When in doubt, attack, is my motto. But I didn’t like those few words of Ferdy’s pal Johnson, and I didn’t think Pal Johnson liked us.
He was years and years younger than Ferdy, and about three inches shorter. He had the sort of nose that looked as if it might have been broken a long time ago, and expensively set. He had the sort of mouth that didn’t go in much for lips.
The top half of his face was filled in by a lot of dead-looking black hair, a pair of strong-minded black eyebrows, and his glasses. What was left looked definitely unhealthy.
Behind me, Ferdy came out of the studio, looking vague but willing, and the bifocals, shifting, trained on him.
Ferdy didn’t fall to the floor or anything. Hejust gazed back and said, ‘My God. Candles In Shapes You Never Thought Of. Should you be up?’
Nobody rushed to answer him. I kept my mouth shut. Disappointed noises were coming from the dog.
Americans are good in a social crisis.
In a trail of high-class fabric, Mrs Sheridan lowered herself and massaged the sheepdog’s billowing stomach. ‘We’ve offended man and dog: how horrible of us,’ she said; and rose just as nicely. The dog got up like a dog.
Mrs Sheridan moved forward to the owner of the flat and stood before him, tilting her gorgeous French-pleated head and looking rueful and sympathetic and friendly at the same time. The eyelashes, the lid colour, the highlighter, the eyeliner and the work on her eyebrows all did a great job.
She said, ‘It’s Mr Johnson, isn’t it? You’ve been so kind, letting Ferdy use your wonderful home. I wouldn’t have disturbed you for worlds, but I just had to say hello and thank you to Roger’s friend. He wanted to know how you were, and I swore I wouldn’t go back without seeing you. And now I can tell him. You’re walking about. That’s so splendid. He’ll be so pleased and happy to hear that.’
Almost any answer might have come from under the bifocals, you felt, or none at all. The owner of the flat had both hands behind him, and he didn’t bring one of them forward. Mrs Sheridan, no fool, hadn’t risked holding hers out.
There was another brief silence. Then Ferdy’s pal said, ‘Of course, you know Roger. Give him my regards. Let me give you a sherry. Ferdy?’
‘Do the honours,’ said Ferdy. ‘Come along in.’ And taking big swerves round the dog, he walked Mrs Sheridan quickly through to what seemed to be, right enough, a small sitting-room.
The guy in the dressing-gown didn’t shift. I saw he had a stick sunk behind him like a third leg, and that both his hands were actually on it.
The housekeeper showed in a doorway, looked at him, and then went away again. The phone rang, and I could hear her answering it.
Looking at me, the guy in the dressing-gown made an announcement. ‘You’re Ferdy’s assistant. You didn’t meet a somewhat blood-boltered couple of porters on your way to the lift?’
Which explained the stony welcome, now I thought of it. Not all the telephone calls had been about potted plants.
I said, ‘Maybe you don’t mind having your guests body-searched, but there’s nothing soft about me. If you don’t report them, I will.’
A fight wouldn’t have worried me; but he backed down. ‘Whatever you say,’ Pal Johnson remarked.
I waited, but that was all he said. ‘You’ll report it?’ I said.
‘Why not?’ He still stood like a road surveyor. He added, ‘I can’t really go in until you do.’
I could tell from his voice that he wasn’t even trying to needle me, which annoyed me a lot. However, there was no point in flogging it.
I walked past him into the sitting-room and took a seat not too near Mrs Sheridan, who looked sort of enquiring. Ferdy poured me a vodka martini which brimmed over as he watched his pal Johnson come in after me and sit down. Questions about the little delay hung like balloons all round his sideburns.
Johnson said, ‘We decided to enter in order of zip codes, Mrs Sheridan.’
A half-drunk glass of whisky was already standing by the high-backed leather chair he had picked to sit in. He raised it to her, and to me, and drank a lot of it.
Natalie took a good American slug of hers and said, ‘We were so shocked by it all. I hope you had the best medical care.’
