Imaginative Experience

  ‘Christ!’ he exclaimed as the train strained to a stop. ‘I am going mad!’ And, pushing his way to the doors, he got out to walk down Sloane Street to Partridges and buy himself something for a solitary supper.

  Halfway along Sloane Street he had a better idea; he would cut through side-streets to Patel’s Corner Shop, renew his order for newspapers and buy his supper there. There might be a clue. He quickened his step.

  Patel’s Corner Shop was busy. Arming himself with a wire basket he prowled along the shelves, glancing at his fellow shoppers. Julia’s flat was only a street away; did any of these people know her? Had some of them been at that ghastly party? He recognized no-one. Morosely he chose a steak, changed his mind, took two. One could go in the freezer. The lettuces were crisp, he put one in the basket. He chose fruit, oranges, Cox’s Orange Pippins, bananas, and sighting mangoes found them irresistible and picked out two. On to the cheese section for a fruity little goat cheese and a hunk of Stilton before running his eye over the notice-board.

  Siamese kitten for sale, neutered.

  Mountain bike.

  Acupuncture.

  Philosophy student in need of accommodation.

  Aromatherapy.

  Half-grown goat.

  Volvo Estate car (Yes, I want a car but shall treat myself to a new one and enjoy its smell.)

  Reflexology.

  Maps of Yugoslavia urgently wanted.

  ‘Sir?’ He had arrived at the counter. Mr Patel smiled.

  ‘Oh, ah, yes, thanks.’ Sylvester unloaded his basket while Mr Patel worked the till. ‘Before I forget, I want to renew my order for newspapers.’

  ‘Mr Wykes, certainly.’

  ‘You remember my name?’ He was gratified.

  ‘The Observer, The Sunday Times, no smellies, Independent?’

  ‘Right, and oh, just a minute, I think I’ll have a couple of tins of dog food.’ He must not lose hope, it was still possible he would entice her for a meal; it would be politic to feed the dog. He liked the dog.

  ‘Chappie?’ Mr Patel made dog food so friendly, so intimate. ‘On the shelf there, sir.’ He packed the purchases in a strong paper bag with Patel’s Corner Shop and Recycled printed on its sides. ‘Coffee?’ he suggested. ‘Beans?’

  ‘Oh yes, thanks for reminding me. A half of Kenyan and half of Colombian, please.’

  Mr Patel weighed coffee beans, sealed them into a paper bag.

  ‘Is it the same goat?’ Sylvester nodded towards the board.

  ‘Is imaginary.’ Mr Patel lowered his eyes. ‘Your dog like Chappie?’

  ‘He might as well be imaginary too.’

  Mr Patel named the sum of Sylvester’s purchases. The moment had come to ask about Julia, but he had prepared no question, was at a loss how to start. Could he say he had been to the house where she lived, had rung the bell, a woman from another flat had opened the door and said, ‘She’s out. Saw her go. No, don’t know her. Why don’t you telephone or write?’ and practically slammed the door? He cleared his throat. ‘I wanted to ask—’ But behind him, impatient to pay and be on her way, a woman poked him in the back with her loaded basket. He paid, pocketed his change and, cursing his lack of courage, left.

  That bloody woman had robbed him of his chance. Mr Patel did know Julia, it was Patel’s notice-board which had found him Julia. It would surely be possible to leave a message; could he do it tomorrow? He could write, but write what, exactly? He could stay home from work, lie in wait, catch her when she came to clean. But did she come? Had she been? Houses could stay clean, couldn’t they? If she was coming as usual, she left no trace. If she were going to come, would she have left his bed so secretly and vanished without a sound? Had he been snoring when she woke?

  ‘Oh God!’ Sylvester exclaimed. He had not thought of this before. ‘Snoring! God!’

  ‘Only me,’ said Hamish Grant as they collided. ‘Your mortal cousin, not the Almighty. I don’t snore.’

  Sylvester said, ‘Oh! Hamish! What are you doing here?’ rather aggressively.

  ‘Just passing. Wondered whether you’d join me for a bite of dinner. Could put you in the picture about my parent’s non-demise and non-funeral.’ Hamish grinned.

  ‘Put my foot in it there,’ Sylvester admitted. ‘I have some fillet steak in this bag.’ He held up the Patel’s Corner Shop bag. ‘And salad, cheese, fruit, coffee. I’m on my own, come and share.’

