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Goat - A Story of Kashmir and Notting Hill
Extract - Part 1
Hot Pink of Notting Hill
Her house was big. If it had been in the middle of the countryside it would have looked substantial but in the middle of Holland Park, with it’s double gates, double garage and double front door with two large brass knobs, it seemed vast. There were box trees on either side of the doors set in glass cubes, the trees shorn to rigid topiary to match the cubes. A pair of stone greyhounds sat in heraldic pose in front of the trees.
Each time I lugged one of the baskets of pashmina from my car up the steps to the front door, a security camera swivelled and blinked at me. When I rang the bell another camera opened and its shutter flashed.
A well-dressed woman answered the door, I introduced myself. She looked down on me from the top step. Her trousers were well cut and she wore a good pink cashmere cardigan. I was wearing clothes suitable for lugging around baskets of pashmina. My outfit did not impress the woman in pink cashmere. She watched as I carried the baskets, one by one, through to where I was supposed to be setting out my wares.
The sitting-room was the size of my whole flat. Everything was large, swollen sofas banked up with too many cushions and investment paintings on a grand scale on the walls. Most of the furniture looked as if it had come straight from the cabinet-maker who had recently been the darling of London’s interior designers. The exception was a low oriental table in front of the fireplace. On it lay four piles of books, one to a corner, each a squared-off stack of hardback catalogues from art exhibitions around the world.
While I gawped, the housekeeper came back with a black lacquered tray. There were matching bowls of Japanese rice crackers and out-of-season cherries, plates of sushi and some tiny blueberry muffins. She arranged them carefully and symmetrically between the four piles of art books.
‘Please, do help yourself,’ she said in a tone implying the contrary.
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