I began to lose interest in the conversation. She knew, and so did I, because I’d heard her ask Ferdy, that Pal Johnson had been two months in the best and dearest clinic in London before his lovely family carted him back to their country mansion. She was making small-talk.
I don’t like small-talk. I looked round the room, which was rigged out like the others in brand-new furniture, this time study-type with oak tables and deep-buttoned leather. On one of the tables was a filing basket of opened letters, and beside it on the floor stood a plastic bin full of new handwritten envelopes with stamps on them.
Mrs Sheridan’s chat moved from the guy Johnson’s health to this friend of hers, Roger van Diemen, who had also had a bad illness but seemed better now.
I tried to read the names on the envelopes, and couldn’t. The curtains were made of silk velvet. In the corner I could see a T.V. but not a video. The word ‘bananas’ came into the talk.
I looked at Ferdy, who had mentioned it, but couldn’t pick up the reason.
No one looked at me, which was all right. Our client had gone on to talk about something she was doing in films, which Ferdy knew about also. She and Ferdy swapped news about cameramen, and she worked the talk round to include painters and some clever compliments about Johnson’s work.
Johnson said the odd word, but hardly more than that. I began to wonder why she was bothering. Perhaps because he was well known. Perhaps because he was snooty, and she felt challenged to try to unbend him.
There was no doubt, either, that she was good at it. Smooth, and funny, and interesting, but letting Ferdy shine too, so that she didn’t seem to make all the running. She tried to get a shine on Johnson as well, but he wasn’t having any, although he stayed polite as polite.
He didn’t signal either, but Ferdy must have come to his senses at last and remembered which of them owned the studio. He stood up, glanced at the clock, and offered, heartily, to top up his famous customer’s sherry.
She took the hint and rising, said she really must go.
Ferdy saw her out. I heard her saying, ‘I couldn’t refuse, but he looks very poorly. Will he paint again, or is it quite hopeless?’ She sounded disappointed. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps she’d hoped to trap him into painting her portrait.
He must have been good once, if Natalie Sheridan wanted him. I didn’t hear what Ferdy answered, but it was bound to be tactful.
Excused from rising, Johnson was sitting nearer the door than I was, and had probably heard the lot. If he did, he paid no attention. When I looked at him, he was pressing a wall bell. His fingers had ink on them. Ferdy’s voice got fainter, as he saw Natalie out to the lift.
The housekeeper came in, looked at her boss and at me, and then went over and collected the envelope bin. As she passed him, Pal Johnson remarked, ‘You’ve met Connie, haven’t you? Mrs Margate?’
The housekeeper smiled. She said, ‘Miss Geddes has been working ever since she arrived. You give her another drink.’
It struck me as funny that the owner of the flat called Ferdy Ferdy and his housekeeper Connie, and that everyone called Johnson Johnson. Then the housekeeper went out and Ferdy came in and Johnson said, ‘Your Bird of Paradise is to have another vodka martini, Ferdy.’
I glared at Ferdy but he didn’t notice. He said to Johnson, ‘Well, you’ve run out of vodka. Where do you keep your supplies in this bloody awful apartment? Who in Christ’s name did it up?’
‘A very rich decorator,’ Johnson said. ‘Ask Connie where the stuff is.’
‘And that’s another thing,’ Ferdy said. ‘That woman Connie’s exhausted. You should go back to Surrey. I don’t know why you came here. The family didn’t want it.’
The guy in the dressing-gown lay back with his feet on the dog. He remarked, apparently to me, ‘You’d better choose something else. He isn’t going to get you a vodka.’
Ferdy, worrying about Connie Margate, never noticed. He said, ‘She can’t go on sleeping here every night. She’s got her own house to run. She’ll get ill, and then where will you be?’
‘Back in Surrey. I thought that’s what you wanted. I’m going to bed,’ said Pal Johnson, and took his feet off the dog.
