‘Then you should wait outside in the car.’
‘I haven’t brought the car.’
‘In my car.’ She was wearing a pink jersey shirt-dress instead of one of the dark suits she usually wore when on duty. She tied a black silk scarf and put on her belted raincoat.
I said, ‘I haven’t got the key of your car.’
‘Wait near my car.’
‘You didn’t bring it today, remember?’
‘The real answer,’ said Marjorie, ‘is that you like the frisson of hypochondria.’ We stepped through the portal. The sun was high in a clear blue sky. It was hard to believe it was almost Christmas.
She was always like this when she was on duty: trimmer, younger, more independent. More like a doctor, in fact. It was difficult to escape the thought that the scatterbrained little girl that she became when with me was not the person she wanted to be. And yet we were happy together, and just waiting for her I rediscovered all the excitements and anxieties of adolescent love. We took one of the taxi cabs from the hospital cab rank. I gave him the address of The Terrine du Chef.
‘I bought you a present.’
‘Oh, Pat. You remembered.’
She unwrapped it hastily. It was a wristwatch. ‘It must have cost a fortune.’
‘They’ll exchange it for a desk barometer.’
She held the watch tight, and put her closed fist inside her other hand, and pressed it to her heart, as though frightened that I might take it from her. ‘You said repapering the sitting-room would be for my birthday.’
‘We’ll probably be able to afford that as well,’ I said. ‘And I thought … well, if you do go to Los Angeles, you wouldn’t be able to take the wallpaper.’
‘And it’s got a sweep second-hand.’ Tears welled up in her eyes.
‘It’s only steel,’ I said. ‘Gold isn’t so waterproof or dustproof … but if you want gold …’
There was a lot of the little girl in her. And there was no denying that that was what attracted me. I leaned forward to kiss the tip of her nose.
‘Los Angeles …’ she said. She sniffed, and smiled. ‘It would mean working in a research lab … like a factory, almost … I like being part of a hospital … it’s what makes it worthwhile.’
The cab swerved and threw her gently into my arms. ‘I do love you, Patrick,’ she said.
‘You don’t have to cry,’ I told her. Her hair came unclipped and fell across her face as I tried to kiss her again.
‘We just don’t get on together,’ she said. She held me tight enough to disprove it.
She drew back from me and looked at my face as if seeing it for the first time. She put out a hand and touched my cheek with the tips of her fingers. ‘Before we try again, let’s find somewhere else to live.’ She put her hand lightly across my lips. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your flat, but it is your flat, Patrick. I feel I’m only a lodger there, it makes me insecure.’
‘I have another trip scheduled. While I’m away, you could speak with one of the less crooked house-agents.’
‘Please! Do let us look. I don’t mean in the suburbs or anything. I won’t look at anything farther out than Highgate.’
‘It’s a deal.’
‘And I’ll try for a position in whatever hospital is local.’
‘Good,’ I said. As long as she worked in the same hospital as her husband there would always be this distance between us, even if – as she insisted – it was solely of my creation. I’d seen her with her husband. It was bloody disconcerting when they got on to the topic of medicine: it was as if they had their own culture, and their own language in which to discuss its finer nuances.
For a few minutes neither of us spoke. As we passed Lords Cricket Ground I saw a newspaper seller with a placard: RUSSIAN MYSTERY WOMAN CHAIRS GERMAN UNITY TALKS. That’s the way it is with newspapers. The car strike had already become ANGRY CAR PICKETS: VIOLENCE FLARES after some name-calling outside the factory that morning.
‘Have you got a game in progress?’ It was Marjorie’s attempt to account for my moodiness.
‘I left just as Ferdy was deciding whether to atomize a sub outside Murmansk and risk contaminating the shipping and ship yards in the fjord. Or whether to wait until its multiple clusters leave him without nukes for retaliation – or with the random target selection of the surviving silos.’
‘And you ask me how I can work in the Pathology Lab.’
