I Am the Only Running Footman (19 page)

•  •  •

“Hi, Super!” she called, waving her free hand hysterically as if she didn't see him every day. The undies shot in; the head disappeared.

Jury went up the steps to his Islington flat, first looking to see if Mrs. Wassermann was in. These days, with Carole-anne
around, Mrs. Wassermann had become less fearful of the London streets, had taken to going out more to the shops and the butcher's and the greengrocer's.

As Jury went up, Carole-anne ran down, her espadrilles slap, slap, slapping on the staircase, her bottle of bright coral nail varnish in one hand. She had finished one set of fingers and one set of toes. They just missed a collision in front of his door, which didn't surprise Jury; she'd caused enough out in the street. Carole-anne was the only person he knew who could saunter across Piccadilly Circus nonstop. Today she was wearing blinding pink shorts and top that made a surprising blend with her red-gold hair. Only, some of that hair had been dyed an even deeper red since he'd seen her five days ago. Hot coral, brazen pink, brassy orange, fiery licks of hair.

“Hello, Carole-anne; you look like a Tijuana sunset.” As they went into his flat, he asked her what she'd done to her hair.

“Now you'll be on about it, I expect,” she said crossly, as she flopped herself on his sprung sofa and finished applying the polish to her other toes. Then, “Oh,” she said carelessly, unfolding herself and pulling a piece of notepaper from the waistband of her shorts. “Here. It's from SB-stroke-H.”

Carole-anne refused actually to
name
Susan Bredon-Hunt, as if by this magical incantation, the person named might appear out of fire and smoke on the spot. Jury looked at the note and its terse message:
eight o'clock.

Now, Jury knew that Susan Bredon-Hunt was not a woman of few words. He waved the paper. “This all? No flowery tribute to New Scotland Yard and its minions, me being minion number one? No frills and furbelows? No, ‘love, Susan'?” He sat down and pulled out his cigarettes and wondered if he had any more beer.

“You needn't get shirty,” Carole-anne said, huffing it out.
She was now half-reclining on the sofa, her legs raised in the air, the small of her back propped with her hands. “I'm only the bloody answering service, I am.”

Jury smiled. Well, it was true. Carole-anne loved to come in and answer his telephone and play her records on his old record player. He sometimes came home and heard the keening wail of Tiny Rudy, her favorite vocalist, or the calamity-in-the-kitchen sounds (breaking crockery and crystal) of Ticket to Hell, her favorite rock group. Given this access to his flat, Carole-anne had decided three months ago that her favorite policeman should have it redecorated and (naturally without his knowledge) had called Decors, one of the swankiest outfits in London, to come round with their swatches.

Her largess with imaginary money was then forgotten, but the swatches had turned up all the same, in the hand of Susan Bredon-Hunt — tall, model-thin, high-fashion clothes, hair razor cut  . . .

It was beginning to sound metallic. All Carole-anne's doing, with her various descriptions of Susan. Her dresses looked like sheet-metal, straight up and down. But then if you'd got nothing up here (the description turning graphic), you wouldn't want to call attention to it, would you? And them cheekbones. She looks like a kite; she's all wings — hips, face  . . . One of these days you'll be looking up at my undies and see her fly over.

“You need someone with a bit more bounce,” she said now, raising her legs again.

“You're bouncy enough for me. Let's get back to this job at the sleaze joint. You can't take that job —”

“Don't be such an old stick, Super. It's a leg up, init?” Her own legs came slowly down.

“Leg up, hell. From King Arthur's to Soho is leaving a cesspool for a sewer.”

She puffed with the exertion of lowering her legs back over
her head. “All the Q.T. Club wants is that the hostesses see the clientele don't run out of drinks and chips. You know, for the gambling.”

“Oh, don't I know. The whole Dirty Squad knows. You look like a pretzel.”

She turned her head and stuck out her tongue.

“That wheel's so rigged you could hoist a mainsail on it.” Carole-anne sighed and sat up. “You should see the gown I wear —”

“No, thanks.”

Her hands were on her hips. “Lord, you're wors'n an old mum.” She tossed her head. It was a poor attempt at hauteur with a pile of red-gold curls spilling across her face.

