Sweet Tooth (38 page)

She kissed me on each cheek – her new bohemian style. Her hat was in soft brown felt and her overcoat was tightly belted around her freshly narrowed waist. Her face was long, daintily freckled and fine-boned, with delicate hollows beneath her cheekbones. It was such a transformation. Looking at her now reminded me of my bout of jealousy, and
though Tom had persuaded me of his innocence, I couldn’t help being wary.

She took my arm and steered me along the street. ‘At least they’re open now. C’mon. I’ve got so many things to say to you.’

We turned off Curzon Street down an alley where there was a small pub whose intimate interior of velvet and brass she would once have dismissed as ‘poncey’.

When we were installed behind our half pints she said, ‘First thing is an apology. I couldn’t talk to you that time in the Pillars. I had to get out of there. I was no good in groups.’

‘I’m so sorry about your dad.’

I saw the tiniest of ripples in her throat as she held down the emotion released by my sympathy.

‘It’s been terrible for the family. It’s really knocked us back.’

‘What happened?’

‘He stepped out into the road, looked the wrong way for some reason and got hit by a motorbike. Right outside the shop. The only good thing they could tell us was he died straight away, didn’t know a thing about it.’

I commiserated, and she talked for a while of how her mother had become catatonic, of how the close family had nearly broken up over funeral arrangements, of the absence of a will and what should happen to the shop. Her footballer brother wanted to sell the business to a mate of his. But now the shop, run by Shirley, was open again, her mother was out of bed and talking. Shirley went to the bar for another round and when she came back her tone was brisk. That subject was closed.

‘I saw the stuff about Tom Haley. What a fuck-up. I guessed it had something to do with you.’

I didn’t even nod.

‘I wish I’d been in on that one. I could’ve told them what a bad idea it was.’

I shrugged and drank my beer, vaguely hiding behind the glass, I suppose, until I could think of something to say.

‘It’s all right. I’m not going to probe. I just wanted to say this, put a little idea in your head, and you don’t have to answer me now. You’ll think I’m running ahead of myself, but the way I read that story this morning, you stand a good chance of being kicked out. If I’m wrong, bloody marvellous. And if I’m right, and you’re stuck for something, come and work for me. Or
with
me. Get to know sunny Ilford. We could have fun. I can pay you more than twice what you’re getting now. Learn all there is to know about beds. These aren’t great times to be in business, but people are always going to need somewhere to kip.’

I put my hand on hers. ‘That’s very kind, Shirley. If I need it, I’ll think about it carefully.’

‘It’s not charity. If you’d learn how the business works, I could spend more time writing. Listen. My novel was in an auction. They paid a bloody fortune. And now someone’s bought the film rights. Julie Christie wants to be in it.’

‘Shirley! Congratulations! What’s it called?’

‘The Ducking Stool.’

Ah yes. A witch, innocent if she drowned, guilty if she survived, then sentenced to death by burning. A metaphor for some young girl’s life. I told her I’d be her ideal reader. We talked about her book, and then her next, an eighteenth-century love affair between an English aristocrat and an actress from the slums who breaks his heart.

Then Shirley said, ‘So you’re actually seeing Tom. Amazing. Lucky girl! I mean, he’s lucky too. I’m just pulp fiction, but he’s one of the best. I’m glad he got the Prize, but I’m not sure about that funny little novel, and it’s rough what he’s going through now. But Serena, I don’t think anyone believes he knew where his grant money came from.’

‘I’m glad you think that,’ I said. I’d been keeping an eye on the clock mounted above the bar, behind Shirley’s head. My arrangement with Tom was for seven. I had five minutes to get clear and find a quiet phone box, but I lacked the energy to do it gracefully. Talk of beds had revived my exhaustion.

‘I’ve got to be going,’ I muttered into my beer.

‘First you’ve got to hear my theory of how this got into the press.’

I stood and reached for my coat. ‘Tell me later.’

‘And don’t you want to know why they threw me out? I thought you’d be full of questions.’ She stood close to me, blocking my way out from behind the table.

‘Not now, Shirley. I’ve got to get to a phone.’

