2009 - We Are All Made of Glue (33 page)

“Is everything all right, Mum?”

“Yes. Just get that kettle on.”

Two minutes later I strolled into the kitchen wearing my jeans and jumper and an insouciant smile on my face. I poured the hot water over the tea bag.

“Thanks, Ben. Just something I had to get finished by today.”

He studied me curiously. I slipped my hands behind my back so he wouldn’t see the raw marks on my wrists.

“Are you all right, Mum? You look a bit…red.”

“Red?” I blushed.

“Have you been in a fight?”

“No. Not exactly. Why?”

“You seem—sort of- irregular.”

It wasn’t until I had another pee at bedtime that I spotted the red lace-trimmed panties still crumpled up on the floor in the toilet. Had Ben noticed them when he went upstairs? Should I say anything? Should I pretend they were Stella’s? (Shame on you, Georgie!) Or should I just keep quiet? That’s what I did.

Without walls

B
en and I had taken to sometimes having our tea in front of the gas fire in the sitting room with the television on in the background—a comfy Kippax habit, which we’d adopted now there were just the two of us. So there we were on Thursday balancing our plates on our knees and watching the seven o’clock news—the usual gloom, doom and trivia. I was about to flick the remote when an item came up about the nuclear missile defence shield that the Americans were supposed to be stationing in Poland to stop missiles from Iran. I know my geography’s a bit shaky, but wasn’t that, like, the wrong continent? Then I noticed Ben had gone very still.

“I wouldn’t worry,” I said. “I’m sure it won’t work, anyway.”

Ben was staring at the screen.

“It’s the prophecy. Gog and Magog.” His voice was almost a whisper. “They’re getting ready for the missiles.”

“What missiles?”

Ben put his plate aside, slid off the sofa, and knelt in front of me.

“Mum, I’m begging you. Take Jesus into your heart.”

He stretched out his hands to me as if he was pleading or praying—my poor broken-in-half boy. I took his hands—they were shaking. I knew that nothing I said would be the right thing, so I kept quiet and just held his hands tight in mine. Then he closed his eyes, and started to speak—it was more like a chant—in that grating up-talk inflection.

“Ezekiel thirty-eight? Thus saith the Lord God? Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, Prince of Meshech and Tubal. I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, all thine army, horses and horsemen? Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them? Gomer, and all his bands; the house of Togar-mah of the north quarters, and all his bands? All of them clothed in all manner of armour, shields and swords?”

It reminded me of the
Lord of the Rings
poster on his wall, the Ores with their sub-prime dentistry, the vast exotic computer-enhanced armies marching into the field. I would have dismissed it as lads’ fantasy, but for what came next.

“In the last days I will bring thee against my land? Thou shalt come into this land, that is brought back to peace from the sword, gathered out of many people to dwell amongst the mountains of Israel, which had been a wasteland before, but is brought forth out of the nations. And they shall dwell safely? All of them? Dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates?”

His voice was wobbling.

“Oh, Ben…” I squeezed his hands. Phrases from Naomi’s letter from Israel—the letter I’d found in the piano stool, which I’d reread so many times, flashed into my mind.
Our place of safety…this barren wasteland…our people gathered from every country where we have been exiles…a land without barbed wire
. But Mr. Ali had told me there were walls now, and checkpoints, and barbed wire.

“And I will rain upon him an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone.” Ben’s eyes were still closed. Then he looked up at me. “Take Jesus, Mum. Please? Before it’s too late?”

“Okay, Ben. Okay.”

He was pale and trembling.

“But you don’t believe it, do you?” He shook his shaved head—covered now with fine dark stubble—in a gesture that could have been frustration or despair.

“Well…”

“You’re just saying it to keep me happy, aren’t you?” His eyes were liquid, backed up with tears. “What’s the point? What’s the point in being saved, if everybody…like everybody you really love is going to be damned?”

The television was still burbling in the background, and I flicked the remote to turn it off—to cut off that terrifying stream of madness that kept leaching into our own little fireside world.

“Come here, you.” I pulled him up on to the sofa beside me, and put my arms round his shoulders, squeezing him tight. “It’s just talk and posturing. It’ll all blow over.”

I said it with a confidence I didn’t feel, putting on a brave face for Ben, for a part of me was scared, too. However much my rational mind dismissed the gibberish of prophets, there was a dark cave hidden away beneath my brain where the monsters slept, fears and nightmares chained up since childhood, but still with a residual power to instil dread. We sat together, listening to the silence settling back into the room. It was raining again outside, a soft pit-pat, not a downpour. I could hear Ben’s breathing getting slower. His hands were very cold.

