With the outside of his shoe, he pushed at the nursery door. Something stopped it and it would open no further.
“That’s it,” Claire repeated, “lived-in.”
Resnick glanced at the phone, willing it to ring. One half of Claire’s sandwich remained untouched. He got up and moved towards the stacks of records. “I’ll put on some music.”
“No. No, don’t”
“Sorry, I thought …”
“I’d rather talk.”
He looked down at her, the crossing and re-crossing of legs, the smile, a little uncertain now. “I think I’d rather not.”
Claire drew a slow breath, lowered her head. For some moments neither of them moved and then, with a nervous laugh, she got to her feet.
“Funny, isn’t it?”
“Funny?”
“Strange. I feel so comfortable here, comfortable with you. All right, I thought, I’ll sit here, talk, relax, get to know him, know you better.” She pressed the palms of her hands together, once, twice. “That’s not what you want”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes, well …” Claire picked up the plate and her mug and set them on a table. “Best thing is …” She was reaching into her bag. “… I should give you your keys back.”
Resnick shook his head. “No.”
“Someone else from the office …”
“No.” His hand closed over hers, over the keys. “You like the house, you said so. You can sell it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
When he drew his hand away, a splodge of yellow remained near the knuckle of her little finger, mustard.
“Look,” she said at the front door, “you may not want to act on them, but there are some things you could do. To make the place seem a better buy.” Resnick waited. “First off, shift the timer on your heating, waste a little money, leave it on right through the day. People come to a place like this and as soon as they see the size of it, they’ve got these huge bills flashing in front of their eyes-gas, electricity, lined curtains, double glazing. They assume it’s going to be difficult to heat, cold. Surprise them.”
“Second?”
“More money, I’m afraid. Nip into British Home Stores and splash out on a few more lamps. That’ll help to make it look warm, too. Brighter.”
“There’s more?”
“Get a good cleaning person. A professional. I’m not saying regularly, just once, a whole day, two days.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“All of it?”
Resnick held the door for her as she stepped out on to the path. The street lamp elongated her shadow across the patchy grass. The repeated whine of a car alarm, the same as before, different.
“If I’m showing people round, I’ll make sure and phone first.”
“Leave a message at the station.”
“Of course.”
Now that she was outside the house, neither of them really wanted her to go.
“You still think I should drop the price?”
“Maybe not. Not yet, anyway.”
“All right. Good night.”
“’Night. And, listen …”
“No, it’s all right.”
“’Night.”
“’Night.”
He heard Claire Millinder’s footsteps, heard the door of her Morris Minor open and close. The car alarm was still sounding and he wondered how long it would be before someone came to attend to it, the owner or a passing policeman. Claire’s headlights cut a moving arc across the opposite wall and he caught a glimpse of her face before it was gone from sight.
Back in the living room, Dizzy and Pepper were picking their way fastidiously through the remains of her sandwich. Resnick looked at his records, thought about Johnny Hodges, thought about Lester Young, finally couldn’t decide. He walked into the kitchen and opened a drawer and removed the unopened letter from his former wife. Postmark: Abergavenny. He lifted the bowl from the sink, turned to the cooker and lit the gas. The flame licked along one edge of the envelope and held. When it was truly alight, Resnick dropped it into the sink and poked at it with the end of a knife, watching it burn.
The ashes he flushed away until nothing remained.
Fifteen
“Harold!” the voice had said, authentic as spaghetti sauce just-like-mamma makes (Mfr. Rotherham, Yorks.). “Freeman and I are at the Royal, the Penthouse Bar, be great if you joined us for a couple of drinks. Loosen up. Limber down. Give us all a chance to talk things through.”
“Screw,” said Harold, “you.”
He sounded as though he meant it.
“Who was that?” Maria had called from the stairs. Beneath her robe her legs were still shiny from her bath. The amount of time she spends slopping around in that thing, thought Harold, the rest of her wardrobe might go for junk.
“Nobody.”
“It must have been somebody.”
“That’s what he’d like us to believe.”
Harold left his wife to her own conjectures and his talcum powder and went off in search of solace. What he could have done with, right then and there, were a couple of lines of coke, let the linings of his nose know who was boss. Pow! Was it true, he wondered, opening a bottle of the next best thing, all those rock stars of the seventies, having their nostrils rebuilt from the inside? Harold shuddered: silver plate.
He looked at the depth of alcohol in his glass and decided to double it.
“Harold! Pour me a drink and bring it up here.”
He went over to the door and closed it on her screeching. “Screw you,” he said quietly, careful lest she hear and think he was being serious.
“Look at that, over there. Look at those.”
Grabianski peered around a giant pot plant, a decorated column. “Where?”
“There. Jesus, how can you miss them? The table in the corner, past the piano.”
Grabianski saw two women, mid-twenties, black dresses slashed low, enough gold to affect the commodities index. “What about them?”
“Let’s go over.”
“Go over?”
“Join them.”
“Together?”
“What d’you mean, together?”
“At the hip?”
“Jerry, you’re not on something, are you?”
“Just hungry.”
“You’d prefer food to that?”
“Infinitely.”
Grice shook his head in near despair.
“Besides,” said Grabianski, “they’re probably waiting for somebody.”
“Sure. The first man to dangle a room key in front of them and ask them to feel his wallet.”
“We don’t have a room key.”
“We have better. A flat five minutes’ walk away.”
Grabianski stood up.
“That’s more like it,” Grice said. “Only mine’s the one on the left. Okay?”
Grabianski couldn’t see any difference. “That’s not where I’m going,” he said.
“You’re going to take another piss?”
“Going to eat. You stay here and catch an expensive sexually transmitted disease.”
Grice grabbed hold of Grabianski’s jacket. They were both wearing their best suits, the ones they had worn to burgle both the Roy and the Stanley houses. It had been Grabianski’s idea: he had been brought up on stories of Raffles, the gentleman burglar. His favorite movie was Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief. When he looked in the mirror he was always disappointed not to see Cary Grant.
“We’ve left it too late,” said Grice, disgruntled.
“To eat?”
“Look.”
A couple of men had sat at the women’s table and were talking animatedly, craning their necks towards the display of cleavage, thinking already of the lies they would tell to their wives.
“Let’s go,” said Grabianski. “Still Chinese?”
“Chinese.”
Maria Roy changed what she was wearing three times before coming downstairs. It would have helped had she been able to recall which of her outfits Harold had last expressed an interest in, even noticed. Finally she settled for a silky suit, high at the neck, loose-fitting trousers, the color of tangerine. Perfume at the wrists, behind the ears, a dab or two between her breasts before raising the zip to the raised collar.