Ruth Rendell - Portobello

'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?'