‘It’s comparable in a way … disease and war. Perhaps it’s better to pick them to the bone and see what they are made of than to sit around and wait for the worst to happen.’
The cab stopped outside The Terrine. ‘I must be back by two thirty at the latest.’
‘We don’t have to eat here,’ I said. ‘We can have a beer and a sandwich and get you back ten minutes early.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,’ she said. ‘It was a lovely idea.’
I paid the taxi off. Marjorie said, ‘How did you find this little place – it’s sweet.’
I was cupping my hands and peering close to the window. There were no lights on and no customers, just the neatly arranged place settings, polished glasses and starched napkins. I tried the door and rang the bell. Marjorie tried the door too. She laughed. ‘That’s typical of you, darling,’ she said.
‘Just cool it for a minute,’ I told her. I went down the narrow alley at the side of the restaurant. It gave access to back entrances of houses above The Terrine. There was a wooden gate in the wall. I put my arm over the top of it, and by balancing a toe on a ledge in the wall I reached far enough to release the catch. Marjorie followed me through the gate. There was a tiny cobbled yard, with an outside toilet and a drain blocked with potato peelings.
‘You shouldn’t.’
‘I said cool it.’ There seemed to be no one looking down from the windows, or from the iron balcony crammed with potted plants, now skeletal and bare in the wintry sun. I tried the back door. The net curtains were drawn. I went to the window but its lacy-edged yellow blind was down, and I couldn’t see in. Marjorie said, ‘Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.’
I tried to lever the spring bolt open with the edge of my security card but it must have been one of those double turn movements with a dead-bolt. ‘That’s women,’ I said. ‘Give them presents and they complain they’re not getting enough kindness.’ I gave her another tiny kiss on the nose.
The lock wouldn’t give. I leaned my back against the glass panel in the door to deaden the sound, then I pressed against it until I heard the glass snap.
‘Have you gone mad?’ said Marjorie.
I put a finger in the crack and widened it enough to pull a large piece of broken glass away from the putty. ‘OK, Ophelia,’ I said. ‘You’re the only one I love; stop complaining.’
I put my hand through the broken glass panel and found the key, still in the old-fashioned mortice lock. It turned with a screech of its rusty tumblers. Glancing round to be sure there was no one coming down the alley, I opened the door and went in.
‘This is burglary,’ said Marjorie, but she followed me.
‘House-breaking, you mean. Burglary only at night, remember what I told you for that crossword?’
The sun came through the holland blind; thick yellow light, viscous, almost, like a roomful of pale treacle. I released the blind and it sprang up with a deafening clatter. If no one heard that, I thought, the place is empty.
‘But you could go to prison,’ said Marjorie.
‘We’d be together,’ I said, ‘and that’s what matters.’ I leaned forward to kiss her but she pushed me away. We were in the pantry. Lined up along the servery there were wooden bowls, each with a limp piece of lettuce and a segment of pale-pink tomato. There were desserts, too: platoons of caramels and battalions of babas, deployed under muslin and awaiting the word to attack.
I helped myself from a tray of sausages. They were still warm. ‘Have a sausage, Marjorie.’ She shook her head. I bit into one. ‘Entirely bread
,’ I said. ‘Be all right toasted, with butter and marmalade.’ I walked into the next room; Marjorie followed.
‘A really long lease is what we should go for,’ said Marjorie. ‘And with both of us working …’
The sewing machine was still there but the uniform had gone and so had the dossier of measurements and photos. I went down the worn stone steps to the room into which the refrigeration chamber had been built. It switched itself on and made us both jump. ‘Especially with me being a doctor,’ said Marjorie. ‘The bank manager told me that.’
There was a tall cupboard built into one wall. Its door was fastened with a massive padlock. A hairpin had no effect on it.
I opened the kitchen drawers, one by one, until I found the sharpening steel. I put that through the padlock and put my weight behind it, but, as always, it was the hasp that gave way: its screws slid out of the dead woodwork and fell on the floor.
‘It’s against the law,’ said Marjorie. ‘I don’t care what you say.’