I wasn’t going to help him. He was doing Ferdy the favours. Ferdy said, ‘You can go to bed if you like, but I’m going to send that woman home for twenty-four hours. She can have one good night’s sleep in her own bed, and a day free of you and your telephone calls. What are you eating?’
‘Humble pie,’ said Johnson shortly. He had his hands on the arms of his chair, and had stuck there.
I got up to go away. Every girl knows what happens when a man suddenly needs help in the house. I didn’t want to be caught there when Ferdy let the housekeeper off as a reward for lifting Johnson out of his chair.
Ferdy suddenly caught sight of me leaving, and leaped up saying, ‘Now, Rita? Who’s Ferdy’s best friend? Who got to meet Natalie Sheridan?’
He followed me into the bedroom forbidding me to leave, and would have chummed me into the bathroom too if I hadn’t locked the door.
When I came out he had gone, and I put on my shawl and stuff and picked up my case and went to tell Mrs Margate I would let myself out. I didn’t want to get within arm’s length of the guy Johnson or Ferdy again.
Mrs Margate wasn’t there. Instead Ferdy was in the kitchen, surrounded by bowls and packets and pans, with a warm smell coming from the cooker already.
‘She’s gone,’ he said. ‘Put your case down, darling, and go and help Johnson to bed while I make us some lunch.’
Ferdy is quite a good cook. My mother, Robina, is the best cook I ever knew, and I learned a lot from her that even Ferdy didn’t know. I stood thinking, while he looked up from his pan, his capped teeth like barley in his speckly fawn whiskers.
‘Go on, darling,’ he said. ‘Natalie’s decided to give London another two days, and wants you to do her for her parties. Why pay for a hotel? Think how Scotch and saving it will be. You sleep on one side of Johnson’s guestbed and I’ll sleep on the other.’
‘You sleep on both sides,’ I said. ‘I’m not staying. I lied to you. I know you had your prostate fixed.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Don’t stay. Just help while I get the meal.’
To tell the truth, he had a point. By afternoon, the security shift in the hall would have changed. I put my case down. ‘On one condition. I make the meal and you help your crippled chum. What’s his first name?’
‘Johnson,’ Ferdy said. ‘Same as his last. The registrar had a stutter. Call him J.J. if he ever speaks to you again. That’s the melted butter, and there’s a dish in the oven. Call when you’re ready.’
He disappeared. I put my case out of harm’s way in the bedroom, took off my shawl and jacket and waistcoat and shirt and put on my overall again. I caught sight of my unpatterned face below the Dracula eyeshadow and if the butter hadn’t started to burn, I would have painted my cheeks then and there, in pure protest.
As it was, I went back to the kitchen and made a smashing meal for all of us, which Ferdy and I enjoyed, and which Pal Johnson either forgot, ignored or slept through, according to Ferdy. Then I found something for Bessie, and left Ferdy to wash up while I took her out for her aged business.
The two new men in the foyer gave me some long funny stares but didn’t stop me, mainly because Bessie would have stopped too, and that to some purpose.
It took longer than I expected, since Bessie, having held out as far as the middle of the pavement and no further, celebrated her general relief by flopping off through every alley after her favourite smells, of which there are more in Mayfair than you would think.
I hadn’t taken a leash, and by the time I got my hand in her collar, she was far from 17b, but in among the dress shops, the ivory shops, the gift shops and the shops making handmade chocolates, so that I rather took my time getting back.
The new doorkeeper stepped in front of me.
He was smaller than the last one: only two feet higher than me. He said, ‘Oh yes. You’re the jokey lady who bloodied up Ned and Josser?’
‘And they deserved it,’ I said. The dog, fawning, dripped Standard Dribble on the doorkeeper’s trousers, and I waited for the accidental black eye.
The doorkeeper said, ‘Good dog, then. Wish I’d seen that: my Gawd, what a picture! Where’s the blood come from, then?’
He was cheerful. The new security man left the counter and joined us. He was cheerful too. ‘Important make-up lady, isn’t she?’ he said. ‘Ned and Josser weren’t to know. You should have told them, Miss. ‘E’s a real fan of yours, Mr Braithwaite.’
