The Keys to the Street (32 page)

•   •   •

At some point in his pilgrimage Roman had made up his mind to settle nowhere for more than a few nights at a time, to be always on the move so as to distance himself as far as he could from an approximation to domestic life. And now he had been at the Grotto for three weeks, had even turned it into a kind of home, storing his barrow under the lee of the archway, sleeping there on his groundsheet, keeping, in a cave of bushes, a store of food. The litter had irritated
him and he had gradually tidied the place up, picking drinking straws out of branches, stuffing broken bottles and packaging into the carriers they gave him at the grocery. And the rain had washed the place clean, scouring the coped edges of the little pool, filling it with fresher water.

When the sun came out, a hot sun at seven in the morning, he sat with his back to the ironwork of the bridge, looking at his garden, the rhododendrons, the elder trees. The water in the nearer pool was now so clear that he could see his thin bearded face and gaunt figure reflected in its glassy surface and use it as a washbasin for splashing face and hands. He could wash the mug he used for drinking milk and wine and the knife that was his only utensil. But this domesticity brought home to him an unwelcome thought. Homelessness could not be artificially contrived but must come about through real need and real deprivation. And again he called himself a phony and a fake, one who had partaken of others’ misery because it was
there
and available.

He should go now. He should move on. His reluctance to leave the home he had made—he would be rigging up curtains next, building partitions from cardboard boxes—brought him a wry amusement and taught him that he could be amused, he could even laugh. Hadn’t he laughed with pure glee at the plight of the man,
her
boyfriend, he had sent off in the wrong direction?

If he left he could less easily keep an eye on her. She had her brother now, he had several times seen them together, her brother would protect her from the dark, red-faced pursuer. Perhaps, then, he would stay just a week longer. He knew where she lived and where she worked, that she had a little dog the old man in the baseball cap took out with the rest, that her brother visited her every day, that she was harassed by a dark-haired man with, to say the least, an aggressive manner. His daughter, he sometimes thought, might have grown up to look rather like her. Elizabeth had that same very slender fairness, the fairy face, that look of being often startled by events.

He remembered a camping holiday they had once had, he and Sally and Elizabeth. Daniel was not yet born. It had been in the Highlands, a place not in the least like this Grotto, this spoiled London garden, yet there had been a cave there and a little pool. Mountains soared beyond and there was a beach of silver sand on the loch. Elizabeth, with a child’s passion for place, had wanted to stay there forever. It was impossible to make her understand that they had to go back, that livings had to be earned, the house maintained, she had to return to school. One night he had let her have her heart’s desire and sleep, not in their tent or hired trailer, but in the cave itself. But anxious parent that he had been, he had worried and, unable to sleep, had moved himself into the mouth of this hole in the mountainside and mounted guard there all night.

Now he was doing the same thing in another place, for someone else. He closed his eyes and saw his daughter, his wife, his son, and though their faces were less clear than they had been, their identities remained, his eternal companions. And he thought, in a paraphrase,
forever wilt thou love and they be fair
. Time could not change them or take them away again and however he became reconciled, however able to find a kind of contentment—for he could feel contentment coming, closing in on him, like fate—they would never be lost or farther from him than now, nor would their lives be forgotten.

He wept for himself and them, sitting by the pool, his head on his knees, quiet accepting tears. Then he got up and stationed himself below the wall to see her when she came up the street and entered the park.

21

Y
our father was a doctor,” Leo said.

“And yours was a civil servant.”

They were reading each other’s birth certificates, sitting in the registrar’s drab foyer.

“That’s a polite way of saying he worked behind the counter at what was then the Labor Exchange.”

“Mine was a GP, nothing grand.” Mary found herself often reassuring him. She was bent on establishing an equality between them. Leo, she saw, had been born in 1971 and she pointed out to him bravely her own birth date of 1965. “You were only a baby when my parents died.”

The date of their own marriage was fixed for August 17, a Thursday. After the formalities were completed Mary asked Leo if his brother would come to their wedding.

“I don’t think so. He’s not much of a one for weddings.”

“We shall have to have two witnesses and he’s an obvious one. I thought I’d ask my cousin Judith and my friend Anne, and Dorothea and Gordon will come. Will you ask your brother?”

“If you want me to.”

“And I should like to meet him first, Leo. Can I meet him?”

They sat down at a table outside a café in Marylebone High Street and ordered coffee. Leo looked as if the long walk had been too much for him and Mary made up her mind to take a taxi home. He had rested his head back against the chair and now he closed his eyes momentarily.

“Can I meet your brother, Leo?”

“Why do you want to?”

“Because he is your brother. I’ve hardly any relatives of my own.” He said nothing. She watched him ruefully, his tired face, his spent look.

“Am I nagging you?” she said.

He touched her hand. “You couldn’t nag anyone.”

“It’s just that you’re so fond of your brother, you’re always talking about him. If he’s such an important person in your life, won’t he be important in mine?”

The coffee came, black for her, a cappuccino for him. “When I’m married I shall break with my brother,” he said, and he looked away. “I don’t want you to meet him. There, I’ve said it. I don’t want that.”

“But you love him so much. He’s done so much for you. I don’t understand, Leo.”

Leo said stonily, “I loved him once. That’s all in the past. He won’t come to our wedding.”

•   •   •

On one of the hills of Kemptown in Brighton, Bean’s sister owned a small two-bedroom terrace house. From the back garden, if you stood on a chair, you could see between two high-rise buildings a segment of sea. Every August she went to stay with her ex-husband’s sister-in-law in the Peak District, and while she was away Bean stayed in her house. Most years they didn’t even meet. Not since Maurice Clitheroe died had he spoken to her except, briefly, on the phone. He made careful arrangements for his holiday. His clients were assured, not once, but again and again, that he would be back one week from his departure.