‘Perhaps one day you’ll tell me why they put the Watchers on you. I wasn’t going to start informing on my friend. I was really ashamed of myself for going along with it. But that’s not why they sacked me. There’s a way they have of letting you know. And don’t call me paranoid. Wrong school, wrong university, wrong accent, wrong attitude. In other words general incompetence.’

She pulled me towards her and embraced me and kissed me on the cheeks again. Then she pushed a business card into my hand.

‘I’ll keep the beds warm for you. And you think about it. Be the manager, start a chain, build an empire! But off you go, darling. Turn left out of here and there’s a phone box at the end. Give him my best.’

I was five minutes late getting to the phone. There was no reply. I replaced the receiver, counted to thirty and tried again. I phoned him from Green Park Tube station and again from Camden. At home I sat on my bed, still in my coat, and read Tony’s letter again. If I hadn’t been worrying about Tom, I might have seen the beginnings of some relief there. The slight easing of an old sorrow. I waited for the minutes to pass until it seemed right to go out to the box on the Camden Road. I made the journey four times that evening. The last was at eleven forty-five, when I asked the operator to check if there was a fault on the line. When I was back at St Augustine’s Road and ready for bed, I came close to getting dressed and going out one last time. Instead, I lay in the dark and summoned all the harmless explanations I could think of in
the hope of distracting myself from the ones I didn’t dare frame. I considered going to Brighton right away. Wasn’t there such a thing as a milk train? Did they really exist and didn’t they come into London in the early hours rather than out of it? Then I kept my thoughts off the worst possibilities by dreaming up a Poisson distribution. The more often he didn’t answer the phone, the less likely it was he would answer the next time. But surely the human factor made a nonsense of that, for he was bound to come home at some point – which was when my weariness from the night before overcame me and I knew nothing until my alarm rang at six forty-five.

I got all the way to Camden Tube the next morning before I realised that I’d left home without my key to Tom’s flat. So I tried him again from the station, letting the phone ring for over a minute in case he was asleep, then gloomily walked back to St Augustine’s Road. At least I wasn’t carrying luggage. But what was the point of my mission to Brighton if he wasn’t there? I knew I had no choice. I had to see for myself. If he wasn’t there, the search for him would begin in his flat. I found the key in a handbag and set out again.

Half an hour later I was crossing the concourse of Victoria station against the flow of commuters pouring off the suburban trains from the south. I happened to glance to my right, just as the crowd parted, and I saw something quite absurd. I had a momentary glimpse of my own face, then the gap closed and the vision was gone. I swung to my right, pushed through the crush, got clear and ran the last few yards into the open shop front of Smith’s newsagents. There I was, on the rack. It was the
Daily Express
. I was arm in arm with Tom, our heads lovingly inclined, walking towards the camera, with Wheeler’s restaurant out of focus behind us. Above the photograph, the ugly block capitals shouted out, H
ALEY’S SEXY SPY
. I grabbed a copy, folded it double and queued to buy it. I didn’t want to be seen next to a picture of myself, so I took the newspaper to a public lavatory, locked myself in a cubicle and sat there long enough to miss my
train. On the inside pages were two more photographs. One showed Tom and me coming out of his house, our ‘love nest’, and another was of us kissing on the seafront.

Despite the breathless tone of excitement and outrage, there was hardly a word of the article that didn’t have an element of truth. I was described as an ‘undercover agent’, working for MI5, Cambridge educated, a ‘specialist’ in mathematics, based in London, given the task of liaising with Tom Haley to facilitate a generous stipend. The money trail was vaguely but properly described, with references to the Freedom International Foundation as well as Word Unpenned. Tom’s statement that he had never had any connection with a member of the intelligence services was highlighted in bold. A spokesman for the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, told the newspaper that the matter was of ‘grave concern’ and that the relevant officials had been called to a meeting later today. Speaking for the Opposition, Edward Heath himself said that, if true, the story showed that the government had ‘already lost its way’. But most significant of all, Tom had told a reporter that he had ‘nothing to say on the matter’.

