Acts & Monuments Page 18

  In either event, Barry reflected, it was what he couldn’t see that made sense of what he could. Which alerted him to a rather striking thought about his daughter. She, too, was a pendant to a portrait that had now been lost. She, too, now stood alone when, actually, she was really one of a pair. Perhaps it was the unseen portrait that explained her too. Perhaps it was not a presence, but an absence that made sense of her apparent inscrutability.

  At which point, Barry realised that the minister had been right. Pickenoy had tricked him into having a spiritual moment. He thought he’d been looking at a picture of a young, attractive, seventeenth-century Dutch woman, and then he’d discovered himself looking at something altogether different; something that wasn’t even there.

  He decided that, whatever it was, it called for a cup of tea and a cake. So off he headed to the Edwardian Tea Rooms.

  The Edwardian Tea Rooms were, as far as Barry was concerned, the museum and art gallery’s crowning glory, for not only did they contain examples of great art in a stunning architectural setting, they also contained examples of great cake.

  The comforting smell of roasting coffee and baked treats perfumed the air as he entered, whilst the deep-red walls and mosaic-tiled floor gently suggested to Barry an earlier, simpler age, when God was in His heaven and all was right in the world. But he also became aware of the huge roof lantern, which ran the entire length of the galleried hall and threw daylight into even its most recessed corner. Even on an overcast late-November day, something made it feel uncomfortably bright.

  As he sat down with a coffee and a generously proportioned chocolate muffin, he felt his pocket vibrate. It was a text from Saleema.

  “So sorry u can’t be here bt Jean has explained. Wanted to say goodbye properly & thank u. Just 2 let u no the money has arrived safely in Pak. We fly out tomorrow. Hope 2 b able to repay money next week. Just let us no where u want it sent. Thx & God bless u, Saleema.”

  Having dismissed the text message, Barry saw something else on his phone screen, but this message confused him: “Lauren Todd mentioned you in a comment.”

  Barry was not much given to using social media, but Lauren had insisted on setting up a profile for him before she’d gone away, so she could keep in touch. He wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do, but he swiped across the message anyway and, sure enough, his social media feed appeared before him. It featured a picture of a large blue whale – the cover image of a David Attenborough DVD box set. It had been posted, not by Lauren, but by his wife. Above it she had written just one word: “Beautiful”. Below it, Lauren had posted “Looks like that’s Mum’s Christmas present sorted then Barry Todd.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Barry that Christmas was that close, but looking at the date he realised it was less than a month away. He felt a slight twinge of regret that his wife felt compelled to tell the world that she found a blue whale beautiful, but seemed singularly ill-disposed toward telling her husband what she thought about him.

  As he assailed the phone with a wounded stare, it suddenly began vibrating in his hand and Lucy’s name came up.

  “Sorry to bother you, Barry, but I just need to give you a heads-up.”

  “What’s the problem, Luce?”

  “I’ve just got off the phone to Iulia Nicolescu. She’s missed her rent payment this week.”

  Barry let out a weary sigh. “And?”

  “Well, she was very upset. I couldn’t quite work out all that she said to be honest. But we aren’t going to get our money.”

  “Is that just this week or is that ever?”

  “Difficult to say. She was going on about not being able to work at the moment because the police had been round. Although I don’t understand that, because she’s an EU national – she’s got a legal right to live and work here; it’s just claiming benefits that she can’t do.”

  Barry didn’t want to crush Lucy’s youthful naïveté, but it appeared that his suspicions about Iulia’s source of income were confirmed.

  “Don’t worry,” said Barry. “I’ll pop down this afternoon and have a chat.”

  “I’ve told her she’s got until close of play tomorrow to get back up to date with her agreement or we’ll have to request the eviction. Is that OK?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll make sure she understands she’s running out of options.”

  Indeed, she was. But so was Barry. If Iulia backed out of the agreement now, he realised that Langley would be asking some very awkward questions as to why Iulia’s eviction had not been requested the moment she had first breached the court order.

  Barry finished his coffee and muffin, and headed back to his car, stopping as he did so to make his daily withdrawal of £250 from a nearby cashpoint.

  He knew it wasn’t Iulia’s fault, but it annoyed him nonetheless that his attempt to do the right thing might backfire. Why do I even bother? He asked himself in frustration. And, no matter how long and hard he thought about it as he drove over to Coleshill, he still couldn’t think of a convincing answer.

  Thirty-Two

  The scent of bleach rose up through the stairwell, but failed to conceal the unmistakable aroma of urine that lurked in its shadowed corners. A handmade sign at the foot of the stairs read “Polite notice – Late night ‘Gentleman Callers’ are not welcome in any of these flats. We will report you to the police!” Barry sighed as he ripped it off the wall. This was clearly not going to be an easy conversation. The stairs spiralled up, passing a window at each turn before continuing on their weary way. Barry followed them up to the very top, all the time hoping for some miraculous deliverance from the cup that Lucy had passed him.

  “Miss Nicolescu? It’s Mr Todd, from the housing association. Can I come in?”

