The Door That Led to Where (2 page)

It was a mild September day, that time of year when the seasons haven't yet made up their minds whether it's still summer or the beginning of autumn. While Clissold Park smelled of dried leaves and overheated grass that had long forgotten the colour green, the chestnut trees braced themselves for the annual conker bashing. AJ was desperate to share the news of his job with someone other than his mum, whose reaction had been predictable to say the least.

‘You can start paying for your board and keep,' she said. ‘Don't think I'm a bleeding hotel.'

He had thought about asking her for a loan for a suit, but he knew what she would say: ‘Do you think I'm made of money?' So he hadn't asked and he had a job and no suit.

It was a relief to escape the flat, to head off to the skate park. He hoped to find his two best friends, Slim and Leon. He could rely on them being there as long as the weather was fine, but today he found Slim alone, attached as always to his one and only possession, his skateboard.

Slim, with dark hair and brown eyes, was taller than AJ, more grown into himself.

‘Where've you been?' he asked.

‘I had a job interview.'

‘A job interview? That's impressive, bro,' said Slim. ‘Where at?'

‘A law firm,' said AJ. ‘Called Baldwin Groat.'

‘You're joking, man. You mean a cube farm? Did you get the job?'

‘Yeah, on trial. Office boy. The place doesn't exactly have cubicles, more huge rooms lined with books.'

‘Shit. What did you do to make that little miracle happen?'

‘Nothing. Mum wrote a letter.'

‘That's heavy. What did she write? That she would do them over unless they gave you employment?'

‘Something like that,' said AJ, and changed the subject. ‘Why is Leon not here?'

‘Wait a mo,' said Slim. ‘How did your mum know about a toff place like that?'

‘She had a job cleaning for them before I was born.'

‘Hold that picture, bro: so she knows these dudes and after nearly seventeen years she's written to them and they've come over all fairy godmother and given you a job. Now why doesn't that add up in my book?'

AJ didn't want to think about the whys of it or how Mr Groat knew what his initials stood for.

‘Leon,' he said. ‘Where is he?'

‘As my rap of the “Electronic Jungle of Despair” goes, “Life is shitty, times is gritty, Leon's been taken back into care.”'

‘What happened?'

‘His mum, being dosed up higher than the Shard, thought she was a white swan from a kiddies' book and flew off the balcony of their flat. Smack in her head, smack onto the pavement, smack into intensive care.'

‘When?' asked AJ.

‘This morning.'

AJ sat down next to Slim. There wasn't much to say. It was an old, scratched record they'd heard many times before. But the news of Leon's return into care took the shine off AJ's day.

Leon's mum was a drug addict. She loved her sons but couldn't look after them. The first time Leon and his little brother were taken into care was when their social worker discovered them eating cat food off the floor while the cat was on the table eating their breakfast. Leon's mum said she couldn't see the difference. The truth was she couldn't see anything. Leon's brother, Joel, was only eighteen months old then.

Their gran, a religious lady high up in the Church of the Celestial Coming, had taken Joel in. She said that Joel was definitely the child of her son, Amos, and still had the chance of being saved. But as far as Leon was concerned, she said he could never be Amos's son, being too pale in the skin. Hell's Highway already had Leon's name printed on the advertising hoardings. He was three when she'd had this helpful revelation and because of it Leon had been in and out of care for the last thirteen years. After a lot of praying for guidance Gran had taken Joel home to Jamaica leaving Leon battling to help his mum with her demons.

‘Where have they taken Leon this time?' asked AJ.

‘Back to the foster family in Muswell Hill. But they won't want him for long, as he's nearly seventeen.'

As if reading AJ's thoughts, Slim said, ‘Nothing changes. We're all up against the white wall of hopelessness. My auntie couldn't care less about my exam results as long as I work on Uncle Jek's stall. The old geezer's only good for shouting out the bargains and being rude to the punters. He can't even count how many pints he's drunk. But wait a bit – if you have this job, don't you need to look the business?'

‘Yeah. The trouble is I haven't any money to buy a suit. So as you say, life is shitty.'

‘What about your mum?'

‘Are you a comedian?' asked AJ. ‘Roxy needs new trainers and the wheel fell off her scooter so Mum is buying her a proper one from the bike shop.' Roxy was AJ's half-sister, the apple of Jan's eye. The word ‘no' never applied to her. ‘I thought about nicking a suit from Oxfam but it wouldn't look good at the law firm if I was done for shoplifting.'

Slim laughed. ‘Come on, bro. I've got an idea.'

Unlike AJ, Slim had a family wardrobe stuffed full of relatives, distant, near, and a lot in between. He reckoned that if they stood hand in hand they would stretch the whole distance from Stokey to Dalston, maybe even as far as Shoreditch. AJ had never worked out where Slim fitted in this jammed wardrobe of unnamed relatives. It was one of the things AJ, Slim and Leon had in common: broken families.