Ferdy? Ferdy explaining and soothing? Ferdy down in the foyer spreading Largs?
The security man said, ‘If you’re goin’ up now, Miss, there’s this parcel. The boy took it up to deliver it, but nobody answered the door. Of course, Mr Johnson’s not up to walking.’
Bessie was at the lift, waiting.
I didn’t join her.
I didn’t take the parcel.
I said, ‘But Mr Braithwaite’s in the flat. Didn’t Mr Braithwaite come to the door?’
They looked at me, and I brought my voice down. I said, ‘Didn’t Mr Braithwaite go up to the flat again after he spoke to you?’
‘Oh no, Miss,’ the security man said. ‘Out on the street like a rocket, he went. A heavy date, he said, and he was late for it. My Gawd, that’s a character. . . Do you ‘ave a key to 17b, Miss? Mr Braithwaite left one for you, in case.’
King Ferdy the Rat.
I turned to make for the street. Bessie joined me, her tail wagging. I halted.
My case was in the flat, too. And my money.
I returned to the desk. I said, ‘Do you know Mrs Margate’s address or phone number? Mr Johnson’s housekeeper?’
They didn’t. I thought.
Ferdy’s flat was being rewired. It was empty.
Natalie Sheridan wanted me for two days. I had no flat, no hotel room, no money and an Old English Sheepdog.
There were a number of choices.
I could shove Bessie into the flat, lift my gear and walk out.
I could tell the men down below what had happened. They could ring Meals on Wheels or the Salvation Army to rescue the guy upstairs if they felt like it. Ferdy would be mad, but it was Ferdy’s fault anyway.
On the other hand, Ferdy could do me down with Natalie Sheridan.
It wasn’t likely. He enjoyed life, and it took a good push before he got the knives out. But everyone knew what happened then.
I didn’t want Mrs Sheridan put off me. I didn’t much want to walk round finding a bed. A free night upstairs had something to it. And sure as eggs, I’d have no come-on from the resident cripple.
I took the key and went up in the lift with Bessie. Someone had wiped off my lipstick from the mirror, and had written TA LOVE on the door. I read it.
Ferdy was a bastard, but I supposed I’d go along with it in the end, as per usual. Twenty-four hours was all he claimed the housekeeper needed.
I could stick it till lunchtime tomorrow. And if I could, the guy Johnson would have to.
I got to his door and nearly changed my mind when I heard the phone ringing behind it. But however feeble, the man could surely take his own calls, if I answered the doorbell and fed him.
I unlocked the door and walked in, shooing Bessie before me. I shouted. ‘It’s Miss Geddes back, Mr Johnson! You’ve got another palm for your parlour!’
I don’t know whether he heard me, but I could hear his voice on the phone, so I suppose he did. I shut the door and went to choose a bedroom. The one I’d used seemed to be the main guestroom. It smelt of Mrs Sheridan’s scent. It had a phone in it.
It struck me that I had some calls to make if I was staying in London. I picked up the phone, and found I was listening to Johnson’s caller.
It was a woman, and she was in the middle of reading a lecture.
‘Well, you can’t stay there, can you? If you don’t go back to your people, then you might as well come to us. Daughter Joanna would love it. She’s made you some rather drippy jam.’
Johnson’s voice said, ‘If I don’t go home, I’d have to go to the Judge’s.’
There was a silence. Then the woman said, ‘Yes, I see that. But it’s too much for Connie.’
He said, ‘I’ll get help for her. Really. It’s all right.’
‘And later?’ She still sounded doubtful. ‘Don’t you want to get away from those phones? Where’s Dolly?’
‘Still refitting.’
The woman said, ‘You could be in the Caribbean by the early summer. Why don’t we send Lenny down to sail her out? We’re not using him. He could take her to Tenerife and wait till you were ready. Or take her across himself with Raymond or somebody. You could fly over.