‘A shop, or a restaurant? Implied right of access – a tricky point of law. It’s probably not even trespass.’ I opened the cupboard.
‘It’s better than paying rent,’ said Marjorie. ‘You’ve paid for your old place three times over, I’ve always said that.’
‘I know you have, Marjorie.’ There was nothing inside the cupboard except dead flies and a packet of account-overdue stickers.
‘We might get it all from the bank – not even have to go to a building society,’ said Marjorie.
The door of the cold room had two large swing clips holding it. Outside, on the wall, there were light switches and a fuse box marked ‘Danger’. I put the light switch on and a small red neon indicator came alight. I put my weight upon the swing clips and without effort opened up the giant door.
‘That would be wonderful,’ I said.
‘You’re not listening,’ said Marjorie.
‘Building society,’ I said. ‘Wonderful idea.’
‘Not have to go to one,’ said Marjorie.
‘Well, there you are,’ I said, ‘you’ve answered your own question.’
Score nothing for guessing that this was an ordinary room disguised as a cold chamber. The frozen air came out to meet me. I stepped inside. It was a normal refrigerated room, about eight feet square, with slatted shelving from floor to ceiling on all sides, except for the part of the rear wall that was occupied by the refrigeration machinery. The displacement of the air tripped the thermostat. The motor clicked on and built up the revolutions until it was wobbling gently on the sprung mounts. It was cold and I buttoned my jacket and turned up the collar. Marjorie came inside. ‘Like the mortuary,’ she pronounced. Her voice echoed in the tiny space. I did my monster walk towards her, my hands raised like claws.
‘Stop it,’ she said. She shivered.
Five sides of mutton were lined up along one side. Frozen fillets – fifty according to the label on the box – had been piled up on the top shelf, and crammed alongside them were three large bags of ready peeled frozen sauté potatoes and three cardboard boxes of mixed vegetables.
‘One gross individual portions: Coq au vin, suprêmes de volaille, suprêmes de chasseur. Mixed.’ A large tin of ‘Curry anything’ and a shelf crammed with frozen lamb chops. Just inside the door there were three bottles of champagne being cooled the hard way. No hollow walls, no secret compartments, no trapdoors.
We came out of the refrigerated room and I closed the door again. I went back into the kitchen and sniffed at the saucepans in the bain marie. They were all empty. I cut a slice of bread. ‘Bread?’
She shook her head. ‘Where could they all be?’ said Marjorie. ‘It’s not early closing.’
‘There you’ve got me,’ I admitted, ‘but I’ll look down in the wine cellar. They could just be hiding.’
‘It’s nearly half past.’
‘You’d better have a sausage. By the time we’ve finished this burglary, there won’t be time for lunch.’ I took another one myself and squashed it between a folded slice of bread.
She grabbed my arm. ‘Have you done this sort of thing before?’ she asked.
‘Not with a partner. Sausage sandwich?’
I thought she was going to cry again. ‘Oh, Patrick!’ She didn’t stamp her foot exactly, but she would have done in her other shoes.
‘I was only joking,’ I said. ‘You didn’t think I was serious?’
‘I don’t even think you are serious about the house,’ she said.
There was no one in the cellar. No one in the toilet. No one in the store room upstairs.
An hour or so ago this had been a flourishing restaurant, now it was not just deserted: it was abandoned.
There was something in the atmosphere, perhaps the sound that our voices and footsteps made with all the windows and doors closed, or perhaps there really is something that happens to houses that are forsaken.
It had been hastily done and yet it was systematic and disciplined. No attempt had been made to save the valuables. There was an expensive Sony cassette player, a cellar full of wine and spirits, and two or three boxes of cigars and cigarettes in a cupboard over the serving hatch. And yet not one scrap of paper remained: no bills, receipts or invoices, not even a menu. Even the grocery order that I’d seen wedged down behind the knife rack had been carefully retrieved and taken away.
‘There’s sliced ham: you like that.’