  The spyhole was checked. Chains were unchained, bolts were unbolted and, finally, a lock was unlocked. Barry was invited in and offered a seat on a second-hand easy chair, somehow made presentable by the addition of a throw. The room was tidy but sparsely furnished, yet its cleanness and the precision with which photos were arranged on the mantelpiece spoke of it being a home that was loved.

  Barry took his seat at right angles to Iulia on the sofa. She looked drained, as if the act of simply living was beyond her now. Her eyes were shadowed and her skin was sallow, but she was still shapely and trim. The fog from her cigarette hung in the air like a cloud presaging a warning.

  “I understand you’re not able to keep to our agreement, Miss Nicolescu. About your rent and arrears.”

  “I have make payments, Meester Todd,” she said, sucking disconsolately on her cigarette. “But I cannot make payments now.”

  “I know, but we have a suspended possession order against you, Miss Nicolescu. If you miss a payment – even one – we have to take possession of the flat. Do you understand that?”

  “I know. Meess Hampton explain.”

  “I know things aren’t easy for you, but you have to appreciate that I can’t allow you to live here rent free. My boss will expect me to act.”

  “I understand Meester Todd, but I try everything. Everything. I get some money before, but…” There was a pause as she sought to explain the delicacy of the situation. “It not so easy now. The neighbours – they watch who come to flat.”

  “Yes. Miss Hampton explained that the police have been round.”

  There was an awkward silence whilst they both developed a sudden fascination with the floor.

  “Are you looking for work at the moment?” Barry immediately felt the need to clarify. “I mean, a proper job.”

  Iulia glowered at him, a hurt look in her eyes. “I am trying, but no one is employing me. Everyone insist on ‘references’, on ‘full employment history’, and when I explain what happen to me…” Her sentence petered out in despair. “It so unfair!”

  Iulia threw out a blanket of smoke from her cigarette and watched as it settled heavily over the roo
m like a duvet. She looked desperate; her eyes sunken and the light from them gone. Barry felt genuinely sorry for her. This wasn’t what he’d come into social housing to do.

  “Is there anywhere you could go – if you couldn’t stay here? A friend perhaps? Or maybe a relative?”

  “There is nowhere. The friends I come with – they all go back now. I have no family here.” Her eyes glassed with the suggestion of a tear. “Shakira – next door – she my only friend here. But she have baby now and her flat is small too. Meess Hampton say I not able to stay there.”

  “Yes, that’s right, I’m afraid. Ms Jackson-Lewis would be in breach of her tenancy if she took you in. I’m sorry, but I was just trying to understand what your options are.”

  “Options? There are no options. I have no money, no job, no family or friends here. I will have to go back to Romania… and they will kill me.” She coughed a forlorn, bronchial rasp. It sounded as though her heart had been broken into a thousand pieces, which were now rattling around inside her chest.

  “Well, as Miss Hampton explained, we’ve been contacted by the Romanian Migrants Welfare Association—”

  “They are not welfare association. They are criminal. They look for me – to kill me!”

  Barry hadn’t discussed with Costel exactly what his intentions were, but it seemed a not-unreasonable assessment of the situation.

  “You’re sure there’s no one else who can help you?”

  “Absolute,” Iulia replied. “This is the best place for me; the safest place. I sure I can get job sometime. But for now…” She stubbed her cigarette out, despondently.

  It seemed they had reached the end of the road. Barry had nothing else to suggest. “I’m obviously very touched by your story, Miss Nicolescu, but, I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do to help. My hands are tied, I’m afraid.”

  Iulia’s head snapped up sharply and she fixed Barry with an accusing stare. “Then you kill me! If you evict me, you slit my throat!” She threw the words at him like a knife.

  “I appreciate how difficult this is for you, but I don’t know what to suggest.” He really didn’t. But he did know that if there was anything he could have done in that moment to avoid the inevitable then he would have done it.

  Iulia’s face crumpled into a tearful grimace. Barry grabbed a tissue from his jacket pocket and leant forward to proffer it to her. As he did so, his most recent cash withdrawal fell out of his jacket pocket and deposited itself across Iulia’s carpet. Barry quickly knelt on the carpet to retrieve it. A moment later he was joined by Iulia.

  “You have money?” she asked, picking up some stray notes. There was something different about her voice. It still sounded like Iulia, but something about its timbre had changed.

  “Well, yes, I suppose I do… Sort of. But it’s not quite as simple as that,” said Barry as he scrabbled round trying to recover the last of his money.

  He felt himself becoming flustered. His shirt removed itself from the back of his trousers as he reached forward under the coffee table, and he felt all the blood in his body rush toward his face as he sensed his upper buttocks being exposed. Yet, when he straightened up, Iulia did not appear repulsed or embarrassed, as he imagined she would. She was kneeling calmly before him with a strange look in her eye. Only moments previously she had looked like a woman slowly marching toward her death, but now she looked alive. And that transformed her.

  “You have money,” she said again. This was only partly true. Barry did indeed have some of his money, but the rest remained in Iulia’s hands and she showed little sign of intending to hand it back to him. Given that, for obvious reasons, Barry could produce no evidence that the money was legitimately his, he recognised that he would need to stifle his immediate response, which was to threaten to go to the police if she didn’t return the money forthwith.

