No Place For a Man (10 page)

‘I wondered when we’d get to that.’ George grinned
at him. ‘I knew someone was living in that old Sierra. I noticed yesterday morning, there’s a blanket on the back seat that wasn’t there before I went to Cuba. And you were on the railway line in the early afternoon, walking across like it was just a country lane.’

‘Quickest way across.’

‘You’ll still get yourself killed. And haven’t you got a home to go to or shouldn’t I ask?’

Tom grinned again. He was keeping his teeth in good nick at least, George thought. He must have got this living-rough business well sorted out.

‘You can ask,’ Tom said.

The table in the left corner next to the bar of the Leo was becoming Matthew’s own. At eleven thirty each morning he felt perfectly content to take his seat there facing the window where he could watch the local to-ings and fro-ings and pick up one of the tabloid papers to read. He was well ahead with the plots of all the TV soaps (though he never watched them), knew which movie stars were sleeping with each other and which outfits had been approved of at the latest batch of awards ceremonies. He was up to date with which members of the royal family had forsworn cocaine and which ones had yet to be tempted to experiment, and he could hold his own in any conversation that involved the selection of decent midfield players for the England team.

‘Usual?’ Micky was polishing glasses behind the bar, wearing a large white apron and looking immaculate and sober.

‘Mm. Please. And have you got some of that chocolate cake? I didn’t bother with breakfast.’

Micky tutted. ‘You should. It sets you up. Men
without work get fat, lolling around all day. You’ll end up at Shape Sorters lining up for a weigh-in, a bollocking and a cabbage-only diet.’

‘Can’t wait,’ Matt grunted. ‘Where’s the papers?’ He looked around. Usually there was a tidy heap of them on the table by the door. Micky had long since given up trying to hang them up on the smart wooden holders that chic cafés used: too much crockery had been swept dramatically and noisily to the floor by people trying to wield the batons and turn the pages at the same time.

‘Nicked. People think each one is provided
just for them
.’

‘That’s because you make each customer feel so special, Micky.’

‘Bloody cheek,’ Micky laughed, handing him an extra large café latte.

‘There’s a local rag on the seat behind you.’

Matthew picked up the newspaper and read, without much interest, about plans to close Richmond Park to through traffic. It was a debate that seemed to have been going on for years, from what he could gather, and he felt there must be a lot of missing information that would give him the right clues to the real state of play.

‘May I sit here?’ Matthew looked up, startled. Angie’s blond hair swung in front of him, inches, it seemed, from his face.

‘Course you can.’ He felt ridiculously flustered, recalling that he’d just about flashed his dick at her only the week before. ‘How are you?’

Angie ordered a hot chocolate from Micky and sat down opposite Matthew, who marvelled at the performance she made of arranging her bag on the seat beside her, her jacket on the back of her chair and the
sugar bowl at the ready directly in front of her. Eventually, satisfied, she answered him. ‘I’m OK, not as OK as I’d like to be though.’ She leaned closer. ‘I think there’s someone watching me. I even thought, one night when I came home, that someone had actually been in. I think it was only imagination, but since then it’s like, when I’m in the house at night, or sometimes when I’m gardening, that I’m not exactly alone. Do you ever get that? Or Jess?’

Matthew pulled a face that was supposed to show he was considering this seriously. ‘No, I haven’t noticed and Jess hasn’t said anything. Who do you think it could be, any ideas?’

She had very pretty nails, he thought, looking at the perfect squared-off ends which were improbably white for someone who claimed to do their own weeding. They sparkled with glimmering polish, which was, he’d say, purely nail-coloured and probably desperately expensive.

‘Not sure. But the bloke next door keeps wandering about in his front garden and measuring. I’m sure he mentioned ages ago that he wanted to build an extension. I don’t fancy the idea of him getting any closer to my place.’

‘Check it out in the paper,’ Micky leaned over the bar and suggested as he handed Angie her chocolate. ‘Planning applications are near the back before the sport.’

‘Would he need planning permission?’

‘Sure,’ Micky said. ‘The houses might be only Victorian but it’s a conservation area. And he’s an architect, isn’t he? He’d know. Check the list.’

Matthew found the page and looked through the list of applications. They were mostly shop-owners
applying for change of use or to put up a bigger and brighter sign over their premises.

