Looking Down Read Free

voice, ‘he was probably watching birds. All varieties.’
    The chuckle was insulting.
    ‘That figures, Mrs B. Shall we let him drive home, or do you want us to keep him? Wasn’t sure if he was quite well, at first, but he’s had a long chat with Dr Armstrong and he seems fine, now.’
    ‘What’s he done?’
    The friendly voice hardened. ‘Fiddled while Rome burned, Mrs B. That’s all.’
    Yes, he would come home. Unrepentant, probably whistling as he went into his awful back room to turn his sketches into frightful, garish paint. Smiling his sweet and vacant smile, telling her, unfailingly, how lovely she looked, asking what she had done, and then scarcely pausing to hear her speak. That was Richard. Lilian closed the door on the room full of daylight and went towards bed, hoping she would be soundly asleep before he arrived home.
    The bed was sumptuous; it always did something for her spirit. Only, when she woke three hours later to hear the door to their room click open and then click shut as someone tiptoed away, only the bleary eye of valium-induced slumber made her fail to notice that it was not Richard Beaumont, but somebody else. Sleep saved her the trouble of screaming.
    ‘Sarah . . . shhhhh. Don’t scream, please, dear, don’t . . .’
    ‘Hmmmm . . . mmmm, geroff. Get your hand away from my mouth . . . Oh for Christ’s sake . . . what the hell do you think you’re doing?’
    ‘Sarah, darling, wake up properly and come and have a drink. I’ve just made the most terrible mistake.’
    ‘What time is it?’
    ‘Early, by any civilised standards. Why does it matter what time it is?’
    ‘Because I was asleep. Why can’t you ring the doorbell like anyone else?’
    She was pulling the duvet over her head and the sound of her voice was mumbled beneath it. A thatch of dark auburn hair protruded onto a white pillow and the sight of it enchanted him. He pulled at it and sat back on the edge of the bed, listening to her grumble, watched her finally unearth herself and sit up in her broiderie anglaise nightie which made her look quite angelic. Such a sweet little girl she must have been, snub nose and everything. She was supposed to have had a talent for turning cartwheels. She looked cross, ran a hand through her hair which obeyed the gesture and stood on end in a halo round her face. The other hand fumbled on her bedside table for her spectacles and stuck them, lopsidedly, on her nose. Apart from the treacherous hair, she could have been his primary-school teacher, Miss Prymm, who also wore clothes buttoned up to the neck, even in sleep. In fine cotton, too, and always white. Conspicuously clean. Hers had been the first house he had ever burgled.
    ‘What mistake?’ she said.
    ‘I went to the wrong flat.’
    She groaned, flopped back against the pillows, the hair still in a rage but the half-glasses over which she peered still in place.
    ‘You look like a virgin madonna, by Titian. But it’s hardly cool, is it, Sarah, to keep your specs on a piece of string?’
    ‘Oh, shuttup. It’s a silver string. And this was an early night. Did you lose your key?’
    ‘You know I lost it last week. I just needed the practice and—’
    ‘Don’t even tell me. I don’t want to know. Go away.
Far
away.’
    ‘And I’ve just seen the head of a Sleeping Beauty.’
    Sarah gave up. The time of day was never relevant anyway, not in this room which looked into the well of the building and was dusky dark twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, winter and summer, ideal for sleep. The view from it was only that of white brick, thick black drainpipes, metallic service impedimenta and other windows looking on to the four-sided centre leading down to a solitary basement quadrangle out of sight from the second floor. At a set time of day, the Romany wife of the Indian, lighter-skinned porter harangued him so loudly that echoes sounded and birds flew from distant chimneys. Then doors were slammed and they