Part 11 (1/2)

”What?”

”I said, what a fetching coat.”

He had preened. ”Rather smart, isn't it. Camel hair, you know.”

”It makes you look ... quite the man about town.”

Now, the coat having been donned, he glanced in the direction indicated by Gloria. At first he noticed nothing unusual, but then he intercepted the man's stare. Quickly he turned away.

”Do you know him?” whispered Gloria.

Rupert made a hurried gesture. ”Later,” he muttered. ”We can talk later.”

Outside the restaurant Rupert looked at his watch. ”The night is still young ... Do you know, I've had a wonderful idea.”

Gloria took his arm. ”All your ideas are wonderful, Rupert.”

”Have you got those keys on you?”

”Which keys?”

”The ones I gave you. The keys to La Ragg's flat. Or rather, the keys to the flat that she occupies.” He gave Gloria a sideways look, and she understood the meaning immediately. This was a reference to his claim to Barbara's flat a claim that might have had no substance in law (in the strictest sense) but had a moral backing which he felt only the deliberately perverse could deny. So he spoke about the flat in the same tones as an irredentist might speak about some ancient and painful territorial claim, or as they might speak in certain quarters about the Spratly Islands or some remote corners of South America and with equal pa.s.sion, too.

Gloria glanced in her handbag. ”They're there,” she said. ”But, look, that man back there. Did you know him?”

Rupert looked evasive. ”Perhaps.”

”What do you mean perhaps? Either you knew him or you didn't. And he certainly seemed to know us he was boring a hole in my back with his stare.”

”He's a chap called Ratty Mason,” muttered Rupert. ”I knew him at school.”

Gloria stopped in her tracks, almost causing Rupert to stumble into her. ”Ratty Mason? That's Ratty Mason?”

Rupert tugged at her arm, encouraging her to walk on. ”I think so. I could be wrong, though. It was dark in there.”

”Well, well,” exclaimed Gloria. ”At long last I've caught sight of Ratty Mason. How long is it since you saw him?”

”Ages,” said Rupert. ”Not since I was at Uppingham. A long time ago, as you know.”

Gloria was not going to let matters rest at that. She had tried before to get Rupert to talk about Ratty Mason, whose name had come up in some context that she did not recall. Rupert had refused, changing the subject rather quickly. She was determined to find out now, though, and she pressed him again. ”Why was he called Ratty?”

”He just was,” said Rupert. ”That's what we called him in those days. Everybody had a nickname.”

”Was he ratty?”

”Not especially. Sometimes the nicknames were chosen at random. There was a boy called Octopus Watkins. I have no idea how he got that name. He didn't have eight arms and legs, as I recall. Did you have nicknames at your school?”

Gloria could spot an attempt to change the subject. ”Ratty,” she persisted, ”suggests that he was, well, rat-like. Or that he turned people in to the authorities. One rats on people, doesn't one?”

”Maybe.”

She stopped him again. ”Come on, Rupert, you can't fool me. There's something fishy here. Why this reticence about Ratty Mason?”

He turned to her, his eyes narrowed. ”Just leave Ratty Mason out of it, will you? I don't want to talk about him. He's history.”

”Were you very friendly with him?”

Rupert snorted. ”Me? Friendly with Ratty Mason? Don't make me laugh.”

”So there was a problem then. What happened? Did he ... betray you?”

At the mention of betrayal, Rupert sighed again. ”I really don't want to stand here in the middle of the pavement talking about somebody like Ratty Mason. I had a really very good idea and now you've gone and spoiled it.”

Gloria thought for a moment. Ratty Mason could wait; there would be another opportunity. ”All right, what's your idea?”

”We go to Barbara's flat and have a look round,” he said. ”You've got the keys.”

Rupert was holding Gloria's arm as he spoke, and he felt a jolt of excitement running through her.

”Rupert!”

”Pourquoi non? We have La Ragg's authority to go and let in those boiler people, so does it make any difference if we merely exercise that right of access a bit early? I don't think it does. Not in the slightest, if you ask me.”

”You make it sound so simple. But what would we do once we're in?”

”As I said, look around. We could see how she's using the place to which we are morally ent.i.tled. It'll be like a UN inspection. That sort of thing.”

Gloria looked about her, as if to see whether anybody might be capable of overhearing this dangerous suggestion. ”All right,” she said. ”I can just imagine what it'll be like.”

”So can I,” said Rupert, chuckling. ”Frightful taste, I bet. Flying ducks on the wall?”

”Undoubtedly,” said Gloria. ”We must brace ourselves.”

Chapter 35: Don't Go There.

Barbara Ragg's flat was on a street that ran off Kensington Park Road. It was not the most expensive part of Notting Hill there were more fas.h.i.+onable and sought-after addresses but it was, by any standards, comfortable and secure. From Barbara's point of view, it was ideal. The flat faced south-west and benefited from the late afternoon sun; the neighbours were quiet and inoffensive, but sufficiently attentive to any unusual occurrences to amount to an informal neighbourhood watch; the roof was in good order; and there were never any unseemly arguments with landlords or residents about the cost of painting the railings that gave onto the street or any of the other shared parts of the building. Barbara found it difficult to imagine herself living in any other area of London, and if she looked at the property pages of the newspapers it was only to reflect on her good fortune in being where she was, in having what she had.

The features of the flat which appealed to Barbara were, as it happened, exactly the same ones that gave rise to an intense and burning jealousy on the part of Rupert Porter. The flat he occupied with Gloria faced in the wrong direction and got very little light at any time of the day. It was also far pokier, having been built at a time when the Victorian confidence that inspired the architects of Barbara's flat had somehow flagged; perhaps there had been a defeat somewhere in that rambling empire, or a financial downturn, sufficient to make Rupert's windows and ceilings meaner, his public rooms less commodious.

Everyone knows, of course, that there are people who live in better accommodation than we do ourselves. Even the wealthy, in their well-appointed mansions, know that there are even wealthier people occupying even better appointed homes. At work, too, inequalities abound. Civil servants, as is well known, measure the size of their carpets to establish where they are in the pecking order; ministerial cars are carefully graded by engine capacity to suit the seniority of the person to whom they are allocated; in airports there are lounges for every grade of traveller, and for the lowest grade, no lounge at all. We all know these things and accept that some people have things which we do not unless we feel that they do not deserve what they have, in which case we look forward to their dispossession. Rupert generally did not resent the residential good fortune of others; he did not scowl as he walked past people standing on the doorsteps of houses that were clearly more desirable than his. That was not the issue. The issue was Barbara's occupancy of the flat that had once belonged to his father, Fatty Porter, and out of which he, Rupert, and any future Porters, had been cheated. Or so he believed; the fact that the flat had been quite properly sold to Barbara's father was not the point. Behind some contracts there is a hinterland of interpretation, and in Rupert's view the Raggs had quite simply tricked the Porters by ignoring what everybody involved plainly understood.

That was the history. And that was what Rupert was thinking about as he and Gloria made their way to the front door of Sydney Villa. There Rupert glanced quickly at the nameplate next to Barbara's doorbell Ragg. He flushed with anger. Porter, it should have read.

”The keys,” he said, his voice lowered.