‘She asked for you special, Charlie, like she always does,’ said Paolo. ‘I don’t want to let her down.’
He could have been talking about a regular customer in a restaurant who wanted a favourite table that wasn’t available.
‘Neither do I,’ said Charlie, his voice still low. ‘She’s all right is Mrs P. Look, we’ve just sent ’em off on their honeymoon and tonight we’re having a family knees-up down at The Abbey Arms. I can’t get out of that, Paolo. Me mum would know there was something up, and I’m not having her upset.’
Charlie was a very loving son. Paolo knew that.
‘You’ll just have to send someone else this time, mate,’ said Charlie. ‘You know these middle-class honky bitches. One black arse is the same as any other. Send Marty.’
Charlie put the phone down quickly. He knew that his last remark wasn’t true, not of Mrs Pattinson. She had not taken a particular interest in Charlie because he was black — colour genuinely meant little to her one way or the other, Charlie was sure — but because of what he could provide. Charlie knew he was the best she had ever had. She had told him so, hadn’t she — and at times when he had been damn sure she hadn’t been fibbing. But at least Charlie had got himself off the hook. Nonetheless he found his thoughts turning towards Mrs Pattinson, as they did quite often nowadays. Of all his clients over the years she was the only one who had got under his skin.
He was still standing in the hallway by the phone — he kept it there, a black one hanging on the wall almost like a piece of sculpture, so that he could take calls in some privacy even when he had guests. There was something so honestly responsive about Mrs Pattinson. Charlie had never known a woman quite like her and, goodness knows, there had been enough of them in his life already.
The voice of his mother calling from among the hubbub in the living-room brought him abruptly back to the present.
‘Charlie, son, what are you doing out there? Are we going to have this party tonight or not?’
Miriam Collins still had the sing-song voice of her native Jamaica. She had been born and raised there until she was ten years old when her parents, along with so many in the years following the war, had emigrated to the UK, to the land of promise.
Through most of her life that promise had never been fulfilled. Her parents had died young, of disappointment and cold, Miriam always said, and it had not been far from the truth probably. Miriam had made a wonderfully happy marriage, but that had been cut short by the premature death of Charlie’s father. Home throughout Miriam’s entire life in England had been a slum of some kind or other in St Paul’s. She still lived in the same terraced house in a little street off the Ashley Road in which Charlie had been brought up, but much of that area of St Paul’s had been given a face-lift recently, and Charlie did his best to make sure that his mother was not short of home comforts nowadays. She had had a hard life and he adored her. It was his greatest wish that he could make the rest of her days happy and comfortable.
Certainly he loved giving his family treats and he loved entertaining them in his flat, showing off a home of a style and quality that none of them had so far aspired to — nor, with the exception of his kid sister Daisy, were ever likely to.
Smiling broadly, he walked down the passageway over the beautiful wooden flooring and into the living-room. His mother, slim and somehow elegant still, a far cry from the stereotype of a middle-aged black woman, stood by the big picture window with his elder brothers, Jack and Winston, whose wives were sitting close together at one end of the big sofa. They were firm friends, those two. Elder sister Mary Anne and her husband Lewis were somehow managing to share an armchair, giggling over the champagne Charlie had provided. Only brother Bart was missing — he had been at the church earlier, looking, thankfully, in reasonable shape, and had promised to meet them later at the Abbey. Charlie hoped for his mother’s sake that Bart would keep his promise.
Children seemed to be everywhere. Lewis and Mary Anne’s twin two-year-old boys were mercifully asleep in their double pushchair, but two of Jack’s three girls were waltzing each other around the room, their shoes making disturbing squeaking noises on Charlie’s immaculate floor, while the third competed with Winston’s little boy and girl to see who could bounce highest on the springy sofa. Their mothers, deep in conversation at the other end, were oblivious. And nobody but Charlie noticed when Winston’s son decided to toss one of the cushions at his father, missing him by several feet.
Not for the first time, Charlie congratulated himself on having decided against his original choice of yet more cream and going for black leather furniture in his living room. He would allow nobody but his family to behave so cavalierly in his home, but family was different. That was what Charlie had been brought up to believe and he did so, with all his heart.
Charlie had never had a girlfriend, really. He didn’t want one. He couldn’t quite face the idea of more sex on a regular basis at the end of a stint of being paid for it. And he felt no need for any emotional ties other than his family. Charlie’s family were everything to him.
‘Oh, there you are,’ said his mother as he picked up the last bottle of Moet. The words were nothing, but her voice was warm with pride and affection. It always was when she spoke to Charlie. She had been laughing when he entered the room, a great belly-shaking laugh which was stereotyped West Indian and which totally belied her size. She was wearing a royal-blue linen suit, the skirt just short enough to show off her still shapely legs but not too short for her years, Charlie thought. The hat of matching colour which she had earlier worn at a rakish angle for the church service was on the glass coffee table in the middle of the room. Miriam Collins had several nice outfits now, and Charlie had insisted on buying something new for her to wear on this special day. He thought his mother — and all his family come to that, they were a good looking bunch, the Collinses, dressed in their best for the occasion — looked absolutely splendid.
Charlie’s eyes were admiring as he put an arm around his mother and attempted to refill her glass. The bottle was almost empty.
‘That’s it then, the end of the champagne,’ he said. ‘Let’s go down the Abbey and show ’em how the Collinses can party.’
Paolo put the phone down, resigned to having to find Mrs Pattinson an acceptable alternative after all. He wondered whether he should try to call her at the Crescent Hotel. But he had never done so before. She might not like it. In any case, Charlie was probably right, he reasoned. When the crunch came, one black arse might well be just the same to her as another. And he really didn’t want to lose the booking. Two hundred quid was a lot of dosh to turn your back on for no good reason.
He took Charlie’s advice. Charlie would know better than anyone, surely.
Paolo sent Marty Morris — another young West Indian from St Paul’s, slightly shorter than Charlie but around the same build.
Marty arrived by cab, alighting a hundred yards or so before the hotel. Be discreet, Paolo had reminded him. He approached chalet ten through the garden, also according to instructions.
It was 7.00 p.m. by the time Marty got there, wet and dark on a particularly nasty October evening. The rain was back with a vengeance again, turning the little-used path he had to follow into something of a hazard. But Marty had been to the Crescent Hotel before and he was able to find his way to chalet ten easily enough, even though the gardens were only poorly lit away from the central buildings.
He entered the hotel’s grounds through the small pedestrian gate set in the brick wall which backed on to a lane off the main street around the corner from the principal entrance. Then he followed the path until he reached a stone fountain, which, even in the bad light, he could see was covered in moss and looked as if it had not operated in years. He remembered that he must turn right there.