  Hamish said, ‘Thanks, love to. How was America? Been back long?’ He sounded quite friendly.

  ‘Ten days, and if you are not careful I will tell you all about it. But first, how is your mother, my favourite aunt?’

  ‘Worried that you may have lost your marbles.’

  ‘So she sent you to enquire?’

  ‘Thought of it myself. No need to be huffy. Finding myself in this area and having heard a rumour that your firm is doing a book on Marvin Bratt; there was that, too.’

  ‘News travels fast,’ said Sylvester. ‘It’s not about, it’s by. Who told you?’

  ‘I know Narrowlane,’ said Hamish evasively.

  ‘Not Jinks?’

  ‘Same thing.’

  ‘So, finding yourself “just passing” in this area, you came to snoop?’

  ‘Snoop’s a harsh word,’ said Hamish. They reached Sylvester’s door. ‘You might need a long spoon,’ he said gently.

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind.’ Sylvester unlocked his door. ‘Come along in. Actually,’ he said, leading the way into the house, ‘I have refused to have anything to do with it. The man is a stinker and what’s more he can’t write.’

  Hamish said, ‘That’s all right, then. Good Lord! Somebody has been at your garden. Can I look?’ He peered through the french windows at the garden, partly visible by the light from the sitting-room.

  ‘Somebody has.’ Sylvester drew the curtains. Should he tell his cousin about Julia? Ask his advice? Better not; he was not a gossip, but he had, had he not, picked up the scent on Bratt. ‘I’ll tell you all about Bratt,’ he said. ‘Let’s eat in the kitchen. Come and talk to me while I cook, help yourself to a drink.’

  Hamish said, ‘OK, but first I must look at the garden. I remember it was lovely in your mother’s day.’ He drew back the curtains and let himself out.

  Irritated, Sylvester went down to the kitchen, where he put down his shopping and reached for the pad on which, before he went to America, he had found requests and messages from Mrs Piper. The pad was, as it had been for all the days since his return, blank.

  ‘Who did you find to do your garden?’ Hamish clattered down the stairs. ‘Someone with real imagination and nous. It can’t have been you, you know hardly anything about gardens. I need help with mine. Who was it? Will you give me the man’s address?’

  ‘I was going to tell you about Bratt.’

  ‘OK, but—’

  ‘Could you uncork this?’ Sylvester handed Hamish a bottle of wine and a corkscrew. ‘And how do you like your steak?’

  ‘Rare. Shall I lay the table?’ Hamish was easily deflected. ‘I met Bratt once,’ he said. ‘Made my hair stand on end, belongs to some cult.’

  Sylvester said, ‘Ku Klux Klan,’ and they discussed Bratt while he grilled the steaks and made a salad dressing.

  It was later, when they had reached the cheese and uncorked a second bottle, that Hamish, letting his eye rove around the room, let it rest on Sylvester’s shopping. ‘I did not know you had a dog,’ he said, staring at the tins of Chappie. Sylvester, his tongue loosened by wine, replied, ‘I haven’t, it’s Julia’s.’

  And Hamish said, ‘Julia?’

  ‘My cleaning lady, Mrs Piper. She did the garden.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wonderful. Would she do mine? Where can I find her?’

  ‘You’d be cleverer than me!’ Sylvester exclaimed. ‘I have been looking for ten days. She is not where she’s supposed to be. I don’t want to intrude, I’ve thought of leaving a note, but would it get delivered?
It’s a delicate situation. I don’t even know if she still comes in to clean, she leaves no trace, it’s—Oh dear!’

  ‘Dog hair?’

  ‘She leaves, left it outside.’

  ‘Telephone?’

  ‘It transpires she is ex-directory.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So how do you normally communicate? I leave notes for my lady.’

  ‘So did I! We used that pad. It’s been blank ever since—er—well—’

  ‘Er, well what?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Come on, Sylvester.’

  ‘No.’

  Hamish raised his eyebrows. ‘Is it important?’

  ‘Vital.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hamish. ‘I see,’ he said, unseeing. ‘Hasn’t she got a family? I’m almost part of my lady’s family, sort of honorary.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How d’you find her in the first place? Agency?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I advertised in the corner-shop.’

  ‘So you ask the shop. It’s simple.’

  ‘I get the impression they wouldn’t tell me. I haven’t the nerve.’

