Portobello

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It was just midday and the last patient was leaving her morning surgery. Mrs Khan had brought one of the twins with her this time, her seven-year-old son Hakim. Ella told her it was wrong to keep her child away from school now the autumn term had begun and the boy translated. Or may be didn't translate but told his mother whatever suited him. How was she to know? Mrs Khan got her usual prescription for tranquillisers, Ella having refused the sleeping pills she was asked for. Hakim was reading the prescription with an important air, nodding his head precociously, when Ella's phone rang. The practice receptionist said, 'He says he's called Joel, Ella.'

Ella sighed. She had been hoping to go home for a quiet lunchtime and afternoon with Eugene. 'Joel? What can I do for you?'

His voice, cracked, weak, gasping, was almost unrecognisable. 'Can you come? Now?'

'What's wrong?'

'I haven't taken too much. Should be all right. I only – want to – get – to…'

The last words were inaudible.

She ran, leaving Mrs Khan and Hakim staring. At the office door she called out Joel's address and told the receptionist to call 999. Within two minutes she was in her car. Miraculously, there wasn't much traffic and she was there before the ambulance. She hammered on Joel's door, yelled his name into the darkness through the letter box. She was downstairs again, begging a porter to break the door down when the paramedics came in, two tall men carrying their first aid bags. Between them they kicked the heavy door in.

'Why's it so dark?' one of them asked her.

'He likes it that way.'

They switched lights on, the feeble bulbs of low wattage, which were all Joel had, and one of them flung back the curtains. Joel was lying on the brown velvet sofa, sprawled on his back, dressed as he always was in jeans and old faded T-shirt, his long shaggy hair spread across his forehead and eyes as if he had pulled it down to hide his face. A dribble of frothy saliva trickled out of parted lips. On the low table were two containers half full of pills, a half-bottle of vodka and a pop-psychology book about schizophrenia.

Ella said, 'Help me get him on his feet.'

'We'll do that,' one of them said.

They began to walk him up and down, half dragging him. Ella raised the blind and opened windows. She read the labels on the pill containers, both made out to other people. Joel shuddered and twitched. His eyes stayed closed. She thought of his heart and the operation from which he wasn't yet fully recovered, and dared not give him adrenalin. She took hold of one of his arms and the paramedic stepped back. 'Joel, Joel, can you hear me? Speak to me, Joel.' She turned to the waiting man, 'Make coffee, would you?'

He was very quick. The coffee was too hot and they added cold water. Ella held it to Joel's lips. He shuddered and the cup rattled against his teeth but he sipped some of it, choked and moaned. His body sagged and without their support he would have fallen.

'You must drink it. Come on now. You must.'

This time he swallowed a mouthful and then another. His pale face took on a greenish tinge and at last a voice came out of his mouth, a voice that barely sounded human, 'Going to be sick.'

The older paramedic fetched a basin from the kitchen sink but he was too late. Joel threw up on the reddish brown Turkey carpet, his vomit much the same colour. Still kept on his feet, he began shaking and trembling, but he drank the water she brought him and at last uttered a long sigh.

'Shall we move him out of here now, doctor?'

'I'll come with him,' she said.

Dave and Lance's nan Kath had been sitting out on her balcony, sharing a bottle of wine and contemplating the traffic in the Harrow Road, which dawdled sluggishly below them. It was a fine warm evening, sunny and pleasant but for the foul air, foggy with pollution. Dave got up when the doorbell rang and let Lance in. Lance kissed his nan and looked longingly at the wine bottle.

'Oh, give him a glass, Dave, and open another bottle, why don't you.'

Sitting out there with a glass of Chardonnay in his hand reminded Lance painfully of such evenings spent with Gemma on her balcony. Would he ever see her again? He took a swig of his wine.

'I've got a bone to pick with you, my lad,' his nan said. 'That bag of stuff you left with me, it's made me nervous. What with you setting fire to old Gib's house and that East European getting killed, though I'll be the first to say that was no fault of yours, but all that's made me think maybe you're one of them terrorists. And what's in that bag is what I want to know?'

Lance said it wasn't true, he'd never set fire to Uncle Gib's house.

'Never mind that. You tell me what's in that bag. No, you show me.'

Dave came back with another bottle of Chardonnay, which he opened with a corkscrew that looked to Lance more like a Black and Decker.

