Ruth Rendell: Portobello

It was not yet quite 10.30 but he fell asleep quickly and therefore was awake at six, scarcely able to believe his ears when the phone rang at ten past. No one should phone anyone after nine in the evening was a principle of Eugene's and certainly not before nine in the morning. His 'hello' was icy.

A man's voice, educated, not unlike his own but younger, said, 'I've only just seen your notice. Well, I didn't see it. Someone told me about it. My mother, actually.'

'Do you know what time it is?'

Instead of taking this question as rhetorical, his caller said, 'No, I don't. Quite early, I should think.'

'What is it you want?'

'I think you've got my hundred and fifteen pounds.'

'Ah, yes.' Eugene tried to consider. 'You did say a hundred and fifteen?'

'Yes. It's mine.'

He wasn't yet fully awake. Still, it was apparent this was the rightful owner of the money. What was he going to do about the other chap, he thought fuzzily, the one who was coming today? 'Perhaps you'd like to come here and collect it,' he said.

'I can't do that.' The voice might be educated but it was odd for all that, vague somehow, in no hurry. 'I'm in hospital, had a heart operation,' it said. This perhaps accounted for the oddity. 'I'm going to be in here quite a bit longer. Could you send it?'

'I suppose so,' Eugene said ungraciously and with a sigh. 'Who are you and where do you live – when you're not in hospital, so to speak.'

'But I am in hospital. Look, I'm called Joel Roseman and I live in Ludlow Mansions, Moscow Road. That's West Eleven. But I don't see why you can't send it to the hospital. It's the Welbeck Nightingale Heart Hospital, only it's not in Welbeck Street, it's in Shepherd's Bush. The McCluskie Wing. Have you got that? A cheque would be safer than sending cash.'

What a time to phone! And from a hospital bed! Surely a private clinic by the sound of it, so this Joel Roseman could hardly be in need of the money. Eugene began to feel very uncomfortable and the hot verbena-scented bath he took didn't much improve matters. He should have got the name and phone number of the man who was coming at 6.30 today so that he could put him off. How could he have failed to do that? In his blue silk dressing gown he sat up in a pink velvet armchair, thinking about it. Looking at the very nice Cotman on the opposite wall usually calmed him down but not this morning. He went downstairs, which he seldom did before he was dressed, and in the drawing room, from the fifth drawer down in a tallboy of tiny drawers, opened a fresh pack of Chocorange, put one in his mouth and another in his dressinggown pocket. 'Tooth-friendly', it said on the packet so that was all right. Still, it was the first time he had sucked one of the things before 10 a.m. Another thin end of the wedge. He would just have to go through with it, see this chap and tell him he was too late. Awkward but inevitable. And those things had better be rationed from now on, one more after lunch, two in the afternoon and maybe one before Ella arrived.

But no, not rationed. Given up. He would buy no more.

Suppose the nameless man, his first caller, happened by chance to fix on the right sum? It would be a remarkable coincidence, Eugene thought, but not impossible. He might, for instance, calculate that in naming eighty pounds and a hundred and sixty pounds as the lower and upper limits he, Eugene, would have avoided the sum arrived at by adding forty to the lower and subtracting forty from the upper. So why not take this figure, which was of course a hundred and twenty, and take away five from it? Put like that it seemed not impossible at all to reach this conclusion, hardly a coincidence. Anyone of moderate intelligence could reach it, choosing only between five pounds added to a hundred and twenty and five pounds subtracted from a hundred and twenty.

The only thing to do, then, would be to send a cheque for a hundred and fifteen pounds to Joel Roseman at the Welbeck Nightingale Clinic or the Bayswater address and hand over another cheque for a hundred and fifteen pounds to the man who was coming at 6.30. He could afford it, he would hardly notice it but still he had begun to wonder why he hadn't gone to the police in the first place. Leaving Dorinda to close up the gallery, he left in a taxi for Moscow Road. There was no point in going there, Joel Roseman must still be in hospital, but he was curious about this man who had had a heart attack in the street not far from his own house. Ludlow Mansions turned out to be what he expected, Edwardian red brick with the usual turrets and cupolas protruding from its slate roof, stone steps going up to double doors and inside a gloomy hall with a porter sitting behind a desk. Eugene thought of asking him for Mr Roseman and perhaps being told that he hadn't been in hospital at all but was away on holiday or even up in his flat, but he decided against it.

Another taxi took him to Spring Street. Eugene got there just as the woman in the sari was turning the sign on the door from 'Open' to 'Closed'. It was a sign. The fates or his guardian angel were helping him to give up. From the window he could see the packets of Chocorange and Strawpink ranked neatly alongside throat pastilles and indelicately close to condoms. He turned away. Stopping cold turkey was the only way and, though already craving a Chocorange, he congratulated himself on his strength of mind. But 'cold turkey' was an unfortunate expression, associated with hard drugs, and he wished he hadn't used it even in his thoughts.

A taxi with its orange light on arrived just as he was back on the pavement. Sometimes he thought London taxi drivers ought to give him points for being a frequent fare like a frequent flier. By this time he would be up for a free round-the-world trip. Home now and prepare for the arrival of the nameless man.

Although the front room of Uncle Gib's house was kept 'looking nice' and therefore its door never opened, the exception was when he held a prayer meeting. In preparing for selected guests from the Church of the Children of Zebulun, he went so far as to fill twelve very small glasses (of assorted shapes and patterns) with orange squash but not so far as to clean the room. Fortunately, most of the visitors to the house in Blagrove Road spent their time on their knees, for if anyone sat down on the horsehair sofa or one of the chairs, clouds of suffocating dust puffed out of the upholstery.

Normally calm and laid back, Uncle Gib became rather nervous on prayer meeting evenings and got through at least ten cigarettes in the preceding two or three hours. He was anxious to be rid of Lance before the first Child of Zebulun arrived. His own past was no longer of importance. Several years before, he had repented in front of the whole congregation, been named and shamed, called a lost sheep, bleating and wretched, at last been forgiven and received into the fold. Now, thanks to the infinite mercy of God, he was an Elder. Things were different for Lance, unregenerate shoplifter, mugger, mobile phone thief and batterer of the woman he had lived in sin with, taker of the Lord's name in vain and a no-good son to his parents. When you came to think of it – and Uncle Gib often did think of it – there was no commandment Lance did not regularly flout, except the one about not making a graven image. Nor, as far as Uncle Gib knew, had he yet killed anybody.

Lance must be well out of the place before six when the prayer meeting was due to start. Earlier in the day he had announced his intention of leaving the house at 'around six' and 'going to see a bloke about a job'. Uncle Gib didn't believe in the job or in any job connected with Lance but he felt his usual satirical rejoinder might be out of place. Lance might change his mind and stay at home. At twenty to six he had his eye on the minute hand of Auntie Ivy's family grandfather clock and was already beginning a nervous pacing. Lance had been up in his bedroom, sitting on the bed thinking about the money in no very systematic way and coming to the conclusion that the sum might be ninety pounds or a hundred and fifty-five and he was just going to have to guess. Gradually, his thoughts turned, as they often did, to Gemma, the girl whose eye he had blacked and tooth he had knocked out. He missed her and not just her TV set and her microwave. The walk to Chepstow Villas would take him very near her flat in Talbot Road. There was a chance she might come out on to her balcony to hang out her washing. Or she might be parking the baby buggy or, since it was warm and sunny, just sitting in one of the chairs opposite the one he used to sit in. After a moment or two, brooding on what he had lost, he went to the top of the stairs and traipsed slowly down them.