‘You know everyone over there. You could stay anywhere you want, or on board if you didn’t want company. I’ll tell Bernard.’
‘Something to look forward to?’ he said. The put-down in his voice was like the one I’d had.
There was another silence. Then she said, ‘Believe me, you won’t feel as tired as this all the time. All the same, I don’t know what you were thinking of, letting these people in. What’s she called, this girl Ferdy’s wished on you?’
‘I don’t know. Geddes, I think,’ he said.
‘And what’s she like?’
There was another silence. Then he said, ‘Small. Tough. Scottish. She’s listening to you.’
The bastard. I whipped the receiver away from my ear without thinking, and so missed the first half of a very smart leave-taking. I heard Johnson say, ‘It’s too much trouble for you. No, please don’t. But of course I’ll remember. Give my love to Joanna.’
Then the woman rang off, but he didn’t. He just laid the phone off the rest, so no more calls could get in.
It also meant that I couldn’t phone out.
As I’ve probably said, attack first is my motto. I got up and banged on the door of his bedroom. Why not?
I had credit cards and an account. I could go to a hotel. Pal Johnson wasn’t going to suffer, with his folks and the Judge and Joanna’s mother and all to mollycuddle him. So I walked into his room without waiting too long for a sniffy invitation. He wasn’t likely to be taking calls starkers.
Starkers he wasn’t, but the Owner of the Apartment he certainly was, sitting straight up in bed as if he’d money rammed into both pillows. On the bed stood the filing basket full of letters, florists’ cards and parcel tags, and beside it a tray of pens and paper and stuff he’d been answering with.
The phone was purring beside him on the table. I put the receiver back on its rest and said, ‘I have some calls to make. Do you want me here or not?’
‘It depends rather,’ he said, ‘on whether Ferdy comes back.’
A man of few words. What he meant was, he couldn’t be bothered to row, but he wasn’t going to lease 17b as a knocking-shop.
I said, ‘There’s nothing for him to come back for. How long is your housekeeper taking?’
‘Till tomorrow night, I imagine,’ he said. ‘I should have asked Ferdy.’
The phone rang, and he looked at it. He didn’t pick it up. It went on ringing. I said, ‘I’ll go into the kitchen and whistle,’ but got no reaction. Against the ringing, he said, ‘Stay or leave as you like. You need a bed?’
The ringing came to an end, and he turned his head and unhooked and laid down the receiver. ‘I’m afraid that is essential,’ he said.
Behind the table, there was a telephone socket in the skirting. I got down on my knees and, pushing aside Bessie, who wanted to die for me, unplugged the cable. In two other rooms, the telephone started to ring again.
I got to my feet. Johnson pulled the blotter over his knees and picked his pen up, as if in return he’d unplugged me. I stood and looked at him sorting his papers.
I wanted to make calls and receive them from, for example, Ferdy or Natalie Sheridan.
The Owner wasn’t going to answer the telephone. Which, if I stayed, made me his personal answering service.
He had started writing again, and I might as well have been a pot with a Zulu in it. I walked out and into the studio. I sat down at the piano and treated it to a yard or two of punchy Scott Joplin, waiting for the ringing to end so that I could start to make my phone calls.
I stopped because my legwarmers had got stamped down to my ankles, and the way I felt about the tantalised fruits told me I was starving.
There was a phone in the kitchen. I had just got a pan out when the ringing stopped and I made a dive to unhook the receiver. The ringing started again as I did it, and a voice spoke before I could get the thing down. ‘Connie? Is that you? How is Mr Johnson today?’
This time, it was a man. I had the answer ready on tap. ‘Very much improved, thank you,’ I said. ‘It will be a long business, of course. But he’s making great strides now, considering.’
There were three more calls before I got all my outgoing ones. One of them wanted to know who I was, and I told him I’d been sent by the escort agency.
I made an omelette and ate it with a glass of milk while I was talking. Then I made another omelette, plated it, and carried it through the hall, having taken the other two phones off their hooks.
