Mr Romance Read online

  Mr Romance

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  Copyright

  Mr Romance

  Miles Gibson

  For Geoff & Diane

  Thanks for the Brooklyn Bridge

  ‘You must not mind me, madam; I say strange things, but I mean no harm.’

  Dr Johnson

  1

  It was late when he came to the house. He came with an east wind that threatened the city with bone-cracking frosts and constant rumours of snow. All day the wind had battered the windows, lifted curtains, squirted through keyholes and made the carpets levitate. At dusk the storm seemed to hesitate, inflated the shadows it found in the street and wrapped its fury in darkness.

  My mother had fallen asleep in front of the television in the back parlour where she’d settled herself for the world wrestling tag-team championships. Father was locked in the cellar. I was at work in the kitchen, sitting at the table, molesting a pair of Janet’s shoes. I don’t remember how I first persuaded Janet to let me loose in her wardrobe, but once the custom had been established it became a weekly ritual to carry her hoard of shoes to the kitchen for an ardent evening of wax and polish.

  The collection assembled for my admiration on that particular occasion contained: one pair simple black court shoes; one pair jaunty red lace-ups with rolling tongues; one pair white sling-back sandals with spiky, scuffed high heels; one pair charcoal grey stilettos; and one pair dainty suede ankle boots that, with a measure of gentle persuasion, would accept my hand as far as the wrist. This little harem of shoes could make me feel absurdly elated. I felt aroused in the knowledge of their possession, debauched by my fumbling and fondling.

  I was working on one of the grey stilettos, sitting in my chair with a newspaper spread on the table to catch the tiny, oily crumbs from the sweetly scented cakes of Cherry Blossom in their flat, old-fashioned tins. I had recently inserted three fingers into the soft, leather throat of the shoe until my fingertips were nesting where her toes had left their faint but indelible impression, and had already dipped my brush in the polish when the doorbell rang. Damn! I raised the brush to the shoe and listened, waiting for someone to answer the bell. Nothing happened. I tried to ignore the intrusion, working polish into the leather. Cradle the shoe and know the woman. The weight of her body has balanced it. Her movements have stretched and fashioned it.

  The bell rang again. I withdrew my fingers, set down the brush and hurried impatiently from the kitchen to unlock the heavy front door, rattle the chains and wrench at the bolt.

  The stranger stepped from the shelter of the rocking privet hedge and stood blinking beneath the hall light. He was short and very pale, with a heavy, lugubrious face and a slick of grizzled hair. He wore a baggy black suit beneath his overcoat and sported a pair of cracked brown brogues.

  ‘Marvel,’ he said solemnly. He looked at me suspiciously, sniffed at the air and set down his luggage on the carpet. He was carrying a cardboard suitcase secured with a strap and a small wooden box that clattered slightly as it touched the floor.

  ‘Can I help?’ I asked, when it grew painfully obvious that he meant no further introduction.

  He blinked and leaned forward, glancing from side to side as if he feared we were being observed. ‘I’ve heard you have a room,’ he said in a voice so faint that I had to strain to hear him.

  ‘Who told you?’ I whispered in return.

  The stranger smiled, pressed a finger to the side of his nose and winked at me with a jaundiced eye. ‘Is it true?’

  I nodded. I was eighteen years old, fresh from school, and dressed to play the part of housekeeper in a long green apron with a pair of Marigolds in the pocket. We had several rooms to rent — it was a big house and we needed the money. Janet had taken a bright, sunlit room on the first floor with a little balcony to its window. Senior Franklin had a pair of rooms beneath the rafters where he cultivated his genius and scowled upon an ungrateful world from narrow windows secured with rusting iron bars. My parents slept at the back of the house and I slept above the kitchen in a room with a view of the grey backyard. And still the house seemed empty, its heavy walls and the massive floorboards absorbed our voices and muffled our footsteps, making us feel like a party of ghosts.

  ‘I think we might have a room.’

  ‘Is it overlooked?’ the stranger inquired, frowning at me as if I intended to trap him in some diabolical snare.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s at the back of the house.’

  ‘Empty?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Warm?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He seemed reassured and settled a little deeper into the folds of his overcoat. ‘Perhaps I might take a look at it,’ he ventured, stooping to lift the wooden box and nursing it in his arms.

  I couldn’t think of a reason to stop him. I grasped the big cardboard suitcase and struggled to pull it up two flights of stairs. The room was at the end of a corridor containing nothing but a chest of drawers.

  ‘Is this it?’ He frowned at the door and looked disappointed as if he had fully expected to find a gate of beaten bronze.

  ‘Yes.’

  He took a step back as I opened the door and switched on the light. A yellow room with a green carpet. A huge eiderdown covered a narrow brass bed. There were patchwork cushions in the lap of an old armchair and plastic flowers in a vase on the table. It was modest but clean and comfortable.

  The stranger leaned forward and stared about him. He looked astonished. His fat mouth trembled and his eyes filled with tears. He snuffled and sobbed and wiped his nose in his hand.

