and went back to studying his lines. No doubt Maugham would send him to sleep. There was a kind of deadness behind its smart dialogue and dated good sense. He wondered if Stella and the ladies of the Reading Club had been wise to choose it? But they were supposed to know their audience and tickets were selling. He had a suspicion it had been chosen because a prominent member of the group had red hair … like Lady Kitty.
Over one of Lady Kitty’s speeches, he nodded off to sleep, but one last thought rolled across his mind.
So I was right, there is trouble, trouble in triplicate, but not Nell Casey’s trouble, not the trouble I smelt, that’s still on the way. This is extra trouble.
But trouble was what he lived by and it paid his wages.
Nell Casey had taken her son home, first borrowing a pint of milk from Stella Pinero.
‘I’d forgotten what London was like for shopping,’ she apologized. ‘Shops all closing at six o’clock sharp.’
‘Not quite that bad any longer, not round here, anyway. Mr Khan down the road by the Spinnergate Tube stays open till midnight, and Max’s Deli about the same.’
‘Not all night, though.’
‘Not all night.’ Stella handed over the pint of milk. She hardly drank milk herself, but the dog loved it and in spite of what her neighbour John Coffin believed, the cat Tiddles spent a lot of time eating and drinking in Stella’s establishment. The dog, of course, was a privileged animal, having once saved Stella’s life. Or from a fate worse than death. The story as Stella recounted it never lost drama in the telling. Still, it had been a bad enough episode in truth.
‘I’ll pay you …’
‘Don’t bother, love.’ Stella repressed a yawn, and pressed Nell’s hand gently. ‘Off you go, I’m dropping where I stand, even if that kid’s wide awake.’
A pair of bright bird-sharp eyes met hers as he leaned over his mother’s shoulder.
‘What was the matter with him, by the way?’
‘His dog. Seems to have got lost.’
‘Bonzo,’ said the child lovingly.
‘You brought a dog from the States? Did you smuggle it in?’
‘It’s not a real dog, a toy dog, stuffed.’
‘Bonzo, Bonzo.’ Now it was beginning to be a shout. Very soon there would be tears.
‘He doesn’t look tired at all,’ said Stella. ‘I admire stamina in a man. You’ll have to put him on the stage, Nell.’
‘Heaven forbid, I’m going to make him a stockbroker who’ll earn lots of money.’
‘Isn’t he a bit heavy for you to carry?’ If he is Gus’s son, Stella speculated, then he would be. That man has heavy bones. Any one who had been on a stage with him knows that. It shakes.
‘Yes,’ said Nell shortly. ‘Come on, Tommy, shut up and find your feet. You can walk.’ She stood him on the ground. ‘We’re still on New York time, you see,’ she said turning back to Stella. ‘That five hours doesn’t seem so late to us.’
‘You wait till morning.’
Nell and Tom walked slowly, hand in hand, round the corner to The Albion. It was March but not cold and there was a moon. If they made a strange couple, mother and small son walking through the empty streets, Nell was not aware of it.
Presently she looked up at the church tower where, high up, a light still shone. A figure could be seen in profile.
‘Look, a man eating,’ said Tom.
‘Yes, a man, still up. Just like us. I don’t suppose he’s eating.’
‘Eating,’ said Tom firmly. He was a child of one idea at a time.
In the flat, Nell said to her French au pair: ‘I think he’s hungry. Give him something to eat.’ She handed over the milk. ‘How did he manage to lose the dog?’ Considering that Bonzo had come with them on all her tours, surviving overnight stays in motels, plane trips across the American continent as well as two flights across the Atlantic, it was strange he should go missing now.
‘Tom says that after the journey Bonzo needs to go into the garden,’ said Sylvie simply. ‘So I put him in the garden.’
One of the things that Nell Casey liked about the girl was that she took Tom seriously. She took the boy seriously herself, but she could see that a slavish adherence to Tom’s dictates could have its drawbacks. She sighed. ‘You’ve looked all over the garden?’
There was a communal garden for The Albion, nicely laid out but not large.
‘Everywhere in the garden,’ said Sylvie firmly. ‘And Tom helped. Bonzo is not there.’
Tom, busy drinking a mug of milk, a feat which demanded all his attention, did not set up a wail for Bonzo, but his eyes staring at them over the mug were unrelenting. Bonzo or else, they said.
Nell knew what that meant: a child who would stay awake, who would not cry but would keep up a constant low keening sound, more painful to listen to than deep sobs.
It’s all an act, she said to herself. He’s a performer, can’t blame him for that, but I don’t feel strong enough for one of his performances tonight. Seeing Gus again had shaken her more than she wanted to admit. She didn’t want to give Tom a smart slap, not what a good mother did, but it had worked on occasion.
She struck a bargain. ‘Let Sylvie put you to bed and I will go down and look in the garden myself.’
Sylvie protested that it was too late, too wet, too cold, but a judicial nod from Tom let her know she could go ahead.
‘Oh, Miss Casey, someone tried to call while you were out earlier this evening, but by the time I got to the door, whoever it was had gone.’
‘Oh? Well, they might have waited.’
‘I was slow,’ apologized Sylvie, ‘I am afraid I was. I called out Please wait. But Tom was-on his pot and I must stay with him.’
Nell nodded. She knew the importance of Tom and his pot and the rituals that went with it. Heaven forbid you should omit them or tamper with them in any way, or the worst happened.
‘Not important,’ she said.
Who knew she was here? A small card stuck by the bell said CASEY. In Los Angeles and even more in New York, people had seemed happier to call her Casey. She liked it. Casey felt free and vibrant and, although very female and attractive, sexless in an interesting kind of way. Not one to be put down. An achiever, that was Casey, and Tom was a bit of her equipment like a Gucci handbag or a bottle of Giorgio. But now she was in London, she couldn’t help noticing that the English air was converting her back to Nell. Nell would lower her voice a decibel or two, would probably drop that scent and wear another (the new Guerlain, say?) and admit freely that Tom was the person she adored.
‘I didn’t expect anyone,’ she said.
‘It