Suddenly, outside in the street, we heard the sound of a car pulling up, tyres splashing in the rain, a diesel engine idling, footsteps on the path, a knock on the door. Ben and I stared at each other. There was another louder knock, then a man’s voice—an unfamiliar voice—“Anybody there?”

I got up and opened the door. I didn’t recognise the man standing there, a bulky, dark-skinned man. But after a moment, I realised he was the driver of the taxi that had pulled up outside on the road. Then the door of the taxi opened, and out clambered Mrs Shapiro.

“Georgine!” she exclaimed. “Please—help me! Do you heff some money for the taxi?”

“Of course,” I said. “How much?”

“Fifty-four pound,” said the taxi driver. He wasn’t smiling.

“Isn’t that a bit…?”

“It should be more than that. We been going round in circles for hours.”

I went to look in my purse. I had forty pounds and some change.

“Ben, can you help?”

He was standing behind me, trying to work out what was going on.

“I’ll have a look.”

He went upstairs. I remembered some loose coins in my duffel coat pocket. And there were some pounds I’d put in the Barnardo’s envelope by the door. Ben came down with a fiver. Mrs Shapiro fished a pound coin out of the lining of her astrakhan coat. Between us we rustled together £52.73. The taxi driver took it crossly, mumbled something, and disappeared.

“Come in, come in,” I said to Mrs Shapiro.

“Thenk you,” she said. “Some persons are living in my house. Will not let me in.”

As she crossed the threshold, Wonder Boy appeared out of the darkness and slunk in beside her.

She sat by the fire cradling a mug of tea in her hands, which Ben had brought on a tray, with some chocolate digestives.

“Thenk you, young man. Charming. I am Mrs Naomi Shapiro. Please—tek a biscuit.”

Wonder Boy stretched himself out in front of the fire and started rubbing himself up against the
Lion King
slippers, making a gruff rasping noise which was as close as he could get to purring. Through sips of tea and mouthfuls of biscuit crumbs, she told us the story of her escape.

After the discovery of the dead body, the bonker lady had become totally bonkers.

“Crezzy. Brain completely rotted away.”

Not content with hanging around in the corridor cadging cigarettes from visitors, she would embellish her patter with an invitation.

“I show you the dead body if you give me a ciggie.”

That upset the staff—they thought it was giving a bad impression of the home. From time to time, just to wind them up, she would rush down the corridor yelling ‘Elp! “Elp! There’s a dead body in ‘ere!” It came to a head when a party of relatives accompanying their aged mother on an inspection tour were accosted by the bonker lady, who somehow led them to believe (they were all smokers) that finding corpses was almost a daily occurrence. The staff member who was showing them round lost her rag and tried to push the bonker lady back into her room.

“But she was fighting them like a tiger. Clawving and skretching mit the hends!”

In the end the security guard had to be called. Then matron arrived in her green cardie with an ampoule of sedative and a needle, but the bonker lady kept struggling and yelling ‘Elp! “Elp! They gonner kill me!”

The relatives, rattled by so much violence, tried to call the police on a mobile phone. By now all the residents—those of them who were upright—had crowded into the corridor and were cheering the bonker lady on. In all the kerfuffle Mrs Shapiro managed to slip unnoticed through the door into the lobby and out on to the Lea Bridge Road, where a passing taxi whisked her to safety.

“And here I am, darlinks!” she exclaimed, flushed with the excitement of her adventure. “Only problem is some persons are living in my house. We must evict them now!”

She put her empty cup down and rose to her feet. I tried to persuade her to stay for a bite to eat, and even offered her a bed for the night, but she was desperate to get home. Wonder Boy had stopped purring and was thrashing his tail against the floor.

We set off down the road, Mrs Shapiro leading the way—it was surprising how fast she could move in those
Lion King
slippers—Ben and I lagging behind, and Wonder Boy bringing up the rear. It was quite dark and cold, the air still damp from the recent rain. As we turned into Totley Place a couple of the other cats appeared out of the bushes and tagged along, too. Violetta was waiting for us in the porch, ecstatic with pleasure at Mrs Shapiro’s return. Wonder Boy hissed, batted her with his paws, and sent her packing.

There were lights in some of the windows, and this was surprising in itself, because I’d never before seen Canaan House lit up so brightly from the inside. I noticed that the front door had been painted yellow and the broken floor tiles in the porch replaced with what looked like modern bathroom tiles. While Mrs Shapiro was fumbling for her key, I rang on the doorbell.