  ‘Is it suitable?’ I inquired anxiously, setting his suitcase on the carpet. His tears alarmed me.

  He wagged his head and tried to speak but the tears choked him. He seemed so upset, so pathetically grateful, that I shrank back for fear that he might embrace me; and in that moment, without warning, he sprang forward as quick as a cat, and with a short kick from a cracked brown brogue, he slammed the door shut in my face!

  I stood in the corridor, stunned by the violence, shocked into silence, and heard him turn the key in the lock. My scalp prickled with horror. There was something wrong. I could sense it. He might be a gangster or child molester, serial killer or human bomb. He might have a suitcase packed with cocaine or a cargo of contraband bibles. Anything. Tiger bones. An inflatable woman. The fingers and toes of his murder victims. And now he was locked in the room and I didn’t know how to evict him. He might have been searching for just such a room in which to kill himself. He might have been walking the streets for days in search of this room. A quiet room at the back of a house that couldn’t be overlooked. It was perfect for murder or suicide.

  I retreated downstairs in time to meet father stumbling from the cellar. He groped his way alo
ng the passage towards the kitchen, clipped the doorframe, gasped in pain and surprise, spun on his heel and fell against the wall, clutching his shoulder. He was still wearing the spectacles he’d designed for the more intricate aspects of watchmaking. He had turned the cellar into a workshop and the spectacles, two magnifying lenses screwed into the frames of some old sunglasses my mother had once tried to throw away, were his first triumph at the workbench. They made him look like a startled loris.

  ‘Did I hear the doorbell?’ he asked cheerfully, wrenching the spectacles from his ears and nursing his injured shoulder.

  ‘A visitor,’ I said carelessly.

  My father frowned. ‘It’s too late for visitors.’ He was firmly of the opinion that evil stalked after sunset. He rarely answered the door and might even ignore the telephone during the hours of darkness.

  ‘He was looking for a room.’

  ‘What did your mother make of him?’

  ‘She didn’t see him.’

  ‘Well, if he wants a room he can come back in the morning,’ father snorted and turned towards the back parlour.

  ‘He’s already in China,’ I said unhappily. My mother had insisted on giving each room a name after reading in Homes & Gardens that every great country house contained a Chinese Smoking Room or William Morris Library. These grand titles would make reference to some priceless collection of antique furniture or the ancient Oriental wallpaper that clung in fragments to the walls. We lived in an ugly brick house filled with the kind of furniture you find discarded on street corners. But mother was not to be discouraged. Janet was in Mexico in memory of a large potted cactus that had failed to survive on the balcony; Franklin was in Lilliput because, as he often declared, he was nothing short of a literary giant; and Marvel was now in China because of the label on the eiderdown.

  Father looked concerned. He raked at his hair and hurried me into the kitchen. ‘Is he all right? Did you notice anything queer about him?’

  ‘He seemed normal,’ I said innocently. It’s true that he looked like an unfrocked priest, he was shabby and fat and weeping so much that he couldn’t speak; but if you ignored these details, he was perfectly fit and healthy.

  ‘Did you discuss the rent?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The rent!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A month in advance!’ father snapped impatiently. ‘You know it’s a month in advance!’

  ‘There wasn’t time…’ I complained. I sat down and looked at the jumble of shoes on the table, but even they could offer no comfort.

  ‘It’s simple enough! You big, wet pudding!’

  ‘He took me by surprise.’

  ‘How did he do that? Pull silk ribbons out of his nose?’

  ‘No. He locked himself in the room,’ I said miserably.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He managed to lock himself in the room.’

  Father stared at me for a moment or two, reluctant to believe that his only son could be so stupid. ‘We’ll have to sort this out,’ he grumbled, and searched about him for a weapon.

  ‘Perhaps we should talk to him in the morning,’ I suggested hopelessly. A miracle might happen. If we left him overnight he might have vanished by daybreak, leaving nothing in the room but a cold white fog or the mark of Satan scorched in the carpet.

  ‘No time!’ father shouted, seizing a potato peeler from the cutlery drawer. ‘It might be too late in the morning. We’ll have it out with him tonight!’

  I tried to reason with him but he wouldn’t listen. He took the staircase in long, leaping strides, stormed along the corridor and banged on the door with his fist.

  There was a startled yelp from within the room. ‘Who is it?’ barked the occupant.

  ‘Wandsworth!’ father shouted. ‘Henry Wandsworth. You’re in my house.’

  There was silence.

  I stood behind father and waited for the sound of exploding glass — I was quite convinced that the fat intruder would vault through the window to make his escape. We would force the lock on the door to find animal bones on the floor, a half-inflated rubber woman beckoning from the bed.

  And then, to my disappointment, the door opened and the stranger appeared. He beamed and stretched out a hand to my father.

  ‘Marvel,’ he boomed. ‘It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir.’

  We shuffled into the room and stared around. He’d already unpacked his suitcase and made himself comfortable. His overcoat had been stowed in the wardrobe and his shoes were empty beside the armchair. I looked at his feet. He was wearing a pair of red felt slippers.