'I've said it twice and I'll say it again. I want to know what's in that bag. And what's more, it's not going out of here till you've opened it and let me see. Isn't that right, Dave?'

'It is, Kath.'

Lance was starting to wish he hadn't come. But he had to retrieve the bag to take it to Mr Crown.

'You've got no choice,' said Dave. 'You open it or else your nan'll put it out with the trash. Or drop it in the canal, more like. She will, you know,' he went on admiringly, giving her a fond look. 'You know what she is, a real Iron Lady.'

'Where is it?' said Lance.

The package was produced. Lance took off the elastic bands and lifted out the pieces of jewellery, two diamond rings, two gold bracelets and a gold chain. Neither Kath nor Dave made a sound.

'It's mine,' said Lance, knowing he wouldn't be believed.

'Pull the other one,' said his nan, recovering her voice. 'Where d'you get it?'

'Posh place in Notting Hill.'

'Breaking and entering,' said Dave in a conversational tone. 'Was it after dark?'

'What if it was?'

'Then it's burglary.'

His nan reached for the bottle. 'Let's have another drink.' Two silent minutes were taken up with refilling the glasses. 'Traffic's easing off a bit,' she said.

'Till it starts again in the morning,' said Dave.

'You can look after that stuff for him, can't you?'

'Well, I can.'

'I was going to take it to a bloke in Holloway.'

'You don't want to do that,' Dave said quickly. 'You never know who you can trust in this game. Let me handle it. You won't be the loser.'

'OK, if you say so.' Lance was feeling quite relieved.

'Getting a bit chilly out here,' said his nan. 'The nights are drawing in. What say we all go down the Good King Billy for a quick one?'

'Or a slow one,' said Dave, suddenly in a cheerful mood.

What Ella called simply 'an emergency', phoning him in the late afternoon, threatened to deprive Eugene of her company until late. He sat watching television and eating sweets, something he hadn't done since he was a child, and he found that he was enjoying himself. Was it true, then, that he was happier without Ella than with her? He tried telling himself that he had been single too long, an ageing bachelor with the occasional girlfriend. It was simply that living with a woman was a state he wasn't yet really used to. But underlying these feelings all the time was the habit that had taken over his life. Even thinking about it brought him to reach for the pack – in Ella's absence it lay openly and open on the table in front of him – and help himself to a sweet. Giving up, phasing out, was now a distant memory.

It was September already and he was getting married in October. A few weeks of freedom to indulge himself in more or less unlimited amounts of Chocorange remained. He switched off the television, castigating himself for watching a mindless game show, and picked up with great care a small bowl of Sung Celadon porcelain that stood on the table beside the Chocorange pack. Once, he thought, he would have talked to himself of the Chocorange being beside the Sung bowl, not the other way about. He palpated the bowl delicately in his hands while he sucked the last sliver of his sweet.

If Ella were here he would even now be making excuses to her. He had to go upstairs to fetch something, he would make a phone call in his study so as not to disturb her, he must go outside and check that the tiresome Bathsheba wasn't once more using his rose bed as a feline convenience. Those few minutes away from her would give him the opportunity to suck a sweet. Though he knew it sounded like insanity, he had actually timed himself doing this and found that eating one lasted four minutes at most. When he came back to her he always craved another. Consuming one set off the longing again. No more than half an hour ever went by before he gave in to desire, made another excuse to escape and almost ran out to find one of his secret hoards.

She was beginning to notice. His sensitivity and percipience hadn't been blunted by his addiction. Once or twice lately she had asked him if he wasn't feeling well and when he said he was fine, asked if he was worried about something. Of course he was worried, perpetually troubled by this craving, and seeing no way – he had tried – to change. ''Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, another thing to fall,' says Angelo. He and Ella had seen Measure for Measure in the summer and that line remained with him. But what if you tried desperately to resist and failed?

If you still fell, over and over? Angelo, of course, was principally referring to sexual indulgence. If he were honest, Eugene said to himself, alone in his house among his objets d'art, he was afraid of reaching a point where he preferred eating a sugar-free orangeflavoured chocolate sweet to making love.

