Make Death Love Me (24 page)

‘And he'd be so right!' said Alan. ‘I said he was a monster, but I'm not so sure. I wish you'd let me meet him.'

‘No.'

‘All right. I don't meet him and I write to Alison today, now. Will that make you happy, my darling? I'll write my letter and then we'll hire the car again and I'll take you out to Windsor for lunch.'

She smiled at him, thrusting back her hair with both hands. ‘The lights are green and we can go?'

‘Wherever you want,' he said.

She left him alone to write the letter, and this time he didn't lock the door. He had nothing to hide from her because he really did write a letter beginning ‘Dear Alison'. It gave him a curious pleasure to write Una's name and to describe her and explain that he loved her and she loved him. He even addressed the envelope to Mrs Alison Browning, 15 Exmoor Gardens, NW2, in case Una should catch sight of it as he passed through the hall on his way to the post.

His pillar box was a litter bin. He tore the envelope and the letter inside it into pieces and dropped them into the bin, noticing that the last scrap to go was that on which he had written the postal district, North-west Two. Not half a mile away from Alison's house he had seen the boy with the mutilated finger. Suppose he had asked him that question about the buses and the tube and had got an answer and the voice answering had been Suffolk-cockney? What next? What could he have done? Written an anonymous letter to the police, he thought, or, better than that, made an anonymous phone call. They would have acted on that, they wouldn't dare not to. Why hadn't he made the boy speak? It was the obvious thing to have done and it would have been so easy, so easy . . .

Walking back to Montcalm Gardens and Una, he was forced to ask himself something that made him wince. Had he kept silent and fed his incredulity and condemned his over-active imagination because he didn't
want
to know? Because all that talk of redemption and vindication was nonsense. He didn't want to know because he didn't want Joyce found. Because if Joyce were found alive she would immediately tell the police he hadn't been in the bank, he hadn't been kidnapped, and they would hunt for him and find him and take him away from freedom and happiness and Una.

‘You haven't even got a goddamned doctor,' said Nigel.

But there he was wrong, for Marty had needed a doctor in the days when he had worked. Medical certificates had frequently been required for imaginary gastritis or nervous debility or depression.

‘'Course I have,' said Marty. ‘Yid up Chichele.' He clutched his stomach and moaned. ‘I got to see him and get some of them antibiotics or whatever.'

Nigel wrapped a blanket round himself and padded out and lit the oven. He contemplated the bookcase; half a dozen slices of stale bread, two cans of soup and three eggs, four bottles of whisky and maybe eighty cigarettes. Having made a face at these last items, he squatted down to warm himself at the open oven. He didn't want Marty coming into contact with any form of official authority, and into this category the doctor would come. On the other hand, the doctor would reassure Marty – Nigel was sure there was nothing really wrong with him – and that ignorant peasant was just the type to start feeling better the minute anyone gave him a pill. Aspirin would cure him, Nigel thought derisively, provided it came in a bottle labelled tetracyclin. He wanted Marty fit again and biddable, his link and go-between with the outside world, but he didn't want him shooting his mouth off to this doctor about not needing a medical certificate, thanks, and his mate he was sharing with who'd look after him and the girl they'd got staying with them and whatever. Above all, he didn't want this doctor remembering that last time he'd seen him Marty had sported a bushy beard like the guy who had hired the van in Croydon.

A groan from the mattress fetched him back into the living room. Joyce was sitting up, looking warily at Marty. Nigel took no notice of her. He said to Marty, not too harshly for him:

‘Give it another day and keep off the booze. If your belly's still freaking you tomorrow, I reckon you'll have to go see the doctor. We'll like wait and see.'

They had bread and the last of the cheese for lunch, and a tin of scotch broth and the three eggs for supper. Marty didn't eat anything, but Nigel who wasn't usually a big eater felt ravenous and had two of the eggs himself. The main advantage of getting Marty to the doctor would mean that he could do their shopping on his way back. A lot more cans, thought Nigel hungrily, and a couple of large loaves and milk and butter and some of that Indian takeaway, Vindaloo curry and dhal and rice and lime pickle. He wanted Marty to go to the doctor now, he was almost as keen as Marty himself had been on Thursday night.

He didn't seem keen any more when Nigel woke him at eight in the morning.

