Another empty lonely weekend, made rather emptier and lonelier because his health had returned and he was beginning to feel well again. He poured himself a glass of wine before sitting down to eat the sandwich he had made for his lunch but, even in his semi-alcoholic days he had always disliked drinking alone. It passed the time, he thought, maybe it would send him to sleep for half the afternoon.
The dreams we have in the daytime are often more vivid and more lingering than those of the night. He was fitter and stronger in the dream than in life, marching along Westbourne Park Road towards the Portobello in search of a pharmacy. In search of Chocorange or Oranchoco. At some point he remembered that there was a pharmacy in Golborne Road and it was for this that he was heading, although as is the way of dreams, especially daylight ones, the place he was aiming for was no longer to be found where it should be. Golborne Road had vanished and a great lake had taken its place, its shores paved with the dark-brown oval lozenges but magnified to the size of rugby balls. A mermaid surfaced and began to sing and beckon to him like the siren she was. He turned from her and ran, waking himself up.
Sitting up and rubbing his eyes, he thought of the quest in his dream and its purpose. He had been doing what had been a regular feature of his life before the virus struck him, shopping for sugarfree sweets. Not just a regular feature but the whole aim and purpose of life, his controlling obsession, the demon he was in thrall to. Now, as far as he knew, he had none in the house. It was November. The previous weekend the clocks had gone back and darkness had come by four. It was getting dark now but no matter, he must go out and find a shop that sold his fix. The one in Golborne Road itself, perhaps, or the sari lady's or Elixir in Kensington High Street or…
He stopped. He thought about what he was doing and realised something. He hadn't tasted or even thought about Chocorange or Oranchoco for more than two weeks. Now when he created one of the sweets in his imagination – once a surefire way of making him long to open a new packet – he felt a small quiver of nausea. He went out into the hall and felt through the pockets of those of his coats and jackets that hung in the cupboard there. He found one, just one, in the right-hand pocket of his leather jacket. The smell of it made his throat rise and he gagged. His reaction to the idea of actually putting it into his mouth, of the touch of it on his tongue, was much the same as it would have been to chewing something scraped off the pavement.
He opened one of the french windows to the garden. Icy air hit his face. A cold breeze had got up, making every branch and bough and twig dip and sway. But still he stood there, breathing deeply. He was over it. His addiction, habit, whatever you liked to call it, was gone. Seven months, excepting a few days' 'phasing-out', it had been with him but it had gone. A virus had beaten it and without his knowing that the process was happening. Bathsheba, bathed in a greenish radiance from his neighbours' lights, her blue coat turned to emerald, stared at him from the shelf on the wall and it seemed to him that her gaze had become mild and even benevolent.
'It's gone,' he said aloud to her. 'It's over.'
He went back inside, closed the door, locked and bolted it. He should be rejoicing, overjoyed, congratulating himself that he was cured. But all he could think of now was that for this stupid fixation, which flu had had the power to destroy, he had lost Ella. For something so absurd, so base, so easily banished – and for good, for ever, as he knew somehow that it would never come back – he had lost her. She was gone as irrevocably as if he had betrayed her with another woman or physically wounded her. For those offences she might have forgiven him but not for this, not because he hadn't been able to give up sucking sweets for her sake. He had lost her for ever.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Her fortieth birthday hadn't been the depressing day she dreaded because Eugene had been with her. Then, in that early morning, when she woke up in the light from the street lamps to see him coming back to bed, she confidently expected him to be with her for the rest of their lives. She could remember every detail of the brief conversation they had had. He told her what he had seen out of the window and then wished her a happy birthday in that funny old phrase she had last heard when her grandfather used it. 'Many happy returns of the day, darling.'
She was getting her returns of the day, though not in the way he had meant. That morning and their lovemaking kept coming back to her. His words repeatedly returned, those spoken in the middle of the night and those when he made her breakfast, brought her cards to her that the postman had left, told her about the new car he had bought her, which would be driven round to the house later in the day. Forty had no longer seemed anything to fear but rather the start of the first decade she would spend as Eugene's wife.
Why think of it? Why let it all run round in her head? Because she couldn't help it. Because whatever else she tried to think about, to concentrate on, their conversations and, worse, their embraces and the real passion she had thought he felt for her as she did for him, kept coming back, and with a fierce intensity. How could he have said the things he had, repeatedly told her he loved her, and then callously rejected her for a childish fixation? She didn't know how he could have, only that he had.
Gemma Wilson was back in the medical centre. A fortnight had gone by since Ella had prescribed sleeping tablets and now she wanted more. She had tried to do without them but her worries were keeping her awake. This time Gemma had brought Abelard with her and Ella, who had known him since he was born, seemed to look at him with new eyes. Had he ever appeared quite so beautiful to her before? He was the perfect blond blue-eyed infant, his skin pink and white, his body strong and neither plump nor thin. Ella, who had never before given much thought to him except to check on his health, now yearned for him.
Writing a second prescription, her head bent so that Gemma shouldn't see the tears that had come into her eyes, she said, 'He's a lovely boy, Gemma, a credit to you.'
'Yeah, I know. I love him to bits.'
'You're not worrying about him, are you?'
'It's my bloke, it's Lance. They reckon he'll be coming up for trial next month. And he never done that fire, Ella, I know he couldn't have.'
'No?'
A cautious look had come into Gemma's face. It was the kind of look that speaks defensiveness but at the same time a need to confess reprehensible things at no matter what cost.
'He wasn't near that house. He was in someone's place in the next street to yours, on the nick if you want to know the truth. It was September fourteen at one in the morning – well, September fifteen by then. Lance never hurt no one but he was on the nick in this lady's house that was away.'
And then Ella knew too. Without her usual warning about not getting into pill-taking habits, she handed the prescription to Gemma. She knew what she had to do and she had to do it quickly.
The films on offer were all on immoral themes. One was actually called
This outing was to mark the first stage in his courtship. That was what you did, he remembered from the first time round, you took her to the pictures. And he had chosen the Electric, not only because it was the nearest cinema – after all, there were buses and what his dad had called Shanks's pony – but because it was there he used to take Ivy when they were courting. This memory had nothing to do with sentiment. Uncle Gib was essentially a practical man with an eye to the main chance. He knew the Electric. If it had been given a makeover and now comprised three or four theatres instead of just one, if it had been newly decorated, still it would hold no major surprises for him. It stood where it always had, its facade was the same, though now painted turquoise, and he could have found his way to it blindfold. Of course, in the old days you could smoke there – everyone did and some,
