Chapter 22

Mix left the company for which he had worked for nine years more with a whimper than a bang. He felt very sore because no one had suggested buying him a drink, still less had anyone presented him with a clock or a dinner service, and no noises had been made about redundancy money. Worst of all he hadt o hand over the keys to the car, which he had left in the firm'sunderground car park.

But he comforted himself with the thought that he had securedundertakings from five of his clients that they would continue using him to service and repair their machines. Inquiring of a cash dispenser as to the state of his bank balance, he had been informed he was nearly five hundred pounds in credit. And that was before the sum went in which the firm owed him for the three weeks they didn't want him to work. Still he lacked the heart to go back to Campden Hill Square. Whenhe did make it down there he'd have no choice but to go on foot. At any rate, the walk would do him good.

On the Friday he went to the cinema on his own, passing on the way home pubs whose clientele spilled out onto the pavements and cafes where diners sat at tables outside. He bought Chinese takeaway for his supper, two bottles of wine, and abottle of Cointreau for the making of Boot Camps. The weather was as hot as it had been in July and as dry. One afternoon ithad rained heavily, the first rain for weeks, and while he watched it he relished the thought of all that water encouraging weeds to grow on the garden grave.

Going home was always an ordeal but less so if he could organize things so as to get back in daylight. That would soon bed ifficult with darkness coming earlier and earlier. Carrying his heavy bags, he kept his eyes fixed straight ahead as he climbedthe last flight of stairs, gazing hypnotically at his own frontdoor. Something had gone wrong with the street lamp immediately outside the house so that no light fell through the Isabella window. The top landing was pitch dark but once inside his flat he was all right. He was safe. And his back didn't hurt anymore. He must be pretty fit to have got over a back injury so fast.

He read Killer Extraordinary, watched television to the accompaniment of a Boot Camp, ate his takeaway and listened tothe singing and sighing of the Westway. If the police were going to question him about Danila they would have done it by now. Possibly, after years, after old Chawcer was dead, which might be ages away, someone would buy the house and dig up the garden. They wouldn't dig down four feet, would they? By then he'd be long gone and far away from this haunted house. Living with Nerissa, married to Nerissa, and maybe they'd buy a place in France or even Greece. Even if they found Danila's body they'd never connect it with Nerissa Nash's husband, the famous criminologist.

Backache woke him in the small hours. It was so bad that he groaned aloud, put the light on and saw it was ten past three. I Just his luck when he'd been congratulating himself on his total recovery. This felt the way they said it did when you slipped a disc. Four ibuprofen and a cup of neat gin sent him off to sleep again but he woke at seven. No chance of beginning on his exercise regimen, as he had intended to do today. The backache felt as if it was there to stay and it was far worse than the last time. It seemed to affect the whole length ofhis spine.

A hot bath and two more ibuprofen helped, though he was left feeling rather dizzy. He took the bus along WestbourneGrove and got off at the Portobello Market, for food had to be bought. The market was always crowded, particularly around the stalls, but Saturdays you could only move by becoming part of the throng and going where it took you. He bought takeawaya nd a roast chicken, bread and cakes, his only concessionto what the papers called " healthy food" a bunch of bananas.

Any more and he wouldn't be able to carry it, not with his backi n agony like this.

In a halfhearted attempt to scan the ads for a job to tide him over until he'd established his own business, he bought an Evening Standard and walked down to Notting Hill high street to find a pharmacist. More ibuprofen was needed if sleep werenot to be a problem and he'd better get something to rub on his back. Outside the big Boots a man was begging. He was sitting on the pavement with an open biscuit tin in front of him, but no dog to win sentimental hearts and no sign proclaiming that he was blind or homeless or had five children. Mix never gave money to beggars and there were already twenty or so coins in the box, but something made him look at the man, a sense of familiarity, perhaps a kind of chemistry between them. He found himself staring into the face of Reggie Christie. It was him to the life, the clear‑ cut jaw, the narrow lips, the bignose, and the glasses over cold eyes.

Mix went quickly into Boots and bought his analgesic. If there had been another way out he would have taken it but he had to go back into the high street. The beggar had gone. Mixcrossed the road to wait for a bus that would take him home. There was no sign anywhere of Reggie. Had he really been there? Had his own mind invented him as a result of thinking of him so much and of looking at those pictures? And was it theresult of stress? The horrible idea that Reggie's ghost had followedhim down here or had come down, expecting to see him, was too frightening to think of.

Gwendolen had looked everywhere for the object she hadcome to call " the thing, " " thong" being a word she associated with sandals. Supposing she must have put it in " a safe place, " she investigated, among many other possibilities, the ovenand the space behind the dictionaries in one of the numerousbookcases. She even unzipped the stomach of the toy spaniel nightdress case her mother had given her for her twenty‑ fifth birthday. It wasn't in any of these potential hiding places. She was irritable with frustration. How could she take the lodger to task without the thing to prove her case?

No letter had come from Stephen Reeves. She was sure now that he had written to her but the letter had gone astray. It was the only explanation. Before she wrote again she would talk to the lodger. What more likely than that he had taken her letter, either by mistake or with malice? She was beginning to think that many of her present problems stemmed from Cellini. Mysteries and misfortunes had seldom come her way before he moved in. He had probably infected her with the germ that brought on her pneumonia.

