The Lubetkin Legacy (22 page)

Violet is woken earlier than usual on Monday morning by a strange sound, a persistent whining rather like a dentist's drill; only it isn't inside her head, it's definitely coming from outside. She lies in the semi-dark and listens, trying to work out what it could be but feeling too lazy to get up and find out. Then a nearer, more familiar sound startles her. It's Pidgie tapping on her window, not the usual friendly ‘Hey, let's have breakfast' kind of tapping, but an urgent, wild hammering with his beak, beating with his wings against the glass. She draws back the blue sari and looks out.

There he is on the balcony. She throws a bit of bread down for him, but he ignores it, and hops on and off the parapet with his one foot, flapping his wings dementedly. Then the whining sound starts up again and she sees to her horror that a man with a chainsaw is sitting in the cradle of a cherry-picker truck backed up close to Pidgie's tree.

‘Stop! Stop!' she screams, but her voice doesn't carry, or the man ignores it.

Still in her pyjamas, she runs to the next-door flat and hammers on the door. The old lady, Inna, opens it, and behind her, peering over her shoulder and wearing only the bottom half of a pair of paisley pyjamas, stands Berthold. He looks startled.

‘Come in. Please.'

‘The cherry trees! They're cutting them down! We've got to get everyone out there!'

He runs back into the flat to look out of the front window.
She follows. Down there in the cherry grove two men in hard hats are waving chainsaws; a bulldozer with a raised platform on the front is positioned directly under Pidgie's tree. But what are those three large mushroomy-looking things that seem to have sprouted up overnight on the grass between the trees? They look a bit like tents.

‘Excuse me; I'd better get some clothes on.' She races back next door and pulls on her jeans and T-shirt.

By the time she gets down to the grove, Berthold is already there. He is still wearing just the bottom half of his pyjamas, and around his bare waist is a bicycle chain, locked securely on to the trunk of Pidgie's tree. The sawing has stopped.

‘Oh, Berthold!' She flings her arms around him. ‘You're a hero!'

By now it's eight o'clock and half the population of Madeley Court has gathered in the garden. They are jeering and shouting and banging tambourines, and Mrs Cracey is waving her umbrella. A half-naked man from one of the tents is shouting at the chainsaw men in some foreign language.

Suddenly everyone stops and stares as a girl emerges from the tent wearing a skimpy shift that is open to the waist, with a plump naked baby clamped to her breast covered only by a veil of dark hair. She sits down on a bench under a tree, cradling the baby in her arms. It is a moment of pure magic amidst the pandemonium: the baby's eyes are shut, his jaws are moving rhythmically, a milky leak dribbles down her breast and the baby stretches out tiny fingers to stroke his mother while she gazes down at him with a faraway look in her eyes. Then the baby stirs, whimpers and burps up a big gob of curds; the spell is broken.

At about eight fifteen she catches sight of Greg Smith
striding towards them in his suit, his mobile phone pressed to his ear and a peeved expression on his face.

‘Hi!' He breaks into a smile when he sees her. ‘What's going on here?'

‘They've started cutting down the cherry trees! Can't you do anything to stop them, Greg?'

‘Probably.' He puts his phone back into his pocket, and marches up to the workmen. ‘Where's your permit?' he barks.

‘We don't need a permit,' says the one driving the bulldozer.

‘Of course we have a permit, don't we, Dez? We're not cowboys,' says the younger one, who has taken off his hard hat to reveal an auburn pigtail.

‘Not cowboys, not gyppos,' adds Dez, looking pointedly at Berthold.

She knows ‘gyppos' is a racist term for travellers, but she cannot see why it would apply to Berthold in his paisley-pattern, M&S-style pyjamas.

The two men rummage through their pockets for a permit. ‘I'll have a look in the van.' The one with the pigtail sprints across the grass and comes back a moment later with a printed form.

Greg takes it out of the man's hands and unfolds it. She cranes over his shoulder.

‘I think the date's wrong,' she says. ‘The council meeting isn't until next week.'

‘Well spotted, Violet. I'll take a copy and check whether this is valid. Thanks.' Greg folds it into his breast pocket. ‘If it's not valid, you realise you'll be personally liable for any damage to council property. That includes parks and gardens. Sorry – must rush!' he winks at her, and strides off.

The workmen look put out. They pack up their tools and amble away towards their van.