There’s quite a lot. Number 12 in the Grove is after a conservatory.’ Angie moved herself into the seat next to him and read over his shoulder. ‘And, look, there it is, number 45, a two-storey extension!’

‘Who’s got a two-storey extension, lucky sod?’ Eddy came into the Leo and joined Matthew and Angie, laughing dirtily. ‘Some of us can only manage a bungalow these days. Catch my drift?’ He winked at Angie, who giggled.

‘House next to me,’ she explained. ‘He’s creeping closer and I don’t like it.’

‘Well we can’t have that,’ Micky said. ‘You’ll have to object. We’ll all write to the council saying you’ve got, oh I don’t know, a right to light or something. Also, shouldn’t he have told you about it? I mean don’t the council send you the info in case you want to challenge the plans?’

Angie wrinkled her nose. ‘I might have had something,’ she admitted. ‘There
was
a council letter but I always throw them away because it’s usually just a survey or a complaint about the hedge growing over the path.’

‘Someone in the Grove’s always got builders in, faffing about with roof extensions and flash decking where perfectly good stone used to be. I can’t remember when the road had less than two skips parked in it,’ Matthew said. ‘And do the council take any notice of objectors?’

‘Worth a shot.’ Angie smiled shining rays of gratitude at Micky.

‘Does anyone think we need any more conservatories as well?’ Eddy said, looking down the list.

‘Well I’ve got one. I can hardly grumble about other people wanting them.’

‘Course you can. Where’s your miserable-old-git quotient?’

Matthew grinned. ‘Jess would tell you it’s alive and flourishing.’

‘Well then.’ Eddy lit a scraggy hand-rolled cigarette. Flakes of tobacco shed themselves across the table. ‘No more building then, not in the Grove, not for anyone. Agreed?’ Angie hesitated for a brief moment, thinking regretfully, Matt assumed, of the pool of boyfriend material the builders had provided. She sighed, prettily, and gave in.

‘Agreed,’ came the chorus.

Jess knew it was ridiculous to be dithering over what to wear when the point of this outing was to sample the services of a personal shopper in a major department store who would pick out something wonderful and new. She could be coming home only a few hours from now with an entirely altered wardrobe philosophy: an aversion to her customary shade-range of blue to grey perhaps, or a new-found need to wear hats. It shouldn’t matter if she turned up in her oldest Saturday-mornings-at-the-garden-centre jeans or a jacket so old it was eagerly awaiting the return of the house-brick shoulder pad. Knowing this didn’t stop her from getting up at the same time as the sun and flicking through the hangers along the rail in her wardrobe, feeling increasing hopelessness as she considered and rejected each item. She didn’t want to let herself in for even the tiniest flicker of disdain from someone super-attuned to the nuances of fashion. It was bad enough having woken up in a depression
feeling middle-aged, middle-sized and with legs that were long past their best-before date. Just now every skirt she owned seemed to be the wrong length and she certainly didn’t want any possible ‘before’ photos of her wearing trousers, if the camera was the sort that added an instant ten pounds. Nothing, she thought as she stared into the cupboard, seemed to go with anything else, or if it did it was for the wrong kind of weather.

‘Difficult time of year, spring,’ she muttered to herself, cursing Paula Cheviot and her bright ideas. Paula had been positively gushing on the phone, as if this assignment was so good she could hardly bear to delegate someone else to do it.

‘It’s one of those things the average reader wouldn’t
dream
of doing,’ she’d trilled. ‘But they all could. Everyone should try it. So much fun having someone else dress you up like a dolly. Selfridge’s at 10.30, photographer Robin will meet you there. You’ll
love
it.’ That, Jess gathered, was an order.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Matthew was still in bed, and as he was currently still filling the In-House Teenager gap so recently vacated by Oliver, he probably would be for several hours to come. To Jess, his voice sounded exaggeratedly growly, the way Oliver’s used to when she suggested he might care to get up at some stage and consider dropping into college for his double maths class.

‘I’m looking for something to wear,’ she told him.

‘Are you mad? Even God hasn’t woken up yet,’ he grumbled. ‘Does it really matter that much what you wear? Isn’t that what they’re supposed to be telling you?’

