pushing it behind his legs. ‘We owe him.’
Ominously Savage shifted the gun again.
As though taking part in some sort of novelty race they rushed to lower their trousers and stood terrified, holding their hands across their underpants. ‘Right,’ said Savage. ‘Now piss off before I decide to shoot you. And don’t come back. Mr Kostelanetz is gone. I’m here now.’
Mumbling relief and thanks they backed, trouserless, towards the door while he kept the muzzle of the gun on them. They reached it and with a rush tumbled out on to the landing. He moved forward, kicked the door shut after them, and bolted it. He heard them falling down the stairs. He sat sweating on the armchair. He rummaged behind him for the keys and picked them up. Then he gathered the three pairs of trousers and carried them to the window, opened it and threw them out into the darkness. Legs flying, they floated down to the courtyard below. Restrained calls of appreciation floated up.
Closing the window he returned to the bedroom. He sat with the light on, feeling an excitement, almost an elation, a confidence that he had not known for a long time. He patted the warm, useless, sub-machine gun and slid it back below the bed.
He had reached the Azores. ‘Location. North Atlantic, 9oo miles west of Lisbon, Portuguese colony. The islands are spread over more than 300 square miles, the most remote group of islands in the Atlantic, the tops of submarine mountains, their bases are two and a half miles deep in the sea and they rise to a height of four miles . . .’
Some nights, after midnight, he would let himself silently, almost secretly, out of the flat and out of the darkened, sleeping building. Snores trembled behind doors. Milk bottles were marshalled against the corridor walls. He always used the stairs; the lift seemed to clang louder at night.
Once as he left late he met Mr and Mrs Maddison entering through the street door. ‘Albert Hall,’ reported Bertie sourly. ‘Tchaikovsky. She’s been bawling again.’
‘Protesting,’ corrected Mrs Maddison firmly. She examined Savage as if wanting to ask where he was going at that hour.
‘In the middle of Sugar Plum Fairy,’ retorted Bertie. He directed a grumble towards Savage. ‘We’ve been in the bloody police station for an hour.’
Savage went out into the hushed cold carrying two bundles of washing. Street lamps made the surrounding dark more intense. He walked up Kensington Church Street, up the smeary, rising pavement, below the leaning trees, past the antique shops where old pictures, vases, chairs and oriental figures faced the street. His routine took him to the all-night shop for groceries and the morning papers and then to the launderette. The clothes he washed and dried he would iron the following day; one skill the army had taught him was the use of the iron.
The all-night launderette was a steamy yellow yolk in Notting Hill. There were late cars and taxis cruising by. The police visited it regularly and one policeman always did his washing there. Savage went there once a week and used the washing machine and spin drier, sitting on a damp plastic chair and reading his newspaper while he waited.
Sitting, hunched, there as he went into the launderette was the girl in the dirty pink fake fur; the girl he had seen before with the wandering youths. Her head was wound into a blue and white striped football scarf through which a slice of her dozing face projected. She roused as he opened the door. ‘Shut it, will you,’ she said drowsily. ‘The wind.’
He closed the door behind him. The windows were steamed, the machines damp, the floor smeared. He took his laundry, shirts and underwear, out of the plastic bags and opening the door of the machine put them inside. He inserted the coins and started the cycle. He studied her briefly sitting behind him, slightly over his right shoulder, and then wiped one of the dark seats and sat down. ‘I’ll keep an eye on it if you like,’ she murmured like someone talking in their sleep. ‘Cost you a quid.’ Her sharp, damp, nose emerged from the scarf, her watery eyes perched above it. ‘I’ll see it’s not nicked.’
Savage said: ‘It’s all right. There’s nowhere I’ve got to go.’
‘Me neither,’ she said.
Some shadows formed abruptly outside the opaque window. The muffled girl’s head came up sharply, her nose appearing and her eyes suddenly sharp as a bird’s. The door of the launderette was pushed open and a youth, embalmed against the cold, appeared. ‘We got some, Korky.’ His voice was hoarse. ‘You coming?’
‘Right,’ answered the girl firmly. She got up, the wet weight of her coverings making her movements like those of an old woman. As she reached the door she said to Savage: ‘Time you was crashed out, home in bed.’
The youth in the doorway thrust a plastic bag towards her. Squeaking she plunged her hands eagerly into it, bringing them out, clutching a mass of steaming chips.
She stumbled out to join the others on the pavement. She had left the door open and Savage got up and went to shut it. As he did so he came face to face with her. ‘I was coming back to shut it,’ she said, her mouth steaming with chips. The football scarf was hung loosely now and he saw her face was thin and ashen, her eyes like black spikes, her lips raw. ‘Where are you going now?’ he asked.
‘Me? With them,’ she answered pointing to the group moving off along the pavement, clinging together. One turned and shouted: ‘Come on, Korky. Stop chatting him up.’
The girl laughed drily and half-turned. ‘Cheeky sod,’ she said to Savage. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘I was wondering where you were going, that’s all,’ he said.
