The Grin of the Dark

TWELVE - EROS

It could be the same boat on the Thames, and I'm close to imagining that the identical reveller is grinning at me through the elongated window as I approach Natalie's apartment. I haven't time to dispel the notion; I'm late enough as it is. I was still waiting for Charley Tracy to return when it occurred to me that I might miss the last connection home. I would have left his phone in the church if the door hadn't proved to be locked. Presumably whoever had been in there slipped away while I was surveying the moor. Eventually I left the mobile in the darkest corner of the back of the van, because I'd locked the driver's door by slamming it earlier, and hurried downhill. I had to wait almost an hour for a train to Manchester, and the London train was too late for me to catch one to Egham. I spent far too much of the journey in trying to call Tracy's numbers and reviving their recorded messages, but at least I was able to speak to Natalie and let her know I would be missing my last train. 'Stay here,' she said, of course.

I'm reaching for the bellpush when someone opens the outer door. He's taller and broader than me, with shiny cropped black hair. His black leather overcoat extends below his knees and is buttoned up to the neck, which gives his rusty pared-down almost rectangular face a constricted look. 'Thanks,' I say and make to pass him.

His face stiffens like a guard's, and he blocks the entrance. 'Whom do you want?'

I'm tired and more than a little bewildered by the events of the day, and in any case I can do without his attitude. 'How do you know I don't live here?'

He bars the way with one arm while he stands in front of the name-plates for the apartments. 'If you do you'll be able to tell me your name.'

'I didn't say I did. I'm asking why you should think I don't.'

'Instinct, old boy. You need it in my job.'

I'm not about to ask what that is. 'Well, this time it's let you down. Now if you'll excuse me – '

'I think not,' he says and pulls the door shut at his back.

I do my best to laugh, but the last slow ripple in the wake of the boat is louder. 'That's what you do for fun, is it? Good night then.'

'I believe I'll wait to see you move on.'

'Who the bollocks do you think you are?' I enquire so low that I can barely hear my own question.

'I think I should be asking you that without the unnecessary language.'

Is it anger or the light from the plastic slab above the entrance that's applying such a pallor to his face? The glow makes his wiry pad of hair look artificial as a clown's, if shorter. 'I'm staying with Natalie Halloran,' I resent having to tell him.

'She said nothing about it to me.' Before I can demand why he should expect this he says 'I still don't have your name.'

That's because he isn't entitled to it. 'Leslie Stone,' I say with all the conviction I can summon up.

He twists around and pokes Natalie's bellpush with one blackgloved thumb. As I mime rage at his back her diminished tinny voice says 'Hello?'

'Nalatie, it's Nicholas. I have a chappie here who says you know him. Does Leslie ring a bell?'

'I'm not expecting anyone called that.'

'Natalie, it's Simon.'

Nicholas turns his head to display his forthright profile. 'Then why did you give me a different name?'

'Natalie knows why. It's our joke.'

Perhaps it isn't, because there's silence apart from the lapping of water. It seems to me that Natalie waits far too long to say 'All right, Nicholas. I know him.'

She releases the outer door with a buzz, but Nicholas steps in front of it. 'Are you certain you should let him in when you and Mark are by yourselves? He seems somewhat unstable to me.'

'I'm sure I can handle him.'

I want to believe she's mocking his insufferable concern as well as giving me a promise. When he moves aside in slow motion I push the door, and push it harder, and manage not to kick it. 'You've let it lock again, you busy bloodybody.'

I'm even more enraged to have to laugh at my own disarrayed words. I clench my fists while he fingers the button once more. In a few seconds Natalie says wearily 'What's wrong now?'

'Your friend doesn't seem to have made his entrance.'

'What on earth are the two of you playing at down there?'

The instant the door buzzes I try to leave my rage behind. Surely my attitude to this character can't have harmed Natalie's career, but as I step into the hall I turn to him. 'Did she get her interview?'

'She's had it, yes. As far as I'm concerned she's hired.'

I might pursue this if she didn't send a whisper down the stairs. 'Simon, is that where you're going to spend the night?'

'I'm sure I'll be seeing you at work, Nalatie.' Nicholas lifts a hand in either an understated wave or a warning. 'You have my number, so don't hesitate to use it.'

I refrain from retorting that I've got it as well. The leathery creaks of his coat accompany him like a soundtrack recorded too closely as he heads towards Tower Bridge. Natalie is waiting in her doorway, but her first words aren't too welcoming. 'What did you think you were doing, Simon?'

'Sorry if I disturbed Black Leather Man. I wasn't expecting him.'