They left the park and headed to Mr Toker's laundry and dry-cleaner's on Church Street. Inside, on the wall near the door, was a photo from the 1930s of five men playing golf outside a ramshackled laundrette. They weren't wearing trousers, just baggy knickers, and socks held up by garters. The sign read ‘Free golf while we press your suit'.

‘Yes?' said Mr Toker, adding, ‘And no, I don't have a penny if that's why you're here.'

‘No, bro!'

‘Don't you
bro
me.'

‘Sorry. No, Uncle
Ş
evket,' said Slim. ‘AJ's got a job.'

Mr Toker studied AJ, not sure whether to take him seriously.

‘Is this one of your high-flying, fancy stories?'

‘No,' said AJ. ‘I do have a job, but no suit, and without a suit I have no job.'

‘Do I look like a gentleman's outfitters?' said Mr Toker. ‘Go away, the two of you, and stop wasting my time.'

The other sign that AJ liked was smaller than the golf photo. It read ‘Anything not collected after three months will be sold'.

AJ pointed to the sign.

‘Please,' he said. ‘I can pay for it on Friday. But if I don't have a suit for Monday, I'm stuffed.'

Mr Toker called to his wife. ‘Sarah. Do we have any suits that would fit this scallywag?'

AJ and Slim could see a large lady bending over a basket in the back room.

‘No,' she said. ‘Why would we?'

‘There. You heard the oracle speak. Now bugger off.'

‘If you could just lend me one I will pay you back when I have my first pay cheque,' pleaded AJ.

Mr Toker laughed. ‘Neither am I a pawnbroker.' He sat down at the sewing machine behind the counter. ‘Scarper.'

‘He will pay you, Uncle
Ş
evket,' said Slim. ‘I promise.

‘How? Neither of you has a penny on you.'

The sewing machine's click-clack agreed with its boss.

‘Not a penny, not a pound,' it seemed to say.

‘I'll leave my skateboard here – it's worth good money,' said Slim.

Mr Toker and the sewing machine stopped. Mr Toker looked up.

‘You would do that for your friend? You're sure?'

‘Yes,' said Slim, handing over his skateboard. ‘It's worth way more than a forgotten suit.'

Mr Toker put the skateboard under the counter, went to the shop door and turned the sign to
Closed
.

‘All right. A deal's a deal.'

Slim looked a little shaken.

Mr Toker began to call out AJ's measurements to his wife, who sighed as she looked through the rails of unclaimed suits. Finally she pulled out one in grey.

‘Go to the back and try it on,' she said. ‘And here – take this shirt.'

Apart from being made for someone altogether taller, the suit fitted AJ perfectly. Without a word, Mr Toker pinned up the trousers and the cuffs then stood back, squinting.

‘Where is this job of yours?' he asked.

‘Baldwin Groat,' said AJ. ‘In Gray's Inn.'

‘The suit will be ready tomorrow after three,' said Mr Toker. ‘Thirty pounds is the price to have the skateboard back.'

‘I owe you,' said AJ to Slim.

‘Big time,' said Slim. ‘That skateboard is  …  everything.'

‘I know,' said AJ. ‘I won't let you down – promise, bro.'

On Monday AJ turned up for work in the suit and a pair of brogues two sizes too big that he'd found on top of a clothes bank. There was no polite introduction to the workings of Baldwin Groat. Morton, the senior clerk, told him that if he was to survive there he would need wit and intelligence. AJ found himself thrown in the deep end of the legal soup.

‘We don't need more staff,' Stephen, the first clerk, had complained. ‘We manage perfectly well.'

‘Aiden was taken on by Mr Groat,' said Morton. ‘Any complaints should be addressed to him as head of chambers.'

Stephen was twenty-seven and had been at Baldwin Groat since he was eighteen. The son of one of the junior barristers, he had wanted to become a lawyer like his father but finding the examinations beyond him had gone for the option of being a clerk. Such was his position and so long had he stayed in that position that he saw any new clerk as a threat. AJ was no exception. Stephen instantly took a dislike to him.

‘Does Mr Baldwin know about this new baby clerk?' he asked the senior clerk.

‘Is that any business of yours, Stephen?' Morton snapped.

‘No, but it's –'

‘It's none of your business.'

As far as AJ could make out from the junior barristers, the most dynamic of the QCs in the practice was Mr Baldwin. He was abroad on a case and AJ had peeped inside his room. A photo of the eminent Queen's Counsel sat on the desk in a silver frame. AJ couldn‘t understand why he would want a picture of himself unless it was to remind him who he was. From the photo AJ decided that he was a man who took himself very seriously indeed, a man without a chin, and with a bottom lip much bigger than the top, which combined to squeeze themselves into a pout.