Jury sighed. He could sympathize with the old mums of this world, trying to convince their kids they shouldn't do what they didn't want to do anyway. Well, he supposed the kids had to beat up on someone because they were mad at themselves at not having the nerve to undertake what was usually some harrowing scheme involving danger.

“You have to be twenty-one to work in that place. You're under.”

It was worse than telling her she was ugly. “I'm
not
under. I'm over. Twenty-two.”

“No kidding? Last week you were twenty-five when you went looking for that steno job. Twenty-five being the age they wanted. Age melts from thy divine countenance.”

She changed the subject. “How long you going to be gone?”

“Five minutes. Long enough to put the Q.T. Club out of business.”

“God! Leave off!” She picked up a pillow.

Jury felt a soft thud on his forehead. “And what about the theater? You can't work nights and keep your job.”

She flounced back on the couch. “It's not even West End. Camden-bloody-Town! You call that
theater?
”

“Just call the club and tell them you regret you must leave town. Say your old mum is dying.”

Now she was turned on her side doing quick scissor-cuts with her legs. “Is SB-stroke-H coming over, then?”

“Susan is her name. Yes, for a bit.”

Carole-anne sat up again and cut him dead with a look from eyes the color of the Aegean. At least Jury imagined that was what the Aegean must be like, deep shimmering blue blending into the purple horizon. “Tonight we was to go down the Angel.” She flopped back, dead.

“I'm really sorry, Carole-anne. I was supposed to see Susan last night and I didn't.”

Points for him, having stood up Susan. Carole-anne relented and struck a languid pose, dangling her espadrille on her toes. “You want to go to bed with a frozen lolly, I don't mind.”

Jury shut his eyes, not so much to shut out Carole-anne's nattering as to defrost the image of Susan she'd just conjured up. “Who I go to bed with is kind of my business, wouldn't you say?”

No, she wouldn't. She started peeling the new polish from her thumbnail and said, “You gotta be careful of flopping in the sack with just
anyone —”

“Carole-
anne
.” It was the dangerous tone.

Which bothered Carole-anne no more than the sandal she was fitting on her small white foot, Cinderella-wise. “What time is it?”

Jury was suspicious. Carole-anne never cared about time when she was using his flat, for whatever purpose. He felt as if he were living on the time-share plan. “Half-past five. Why?”

She rose and stretched, a sight not just for the sore-eyed but for the blind. “Oh, just thought I'd go for a walk.” Arms straight out, she turned from the waist. “What time's SB-stroke-H coming?” Round to the right, round to the left  . . .

As if she didn't know. “Eight. Why?”

Her calisthenics continued. Deep kneebends now. She shrugged at the same time. “Nothing.” She ended with a split.

“You can be the house cheerleader. Listen, while I'm gone, keep an eye on Mrs. Wassermann, will you? Take her to the Bingo in Upper Street, or something.”

Carole-anne stopped halfway down to the floor. “
Bingo
?”

He might as well have asked her to visit a nunnery. “Sure. She's got chums that go there every week.”

“Welllll  . . .”

“There's a surprise in it for you.”

Carole-anne loved surprises. “Sure, I'll take her to Bingo. Don't I always look out for Mrs. W?”

She did, actually. Jury said, “I've found a job for you.”

Still split, she took the card he held out. “That's a
surprise?
What's this?” She looked down at the card.

“You'll love it. You get to wear a costume, Carole-anne.”

That got her attention. Carole-anne would have gone down the mines if a costume were part of the job. It was one of the reasons she loved acting and was good at it.

“What sort?” Her eyes glittered as she scooped herself off the floor.

“Oh, one part of it's a sort of satin turban. With stars all over it. You get to tell fortunes.” He smiled at her own wide smile. Carole-anne was having a good enough time predicting Jury's future. Imagine turning her loose on perfect strangers, knowledge of whose lives would be uncluttered by reality. She'd be moving the planets about to suit herself. In a walk to the Angel pub she'd tried to convince him that the twinkling light on top of the post office building was Haley's Comet.

“Is it a fair, like? Do I have a booth?”