'Just come in before you start,' she murmurs and steps back. Once the door is shut she says no louder 'He took me and Mark for dinner and then we came back here for a drink. Is there anything else you'd like to know?'

I have to believe there isn't except 'Did I really hear him call you Nalatie?'

'He used to send me valentines at school. He was dyslexic, so I always knew who'd sent them. It's our joke.'

I thought that was my line to share with her. Is she deliberately repeating it, or didn't she hear me earlier? I try to dismiss the issue by saying 'I take it your day was successful.'

'They seemed to like what they saw.'

'They would if they have any sense.'

She touches tongues, leaving me a taste of alcohol, and leads me by the hand into the main room. 'How was yours?'

'Long, and otherwise I honestly don't know.'

'Would you like a drink, or straight to bed?'

'Option number two would make up for a lot.'

'Try not to make too much noise.'

I take it she means on my way to her room. As I sit on the sofa while she uses the bathroom, I'm reminded by a faint smell of leather that Nicholas was here first. That's absurd, and I switch on the television, muting the sound so as not to waken Mark. I've just identified 'Once A Year Day' from The Pajama Game when Natalie emerges, and I extinguish the sight of performers tumbling soundlessly over one another in a park. I use the electric toothbrush I've lodged in the bathroom cupboard, and am tiptoeing across the corridor when a voice blurred by drowsiness says 'Who's at?'

'Go to sleep, Mark,' Natalie calls. 'You should have been asleep hours ago.'

'But who is it?'

'It's me. It's Simon.'

'I want to show you something on my computer.'

'It's far too late,' Natalie intervenes. 'Go back to sleep now.'

'I'll see tomorrow,' I promise Mark and dodge into her room.

She has dimmed the light. In the dusk the stylised roses of the quilt and the wallpaper seem to glow like her invitingly heavy-eyed face, but I'm so tired that I could imagine my vision is being drained of energy. I undress and lay my clothes on top of Natalie's on the chair at the end of the bed. I slip under the quilt, but when I make to prop myself up on the mattress she puts a finger to my lips. 'Let's wait to be sure everything's quiet,' she whispers.

I lower my head to the pillow and drape an arm around her bare shoulder. As we gaze at each other I feel that the day has finally come to rest. Then she says not much louder than her minty breath 'Was your trip worth it?'

'I feel as if I've been changing all day. I got some background. No more film, though. I hope Mark won't be disappointed.'

Natalie's eyes glimmer with some emotion. 'Why should he be?'

'The tape I told him he could watch again got damaged somehow. There's no Tubby on it any more.'

'Oh dear, but maybe that'll mean he'll forget about it. He keeps trying to show me what your find looked like. It stops being funny after a while.'

'Perhaps you should have taken him to your parents.' That's unfair, I know, but it's also my cue to add 'By the way, you know they want me out.'

'They don't know you're here, and even if they did...'

I wouldn't mind hearing the end of that, but I have to explain 'Out of their house by my birthday.'

'Well, this isn't their house.'

'They bought it, didn't they?'

'They gave it to me. It's up to me who comes in it.'

I can't help wishing this didn't also cover Nicholas, which incites me to say 'I thought you didn't like arguments.'

'Not if they're unnecessary. Is this going to be one?' She draws back from me, which is discouraging until I realise that she means to see or be seen more clearly. 'If something's mine it's mine,' she says.

'There isn't going to be an argument.'

She raises her head further, listening for Mark, and then her soft cool fingers take hold of my response to her vow. 'Time you stopped commuting and time I stood up to my parents a bit more.'

'Meanwhile I'm standing up for you.'

'Oh, Simon,' she murmurs, but not too reprovingly, because the joke is more feeble than its subject. She lies back, and I set about kissing her freckles one by one, a process that leads beneath the quilt and makes her clutch at me. I force us both to wait for as long as we can bear, and I'm kneeling over her when I freeze. 'Is that Mark's computer?'

Natalie lifts her head from the twilit bank of flowers that is the pillow. After quite a few seconds she says 'I can't hear anything.'

'I must be tired. Not too tired,' I add hastily and slip into the waves of her. I'm rediscovering our rhythm when I seem to hear the noise again, and I strive to be aware only of Natalie – her smooth limbs holding me tight and tighter, her blue eyes renewing their claim on mine and all that lives within them, her surges summoning mine. Afterwards she falls asleep in my arms, and I could easily follow her into oblivion if it weren't for the noise. Perhaps it's on television; it sounds artificial enough. It must be in another apartment, even though I could imagine that the breathlessly protracted bursts of monotonous laughter are part of the fabric of the walls.