  Hamish laughed. ‘Why on earth not?’

  ‘It’s a feeling.’

  Hamish said, ‘Let me think.’ Leaning back, he closed his eyes. ‘Why not wait in on her day and catch her then?’ He was amused.

  ‘I’ve thought of that, but we are fearfully busy. I can’t spare the time.’

  ‘And you say it’s important?’

  ‘Yes, yes. And I do know where she lives. I went there, I rang a bell at the street door and a woman from another flat came to the door and was bloody rude—’

  Hamish said, ‘Suppose you tell me what you are really on about. Why not begin at the beginning?’

  Sylvester said, ‘Oh, all right.’ And, gulping down some wine, told his cousin how, returning from America, he had found Julia asleep on his sofa, still wearing her overcoat, taking refuge from a noisy orgy in the flats where she lived and that she turned out to be someone he had once seen leaping out of a train to rescue a sheep.

  Hamish said, ‘Didn’t you tell me about her? Last time we met? We’d been dining—’

  ‘I may have.’

  ‘And what else happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Hamish sniffed. Sylvester refilled their glasses, glancing sidelong at his cousin, who said, ‘Why are you so evasive?’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘Not?’

  ‘It’s a delicate situation,’ Sylvester muttered uncomfortably.

  ‘Why is it delicate?’

  ‘She’s a wounded person; her husband and child were killed in an accident.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Have some more cheese.’ Sylvester pushed the cheese across the table. Hamish cut himself a sliver, popped it in his mouth.

  ‘You too are wounded,’ he said, munching. ‘Your ex-wife Celia—she is ex by now, I hope?—pretty well shredded your self-confidence.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’ Sylvester was irritated that his cousin should have had that impression. ‘Any slight nicks in my amour propre are long since healed,’ he said.

  Unimpressed, Hamish said, ‘Good.’

  Sylvester said, ‘I’ll make some coffee,’ and proceeded to do so, reminded painfully of Julia by the coffee grinder’s screech.

  An hour later, bidding his cousin goodbye, Hamish standing on the doorstep buttoning his overcoat said, ‘You are in love with this girl.’

  And Sylvester replied, ‘I want to find out whether I am.’

  ‘You said she has a dog?’ Hamish cogitated.

  ‘Yes.’

  Hamish said, ‘Cherchez le chien,’ and laughed as he walked away.

  THIRTY-TWO

  ‘IT IS SOMETHING YOU should know.’ Rebecca sat on the sofa holding her drink while Sylvester lolled in the armchair, his legs crossed at the ankles. He had just got back from work when Rebecca rang the bell. ‘What neat timing,’ he had ungraciously said on opening the door to her uninvited presence. ‘Want a drink?’

  She had accepted a vodka and tonic, which she now sipped. ‘Aren’t you having a drink?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am drinking alone?’

  ‘Yes.’ He eased off his shoes, letting them thud onto the rug. His socks, she observed, were pink of the variety once called shocking. ‘Lovely rugs.’ She examined the rugs. ‘Kelims, I think you said.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you get those socks in America?’

  ‘Did you come to discuss my socks?’ Aware of sounding disagreeable—Rebecca was after all an old associate, friend, he supposed—Sylvester said, ‘Sorry, Rebecca, a shop on Fifth Avenue. They also had electric blue. I resisted those.’

  Rebecca gulped down some vodka. Drinking alone put her at a disadvantage; it was not easy to get started. ‘Is that smart new Renault outside yours?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, Rebecca, it is, how observant you are. I bought it in London and the socks in New York. Anything else? Did you not say there was something I should know?’

  How to begin? It had seemed so simple, but here on his sofa she felt daunted. Had she thought it properly through? She raised her glass, sipped. Would he want to know where she had gained her information and who from? He would. They had known each other a long time, years, but was he the sort to wake in his own bed as she had the other day in hers, to find a strange face on the pillow? She doubted it. She must manage without giving details. ‘It’s nothing much.’ She swallowed some vodka. ‘Just something I heard about your cleaning woman,’ she said; and because for some silly reason she felt nervous with Sylvester sitting there in his socks, not drinking but watching, she added, ‘I was just passing,’ which they both knew to be untrue since to reach Sylvester’s door entailed, for her, quite a detour.

  Sylvester grinned. ‘Yes?’

