Grasshopper Page 26

  It couldn’t be Selina but it was. She had a hangover, there were pouches under her eyes and red veins branching all over her round cheeks. But she was as beautifully dressed as ever, the pink pearls round her neck and in her ears. She looked at me as you might look at someone who has just kicked you hard on the shin for no reason, with disbelief, bewilderment and pain.

  ‘Oh, Clodagh.’

  I didn’t connect her tone with the missing money. Not then. I simply supposed I must have done some awful thing, or awful in her eyes and Max’s, been seen by one of their friends smoking in the street, or holding hands with Silver or burying my poor cat.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I said, preparing to defend myself.

  ‘Max wants to see you. Now. He hasn’t had his breakfast yet, he couldn’t eat, he says.’ I hadn’t had mine either. It was only eight o’clock in the morning. ‘It was as much as we could do to entertain our guests last night. And as for food, it would have choked us. I drank too much, of course. I had to.’ She had never uttered so many sentences to me without the ‘darling’ inserted. ‘He’s in the drawing room. Please go up at once, will you?’

  I had come a long way since last October. ‘I’ll have a bath and dress first,’ I said. I did and I took my time. Not without great anxiety, of course, and not without some self-reproach. I had constantly to remind myself, I did so every day, that Max had let me have this place rent-free. It was because I lived there that I had met Silver, and Silver was my treasure, the most important person in my life, the only one who could have taken Daniel’s place and more. All this had happened through Max. He was concerned about my welfare, he was even now, or so I supposed, doing his best to find a university course for me that I might like the sound of and want to take. I ought to be grateful and I was. But I also felt there was no reason to treat me like a bad child showing early symptoms of psychopathy.

  No one had cleaned up the drawing room after the party. Sticky glasses stood about, a full ashtray overflowed on to a black and gilt ormolu table and someone had spilt syrupy orange liquid on the emerald carpet. It made a livid patch of what looked like an ineradicable stain. Max in sepulchral black tracksuit – a kind of mourning assumed for me? – was sitting in an armchair, one of the uncomfortable kind upholstered in shiny satin. In front of him stood a round table and on the table was Liv’s money laid out in ten neat piles, rather like cards for a game of patience. He looked happy, pleased with himself and several years younger than when I had last seen him. But the voice in which he spoke to me was deep, heavy and loaded with doom.

  ‘Sit down, please, Clodagh. Sit down over there.’

  ‘Over there’ was another satin armchair, but chestnut brown instead of yellow. I felt something sticking in my side and pulled out from underneath me a silver cigarette holder from which, into my hand, trickled a little stream of black tar.

  ‘Oh, put it down, put it down,’ said Max.

  I laid it on the table a few inches from the notes and, in the absence of anything else to do, wiped my hand on my jeans. Max stared as if he had never before seen such a disgusting act. There was silence now of the kind that is always intended to intimidate the accused, to force them to ask what’s the matter. I looked at Max, I looked at the money, I did what the silence expected of me.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Can you think,’ said Max, ‘of any reason why I shouldn’t call the police?’

  I couldn’t. ‘I’d like to say something,’ I said.

  I spoke slowly because I was quaking inside and if my hands began to tremble I didn’t want him to see. I closed my fists, something which always looks aggressive, though it may be a defence measure. ‘You very kindly let me have the flat and you let me have it for free, but I don’t think that should mean I don’t have any right to privacy. I’m over eighteen, I’m grown up, I ought to be able to keep things in the place where I live without other people –’ I nearly said snooping – ‘looking for them and taking – taking them away.’

  It wasn’t very well put. Max’s lips twitched. Inwardly he was laughing at my inability to be articulate, to find the cogent phrase. But in the same cold tone he told me I’d abrogated – that was the word he used – my right to privacy through my behaviour. Instead of asking me where the money came from, he told me and then denied the implication.

  ‘It hasn’t escaped my notice that this is precisely the sum taken from the houseboat when that poor woman was killed. However, I am not for a moment suggesting you were involved in that appalling business.’

