Page 13

T HE MAITRE D’, OR WHATEVER you might call that in an Indian rather than French restaurant, asked Aaron for a private word as he paid the bill. Aaron went with him, and was a good five minutes in the back room. Joel wondered what it was about, but not very hard. He was preoccupied.

He’d been decidedly unimpressed by Aaron’s failure to contact him as promised, and as the days passed, he’d had to face the fact that he was not just feeling snubbed, and welshed on, but disappointed. Their night together had been something out of the ordinary. Aaron’s need, and restraint, and how he’d finally surrendered himself, putting himself entirely in Joel’s hands. Hand.

And it wasn’t just that he did indeed bang like a barn door in the wind. It was the rawness when he spoke, as though he never told anyone anything and didn’t know how to do it. It was the inexplicable feeling that he trusted Joel, and Joel could trust him.

Met fucking Police. Joel must be off his chump.

And yet here he was now, waiting for a man with a laundry list of problems who’d ignored him for weeks and then sent a telegram ordering his presence, and who was even now in the back room with a doe-eyed and handsome restaurant proprietor doing God knows what. That said, Joel would fuck for this food, so he couldn’t argue that one.

So he waited until Aaron emerged—looking, it had to be said, grim-faced rather than sexually replete—and they thanked the proprietor and headed out into Soho.

The night was bright with lights despite the darkness and faint prickle of moisture in the air. It was not yet nine o’clock. Joel didn’t want to ingest anything else for several days, but he suggested, “Want to stop for a drink?”

“Not in Soho, I was stationed here for a while. Do you want one?”

“I’d rather walk the food off, if you’re all right with that.”

“Absolutely. How have you been?” Aaron asked, somewhat abruptly. “I am aware I’ve just talked about myself.”

“You have more going on. I’ve been fine. Nothing new. Clients. Saving up.”

“No trouble from Paul?”

“Not a peep.” Joel felt slightly bad now about mocking his relationship with his cousin. “It’s been terribly boring.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Aaron muttered. “What about your family? Since you know about mine.”

“I don’t have one. My father didn’t care for how I am, my brother was the same but more so, and my mother and sister weren’t going to put themselves in the firing line for my sake. I shook the dust off my feet a long time ago. Well, they strongly encouraged me to shake it off, but whatever.”

“You’ve never gone back?”

“Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know,” Aaron said. “Maybe it’s easier as a grown man, or at least different.”

“Perhaps my brother has matured into a thoughtful man who regrets his bullying ways, and my mother wants nothing more than to see her lost son once again. That’s possible, right?”

“Yes, surely.”

“Then it wouldn’t be hard for them to find me and say so. There’s not a lot of Joel Wildsmiths in the world; they could send their letters of regret and reconciliation to me at any time. Only, they haven’t, so I’m going to assume nothing’s changed, and not trouble to put myself through finding out for certain.”

“Right,” Aaron said. “Fair. I’m sorry it was like that. My father wasn’t easy and my mother had regrets, but my sister would fight tigers for me and that made a huge difference.”

“You sound like you’re very fond of her too,” Joel said, needing to shift the subject. “And a niece, was it?”

“That’s right. Violet is three, and shaping up to become a force of nature like her mother. Roger, Sarah’s husband, is the most placid man alive, and needs to be.”

Prodded further, Aaron told a couple of stories about his niece and sister—inconsequential stuff, just the trivial web of incident and amusement that made up family life, but told with immense warmth and clear fondness. Joel listened and laughed, and wondered how a man with so much love to give could be so lonely.

Well, he knew how. Aaron had told him.

They had walked up Charing Cross Road. By silent consent they swung right along New Oxford Street, dodging the crowds, heading towards Holborn.

“Is it more comfortable here?” Joel asked. “Out of Soho, I mean.”

“At least before we get into King’s Cross and Clerkenwell.”

“You probably see the streets entirely differently, don’t you? For me it’s just another bit of London, and for you it’s a place of crimes and gangs and murders and, uh, traffic offences.”

“It’s not that bad. But you get to know a lot of faces, I will grant.”

“And people know yours. I like to be anonymous in the crowd: it’s why I came to London.”

They walked up Theobald’s Row, feet in comfortable synchronisation. Joel was beginning to feel slightly less bloated.

“That was a magnificent meal, in case I didn’t make that clear,” he said. “Debt paid in full. What were you talking to the owner johnny about? You looked rather annoyed.”

Aaron exhaled. “A small annoyance. Nothing to concern you.”

Well, that was him told. “I beg your pardon. Didn’t mean to interfere in your private business.”

“No, it was a fair question. I just can’t tell you the answer.”

