2009 - We Are All Made of Glue (9 page)

“Oh, Ben, Why…?” I felt a rush of anxiety—I knew the cruelty kids could unleash on each other.

“Dunno. Like you said. Drawing attention.”

My heart lurched. A buried image from my own schooldays had pushed its way up into my mind. Kippax. It must have been about 1974. A girl cut her arms in the toilets.

“Ben, if you’re feeling…”

“It’s all right, Mum. I’m all right. Don’t stress.”

He smiled fleetingly, loaded his plate into the dishwasher, and slouched off upstairs.

Polymerisation

N
ext morning I found myself nursing a headache from last night’s Rioja, worrying about Ben, and wrestling with a chain of polymers. Polymerisation is the key to the chemistry of adhesion—it’s when a single molecule suddenly grabs on to two other similar molecules on each side, to make a long chain. A bit like line dancing. Not what you feel like first thing in the morning. Then the phone rang. It was Mrs Goodknee, trying in her squeaky voice to get me to hand over the key so she could do her home assessment. I insisted we meet at Canaan House and look around it together. We arranged to meet at noon.

I wanted to give Mrs Shapiro the best chance I could, so I went over there about an hour earlier to prepare for her visit. I’d filled a plastic bucket with cleaning stuff, air freshener spray, and a pair of rubber gloves, and set off at a brisk pace. Instead of the batty-woman outfit I was wearing a smart grey jacket—which I hoped would make an appropriately serious impression. The hard wintry air made my centrally-heated lungs gasp with the shock of the cold at every breath, and the brightness of the light stung my hungover eyes, but I forced myself to look up at the sky. The clouds had cleared and a shaft of low sunlight gilded the upstairs windows of the terrace of houses along my road. My heart lifted. Winter sunshine—it seemed like a gift, a promise of warmer days to come. I started to hum, “
Here comes the sun…nana nah na…
”

There was another clump of bird feathers on the path at Canaan House—a pigeon, this time. I kicked them out of the way. The cats must have been waiting for me because the moment I approached the house they all appeared, clamouring around me, miaowing with their pink hungry mouths. I fed them outside, taking care not to let them sneak indoors.

Then I got to work on the kitchen. I took off my smart jacket, pulled on the rubber gloves and cleared the festering detritus out of the sink. I filled up a couple of bin bags with packaging (mostly labelled REDUCED), and the oozing contents of the disgusting fridge. To think that I’d eaten food stored in this fridge, prepared on this table, cooked in these pans—I was lucky to be alive. Maybe it wasn’t the fish that had nearly killed me that night but some lethal bug endemic to this kitchen, to which Mrs Shapiro had long since become immune. In the bottom of the fridge I found three black, wizened human fingers. It took me a moment to realise they were carrots.

I poured bleach into the sink and swept the floor in the kitchen and hall, removing a pile of cat poo mouldering beside the telephone table. Still fifteen minutes to go before midday. I went upstairs to Mrs Shapiro’s room, opened the windows, sprayed the air-freshener around and picked up the clothes on the floor and shook the bed covers out of the window. As an afterthought, I pushed the Harlech Castle tin further back on top of the wardrobe where it would be completely out of sight. I’d worked up a bit of a sweat with all the exertion, and my cheeks glowed self-righteously.

I was admiring my handiwork when I heard a woman’s voice in the garden. I froze and listened. She must have been standing directly below the open window. It was an ugly, metallic voice, like a rusty gate, and she was talking loudly, the way people do into their mobile phones.

“I’m just going in to have a look around.” (A pause, while she listened to the voice at the other end.) “I’ll let you know.” (Pause.) “It’s an old biddy who lives here. She’ll be going into a home.” (Pause.) “I don’t know yet. I’ll get a good valuation.” (Pause.) “Hendrix.” (Pause.) “Cash. Five grand.” (Pause.) “Damian.” (Pause.) “I’ll find out. And I’ll ask about the tree. I’d better go now.” (Pause.) “Bye-ee!”

A few moments later, I saw her walking up the path smoking a cigarette. I recognised her at once as the redhead who’d been in the garden the other day—that toxic-green jacket. Its quilted texture reminded me of
lizard
skin. She stopped by the gate—she was waiting for me, thinking I’d be coming up the road. I didn’t want her to see me emerging from the house so I let myself out of the kitchen door, locked it behind me, and looked for another way out. A mossy path led down through the long back garden to a derelict mews block at the back. Beside it was a gate. It was bolted, but I managed to force it open and found myself on another cobbled alley that must once have been an access to the mews, now overgrown with brambles that led back on to Totley Place. As I turned into the lane I could see Mrs Goodknee waiting for me at the gate, flicking through a file.

