At the top there was a platform and from here they could see the width and breadth of Headingley and, beyond, Leeds, expressed in a shallow grey and brown bowl of jumbled shapes. Smoke rolled over, merged with winter clouds, as if the city were crystallising carbon monoxide for fun and relishing the spectacle of its vast exhalations.
When Mark looked at Simmonds with a question on his face, he noticed the round window of his own room, right by the old man’s knees. I was sleeping at the top of the house, he thought, right at the top of the city. But he, in the end, hadn’t had to let down his hair to bring up the prince, a skinhead Rapunzel with a fire escape for back-up.
“Yes, that’s your room,” Simmonds said quickly. “Did you sleep well?”
Embarrassed by the old man’s wheedling, conciliatory tone, and not wanting to give himself away, Mark nodded curtly.
“No—heh—visitors in the night?”
Mark kept stony-faced, gripped the railing and stared out over the city.
“That room—that whole floor of the house, in fact—used to be a factory, you know. It was bought in 1933 by the men who made false teeth for the whole of Yorkshire. They turned out thousands of tiny casts and posted them to dentists in immaculate parcels. Somewhere we’ve got all the casts they used to use. You’d never imagine there’d be so much variety in teeth.
“They bought the floor off the Methodists, who’d been holding services and a Sunday school here since 1903. I used to come here three times on a Sunday when I was small, and here was where I learned to play the organ. When I bought the house from the Tooth Fairies in 1964, I sold that organ for a huge sum. I’ve even had offers for the Tooth Fairies’ cast-off casts. Isn’t that extraordinary?
“But people will have anything if you put a price on it. You can, if you are deemed an expert, place value on absolutely anything, simply by privileging it with a single glance. People look to see where you are looking and suddenly they are interested, too.
“Their interest is piqued. That’s such a good word. Is your interest piqued, Mark?”
He shook his head as if to clear it and spoke without looking at the old man. “I’m bloody confused, if that’s what you mean.”
“But are you intrigued?”
Mark thought. “I’m too easily intrigued. I get drawn in.”
“I thought so!” Simmonds clapped his hands. “Then we’re alike, you and I. You see, when a value is laid on an object, others follow the gaze, and a conflict of interests is bound to result. And who can unpick the crosscurrents of desires that engulf the poor, stranded piggy-in-the-middle? This is when people get jealous, you see.”
Frowning, Mark looked at him. “And who, exactly, is piggy-in-the-middle here?”
“Oh,” Simmonds said lightly, “I’m not drawing an explicit analogy. I hope I have more taste than to be as crass as that. I’m not a didactic man, not at all. Like any connoisseur, I like merely to suggest. If you can impute any meaning at all, set any value on what I imply, then that is up to you. As for who is piggy-in-the-middle…? Well, my dear, out of each of us implicated in this sorry debacle…I would say that we all are, wouldn’t you?”
When would the piggies be sent to market? Mark wondered. He had heard enough and wanted to get back downstairs.
“Did Tony come to you last night?” The old man’s eyes were bright as a cat’s.
“No,” Mark replied. “I haven’t seen him yet at all. That’s the point. I haven’t seen him at all.”
The old man looked shocked for a moment, as if a plan he had assumed was working had fallen to pieces in his hands. “I thought he had. I thought that was the gleam in your eye. I thought he was with you last night.”
Mark shook his head and grunted. He turned to go back down the fire escape, not wanting to tell Simmonds anything about it. No sense in giving yourself away to strangers.
At the bottom, in the frozen garden, he came face to face with Richard.
“Good morning!” Richard called out to them both, smiling warmly at Mark.
Simmonds shuffled past them, returning to his usual querulous self, heading for the kitchen.
“What were you doing up there?”
Mark kept his voice low and said, “He was asking about last night.” Mark was acutely embarrassed. In the daylight Richard looked even younger than he had thought. He was wearing a t-shirt that said ‘WILLY CHOP WIFE WALKS FREE’ in tabloid lettering. They were strangers again, Richard enjoying Mark’s newness. But something had happened in the meantime. No matter how casual, shouldn’t there be a kind of recognition?
“Oh.” Richard suddenly grinned. “So you told him about us getting pissed and ending up dancing like two pensioners to Maria Callas? How could we dance like that to opera? We must have been well gone.”
“I suppose we were,” Mark said thoughtfully. “But I didn’t even tell him as much as that.”
Richard shrugged. “Wouldn’t matter if you did. It doesn’t matter what he thinks, really. It wouldn’t have mattered, even if anything else had happened, either. Nothing to do with him. Let him be shocked.”
At first Mark could only take in the childish impudence of his words. Then he said, “But something did happen, Richard.”
Richard looked at him and laughed suddenly. “Yeah, right. We were so far gone, we’d never remember it anyway.”
Mark froze. “Are you saying you never came back to my room last night?”
“Mark, I didn’t. I wanted to. You knew I wanted to. But you said you wanted to sleep…you said—”
“You didn’t come back? It wasn’t you?”
The question froze lightly in the air. Then Simmonds rapped hard on the kitchen window. The phone was ringing.
SAM HATED THE VERY FEEL OF THE PLACE. SHE HAD BEEN IN LEEDS ONCE before, during a week spent merchandising a new store. All the managers from within a
