She flushed her usual high colour when she was inwardly disturbed. ‘I’ve got a boyfriend in Holland.’
I was ready to choke. ‘So it’s the end?’
‘Yes.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
I stroked Dismal’s wide head. ‘And what about my kids? I’m missing them as well. I haven’t seen ’em for weeks, and it’s breaking my heart.’
There was a big tear in her left eye. ‘You can see them whenever you like.’
‘It comes to all of us,’ said Bill.
‘You keep out of this.’ I had been expecting it for a long time, hoping for it, in many ways wanting to be free of her for good, but now that the words had come out, and in front of other people, I felt sick. At the same time I wasn’t certain that she meant it, and this made me angry, so in order to make sure, no matter how much more miserable I was going to be, I asked: ‘When are you going to take your things from the house?’
‘It’s my place as much as yours. I’ll take them when I like.’
‘Make it soon,’ I said. ‘My girlfriend wants to move in.’
‘Do you play this game often?’ Bill said.
‘Girlfriend?’
It was getting too complicated. ‘I’m only kidding. But what about Maria?’
Maria, who sensed things were not as they should be, sat idly with the knitting on her lap. ‘She’s your responsibility,’ Bridgitte said. ‘You brought her.’
‘That’s nice of you. I need a caretaker.’
‘I’ll stay on for a day or two,’ Bill said. ‘She’ll be all right with me.’
‘Yes, and I’ll thank you to keep your hands off her if you do.’
‘I’ll go back to London,’ Maria said. ‘To get a job.’
‘You stay here,’ I told her. ‘I need you. Look after Dismal and Bill. London’s no good for a nice person like you. The police will send you back to Portugal if you haven’t got a job. In fact they’re probably hunting high and low for you at this minute.’
She began to cry.
‘It’s all right,’ I told her. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about. I’m going to London tomorrow to kill the man you used to work for. Then I’m going to Holland to kill Bridgitte’s boyfriend. Then I’m going to kill myself. Clear the air a bit.’
‘A holocaust,’ said Bill. ‘Take a Bob Martin’s and calm down.’
I fetched a bottle of whisky out of the cupboard and poured everyone a glass. ‘Here’s some medicine, Maria. It’ll make you feel better.’
‘It’s whisky.’ Her eyes moistened. ‘I like whisky.’
So that’s how it happened, I thought. No wonder she didn’t know.
‘Give me another.’ Bill drained his glass before I set the bottle back on the table.
‘You won’t kill Jan,’ said Bridgitte. ‘He’ll kill you, you coward. You won’t frighten me, or him.’
‘Of course I won’t kill him,’ I laughed. ‘I’ll be too busy with Agnes.’
She swallowed. ‘Agnes?’
‘The girlfriend I mentioned. I really have got one. She went to America with me. Her name’s Agnes. And she’s pregnant. This house won’t be big enough to hold us soon. It’s just as well you’re leaving.’
‘You’re rotten,’ she screamed. ‘Rotten, rotten, rotten.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I said.
She stood up.
‘You throw that glass,’ I told her in no uncertain terms, ‘and it’ll be the last thing you do.’
She set it on the mantelpiece. ‘Maria, let’s go to bed.’
Sweating with misery and rage, though I knew I was getting off lightly, I poured more whisky for Bill and myself. Maria had a look which I can only describe as ecstatic when Bridgitte picked up her glass, and the bottle, and they went out of the room holding hands.
‘This place has a funny effect on people,’ Bill said, ‘but I find it restful enough. Jack Daniel’s has a lovely taste. I wish you hadn’t let them take the bottle.’
‘I’ve got some more,’ I said, going to the cupboard.
Twenty
When everything is settled, torment slops away beyond recall. It is arguable, of course, whether anything is ever settled, but I thought it was as I dressed in my two-hundred-guinea bespoke three-piece suit, donned my tailor-made shirt, laced up my handmade boots, put a handkerchief in my lapel pocket and took a brace of duty-free Romeo and Juliet cigars from the box in the spare room. I filled a holdall with shirts, underwear, shaving gear, my hip flask and the air pistol. Last of all, I threaded the gold half-hunter watch across my waistcoat. No one was awake. I said goodbye only to Dismal. Maybe I would be back in the morning. Perhaps I would never be back. The outcasts of Upper Mayhem could look after themselves.
Streaks of pink cloud crossed the sky, blue on the ground and hazy above. It felt good to be alive, the sort of morning that was kind to a hangover as I strode along with my umbrella towards the bus that would take me to the station. I bought a Times, and a train came within five minutes. Judging by my state of mind, my middle name was Havoc, no matter how many decisions had been made. To know what to do, and come out of chaos with advantage, seemed impossible. Whatever I did would be wrong, so I was bound to do the worst. My mother would say, not without pride, that it was the Irish in me, but I didn’t think so. When your back is to the wall you at least turn round and give it a push in case it magically falls and you are free. All in all, I felt reckless, certainly in no mood for taking the safest option.
Wearing what I was wearing, I could not go into the maelstrom on anything less than a first class ticket. Bridgitte’s announcement that she had a boyfriend and was leaving me for good, made the knives inside turn even more quickly than when I recalled Moggerhanger’s dirty trick in sending me to Canada with a load of printed matter which, whatever else was stamped on them, contained my death warrant. Whereas he had wanted to wipe me out physically, Bridgitte, from motives of self-preservation which nobody but me could understand better, was out to destroy me in spirit.
I had always prided myself on never giving in. In leaps of optimism, I was spring-heeled Jack, though today I thought that if I got with alacrity out of the dumps I might land somewhere even worse. People in second class, when I went for a stroll, glanced at me from behind the fortifications of their faces. I looked back from mine. They saw a berk from the first class going through for a walk, and I saw people with expressions put there by too much looking at television, that I had fought to wipe off my own face since birth.
A few miles of walking would get my confidence back. I strode through the City, by the Bank of England and St Paul’s tube station, over Holborn Viaduct and down Fetter Lane into Fleet Street, and west via the Strand towards St Martin’s Lane. The more I walked the less inclined I was to go into Moggerhanger’s den and get chopped into little cubes of meat. London made me cheerful. So much traffic and so many people continually passed that no threat seemed serious anymore. I had accumulated a few thousand pounds since I started working again for Moggerhanger and what a pity, I mused, that I should disappear into the Thames or prison before I could spend it.
I went into one of those new-style eating places with plastic sawdust on the floor and plain wooden tables called The Trough, where the menu was chalked on a board and you could get a wedge of quiche, a lettuce leaf, a slab of damp brown bread and a cup of acorn coffee that wouldn’t send a tse-tse fly to sleep, for five pounds. I sat for half an hour while I read The Times and watched people coming and going.
A girl came in and, instead of sitting at a table, she went behind the counter and through a door. She came back wearing a grainsack apron, as befitted a waitress in such a dump, and I saw by her reflection in the mirror that she was that same Ettie from the café on the Great North Road with whom I’d had a romantic attachment on my way down from Peppercorn Cottage. That’s London, I thought, wondering whether I should do a bunk before she spotted me. There was no time to make a decision. She came up to me, and the flush of recognition disappeared under her blond roots. ‘Michael!’