She feels a bit sorry for them. She glances across at Berthold,
still chained to the tree in his pyjama bottoms, and feels a bit sorry for him too.

‘Why don't you get your clothes on and come for a coffee, Berthold?'

‘I can't. I left the key upstairs. Can you go and get it off Inna?'

‘Oh, Berthold!' She flung her arms around me. ‘You're a hero!'

Twice in one week. Things were looking up. First the plump Eustachia (I couldn't bring myself to call her Stacey) and now the slender Violet. It was a triumph of Clooneyesque proportions. Yes, it was almost worth the discomfort of the bark of the cherry tree grating against my naked back, and the particularly annoying twig digging in just beneath my left shoulder blade.

Then Mrs Crazy had arrived on the scene wearing a shower cap over her stiff faux-blonde bouffant, purple-coated, fully bejewelled, and armed with two umbrellas. She immediately set about the chainsaw man, who dropped the saw on the ground, where it whirled and whined until the other hard-hat risked his fingers to catch it and turn it off.

While they were arguing between themselves, a flap opened at the side of one of the tents, and a man emerged, a tall overweight man with shoulder-length hair, wearing nothing but a pair of saggy, baggy Y-fronts.

He yawned, scratched his head, and exclaimed, ‘
Ce fucking este acest fucking zgomot? Du te fucking de aici!
'

His language was incomprehensible but his meaning was not. The second hard-hat, the one who now had the saw in his hands, raised it in a threatening way and said, ‘You'd better get those tents moved. We're clearing all these trees, and you're in the way.'

The Y-fronts man said, ‘
Nu am nici o fucking idee despre ce este fucking vorba. Du te fucking de aici! Am incercat sa fucking dorm!
' He fished a box of matches and a bent cigarette from the pouch of his grisly Y-fronts, straightened it out and lit it.

‘Did you hear what I said, mate? You no speekee English? Fuckee offee back to your own countree.' The hard-hat switched the chainsaw on and waved it about some more.

The Y-fronts man puffed meditatively.

‘Chill, Dez.' The second hard-hat removed his yellow helmet and shook his head. A thin plait of hair secured with a rubber band tumbled on to his shoulder. ‘We don't want to get into no fights.'

Mrs Crazy, not persuaded by his pacific rhetoric, thumped him on his un-helmeted head with an umbrella. He staggered and fell against the tent. The tent flap opened again and a young woman crawled out on her hands and knees.

‘
Ce se intampla? Cine sunt acesti oameni?
'

She looked about the same age as Violet, with dark eyes and long, glossy black hair cascading Magdalene-like down her shoulders, which was just as well because she seemed to be wearing nothing at all apart from a pair of red polka-dot panties.

‘
Du te inapoi in cort, Ramona! Nu ai nici o fucking modestie!
' the man yelled at her.

The young woman threw him a look and withdrew into the tent, only to re-emerge a few minutes later with a baby.

It was at this point that Violet lost the plot. She rushed up to some sharp-suited, up-himself creep who was taking a short cut through the grove on his way to the City while talking loudly in an Eton drawl on his mobile phone, and asked him to help. He ordered the hard-hats to stop, and they backed off in the deferential way of the working classes confronted by their natural superiors. Violet gave him one of those sweet girly looks, and I thought she was going to throw her arms around
him too, but fortunately she didn't, and off he went on his indomitable way.

‘
Costum fucking grozav
,' said the underpants man admiringly to his departing back.

Then the workmen zoomed off in their van, and there was now no conceivable reason for me still to be chained up here almost an hour later. It had been a mistake to trust Inna with the key. She had said she would follow in a few minutes with some coffee and toast, and bring the key to unchain me at the right moment. What in God's name had happened to her?

While not wishing in any way to make light of Jesus' suffering on the cross, there were certain parallels in our situation, which put me in a meditative frame of mind while I awaited my release. I thought of my dear mother embarked on her fearsome journey to the undiscovered country, her ashes mixed with those of strangers and scattered to the winds by unknown hands. Yet there was a kind of consolation in the mixing: she was what you'd nowadays call ‘a people person'; she wouldn't have wanted to travel that way alone.

