Read Online Out of the Blackout by Robert Barnard - Free Book Online Page B

penetrated by freaks of the atmosphere to his heavenly fastness.
    There were more Simmeters than he had so far met, that he concluded early on. They slept on the first floor, and all three bedrooms there were occupied. Each night, through the crack of his door that he left slightly ajar, he heard three separate sets of footsteps mount the first flight of stairs: first the old woman—slow and heavy, but without help; then, as a rule, Len—fussily closing the door to the ground-floor rooms, checking the front door, and turning off the lights as quickly as possible; then, he was fairly sure, a woman’s—less careful with the door, leaving lights on while she went to the bathroom, once leaving them on after she had gone to bed, so that he heard Len come out and switch them off, muttering bitterly. These last two sets of footsteps sometimes came in a different order, but they never came together.
    The view from his poky garret window was unsatisfactory. By no kind of bodily contortion could he see the tiny front garden, like a folded pocket handkerchief, or the iron gate. But he could see the pavement in front of the house, and on three successive mornings he saw a woman with faded fair hair who seemed to have just turned—to have come out of the gate, and then turned in the direction of the tube station. And it was not Miss Cosgrove, from the room opposite his.
    He had said ‘Good Morning’ and ‘Good Evening’ to Miss Cosgrove two or three times by the end of the first week. He had not wanted to rush into engaging her in conversation. He felt instinctively that the secrecy of the Simmeter family was part of a larger secrecy or wariness that was a birthright of Londoners—an obsessive guarding of their privacy, a blank front to the world’s curiosity. The unfriendliness of Londoners had been part of the received wisdom of Yeasdon, in spite of the manifest openness and forthrightness of most of the kids who had landed on them during the war. Their parents, Yeasdon knew, would be different: you could have the same neighbour in London for thirty years and not swap more than the occasional good-morning with him. Thus, making no distinction between Wimbledon or West Ham, Kensington or Kentish Town, the Yeasdoners confidently pronounced on the mores of thecapital, on the strength of their day trips to Oxford Street and a nice play.
    So Simon was a little nervous one evening, when he had been in Miswell Terrace a matter of ten days, when out of the blue he invited Miss Cosgrove in. He was on his way down to fill his kettle from the bathroom tap and when he met Miss Cosgrove coming up the invitation in for coffee seemed to present itself naturally.
    â€˜Well, that’s kind of you. Thank you very much,’ she said, after a moment’s hesitation, and clearly surprised. She and Mr Blore, it seemed, had not fraternized. When she came in a few minutes later the kettle was beginning to sing. She looked around the room—at the Constable and Canaletto prints, at the Beatles poster and the embroidered bedspread that his mother had sent him, and said:
    â€˜Well, you’ve done what you could. I don’t think anyone could make this room really pleasant.’
    â€˜I suspect you’re right. It’s only temporary. I don’t want to commit myself to a flat till I know London better.’
    â€˜That’s probably wise. I’ve never gone in for a flat myself because there are other things I prefer to spend my money on, but sometimes I think there are areas I’d prefer to live in. Where do you work?’
    â€˜I’m on the scientific staff at the London Zoo.’
    That set Miss Cosgrove going, and got the conversation off to a good start. Miss Cosgrove was not an imaginative soul, and the inherent sadness of the Zoo had never struck her: the London Zoo was her idea of a good day out, she said. She’d taken her mother, five years ago, it must be now, the last