Sweet Tooth (20 page)

One dark late afternoon in December, three days before the end of term, he is mugged in the street. Monica has asked him to go to the bank at lunchtime to draw out seventy pounds from the joint account so that she can buy presents and Christmas treats. It is almost all they have by way of savings. He has turned into his own road, which is narrow and poorly lit, and is a hundred yards from his front door when he hears steps behind him and feels a tap on his shoulder. He turns and
standing before him was a kid of sixteen or so, West Indian, holding a kitchen knife, a big one with a serrated blade. For a few seconds the two stood close, less than three feet apart, staring at each other in silence
. What troubles Sebastian is the boy’s agitation, the way the knife trembles in his hands, the terror in his face. Things could easily get out of control. In a quiet shaky voice the boy asks for his wallet. Sebastian raises his hand slowly to the inside pocket of his coat. He is about to give away his children’s Christmas. He knows he is stronger than the kid and he calculates that as he holds out his wallet he could strike out, hit him hard on the nose and snatch the knife off him.

But it is more than the kid’s agitation that restrains Sebastian.
There was a general view, strongly held in the staffroom, that crime, especially burglary and mugging, was caused by social injustice
. Robbers are poor, they’ve never had the right chances in life and can hardly be blamed for taking what isn’t theirs. This is Sebastian’s view too, though he’s never given the matter much thought. In fact, it isn’t even a view, it’s a general atmosphere of tolerance that surrounds decent educated people. Those who complain about crime are likely to complain also about graffiti and litter in the streets and hold a whole set of distasteful views on immigration and the unions, tax, war and hanging.
It was important therefore, for the sake of one’s self-respect, not to mind too much about being mugged
.

So he hands over his wallet and the thief runs away. Instead of going straight home Sebastian walks back towards the High
Street and goes to the police station to report the incident. As he speaks to the desk sergeant, he feels a bit of a cad or a snitch, for the police are clearly agents of the system that forces people to steal. His discomfort increases in the face of the sergeant’s grave concern, and the way he keeps asking about the knife, the length of the blade, and whether Sebastian was able to see anything of the handle. Of course, armed robbery is a very serious offence. That kid could go to jail for years. Even when the sergeant tells him that there was a fatal stabbing only the month before of an old lady who tried to hang on to her purse, Sebastian’s unease is not dispelled. He shouldn’t have mentioned the knife. As he walks back along the street, he regrets his automatic impulse to report the matter. He’s becoming middle-aged and bourgeois. He should have taken responsibility for himself. He is no longer the sort of guy who puts his life on the line and climbs up sheer faces of granite, trusting his agility, strength and skill.

Because he is beginning to feel weakness and trembling in his legs he goes into a pub and with the loose change in his pocket is just about able to afford a large scotch. He downs it in one, and then he goes home.

The mugging marks a decline in his marriage. Though Monica never says so, it is clear she doesn’t believe him. It’s the old story. He’s come home stinking of drink, protesting that someone has run off with the holiday money. The Christmas is wretched. They have to borrow from her haughty brother. Her distrust kindles his resentment, they are distant with each other, they have to pretend to be jolly on Christmas Day for the sake of their children, and that seems to heighten the bleakness that comes down to trap them into silence.
The idea that she thought he was a liar was like a poison in his heart
. He works hard, he is loyal and faithful and keeps no secrets from her. How dare she doubt him! One evening when Naomi and Jake are in bed, he challenges her to tell him that she believes him about the mugging. She is immediately angry, and won’t say whether she does or not. Instead, she
changes the subject, a trick in argument, he thinks bitterly, she is supremely good at and one he should learn himself. She is sick of her life, she tells him, sick of being financially dependent on him, of being stuck at home all day while he is out advancing his career. Why have they never considered the possibility of him doing the housework and looking after the children while she resumes her career?

