I gazed longingly now, as I crossed the road, and saw someone standing in one of the upstairs windows, looking down. I couldn't see too clearly without spectacles, but thought it might be Dirk. I waved, but he didn't wave back, and then a car came along, and I had to watch where I was going and lost sight of the window. I went up the front steps, found the door open, and went straight in.
My heart sank as I heard Sophie yelling. This was going to be embarrassing; Dirk and Lemmy were friends of mine, and it had been I who had suggested to Sophie that she hire them as decorators. I'd imagined I was doing everyone a favour, but it was turning out to be a disaster. Lemmy was artistic, but lacked ambition. Dirk occasionally knocked down walls for people; sometimes I wondered whether he did it with his head. But mostly they passed their time listening to Capital Radio, drinking Tennent's Extra and smoking grass. Unfortunately, these activities were such an integral part of their lives that they continued to pursue them while working for Sophie.
The door to Sophie's flat was on the first landing, propped open with a paint can. I found myself looking straight into the bathroom, where Dirk, Lemmy and two stepladders were crammed between the toilet and the towel-rail amid a riot of Neapolitan ice-cream colour. They were slapping pale raspberry over even paler pistachio and singing tunelessly along to the radio, which was perched on the edge of the bath, making a sizzling noise like chips in a deep-fat fryer.
They broke off from their singing to greet me.
'Hi, Clare!' said Dirk.
'Kampuchea jambalaya manderlay down the market,' said Lemmy.
I mustered something non-committal in reply. It wasn't a speech impediment Lemmy had, not exactly, because you never had any trouble hearing what he said. It was just that very little of it ever made sense. He might as well have been jabbering in Cantonese, though Dirk always seemed to understand what he was talking about and would occasionally provide a loose translation.
The bathroom was next to the kitchen, which is where I found Sophie hunched over a steaming kettle with a pained expression on her face. Instead of saying hello, she said, 'I expect you want some coffee.'
I nodded assent, and she filled the cafetière with boiling water. 'They're imbeciles,' she said. 'They can't even tune the radio properly. No wonder they can't find full-time jobs.'
Actually Lemmy's quite brainy,' I said. 'He did Biochemistry at university. At least, until he dropped out.'
It might help if he learned to speak properly,' said Sophie. 'I can't understand a word he says. It's embarrassing.'
'It is a bit of a problem with Lemmy,' I admitted.
'And would you believe they painted the bathroom the wrong colour? I told them to go over it again, but if they expect me to pay them twice they've got another think coming.'
She jammed the plunger down into the cafetière so violently that the worktop wobbled. 'Sorry to go on about it,' she said. 'It's not that I don't like them. It's just that they're not terribly competent.'
I was getting fed up with hearing her moaning. 'Maybe you should give them their marching orders,' I suggested.
Sophie shook her head. 'Oh, I couldn't do that. Wouldn't be fair. No, I'll manage.'
She unwrapped four coffee cups with matching saucers, fashioned from china so pale it was almost translucent, with handles so delicate there was barely anything to grip.
'I don't suppose you have any mugs?' I asked, already seeing Dirk's meaty fist accidentally mashing this doll's-house crockery into pearlised dust.
Sophie just didn't get it, 'There was nothing to drink from,' she explained patiently. 'I had to go out and buy these.' I thought plastic beakers from the local Qwik-Mart would have done just as well, but didn't say so. I knew what Sophie was like. 'Grenville's supposed to be bringing the rest of my stuff round tomorrow afternoon,' she added.
Grenville was a horrible little dwarf who lived not far away, in Campden Hill Road, with Carolyn. Carolyn was, after me of course, probably Sophie's best friend.
'Want some help unpacking?' I asked her.
'Wouldn't say no.'
As she poured the coffee I said, as casually as I could, 'And will Miles be lending a hand?'
Sophie tensed. 'Not bloody likely. I believe he's off to Paris for the weekend.' She didn't say whether Miles was off to Paris on his own. She didn't have to; we both knew who would be accompanying him. I should have been relieved that I wasn't going to run into him after what I'd said on the phone, but instead I felt a keen disappointment.
'Do they take sugar?' asked Sophie, preparing to carry two cups of coffee next door to Lemmy and Dirk.
'Sure they do,' I said. To her credit, Sophie didn't make too much of a face as I told her exactly how much sugar they took, but she was forced to tip small quantities of coffee into the sink to make room for it. I didn't dare say they liked to drink it with milk, as well. They would just have to meet her halfway.
She went next door, and within seconds they were all three of them arguing, though I doubt whether anyone really knew what it was about, because Lemmy, as usual, was talking gibberish, and Dirk wasn't a whole lot more coherent. I heard him assuring Sophie that the living-room would be finished 'in a twinkling', which must have set off some free-flow association in his head because he then started singing the chorus from Good Morning Starshine. Lemmy joined in on the chorus with ooby dooby wabby, ooby wabby dabby and together they drowned out the radio, which was playing something by Bruce Springsteen.
Sophie came back with her arms wrapped around her head, trying to block out the racket. Nothing in her upbringing had prepared her for dealing with people like Lemmy and Dirk. I asked for a guided tour of the flat, hoping it would take her mind off them.
'You've seen the bathroom,' she said, leading me up another short flight of stairs, 'and that was the kitchen, and here we have… the bedroom, which is the only room they've managed to finish. I don't understand why they keep starting on new rooms when they haven't finished the old ones.'
'Oh, but this is nice,' I said quickly, and it was, though I wasn't too keen on the colour — the walls had been painted a watery buttermilk. White walls weren't good enough for Sophie; nothing so reasonable, utilitarian or simple as white. No, it had to be white with a twist — white with a dash of daffodil, or a whisper of duck-egg, or a tinge of conjunctival pink.
There was a double bed, and a wickerwork chair, and a vast wardrobe, and an old cheval mirror, and a pile of about half a dozen suitcases, which I noticed were either Globetrotter or Louis Vuitton or Mulberry. For a long time now I'd been in the habit of checking the labels on Sophie's possessions. You could always rely on her to ferret out the most stylish, the most recherché, the most expensive product. It was always worth rooting through the contents of her bathroom cabinet, just to find out what kind of eyedrops she was using, or what sort of vitamins were in vogue. Even her toothpaste was a little-known brand that came in a plain white tube with navy lettering and cost twice as much as every other kind.
The bedroom floorboards were bare, but there were curtains up at the window. I assumed they had been left by the previous occupant and that she hadn't yet got round to replacing them, because they were not at all the sort of thing that Sophie would have chosen. But the window-sill was already crammed with Grape Ivy and other assorted houseplants.
'Were these here already?' I asked, meaning the curtains.