you don't need me at all. Surely' – she must be tactful here – 'you need someone you can tell all this to who would be sympathetic. I don't mean I'm not but I'm a doctor of medicine, I'm really not qualified to help you over this.'
'You mean a psychiatrist?'
'I meant a therapist, yes.'
'You think I'm mad?'
'No, of course not. Of course I don't think you're mad because you have – well, a very active imagination.' She took her phone directory out of her bag. 'Look, why not let me phone this woman who's an excellent psychotherapist and make an appointment for you to see her?'
'She'll think I'm mad.'
'No, she won't. She's the last person to think like that. Are you well enough to go out now if you go in a taxi?'
He said lifelessly, 'Oh, yes, I've been out. I'm supposed to go out a bit, only I can't walk far. Mithras doesn't come with me.'
'So I can phone Dr Peacock?'
'Sure. Go ahead.'
He kept his eyes fixed on her while she made her phone call. It seemed to her that it was darker in the room than it had been when first she came. Not much sun could penetrate this place but what there had been had gone, the sky clouding over. She told Joel she had made an appointment for him two days ahead in the afternoon.
'I'd like to tell you about Jasper,' he said.
'Perhaps it would be best to save that for Dr Peacock.'
'And my pa. I'd like to tell you about him and why he hates me. You will come back, won't you? Just because I'm going to this Dr Peacock doesn't mean you won't be my doctor any more?'
'Of course it doesn't, Joel. But I think you should come to me now you're better.' Anyone overhearing this would assume she was speaking to a boy of ten. 'We'll fix a time for you to come after my usual surgery hours.'
She got up and he got up. Out in the gloomy hall, he said, 'Mithras is here. He didn't come in while you were with me. He's been waiting out here, over there in the corner by that thing, the thing like a tree where you hang coats.'
Ella said calmly, 'Would you please switch on a light?'
The sudden brightness made her blink. Joel covered his eyes with one hand. 'Dr Peacock will let me know how you get on,' she said. 'And you must let me know too.' She held out her hand. 'Goodbye for now, Joel.'
'Goodbye.' He wasn't looking at her but at the corner where the coatstand was.
He opened the front door for her, still looking away. The fresh air, the hazy sunshine, passing traffic, people, brought her back from something that was more than unease. Savouring her relief, she began the walk to Chepstow Villas. She had no patients this evening and Eugene had said he would be home early. It was a pity really that she couldn't tell him about her experience of the afternoon in that dreadful flat, hearing those dreadful things. But she couldn't, any more than a priest could disclose what was told him in the confessional.
Several replies came to Uncle Gib's advertisement. Applicants were attracted by the low rent but all but one of them were repelled by the condition of the house, the bare and dirty rooms and, above all, the absence of a bathroom. The one who wasn't belonged in that class of people Uncle Gib described as beggars who couldn't be choosers. He was a young man from eastern Europe and he had a job washing dishes in a tiny café in the Portobello Road, nearly as nasty as the house in Blagrove Road. At present, he told Uncle Gib, he was sleeping on the floor of his friend's bedsitter.
To him the top flat was a palace.
'I toilet in garden,' he said, 'and wash in kitchen.'
'Scullery,' said Uncle Gib, 'and only when I'm out, mind.'
CHAPTER NINE
Eugene considered the items for sale in the health food shop unappetising, the fruit bruised and the vegetables looking as if a slug might crawl out between the leaves. As for quinoa, whatever that was, and kasha, did normal people eat those things? But Ella, who had put her flat on the market and more or less moved in with him, wanted ginger and garlic and something called fenugreek for what she planned to cook that evening and this was the only place he knew for certain he could get