Even as she says all this he is thinking what an attractive prospect it is. He could turn his back on those awful kids, who never keep quiet or stay in their seats in his classes. He could stop pretending to care whether they ever spoke a word of French. And he likes being with his children. He would get them to their school and playgroup, then take a couple of hours for himself, perhaps fulfil an old ambition and get some writing done before picking up Jake and giving him lunch. Then an afternoon of childcare and light housework. Bliss. Let her be the wage slave. But they are having a row and he is in no mood to make conciliatory offers. He brings Monica back sharply to the mugging. He challenges her again to call him a liar, he tells her to go to the police station and read his statement. In reply, she leaves the room, slamming the door hard behind her.

A sour peace prevails, the holidays end and he goes back to work. It’s as bad as ever at school. The kids are absorbing from the culture at large a cocky spirit of rebellion.
Hash, spirits and tobacco were playground currencies
, and teachers, including the headmaster, are confused, half believing that this atmosphere of insurrection is a token of the very freedom and creativity they are supposed to be imparting, and half aware that nothing is being taught or learned and the school is going to the dogs. The ‘sixties’, whatever they were, have entered this decade wearing a sinister new mask.
The same drugs that were said to have brought peace and light to middle-class students were now shrinking the prospects of the hard-edged urban poor
. Fifteen-year-olds come to Sebastian’s classes stoned or drunk or both. Kids younger than them have taken LSD in
the playground and have to be sent home. Ex-pupils sell drugs at the school gates, standing there openly with their wares alongside the mums and their pushchairs. The headmaster dithers, everyone dithers.

At the end of the day Sebastian is often hoarse from raising his voice in class. Walking home slowly is his one comfort, when he can be alone with his thoughts as he makes his way from one bleak setting to another. It’s a relief that Monica is out at evening classes four times a week – yoga, German lessons, angelology. Otherwise, they step around each other at home, speaking only to manage the household. He sleeps in the spare room, explaining to the children that his snoring keeps Mummy awake. He is ready to give up his job so that she can go back to hers. But he can’t forget that she thinks he’s the sort of man who can drink away the children’s Christmas. And then lie about it. Clearly, there is a far deeper problem. Their trust in each other has vanished and their marriage is in crisis. Swapping roles with her would be merely cosmetic. The thought of divorce fills him with horror.
What wrangling and stupidity would follow! How could they inflict such pain and sadness on Naomi and Jake?
It is his and Monica’s responsibility to sort this matter out. But he does not know how to begin. Whenever he thinks of that boy and the kitchen knife in his hand, the old anger returns. Monica’s refusal to believe him, to believe in him, has broken a vital bond and seems to him a monstrous betrayal.

And then there is the money: there is never enough money. In January their twelve-year-old car needs a new clutch. This in turn delays the repayment to Monica’s brother – the debt is not settled until early March. It is a week later, while Sebastian is in the staff room at lunchtime, that he is approached by the school secretary. His wife is on the phone and needs to speak to him urgently.
He hurried to the office nauseous with dread. She had never phoned him at work before, and it could only be very bad news, perhaps something to do with Naomi or Jake
. So it’s with some relief that he hears her tell
him that there has been a break-in that morning at the house. After dropping off the children, she went to her doctor’s appointment, then to the shops. When she got home the front door was ajar. The burglar had got in round the back garden, broken a window at the rear of the house, lifted a catch and climbed in, gathered up the stuff and gone out by the front. What stuff?
She listed it all tonelessly
. His precious 1930s Rolleiflex, bought years ago with the proceeds of a French prize he won at Manchester. Then, their transistor radio and his Leica binoculars, and her hairdryer. She pauses, and then she tells him, in that same flat voice, that all his climbing gear has been taken too.