‘Do stop it,’ she said.
I walked into the restaurant. The light came through the net curtains and reflected upon the marble table-tops and the bentwood chairs arranged around them. It was all as shadowy and still as a Victorian photograph. Antique mirrors, gold-lettered with advertisements for cigarettes and apéritifs, were fixed to every wall. Mirrored there were seemingly endless other dining-rooms, where red-eyed pretty girls stretched ringless hands towards tall shabby furtive men.
Reflected there, too, was a bright-red milk float, and I heard it whine to a halt outside in the street. I pulled back the bolts on the front door and let Marjorie pass me. The milkman was putting two crates of milk on the doorstep. He was a young man with a battered United Dairy cap, and a brown warehouse coat. He smiled and spent a moment or two recovering his breath. ‘You’ve only just missed them,’ he said.
‘How long ago?’
‘Best part of half an hour, bit more perhaps.’
‘It was the traffic,’ I said.
‘Poor fellow,’ said the milkman. ‘How did it happen?’
‘How do any of these things happen?’ I said.
‘Ah, you’re right there,’ he said. He took off his hat and scratched his head.
‘Looked bad, eh?’ I said.
‘All drawn up – knees against his chest.’
‘Conscious?’
‘I was right down the end of the street. I saw them putting him in. They had to open both doors to get him through.’
‘What was it: Ambulance Service?’
‘No, a fancy job – painted cream with lettering and a red cross.’
‘If only I knew where they’d taken him,’ I said. ‘This lady is a doctor, you see.’
He smiled at Marjorie and was glad to rest a moment. He put a boot on the crate, plucking at his trouser leg to reveal a section of yellow sock and some hairy leg. He took out a cigarette case, selected one and lit it with a gold lighter. He nodded his head as he thought about the ambulance. ‘It came right past me,’ he admitted. ‘A clinic, it was.’
‘The rest of them went with him, I suppose?’
‘No, in a bloomin’ great Bentley.’
‘Did they!’
‘A Bentley Model T. That’s like the Rolls Silver Shadow, except for the Bentley radiator. Nice job. Green, it was.’
‘You don’t miss much, do you.’
‘I made one, didn’t I? Plastic – two hundred separate parts – took me months. It’s on the tele, you should see it: my missus is afraid to dust it.’
‘Green?’
‘Front of
fside wing bent to buggery. A recent shunt, not even rusted.’
And the ambulance was from a clinic?’
‘It’s gone right out of my mind. Sorry, Doctor,’ he said to Marjorie. He touched the peak of his cap. ‘I’ve got a terrible memory these days. You’d be National Health, I suppose?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose they can afford a private place.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said the milkman. ‘Little goldmine, that place is.’
‘I’d better run,’ Marjorie said to me.
‘No one here today,’ I said.
‘No, well they don’t do lunches,’ said the milkman. He picked up two crates of empty milk bottles and staggered away.
‘How did you know about the ambulance?’ Marjorie asked me.
‘Ah,’ I said, feeling rather clever.
‘But who was it?’ insisted Marjorie. ‘What happened here?’
‘A Russian admiral with kidney trouble,’ I said.
Marjorie became angry. She stepped out into the road and hailed a cab. It stopped with a squeal of brakes. She opened the door and got in. ‘The incredible amount of trouble you will go to to avoid a serious talk! It’s sick, Patrick! Can’t you see that?’
The cab pulled away before I could answer.
I waited on the pavement, watching the milkman as he staggered under the weight of more crates of milk. Sometimes he put them down and caught his breath for a moment. He was a quick-witted, energetic fellow, whom any dairy would be well advised to employ, but milkmen who lavish hand-made crocodile boots upon themselves do not wear them on their rounds, especially when the boots are new and unbroken. Footwear is always the difficulty in a hasty change of dress but the gold lighter was pure carelessness. It was obvious that The Terrine was staked out, but as the bogus milkman moved down the street I wondered why he should have told me so much, unless a course of action had already been prepared for me.