  ‘It’s a privilege to be offered such charming and spacious accommodation,’ he continued, slapping the bed so hard that it made the springs of the mattress sing.

  ‘It’s not bad,’ father agreed, glancing about him as if he were looking at it for the first time. He had recently painted this room and I knew he was proud of the work.

  His great grandfather, William Wandsworth the Chemist, had built the house. William had made a fortune from popular patent medicines and this toppling conceit of brick and stained glass served as his monument. The fortune had been squandered but the house remained. My father had inherited the impossible task of trying to keep it from falling down. He seemed to spend most of his life nailing down woodwork, tacking canvas over broken windows and scrambling among the chimney pots, repairing roof tiles and leaking gutters.

  ‘Is this your boy?’

  My father turned and stared at me as if he’d forgotten my existence. ‘My son!’ he exclaimed. ‘The Skipper.’

  I smiled weakly and stared at the floor. Skipper was the only name I’d been prepared to accept as a child. My real name was such an embarrassment that my mother alone dared use it and only then in moments of anger or great frustration. It’s no fun being named after a 300-pound German wrestler. I was lean and fast, like my father, and Skipper suited me.

  ‘He’s a fine young man!’ Marvel declared.

  Father was flummoxed. I knew from the tilt of his chin and the way the potato peeler had been planted like a fountain pen in his shirt pocket, that he’d been prepared for a scuffle. And here he found nothing but a charming old man in a pair of carpet slippers. He loitered, shifting his weight from foot to foot, and looked distinctly flustered.

  ‘It’s a cold night,’ Marvel said, trying to make conversation.

  ‘Is it?’ father said. He sounded surprised.

  ‘Bitter,’ Marvel said mournfully.

  ‘Have you come far?’ father asked, glancing at the suitcase in a corner. I saw that his precious wooden box had been pushed a little way under the bed, as if he were trying to hide it from view.

  ‘Across town,’ Marvel said, waving towards the window as the wind rattled and pulled at the frame.

  Father smiled and tried again. ‘How did you find us?’

  ‘Word of mouth.’

  Father nodded as he tried to think of another question. ‘So tell me, what’s your line of business?’ he asked at last, fiddling with the folds of the curtains.

  The stranger shot me a wild glance and his face turned deathly pale. ‘This and that,’ he said anxiously. ‘I’m engaged in this and that.’

  ‘I hope it’s a living,’ father grinned.

  ‘I find myself in receipt of a modest consideration…’

  ‘Is it regular?’

  ‘Regular as clockwork,’ he said and then, catching the drift of the conversation, he grunted, rummaged for his wallet and offered to pay for the room.

  For a moment father looked ashamed but with a little encouragement he settled the business — a month in advance — and the money changed hands without complaint.

  We wished Mr Marvel goodnight and crept downstairs feeling foolish.

  ‘We’ll tell your mother in the morning,’ father declared, folding the bank notes into his pocket.

  2

  ‘He’s an animal!’ mother said as we cleared the breakfast table. She clattered the cutlery on the
tray and shook her head in disgust.

  The Buffalo Brothers had lost their world championship tag-team belts to the combined forces of Abdullah the Turk and Boris the Butcher. It had been a bad night in the squared circle. Abdullah and Boris, fighting as the Desert Assassins, were brawlers, plain and simple. Abdullah was a sadist with a waxed moustache who liked to gouge and bite his opponents. His partner, Boris, was a swamp creature. He stood nearly seven feet tall, weighed 400 pounds on an empty stomach and always made his entrance wearing a black leather mask. Mother loathed him.

  Rick and Randy Buffalo were excellent ring technicians and Randy, the younger brother, was strong enough to knock down a horse. But they were clean, tactical fighters and no match for the masters of mayhem. Mother described the final moments of the fight. Abdullah had tossed Randy from the ring, followed him down and battered him senseless with a metal chair. In the confusion Boris caught Rick — preparing to launch himself from the top turnbuckle for a flying drop kick — by blinding him with a pepper spray, brought him back to the canvas with a punishing belly-to-belly suplex and snatched the pinfall. One. Two. Three. It was terrible. A disaster.

  ‘That’s not wrestling!’ mother grumbled. ‘It’s a mockery!’ She searched the pockets of her cardigan for a short length of lavender lavatory paper and used it to pull on her nose. She was small and dark and as bright as a jackdaw. When she worked in the house she always wore the same faded summer frock printed with bundles of old-fashioned roses and any number of cardigans, depending upon the weather.

  ‘Who was the legal man?’

  ‘Randy was legal,’ she said, as if it were obvious. ‘He couldn’t tag Rick while the Turk was whacking him with a chair. He was on the floor with his brains coming out through his ears.’

  ‘Well, it should have been a count out,’ I said, after weighing all the evidence.

  ‘That’s right!’ mother said, triumphantly. ‘Exactly. And that wouldn’t lose you the belt. Everyone knows that!’

  ‘Who was the referee?’

  ‘Rhino Black.’

  ‘Well, he’s so stupid they have to help him tie his own shoelaces,’ I said scornfully.