That would have been yesterday. Then he must have gone into hiding. How else to explain his silence? I came out of the cubicle, binned the paper and just made the next train. All my journeys to Brighton lately had been on Friday evenings, in the dark. Not since that first time, when I travelled to the university in my best outfit to interview Tom, had I crossed the Sussex Weald in full daylight. Staring at it now, at the charm of its hedgerows and bare trees just thickening in early spring, I experienced again the vague longing and frustration that came with the idea that I was living the wrong sort of life. I hadn’t chosen it for myself. It was all down to chance. If I hadn’t met Jeremy, and therefore Tony, I wouldn’t be in this mess, travelling at speed towards some kind of disaster I didn’t dare contemplate. My single consolation was Tony’s farewell. For all its sorrow, the affair was put to rest and I had at last my token. Those summer weeks were
not my private fantasy, they were shared. It had meant as much to him as to me. More, in his dying days. I had evidence of what had passed between us, I had given some comfort.

It had never been my intention to obey Nutting and Tapp’s order to break off with Tom. The privilege of ending the affair belonged to Tom. Today’s headlines meant my time with the Service was over. I didn’t even need to be disobedient. The headlines also meant that Tom had no choice but to be shot of me. I almost hoped that I wouldn’t find him in the flat, that I’d be spared the final confrontation. But then I’d be in agony, it would be intolerable. And so I went round my problem and my scrap of consolation and I was in a daze until the train stopped with a jolt in the lattice steel cavern of the Brighton terminus.

As I climbed the hill behind the station I thought the cawing and keening of the herring gulls had an emphatic falling note, a far stronger terminal cadence than usual, like the predictable final notes of a hymn. The air, with its taste of salt and traffic fumes and fried food, made me feel nostalgic for the carefree weekends. It was unlikely that I would ever come back. I slowed as I turned into Clifton Street, expecting to see journalists outside the building where Tom lived. But the pavements were empty. I let myself in and began to climb the stairs to the attic flat. I passed the sound of pop music and the smell of cooked breakfast on the second floor. I hesitated on his landing, gave the door a hearty innocent knock to scatter the demons, waited, then I fumbled with the key, turned it first the wrong way, cursed in a whisper, and shoved the door wide open.

The first thing I saw were his shoes, his scuffed brown brogues, toes pointing slightly inwards, a leaf stuck to the side of a heel, laces trailing. They were under the kitchen table. Otherwise, the room was unusually neat. All the pans and crockery had been put away, the books were in tidy piles. I went towards the bathroom, heard the familiar creak of the boards, like an old song from another time. My small
inventory of cinema suicide scenes included a corpse collapsed considerately over the bath with a bloodied towel around its neck. Fortunately, the door was open and I didn’t have to go in to see that he wasn’t there. That left the bedroom.

The door was shut. Again, stupidly, I knocked and waited because I thought I heard the sound of a voice. Then I heard it again. It was from the street below, or from a radio in one of the flats downstairs. I also heard the thud of my own pulse. I turned the handle and pushed the door open, but remained where I was, too frightened to go in. I could see the bed, all of it, and it was made, and the Indian print bedspread was smoothly in place. It was usually in a tangle on the floor. The room was too small for there to be anywhere else to hide.

Feeling sick and thirsty, I turned back into the kitchen for a glass of water. It was only as I came away from the sink that I saw what was on the kitchen table. The shoes must have distracted me. There was a parcel done up with brown paper and string, and, lying on top of it, a white envelope with my name on it in his writing. I drank the water first, then I sat down at the table, opened the envelope and began to read my second letter in as many days.

22

D
ear Serena,

You may be reading this on the train back to London, but my guess is that you’re sitting at the kitchen table. If so, my apologies for the state of the place. When I started clearing out the junk and scrubbing the floors I convinced myself I was doing it for you – as of last week your name is on the rent book and the flat may be of use. But now that I’ve finished, I look around and wonder if you’ll find it sterile, or at least unfamiliar, stripped clean of our life here together, all the good times wiped away. Won’t you miss the cardboard boxes filled with the Chablis empties and those piles of newspapers we read in bed together? I suppose I was cleaning up for myself. I’m bringing this episode to an end, and there’s always a degree of oblivion in tidiness. Consider it a form of insulation. Also, I had to clear the decks before I could write this letter, and perhaps (do I dare say this to you?) with all this scrubbing I was erasing you, you as you were.