‘Come on, get dressed,' he said to Marty. ‘Have a bit of a wash too if you don't want to gas the guy.'

Marty groaned and rolled over, turning up the now yellow whites of his eyes. ‘I don't reckon I've got the strength. I'll just lay here a bit. That'll be better in a day or two.'

‘Look, we said if your belly's still freaking you you'd go see the doctor, right? You get down there now and do our shopping on the way back. You can do it at the corner shops, you don't need to go down the Broadway.'

Marty crawled off the mattress and into the kitchen where he ran water over his hands and slopped a little on to his face. The kitchen walls and floor were moving and slanting like in a crazy house at a fair. He took a swig of whisky to steady himself and managed to struggle into his clothes. It didn't help that Joyce, sitting up on the sofa with the blanket cocooned around her, was watching him almost with compassion or as if she were genuinely afraid he might fall down dead any minute.

An icy mist, thick, white and still, greeted him when he opened the front door. It wasn't far to Dr Miskin's, not more than a couple of hundred yards, but it felt more like five miles to Marty who clung to lamp-posts as he staggered along and finally had to sit down on the stone steps of a chapel. There he was found by a policeman on the beat. Marty felt too ill to care about being spoken to by a policeman, and the policeman could see he was ill, not drunk.

‘You're not fit to be out in this,' said the policeman.

‘On my way to the doc,' said Marty.

‘Best place for you. Here, I'll give you a hand.'

So Marty Foster was conducted into Dr Miskin's waiting room on the kindly arm of the law.

Nigel knew Marty would be quite a long time because he hadn't made an appointment. That sort of morning surgery – he knew all about it from the giving if not the receiving end – could well go on till noon, so he didn't get worried. Marty would be back by lunchtime with some food. He was hungry and Joyce kept whimpering that she was hungry, but so what? Nobody got malnutrition because they hadn't eaten for twelve hours.

At one o'clock they shared the can of chicken soup, eating it cold because it was thicker and more filling that way. There was now no food left. Marty was fool enough, Nigel thought, to have taken his prescription to a chemist who closed for lunch. That would be it. He had gone to the chemist at five to one, and now he was having to wait till two when they opened again. Probably wouldn't even have the sense to do the shopping in the meantime.

‘Suppose he doesn't come back?' said Joyce.

‘You missing him, are you? I didn't know you cared.'

The mist had gone and it was a beautiful clear day, sunshine making the room quite warm. Soon they could stop using any heat, and when the fridge came and the TV . . . Nigel saw himself lounging on the sofa with a long glass of martini and crushed ice in his hand, watching a film in glorious colour, while Joyce washed his clothes and polished his shoes and grilled him a steak. Half-past two. Any time now and that little brain would be back. If he'd had the sense to take a couple of pills straight-away he might be fit enough to get down to the electrical discount shop before it closed.

Nigel told himself he was standing by the window because it was nice to feel a bit of sun for a change. He watched old Green coming back from the Broadway with shopping in a string bag. He saw a figure turning into the street from Chichele Road, and for a minute he thought it was Marty, the jeans, the leather jacket, the pinched bony face and the cropped hair. It wasn't.

‘Watching for him won't bring him,' said Joyce who was forcing herself, rather feebly, to knit once more.

‘I'm not watching for him.'

‘He's been gone nearly seven hours.'

‘So what?' Nigel shouted at her. ‘Is it any goddamned business of yours? He's got things to get, hasn't he? Him and me, we can't sit about on our arses all day.'

They both jumped at the sound of the phone. Nigel said, ‘You come down with me,' pointing the gun, but by the time they were out on the landing the bell had stopped. No one had come up from the lower floors of the house. In the heavy warm silence, Nigel propelled Joyce back into the room and they sat down again. Past three and Marty hadn't come.

‘I'm hungry,' Joyce said.

‘Shut up.'

Nothing happened for an hour, two hours. Although Nigel had turned off the oven, the heat was growing oppressive, for the room faced west. If the police had got Marty, Nigel thought, they would have been here by now. But he couldn't still be wandering about Cricklewood with a prescription, could he? The knitting fell from Joyce's fingers, and her head went back and she dozed. With a jerk she came to herself again, and seeing that neither Nigel nor the gun were putting up any opposition, she dragged herself over to the mattress and lay down on it. She pulled the covers over her and buried her face.