“It's a shop, actually. I'm not sure about the booth.” He handed her the little card. “The proprietor wants you to
come round right away. Madame Zostra, that's who you're to be,” he added. “
Madame Zostra, famous clairvoyant”  . . .
where had he read that?

“ ‘Starrdust,' fancy that,” she said, studying the card. “Whatever do they sell?”

Jury smiled. “Oh, different things. Dreams, maybe.”

Carole-anne sighed and shoved the card into the band of her shorts. “If SB-stroke-H is coming, you'll need one, Super.”

Her espadrilles slapped out and up the stairs.

•  •  •

Susan Bredon-Hunt, who was walking about the room barefoot, in her silky teddies, was talking about a future she seemed to think was theirs. She talked a great deal, Susan did. Immediately she came into his flat, she would undress, but not, he had found, out of a desire to go straight to bed, or even to appear engagingly wanton. She seemed to need to undress to calculate. Prancing back and forth (there was something equine about Susan, who rode to hounds), she smoked and drank her wine. The bowl of the glass she held cupped in her hands like a little crystal ball in which she read their future.

“. . . and it's time you met Daddy, Richard. I just lunched with him today at Claridge's and he wants you to come round for cocktails.  . . .”

And so forth. It depressed him to think of it, really. The manor house somewhere in Suffolk. A star-studded family of all sorts of variations of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Here a CBE, there a few OBEs, no lowly MBEs, of course. Daddy, he remembered, was a Knight of the Thistle. Jury imagined that he himself appealed to some sense of recklessness in Susan, the desire to do something shocking like marrying a civil servant, a policeman.

He wished she would stop her pacing and planning and
talking about the future they most certainly would never share. Even a fight about the other night when he had left so suddenly would have been a relief, would have made him feel closer to her. But when he had brought it up, she had simply brushed it aside and went on to talk about the future, their future, as if she were dressing a window in some fashionable matchings of escritoires and turkey carpets.

As she paced by his chair, he reached out and pulled her down on his lap, spilling a little of the wine across the peach silk that covered her small breasts. He ran his hands down her sides, from the angles of the shoulders to the bony hips, as she scraped at the wine stain.

“This is brand-new, Richard,” she said, pouting.

“I'll buy you another.” He buried his face in the curve of her neck —

There was a knock at the door.

He knew who it was.

•  •  •

“Oh, I
hope
I'm not interrupting —” said the tenant from upstairs. Carole-anne Nouveau was wearing a fire-brigade-red dress, down the front of which any man would have loved to dump a cask of wine. The neck was scooped out in a diamond shape, the mandarin collar tightened by some sparkly bit of fake-diamond costume jewelry. The tightness elsewhere didn't need diamonds. He could not believe that she was carrying a casserole, whose steam emitted wonderful vapors. “Your favorite.” She smiled sweetly.

He had no idea what his favorite was, but he was suddenly hungry as hell. For drink, food, sex. “Thank you,” he said, straight-faced.

“And here's that song  . . .” Sweet smile. She sashayed over to the record player, put the casserole down, and took the record from its sleeve. She clicked the button, turned to Jury, and winked, if such a languorous movement of the eyelash could be called a wink. “You remember . . . well  . . .”

On an extended sigh she listened to a few bars. “
Of all the girls I LOVED before
 . . .” Dreamily, she held Jury's eye long enough for a countdown on a launch pad. “That's Julio. You remember Spain.”

The only Spain he'd ever shared with Carole-anne had lasted for twenty minutes in the lobby of the Regency Hotel. He glared at her as Julio remembered the girls he'd loved going in and out his door.

Carole-anne pretended not to notice Jury's black look as she shoved the casserole up against Susan's apricot bosom, and (in a totally different voice) said, “Ten minutes on top of the cooker, dear. Ta.”

The steam coming off the casserole could not compete with the steam coming off Susan Bredon-Hunt.

•  •  •

Jury stowed his things in the car next morning and went down the steps to the basement flat. He was surprised to find the door slightly ajar and the heavy drapes open. Mrs. Wassermann had enough deadbolts for a locksmith's display case, and it usually took five minutes just for her to open the door. Not today, though. Since Carole-anne had taken the upstairs flat a year ago, Mrs. Wassermann had lowered the drawbridge of her fortress flat and let in a little light.