‘Up west, I expect.’
She turned and with the dirty pink coat flopping, the scarf dangling, went after her companions on legs like sticks. She wore heavy boots but no socks. Savage watched her go and then returned into the warm, damp, launderette and closed the door. He sat following the revolutions of his washing, wondering about her at large in London on that night.
When he left the launderette Notting Hill was vacant except for a delivery truck and two taxis idling at the traffic lights, their drivers conversing in shouts. He walked down Kensington Church Street, making a detour to put his newspaper on the roof of boxes that sheltered a tramp he had got to know who liked to study the financial pages.
Even now, after weeks, Savage remained cautious and in the desolate and empty street he paused at each corner and peered into each shadow. It had begun to rain thinly, but with growing pace, and he hurried towards Kensington Heights. He could see the all-night security lights and he swung his two laundry bags decisively and made towards them. Soon he would be home.
As he rounded the final corner towards the courtyard of the apartment block,
a figure emerged coming the other way. He stopped. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Didn’t mean to give you the . . .’ Her voice was harsh as if she had a sore throat.
Savage stayed still, looking at her. ‘Oh, it’s you!’ she exclaimed. ‘Done your washing?’
Her face glimmered, a white patch wrapped in the football scarf, but he could see the steady glint of her eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said nervously. ‘It’s done.’
‘Fancy us meeting up again like this,’ she said as though they were at a social gathering.
‘I thought you were going with your friends.’
‘Changed my mind,’ she answered. ‘I always am. I change it all the time. I’m like that.’
‘Have you been following me?’ he asked her.
‘Right, I have.’ She sounded genuinely disappointed. ‘And I thought I moved like one of them phantoms.’
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘We’re both getting wet.’
‘Sopping,’ she agreed. Her voice grated. ‘Can I come with you?’
Savage blinked. ‘Where?’
‘Wherever it is you live.’
He tried to swallow his astonishment. ‘. . . But . . . look, I can’t let you . . .’
‘Aw, come on,’ she encouraged. ‘You can’t have a wife or a woman because you wouldn’t be doing your own laundry.’ They stood five feet apart. Her voice became a plea. ‘Just for tonight.’ She surveyed the night. ‘It’s pissing.’ Her eyes returned to him and her expression changed. ‘. . . Raining,’ she corrected.
‘No, no, you can’t,’ he argued. ‘I’ve got problems of my own, believe me.’
‘All right,’ she responded as though she did not care. ‘Sod off with your problems.’
Grimacing, he moved towards the door and unlocked it deliberately, trying not to look back at her. She had not moved from her place. She was like a wraith on the pavement. He opened the outside door and let himself in, then deliberately closed it. She knocked blatantly. Savage ground his teeth, waited, reopened it six inches. ‘You’re not coming in,’ he insisted leaning to the aperture. ‘I’ve got enough troubles.’
‘I’m no trouble,’ she said to the crack. He could see one eye. ‘I’m a bit of bother now, this minute, but I’m not generally. I’ll be good and I’ll go off in the morning and you won’t be lumbered with me ever again.’ It was a long speech delivered in a croak. Warily he opened the door a few extra inches. Her pinched face was close. ‘I’ve got a cold coming on,’ she pleaded. ‘I don’t feel very well at all.’
She began to cough, heaving and spluttering and clutching her chest. Savage regarded her helplessly. She looked up into his confused face. ‘All right,’ she said like a threat. She half-rolled away, hugging the brick wall. ‘I’ll go. You won’t hear from me again. Never, ever.’ With a final spasm she moved further away until the stark beam of the security light fixed on her. ‘Good . . .’ cough, cough, cough ‘. . . fucking night,’ she gasped.
Savage forced himself to shut the door. He leaned against it briefly and then began resolutely mounting the stairs. After the first flight he halted, cursed quietly and then went back and opened the street door. She was standing on the step, facing him, her sharp, damp nose only an inch distant, her eyes full. ‘I won’t bother you,’ she promised.
Slowly he let her in. ‘You don’t realise,’ he said lamely. ‘I’ve come here for some privacy. I don’t want anybody in the place.’
She had already slid past him and was going sideways up the stairs. ‘I won’t be staying,’ she promised again on the first landing. ‘Which number?’
‘Keep going,’ he sighed. ‘It’s right at the top.’
‘What’s the matter with the lift?’
‘The lift,’ he replied doggedly, ‘is too noisy. It wakes people.’
‘Stop shouting then,’ she whispered, her washed-out face turning quickly on him. ‘Talk quiet.’
He got her to the top of the stairs. As he rummaged for his key she summoned up another coughing spasm. ‘No,’ he pleaded holding up his hand. ‘Don’t start, please. Don’t worry, we’re going in.’
He pushed open the door and she went before him with an odd decorum, hurrying on tiptoe. ‘Oh, it is nice,’ she breathed as if she had viewed a dozen apartments that day. Her bone-like fingers bit into the scarf still under her chin. ‘Very posh. I bet you like it here.’
