‘You mentioned Helene was your au pair. You have some grand turns of phrase, as well.’
‘And here was me thinking I was doing proper Estuary English, an’ all.’
‘Tell you what,’ said James, all seriousness, ‘I won’t tell anyone you’re secretly posh if you don’t tell anyone I’m secretly dour.’
‘Was that a secret?’
‘Aye. A right crabbit auld bastart, my Granda used to say.’ James’s mouth quirked. ‘But he used to call me a wee scunner as well.’
Gabriel didn’t know what a wee scunner was, but that nostalgic glimmer in James’s eye suggested it was fondly meant.
Talk was more businesslike after that, though James’s house rules were simple. After tea, James insisted on washing the tea things, so Gabriel retired to unpack his few belongings and choose the best place for his easel.
That done, he stood at his window and looked out across the patch of grass behind the flats; across red brick walls to tight-packed houses, ramshackle sheds, lights coming on in small windows in homes all across Plaistow and West Ham.
No ghosts here, he decided. I can be safe here. Everything’s going to be fine.
After living for the first few days on Tesco’s sandwiches – there was hardly any food in the house and Gabriel was responsible for his own groceries anyway – Gabriel did a proper shop. He returned with provisions to find James watching the news.
Gabriel stared at James sitting motionless in front of the screen, so devoid of movement and colour that Gabriel could have sworn the man was dead. Gabriel had seen dead people in his time, and he knew that nothing living was ever that still.
He’d seen other things that looked dead too, but he’d touched James when their hands had met over his suitcase. James was real, solid flesh, not a wisp of light or the product of a febrile mind. Other people had spoken to James. Baxter and Helene and the estate agent. No way was James a ghost.
Cautiously, Gabriel placed the bags on the floor, walked over and poked James in the shoulder.
James jerked away from him as though scalded.
‘Sorry,’ said Gabriel, keeping his tone level. ‘Just checking.’
‘Just checking what?’ snapped James.
‘That you’re real and still breathing.’
‘I…’
James’s expression tumbled through all kinds of reactions, none of which Gabriel had been expecting. Irritation. Horror. Distress. Shame. That last one made no sense.
‘I had a flatmate once,’ Gabriel explained conversationally, ‘Well, flatmate’s overstating it. We went to sleep under the same bridge. I woke up in the morning and he was as dead as a doornail.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t ask. It was a bad week and I had to sleep rough, that’s all. Denton was 40 going on 300 by then, or his liver was, so it was hardly a surprise. At least he’d had a hot meal for a change. Sometimes,’ Gabriel pouted thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if it was the pie and mash that did for him, but I couldn’t have said no to the poor bugger.’
‘Ah. Well. Sorry. Still breathing.’ James spread his hands in a demonstrative gesture and took a deliberate deep breath through his nose. ‘See?’
Gabriel grinned. ‘Well, keep it up. The paperwork for reporting a death is tedious, and more to the point, if you shuffle off the mortal coil, what am I supposed to do for a place to live?’
‘If you like, I can leave you the old pile in my will,’ said James thoughtfully. ‘There’s nobody else to take it. Then you can have all the fun of scoping out lodgers and making the monthly payments.’
‘Now you’re giving me motive for murder.’
‘I’ll take you with me to see my bank manager next time I have to negotiate a delayed payment. Then see how motivated you are to stab me in the gullet.’
‘I wouldn’t stab you. Too messy.’
‘Aye?’ James’s good humour had returned, and he awaited elaboration.
‘Poison, maybe. Or I’d take you for a walk by the canal, smack you with a rock and push you in.’
‘You’ve thought this through.’
‘I got bored yesterday. It passed the time.’
James’s laughed morphed into a positively infectious giggle, setting Gabriel off. Gabriel liked James’s laugh, the more so because most of the time James seemed unspeakably sad. A happy James was a lovely thing.
‘So,’ said Gabriel. ‘How would you get rid of me?’
‘Fork to the kidney,’ said James without hesitation. ‘And I’d eat you over a couple of days. Dispose of the evidence in a nice French casserole with peas and tatties.’
‘Bullshit. You’d never eat me. You never eat.’ Gabriel smirked at James’s startled expression. ‘Baxter said so, and you’ve nothing in the house except that half pack of gingernuts he didn’t finish nicking off you. In any case, you’re a doctor. You’d use me for terrible experiments in the cupboard under the attic stairs. Like Dr Moreau.’
‘Sprung,’ said James ruefully, but the startlement had fled.
Gabriel unpacked the groceries neatly into the kitchen cupboards while James returned his attention to the TV. That done, Gabriel picked up a fresh apple from the mound he’d stacked in a dusty fruit bowl, dropped into the spare chair and bit into the fruit.
‘I googled your stuff online,’ said James, muting the program. ‘At the Dupre Gallery. Your work’s extraordinary.’
Gabriel knew what the critics said of his art; the ones who hated it, and thought it “cheap emotional exploitation”, as well as the ones who loved it. Dare’s art, said one of the favourable analyses, paints glimpses of street life, homelessness and crime with compassion as well as a palpable sense of danger. Another had called his work stark but humanising. On the whole, Gabriel didn’t much care what the critics thought of his work one way or the other, though it was, as Helene said, a relief that some were selling at last. Anything that kept him from having to use his father’s money was a good thing.
But Gabriel liked it very much that James liked his work.
‘My family would prefer I painted things that were more conventional,’ he confessed suddenly. ‘They think my work is too dark.’
‘The world is dark,’ said James. ‘You find the hope in it anyway. That’s important. The capacity to see hope in the darkness is important.’ His tone was oddly yearning.
‘I think so,’ said Gabriel, taking another bite of his apple. He wondered exactly what in James’s experiences had made him understand, and long for, hope in the dark and dangerous places of the world.
Over the next fortnight, Gabriel and James settled into a comfortable routine.
True to his word, James didn’t pry into Gabriel’s odd visitors, who arrived sporadically from Gabriel’s third night in his new home. He noticed them, though. Haunted, harried people. Young people who looked out of old eyes; old people who looked out of eyes dimmed with pain. The people from Gabriel’s paintings.
Gabriel made sure that James was aware of the visitors, whatever time of the night they arrived, with a soft tap on the bedroom door. James was always awake, betrayed by discreet tell-tales from his small bedroom – the soft footsteps pacing the carpet, the crinkling hush of pages turning, and a low light that glimmered faintly under the door.