CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ella was looking for the key to the side gate. She had checked the hooks in the garage where various keys hung and glanced into the shed at the end of the garden. Keys were also kept in a drawer in the kitchen but it wasn't among them. She asked Eugene.
'In the lock on the gate.'
'No, it isn't. And it's not in the garage or the shed, or with the other keys in the kitchen.'
'It doesn't matter, does it? The gate's always bolted on the inside.'
'Yes, but I don't like the idea of that burglar having it and I'm sure that's who's got it.'
She wasn't quite sure. For a man with so many valuable possessions, Eugene was very careless about security. She hadn't been aware of this before she became engaged to him. It wasn't a character trait that affected their relationship. In the future she would see to the safety side of their living arrangements, so that was all right, but meanwhile where was that key? When she came to think of it, what was the point of the burglar keeping the key? He would know the gate would in future be kept bolted and expect bars to be put on the windows at the back of the house. Whatever Eugene might say, he had probably put the key in some unsuitable place in the house.
If she couldn't find it, she'd have the lock changed. That was only prudent. With no surgery that morning, she waited till Eugene went off to the gallery and began to search the kitchen. That was where it very likely might be, dropped into one of the many drawers by an absent-minded man who wouldn't think twice about getting it mixed up with cutlery or microwave operating instructions or teacloths. But it wasn't among the knives and forks or lying on top of an oven glove. Ella did a good deal of tidying-up as she searched, always conscious of the fact, and very happy to be conscious of it, that in a few weeks' time this would be her home as much as it was Eugene's. She folded the cloths more neatly, put the cooking implements in a different section from the forks and spoons, and the knives in the empty knife block. Squatting down to search the unlikeliest of places, the area at the base of the oven where baking and roasting tins were kept, she took hold of a kind of flange to hoist herself up – really, she would have to join a gym; being stiff in the joints at her age was a disgrace – but found herself pulling open a drawer. A secret drawer – who would have thought it?
It was empty but for two small orange-and-brown packets containing sugar-free sweets. Chocorange, they were called. Ella took a sweet out of the already opened packet and put it into her mouth. Rather nice. Probably left behind by Carli the cleaner, she thought. Carli was always on the lookout for things to satisfy her appetite but help her lose weight. Ella finished searching the kitchen but the key still eluded her. It looked as if changing the lock was inevitable.
Eugene had sold two John Hugons bronzes, lovely things he was almost sorry to part with. They would have looked beautiful in his drawing room and Ella would have liked them. Leaving Dorinda in charge, he went off to have lunch with a woman artist, an exhibition of whose work, tiny paintings rich in gold, silver and copper lacquer, he was going to mount in the gallery. Lunch was to be at a restaurant in Knightsbridge and on his way he called in at Elixir and bought three packs of Chocorange.
His intention had been to resist temptation. His intention was always to resist temptation, although the phrase 'phasing out' he had abandoned. Lately, he had been seriously cutting down, largely the result of having Ella with him most of the time. Saturday and Sunday had passed without a single sugar-free sweet but on Monday he had eaten several on his way to the gallery and three more while Dorinda was out at lunch, almost returning to his usual pattern. Just one pack remained in the secret drawer, four in the spare bathroom cabinet and two in the drawing room. The cache behind the E. M. Forsters must stay there untouched. He envisaged a time when he was over this, when it was all behind him and he could, with ritualistic pleasure, take that bagful and drop it in the waste bin on the corner of Pembridge Road.
But that time wasn't yet. The craving had been very sharp this morning. He was also hungry. The breakfast he had eaten was inadequate to satisfy him until lunchtime but if he ate twice as much, which he would have liked, he'd start putting on weight again. Chocoranges were a substitute for real food. He had brought a full pack out with him, eaten two sweets on the way, two more surreptitiously, telling Dorinda he had a sore throat, and now three more on his walk to Elixir. He knew that if he didn't replenish his by now meagre kitchen, bathroom and drawing-room stocks he wouldn't be able to resist breaking into the store in the plastic bag behind the books. And somehow doing this seemed to him to signify the beginning of the end. What he meant by 'the end' he wouldn't have been able to say, but it included such concepts as 'downfall', 'crack-up' and total abandonment to a loved, yet hated, habit. The Chocorange sweets in that bag were sacrosanct, never to be touched. So he could persuade himself that buying three more packs in Elixir was a prudent measure, postponing or avoiding altogether the final weakness. And now he had the three in his briefcase, he need not be careful to restrain his consumption of the sweets in the pack he had brought out with him. In spite of the one he had put into his mouth before entering Elixir still remaining there as a sliver between the side of his tongue and his back teeth, he helped himself to another whose rich creamy taste was so much stronger and more delectable than the fragment that had once been as delicious as the newcomer. Philosophising as he often did on the nature and constituents of his addiction, Eugene considered what makes a habit and what a dependency and, concluding that in his case the former had finally become the latter, entered the restaurant where he ordered a sherry to take away the taste and the smell of chocolate. It was a reversal of the accepted order of things. Instead of chewing a sweet to disguise the smell of alcohol when he opened his mouth, he was drinking alcohol to hide the smell of a sweet on his breath.
The house opposite the one with the bamboo was up for sale. The owners had moved out, removing curtains and blinds from the windows. Lance sneaked round to the back where he tried the handles of the back door and a glass door, which opened out of a living room. Both were locked but he had known they would be. Telling himself that no one cares much if you break a window in an empty house that's going to be sold, he picked up a large flint which, with a hundred like it, formed the border of a circular flower bed. He took off his jacket, wrapped it round the flint and slung the wrapped stone against a glass pane in the back door. After that, he pushed his hand through the gap he had made, unlocked the door and let himself in. He made very little noise and what he had made had apparently gone unheard by neighbours.
Inside, all was empty and forlorn. A large wooden crate served him as a seat by the front-room window. From there he could watch the house opposite. It was only then that he asked himself precisely what he was looking for. The old woman to go out? Suppose she was out already? The house had no garage and there was no car on the short driveway. But she was about a hundred years old and people of that age often didn't have cars. Lance had been on the watch for no more than five minutes when the rain began. It started as a drizzle, then became torrential, creating a sort of fog through which nothing on the other side of the street was discernible.
Like most summer rain – of which there had been a great deal lately – the shower lasted no more than ten minutes. It cleared and the sun came out, blazing on the wet pavements. That made him think of Gemma who'd been complaining that this weather she couldn't get her washing dry. Fize had promised to buy her a tumble dryer but so far he hadn't done anything about it and meanwhile it was always bloody raining. She had come round twice more to visit Lance in Blagrove Road, though the first time there had been very little time for the affair aspect of things as she'd spent two hours cleaning his room, taking down the curtains to get them washed and changing the sheets. But the second time… The only alloy in Lance's happiness had been another encounter with Dorian Lupescu on the stairs. Gemma had made no comment on his appearance but Lance hadn't liked the look on the Romanian's face, his eyes rolling and his lips pursed up as if for a silent whistle.