“Hi. I’m Georgie Sinclair. Sorry I’m late.”

She must have been in her mid-forties, about the same age as me, perhaps even a bit younger, but she had a stiff over-groomed style that made her seem middle-aged. I couldn’t see her knees, but I doubted they were dimpled and chubby. She handed me a business card. Ah.

“Margaret Goodney. I’m a senior social worker at the hospital. Thank you for coming. Have you got the key?” Her Essex vowels squeezed themselves into a bland corporate dialect.

She followed me up the path. Fortunately I’d fed the cats already, and they’d gone off to do their own catty things. Only pretty, friendly Violetta appeared, rubbing herself against our legs.

“Hello, kitty kitty,” Mrs Goodney squeaked. “Who’s a pretty kitty, then?”

She took a spiral-bound notebook out of her shoulder bag and turned to a new page.
Canaan House, Totley Place
, she wrote at the top. Then she underlined it twice.

“A bit of a jungle, isn’t it? That tree needs to be cut down.”

“It’s got a preservation order on it.”

She made a note.

Seeing Mrs Shapiro’s house through Mrs Goodney’s social worker eyes made me realise how pathetic my clear-up efforts had been. Her nose wrinkled the moment we walked in through the door.

“Poo! It’s like the black hole of Calcutta in here.”

The air-freshener had worn off already. Her heels click-clicked on the loose tiles in the hall. Her eyes darted around. She made a note on every room we walked into. Her note on the dining room read:
Good proportions. Original fireplace
. Her note on the kitchen read:
Total refurbishment
. She saw me craning to see what she’d written, and flicked the page.

“A house this size is a liability,” she said, not unkindly. “She’d be much happier in a nice care home.” She made another note. “Mm. No food in fridge. That’s a sure sign of self-neglect.”

“I cleared the fridge.”

“What did you do that for?”

“It was going mouldy.”

“That’s what I mean. We have to do what’s best for her, don’t we, Mrs…?”

“Sinclair. Call me Georgie. Doesn’t she have any say in the matter?”

“Oh, yes, of course we have to get her consent. That’s where you could be very helpful, Mrs Sinclair.”

I felt a flush spreading up my cheeks. Was she going to offer me five grand? But she just smiled her toothy smile.

As we stepped into the bedroom, she quivered and put her hand to her nose. Mussorgsky had managed to get in there ahead of us and had taken up his position on the bed. He raised his head and yowled as we came in. Violetta had sneaked in with us and was lurking in the doorway, giving Mussorgsky the eye.

“These cats—they’ll have to go.”

“They’re her friends. She gets lonely.”

“Yes, companionship—that’s another of the advantages of residential care.”

She made a note in her book.

On the floor by the bed were Mrs Shapiro’s peach silk camiknickers, pretty but whiffy, which I’d overlooked in my whirlwind clean-up. She bent down and picked them up, held them for a moment between finger and thumb, then let them fall.

“She fancies herself, doesn’t she?”

I saw her wipe her fingers discreetly on a tissue. I can’t explain why, but it was that contemptuous finger-wiping gesture that really made me hate her.

The bathroom came as a shock to both of us. The smell was definitely human, not cat pee. The toilet bowl, originally white porcelain patterned with blue irises, was now brown-stained, cracked and encrusted. The stain had seeped in a damp acrid circle into the rotting floorboards, which had partly collapsed under the toilet bowl, making it lean at an alarming angle. Hanging loose from the wall was a basin in the same iris design, with green-yellow drip-trails beneath the taps. A large enamel claw-foot bath stood under the window, with an old-fashioned shower head above it. The grime circles inside the bath grew in layers, like trunk rings in an ancient tree.

“It’ll all have to come out,” she murmured, jotting in her notebook. “What a shame.”

Downstairs in the hall, she stretched out her hand to shake mine.

“Thank you very much, Mrs…Georgie. I’ll go and write my report.”

“You’re going to put her into a home, aren’t you?” I blurted.