It was Mr Ali’s nephew, Ishmail, who answered the door. He recognised me at once, and beaming broadly gestured to us to come inside.

“Welcome! Welcome!”

He’d learned another word. The inside of the house had been painted, too, in white and yellow. It looked lighter and fresher, and smelled much better. I saw Mrs Shapiro looking around, and tried to judge the expression on her face. She seemed to be quite pleased.

“You’ve been busy,” I said to Ishmail. “This is Mrs Shapiro. She’s the owner of the house. She’s come home now, so I’m afraid you’ll have to leave. It’s what we agreed. Remember?”

He smiled and nodded blankly. He obviously had no idea what I was on about. I tried again, talking more loudly, with accompanying gestures.

“This lady—live here—come back—you must go—go now.” I pointed at Mrs Shapiro and made shooing hand movements.

“Yes. Yes.” He smiled and nodded.

Then Nabeel appeared on the scene, and joined in the smiling and nodding, offering his three words of English.

“Hello. Please. Welcome. Hello. Please. Welcome.”

“Hello. Yes, please. Welcome,” said Ishmail.

I went through my pointing and shooing routine. They smiled and nodded.

“Hello. Yes. Please.”

We were getting nowhere.

Then Ishmail—you have to credit him with some intelligence—got his mobile phone out, keyed a number, and started talking in Arabic to the person at the other end. After a few moments he passed the phone to me. It was Mr Ali.

“You’ll have to tell them to leave,” I said. “Now that Mrs Shapiro’s home. They can’t stay. You promised—remember? I’m really sorry. I thought we’d have some warning, but…” I was getting a bit hysterical.

I passed the phone to Ishmail. He listened for a few moments, then uttered a stream of Arabic, then listened again, then passed the phone to me.

“Tonight too late. I have no van.” Mr Ali’s voice sounded faint and crackly. “Please let them to stay for tonight. Tomorrow I come with van.”

“Okay,” I said. “Just tonight. I’ll talk to Mrs Shapiro. Mr Ali, thank you for the work you’ve done—the painting—it looks wonderful.”

“You like this yellow colour?”

“Very much.”

“I knew you would like it.” He sounded pleased.

Mrs Shapiro had lost patience with our three-way conversation, and had disappeared somewhere. Ben had wandered off into the study, where a television had been rigged up with an internal aerial and Nabeel was watching football. They sat side by side grinning and cheering when a goal was scored. Nabeel pointed to himself and said, “Hello! Please! Arsenal!” Ben pointed to himself and said, “Hello, Leeds United!”

I found Mrs Shapiro in her bedroom. She was curled up in bed with Wonder Boy, Violetta, Mussorgsky, and one of the pram babies. Wonder Boy had actually got under the covers with her. They were all purring, and Mrs Shapiro was snoring.

Home improvements

N
ext morning, I woke up with that feeling that I had something important to do, but I couldn’t remember what it was. I’d left Mrs Shapiro sleeping at the house last night, and I thought maybe I should go back this morning and check up on her. Then the phone rang. It was Ms Baddiel, reminding me of our meeting and asking for directions to Totley Place. After I’d put the phone down, I had another bright idea. I picked it up again, and dialled Nathan’s number.

“I wonder whether you could give us some advice. About the use of modern adhesives in home improvements. This morning. Eleven o’clock.” I gave him the address.

“Great. I’ll bring the DIY demonstration kit.”

“Bring your father, too.”

I smiled as I put the phone down. Matchmaking is a game that two can play.

I went up there a bit earlier to make sure everything was shipshape for Ms Baddiel, and to supervise the departure of the Uselesses—I hoped they’d be all packed up and ready to go. When I rang on the bell at about half past ten, it was Ishmail who opened the door again and invited me in. The house was pleasantly warm, and smelled of woodsmoke, freshly brewed coffee and cigarettes. I followed him through to the study at the back of the house where a fire had been lit in the hearth. They were burning sheaves of papers and bits of old wood—including some of the boards that had been taken down from the windows. The television was on, and a sofa, still draped in a white dust sheet, had been dragged through from the drawing room. On the sofa sat Mrs Shapiro and Nabeel. They were smoking and drinking coffee from the silver pot and watching
The Hound of the Baskervilles
in black and white on the television. Mrs Shapiro was wearing her candlewick dressing gown and her
Lion King
slippers. Violetta was curled up on her lap, Mussorgsky was on Nabeel’s lap and Wonder Boy was stretched out on the rug in front of the fire. It was a scene of cosy decadence.