Mr Groat, who had no photos of himself, or anyone else for that matter, was seen as something of an eccentric.

Whenever they were alone Stephen took delight in telling AJ exactly how short his career in the law firm would be.

‘When Mr Baldwin's back you'll be out on your arse,' said Stephen. ‘One GCSE. You think Mr Baldwin will stand for that? He only takes the brightest and the best. You can't say you quite fit the description.'

AJ was used to bullies. They were to be found in every gang he had ever come across. He ignored Stephen.

‘You don't need to charge about the place,' Stephen would say. ‘You just get us more work.'

Again AJ ignored him. He would rather be doing anything than standing there looking like a hatstand as Stephen did.

On the Friday of his first week, Morton called him into his office.

‘You're for it,' said Stephen helpfully. ‘I didn't think you'd last longer than a week. Never mind. You can put it down to work experience.'

AJ stood in front of the senior clerk's desk. ‘You're a quiet one, Aiden,' said Morton. ‘Do you like it here?'

The idea that he might like or dislike the job was a luxury of thought AJ hadn't allowed himself.

‘Yes,' he said.

‘Have a good weekend.'

His seventeenth birthday, hardly remembered, was quickly forgotten. That Saturday AJ was able to get Slim's skateboard back and they went in search of Leon. They reckoned the best place to find him would be the undercroft of the Southbank Centre. The three of them had been going there since they were eleven.

October had come in unseasonally warm, taking everyone by surprise. Half the inhabitants of London were slow cooking in new winter clothes while the other half were out to shimmer in the sunshine in shorts and skimpy dresses, doing their best to chase away the thought of autumn altogether.

It was a relief to find Leon, though he looked tired and thinner. His mum was still in a coma and he visited her whenever he could. His foster family meant well but thought that he shouldn't see her, that it wasn't good for his stability.

‘I ain't going back there,' said Leon. ‘I'd rather live rough than stay in that up-its-arse-house. They eat brown rice and shit like that, full of what's good for you. They say that if I carry on living with Mum, I'll end up just like her. They understand nothing except what they read in the
Guardian
. I tell you, life is better in the
Sun
. At least the women have tits. I haven't been going to college either.'

Of the three of them, Leon had done the best in his exams and been accepted at sixth-form college.

‘What're you going to do?' asked Slim.

‘Move back home. Live there on my own. I'm not a kid.'

‘Live on what?' said AJ.

‘That's where I thought you might help me out, bro.'

Leon disappeared down the ramp.

‘In the nineteenth century,' AJ said to Slim, ‘we would've been considered men by now. Do you ever think that you were born in the wrong century? At the wrong time, to the wrong parents?'

‘No, never. All I know is we all live in the Electronic Jungle of Despair.'

On Monday, AJ noticed that no one in chambers slouched, nor did the junior barristers linger in the clerks' room. The day was wired tight.

AJ waited anxiously to be called into Mr Baldwin's office. Stephen had a knowing look about him.

‘I wouldn't make yourself too comfortable here,' he said. ‘If Mr Baldwin doesn't like you – well, that's that.'

Charles Baldwin QC was a well-dressed man, a time fighter, someone who invested a lot of energy in staying young. A smug smile stuck firmly to his tight features.

‘So you're Aiden Jobey,' he said, greeting AJ with a pat on the back. ‘Morton speaks highly of you. He thinks you could well make a good clerk. I knew your father, you know.'

Had AJ heard correctly? This lawyer had known his father. Why hadn't Mum mentioned it? Surely it was important.

‘And Janice, your mother,' Mr Baldwin continued. ‘I remember her well. She was a pretty little thing.'

AJ wondered if Mr Baldwin was muddling him up with someone else. It was hard to imagine that the red reptile was ever a pretty little thing. AJ was completely wrong-footed by this plastic cheerfulness. It was not what he had been expecting and he was quite at a loss. How had his mum come to make such a huge impression on Mr Groat and Mr Baldwin that seventeen years down the line they still remembered her? It would have helped if the red reptile had been more talkative on the subject but like so much of her past it belonged in the deep freeze of things unsaid.

‘A black coffee, please. Thanks, Aiden,' said Mr Baldwin.

AJ was dismissed.

‘Well?' said Stephen who was waiting outside.

‘He wants me to make him coffee.'

‘As soon as you can Aiden,' shouted Mr Baldwin through the office door.

At the end of a week of making coffee for Mr Baldwin, AJ found to his amazement he still had a job. Stephen was furious, almost green round the edges.

‘Don't start thinking you are going to last here,' he hissed, ‘because you're not.'

What AJ had seen of Mr Baldwin he hadn't much liked. He thought of him as two-faced. One face was all cultured charm, the other, fast fury, like a sports car in seventh gear. He didn't trust the eminent lawyer – neither could he work out why he was so interested in his family.