  “That’s my money, Miss Nicolescu. Thank you,” he said sternly, reaching out his hand.

  She flicked an eyebrow casually. “You want money; I give you money. No problem.”

  Iulia dangled the money invitingly in front of his empty hand. Barry went to grab it, at which point she snatched it away.

  “But think, Meester Todd. You say yourself, you not want to evict me. Why you not help me?”

  “You’ve got a debt of nearly £2,500. A couple of hundred quid off me is not going to help you for long.”

  “But maybe you have more money.”

  Barry paused. He did indeed have more money, but he couldn’t quite see why Iulia suddenly seemed to expect that he would be prepared to give it to her in order to forestall her eviction.

  “Even if that were the case, it’s against the rules.”

  She spoke to him as though she were a child. “You good man, Meester Todd. You want to help me. I see that.” She tilted her head to one side, then bowed it forward and looked up at Barry, opening her eyes fully as she did so. The look she gave him, and the voice, provoked the first stirrings of desire in Barry. But he knew it was an impossible desire. She was far too young and far too pretty. And that fact broke his heart.

  The Todds could not be said to have enjoyed a particularly active sex life since Christopher’s death. Barry had hoped that, once Lauren had moved out, things might have improved. But, in the two months since Lauren’s departure, his wife’s demeanour had not suggested that it was likely to be on the agenda for the foreseeable future. And he now realised that that fact broke his heart too. Of course, Iulia could not possibly have known that, but Barry wondered for a moment if somehow her look had penetrated his heart and now sought to reunite its broken pieces.

  “If I was to ‘help’ you, as you put it, I could lose my job. You do understand that? We’re not allowed to help our tenants – well, not in that way – so I’d be putting you in a position where you could get me fired.”

  “But I never do that, Meester Todd. If you help me to stay here I never betray you, never!” She moved closer to Barry. He wanted to back away, but his chair was behind him.

  “Obviously, I’d love to help you if I could. And, yes, I do have a little bit of money – not much, you understand – but enough potentially to get you through this. Over time. Like I said, I don’t want to evict you. But it’s the risk, you see. It can’t all be down to me. I’d need you to do something too. For me.”

  “Of course!” said Iulia. She was now so close he could taste the smoke on her breath. “I not expect you to help me for nothing. I help you too.”

  “But you couldn’t pay me back.”

  “Not with money, no. But maybe something else. You have something I need. Maybe I have something you like?” she asked, flicking open the button on her jeans. “Maybe we swap? I do whatever you want, Meester Todd.”

  She said it with such compassion that Barry wanted to believe, more than anything in the world, that it was true. He fixed her with a penetrating stare, his heart beating hard through his chest. “Really?”

  “I will do anything to stay here – in this country – Meester Todd,” she replied, deftly unbuckling Barry’s trouser belt with her free hand. “Anything.”

  “Right,” Barry squeaked, feeling Iulia’s hand slip effortless inside his Y-fronts. “But when you say ‘anything’…”

  She gently lactated him for a few moments, then suddenly snapped her hold into a vice-like grip.

  “You help me to stay here?” she asked, meeting Barry’s agonised stare full-on. “My rent? The money I owe? You pay me, so I can pay these things?”

  Under the circumstances, Barry didn’t feel he had any option but to agree. “Yes, yes!”

  “Not just one week?”

  “Of course not! For as long as you need.” In truth, it didn’t feel like it would be much of a hardship. “As long as you can promise me you won’t say anything to anyone about our… arrangement.”

  “Then we have deal.” And instantly her eyes
melted into pools of tenderness in which Barry allowed himself to wallow.

  Thirty-Three

  “Barry, could you come in and see me, please?”

  It wasn’t what Barry wanted to hear first thing on a Monday morning, particularly when the person doing the beckoning was Langley. It brought him back to reality – or, at least, it brought him back into the public world – and reminded him that it was the world that he still had to occupy, at least for some of the time. But something had changed the previous Thursday: something that had opened up a door to a different reality, a very private one. And it was this world that Barry had found occupying his mind since his encounter with Iulia.

  After Christopher, it was as though he had become suspended in his grief, like a ship trapped in the winter ice. He hadn’t known how to proceed safely in a world that seemed so uncomprehending of his pain. But after his encounter with Iulia he now knew that there was another man lurking inside of him. And Barry knew that it was this man whom he now had to invite to the forefront of his person. The money, Iulia, everything – this would be the axe that he would take to the frozen sea in which this new Barry was trapped. He would be careful to keep his old self for public display, of course. But he had decided that, in his private moments, it would be this new man who would drive him. Now, however, Langley’s sudden hailing of him brought Barry back into the public world in which he still, for the moment at least, had to live.

  Upon entering Langley’s office, Barry saw that Angela was waiting for him too. Her involvement in a meeting was never a positive sign. He saw that she was rotating her pen nervously in her fingers. She looked up briefly to welcome him into the room, but then her eyes began to flicker, seemingly anxious to look everywhere except at Barry’s pleading face. He felt a tide of nausea spread through his stomach.