Aphrodite’s Hat

‘In any event,’ said Mr Pullen, he hoped placatingly, ‘Mrs Radinsky is not a leaseholder. As you know, she is a long-term tenant. It is, I’m afraid, up to us to persuade the council that it is time for her to be re-housed.’

‘What do you suppose she does do, though?’ Clive asked Clare. As the youngest members of the meeting, they had elected to take the stairs, leaving the others to pack themselves by turns into the inconveniently small lift. Clive, who was behind Clare, observed her ankles with pleasure as she ran down the steps.

‘Don’t know,’ Clare said over her shoulder. ‘And don’t care. I just didn’t like that dreadful creature getting at the poor old duck.’

‘I don’t know that “duck” describes her,’ said Clive. He was a quiet young man but he noticed things. He had noticed Mrs Radinsky’s callers. It was hard to know what to make of them, but they appeared to be men of the world.

A few days later, he bumped into the object of these calls herself. Mrs Radinsky, carting several bulky bags, was getting into the lift. Clive held the door for her and then, not wanting to seem to avoid her – though for the sake of fitness it was his habit to take the stairs – followed her in.

‘Bless you, dear,’ Mrs Radinsky said.

She was a small woman, with remarkably black hair, well-carmined lips and bright hazel eyes. The eyes put Clive in mind of a bird’s. She smelled of something powdery, which might have been marguerite but was in fact lily-of-the valley and reminded Clive of his grandmother. She was wearing red suede gloves, what appeared to be a man’s tweed coat, cut down, and a fluffy red scarf. Nothing about her, unless you counted the lipstick, looked even faintly racy.

The lift took them to the top floor and again Clive held open the door. ‘Thank you, dear,’ said Mrs Radinsky. ‘Come in and have a glass of something, if you like.’

Clive hesitated. There was the question of the rats. His curiosity was not so strong that it outreached his timidity. But then the thought of telling Clare Trevellyan that he had penetrated number thirty-seven galvanised him.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

Mrs Radinsky’s flat like Mrs Radinsky was small and dark with a preponderance of red. Fringed lampshades glowed hospitably crimson against a deep flock paper of a kind which Clive had only seen previously in the less upmarket type of Indian restaurant. The flock was almost invisible behind a crowd of pictures of a catholic range of subjects: two elephants giving a third a shower, some seductively ill-clad mermaids disporting themselves on rocks, a yoked horse standing patiently beneath a spreading oak, a lady in a pale blue crinoline squinting at a man in a frock coat.

On the crammed sideboard were a couple of ships in bottles. Noticing the direction of her guest’s gaze, Mrs Radinsky said, ‘My father was a naval man.’ She indicated that Clive should sit down on a peach velour sofa, well ballasted with cushions, while she disappeared into the kitchen from where she could be heard whistling while unpacking bags.

‘Sherry?’ she called suddenly. ‘Or something stronger?’

Clive, renouncing the idea of saying he would truly rather have tea, plumped for sherry.

‘I only have the dry.’

‘Dry’s fine, thanks.’

‘So what do you do?’ asked Mrs Radinsky, presenting him with a cut-glass tumblerful of pale sherry and a china plate of sponge fingers.

Clive explained that he was training to be a surveyor.

‘That’s nice,’ said Mrs Radinsky. With her coat and scarf off she looked younger. ‘One of my gentlemen’s a surveyor.’ She looked at Clive with her bright bird’s eyes. It was hard to say if it was knowingness or innocence in them.

Thinking of Clare Trevellyan, Clive took a plunge. ‘Gentlemen?’

‘My clients,’ said Mrs Radinsky peaceably. She leant across him, took a sponge finger and dipped it into his glass of sherry. She herself was drinking nothing. ‘They come to consult.’

In spite of Clare Trevellyan’s ankles Clive couldn’t find it in him to ask what the consultations consisted of. But here, surprisingly, his hostess helped out.

‘Horoscopes,’ she explained. ‘That and the tarot and a bit of mediuming, though I’m sick to death of that.’

‘But why only gentlemen?’ Clive burst out.

Mrs Radinsky laughed. ‘Gets them going here,’ she said, nodding her head. ‘It’s my bit of fun. They think I’m a tart, see?’ She pulled an impenetrable face and got up and went out of the room, returning with a manila file.

‘I’ve got all the correspondence here. One of my gentlemen’s in the council. He keeps an eye out. Sees we don’t go too far. But there’s nothing they can say. I’m not breaking the law. I don’t charge, see? Me on the game? Chance would be a fine thing! Want their heads examining. Have another finger?’

‘No, thanks,’ said Clive, who hadn’t touched the plate. He extracted a crumb from the sherry, hoping it didn’t seem impolite. ‘Why do your gentlemen come?’

‘Love, mainly. They’ve had a love problem and someone tells them, “Go to Rita.” I’ve a name. Then they get used to coming, just to talk. Everyone’s got troubles and I listen to them. It’s not the stars, really, you know, that tells me things. It’s knowing how to look. For instance, you’re in love. I saw it in your face. That’s why I asked you in. When’s your birthday?’

‘Next week,’ Clive said. ‘December the twenty-second.’

‘Ah, Christmas boy. They either turn out easygoing or resentful. You’re the first sort, I can tell. Capricorn. Let’s see … ‘76?’

‘1977, actually.’

‘Time of birth – not that it matters, but we always ask.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Clive. ‘Morning, I think. My mother said I arrived in time for breakfast.’

Mrs Radinsky closed her eyes, fluttered the lids a trifle alarmingly and then opened them and took another sponge finger. ‘Sure you won’t have one? Don’t blame you. They’re old as buggery. My judge brought them. Lord knows how long he’d had them. Your beloved’s a Gemini, born 1984. They can be slippery, Geminis, but yours’ll be all right.’

‘How do you know?’ Picturing Clare’s dark blonde hair he didn’t even question that she did.

‘Instinct. You came in here, didn’t you? That says a lot. Not many would. I had that Mr Pullen at my door last week. Pissing in his pants with embarrassment. “Oh, Mrs Radinsky it’s about them bottles.” They’re not mine, you know.’

‘No?’

Mrs Radinsky pulled another face. ‘Think my gentlemen wouldn’t take mine away?’

‘Whose are they?’ Of course she would know.

‘Ah,’ said Mrs Radinsky. ‘I’m not saying. Not unless I have to. I’ll go so far as to say it’s a Virgo. You can’t trust Virgos. They come across all goody-two-shoes but they’re vicious underneath.’

The following week it was the residents’ Christmas party, held, to accommodate the numbers, they graciously suggested, in the Hampshires’ double penthouse. The view across London from both sides of the flat was, everyone agreed, quite superb. The pale walls were hung with discreetly lit modern paintings, the furniture was Conran, the wooden floors maple, the rugs principally white. Yes, Mrs Hampshire agreed with Susan Macclesfield, it was a trouble to keep them so spotless but then she was like that. It was in her stars. Nothing, Clive thought, as he turned away, with an upbeat of his heart as Clare Trevellyan entered the crowded room, could be less like the friendly fug of Mrs Radinsky’s flat, which, he suddenly recognised, must be just the other side of the wall.

‘Hi,’ said Clare. She was dressed in a grey angora cardigan, a short black skirt and little ankle boots.

‘Oh, hi.’

‘How are you?’

Clive started to say he was all right and then said instead, ‘I went to see Mrs Radinsky. Or rather she asked me in.’

‘Well done you!’

‘She’s nice.’

‘Good.’

‘Not on the game at all. The idea’s preposterous.’ Clive had a hunch Clare would respond to this word.

‘What is she then? Who are the callers?’