I banged on the Owner’s door, and got an immediate answer. ‘Come in. You were good enough to answer the phone?’
I put the plate on his blotter and handed him a knife and fork. ‘It was an accident. Just folk with good wishes.’
‘Did they leave names?’ he said. He looked down at the plate and added, ‘Have you eaten?’ There were a dozen new addressed envelopes on the table.
‘I had the one I practised on,’ I said. ‘Did you want their names? There wasn’t a pencil.’
The Owner picked up the fork. ‘They’ll ring again,’ he said. ‘If you took their names, I could ring back some time. The only people I’d need to speak to are my own family. They’ll say who they are. And people called Ballantyne.’
He looked up and said, ‘Of course, I’m deeply obliged. If you have to go, would you be very kind and take Bessie down to the doorman? He doesn’t mind walking her.’
‘I’ll walk her last thing,’ I said. ‘And post your letters. I’ve got Ferdy’s key. Would you like some tantalised fruit from the box?’
You could see him think about it, but not for long.
‘Not very much. You have them,’ he said.
He hadn’t complained about the Scott Joplin, so I went and played some more, and fed Bessie and watered her, and then switched on the T.V. I’d noticed in the wee sitting-room. I remembered at the same time that, though I’d fed the Owner, I’d forgotten the liquids.
I rooted out a nice selection of bottles, and ice, and some big and small glasses, and carried it all to the bedroom.
The door was ajar, and behind it, Bessie lay on the rug, snoring heavily.
Above her on the bed, the Owner was sleeping too, on his face, with his bifocals thrown on the sheets anyhow. I put them where I left the whisky, and took a vodka for myself back to the sitting-room.
I used to be good at cartoons at college. After I finished my drink, I filled in time drawing Ferdy ogling Mrs Sheridan, and Mrs Sheridan dropping towels in front of the bug-eyed agency man.
The block and crayon came from the studio, where I’d found where Johnson kept all his painting things. They hadn’t been used for an age. The palette had lost all its stickiness and the rags were all hard.
There were two more calls. One was from Ferdy, roaring tight from a nightclub, and bellowing housekeeper’s instructions about food, pills and Bessie. I put the phone down on him.
Later, I took Bessie out on the pavement and the security man held the door for me. Back in the flat, I left her to push her own way into the Owner’s room, having no mind to get mixed up with bedtime ablutions.
I found a box of chocolates and some grapes, and took them to the big bedroom.
There were no satin nighties or black lace undies in any of the fitted drawers, which was a pity. It made you wonder what Ferdy and Pal Johnson actually had in common, apart from short tempers. However, the beds were made up. They were new, too. The sheets had sticky corners where the price labels had been.
I was tired. I wakened four times: twice with burglar alarms going off in the Persian carpets and once because of some drunks. The last time, I couldn’t make out what it was, and then realised that it was Bessie not snoring. There was a light on under my door, and the sound of somebody chatting.
I could just make out that it was the Owner, moving about if not racing, and talking to Bessie. I took it that he had wakened up and was going to bed officially, without bothering to find out if the flat was crowded or not.
I had the feeling that, so far as he was concerned, we were all invisible anyway, with the possible exception of Bessie.
I was just dropping off to sleep again when the funny thing happened.
It began with a ring at the doorbell.
For a moment, I thought it was yet another bloody phone call. Then I came properly awake, and remembered it was two in the morning, and I was in a strange block of flats with a moody bastard, and if the doorbell rang, he wasn’t going to do anything about it, but I’d have to.
I got up, draped myself in the quilt, and marching out, put the hall light on. There was, I saw, a light under the Owner’s door. The doorbell rang again.
I walked through the hall, and stopping just short of the door, yelled through it, ‘What is it?’
A cockney voice said, ‘Mr Johnson? Security.’
After all the jokes down below, you’d think Security would damn well know Johnson couldn’t come to the door. I said, ‘What is it?’
