shoulder down the street to where a white removals van waited menacingly. ‘The van will be OK over there for fifteen minutes, won’t it? I saw them towing someone away when I was coming over. Is parking still all right on Sundays around here?’
‘The van?’
Another change of tone, concern perhaps. ‘Are you OK, Jasper? What did you get up to last night?’ She broke away and put her hand up as if to take the temperature of my forehead.
I moved slightly to block the entrance and hoped that the black clouds of adversity that were scudding across my face were being interpreted as evidence of the earliness of the hour rather than the deepening crisis.
Businesslike now: ‘Jesus, Jasp, come on, let’s get you washed and dressed.’
‘We can’t,’ I said, a beat too quickly.
That was it. She was about to catch the insinuating scent of betrayal wafting down the stairs behind me. I could not hug her again. I had to act.
‘I’m not sure about the van,’ I said. ‘We had better check the parking restrictions. I think they’ve changed them because of the Heathrow link and the Paddington basin stuff … and I don’t think you can park here without a permit, even on Sundays. It’s because all the people coming in from the airport started leaving their cars and choking up the whole area. And now they’re just – you know – towing everybody away right, left and centre. Round the clock. We’d better check.’ I shook my head. ‘Did we really agree seven?’
Before she could get a word in, one arm around her waist and the other holding up my jeans, we were off to get a closer look at the nearby lamp-post with the parking notice on it. Three steps away from the door and it clicked shut behind us. Locked.
We stood together, bereft in the early morning street. How I berated myself. Shut out of my own home! How I cursed. And yet how adamant I was that I would not wake my neighbours to get in. Lucy, no! At this hour of the morning? No! Even if we are let into the hall, I’m not sure I left my own front door open! And the only person who has a spare set of keys is the Roach – but he’s a DJ and he doesn’t get up until mid-afternoon and there’s no way I am waking him up now: he’s probably not even home yet! I’ll sort it all out later. Then, how suddenly enthusiastic I became, how eager to be off. Hey, come on Lucy, what’s the problem? I’ll get a shower at your house, borrow some clothes … we might as well get on with it now you’re here. No sense hanging about. I’m up now! And, finally, how quietly apologetic: I’m sorry I forgot. Luce, I really am. I’m such an idiot sometimes …
So, five past seven on a Sunday morning: I had only been awake for less than ten minutes and already I was half-dressed, grinding through the rusty gears of destiny up the hill towards St John’s Wood.
It was a baneful day writhing with the horrors of which nightmares are made. And help, too, was thin on the ground. As usual, Lucy’s elusive sister, Bella, with whom Lucy shared her flat (and whom I had never had the pleasure of meeting in any of my scandalously few visits) was nowhere to be seen – away on holiday again. According to Lucy, Bella also wanted to ‘take the plunge’ and so hadn’t wished to sign another year’s contract either – although, clearly, she was some way behind Lucy in the property-hunting business. ‘Bloody Bella hasn’t even started looking so God only knows what she is going to do with all her stuff when she gets back tomorrow – probably ship it over to Mr Wonderful’s.’ (It may have been my over-zealous imagination but I couldn’t help but feel that the barb of this comment was intended as much for me as for Bella’s boyfriend.) Neither, I might add, were any other of Lucy’s many reported pals in evidence. In fact, the only other assistance was provided by Lucy’s nice-guy landlord and would-be best friend, Graham, a merchant banker with pretensions to photography, whose daily scratchings in that latter-day Golgotha that Londoners call the City had yet to reduce his towering smugness by so much as an inch. (Hey, watch out ladies, here comes Mr Right … and guess what? He’s single! And very nice manners. And so tall.)
Six foot two and boasting of some feeble drink-induced discomfort, Graham appeared shortly after eight, bringing with him – following a quick call on Lucy’s mobile phone – an old Oxford shirt, a pair of jogging trousers and running shoes. Though everything was too big (I am a lean five eleven), I was grateful all the same. Graham, I sensed, liked to inhabit a sartorial Hades all of his own and his charitable offerings could have been a lot worse. Not that this excused the poverty of his mercantile soul.
While Lucy wrote labels and Graham wrapped crockery, I dutifully showered and changed before rejoining the fray, manfully ignoring the toxic Armageddon taking place inside my head.
In what was left of the kitchen, Graham was now pouring lukewarm water on heavily brutalized bags of sawdust and po-facedly serving the results up as ‘cups of tea’. Lucy, meanwhile, was outlining the latest plan: as the van had to go back at one, we would have to make sure that all the remaining bits of furniture were moved first. After that, we were going to be limited to the use of Lucy’s Renault for odds and ends and Graham’s four-by-four LandWaster for the bigger boxes.
‘But I’ll have to be off to meet some of the lads around three, Lucy, I’m afraid,’ Graham said, loyalties already torn so early in the morning. ‘Although I can come back this p.m. if there’s any more needs shifting … and bring a couple of the lads with me – if you want us to tackle the dining room.’
Lucy smiled. ‘No, it’s all right, Graham. That’s very kind. But I really just want to move my desk and that big bookcase out there before you go. My dad did the bed and my sofa yesterday. And the table and all the chairs in the dining room are Bella’s.’
‘Well, tell her she can give me a ring tomorrow when she’s home if she requires –’
‘She’s not getting back till very late but I’ll let her know you’re up for helping when she needs it.’ She turned to me. ‘Are you OK, Jasp?’
‘Yes, I’m fine, thanks.’ I smiled weakly.
Lucy put a hand on my head. ‘Sorry – don’t you like the tea?’
‘No. Yes. It’s OK. I’ll be OK. Just a little …’ I cleared my throat.
She made a face at Graham and then lowered her voice. ‘Jasper is a bit of an arsehole about tea and things. Spends a lot of time on his own.’
Graham shrugged, charitably. ‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with being an arsehole. Plenty of people are arseholes. Just got to make the best of it is all.’
‘You’re right,’ I nodded.
By nine, we had set to – hefting and heaving, staggering and swaying, pushing and pulling, levering in and out and round about, and pounding up and down and up and down and up and down the bastard stairs. Did ever a woman have so much stuff? And to what end? Rails and rails and rails of clothes and shoes innumerable; and then the mutinous fucker of a dressing table and more boxes of clothes (now neatly labelled ‘keep for two years’ or ‘winter’ or – most gallingly – ‘don’t keep’); and then the bookcase and another mirror, complete with a maddening brown blanket that seized every opportunity to embrace the floor. And then the desk. The bloody desk.
The only respite was during the few intermezzi of trundling back and forth across the city in the removal van, knee-deep in the cabin detritus of crisp packets, burger cartons and chocolate wrappers left behind by generous generations of amateur shit-shifters before us.
The van went back and we switched to the car. But it was nearly six by the time we were finished.
At six thirty-nine, I awoke for the second time that day. And for the second time was plunged head first, without apology or warning, into die Scheisse.
I suppose that I must have drifted off to the underpowered lull of the Renault as we pulled away from Lucy’s mother’s Fulham address for the last time; and I suppose that the sudden silence, as she turned off the ignition, must also have woken me up.