Nigel stood at the window. It was half-past five and the sun was going down into a red mist. There were a lot of people about, but no Marty. Nigel felt hollow inside, and not just from hunger. He started to pace the room, looking sometimes at Joyce, hating her for sleeping, for not caring what happened. Presently he took advantage of her sleeping to go out to the lavatory.

The phone screamed at him.

He left the door wide open and ran down. Keeping the gun turned on that open door, he picked up the receiver. Pip-pip-pip, then the sound of money going in and, Christ, Marty's voice.

‘What the hell goes?' Nigel hissed.

‘Nige, I rung before but no one answered. Listen, I'm in the hospital.'

‘Jesus.'

‘Yeah, listen. I'm really sick, Nige. I got hepa-something, something with my liver. That's why I'm all yellow.'

‘Hepatitis.'

‘That's him, hepatitis. I passed out in the doc's and they brought me here. God knows how I got it, the doctor don't know, maybe from all that takeaway. They give me the phone trolley to phone you and they want my gear brought in. They want a razor, Nige, and a
toothbrush
and I don't know what. I wouldn't tell them who you was or where and . . .'

‘You've got to get out right now.
You've got to split like this minute. Right?'

‘Are you kidding? I can't bloody walk. I got to be in here a week, that's what they say, and you're to bring . . .'

‘Shut up! Will you for fuck's sake shut up? You've got to get dressed and get a taxi and come right back here. Can't you get it in your thick head we've got no food?'

Pip-pip-pip.

‘I haven't got no more change, Nige.'

Nigel bellowed into the phone, ‘Get dressed and get a taxi and come home
now.
If you don't, Christ, I'll get you if it's the last . . .' The phone went dead and the dialling tone started. Nigel closed his eyes. He leant against the bathroom door. Then he trailed upstairs again. Joyce woke up, coming to herself at once as she always did.

‘What's happening?'

‘Marty got held up. He'll be here in an hour.'

But would he? He always did what he was told, but that was when he was here in this room. Would he when he was miles away in a hospital bed? Nigel realized he didn't even know what hospital, he hadn't asked. He heard the diesel throb of a taxi from the street below several times in the next hour. Joyce washed her face and hands and looked at the empty bookcase and drank some water.

‘What's happened to him? He isn't going to come, is he?'

‘He'll come.'

Joyce said, ‘He was ill. He went to the doctor's. I bet he's in hospital.'

‘I told you, he's coming back tonight.'

When it got to ten, Nigel knew for certain that Marty wouldn't come. He came back from the window where he had been standing for an hour, and turning to look at Joyce, he found that her eyes were fixed on him. Her eyes were animal-like and full of panic. He and she were alone together now, each the prisoner of the other. He had never seen her look so frightened, but instead of gratifying him, her fear made him frightened too. He no longer wanted her as his slave, he wanted her dead, but he heard the red-haired girl on the phone and then Bridey coming in, and he only fingered the gun, keeping the safety catch on.

Sunday passed very slowly, beginning and ending in fog with hot spring sunshine in between. Nigel thought Marty would phone in the morning, would be bound to, if only to go in for more bloody silly nonsense about having a toothbrush brought in. And when he did he, Nigel, would find out just what hospital he was in, and then he'd phone for a mini-cab and send it round to fetch Marty out. He couldn't believe that Marty would defy him.

When it got to the middle of the afternoon and Marty hadn't phoned, Nigel's stomach was roaring hunger at him. The bookcase cupboard was bare but for the four bottles of whisky and the eighty cigarettes. For the sake of the nourishment, Nigel drank some whisky in hot water, but it knocked him sideways and he was afraid to repeat the experiment in case he passed out. Most of the time he stood by the window, no longer watching for Marty but eyeing the corner shop which he could see quite clearly and whose interior, with its delicatessen counter and rack of Greek bread and shelves and shelves of cans and jars, he could recall from previous visits. Pointing the gun at Joyce, he forced her to swallow some neat whisky in an attempt to render her unconscious. She obeyed because she was so frightened of the gun. Or, rather, her will obeyed but not her body. She gagged and threw up and collapsed weeping on the mattress.