Pause. No quick thinker, this voice. Then it said, ‘Are you alone, Miss?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Mr Johnson’s here, but he can’t come to the door. What is it?’
It was great news for two in the morning. He wanted to come in, because a man had been seen hanging about. A big fair man in black, lurking outside. By the fire escape leading to 17b’s back balcony.
Damn Ferdy.
I wasn’t going to open the door at this time of night, whoever this guy said he was.
I would have to go and search through the flat myself. There was an umbrella stand under my nose with various sticks in it, and some pretty sharp knives in the kitchen.
I rather wished I was wearing something handier than a quilt, but if all else failed, I could smother the guy if I caught him.
I explained this through the door. It didn’t go down well. There followed a fairly noisy argument, with the security man standing outside demanding to get in.
It was cut short by the well-known crack of the Owner’s voice.
Propping up his bedroom doorpost behind me, Pal Johnson said, ‘Must we wake the whole building? Ask him his name. If it’s Ritchie Tiller, and he had a new grandchild last Tuesday, let him in.’
It was, he had, and I did. I waited, wrapped in my quilt, while Grandfather Tiller came in, properly uniformed, searched the apartment, and found nothing and nobody.
He refused a drink, apologised to the Owner and me for disturbing us, and went away.
Pal Johnson, getting up from the hall chair, was kind enough to thank me as well, before tapping his way to his room and shutting his door with a snap.
I watched him go. I didn’t get back into bed, although I put out the hall lights and my own. I sat in my doorway and waited. I was interested.
Johnson’s room was the only one the security man hadn’t searched. Naturally. Johnson had been awake ever since the intruder had been glimpsed, and in any case, had checked the curtains and cupboards himself.
So he said.
And since the security man believed him, the security man couldn’t know, as I did, that Johnson didn’t smoke cigarettes.
And wouldn’t therefore have wondered, as I did, about the smell of good cigarettes that had floated very faintly from the open door of Johnson’s room.
I waited a long five minutes before I heard the voices from behind the same door.
One was Johnson’s. The other man had a lighter voice, and seemed, keeping it low, to be trying to speak at some length, while Johnson kept cutting him off. They were quarrelling.
There was no doubt they knew one another. There was no doubt either that they were good at keeping their voices down. I crouched in my quilt at the door, and I still couldn’t make out the words properly. It was maddening.
I tumbled back to my room when the voices stopped. But instead of Johnson’s door opening, there was a rattle of curtain rings. His guest was using the window, the balcony and the fire escape.
There was a view of the fire escape from the studio. I didn’t switch on any lights. I just stood in my quilt, and watched this broad-shouldered menace in black come out of the Owner’s room and whizz silently down.
I saw his face in the mews light, and it was battered and tough, like those guys who get sent to the Sitwells. His hair was curly and yellow.
I slipped back to the hall. In the room of the Owner and host, a window closed and I heard curtains shutting again. No wonder he hadn’t wanted the building roused.
Whatever the quarrel had been, no one had slugged him, it seemed, at the end of it.
Pity.
I didn’t know what he was up to, but in his state it couldn’t be much. You meet all sorts in show business and nothing in the sex line surprises me, which is not to say all of it appeals to me.
I had no doubt, really, that Ferdy’s pal hadn’t been murdered, but it was a shame to go to bed without checking it.
I tapped on Johnson’s door, neatly wrapped in my quilt, and asked him if he would like a wee cup of tea to send him over.
I was ready for most things except absolute silence.
I gave him time to be in the bathroom, get his glasses on, find his stick, put on his dressing-gown, get the other three guys out from under the bed.
I gave him time to die, and then stopped tapping and turned the door handle.
This time the door was locked. No punk with pink and blue hair was going to turn over his bedroom again.
I nearly went to phone for help. He must have realised, then, that if he didn’t answer, that’s what would happen.
He spoke.
He said, ‘Miss Geddes. Will you get the hell back to your room and leave me alone?’
That looks almost polite. You didn’t hear the voice that he said it in.
I picked up my quilt and got out of it.