  What was he suggesting, then? That it was the kind of thing I might be associated with? I understood, then. I saw how he and Selina saw me. As a criminal. The first instance of my criminal behaviour was not only climbing the pylon but taking a younger friend up with me and killing him. I smoked, though they had told me not to. I played truant from my polytechnic and lied about it until I was chucked out. And now I was a thief or at least a receiver of stolen goods.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’

  ‘I’m looking after that money for a friend.’ It was true but it sounded feeble. The truth sometimes does. ‘She asked me to look after it because it wasn’t safe where she was and she hasn’t a bank account.’

  ‘You’ll have to try rather harder than that.’

  ‘I can’t try harder than tell the truth,’ I said. It wasn’t a bad answer on the whole. It made him angry.

  ‘Oh, nonsense, nonsense. Now listen to me. You’ve made something of a mess of the first twenty years of your life. Do you have any idea of what you want to do in the future? Or are you set on becoming one of those down-and-outs one sees sleeping on the streets? But, no, you’re a woman. You’ll marry the first man who’s willing to have you and you’ll make him miserable as well as yourself.’

  This picture was so unlike me I couldn’t take it seriously. Not the last part, at any rate. It didn’t even make me cross. ‘I want to be a roofer,’ I said. ‘I’ll do a City and Guilds building course and then I’ll apprentice myself to a roofer.’

  ‘Really?’ In order to get up, Max pushed the table a little further away from him and nearer me. This was a mistake on his part. ‘I hope you don’t imagine you can remain here while you train to be an artisan. I have other uses for Grandmother Mabel’s apartment. I’d like you out of here within the week.’ He was longing for me to beg him not to call the police. ‘Within the week, Clodagh.’

  ‘I’ll go today,’ I said. ‘Thank you for letting me live here. I am grateful, though you may not believe it.’

  With that, before he could stop me, I snatched up the notes, two fistfuls, and ran for the door. Max was athletic for his age and he was wearing a tracksuit and trainers, but his age was sixty and mine was twenty. He made an awful roar, the kind of noise you imagine a wounded bison might make. I slammed the door behind me, ran downstairs and out of the house by the front door. Luckily, as usual, my key was in my pocket. It was early and it might have been that no one was up, but I rang Silver’s bell and Wim came down to let me in. He came surprisingly fast, but then he was a surprising person. The great thing was that you never needed to explain anything to him, just as he never explained his own conduct to anyone. I raced up the stairs, my hands full of money, burst into the flat and into Liv’s room. Whether she had been alone all night I couldn’t tell, but she was alone then. And asleep.

  I shook her. It wasn’t very kind of me but I had to wake her. She was one of those slow surfacers who take ages to rouse themselves, but while she was making wa-wa-wa, what’s-the-matter noises, I held up the money for her to see before stuffing it under her pillow.

  It was strange how exhilarated I felt. I had been thrown out of my home, I had been insulted – even someone with less amour propre than I had would have seen Max’s words as insults – and for all I knew the police sirens might be sounding for me any minute, but I felt full of happiness and energy. Adrenalin, I suppose it was, released by the running and the snatching of
the money. I rushed into Silver’s room. He wasn’t asleep. He put out his arms to me and I got into bed with him. Quite a long while after that I told him what Max had said and how I had been evicted. I seemed to make a habit of being thrown out of places and wondered what establishment would be next to do it.

  ‘Not this one,’ said Silver. ‘I’ll come back with you to collect your stuff.’

  No, I said. That might not be wise. I’d do a Liv, I thought, and keep my refuge a secret from Max and Selina. But first I’d talk to them.

  Max is dead now. He has been dead for three years. After Selina left him, perhaps I should say was forced to leave him, when he brought his lover into their home, after what’s usually called an ‘acrimonious’ divorce, 19 Russia Road was sold and the proceeds divided between them. Max bought a little house in a Bayswater mews and married the woman he had been living with, and it was there I went one evening to have dinner with them. By that time we were on friendly if guarded terms. A ring main on the ground floor failed while I was there and I was able, to my great pleasure and with a certain secret triumph, to find the fault and put things right. Max was astounded. Thanking me, he said I obviously had intelligence and what a pity it was I had made so few intellectual demands on it. Six months afterwards he was dead.