  ‘A person I met told me some oddish things about her.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘It may be exaggerated gossip.’ As seen from Sylvester’s sofa, the probity of her visit was becoming obfusc.

  ‘Would that person be the man I saw you dancing with the other day? In the street—’

  ‘What’s wrong with dancing in the street?’ Rebecca bristled.

  ‘Did I say so? Even hint?’

  ‘No—but—’

  ‘I thought you were having a lovely time with a bit of Rough Trade. You looked positively frisky.’

  ‘Sylvester! Frisky! Honestly!’

  ‘It’s not an insult, of course not! So what piece of news, what spicy titbit did this piece of Rough Trade impart?’ Sylvester wheedled.

  ‘His name is Benson, Maurice Benson.’ Rebecca disliked Sylvester’s description, it was too apt.

  When she takes offence, Sylvester thought, she looks positively masculine. A moustache formed like the horns of a water buffalo would suit her. ‘I know his name,’ he said, ‘and he calls himself a twitcher. What did he have to say about Mrs Piper? He smells terrible—of stale tobacco and beer.’ Rebecca tightened her lips; she liked the way Benson smelled. ‘Did he tell you that he spies on Mrs Piper, and for some reason spies on me?’ Sylvester asked. ‘Is that the “something” I should know? Did he tell you that he rings her up in the middle of the night and makes threatening calls? Did he tell you that? Did he happen to tell you that Mrs Piper’s ex-husband and child were recently killed in a car crash?’

  Rebecca said, ‘No,’ whispering it. ‘No.’

  ‘I believe you’ve been to bed with him,’ Sylvester teased.

  Rebecca exclaimed, ‘What!’, flushing up brightly.

  ‘So what did he tell you?’ (Perhaps I went too far; she is blinking back a tear.)

  ‘What he told me—oh—He followed her out of interest. Yes, something to do with birds? Went to see her mother who is called Clodagh May and lives in Devon—He had seen her, your Mrs Piper, doing something peculiar which
interested him. He is interested in people as well as birds but birds are his passion. He did say, yes, he did, that he had teased her a little about something he knew.’

  ‘He makes obscene calls.’

  ‘Oh, Sylvester, really! I’ve had obscene calls, you know the kind of thing, heavy breathing and what colour knickers are you wearing? Maurice Benson wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘You have?’ Sylvester was briefly deflected; for Rebecca to receive obscene calls hardly tallied with the imaginary moustache. ‘Knickers?’

  ‘Yes, and the other one is the splendid length of the caller’s penis.’

  ‘What do you say to that?’

  ‘Either one hangs up, or one says, “Is that all? Only ten inches? Pitiful”.’

  ‘Gosh! But back to your Benson, what germs of information did he impart?’ Sylvester was unrelenting. ‘Did he tell you he accuses her of murdering her child?’

  ‘No, he did not. I am sure he would not.’ She was shocked. ‘He knows she knows some secret lake ospreys visit when they are migrating and wants to know where it is so that he can log it, the osprey, in the book he keeps as a twitcher. Obviously that is why he has rung her up. Of course it is. But one funny thing he did say is that she tried to deafen him with a whistle.’

  ‘I don’t know about the osprey,’ Sylvester said, ‘but the whistle’s true and serves him bloody right. The fellow took you for a ride, Rebecca.’ Not for anything would he let her divine his rage. ‘I hope you enjoyed it,’ he said. ‘You look like you need a refill, let me take your glass.’

  Rebecca said, ‘No, thank you, Sylvester. I must go.’ She heaved herself up from the sofa. ‘I’ve got a date,’ she said.

  At the street door Sylvester pecked her cheek. ‘You slept with that hunk,’ he said.

  Rebecca said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ and slapped the bonnet of his new car as she walked past.

  THIRTY-THREE

  WHEN SYLVESTER RECOGNIZED JOYFUL sitting on a doorstep in Notting Hill he nearly caused an accident. The driver of the car which barely avoided shunting him blew her horn, rolled down her window, yelled, ‘Male driver!’, and making the ‘V’ sign pulled out to pass. Parking by the steps on which the dog sat, Sylvester’s heart beat fast; the hand which pulled on the brake was sweaty. He pressed the button, rolled down his window and uttered the animal’s name in a conspiratorial croak. ‘Joyful?’ Joyful raised the head which was propped on his paws and, meeting Sylvester’s eye, flattened his ears in recognition.