Looking Down (6 page)

‘Well, it probably isn’t so odd that he’s taken up painting, you know. Not if he always wanted to and never had the time. It could have been so much worse. It could have been golf, or cricket, or gambling, or dangerous sports.’

‘It is a dangerous sport,’ Lilian interrupted. ‘It gets him arrested on clifftops and stuck in mud. It makes him do things he
isn’t fit for and wear clothes he hasn’t got, and it turns his mind inwards. And it’s not so much the doing of it, but what he does with it, and the way he does it. Obsessionally.’

‘Maybe he was always like that? Men don’t actually change, do they?’

‘I suppose he was. He was certainly obsessional about me. I think he was obsessional about his kids. He must have been obsessional about money in the days when he made it. Says he never felt safe, that’s why he went on. He must have been obsessional about collecting things, too.’

‘So maybe that’s what happens. When he feels safe, it’s like a gap in his life, and he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself so he finds another obsession. You’ve made him feel too safe. It’s a theory, anyway.’

‘Hmmm.’ Lilian was trying to work out if this was a criticism or a compliment. ‘Maybe he does feel too safe. Safe life, ultrasafe block of flats. Nothing to alarm him. Plenty of lovely things to make him feel safe. All that comfort.’

‘Perhaps it would help if you could share the interest?’ Sarah hurried on. ‘But I don’t suppose you’re much interested in art, are you? I suppose I mean paintings.’

‘I like them when they look nice, yes.’

She was keeping her eyes away from the lumbering cow, obviously thinking hard. A delicious little frown line appeared above her huge green eyes. Appropriate that they should be green, Sarah thought. One day, my girl, if you aren’t careful and find better things to do, you’ll see that frown line in the mirror and have a fit. Lilian was suddenly cheerful and ready to go.

‘Made him too safe, have I? Now that’s an idea. I never thought of that. Must dash. Thanks ever so for the coffee.’

Which she had scarcely drunk. Sarah showed her to the door, only mildly curious about what she was going to do with the rest of her day, guessing she would do whatever kept wives did.
Lilian’s own total lack of curiosity about Sarah’s daily life was faintly insulting but probably just as well.

‘Do you ever sit for Richard?’ she asked as she opened the door into the empty and spacious corridor beyond.

‘Sit?’

‘I mean sit as in pose.’

‘No. He knows I’d hate it. And I’d certainly hate the result.’ She smiled, a smile as endearing as her chuckle. ‘Does that sound selfish? I’m not that bad. Actually, he’s never asked. And what worries me most about this painting lark is that it might break his heart.’

And that, Sarah thought, was genuine. Painting could certainly do that. Lilian went up in her estimation.

Back inside the Beaumont apartment Lilian strode down the long corridor to fetch her coat and, sidetracking, flung open the door of the daylight room. Felt too safe, did he? She knew that the
Do not disturb
sign applied only when he was there, and she could never resist going in when he wasn’t, simply to open the window on to the well and disturb the smell of spirits which seeped under the door. She’d show him
safe.

He had been working hard the last three days, making a painting from the sketches he never showed her. She looked at the wet oil painting on the easel.

Screamed. Choked back the scream with a hand over her mouth and ran from the room, slamming the door behind her.

Ten minutes later, unaware of the screams in this soundproof place, Sarah Fortune ran down the stairs to the foyer. She usually ran, not always because she was late, but for the hell of it, and she had the knack of running in heels, learned in childhood ballet class before she grew too tall and then, perversely, stopped growing at all and flung herself into any sport that did not require membership of a team. She ran whenever there was room. The last flight down was wide with a tarnished brass banister, and Fritz the porter could hear her footsteps over the carpet only as she reached the last three steps and appeared in the mirror opposite his desk. He straightened his tie and waited, pleasurably, his girth expanding in sheer relief that it was not anyone else. Her lightweight black coat flowed behind her revealing a broad, rusty red-coloured leather belt round her waist, knee-length skirt, sheer stockings and heeled pumps that matched the belt. The auburn hair glowed. It always amazed him how she could look so much like a ball of fire at one moment, and at another so desperately ordinary. She skidded to a halt, not even breathless.

‘Hello, Fritz, what’s the news today?’

