many men only mature at the age of twenty-eight. You’ve heard of that? Seems a bit late to me, but that’s what they say.”
Eddie had turned round and slunk back into his room, a Polonius in retreat from behind the arras. That woman, he thought, that blowsy woman is after my dad. And if she gets him, then she gets the lot when he snuffs it—the flat, the wine business, the old Jaguar. The lot. She has to be stopped.
Then he thought: Twenty-eight? Twenty-eight?
3. Dee Is Rude About Others
AS WILLIAM LOCKED his front door behind him that morning, he heard the sound of somebody fiddling with keys on the landing downstairs. This was nothing unusual: the girls, as he called them, had a difficult lock, and unless one inserted the key at precisely the right angle and then exerted a gentle upward pressure, it would not work. It was not unusual, he had noted, for the locking-up process to take five or ten minutes; on one occasion he had gone out to buy a newspaper and returned to discover one of the young women still struggling with the recalcitrant lock.
As he made his way downstairs, he saw that it was Dee on the landing below.
“Having trouble with the key?” he asked jauntily.
She looked up. “No more than usual. I thought I’d got the hang of it and then …”
“Keys are like that,” said William. “They never fit exactly. I remember an aunt of mine who used the wrong key for years. She was determined that it would work and she managed to force the lock of her front door every time. But it took a lot of force. She had lost the right key and was in fact using the back door key. The triumph of determination over … well, locks, I suppose.”
Dee stood back and allowed William to fiddle with the key. After a few twists the lock moved and he was able to withdraw the key. “There we are. Locked.”
They started downstairs together. There were four floors in Corduroy Mansions, if one included the basement. William owned the top flat, the girls were on the first floor, and in the ground-floor flat lived Mr. Wickramsinghe, a mild, rather preoccupied accountant whom nobody saw very much, but who kept fresh flowers in a vase in the common entrance hall.
“The others have all left for work?” asked William.
“Some of them. Jo’s away for a couple of days. I’ve actually got the morning off, so I’m doing a bit of shopping before I go in at lunchtime. Caroline and Jenny are at work, if you can call it that.”
William raised an eyebrow. “From that, I take it that you don’t.”
Dee sniffed. “Well, look at Caroline. She’s doing that Master’s course at Sotheby’s. Fine Art. She goes to lectures and drifts around the salerooms. Very taxing.”
“Very pleasant,” said William. “But she’ll have essays to write, won’t she? ‘The Early Giotto’ and that sort of thing. And articles to read? The Burlington Magazine, I suppose.”
Dee was not convinced. She worked in a health-food shop, the Pimlico Vitamin and Supplement Agency; she knew what hard work was.
“And Jenny?” William asked.
“Her job consists of going to lunch, as far as I can tell,” said Dee.
“There must be more to it than that,” said William. “Being a PA to an MP must involve something. All those letters from constituents. All those complaints about drains and hospital wards. Surely those must take up a lot of time?”
“Oh yes, I suppose they do. But still she seems to have a lot of time for lunches.”
William smiled. “Have you met her boss? The MP.”
“Oedipus Snark? Yes, I met him once. He came round to the flat to deliver some papers to Jenny.” She shuddered involuntarily.
“He didn’t make a good impression?”
“Certainly not. A horrible man. Creepy.”
They had now come out of the front door and continued to walk together along the street. William walked to work; Dee was heading for the tube.
“His name hardly helps,” said William. “Oedipus Snark. It’s very unfortunate. Somewhat redolent of Trollope, I would have thought. What was the name of Trollope’s villain? Slope, wasn’t it? Snark and Slope are obviously birds of a feather.”
“Creep.”
“Yes,” said William. “That would be another good name for a villain. Creep. Of course that’s a name with political associations already. You won’t remember CREEP, but I do. Just. Watergate. Remember Watergate?” He realised that of course she would not. Just as she would know nothing about Winston Churchill or Mussolini;