‘I do,’ he replied. ‘When I’m quiet.’
Quickly she went to the big window and to his astonishment familiarly flicked the curtains aside. ‘Cor, look at that,’ she said surveying the rainy night. ‘I bet some of my mates could see me if I waved.’
‘Your mates are not coming in here,’ he warned with a touch of panic. But she was already waving. She waved widely with both hands, then pulled the curtains firmly and revolved to face him. ‘Nobody there,’ she said. She unwound her soaked scarf revealing her thin head and damp, dank hair. ‘You’re a good bloke,’ she said as if he needed reassurance. ‘I want to say thanks.’
‘That’s all right,’ he said solemnly. Her face was narrow, so narrow it made her nose big and her eyes long. Her hair was tangled. Her lips were bloodless and her nose running. ‘Snotty me,’ she sniffed wiping it with the end of the football scarf.
‘Take your coat off,’ he suggested nodding at the dripping nylon fur. ‘My Paddington,’ she smiled slightly. ‘All right. I call it after Paddington Bear. You know, the one from Peru.’ She took it off and eyed it unhappily as it hung from her hands. ‘It looks quite good when it’s clean.’ Underneath she had a thin, checked dress. ‘It niffs a bit.’ She handed him the coat and he took it into the kitchen where he draped it across a stool.
When he returned she was standing with mock meekness. Her fragile dress was creased, the hem three inches clear of her knees. ‘Sit down, will you,’ invited Savage awkwardly. ‘Would you like something to drink?’ He glanced at her. ‘Tea or coffee?’
Demurely she sat on the edge of the sofa. ‘I didn’t think you meant champagne,’ she giggled quietly. ‘Anyway, I’ve gone off champagne. I’ll have a cup of tea though. Three sugars.’
With relief he returned to the kitchen, put the kettle on, and put his head through the door. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘As a rule, yes. Always. But I’ve just scoffed about three tons of chips. You saw Charley with the chips, didn’t you. He nicked them from some drunk. So I’m not that hungry. What’s your name, by the way?’
He merely said: ‘Savage.’
‘Not just Savage,’ she objected. ‘Can’t be. That’s something you are. Savage.’
‘It’s Frank Savage,’ he said.
‘Don’t like Frank,’ she ruminated. ‘That sounds like something you are again. You can be Frank or you can be Savage. I think I’ll call you Savage.’ She quickly caught the alarm in his eyes at the suggestion that this was to be a longer relationship. ‘Just for now,’ she reassured him. ‘One night only. I said I’m off tomorrow and I’ll be off tomorrow. Always keep my promises I do. That’s one thing about me.’
‘What is your name?’ he asked. The kettle began to whistle.
‘I’ll tell you after you’ve made the tea,’ she said. ‘We can sit down and have a good natter.’ She drew together her skinny shoulders. ‘I’ve not felt so warm for weeks.’
Sure that the situation was slipping away from him he hesitated before going to the kettle. ‘Go on,’ encouraged the girl. ‘I won’t nick the family treasures.’
He returned embarrassed to the kitchen and poured the water into the teapot. She began singing tunelessly and moving around the room. He peered around the door. She was standing examining his typewriter, her thin back to him, the dress hardly curved over her buttocks, her white legs carelessly knock-kneed. As though she had an acute sense of being watched she turned abruptly. ‘What have you got this thing for?’ she asked.
‘I’m a writer,’ he hesitated. ‘A sort of writer.’
‘What sort?’ She pointed at the machine. ‘This came out of the Ark, didn
’t it’
‘I’m putting together an encyclopaedia,’ he responded solidly from the kitchen doorway.
‘On that?’
‘Yes, on that.’
‘You ought to get a word processor.’
‘I don’t want a word processor. I can’t use one. Was it two sugars?’
‘Three,’ she corrected. ‘Please. I’ve got to build myself up. I’m vanishing. Look at me.’ She spread her legs and threw her arms sideways. ‘Like a skellington.’
He carried in the teapot with two mugs, each with milk, and the sugar on a tray. He had put some chocolate biscuits on a plate. Her eyes went instantly to them and she reached out eagerly. ‘I hope they mix with the chips. I don’t want to throw up, not now. Not on your nice carpet. I was hot at school on computers. You ought to get one.’
Patiently he poured the tea and she smiled as she studied him. ‘You’re like some old lady doing that.’
‘I’m not used to guests,’ he told her defensively. ‘Especially not at this time of night.’
‘What time is it?’ she asked without much interest. Ignoring the clock, she caught hold of his wrist and blinked at his watch. ‘Late,’ she said. ‘Quarter past two.’ Her thin eyes rose to him as they sat almost formally on the sofa. ‘You was asking about my name,’ she reminded him. ‘You know the name of my coat, Paddington, but you don’t know mine.’
‘Well, yes. What is it?’
‘Korky,’ she said bluntly like someone laying their cards on the table. ‘Korky Wilson.’
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