At that point he feels the need to sit down. The secretary, who has been hovering, tactfully leaves the office and closes the door.
So much good stuff carefully accumulated over the years, and so much of sentimental value, including a rope he once used to save a friend’s life during a descent in a storm in the Andes
. Even if the insurance covers it all, which Sebastian doubts, he knows he will never replace his mountaineering equipment. There was too much of it, there are too many other priorities. His youth has been stolen.
With his upright, goodhearted tolerance deserting him, he imagined his hands closing around the thief’s windpipe
. Then he shakes his head to dismiss the fantasy. Monica is telling him that the police have already been round. There is blood on the broken windowpane. But it looks like the thief wore gloves, as there are no fingerprints. He tells her that there must have been two burglars at least, to lift all his gear out of the cupboard and carry it quickly from the house.
Yes, she agreed in her affectless voice that there must have been two
.

At home that evening he can’t resist punishing himself by opening the cupboard under the stairs and gazing at the space where his equipment was.
He restored the buckets and mops and brushes to their upright position, then he went upstairs to look in his sock drawer, where he had kept his camera
. The thieves knew what to take, though the hairdryer matters less since there
are two. This latest setback, this assault on their domestic privacy, does nothing to bring Sebastian and Monica closer. After a brief discussion they agree not to tell the children about the break-in and she goes off to her class. In the days that follow he feels so low he can barely bring himself to make the insurance claim. The full-colour handbook boasts of ‘solid protection’ but the small print in the schedule is miserly and punitive. Only a fraction of the camera’s value is covered, and the climbing gear not at all because he failed to itemise it.

Their dreary co-existence resumed
. A month after the burglary, the same school secretary seeks out Sebastian at break to tell him that there’s a gentleman to see him in the school office. In fact he is waiting for Sebastian in the corridor, holding a raincoat over his arm. He introduces himself as Detective Inspector Barnes and he has a matter to discuss. Would Mr Morel care to drop by the police station after work?

A few hours later he is back at the front desk where he reported the mugging before Christmas. He is obliged to wait for half an hour before Barnes is free. The DI apologises as he shows him up three flights of concrete stairs and ushers him into a small darkened room.
There was a fold-down screen on a wall and a film projector in the centre of the room balanced on what looked like a bar stool. Barnes showed Sebastian a seat and began his account of a successful sting
. A year ago the police rented a run-down shop in a side street and staffed it with a couple of plainclothes officers. The shop bought secondhand goods from the public, the idea being to film thieves as they came in with stolen goods. With a number of prosecutions now under way, the cover has been blown and the shop has closed. But there are one or two loose ends. He dims the lights.

A hidden camera is positioned behind the ‘shop assistant’ and gives a view of the door onto the street and, in the foreground, the counter. Sebastian has already guessed that he is about to see the young guy who mugged him come into
the shop. With a successful identification, he’ll be done for armed robbery, and that will be fine. But Sebastian’s guess is wildly wrong. The person who comes in with a holdall and sets down on the counter a radio, a camera and a hairdryer is his wife. There she is, in the coat he bought her some birthdays ago. By chance she turns and looks towards the camera, as if she has seen Sebastian and is saying, Watch this! Soundlessly, she exchanges a few words with the assistant and together they go outside and come back moments later dragging three heavy canvas bags. The car must be parked right outside. The shop assistant peers inside each of the bags, then goes back behind the counter, glances over the items. There follows what must be a negotiation over prices.
Monica’s face was lit by a bar of fluorescent light. She seemed animated, even elated in a nervous sort of way. She smiled a lot and at one point even laughed at a joke the plainclothes policeman made
. A price is agreed, banknotes are counted out, and Monica turns to leave.
At the door she stopped to make a parting remark, something more elaborate than a goodbye, and then she was gone and the screen went black
.

The DI switches off the projector and turns up the lights. His manner is apologetic. They could have prosecuted, he says. Wasting police time, perverting the course of justice, that sort of thing. But clearly this is a delicate domestic matter and Sebastian will have to decide for himself what to do. The two men go down the stairs and out into the street. As he shakes Sebastian’s hand the DI says he is terribly sorry, he can see that this is a difficult situation and he wishes him all the best with it. Then, before he goes back into the station, he adds that
it was the view of the police team working in the shop, who had recordings of what was said at the counter, that ‘Mrs Morel probably needed help’
.