cheering up, actually thanked her friend.
'I hope I'm not becoming an alcoholic,' she said. 'I'm sure I would if you and Olive had your way. Of course it's my lodger who has driven me to it. I never used to drink anything stronger than orange juice.'
She had been going to tell Queenie about the encounter with Mr. Singh and what he had unwittingly revealed to her. But somehow she didn't want to discuss her neighbor withQueenie or anyone else and she couldn't describe the lodger'scrimes without involving Mr. Singh. Instead she said, 'I really don't like to ask. It's something of an imposition. But could youbring yourself to go upstairs and knock on his door and tell himI would like to see him this evening at six? Please,' she said,though it went against the grain. 'I have several matters I mus tbring up with him.'
'Well, dear, I will if you don't mind waiting a bit. I've still got to catch my breath after walking all the way here. I waited and waited for a bus but it never came. I'll go up before I go. I promise. Now shall I get you something to eat?' Queenie looked longingly at the bottle. 'Or a drink?'
'Ye could both have a small glass of port.'
'We could, couldn't we? After all, it's Sunday.'
'Surely it's communion wine one drinks on a Sunday,not port.'
'Possibly, dear, but not being a churchgoer I wouldn't know.Shall I be mother?'
Gwendolen shuddered. 'It's fortified wine, Queenie,not tea.'
She thought this habit of bringing a present to a sick friend and then expecting to share it, deplorable. But even a lifetime of rudeness hadn't taught her to drink exclusively in front of someone else. She watched Queenie pouring measures she considered too liberal into the wrong sort of glasses, raised hers and said what the professor used to say in like circumstances,'Your health!'
A snack of cheese and biscuits, fruit, and a slice each of the carrot cake, an offering from Queenie's elder daughter, was eaten off trays laid with ancient yellowing lace-trimmed cloths found in a sideboard drawer. 'You look as if you might drop off to sleep at any moment,' Queenie said.
'The thing isn't the only matter I have to complain to the lodger about,' said Gwendolen as if she hadn't spoken. 'I was expecting a very important letter while I was in hospital. It should have come here and apparently it didn't.' She had nointention of disclosing much about the nature of this letter orits sender to Queenie. 'I suspect Cellini of tampering with it. 'She had long dropped the 'Mr.' 'Unless you or Olive havebeen interfering with my post, which,' she added in a moreconciliatory tone, 'seems unlikely.'
'Of course we didn't, dear. Where would this letter have come from?'
'The postmark would probably be Oxford. And now I really do want to sleep so perhaps you'd go upstairs to the lodger. Sixo'clock he's to present himself.'
Queenie lumbered up the stairs, looking longingly at the telephone as she passed it. But she would only have had to lift the receiver for Gwendolen to hear it and be down upon her like a ton of bricks. For all her seniority, Gwendolen had bette rhearing than she had. On the first landing she removed her punishing high-heeled shoes and, taking deep breaths, struggledon, shoes in hand. If he wasn't in she'd have something tosay to Gwendolen. Her friend needn't think she had a prerogativein rudeness. Two could play at that game.
He was in. He came to the door with a cardigan tied roundhis shoulders and his feet bare. 'Oh, hi. What is it?'
Ever since she was fifteen Queenie had believed, and acted according to her belief, that if you want anything out of a man, if you simply want to exist in his presence, you must be extravagantly polite, sweet, winning, and even flirtatious. It hadn't contributed to her comfort, but to the happiness of her marriage it had. 'Oh, Mr. Cellini, I'm so sorry to bother you and on a Sunday too, but Miss Chawcer says will you be an angel and give her just five minutes of your time at about six o'clock this evening. If you'd just pop down and have a word with her. I'm sure she won't keep you, so if you could… '
'What's it about?' '
'She didn't say.' Queenie flashed him an enormous toothy smile of the kind some man had once told her lit up her whole face, and proceeded to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. 'You know what she is, Mr. Cellini,' she said, betraying Gwendolen without knowing she was doing so, 'awfully fussy about every little thing. Not that you'd think so, would you, from the state of this house?'