  As for Selina, she never remarried. I sometimes read about her in the papers, in the gossip columns or diary notes. The profile some journalist did of her for The Times last year mentioned a partner, so she’s not alone in the hi-tech ultra-modern flat she’s bought in Docklands. Streetwise is of course still running and likely to run for many years.

  When I went back into their house that morning, I thought that not only was I descending the iron staircase and entering old Mrs Fisherton’s for the last time, but that this would be the last time I’d speak to Max and Selina. I never imagined – how could I? – that I’d go to Max’s new home and, ultimately, visit him in hospital when he was on his deathbed. Nor that Selina and I would regularly exchange Christmas cards and that she, unable to accept the invitation to my wedding, would send me a handsome present of the most expensive kind of food mixer. No, that morning, I thought I was turning my back on them and the house for ever.

  Feeling no animosity towards Mabel Fisherton herself, though I wished she had furnished her flat more cheerfully, I said goodbye to her and, when I had taken my clothes off them, jangled the wire hangers in her wardrobe for the final time. If her namesake had lived, what would I be doing about her? I’d have found a way, I thought, and wished I had a sweet cat to take away with me. When I had packed my case and Dad’s trunk I went upstairs to look for my landlords, if people can be landlords when you aren’t paying them.

  They were both in the kitchen. I had never been in there before and hardly imagine Max was there very often. He looked rather out of place, sitting awkwardly at the table with a cup of coffee in front of him. Too upset to drink it in solitary state in the morning room, I supposed. Selina was at the sink, washing, of all things, one of their big Chinese vases. Over her dainty lilac skirt and sweater, she wore an apron with the faces of local heroes Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett printed on it. Both turned to face me and Selina slowly stripped off her yellow rubber gloves. We’re all inconsistent about our expectations and prejudices. I had never expected young men to get up when I came into a room, I’d have been astounded if one of them had, but I knew men of my father’s generation and Max’s rose to their feet for women and thought it good manners to do so. Max stood up for Selina and for Erica Silverman and the cushion designer, I had seen it, and I’m sure he did for his mysterious lover, but he had never once stood up for me. I didn’t want him to, I didn’t care, but I knew he stayed put because he despised me and thought I merited no courtesies. He sat tight and scowled at me with dislike.

  I was no longer frightened. Not in the least. Euphoria made me want to be rude to them but I knew I must restrain myself.

  ‘What is it now?’ Max said, as if I had been popping in and out of the kitchen for hours. ‘Since you’re leaving I’ve decided not to inform the police.’

  Selina looked as if she was going to cry. ‘Oh, Clodagh, how could you?’

  ‘I came to say goodbye,’ I said. ‘I’m going now.’

  ‘Is that all you have to say?’

  Teachers at school had occasionally talked to me like this but more politely. ‘I’d like to know how you found my friend’s money.’

  Max shook his head in exasperation and turned away but Selina answered me. ‘I was looking for table napkins.’ She gave her husband an injured look. ‘We’ve only got paper ones but Max wanted real ones and said his grandma had some.’

  ‘My grandmother,’ Max corrected her.

  I wanted to laugh but kept a grave face. I also wanted to say that I hoped the napkins had been starched and folded into waterlily shapes. ‘Well, goodbye,’ was what I actually said. ‘And thank you very much for everything.’

  ‘I shall be phoning your parents this evening,’ said Max.

  I left the kitchen and started down the stairs. Selina came after me, tottering on her stilettos. I stopped and we faced each other halfway down. ‘Why didn’t you stand up for yourself, darling?’ she asked in a stage whisper, something she was presumably practised in. I understood I was reinstated in her regard. ‘Why didn’t you say you wanted to keep the flat?’

