Peggy sighed. ‘Probably. There seems to be a lot of duplication in this job. I’ve only been at it three weeks, but you’re not the first one to tell me it’s all been done before.’
The woman smiled sympathetically, and just then the phone in the hall rang. ‘I’d better get that,’ she said. Peggy started to make her excuses but Mrs Donovan waved her in. ‘Come inside and close the door before you catch your death.’ While she went to the phone, Peggy waited patiently in the hall. The woman wasn’t long. ‘Bloody tele sales,’ she announced, coming back into the hall.
‘They are a nuisance,’ said Peggy, shivering slightly. It was a raw day outside, and in her anxiety to look authentic she had not put enough clothes on. The weather had been hovering between autumn and winter for several days, but today for the first time you could sense the months of real cold ahead.
‘You look like you’re freezing, dearie. Come into the kitchen and have a cuppa and warm yourself.’
Peggy didn’t even pretend to protest, foreseeing a golden opportunity to gossip about the neighbours. As the kettle warmed on the gas hob, she looked around the room, which had family photographs all along the top of a sideboard. ‘Your children?’ she offered.
‘All five of them. Grown up now,’ the woman added sadly, ‘and my poor Leonard gone ten years now. Still, mustn’t grumble.’
‘Have you been in this house a long time then?’
Mrs Donovan gave a little laugh. ‘Each one of my children was born and raised here. It will be forty years come October.’
‘Gosh,’ said Peggy appreciatively. ‘I suppose the neighbourhood’s changed a bit since then.’
The woman gave Peggy a sideways look. ‘Not for the worse,’ she said firmly.
‘Not at all,’ said Peggy. ‘I can see that. It looks a fine street to me.’
The woman relaxed. ‘It’s just that so many left when the Asians came. Not me, mind; I wasn’t going anywhere. I always said, there’s good and bad – white, black, and all the in-betweens. Why should I up sticks if people treat me right? Who cares what colour they are?’
‘Who indeed?’ said Peggy, taken aback by the old woman’s almost aggressive tolerance and the implication that she – Peggy – might not agree.
The old lady went to the stove and poured boiling water from the kettle into two waiting mugs. ‘Milk?’ she asked and Peggy nodded. When she brought the mugs over she pushed the sugar bowl along the kitchen table, and Peggy shook her head and pushed it back.
They sipped in quiet contentment for a moment. Then Peggy said casually, ‘You’ve got good neighbours then?’
‘The best,’ Mrs Donovan declared. ‘The Desais live on that side,’ she said, and proceeded to talk about the Hindu family next door. Peggy nodded as the old woman took her through three generations of Desai family tree, little realising that her listener was entirely uninterested in them, and was only waiting for her to talk about her neighbours on the other side.
Peggy’s cup had been refilled by the time she felt able to ask about the other neighbouring family. ‘Mrs Atiyah,’ Mrs Donovan said, and her face seemed to light up. ‘Isn’t it a lovely name?’
‘Very pretty. What kind of name is it?’
‘The family was from Yemen, luv. What we used to call Aden before they went and got themselves independent. Though then there was a lot of trouble, and that’s when the Atiyahs moved here.’
This time Peggy paid close attention while Mrs Donovan went through the generations of Atiyahs. Mr Atiyah senior had passed away several years before, leaving Mrs A solitary in the house, though she had two daughters (and five grandchildren) living nearby, and almost every day one of them paid a visit on their mother. ‘She’s seventy-two next March, not that she looks a day over seventy if you ask me yourself.’
‘It’s nice she’s got daughters to look after her,’ said Peggy, resisting the temptation to finish her tea, since she couldn’t be sure she would be offered another refill. ‘Though I suppose she would have liked a son as well.’
‘Oh she’s got a son, all right. He’s the youngest child and the apple of her eye. And Mrs A spoils him rotten. You’d think he was still a schoolboy from the way he lets his mum take care of him – I’ve seen him lug his laundry home for her to do, and him living all the way down in London.’
‘He’s got no family then?’
Mrs Donovan shook her head. ‘No, he’s still a student. If you ask me, it’s all very well everyone going to university these days, but sometimes they carry it on too long. Mika is twenty-six if he’s a day. By that age my Leonard had been working for ten years, yet this lad’s still at his books.’ She shook her head uncomprehendingly. ‘My nephew Arnold—’ she started to say, but Peggy cut in quickly to impede the diversion. ‘Do you reckon his mum minds? I mean, his being a student and all?’
For a moment the old lady looked confused, as if her nephew Arnold was being discussed, then she realised Peggy was talking about the Atiyah boy and she shook her head decisively. ‘No, his mum thinks the sun shines out of that boy’s eyes. Even when it’s grey and overcast outside.’ She gave a little chuckle.
‘They say Middle Eastern lads are very dutiful sons.’
The woman gave a little harrumph, and Peggy realised she didn’t like her neighbour’s son much. She said nothing but waited patiently, and sure enough there was more to come. ‘Like I say, the boy’s been spoilt. Why, last year he said he wanted to go back to his homeland – he meant Yemen – and his mum coughed up the air fare. What was the point, I ask you? He’s born and bred British just like you and me, so why start pretending you’re not? Never go backwards, that’s my motto.’
‘Maybe he wanted to explore his roots. Like that programme on the TV.’
‘I can’t see him sobbing over his great-grandmother like what’s-his-name did. He’s a hard little bugger, our Mika.’
‘Did he like it in Yemen?’
Mrs Donovan shrugged. ‘I didn’t think it was my business to ask. Mrs A knows I don’t approve of the boy – he’s not polite, at least not to the likes of an old lady like me.’
‘Really?’ said Peggy, trying to sound indignant.
‘Not since he went to the Middle East. He hardly says hello when he sees me.’
‘Are they a very religious family?’
Mrs Donovan paused, as if she had never thought about this before, and said reflectively, ‘The old man was, but not Mrs A. Since he died I don’t think she goes to the mosque much. And when one of her daughters married an English bloke, she didn’t bat an eye.’
‘And Mika?’
She shrugged, and looked at the mugs on the table. Peggy realised she was in danger of outstaying her welcome; the old lady liked to talk, but on her own terms, and that didn’t seem to include answering too many of a stranger’s questions. Peggy got up from her chair. ‘Golly, what you’ve said has been so interesting I could stay and listen all day. But duty calls, and I have to get back to work. Thanks so much for the tea, Mrs Donovan.’
‘Call me Maggie, dear.’
‘Right, Maggie. You’ve been very helpful.’
‘Have I?’ asked Maggie, and her face was suddenly cheerful again. ‘That’s kind of you to say, luv, though I don’t see how.’
‘I’ll just leave you this,’ said Peggy, putting a small printed leaflet on the kitchen table. ‘It explains about the Electoral Registration process and it’s got my phone number on it in case there’s anything you want to inquire about.’
‘Thanks, luv,’ said Mrs Donovan, picking up the leaflet and putting it on the sideboard beside the photographs.
Chapter 33
Martin Seurat looked moodily out of the window of his office in the headquarters of the DGSE, France’s external intelligence service. He occupied a small room in a corner of one of the white stone buildings just off the Boulevard Mortier on the outskirts of Paris. Outside, the gravelled courtyard had darkened to the colour of slate from the rain that had come down in a short heavy burst earlier that morning. The sky had stayed overcast, with no hint of sun, and now the wind was picking up. It all seemed like a plot by winter to hurry things along, thought Seurat, who every year wanted to hibernate at this season and wake up only when the clocks changed in spring.