'Too right.' Mix wanted to get back to the video he'd made.a couple of weeks back of Man U playing some Central European team. 'Tell her I'll be there around six. Cheers, then.'
When she got back to the drawing room Gwendolen was asleep. She wrote on a scrap of paper. Mr. Cellini will come at six. Love, Queenie.
Up in the top flat the football remained unwatched. Taking the message without much thought; Mix had gone back inside and become an immediate prey to misgivings. She must have found the thong, he thought. Someone had and who morelikely than old Chawcer? He must think up some reason for its being in the copper and the only one he could think of, that he had been doing a girlfriend's washing because her machine had broken down, was obviously not feasible. Who washed in antiquated holeslike that anymore? What was wrong with the launderette? Anyway, it wouldn't account for the fact that he shouldn't have been in her washhouse.
Perhaps he could deny all knowledge of it. That might bebest. Even better, if he could manage it, would be to suggest Ma Fordyce or Ma 'Winthrop had something to do with it. Hecould even say he'd seen one of them with the thong in he rhand. Don't worry about it, he said to himself, don't even think about it. Think about something else. Like what? That Frankfrom the Sun in Splendour might be with the police at this moment? That Nerissa was out with another bloke? No, think about the possibility of offering Brian Brunswick two-fifty for the Volvo. Why shouldn't he go back to the house tomorrow and ask Sue Brunswick to come out in the car with him? She didn't have to be a driver, she only had to sit beside him. That would be brilliant. He could drive her down to Holland Parkor, better still, to Richmond and suggest they had lunch in oneof those trendy pubs. She couldn't refuse, not if she wanted to sell her car. Then, afterward, with the old man, this Brian, out of the way,when they got back to her place…
It would probably be a one-off and just as well. Once he'd got inside Nerissa's house and talked to her over coffee he wouldn't need second-rate women like Sue Brunswick or secondhand cars, he'd have the Jaguar and, above all, he'd have Nerissa. By next Sunday his whole circumstances could have changed. He wouldn't even be here in this flat, attractive as itwas, he'd be moving into Campden Hill Square, he wouldn't need a job or a car or care about what a bunch of old women thought of him. There'd be no murderer's ghost in her house. He'd tell her about the thong and they'd have a good laugh over it together, especially the bit about when he'd told old Chawcer the thong belonged to Ma 'Winthrop. As if she couldeven begin to get it round her fat arse!
He took three 400 milligram strength ibuprofen, put socks and shoes on and his arms into the cardigan sleeves and went down at ten past six. Gwendolen wasn't lying down, she wasn't even sitting down, but pacing the room because the lodger wasover ten minutes late. When he appeared, she was so angry she couldn't control herself.
'You're late. Doesn't time mean anything to people anymore?'
'What was it you wanted?'
'You'd better sit down,' said Gwendolen.
Was it a fact that anger made your blood pressure rise and that you could feel it rise, pounding in your head? Sometimes she thought about her arteries, lined as they must be by now with stuff like the plaque you got on your teeth. Her head swam. She had to sit down, though she would have preferred to stand and tower over him. But she was afraid of falling and thus making herself vulnerable in his presence.
'A very charming neighbor of mine called on me this morning,'she said, taking a deep breath. 'These immigrants to ourshores could teach some people around here what good manners are. However, be that as it may, he had something to tell me. Possibly you can guess what it was.'
Mix could. Though he had been turning over in his mind possible reasons for old Chawcer wanting to see him, this wasn't one of them. He had no explanation to offer. 'With increasing disma, he listened to her long account of Mr. Singh's visit, his misapprehension as to Mix's presence in the garden and her own indignation.
'Now perhaps you'll tell me what you thought you were doing.'
'Digging the garden,' said Mix. 'You can't say it doesn'tneed it.'
'That's no business of yours. The garden has nothing to do with you.' Gwendolen had decided not to mention the thing. The letter was another matter. 'And I've reason to believe you've been tampering with my post.'
'That's a lie, for a start.'
'Don't speak to me like that, Mr. Cellini. How dare you suggest I might be untruthful? You still haven't given me