His news was not always complete, but covered the essentials. Fritz did not sit at his over-grand porters’ desk every hour of the day, but only when he felt like it or it was clearly expected of him, such as when there was a party, or in the mornings when the comings and goings were busiest, and he was intermittently observant. He could be summoned out of his basement by the front-door buzzer or the bell on the desk, the notes of which he answered with a sloth proportionate to the impatience of the summoner. Repeated hitting of the desk bell made him slower. He presided over the communal parts of the premises, which were cleaned, resentfully, by his wife, although it always fell to him to polish the mirror on the far side of the foyer, facing his desk, through which he watched Sarah Fortune emerge from the stairs, and everyone else who came via the lift, to his left. The mirror was useful, enabling him to watch the two internal exits simultaneously as well as the door. The lift was small and frequently non-functional. There was a carpet with geometric designs on the floor of the foyer, in keeping with the angular, deco moulding of the mirror. The disadvantage of the mirror was the fact that it repeated the irritating carpet design, which when he was bored or forced to wait drove him mad. He preferred puffing round the building with the post, pretending to be older than he was, and resented heavy deliveries.

‘Haven’t even been having time to read the paper, Sarah. Mr Beaumont collected his post, didn’t even tell me where he was going like he usually does, so he must have been gone first thing, and since then I’ve been up and down, up and down to that sodding penthouse with a whole load of boxes, just got delivered . . .’

‘Any messages for me?’

‘Nope, although I did see your brother through the door. Thought he was coming in, but he went away.’

‘Oh. So tell me about the penthouse. You were going to get inside . . . has she really gone?’

‘Yes,’ he said, lowering his voice to a whisper.
‘Yes!
She’s gone, really gone. She went last week. I’m really sure of it now. Chinese woman wanted me to put stuff in the kitchen, so I got a good look. She’s in a foul mood. No one’s been cleaning in there, I tell you, and she wouldn’t have let me in if Minty had been there to cart stuff, would she?’

‘Well well, I suppose it’s a relief. She got away at last. I only hope it wasn’t going from the devil to the deep blue sea. And I wish she could have let you know where she’d gone.’

It was the wrong thing to say. It made him defensive.

‘She couldn’t, could she? Couldn’t or wouldn’t, same thing. But I think it was the money helped, Sarah. She let me save it up, see? And at least she wasn’t starving. And I have to admit, although she was frightened of
them,
she still got plenty of gumption.’

He was still whispering. He always whispered when he talked about Minty. Minty was an abbreviation of a name he could not pronounce. Minty, who was the resident servant of the fluctuating Chinese tribe in the penthouse, although perhaps more aptly described as a slave, who never left the building. She had long been a source of anguish to Fritz and a shared concern with Sarah, who found the idea of anyone who was afraid to go out, because they had nowhere else to go, perfectly abominable.

‘Remember when she used to come down here and just sit over there and look at the door?’ He pointed to the sofa and chairs arranged in front of the mirror, and then at the large plate-glass doors that led outside.

‘Yes. Always fiddling with her necklace.’

‘She was so thin.’

‘Until you fed her . . .’

‘It was my wife feeding her,’ he continued to whisper, uncomfortably. ‘She likes to cook. Said it was as easy to make stuff for three as two, and, anyway, Minty wouldn’t talk to anyone else. Both Romany, see?’

‘So, between you, you got the gist.’

‘Only that she was illegal. Like my wife,’ fore we got married. Never found out how Minty landed up with the Chinese either, didn’t come in on their passport, like some of them other slaves do. She was too frightened to say. She was stuck, anyway. They worked her to death, starved her and gave her no money. She’d no papers, anyway. Couldn’t call the police, could I? Should I? She definitely didn’t want that, and if the Chinese found out I’d caused that trouble, I’m out on my ears, like as not. I’d have risked it, mind, but she said no, no, no, and cried, and the wife wouldn’t have had it.’

It was an often repeated conversation. Fritz always had to go back to the beginning, forgetting how Sarah had agreed with him, agreed still, that the choices about what to do about Minty were limited, so the plan they had formed was for the Fritzes to do the feeding, while Sarah and Richard Beaumont stuck money behind the desk regularly, followed by the gift of a prepaid mobile phone. Minty’s stash, they called it. Minty could not take it upstairs into the penthouse; they would find it, she said, but she knew it was there. Minty stole out of the top floor and left the penthouse door on the latch when they were out. She never went further than the foyer. No one ever spoke to the Chinese. A man, a woman and a selection of males seemed to live in the penthouse. They came in and out, always carrying something. Traders, Fritz said. None of them ever smiled.