It wasn’t Joel’s affair and in truth he didn’t care; he’d just been making conversation. But the response was yet another Thus far and no further from Aaron, and it reminded Joel abruptly that he’d been a whisker from dropping the telegram into the waste-paper basket.

“So are you planning to come up?” he asked abruptly.

“Up?”

“To mine.” He’d made the invitation earlier, as he kept making all the running. He needed to hear something back, even just a clear Yes, please .

Pause. Then Aaron said, “I don’t think so.”

“Right.” That was a bucket of icy water. “Right. Of course. Entirely up to you. Just out of interest, what was the fucking point of this, then?”

“Point of what?” Aaron asked, and it was such an obvious bit of stalling that Joel’s temper exploded.

“Come off it. You didn’t invite me to dinner because you wanted company, still less walk up this way when you live in Lisson Grove.”

“You have no idea how much I wanted company.”

“Right, of course. So naturally you called me, a man with whom you have had frequent interesting conversations.”

“Yes,” Aaron said. “I enjoy talking to you, and I owed you dinner, so—”

“The funny thing is, I read your hand and saw a painfully honest man,” Joel said. “And yet on this subject, you lie like stink.”

Aaron gave the harsh exhale of exasperation. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Well, ‘Last time was wonderful, shall we do it again?’ would be nice, and ‘I’m too much a coward to ask for what I want’ would be truthful, and ‘I’d rather be celibate forever than fuck you again’ would at least put an end to this farrago. I’d just like you to make up your mind what you want and stick to it, that’s all, because this pissing around is—” Painful , he wanted to say. Gutting. Leaving me lonelier than just being alone would. “Fucking annoying.”

“It’s not about what I want, because what I want and what I can have are extremely different things,” Aaron’s voice rasped. “It would be too great a risk for us both.”

“Then why did you summon me for this evening in the first place?”

“I told you! Why is that so hard to believe? Don’t you think you have any other worth in life than—than—”

“Fucking? Yes, I do. I’ve got plenty of worth. I’m dripping in worth, me in my shitty flat with my made-up job and my missing hand, because at least I have the guts to know what I want and try for it, and that’s more than you do, Detective Sergeant!”

“Christ, don’t start that again. And why the devil are you so offended?” Aaron demanded, in one of those voices that combined shouting and whispering to strangulated effect. “Why is it such an affront to have someone seek you out for your company, not your—services?”

“Services? Fuck you!”

“You know what I mean.”

“You might find out what you mean yourself, if you had the balls to say it,” Joel informed him. He felt rather sick, and it wasn’t the overeating.

He didn’t think he was only worth fucking. He had plenty of friends, and a job of sorts, and a whole life he’d built all by himself in a world that kept taking things away from him. If he didn’t have healthy self-esteem, he at least had enough front that nobody else could tell the difference.

That wasn’t the problem. The problem was his response to Aaron’s hand, and how much he wanted the policeman to look at him with those dark eyes lit by desire, and that when Aaron’s telegram had arrived, he’d stupidly, irrationally hoped , because all his hard-won experience of life, all his common sense, hadn’t been enough to stop him believing deep down that this, between them, was something special.

So he’d offered, and Aaron had turned him down flat, and now he felt like a self-deluding fool, begging for crumbs, again . He should have known it was all going to end in tears; everything did, but he had thought they might have fun on the way.

“Fuck you,” he said again, since it summarised his thoughts so neatly. “We’re not friends, I don’t know the rules to the game you’re playing, and I’m tired of it.”

“Joel!” Aaron said. “Will you just listen?”

“To what?”

Aaron grabbed his arm. Joel wrenched it away. “Look, I’m sorry. I just wanted to see you, and that was selfish of me. And yes, I wish to God I could have more than just a meal with you, but I can’t. And that’s not because of you in any way.”

Why is it, then? Joel wanted to ask, but that way madness lay. He was not going to lay himself open to another rejection. He was going to extricate himself from this hot-and-cold nonsense with a man he barely knew, and stay well out of whatever trouble Aaron was in. He had money to earn.

“Whatever,” he said. “It’s been fun, lovely meal, but I’m freezing so I’m going to keep walking. Don’t come with me.”

“Goodbye,” Aaron said quietly, and the soft finality of that stayed with Joel as he stamped furiously away, cursing himself, and men who didn’t know what they wanted, and whatever was squatting on Aaron’s shoulders, and himself again. Mooning like this over a man he’d fucked once: ridiculous. It would make a funny story in a few weeks’ time.

