Where Memories Lie

CHAPTER 3

Notting Hill Gate is a superstitious place because it seems to exceed rational prescriptions and explanations. On the Portobello Road, one feels oneself growing more insubstantial, less and less able to keep a sense of personal proportion in the crowd of people who all look so much poorer, or richer, or wilder, or more conventional than one is oneself.

—Jonathan Raban,

Soft Cities

“Mr. Walters?” Kincaid caught his slip as soon as the words left his mouth. “Ern?” he corrected himself. “Is everything all right?” He’d never got comfortable with calling Gemma’s dad by his first name.

“Gemma here?” Ern Walters asked it so tersely that it might have been a statement. A small, wiry man, he was dressed in his usual outfit of tweed jacket and tie, with a weathered flat wool cap covering what remained of his thinning hair.

“No, no, actually she’s not. But come in, please.” His sense of apprehension growing, Kincaid held the door wide and gestured him in. Gemma’s parents had visited them only once since they’d moved into the Notting Hill house, for Toby’s birthday party.

Walters followed, but once in the hall, he planted his feet and, taking off his cap, crumpled it in his hands as he spoke. “Work, is it?” From the disapproval in his tone, Gemma might have been soliciting.

Kincaid frowned but said merely, “No. She’s gone to see a friend who rang up. Some sort of problem.”

“Always has time for her friends, does she?”

Bewildered by the other man’s belligerent tone, Kincaid wondered if he had been drinking. But there was no smell of alcohol on Walters’s breath or any wavering in his stance, and Kincaid felt a greater prickling of alarm. “Come into the kitchen and sit down, Mr. Walters,” he said, reverting instinctively to the more formal address. “Let me fix you a drink or a cup of tea, and you can tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’ll not be stopping.” Ern Walters set his chin in a stubborn line that suddenly reminded Kincaid of Gemma. “It’s just I thought she should know. Gemma. It’s her mum. She’s been taken ill. Collapsed.”

“What?” Kincaid stared at him in shock. Whatever he’d expected, it hadn’t been this. Vi Walters was one of the toughest women he’d ever met, an indomitable life force. “When? Where? Is she all right? Why didn’t you ring us?” The questions tumbled out, too fast, he knew, for coherent answers. He stopped himself, giving Ern Walters time to speak.

“Right in the middle of Saturday-afternoon rush. Said she didn’t feel well. Then she went down like a felled tree. I couldn’t get her up.”

Now Kincaid heard the terror beneath Ern Walters’s gruff manner. He clamped down his impatience, made himself wait until Walters went on.

“The ambulance took her to Whipps Cross. They say she’s resting comfortably, whatever that means.”

“You didn’t know she was ill?”

Walters glared at him. “She’d complained of feeling a bit tired lately. Wanting to put her feet up and have a cuppa. I never thought—”

“No, of course not.” Knowing Vi, Kincaid guessed she wouldn’t have taken kindly to a suggestion that she see a doctor. “What will they do now?”

“Tests, they said. And more tests in the morning.”

Kincaid pulled out his phone. “I’ll ring Gemma. She’ll want to go—”

“No.” Ern Walters cut him off before his finger touched the first key. “There’s no need for her. Cyn’s there.”

Harry Pevensey rubbed the crust from the rim of his cold cream jar, flicked it from his fingers, then took a very long swallow of his Bombay Sapphire on ice before switching his glass to his left hand and methodically working the greasy cream into his face with his right. Round strokes from the chin up, around the eyes and the forehead, so as not to cause wrinkles, then the wiping with tissues tossed carelessly in the direction of the waste bin. Carefully, he examined the face that emerged from beneath the white mask, and took another swig of gin.

That was one of the few perks still accorded him, the drink sent down from the bar to his dressing room after a performance, even in this miserable pub in Kennington.

His dressing room, indeed. The thought made him laugh. Once it would have been his dressing room, when he’d played leads, or even second leads. But now he’d been relegated to the Stranger in a profit-share production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, with an appearance only in act two, and insult added to injury, sharing a room with a half-dozen amateurs with even smaller parts. There was perhaps no greater sign of an actor’s career in decline.

He’d waited for the others to swipe off their makeup and go giggling into the night so that he could have his gin and contemplation in peace. That much dignity, at least, he had left.

The face that regarded him in the mirror was still handsome enough, the complexion a pale olive, the hair thick and dark except for the smattering of gray at the temples that he covered carefully with dye on a toothbrush. A closer inspection, however, revealed the faint web of broken veins in the nose and cheeks, the slight sagging of jowls, all signs and portents of worse things to come.

Yes, there was no denying that his career was in decline, but the truth was that his whole life had been a decline, except for one brief spark, and that had turned to ashes quickly enough.

