Portobello

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Church of the Children of Zebulun was in a poky little mews off the Portobello Road and nearly as far north along that long serpentine street as you could get without coming up against the Great Western main line. There was a shop selling Central African artefacts in the mews and another offering natural remedies in purple glass jars and bottles. The church had once been a garage with a flat over the top of it. Its founder, now dead, had converted it into a single high-ceilinged room, attached a plasterwork gable to its front and painted the whole edifice a shade of burnt orange. A sign executed in black lettering said 'O, Come, all ye Faithful'.

A regular attender on Sunday mornings, Uncle Gib dressed himself in his best, a black pinstriped suit that had been new when he got married some forty-six years earlier, one of the shirts picked up in a Portobello Road sale and a blue tie, also new for that distant wedding. The suit had once in its long lifetime been cleaned. That was in the days when Auntie Ivy was alive and able to take it to the dry-cleaners. Since then it had been kept in Uncle Gib's wardrobe, its pockets stuffed with mothballs. It reeked of camphor. He had been thin when he married and he was thin now. The mystery (to him) was that the trousers seemed longer than they had been, for Uncle Gib, if no heavier, had suffered one of the drawbacks of old age and shrunk an inch or two.

He enjoyed the services of the Children of Zebulun, usually had something to say when the spirit moved him and sang the hymns lustily while Maybelle Perkins's sister played the piano. Afterwards there was tea and orange squash and Garibaldi biscuits, though Uncle Gib never ate any. He consumed no food outside his own home. But no food or drink was served this Sunday and the service was ended after only fifteen minutes. The Shepherd – the Children had no appointed priest or preacher – had no sooner moved to the lectern and uttered the opening words 'Chosen People!' when he swayed, stumbled and collapsed. His head had scarcely touched the floor before a woman in the front row was on her mobile, calling emergency services. Of that other kind of service there would be no more that day.

Maybelle Perkins assured Uncle Gib she would 'keep him posted' as to the prognosis for the sick man, though he was more concerned at missing the hymn singing than for the Elder's fate. He set off for home, feeling disgruntled, his mood intensifying at every outrage he encountered along the way: shops open on the Portobello Road on a Sunday, pubs open on a Sunday, and those foolish enough to go into them driven out to smoke their cigarettes on the pavement. Uncle Gib lit one of his own but he didn't linger. Turning into Golborne Road, he remembered it as it had once been. Not with nostalgia, still less with longing, but with a kind of practical assessing faculty directed at estimating how much the street had 'come up'. This was something he did most days and with mounting satisfaction. Doing it now went a long way towards dispelling his bad mood.

Continuous heavy rain had brought a rich green to the trees, sycamores and planes, which grew in the pavements. Trees were good. Their presence enhanced properties. The blocks of flats were a desirable replacement for the rows of little slum houses while those that remained, including his own, were of superior size and in most cases, excluding his own, tarted up and painted with new windows and bright front doors. Of course he wasn't going to sell, or not yet, not for a while, but it was good to know one had an investment that made a steady profit… A Sunday newspaper, much handled, which someone had left on top of a wall, he picked up and tucked under his arm. Save him buying one, though he had had no intention of wasting his money on such rubbish.

A man was standing outside his house, looking up at the first floor. He moved off towards the corner when he saw who was coming, though not before Uncle Gib had recognised him as Feisal Smith. This was the man who had come round to his place with another thug, wanting money. Uncle Gib had forgotten why he had wanted money but he was a pal of Lance's, he was sure of that, and as such unwelcome in his vicinity.

Uncle Gib strode after him and, when he turned, shouted, 'Godless layabout!'

A qualified electrician with a steady job, Fize might have taken umbrage at the imputation he was idle but it was rather the adjective 'godless' that riled him. Along with the rest of the males in his family, he had been to the Kensal mosque on Friday as he always did. He might have had a white father, the blond and blue-eyed Smith, but his Assam-born mother knew her duty and had brought him up a good Moslem.

'Fuck off, you useless old git,' he said and added the latest up-to-the-minute insult: 'Smoker!'