He marched up Gray’s Inn Road. The south end was lawyer territory; as you went further north towards King’s Cross the area became dangerous in different ways. He kept an eye out as he walked, alert for lone men doing nothing much, or the occasional flare of light that was huddled smokers, waiting in doorways for whatever it was they waited for. Victims, companions, the morning, or maybe just an end to the persistent, pervasive winter drizzle. In their dreams.

Joel’s footsteps echoed flatly on the wet pavements. Gray’s Inn Road could feel very long on a rainy night. Cold, too. His hand was bare because getting a glove on one-handed involved holding it with his teeth and he hadn’t wanted to do that in front of Aaron. He couldn’t be bothered to stop and go through the palaver now, but he wished he had done it earlier because his fingers were icy. Good thing he didn’t have two hands, or he’d be freezing.

His stump hurt too. It still ached now and then; probably it always would. He didn’t get phantom hand sensations any more, thank God, just firing nerves and a dull pain in the cold, but there was plenty to resent, all the same.

He passed the Royal Free Hospital with the glower he always gave hospitals on principle. Nearly there now, which was good because he was itching to be home, even if his bedsit scarcely deserved the name. He wanted to be inside, away from the cold and damp and dark and the sense of people watching him.

He wasn’t quite sure where that last thought came from. It came, though, and he felt himself straighten as his muscles tensed in response.

He didn’t ignore it, because his instincts paid his bills and had carried him safely through three years of war, before he got careless. He sped up a little, heart thumping, eyes darting. Couldn’t see anyone. There were feet behind him, but well behind. Might be nothing. Lots of people would be walking to the railway station, even at this hour.

He turned down Acton Street, ears straining for feet behind him, and crossed over Percy Circus, and now he was pretty sure he wasn’t being followed at all. What a drama out of nothing. He’d laugh at himself as soon as he was inside.

A handful of yards past the roundabout, number 22 right there, and a man just a few steps further along. He was leaning against the railings, smoking a cigarette, cap pulled down low, and he’d turned his head to watch Joel approach.

Joel’s keys were in his overcoat pocket. He closed his hand round them, slotting them between his fingers, with a tiny anticipatory pulse of nausea at the idea of punching someone with them. Breaking his fingers, or the metal tearing them, anything that might damage his remaining hand—

Calm down , he told himself. He kept his pace steady, and the man kept his gaze steady too, watching Joel and making no effort to hide it. Joel pretended not to see. He climbed the steps with his spine clamped tight, his skin prickling, poised to whip round at the slightest sound of movement.

None came. Nothing at all. He unlocked the front door with a shaky hand, which was absurd. He was panicking over nothing, over a man who was loitering in the drizzle for his own reasons and would probably have watched any passer-by—

He glanced down, and the man looked directly up at him, meeting his eyes. He kept looking, without speech or movement, until Joel closed the door.

He did not sleep well that night.

***

A FEW DAYS LATER JOEL was still feeling fairly wretched about all of it.

For one thing, he’d been unreasonable and he knew it. Aaron’s back-and-forthing, his cowardice even, was a perfectly good reason to give him short shrift, and if Joel had said as much in a sensible way, he’d have nothing to feel bad about. As it was, he’d flown off the handle when Aaron had declined sex, and that was shitty, even if it wasn’t what he’d actually meant. He ought to apologise, if only for that part.

He wasn’t going to, obviously, certainly not in the absence of any apology from Aaron for all the pissing about. He’d do much better to forget the whole thing, since his stupid hopes and nonsensical feelings had worked him up into a state where he’d not only embarrassed himself making unwanted demands, but talked himself into being terrified of a few footsteps and a loiterer.

That was Aaron’s fault too, of course, him and his vague allusions to risks and dangers and dodgy colleagues. Not Joel’s problem, and he was going to stay well away. Any further telegrams—not that there would be any, nor was he hoping for one—were going straight into the waste-paper basket.

“Pick yourself up, Wildsmith,” he said aloud. He’d done it before, in far worse circumstances. When you’d lost your family, such as it was, and your dominant hand, and your liberty, you learned to shake off minor losses such as a casual one-night lover who didn’t matter anyway. He just wished he had a few more clients to keep him busy while he did the shaking off, because right now the afternoon was stretching very emptily in front of him.

Fine. He’d meant to refresh the classified advertisement he put in the papers anyway, so he’d do it now. He’d pay for more space, enough for a testimonial or two, maybe get someone to lay it out with a few decorative flourishes. He could afford to invest a little more in finding new clients.

He was just drafting the text when somebody knocked.

Landlady, probably. It wouldn’t be a telegram boy and it certainly wouldn’t be Aaron. It was the middle of the day, and he wasn’t thinking about Aaron.