  ‘Because I don’t.’

  ‘He wants it for his woman. She’s got nowhere to live and he’s going to put her in there. He will now. You’l see.’

  ‘Goodbye, Selina,’ I said, and once again I ran out of the front door of 19 Russia Road.

  Out in the street, observing for the first time that it was a lovely day, I stood breathing what passes for fresh air in Maida Vale and staring appreciatively at Mrs Clark’s geraniums and the plaster face of a woman in a tiara above her triple window. A more important first time was the realization that I need never live below ground again. My troglodyte days were over. I opened the gate of No. 15 and had taken a single step on to the paved path when a voice behind me called out, ‘Excuse me!’

  I turned round. The man who had spoken had no need to introduce himself. Liv looked exactly like him.

  ‘You’re Mr Almquist?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘There’s a strong family resemblance.’

  ‘You are her friend? She lives here?’

  I nodded. ‘Please to take me to my daughter,’ he said.

  I’d have liked a half-hour’s warning, a chance to get Liv up and dressed and remove both Jonny and Wim. Silver was all right, he always made a respectable impression. But I had no warning and it was too late to lie. The arrival of Mr Almquist seemed an unnecessary and certainly unwanted complication. For some reason, halfway up the first flight of stairs, I thought about Max phoning my parents. I wouldn’t be there, would I? Was I too about to turn into a missing person, like Liv?

  Going up those stairs with someone from the outside world, a ‘grown-up’ (does one ever think of oneself as grown up? Do I now? Did Max?) was a new experience. It made me look around as we reached each landing and perhaps see what I saw through Håkan Almquist’s eyes. I had never really looked around before, I had always been too keen to reach the top, but now I saw carpeted hallways with small tables standing on them or a single chair, doors open on to rooms prettily furnished but deserted, nearly always empty, immaculately cleaned by Beryl, a flower vase filled with dried grasses on a gilt table, a red and white striped settee with perfectly plumped-up cushions where no head ever rested, a glass bowl with fruit in it, but even from this distance you could see the apples and oranges were made of wax.

  If Håkan Almquist thought he was going to find his daughter in a room like one of these, his expectations were soon dashed. But I suppose he took very little notice of his surroundings, for when Liv saw him she screamed. It must be disconcerting for a parent when his child reacts like that and Liv’s father certainly seemed distressed. He sat down heavily on
one end of the sofa. Wim was on the other end, wearing his plum-coloured tunic, and consuming a breakfast of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut chocolate and what looked like a banana milk shake. Liv’s screams turned to crying, the tears rolled down her cheeks, while she shouted, ‘I am not going home, I am not, I am not!’

  There’s a saying that home is where they have to take you in, which to my mind implies that it’s a last resort. You don’t want to go there and they don’t want you but there’s really no option. I hadn’t reached that point (though I did eventually) and if Liv had, she was still fighting it. Mr Almquist spoke to her in Swedish and she replied in that language until, suddenly, she said, very loudly and clearly, ‘I am British now. I stay here and become a British person.’

  Sweden was not in the European Union at that time and in order to stay Liv would have needed a work permit, which she must have had while working for James and Claudia. Mr Almquist, still speaking Swedish, mentioned their names, and Liv began shouting again.

  ‘They are never giving me a reference. I tell you, they hate me. They like to see me dead. That is why I never can go in the street. Do you understand now? I never can go down into the street.’

  Plainly the poor chap didn’t understand. Silver tried to explain, but of course he knew better than to mention the money or the car crash, so Håkan Almquist became more and more mystified. All the while Wim sat there finishing his milk shake and the last square of his chocolate. I won’t say I never saw him eat anything but chocolate but it was his staple food, his rice or his potatoes you might say, and the occasional slice of pizza or packet of crisps was just garnish. Liv seemed to be directing her sobs and cries at him as much as at her father, perhaps she thought it made her attractive. He ignored her. He might have been quite alone in the room. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had got up and climbed out of the window, but Liv’s father would have been.