Like two male cats who hiss and spit at each other while each keeping his distance, a few yards dividing them, Fize and Uncle Gib remained for a moment exchanging glares, then turned away simultaneously. Uncle Gib let himself into his own house, lighting a fresh cigarette from the stub of the last. The place was utterly silent. In the kitchen the envelope containing the insurance company's form and his cheque for the premium lay already stamped on the table. It was ready to be sent but he had failed to take it with him because of doubts he had as to whether it was sinful to post letters on a Sunday. He had meant to ask Reuben Perkins's advice on this matter but the collapse of the Shepherd had put an end to that.

Lance might be upstairs. If so, he was keeping very quiet. Uncle Gib concluded that he and Feisal Smith had been out somewhere together and had parted at his gate. Out all night drinking probably. He sat down on the sofa and opened the Mail on Sunday. Foot and mouth disease dominated the pages. The floods, now largely subsided, were being blamed for carrying the virus. There was no end to the damage floods could do, Uncle Gib thought, stop trains, cut off electricity, spread disease and wreck your house. A picture on an inside page, accompanied by a scary article, showed how London might look were the floods to come here next time.

Uncle Gib's eye fell upon the letter on the table. How could it be a sin to post it when the contents of the pillar box wouldn't be collected till tomorrow? There could be nothing wrong in a letter going out on a Monday. If it went by the first post on Monday it would get to the insurance company on Tuesday and then if the floods returned his house might be engulfed but the insurance would pay up. Better take the letter now, and then, when he got back, read about Noah and the flood in Genesis. That would be a good and appropriate way to spend the rest of Sunday morning.

Upstairs, in Lance's bed, Lance and Gemma lay in silence, afraid to move. Because his room was in the back they had heard nothing of Uncle Gib's altercation with Fize. As far as Gemma knew, Fize was working overtime, rewiring a house in Shepherd's Bush, but they had heard Uncle Gib come in, a good hour earlier than he should have been. And twenty minutes afterwards they heard him go out again.

'Oh, my God, Lance, that was scary,' said Gemma. 'How long d'you reckon he'll be?'

'Don't know, do I? I don't know where he's at, coming back like that, spying on me.'

Gemma got up, began putting her clothes on. 'I'm outta here, that I do know.'

He crept downstairs with her, opened the front door a crack. The street was empty but for a man hosing down his car. They kissed, a short but passionate clinch. 'Give me a bell,' said Gemma and tottered off on her four-inch heels.

She had been gone no more than two minutes when Uncle Gib was back. Lance was upstairs, listening behind his half-open bedroom door. He wouldn't have been surprised to hear Gemma screaming as Uncle Gib dragged her back into the house, bent on punishing them both, but he was evidently alone. Lance retreated into his bedroom, sat down on the rumpled bed and swallowed, straight from the bottle, the rest of the wine he and Gemma had been too frightened to drink.

Lighting a cigarette and pouring himself a glass of grapefruit squash, Uncle Gib sat down and read Genesis, chapters seven to nine. One verse particularly caught his attention: 'And I will establish my covenant with you: neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood: neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.'

That was all right then. Except that there were floods all the time, especially in foreign places like India. Uncle Gib wasn't worried about the destruction of the earth, only about his house. Genesis and Noah and all that were a mystery. He must make a point of asking Reuben to explain when he was better but meanwhile it might be just as well that he posted that letter when he did.

Eugene and Ella were having a pre-nuptial party. Ella's sister and her husband were there, two of her friends from medical school and two of her partners in the practice. Eugene's actor friend Marcus and his civil partnership partner Lawrence had come, as well as Priscilla Hart, the painter who painted the gold, silver and bronze miniatures and whose exhibition was due, and of course Dorinda; the Sharpes and the owner of William the Bengal cat, but not Elizabeth Cherry who was away on holiday. The conversation, which instead of concentrating itself on the kind of intellectual plane Eugene would have preferred, had turned – at least among the Chepstow Villas contingent and