He went to the door and opened it to see an unfamiliar man in a check coat. It wasn’t a nice coat, but he didn’t look like a terribly nice man. The cold eyes, broken nose, and mangled mess of one ear might be clues.

“Hello?” Joel said.

“Joel Wildsmith, graphologist?” the man asked. He didn’t say it nicely.

“That’s right. Who are you?”

“Mind if I come in?” The man had already started moving. Joel stepped back. He had the distinct feeling that if he didn’t, he’d be pushed.

“I don’t think we have an appointment,” he said warily. “Who are you?”

The man was looking around. His cheeks had the broken blood vessels of a drinker, or a fighter, or a rough life, or all three. “Nice place, Mr. Wildsmith. Graphologist? What’s that, then?”

“I analyse handwriting. Again, who are you?”

“You can call me Mr. Twigg.”

“And...do you want some handwriting analysed?” Joel wondered if Mr. Twigg actually wanted something read to him. He didn’t look like he’d paid a lot of attention in school, somehow.

“Nah, nah. Save it for the suckers.”

“Then what can I do for you?”

“Now you’re talking,” Mr. Twigg said. “Only, it’s not for me. See, I work for a fellow named Darby Sabini, if you know the name?”

Joel’s mouth dried. “The gentleman who...” He couldn’t think of a polite way to express leads the biggest gang round here . “Runs things in Clerkenwell?”

“Very good. So I dare say you know Darby and the boys keep an eye on the area. Make sure things run smoothly for small businesses like yourself.”

“I don’t have a business. I just read handwriting.”

“And get paid for it, right? Everyone’s got to make a living. So what Darby wants is a small monthly payment to cover his costs, so you can keep on making a living.”

Joel didn’t bother to ask what costs, or what Darby Sabini would actually do for his money. He knew what this was, and Mr. Twigg knew he knew.

“How much?” he said.

“Pound a week sounds fair.”

“What?” Joel yelped. “Are you serious?”

“Dead serious. Here you are, no overheads, getting paid for reading, you can spare it.”

Most clients took less than half an hour, and sometimes Joel only had four or five clients in the week. “That’s too much,” he said.

Mr. Twigg’s eyes snapped to his. “Did I ask what you thought?”

“I don’t make that much money! I don’t know what you imagine—”

“I don’t imagine. Never have. I bet you’re an imaginative sort, graphologist and all that. You got a good imagination?”

“Look, Mr. Twigg—”

“You got a good imagination?”

Clearly he had to answer. “I suppose so.”

“I bet you do. ” Mr. Twigg gestured at Joel’s left sleeve. “I expect you’re always imagining stuff about that. What if you lost the other hand. What if someone took a brick to your fingers, smashed ‘em flat. One by one.” He made a sharp, violent, downward gesture. Joel flinched. “I bet a man with imagination would lie awake at night thinking about stuff like that.”

Joel swallowed hard. Mr. Twigg held his gaze for a couple of seconds longer. “Like I said, a pound a week, first month payable in advance, and then everyone can go about their business with no unpleasantness, see?”

Joel saw very well. “I don’t have that on me.”

“Then I’ll come back for it tomorrow,” Mr. Twigg said. “At ten. Make sure you’re here.”

“I’ve a client at ten.”

“So have my envelope ready. See you tomorrow, Mr. Wildsmith. Pleasure doing business with you.”

He ambled out, leaving the door ajar. Joel went to shut it, and stood for a moment, breathing hard.

He was being shaken down. So what was he going to do about it?

Police? Mr. Twigg hadn’t told him not to go to the police, but Joel suspected he was expected to know that for himself. Would the police act on the implied threat, or fob him off as they had his pawnbroker friend? Would they look at his record? Could they do anything useful at all?

If he spoke to Aaron—

No. It would be nice to have a CID man he could whistle up, but for that, he would need not to have told him to fuck off.

And suppose the police did their job and arrested Mr. Twigg, what then? The Sabinis had plenty of men. Would Darby Sabini accept the loss, or would Joel get jumped in a dark street one night? He didn’t think defiance would feel like a moral victory after someone had pulped his right hand with a boot heel or a brick. Joel could feel it, feel the dry, grainy texture and the dull edge smashing down...

“Fuck,” he said aloud.

He sat down and put his head in his hand. What to do? Pay up? He could manage a pound a week, probably, but it would put his state-of-the-art prosthetic out of his reach for months more, maybe years. The thought of waiting longer so some bastard gang boss could drink gin at his expense filled him with a sick, helpless fury.

And just like the other times he’d been the helpless target of abuse, he’d have to get used to it, because there was damn all he could do about it.