He was born Hari Pevensey, the given name a sop from his Anglo father to his Indian mother. His father, the youngest son of declining Dorset gentry, had gone out to “Indya” to try his hand at engineering. At that he had failed dismally, but he had managed to bring home the youngest, dowryless daughter of a minor Indian prince whose fortune had not survived India’s independence.

Nor had the couple’s return to England been a success. What remained of the family had been horrified by the foreign bride who gave herself airs. His father had been found work managing a box factory, his parents and their newborn son installed in a two-up, two-down Victorian semidetached, and Harry suspected that shortly thereafter marital relations cooled to an arctic level that had precluded more children. He could certainly not remember any sign of affection between his parents, both of whom must have felt royally cheated by fate.

Then, when he was five, Harry’s parents had performed the most dramatic feat of their lives by orphaning him spectacularly, having drunk to excess and crashed their car into a Dorset hedge. Spending the remainder of his formative years passed among aunts and his English grandmother, Harry buried Hari as thoroughly as he could; it was his skill in protective coloration as well as his slightly exotic good looks that had got him into a London art school.

Those had been the days, he thought with a nostalgic sigh as he wiped the last dabs of white from his chin. In the early seventies, heady with his first flush of success, he’d hobnobbed with rock stars in Chelsea clubs, drunk too much, slept with anyone who took his fancy, and gradually discovered that his looks concealed a talent that was facile at best.

And now here he was, examining the pouches under his eyes, cultivating a taste for gin he couldn’t afford, and contemplating with great reluctance his return to his once-trendy flat in Fitzrovia.

There was one small ray of hope in his dismal outlook, however. There might be a payoff from the recent little financial gamble he had let himself be talked into, against his better judgment. But then, what good had his judgment ever done him, and what had he to lose? Besides, there had been the satisfaction of spiting Ellen. Even now that thought was enough to make the Sapphire burn more warmly in his stomach.

But in fact, he’d since realized, there might be more to gain than that. If the deal came off, his percentage might keep the creditors at bay a bit longer. Optimism inspired an attempt at a jaunty smile in the mirror. There might still be life in the old devil yet. He ran a brush through his hair, collected his raincoat, and flipped off the lights, and when the doorman tipped his cap to him, Harry saluted in return and set off home whistling.

Like Doug Cullen, Melody Talbot left Duncan and Gemma’s house on foot. She, however, had not far to go, and had been glad to walk in the rain-freshened air. Pulling her coat a bit tighter, she’d detoured around St. John’s Gardens, taking Lansdowne Walk instead. Although she’d never admit it to anyone else, since the Arrowood murders she hadn’t liked walking down St. John’s alone at night.

At Ladbroke Grove she’d cut over a street and entered the station, ostensibly to collect some of her things, but in truth she’d just needed a dose of familiarity. But the building echoed emptily, and few of the faces on the Saturday-night rota were familiar. She rummaged in her desk, to save face, then went out again into Ladbroke Road, the clack of her footsteps loud on the pavement.

The dressy shoes felt artificial, just as she had felt all evening. What had she been thinking, to put herself in such a situation, with superior officers and that nosey parker Doug Cullen to boot?

She’d been flattered to be asked. But it had been much too dangerous, the temptation too great, the revelatory stakes much too high.

Her footsteps finally slowed as she neared her flat. She had never invited anyone there, not even Gemma. It was one of her hard-and-fast rules, and although her address was available in her personnel file, so far no one had had the temerity, or possibly the interest, to show up on her doorstep.

The second thought saddened her, and as she entered her building and took the lift to her top-floor flat, she felt more regret than her usual relief.

What had she got herself into, leading this double life? It had been the rebellion, the gamble of it, in the beginning, the pleasure of flaunting her father’s disapproval, but she hadn’t realized how much she would come to love the job, or just how lonely and isolated her secrecy would make her.

Was she overly paranoid, refusing to invite anyone to her home? The flat, in an updated 1930s mansion block, had been her bargain with her father, his concern for her safety set against her desire for anonymity. But she’d made sure the place was small enough, and sparsely furnished enough, that she could get by with saying it was only a let, and that she’d got a good deal. Admitting that she owned the place was a different matter entirely.

Lowly police constables did not buy flats in Notting Hill. Not unless they had money and influence, both things she’d worked hard at denying since childhood.

But things would never be the same if she were found out. Oh, they couldn’t fire her outright, that would cause a scandal greater than her presence. But she would be quietly pulled from the more sensitive jobs, and there would be no possibility of promotion, not even to some isolated hamlet in Outer Mongolia. There would be jeers and whispers in the canteen, conversations that would stop when she entered the room, and she would never again be one of the mates.

