1

A storm had been in the air since breakfast; far, far out to sea then, but rolling lazily in with the tide, unconcerned when it would hit upon land. Litmus caught the first flash at 10:35, just a watery h’penny sized pulse. Strange that it registered with him at all, yet the morning had been so dark - and the dining lounge at The Eiffel so full of boredom and desperation and bacon fat – that it stuck, framed in the south facing window, still badly streaked with last week’s rain. At that moment, the knife and fork became too heavy in his hands, and he surrendered them to half an egg and a fried mushroom that had seen better days. Was this what they meant by foreboding?

Now, in wintry dusk, the rain finally struck, collapsing from a purple sky that dwarfed Litmus shuffling about on the promenade. He ought to think about finding cover, maybe that little Victorian shelter with the white wooden bench with the broken fourth slat. No, that was yesterday. Too well concealed, Frank had nearly high-tailed and missed him altogether. Couldn’t risk another afternoon of chasing his bobbing Burberry along the seafront, only sand giving grip against a concrete slick plane of puddles and littered chips. Besides, it made him sleepy, watching the waves, grey and oddly luminous a hundred yards down the beach, angry today. No, he’d pull up his overcoat and get wet. Maybe head for the pier, fast disappearing in the driven rain. Surely Frank wouldn’t miss him there. And Frank was late; he always had the knack – or so much as Litmus could tell – of sharpening up under pressure.

Beneath the turreted pier entrance he banged his feet up and down and waited, hands deep in damp pockets against the wind. Nothing doing on the High Street, bar the occasional Humber nosing along; lights starting to glow warm orange from the lines of hotels and boarding houses, possibly an old couple ballroom dancing in the Grande. Jeez, thought Litmus, at four on a November afternoon, only in England… And that god-awful stink of salt and vinegar…

Too late now to look nonchalant, as if he’d known all along. Frank’s leant beside an old mechanical fortune-telling machine, a grotesque toothless gypsy woman, out of work since September and in need of paint. Just munching out of his newspaper, suspiciously bone dry, trying to come across all spiv, not nineteen.

“Hey pops, great looking back. Ever thought of turning a one eighty now and again?”
“You got anything for me?”
“Just this”, going for an inner pocket and polythene wrapped package, “ain’t much but it was a slow night. He met with Salt for an hour, never so much as touched her, never mind a kiss.”
Litmus carefully fanned out the dozen or so prints, shielded against any stray raindrops. He looked like a man who’d been dealt a dodgy deck.
“Heck, I spent six dollars on that Agfa for this? There’s nothing here I can use. Three days now, when you gonna bring me something I can use?”
“Hey, can only take – what – I - see,” spelling it out, the practiced jab.
“You never see anything, that’s the damn problem. Look harder. You’ve gotta be missing something. He’s still at the Adelphi right?
“Since Sunday.”
“Well I’ll give you till Thursday else the deal’s off.”

Litmus shot him a few shillings for the day, might have been more if he hadn’t kept on about this girl he was seeing later with butter coloured pigtails, or gone bounding off into the darkness with such dexterity that every raindrop, stunned with impress, veered around his shoulders and face. Making Litmus, that is, feel both old and lovelorn. Not to mention an awful many miles from home. He tried to think of Californian oranges and sunshine. Of his little office off Lexington Avenue; the frosted glass door with his name inscribed in neat Franklin Gothic; the burly elevator man who littered pecan shells, Hansel and Gretal style, in a trail behind him wherever he wandered, as if anxious to return to some point in a metaphysical past, and in need of assistance to pick up the scent; the shabby Pontiac he called his own, with its crucifix shaped chip in the windshield and moody clutch. Most of all, he thought of Maria his PA, with her alabaster complexion and turtle neck sweaters, the sexy slow snare drum of her black stilettos down the corridor, the cute little way she struggled for the Z-key on the typewriter, biting playfully into her lower lip, draining it white before the blood rushed back in. But she was too young and painfully oblivious. And thoughts of Maria couldn’t help him, not here in the rain with thunder rolling and the odd idiot gull screeching and wheeling overhead. It was back to The Eiffel. Nothing else for it.

2

He hadn’t had a glimpse of Pepper for ten days now, munching into an orange on platform seven, Liverpool Street, Standard folded as if to conceal, leaving pips and peel amongst the spent tickets, their own little language, follow-me speak, as ever… It was enough. Then onto the 4:15, steaming out through Bethnal Green, statues on the platform pencil-like beneath umbrellas, past Ilford and still to be repaired bombsites, charred matchstick terraces and blinking streetlights. Litmus tried to sleep. The rattle of the points was comforting; likewise the schoolboy imps playing dodge with the guard up and down the adjacent corridor, ducking and diving with wartime efficiency. Pepper would be in first class. There was no need for a close watch, he’d make pains to leave a scent: the dropped cufflink glinting against the enamel of a station toilet washbasin; a rolled newspaper with curiously circled small-ads; the oranges, of course, a particular favourite.

And so, in the shadow of this umbilical push-pull, Litmus had found himself in the driving seat of a knackered old Austin, barely looking as if it would last twenty miles (petrol still rationed and tank all of an empty slosh), spluttering into Hornsey-on-Sea, the end of the line. The presence of saltwater seemed to have washed all colour out the place, or maybe forced it downward underground. He would, perhaps, peer into a drain and see all of summer’s palette – aquamarines and crimsons and deckchair yellows – beaming back at him though the grate. For now, just peeling pastel shades curling away from walls and doors, curtains with no energy to twitch, a feel of decay. He’d found a post office the next morning and wired Clarissa Stroud, the society lady who’d somehow picked upon his office, but whose payment was so prompt and handsome he could barely refuse. She was the sort who drove him to guilty despair with the sight of his dusty desk and necessary pools of disorder, minutiae which tended to self-resolve if left crumpled together for long enough. That would probably be Maria.