‘Where's your father now?' Mr Baldwin asked one morning as AJ brought in his coffee.

‘Dead, sir. I never knew him.'

‘Oh, sorry to hear that. I recall that he didn't have a will – I tried to convince him to write one. But I suppose he thought he had plenty of time. So do you have anything to remember him by?'

‘Like what, sir?' asked AJ, feeling that he was missing something behind the question.

‘Oh, I don't know,' said Mr Baldwin. ‘A memento perhaps?'

‘He left me nothing, sir,' said AJ. ‘Not even a name.'

Stephen looked as if he could willingly murder AJ for usurping his position but Mr Baldwin and his team soon became consumed by a forgery case and Stephen was once more indispensable.

Two weeks later, on the Monday morning, Morton found a note Mr Baldwin had left for him, saying that he was taking a long weekend and would be back on Wednesday. Morton was not best pleased. Mr Baldwin's mobile went straight to voicemail and he had left no other contact details. Even Stephen, who kept Mr Baldwin's diary, was in the dark as to his whereabouts.

‘Mr Baldwin is very discreet about his private life,' he said. ‘But he may have been going to a fancy dress ball. I found this on his desk.'

It was a receipt for the hire of a costume from Angel's in Shaftesbury Avenue.

‘I'm not asking for gossip, Stephen, I'm asking if you know where he is.'

‘No, Morton, I don't.'

‘I just hope he has a good reason for dumping a hell of lot of work on Ms Finch's plate,' said Morton.

It was that week that AJ's life went from being ordinary to extraordinary in a way he could never have imagined and, like most unusual events, it started with no warning.

Morton asked AJ to sort out some files in the Museum. AJ hadn't seen any room in chambers that could be described as a museum and by now he knew the place well enough. As you came through Baldwin Groat's door on the second floor, there was the reception desk with its huge, caring vase of flowers, comfy chairs for clients to sit on and a picture on the wall that showed a scene of eighteenth century London. Next to reception was the clerk's room and Morton's office. Morton usually liked to keep his door open so that he could see who was coming and who was going. The first room down the corridor belonged to the junior barristers, Mr Baldwin had the largest of the rooms by far and Mr Groat's room was at the back, overlooking Gray's Inn Gardens. There was a small kitchen, loos and a photocopying room but nothing else, so what was Morton talking about?

The Museum turned out to be through a small door that AJ had thought was a broom cupboard. Here the archives were stored, file upon file of cases dating back decades. It was furnished with a solid table and a chair but it was the collection of bizarre objects on the table that caught AJ's eye: a human skull, a compass, several bowler hats, pieces of jewellery and a box stuffed full of pocket watches and handkerchiefs. AJ could well imagine Fagin having once been a client of Baldwin Groat.

‘What do I do with these things?' asked AJ.

‘File them in boxes and mark them to the relative cases. It will take you the best part of a week. It's needed doing for ages.'

One of the reasons that AJ had done so disastrously at school was simply the noise: the clatter in the classroom, the bells ringing, the stampede after lessons, the screaming children in the playground. There was enough noise at home. What he had longed for was silence. He had started skiving off school to go to the local library. There, no one was allowed to speak, noise was banned. It was three months before he realised that with a library ticket he could take books home. Solemnly he read through the alphabet of children's literature. It was Mr Montgomery, the senior librarian, who found AJ reading
Oliver Twist
and with his help AJ discovered the rest of Mr Dickens's work.

The Museum proved to be an education in itself – a library of criminal cases. AJ studied the ancient writing – legal mumbling that he didn't understand – but underneath were stories of real people, people like him and Leon and Slim. By the end of the day he had barely started.

On Wednesday Mr Baldwin returned, looking pale. He came to see for himself how AJ was doing.

‘Come across any old skeletons?' he said.

‘No, sir,' said AJ.

‘If you do, bring them to me.'

On Thursday AJ pulled a dusty file from the shelf. What was written on it made his stomach churn.

Jobey

1813

Jobey. The name that didn't belong to him but somehow did. He still hadn't dared raise the matter with his mother and didn't quite know why. He opened the file, hoping it might answer a few questions but it contained only a map, hand-drawn on yellowed paper. Gray's Inn Road was clearly shown, and Mount Pleasant, just a few streets away – but what did Coldbath mean? And why was there an X just to the left of it? AJ took a photo of the map on his phone.

It was getting dark on Friday afternoon when he lifted the lid of the last battered cardboard box. Inside was a rusty iron key about ten centimetres long, the stem turned and decorated. The end that went into the lock had a zigzag line down its centre. It belonged to a time when a key had more weight to it than it did today. This was a key you didn't lose.

A label was tied to the ring. Written on it in beautiful handwriting were the words:

The property of A. Jobey, Esq.

2nd October, 1996

AJ blinked and looked at it again to make sure he had read the date right. It was the day he was born.