Jess pulled out a navy blue Jigsaw jacket and draped
it on the bed across the fidgeting little heap that was Matthew’s feet. The jacket was a trusty standby, a well-shaped old friend with a flattering Nehru collar. ‘Well, they’re going to get some kind of impression of me the second I walk in. I don’t want to have a “near-menopausal suburban frump” sign flashing over my head. The person in charge would be pointing me at the mid-calf box-pleat skirts and gold-button blazers.’

‘Selfridge’s don’t have that kind of thing any more. You should take me with you. See what they can come up with for a man of newly acquired endless leisure.’ He hauled himself up from the depths of the duvet and yawned. ‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’

Jess laughed. ‘Ask one of the girls. They should be up by now.’

As if she’d been waiting outside for her cue, Natasha slid into the room. She had her purple satin dressing gown wrapped tightly round her and her body was contorted in an attitude of exaggerated agony.

‘It’s not fair! We’ve got an inset day and I feel terrible!’

‘Insect day?’ Matthew looked at her with his head on one side like an appealingly dim budgie.

‘You know, teachers catching up with their own curriculum, that kind of thing,’ Jess explained. To Natasha she said, ‘Nobody told me you had a day off. What’s the matter? Do you feel feverish?’ She put her hand on Natasha’s forehead. It felt cool enough, though her skin was a bit clammy.

‘Nah, just a period, just the usual,’ Natasha groaned and sat down heavily on the bed, bending forward so her head was on her knee.

‘Oh women’s stuff.’ Matthew waved a dismissal at
her. ‘Imagine if all we men went wobbly once a month.’

Natasha looked up and stared at him, then at Jess, and the two of them laughed. ‘Imagine!’ they said together.

‘Mum, if I take some paracetamol and if I feel better, can I come out with you? Please? I really can’t face doing maths.’

Jess hesitated. Natasha was looking particularly vulnerable. If she said no, the poor girl would probably burst into tears. On the other hand, a teenager, especially one of changeable and hormonally unstable mood, might not be the best companion for her first proper assignment as a roving journalist.

‘OK,’ she agreed eventually. ‘But on condition you are quiet and polite and remember that this is my job, not just a jolly outing. You have to promise not to strop and absolutely definitely not to show me up.’

‘OK I promise. And if I’m really good will you buy me something? Please? Just something little, and really really cheap?’ Natasha was doing her best to look her most persuasive.

Jess looked at the heart-shaped little face, the huge eyes that silently pleaded ‘pamper me’. She remembered period pains; at her school they not only didn’t get you off games but earned you an extra run round the hockey pitch. Her mother had told her they were a trial run for childbirth and there’d been times, when she was about fourteen and whimpering on her bedroom floor clutching a hot-water bottle to her middle, when she’d wondered why anyone had children at all if this was only the half of it.

‘Maybe,’ she conceded to Natasha. ‘It depends.’ Too late, Jess realized she’d given the answer that any
teenage girl would translate as a ‘yes’ so definite it rated on the same level as a sworn affidavit.

Matthew groaned from the depths of the duvet. ‘You’ll regret saying that,’ he predicted. ‘She’ll scorch your credit card.’ Natasha, triumphant, padded out of the room and down the stairs to get ready. Jess turned back to the wardrobe. Somewhere in there must be the skirt that went perfectly with the blue Jigsaw jacket.

‘What did she say?’ Zoe was already up and dressed and in the kitchen raiding the fridge and the cupboard for food supplies to get her through the day. Emily’s school out in the Oxfordshire sticks might be pretty easy-going in some ways but they might draw the line at letting a stranger in for lunch. Boarding schools might be really weird, like prisons or something. They probably had a head-count every hour or two to make sure people hadn’t sneaked in from the town to get a free meal or join in a quick game of lacrosse or raid the trophy cupboard.

‘It’s fine. I should be able to keep Mum out for hours, long enough to keep her mind off what you might be up to anyway. Are you sure about this? You’ve never been there before. You might get lost. Why can’t Emily just come back up here and see you?’

‘She doesn’t want to go to the clinic by herself. I
told
you. I said I’d meet her at the school and then we’ll hitch into Oxford and I’ll get the coach home from there. Apparently it’s general studies afternoon, whatever that is and they more or less do what they like.’

Natasha laughed. ‘Well we all know what Emily likes. Stupid little slapper.’