It was after midnight when their taxi arrived at Primrose Hill. That had been a problem: where to go. He hadn’t lived in London for nearly six years, and he doubted that Anna would open her house to a neglectful former husband and his much-younger American companion.
‘How are your breaking-and-entering skills?’ he’d asked.
‘I can smash a window with a brick.’
A light rain fell as he looked up at the three-storey terrace house on Chamberlain Street, reminding him that he had no coat or, indeed, any luggage. With luck there would be some clothes in the house, albeit superannuated by moths and fashion.
‘Who lives here?’ Eleanor said, looking up at the peeling gloss and the pale-brick walls overgrown with Virginia creeper and wisteria. The windows were dark and sightless, with heavy wooden shutters behind the glass.
‘It’s been closed up since my father died. Couldn’t bring myself to sell it.’
The front door was too sturdy an obstacle to break without waking the street, so Denham carefully descended the narrow steps that led to the basement door. At the foot of the steps he trod on a piece of buttered bread lying on the gravel. It was dusted with splinters of glass that glittered in the light from the streetlamp, and he saw that it had been employed, recently it seemed, to break the glass of the basement door noiselessly.
‘We’ve been burgled,’ he called up. Gingerly he put his hand through the broken glass and opened the door, his shoe crunching on the shards that lay on the floor inside. ‘Have you got a match?’
Together they crept into the basement. Years ago his father had used it as a workshop. Now it resembled some long-ransacked tomb. The detritus of small motors covered the table, ghostly in the match light, and the air smelled musty with damp and diesel oil. Technical drawings furred in dust were scattered over the floor.
‘Holy crap,’ Eleanor cried, startled when Denham kicked a fuse box in the dark, sending it thumping across the floor.
In the hall Denham lit another match and entered the kitchen. Silhouettes played behind the old iron stove and the rows of enamelled plates. It was like having the pages of a half-remembered childhood book opened for him again.
‘I think our burglar stayed for dinner,’ Eleanor whispered, pointing to a plate with crumbs and smeared butter. On the table were two curling crusts of brown bread, some sour-looking green apples, and an empty tin of corned beef. On a chair was a purple kite Denham recognised, and a comic book opened to a strip featuring Corky the Cat.
‘I think I know who came calling,’ he said. He lit another match, walked across the hall, and, putting two fingers in his mouth, made a loud whistle up the stairs.
Silence for a few seconds, then a thudding commotion from somewhere at the top of the house, as if someone were erecting a barricade of chairs and mattresses.
A boy’s voice, terrified. ‘Who’s there?’
‘Come and say hello to your dad.’
Another moment’s silence, then the sudden sound of running feet, and Tom came bounding down the two flights into his father’s arms. He was clasped so tightly against Denham’s wounds that the pain shot orange stars through his eyes. He didn’t care.
‘Oh, Tom.’
The match went out, and in the darkness Denham smelled earth and bark and liquorice in his son’s hair, and when his small voice spoke it was with a soft whistle. He had lost his two front teeth, like the apparition in the cell. Maybe it was Tom’s spirit that had come to him after all.
‘Are you going to stay this time?’
‘Yes,’ said Denham, struggling under the emotion in his voice. ‘Daddy’s not leaving again.’
Tom’s voice fell to a whisper. ‘Who’s in there?’
It was easier to see in the kitchen, where the city glow of the clouds shone through a window over the sink. Beyond it was a garden, dark and overgrown. Eleanor stood tall and graceful in the spectral light. A figure from a dream.
‘Her name’s Eleanor,’ Denham whispered. ‘She’s from New York.’ He led Tom by the hand into the kitchen. ‘She’s a special friend of mine.’
‘Thomas Denham, how d’you do?’ said Tom, stiffly offering his hand.
‘Great to meet you, kid.’ Eleanor took his hand and pulled him into a hug. ‘Mind if we stay at your hideout?’
Denham found a penny in a drawer in the hall and went out to call Anna from the telephone box on Regent’s Park Road. She wailed when he told her; her tragedy salved in an instant by the news. ‘He’s safe and well,’ Denham said. ‘I’ll bring him up first thing in the morning.’
When he returned, Eleanor was chatting with Tom, who was helping her make corned beef sandwiches in the light of a paraffin lamp. The bread was stale, but with a few slices of sharp green apple as relish, and Tom’s obvious joy, the meal felt like a treat. Denham tried abridging their adventures for an eight-year-old’s consumption as he explained about his injuries to a concerned son, telling him the police challenged him to a boxing match, but one question led to another in the boy’s eager mind, as he listed all of the ploys Charlie Chan would have used, until it was very late and his father was exhausted.
‘We’ll tell you the rest over breakfast,’ Denham said. ‘But now to bed. Your dad has to sleep.’
‘Will Eleanor be here for breakfast, too?’ Tom whispered.
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
The mattress in the master bedroom might have been a century old and not aired in just as long. Denham sat on the edge, his hands resting on the springs, and watched Eleanor undress in front of him without a word, standing amid the shadows and the cobwebs.
She took out a hairpin, gave her head a small shake, and her hair fell around her neck. She reached beneath her hem, undid her garters with a secret movement of her fingers, and slowly slid her stockings down over her smooth, long legs. He hesitated, shyness yielding to desire, then took her hand and held it to his face. They kissed, lips and tongues just caressing, breath quickening. She undid her blouse, holding his gaze as it shimmered from her shoulders to the floor. Pale breasts in a white-silk bra.
Gently he touched them, running his thumb under the silk strap. Then she reached behind her back, and the bra, too, came away.
Getting out of his own clothes was a challenge, and he winced as she helped him out of his shirt.
They lay back on the bed. The house seemed to creak, as if turning over in its sleep. She had on only her white-silk panties. Her skin was translucent, as if she were absorbing the faint lamplight from the street. Their faces in shadow, he whispered in her ear. She gave a soft, complicit laugh, then slipped the panties off.
N one of the men noticed him crouching in the corner of the control car. They were flying blind: rain and hail dashed the windows from the darkness outside. Their faces were illuminated by the radium glow from the dials on the instruments. The propeller engines were making every surface tremble. One of the men turned and saw him. It was his father, who smiled in the apologetic way he had. A slide rule and pencils in his top pocket. Denham tried to call out but couldn’t be heard over the roar of wind and engines. His father winked at him sadly, opened his hand to reveal the pocket watch, and Denham understood that everything was lost. Suddenly the engines started making a violent hammering sound, and he awoke to realise that the hammering was at the front door.
He lay still, breathing fast. Tiny rays filtered through the tattered curtains. He heard the milk horse clopping down Regent’s Park Road. Eleanor was still in a deep sleep next to him, her arm linked in his. The hammering sounded again.
He heard Tom running down the stairs to the hall, talking to himself.
Denham shouted, ‘ No, ’ and started to get up but the pain in his ribs forced him back onto the mattress. Eleanor stirred.
Moments later Tom called up the stairs from the hall.
‘Dad, a man wants you.’
‘Who is he?’
‘He’s got a bowler hat.’