She meant to catch him when she heard him come down the stairs preparatory to going out. Or when he entered the house. Her difficulty was that since her illness she fell asleep far more easily than she used to do and she was afraid she must have dozed off when last he came in or left the house. Climbing all fifty‑ two stairs to his flat was too much for her at present, though she would have admitted this to no one. Nor would she have told Olive or Queenie that making her way up to her bed‑ room and getting ready for bed exhausted her so enormouslythat she barely had the strength to wash her face and hands.

No doubt the lodger did enter the house at some time in the late morning. She was almost sure she heard his footsteps mounting the stairs. Would he come down again? She doubted she could tell for she fell into catnaps throughout the afternoon. Olive came in at about five but she didn't offer to go upand see ifhe was at home. She wasn't weak from illness, Gwendolenthought scornfully, but far too fat.

" You could phone him. "

Gwendolen was shocked. " Make a telephone call to someoneliving in the same house! 0 tempora, 0 mores. "

" I don't know what that means, dear. You'll have to speak English. "

" It means, a times, a customs. That was my reaction when you suggested phoning an individual who lives upstairs. "

Olive decided. Gwendolen must be exhausted to speak in that ridiculous way, and offered to make " your evening meal, Gwen. " Her friend's adamant refusal had no effect. She had brought all the materials for a meal with her. "

Not 'meal, ' Olive, " Gwendolen said feebly. " Please not 'meal. ' Dinner‑ or supper if you must. "

The moment Olive had gone she prepared to go to bed. It took her an hour to get up there and into her nightgown. The house was silent, more silent than usual it seemed to her, and not at all warm. The forecast on her wireless had said it wouldbe a fine day, the temperature in the high twenties, whatever that meant, and the night exceptionally mild for the time of year. The wind was supposed to be westerly and therefore warm, but it felt cold to her as it penetrated ill‑ fitting windows and plaster cracks. There were two windows in her bedroom, but from the front one she could see nothing but darkness and gray branches. The street lamp had gone out, its glass broken, probably by the thugs with bottles who roamed the street. Down in the garden, seen from the other window, the shrubs bent and twisted in the wind and the tree branches swayed this way and that.

Earlier she had heard Mr. Singh's geese cackling but now they were quiet, shut up for the night. There was nothing alive in the windswept garden but Otto sitting on the wall, eatings omething he had caught himself. From the window in the darkness, glazed by yellow light, Gwendolen could just see or divine that he was making his supper off the pigeon that roosted in the sycamore. She wrapped a thick wool cardigan about her shoulders, went to bed and fell asleep before she had pulled the bedclothes up to cover her.

Sunday had meant nothing to Mix since the death of his grandmother. Now it was just a pallid version of Saturday, rather unpleasant and irritating because some of the shops were shut, s treets were empty, and men who had girlfriends or wives or families took them out in cars. Still, it was also the day he had resolved to renew his campaign of really getting to know Nerissa. He hadn't yet got used to being without a car and, as he had yesterday, he went downstairs at nine‑ thirty and sauntered outside to begin the drive to Campden Hill Square. No car, and then he remembered what had happened to it, cursin groundly. Heavy doses of ibuprofen had numbed his back and he set off to walk.

The wind was cooler this morning. Autumn was coming. Being used to the warm interior of a vehicle, he was inadequately dressed in a T‑ shirt and he shivered as he walked. As he approached her house he saw that the Jaguar was on the frontdrive and his spirits rose. He had forgotten to supply himselfwith something to take to her door, a campaign leaflet or anenvelope to be filled for a children's charity, so all he could do was wait and trust to the inspiration of the moment.

He began to shiver and goose pimples came up on his arms. To warm himself up, he marched to the bottom of the hill, along Holland Park Avenue and up the other side of thesquare. He was breathless when he got back to the top but no warmer. To his horror, he saw the Jaguar reversing out of the drive. He had missed her.

She drove past him down the hill and though he waved, she couldn't have seen him. She kept looking straight ahead and gave him no answering smile. There was nothing for it but to make his way back home and nothing to do when he got there but rub the stuff he had bought on his back and write applications to the two jobs he had seen in the Evening Standard, both of which looked likelier than the others.

The lodger had lived in her house for nearly four months now and sometimes weeks had passed without her seeing him or wanting to see him. They had spoken only when they encounteredeach other by chance and then not for long. He was another kind of person, she had told herself, and no doubt she was not his. Therefore she found it strange how much she now needed to see him. It seemed to her essential that at some point during this Sunday she should confront him and have out with him this business of the thing and the missing letter. There was also the matter of his failure, according to Queenie and Olive, to feed Otto in her absence. Her own indifference to Otto was not the question. It had been Cellini's duty to feed the cat, he had promised. Besides, she was sure Otto would never have killed and eaten those guinea fowl and that pigeon if he had been properly fed.