“I shall be in harness again on Friday the eleventh,” he told them, one after another.

Erna Morosini said she had seen a young woman exercising a bunch of dogs. The woman always wore jodhpurs and had long
dark hair. She looked young and strong. Her name was Walker. Didn’t Bean think that was funny, her being called Walker and walking dogs? Did Bean know anything about her? Did he think she would take on Ruby while he was away?

“Would you really entrust your much-loved beagle to her, madam?” Bean asked. “She obviously takes charge of far too many dogs. You can see they’re out of control.”

“Well, if you put it like that …”

Mrs. Goldsworthy caused him even more disquiet by telling him that the school-leaver who had taken on Barker-Pryce’s Charlie would be exercising McBride “as a temporary measure.”

“I can’t do it. Not with my knee.”

It was the first Bean had heard of Mrs. Goldsworthy’s knee. Giggling and showing off her ribcage, Lisl Pring said she had made the perfect arrangement. She didn’t need the exercise but her boyfriend did and he was going to ride his bicycle round the Outer Circle, dragging Marietta behind him.

Bean was shocked. “That’s against the law, miss.”

“The cops are going to bother about that, are they? When they’ve got this murderer to catch?”

Mrs. Sellers said she would simply go back to what she had been doing before Bean was engaged, walking the dalmatian herself. But she looked aggrieved. Perhaps she thought there should have been something in the references about him having holidays.

Lunchtime or late morning were good times to catch Barker-Pryce, before he went down to the House. Bean encountered the school-leaver on the doorstep, about to exercise Charlie. He had a low opinion of anyone who didn’t take a dog out before noon and he gave the tall sixteen-year-old one of his looks, baring his teeth.

This time Barker-Pryce said absolutely nothing. He opened the door, stood aside to let Bean in, closed the front door, opened the door to the study, stood aside to let Bean in, closed the door. Where was his wife? His servant? The cleaner?

Bean had brought more photographs, but when offered them, Barker-Pryce shook his head in silence. He had the money ready, five twenty-pound notes in a stack on the desk next to the headed paper. Bean held out his hand and Barker-Pryce put the money into it, saying not a word. He opened the study door, stood back for Bean to go through, and left him to let himself out of the house. As he closed the front door Bean heard the rasp of a lighter struck by a thumb and the leap of a flame as a cigar was lit.

Dealing with The Beater would be less straightforward. Or so he believed. He had no knowledge of where The Beater lived nor of his real name and it was no use seeking him out where they had previously met, for that would defeat the purpose of his enterprise. He could of course wait for him in a likely place and make his demand, but as he walked back to York Terrace he asked himself whether it was necessary at this stage to do anything at all.

They had looked at each other and they had done so speechlessly. The silence, though, had been eloquent and Bean was certain each had read the other’s mind. The Beater would know that he had taken in the whole situation and appreciated exactly what the position was. The Beater would need nothing put into words. He would be more silent than Barker-Pryce. Even now, at this moment, he would be thinking of everything Bean knew and just how disastrously Bean could ruin his life and his prospects if he chose.

Bean went home and opened all the windows. In weather like this he wished Maurice Clitheroe had installed air-conditioning before he died. He put a pack of frozen Bombay potatoes and another of pilau rice into the microwave and, tucking Barker-Pryce’s hundred pounds into the suitcase he’d be taking away with him, thought that if he went on at this rate he’d soon be able to send out for stuff from Express Tikka and Pizza.

With BBC 1’s
News at One
turned on, sipping at a can of diet Sprite, he started wondering about The Beater once more. It was becoming clear to him that he need do nothing. The Beater would
seek him out. He knew where he lived, for he might well have expected to inherit Maurice Clitheroe’s house himself and would have watched closely to see who would occupy it after Clitheroe’s death.

The Beater might come at any time.

This thought was vaguely unpleasant. Seated in the very room where so many unsavory happenings had taken place, Bean seemed to hear again his employer’s screams, the swish of the switch and slap of the cane. The Beater was not only an accomplished actor but strong, too. Thinness didn’t mean much, it was the muscles that counted. Bean fancied he would be quite ruthless. It might be wise not to let him into the house but to suggest, for instance, that they meet in a pub or even talk in the street.

He would do that. When The Beater surfaced—and Bean was sure now that this would happen before his departure for Brighton on Saturday—he would be prepared, leave nothing to chance, above all, never be alone with The Beater where there were no other people, no lights, no life.

He set off as usual at a quarter to four. Ruby didn’t want to be walked and dragged her feet all the way up Portland Place, only showing some interest in life when they came to the parking meter with which she conducted a desultory love affair. Passing the Cornells’ former home, Bean saw that the Venetian blinds were pulled down at all the windows and three black plastic bags of rubbish had been left in the area. A stink of something spicy and decaying wafted up to the pavement.

The afternoon was hot and he was wearing his red baseball cap with the perforated crown, his jeans, and a short-sleeved T-shirt with a herd of elephants marching across it, but he was sweating. When he was in Brighton he might invest in a pair of shorts. More and more people were wearing them, even men of his age. Into the gardens of Park Crescent where the lawns, green and springy the previous week, were fast drying and turning yellow. Ideally, he ought to find another dog in this area so that he didn’t have to walk
the solitary one on her own all the way from Devonshire Street to Park Square. That prompted him to ask Mrs. Sellers if she knew of anyone, but she stared vaguely at him as if she didn’t know what he was talking about. Spots started panting as soon as they were out in the street.