Ten minutes later when he went back to the window, the man had gone. He heard Bridey’s door close and her feet on the stairs as she went off to work.

22

Alan was almost sure he had got the wrong room. The young man with the fair hair, who just now had opened the window and leant out as if he meant to call to his watcher, must be the Green whose name was on the third bell. After the window had closed and the angry-looking face vanished, Alan had crossed the road and pressed that third bell several times, stood there for seconds with his thumb pressed against the push, but no one had come down to answer it.

He walked away and was in the corner shop buying a paper when he saw the girl called Flynn go by. He would talk to her just once more, he thought. The Rose of Killarney was due to open in ten minutes.

This was the second time since Monday that he had come to Cricklewood. He would have come on Wednesday and made it three times, only he couldn’t do that to Una, couldn’t keep on lying to her. Besides, he thought he had exhausted his powers of invention with Tuesday’s inspiration which was that he had to see his solicitor about Alison. Una accepted that without comment. She was busying herself with preparations for their departure on Friday, writing letters, taking Ambrose’s best dinner jacket to the cleaners, ordering a newspaper delivery to begin again on Saturday. But Tuesday’s sortie did him no good, he was no forrarder. Although he had spent most of the afternoon watching the house and walking the adjacent streets, he had seen no one, not even the Irish girl, come in or go out.

When he got back he had to tell Una he had been with the solicitor and what the man had said. It was easy for him to say that he would be giving up his share of his house to Alison because there was a good deal of truth in this, and he was rather surprised as well as moved when Una said this was right and generous of him, but how he must feel it, having worked for so many years to acquire it!

‘You must think me very weak,’ he said.

‘No, why? Because you’re giving up your home to your wife without a struggle?’

Of course he hadn’t meant that, but how could she know? He longed to tell her who he really was. But if he told her he would lose her. He had done too many things for which no one, not even Una, could forgive him; the theft, the betrayal of Joyce, the lies, the deceitfully contrived fabric of his past.

That evening they had gone out with Caesar and Annie, but on the Wednesday they spent the whole day and the evening alone together. They found a cinema which was showing Dr Zhivago because Alan had never seen it, and then, appropriately, they had dinner in a Russian restaurant off the Old Brompton Road because Alan had never tasted Russian food. When they got home Ambrose phoned from Singapore where it was nine o’clock in the morning.

‘He was sweet,’ said Una. ‘He said of course he understands and he wants me to be happy, but we must promise to come back and see him for a weekend soon and I said we would.’

Alan thought he would feel better about Joyce once he was in Devon and couldn’t sneak out up to Cricklewood in the afternoons, for he knew he was going to sneak out again on Thursday. It was Una who put the idea into his head, who made it seem the only thing to do, when she said she’d buy their tickets and make reservations and then go on to the hairdresser. He could go out after she had gone and get back before she returned. He would definitely get hold of the Irish girl or of Green if Foster didn’t answer his bell. It ought to be simple to find out what time Foster came home from work, and then catch him and, on some pretext, speak to him. With pretexts in mind, Alan picked up from the hall table in Montcalm Gardens a brown envelope with The Occupier written on it, and which contained electioneering literature for the County Council elections in May. He put it into his pocket. After all, it would hardly matter if Foster opened it in his presence and saw that it was totally inappropriate for someone who lived in Brent rather than Kensington and Chelsea, for by then Alan would have heard his voice.

It was a cool grey day, of which there are more in England than any other kind, days when the sky is overcast with unbroken, unruffled vapour, and there is no gleam of sun or spot of rain. Alan was glad of his windcheater, though there was no wind to cheat, only a sharp nip in the air that lived up to its name and seemed actually to pinch his face.

He began by pressing Foster’s bell several times. Then he walked a little before trying again. It was rather a shock to see an old man come out of the house, because he had somehow got it into his head by then that, in spite of the names on the bells, only the Irish girl and the fair-haired young man inhabited the place. The old man was deaf. Alan caught him up a little way down the road and tried to ask him about Foster, but it seemed cruel to persist, a kind of torment, and he felt embarrassed too, though there was no one else about to hear his shouts.

He tried the bell marked Flynn, and because there was no answer to that one either, went back to the Broadway and had a cup of tea in a café. He supposed he must have missed seeing the girl come home because he had been back to the house and tried Green’s bell in vain and was now buying his paper when he caught sight of her turning into Chichele Road, plainly on her way out, not her way home. There was a paragraph on an inside page of the Evening Standard to the effect that the car stolen in Capel St Paul had been found in Epping Forest. Kidnap Car in Forest Hideaway. But the paper contained nothing else about the robbery, its leads being Man Shot in Casino and 77 Dead in Iran Earthquake. He walked along the wide pavement, which had trees growing out of it, until he came to the Rose of Killarney. When it got to five, the Flynn girl herself came out to open the doors.

Bridey had been frightened of the man in the windcheater only for a very short space of time. This was in the seconds which elapsed between her opening the front door to him and her return of the five-pound note. She was no longer afraid, but she wasn’t very pleased to see him either. She felt sure he was a policeman. He said good afternoon to her which made her feel it was even earlier than it was and reminded her of the great stretch of time between now and eleven when they would close. Bridey made no answer beyond a nod and walked dispiritedly back behind the bar where she asked him in neutral tones what he would have.

Alan didn’t want anything but he asked for a half of bitter just the same. Bridey accepted his offer of a drink and had a gin and tonic. An idea was forming in her mind that, although she would never dream of calling the police or going out of her way to shop anyone to the police, in this case the police had come to her which was a different matter. And she would like to have revenge on Marty Foster for insulting her and showing her up in front of the whole saloon bar. She had never really believed that story of the five-pound note being dropped by Marty as he left the Rose of Killarney. More probably the man in the windcheater was after him for theft or even some kind of violence. Bridey wasn’t going to ask what he was wanted for. She listened while the policeman or whatever talked about ringing bells and not getting answers, and about old Green and someone else he seemed to think was called Green – she couldn’t follow half of it – and when he had finished she said:

‘Marty Foster’s got flu.’

Alan said, half to himself, ‘That’s why he doesn’t answer the door,’ and to Bridey, ‘I suppose he’s in bed.’ She made no answer. She lit a cigarette and looked at him, gently rocking the liquid in her glass up and down.