That confession frightened him. He had never put it into words before, had never in fact been aware of it for very long. Perhaps it was new. It must mean that his habit was gaining increased power over him. But he was getting married in a few weeks' time. He was getting married so that he might live for the rest of his life with the woman he loved and so that he might make love to her as often as he and she chose. He looked at the pale-green bowl he held in his hands, looked into its depths as if, crystal-balllike, it could foretell his future. When he set it down, his now free left hand reached out to pick up the brown-and-orange pack, his now free right-hand finger and thumb picked out a sweet and put it into his mouth.

What he had realised ought to be the jolt that shocked him out of this, shocked him into throwing all those packs away and beginning on the course of abstinence. Other people resisted temptation. They stopped smoking simply by ceasing to buy cigarettes. But they had nicotine patches, he thought. If only there were a Chocorange patch! The idea made him smile, then laugh. It was easy to laugh when he was sucking one of those delicious sweets.

He couldn't give up cold turkey, he knew he couldn't. He had tried. What would happen was an enforced deprivation, starting with the last days of their honeymoon when, sneaking into the bathroom in Como or going off for a solitary walk while Ella shopped somewhere, he finished up all the sweets he had brought with him. No more would be available in Italy. He would have to exist without them until they got home and then, even if he bought more – and he knew he would – because Ella would be living with him, not simply staying here four nights out of seven, the number he ate must necessarily be restricted. And gradually that number would grow less and less until the day came when it hardly seemed worth buying more. He must try to look on his marriage as the sure and certain cure for his habit. His marriage was his lifeline.

They were keeping Joel in overnight. He was weak and utterly enervated but consciousness had returned fully. She had sat with him for most of the afternoon and was there when he tried to sit up. Without asking him she had phoned his mother and told her what had happened, not saying it was a suicide attempt, which was what she suspected, but that her son had mistakely taken an overdose. Wendy Stemmer had arrived at five o'clock, anxious and exasperated, hair newly done, dressed in white broderie anglaise, and it was then that Ella had left the room and phoned Eugene.

Returning, she found Joel with his eyes tightly shut and his mother holding one of his long white hands.

'What will he do next?' Mrs Stemmer asked her in a despairing tone.

Ella felt like saying that the remarkable thing about Joel was that he did almost nothing, but she only smiled.

'Is he going to be all right? He won't tell me anything.'

'I'm sure he is. But you must ask the doctor who is looking after him here.'

Wendy Stemmer tottered off in narrow-strap stilt-heeled sandals to do that and Ella took her place but without holding Joel's hand. He opened his eyes and said, 'Has she gone?'

'She's coming back. She's very anxious about you, Joel.'

'I know you think I meant to kill myself but I didn't.'

'All right. If you didn't I'm very glad.'

'I want to tell you what I was really doing.'

'That's fine but here's your mother coming back. Do you want to tell her?'

'No!' If he had been stronger it would have been a shout. As things were, it came out as a strangled gasp.

His mother had been told he ought not to be left alone in his flat. Not even during the day. Ella went to speak to the doctor. Discreetly, he refused to say what he evidently thought, that this was a failed suicide attempt, and when she told him about the midday phone call, that rescuing Joel hadn't been due to any great intuition or acuity on her part, he agreed with obvious relief that his brush with death had probably been an accident.

'I think he wants to tell me about it but it must be in his own time.'

'Oh, I fully agree.'

Wendy Stemmer had slipped off her punishing sandals and they lay on their sides under the bed. 'He seems very fond of you,' she said accusingly at Joel's bedside but with her back turned to him. 'Tell me something. Are you his girlfriend?'

'Of course not. I'm his doctor.'

'I asked because I've never known him so keen on a woman before. I always thought he must be gay, though he didn't give any signs of that either.'

Ella was so angry she took a few seconds before she could trust herself to speak. 'Mrs Stemmer, don't you think you could persuade your husband to be reconciled with Joel? If you tell him how lonely Joel is, how he lives in the dark and now he's – accidentally, of course – taken an overdose of – well, pills that weren't prescribed for him?'

She watched the woman's face as a deep flush spread over it under the thick make-up. Saying that she knew some of the sedatives came from his mother, would do neither Joel nor her any good. It was useless. 'Couldn't you try, Mrs Stemmer?'

'It won't be any good.' Wendy Stemmer bent over, perhaps to hide her face, and eased her sandals on again. She looked up and Ella thought she spoke for the first time with sincerity and maybe from her heart. 'I've tried. I'm always trying. Last time I told him he ought to see Joel he hit me.' She drew in her breath. 'Right across my face.'

Ella had nothing to say.