‘And then the stash was gone,’ Fritz said mournfully. ‘A week since. I don’t like to think that was all she wanted.’

‘Doesn’t matter if it was, Fritz. It was choice she needed. You gave it her.’

‘Did we? Me and the missus, and you and Mr Beaumont? Anyway, she isn’t dead up there, she’s gone. I’ll miss her.’

‘You can’t help people more than they allow, Fritz. Never could, except for kids, and she wasn’t one of those. What if you
had reported her existence? She’d either be out on the street or sent home. If she had one.’

Fritz was often close to tears. He blew his nose and laughed nervously, staring at her through dark brown, permanently sad eyes. She always had the desire to make Fritz laugh and never managed it. He was the sort of man who gave her the desire to pull silly faces if only to raise a smile. He sighed, hesitated before he spoke.

‘Home? Ah, I didn’t say to you about that. That’s the bit I never told you. See, the wife could never get her to believe what will be happening if she turn herself in. The worst and the best. She’d get sent
home.
And believe me,
that
was what she wanted most of all. To go home.’

Sarah buttoned her coat.

‘I wish I’d known that. On the other hand, perhaps I don’t. We can only say good luck to her. She escaped on her own terms.’

She turned for the glass doors. They looked thick enough to withstand bullets, with large brass handles and lock. All the residents had keys, unless they were slaves. Then she turned on her heel.

‘I suppose we’d better be on the lookout, Fritz.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘For whoever the people in the penthouse get in next. There’s plenty where Minty came from.’

Her own shoes silent on the pavement, she tried to remember the girl as she walked down the street, wondering when exactly she had gone, trying to picture the face she had seen behind the penthouse door putting her finger to her lips, shaking her head and shutting the door again. Doing the same thing on the second attempt. Three months before, the girl’s elbows had been bigger than her knees, until the Fritzes fed her, and Sarah remembered the bare knees. Amazing what food did. Sarah’s impression was that she was not as frail as Fritz thought; simply an ageless girl
who had seen too much and was marked by desperation, but not helpless yet. A girl with a hardened heart, capable, therefore, of anything. Frightened but fierce, sinking but not drowning. Minty hung washing on the balcony; Sarah could just see from her window where the line had broken and hung down into the well, as if she had given up. Why hadn’t she and Richard and Fritz joined forces and marched up to the door and demanded to know who she was? Because Minty chose not, and the Chinese paid the bulk of Fritz’s wage, and that was not the way things were done. And because, to be honest, Sarah had not wanted to get more than minimally involved. Her life was in control and that was how she wanted it to be. She did not want it riddled with pity.

Sarah turned back and looked at the frontage of the block. It was a confused design, Edwardian deco, originally experimental with lots of linear twiddles and red brick, built for luxury, descending to penury and shabbiness in the nineteen sixties, narrowly missing demolition fifteen years later and then restored to dignity at the beginning of the last decade. Now odd, but posh. A safe place for the conduct of private lives. The man who had left Sarah her flat in an astonishing piece of generosity may have thought it was still worth the pittance he had paid for it twenty years earlier. She was immensely grateful and yet it increased her debt to the world. She had not deserved it; no one did. And it was a flawed place, so solid and secure that it could contain with apparent impunity a slave, kept by people who could have afforded to hire an army to clear their stable.

None of these reflections were part of any firm moral agenda on the subject of asylum seekers, their criminal gangs, Albanian women with drugged babies wailing and begging in the Underground in a way which deadened pity. It made sense to Sarah that the deprived of the world should descend upon the relatively rich – who wouldn’t? She didn’t know what she thought
about it as a global problem, but then she tried to avoid having opinions. She didn’t envy politicians who had to have opinions without the luxury of being able to change their minds, and all she could really care about was individuals, one by one. There was no time to trouble the mind about what she could not change. Sarah Fortune was hell-bent on a quiet life, avoiding other people’s pain.