Thinking of the guinea fowl reminded her that Mr. Singh was due to call on her at 11 A. M. She was so sure he would be late, everyone always was these days, that she was astonishedand nearly disbelieving when the doorbell rang promptly on the hour. When she got to her feet she felt so dizzy she had tograb hold of the back of the sofa so it took her a few minutes toget to the door; he rang again, which gave her an excuse to be irritable.

" All right, all right, I'm coming, " she said to the empty hallway.

He was a handsome man, taller and paler than she had expected, with a small iron‑ gray mustache and instead of the anticipated nightshirt‑ like garment, he wore gray flannel trousers, a sports jacket, and a pink shirt with a gray and pink tie. The only incongruous note (to Gwendolen's eyes) was his snowwhite intricately wound turban.

He followed her into the drawing room, patiently walking at her own slow pace. " It is a fine place you have here, " he said.

Gwendolen nodded. She knew it. That was why she stayed. She sat down and motioned to him to do the same. Siddhartha Singh did so, but slowly. He was looking around, carefully taking in the spaces and corners, the peeling walls and cracked ceiling, the shaky and splintered window frames, the prototype radiators dating from the twenties, and the carpets, one piled on another, all eaten by moths and apparently chewed by smallmammals. Only in the slums of Calcutta, years ago, had h eseen such a degree of disintegration.

" If it is about your birds, " Gwendolen began, " I really don't know what I'm supposed… "

" Excuse me, madam. " Mr. Singh spoke very politely. " Excuse me, but the bird episode is a thing of the past. History, if I may so put it. I cut my losses and turn over a new leaf. And on this subject, perhaps you, obviously an English lady; can tell me why 'leaf. ' Is it perhaps that we go out into the woods and turn over a leaf to discover a secret beneath? "

Gwendolen would, in normal circumstances, have made a withering rejoinder but this man was so good‑ looking (and not just for an Oriental) and so charming that she felt quite weak in his presence. Like the Queen of Sheba when confronted by Solomon, there was no more spirit in her: "

" 'Leaf' means a page, " she said unsteadily. " A page in the well, the book of life, I suppose. "

Mr. Singh smiled. It was just such a smile as the sun god might bestow, broad, benign, lighting his whole handsome face and displaying the kind of teeth possessed by American adolescents, shiny, white, and even. " Thank you. Sometimes, although I have been in this country for thirty years, I feel I dwell in a new age of enlightenment. "

Gwendolen smiled back helplessly. She made an offer the like of which she hadn't extended to a casual visitor since Stephen Reeves disappeared from her life. " Would you likesome tea? "

" Oh, no, thank you. I am here only for a jiffy. Let me come to the point. While you were unwell and not in residence, I see your gardener working away, a most industrious young man, and I say to Mrs. Singh, look, this young man is just what we need to set things to rights here. And that is why I come to you. For the name and, please, the telephone number of your gardener, in the hope that he requires more work. "

Various emotions fought each other. in Gwendolen's head. She hardly knew why she had felt a sinking of the heart when a Mrs. Singh was mentioned, though she could understand the astonishment and incipient anger that rose in her at the same time. She sat up straighter, wondering fleetingly if he might take her for ten years younger than she actually was and said, " I haven't got a gardener. "

" Oh, yes, indeed, madam. You have. Perhaps it has slipped your mind. I understand you have been indisposed and in a hospital. That was when he was here. No doubt you engaged him and he came to begin the work in your absence. "

" I did not engage him. I know nothing about it. " Impossible to delude herself. He was looking at her pityingly as if he saw her not as ten years her own junior but as an old woman suffering from senile dementia. " What did he look like? " she asked him.

" Let me see. About thirty years old, fairish hair, a Britishf ace, blue eyes, I think, and handsome. Not as tall as I or" ‑ he sized her up critically‑ " as you, I would respectfully say, madam. "

" What exactly was he doing? "

" Digging the garden, " said Mr. Singh simply. " He dug in two places. The ground, you know, is very heavy, like rock, like" ‑ he ventured a flight of fancy‑ " adamantine stone. "

He even spoke, she thought, the same language as she did. If she had known him sooner, would he have replaced Stephen Reeves in her affections? " The man you're talking about, " she said, her anger surfacing again, " is my lodger. He lives upstairs, on the top floor. "

" Then I apologize for troubling you. "

Mr. Singh got to his feet, affording Gwendolen another sight of his tall soldierly figure, his height, and the boardlike flatness of his stomach. She wanted to cry, " Don't go! " Instead she said, " His name is Cellini and he is not permitted access to my garden. "

Another smile, but sad this time. " I won't say I'm not disappointed. No, please don't get up. You are a convalescent lady and not, if I may say so, quite in the first youth. " He caught sight of himself in one of Gwendolen's many fly‑ spotted, desilvered mirrors. " Who is? " he said more tactfully. " Now I say good morning, thank you for your trouble and I let myself out. "

With his departure the sun went in. Anger remained, hotter than before. She would lie in wait for Cellini now, drink black coffee, do anything to stay awake until she heard him come in. The thing, the letter, and now this, she thought. She'd get rid of him and find a nice quiet lady, not in the first youth. Oh, the hurt the phrase had done her! Even though he bracketed himself with her in that category. But Cellini. She would evict Cellini just as soon as she could.