“Of course my recommendation is entirely confidential.” She pursed her lips. “But I think residential care could be an appropriate option. We have to do what’s best for her, not what suits us, don’t we, Georgie?”

“What do you mean—what suits us?”

“It can be hard for a carer to let go, when the time comes. They like to think they’re doing it all for the other person, when really they’re just being selfish, trying to hang on to their caring role even when they’re no longer needed, because they want to feel valued.”

She smiled a bland professional smile. I felt like strangling her with her repulsive reptilian outfit and stuffing her nasty cube-heel shoes into her squeaky creaky gob.

“So you think I’m just a selfish bitch with a cat-poo fetish?”

She glanced at me sharply, decided I must be joking, and her lips twitched in a thin smile.

“We wouldn’t want to be held responsible if she had another accident, would we?”

She turned and click-clacked down the path.

§

As soon as I got home, I took out the card Mrs Goodney had given me, phoned the number, and asked for Damian Hendrix. There was a long pause.

“This is the hospital social work department,” a woman’s voice told me. “Are you sure you don’t want the local authority Social Services?”

I looked up the local authority number in the phone book and tried again.

“Could I speak to Mr Damian Hendrix?”

“I’m sorry, we don’t have anyone by that name here. What was it about?”

“It’s about an old lady going into a home.”

“Hold on, I’ll put you through to elderly.”

The line crackled.

“Elder-lee!” a cheerful voice chimed in my ear.

“I’m looking for Mr Damian Hendrix.”

“Mm-mm. No Hendrixes here. Are you sure you’ve got the right name?”

“I’m sure about the Damian. Have you got any Damians?”

“Mm-mm…” I heard the voice call to someone else in the room, “Eileen, ‘ave we got any Damians?”

“Only ‘im in’t store,” said Eileen.

“Only one who works in the resource centre,” said the cheery voice.

“No, it must be someone else. Thanks.”

I put the phone down.

Eileen—that voice—she must be from Yorkshire. I felt a little stab of homesickness, remembering how I’d felt when we moved down from Leeds to London, after Rip was offered the job on the Progress Project. We’d hovered for weeks like lost souls in the limbo of estate agent offices, looking for a place that might one day feel like home. We’d been dismayed at London prices, and at how poky the houses were—at least, the ones we could afford. The squat Edwardian semi we finally bought had seemed brighter than most. It had been all done out for a quick sale by the builder, painted in neutral shades to compliment (sic) the stunning period features, with laminate floors (authentic-oak-style), a granite worktop (Uba Tuba) and fitted well-known-brand kitchen appliances. It smelled of newness and fresh plaster. It had no character at all. I’d liked it at the time—it had seemed like a fresh canvas on to which we’d paint our new life. But that’s not how it worked out. Maybe things had been going wrong for ages, like damp seeping into a basement, and I just hadn’t noticed the warning signs.

§

Later that afternoon, as I was walking down the local parade of a dozen or so shops, I remembered the other reason we’d chosen our house. This little neighbourhood had seemed an intimate island of friendliness in the vast anonymous bustle of London. There was the Turkish bakery, strangely famous for its Danish pastries, the Song Bee, our favourite takeout, recently opened by two young women specialising in Chinese and Malaysian cuisine, Peppe’s Italian delicatessen, Acne Al, as Ben called the newsagent by the bus stop, and two estate agents, a local branch of Wolfe & Diabello on the corner where I was standing, and across the road, Hendricks & Wilson.

Then it dawned on me. Hendricks! Should I barge in and make a scene? Instead, on impulse, I pushed open the door of Wolfe & Diabello. If Mrs Goodney was going to get her little Damian to do a valuation on Canaan House, at least I could get one, too, for comparison.

A small bosomy girl with sleek blonde hair and careful eyes was sitting at a desk by the window. Her name badge said Suzi Brentwood.

“My aunt’s thinking of selling her house. Could you give us a preliminary valuation?”

“Of course.” She flashed her little pearly teeth at me. “I’ll make an appointment with one of the partners. Is next Friday all right? We’re a bit busy. What’s the address?” Her eyebrows rose a fraction when I told her.

Black treacle

B
y the time Friday came round it was raining again, a miserable December drizzle that stained the streets and rooftops melancholia grey. I was starting to regret my appointment with the estate agent, and I thought of ringing up to cancel, but something about Canaan House had pricked my imagination. As Ms Firestorm would say, I was
inexorably drawn
.