The lift stopped and Melody stood for a moment, blinking in the light of the corridor, before taking the last few steps to her door.

The flat looked just as neat and tidy as she had left it, radio on, Classic FM playing quietly in the background for company. Not neat and tidy, she corrected herself. Sterile.

For once, she kicked off her shoes haphazardly and tossed her coat over the arm of the sofa. Barefoot, she padded to the corner bay window that overlooked Portobello Road. No sound rose from the street. It was past closing and even the pubs were quiet.

It was too bad, Melody thought, that she hadn’t fancied Doug Cullen, the little swot, because she suspected that she just might have encountered someone as lonely as she was.

Gemma made the drive to Leyton on autopilot. It was a good deal farther than it had been when she’d lived in her friend Hazel’s garage flat in Islington, and there was no easy route. She wound her way through the quiet streets, north, then west, skirting Willesden, Hampstead, then Camden Town, all the while her mind revolving in tight little circles of denial. Not her mother, dear God, not her mother. It just wasn’t possible.

Kincaid had argued with her about going to hospital, of course, told her there was nothing she could do tonight, that her father hadn’t wanted her to go.

How like her dad, to have trekked halfway across London rather than to have rung her. He’d wanted to confront her, she suspected, to let her know that he felt what had happened to her mother was somehow her fault.

That had stung, but it wasn’t her brief flare of temper at her dad’s pigheadedness that had sent her flying across London, but panic, and a wash of guilt. How could her mother have been ill and she not known?

She had seen her just a few weeks ago—or had it been longer? Time flew, work and the children kept her busy, and then when she did visit, it was to contend with her father’s silent pall of disapproval. But these were all excuses that seemed flimsy and selfish now.

Leyton slid by, the streets of her childhood suddenly painfully familiar, and then she was entering the grounds of Whipps Cross University Hospital. The silhouettes of the late-Victorian buildings loomed fittingly massive against the pink glow cast by the ever-present city lights.

She had been born here, as had Toby, as had her sister and her sister’s children, not to mention much more noteworthy personages such as David Beckham and Jonathan Ross. But even they were minor footnotes to all the births and deaths this place had seen in the last century.

Familiarity with the complex allowed Gemma to park and find her mother’s ward easily enough, and there she found her sister as well. Cyn was sound asleep, sprawled across three chairs in the waiting area, her red-gold hair tumbled back like a drowning Ophelia’s, her tanned midriff showing, tropical-pink toenails peeking coyly from beneath the hem of her jeans. Trust Cyn to look fetching in even the worst of circumstances, Gemma thought with a burst of irritation, but then her sister emitted a faint snore and Gemma sighed. Cyn was Cyn, after all, but she could at least have rung. She had probably been enjoying her role as the good sister too much—or perhaps, Gemma thought more charitably, she’d just been too worried.

She’d meant to wake her sister, but decided to let Sleeping Beauty lie and speak to the charge nurse instead.

Her heart quickened as she entered the ward itself. The bright lights of the corridor couldn’t combat the dead-of-night silence, the sense she always felt at such times in such places of life hanging by a thread.

But the charge nurse, a slightly tubby Pakistani man, was cheerful enough, and was willing to bend the rules and allow her into her mother’s room. “Anything for London’s finest,” he said, with an assessing stare that meant she probably didn’t measure up to her sister.

“About my mum, do you know anything at all?” she asked, hesitantly, not sure she was ready for an answer.

“Waiting for blood tests, love,” was all he would say. “It’s just down on the right. You can sit with her as long as you’re quiet.”

The cubicle was dark except for the bluish fluorescent light burning above the bed. Her mum looked oddly small and withered against the starched white sheets, and Gemma noticed for the first time that her mother’s red curls were fading to gray. An IV line snaked from a shunt in her hand to the standing pole at the head of the bed, but otherwise there were no wires or tubes, no indication that Vi Walters’s universe had been turned on its head.

Her eyes were closed, her forehead creased in a slight frown, as if sleeping were an effort. When, Gemma wondered, had she last seen her mother in repose? Her mum was always busy, always doing, the only respite she allowed herself the occasional cup of tea in the small kitchen of the flat above the bakery. Sometimes, after a particularly hard day, she would prop her feet on one of the other chairs and sigh, but if Gemma’s dad came in, she would right herself briskly, as if she didn’t want to be seen slacking.

Gemma pulled the stiffly upright visitor’s chair as close to the bed as she could and took her mother’s hand a little awkwardly, unsure if the touch would wake her, but her mum’s eyelids merely fluttered, then the line on her forehead relaxed, as if she’d found some subconscious comfort.

Dawn found Gemma still there, her cheek now pillowed on the bed beside her mother’s hand, when the consultant making early rounds came in with his diagnosis.