The years she had lived at Madeley Court had been rich with love, friendship and mutuality – years of believing that a better world was possible if we would only give it a try. Years of pre-school playgroups and after-school crèches, allotment gardens and tenants committees, tombolas for Africa and India, fasts to free Mandela, anti-nuclear coffee mornings and solidarity barbecues. When the first Jamaican family had moved into the block in 1968 and Enoch Powell had warned of ‘rivers of blood', Mum had plied them with rivers of tea. My childhood had been lived in a world designed by Berthold Lubetkin and charmed into being by Aneurin Bevan – paternalistic maybe, but untainted by cynicism and self-interest. An uncynical tear sprang to my eye. Chained with
my back to the road, my eyes feasted on the fine proportions of Lubetkin's building, the private spaces and the communal spaces interlinked, the winding line of the walkway through the gardens uniting his vision.

If only Mother had been here to defend her domain and the ideals it embodied, wielding her umbrella alongside Mrs Crazy! But what would she have made of the long-haired tent-dwellers messily encamped in her cherry orchard? Would she have admired them as free spirits and adventurers, or abjured them as lazy ne'er-do-wells? You could never tell with Mother. She was vehemently critical of idleness, drunkenness and bad language. On the other hand, since her retirement, she had seldom been out of her dressing gown before noon, her sherry habit was legendary, and she had tried to teach Flossie to swear at the television. She deplored promiscuity, but she adored babies, whatever their parentage. Women are soft that way. Even bloody Inna – damn her, where the hell had she got to with that key? – never missed a chance to gawp into a stranger's pram.

On the wall in my room I have a photo of Stephanie and Meredith in that same pose, taken in our old flat in Clapham: Stephanie is smiling, not at me, not at the camera, but at her own inner pleasure; Meredith is a fat greedy blob of sensuality with a wisp of dark hair on her crown. If she had lived, she would be twenty-three now. If she had lived, perhaps Stephanie and I would still be together, and I would have a string of acting credits and an almost-paid-off mortgage.

Chained as I was, unable to move, my mind was wandering off down the hazardous trails of the past. I pictured Meredith as she might be now, and the image that skipped into my mind was Violet with her swept-up hair and her dimpling smile, so beautiful and so vulnerable, though at the time of the accident she had seemed as sturdy as a pony on her little legs. Here she
was at long last, trotting through the dappled shade of the cherry grove, holding a cup with a lid, and Inna overtaking her in her characteristic high-speed hobble, bringing two slices of toast on a plate, which she thrust into my hands.

‘It, it.'

‘But where's the key?' I asked.

Inna looked shifty. Her diamanté glasses had slipped to the bottom of her nose. ‘Oy! Lost it!'

She turned to consult Violet over her shoulder; they exchanged a few muttered words.

‘I'm afraid Inna's lost the key.' Violet smiled and surreptitiously tapped her temple.

‘For God's sake, woman! You only had it for two minutes! How can you have lost it?'

Inna did her confused act, flapping her hands and rolling her eyes the way I had taught her. I wanted to slap her. The twig dug deeper under my left shoulder blade. Above me in the cherry tree there was a sudden rustling of leaves and a large gob of something warm and moist landed on my head.

‘Naughty Pidgie!' Violet chided, and leaned forward with a tissue to wipe it away.

For a moment I felt the pressure of her firm young breast on my naked chest. Confusion overcame me.

‘Have you looked down the side of the sofa, Inna? Have you looked in the rubbish bin? This is getting bloody uncomfortable,' I shouted.

Not only was it uncomfortable, it was also embarrassing. The eleven occupants of the three tents, including the Y-fronts man, the lady with the baby, a couple of colourfully dressed oldies and assorted children, had all gathered in a semicircle around my tree, and were whispering among themselves.

‘Go away! Piss off! Bloody foreigners!' I shouted at them, which I know was wrong, but I was annoyed because the glory
of the day – i.e. the saving of the cherry trees – which should have been mine alone, had to be shared with this scruffy-looking crew and the smarmy businessman-type, who seemed to be on far too friendly terms with Violet. After all, it was I who had raced down here half naked at seven o'clock and suffered the discomfort of quasi-martyrdom, while he swanned off to his office and they hung around smoking and gibbering.

They fell silent when I shouted, then an old guy in an embroidered shirt and baggy trousers stepped forward, grabbed my hand, pumped it up and down, and made an incomprehensible speech that went on for several minutes. The semicircle of onlookers clapped politely. Next, the young woman with the magnificent tits, the one who had been breastfeeding her baby, stepped forward and handed me a long, stiff pinkish object, partly wrapped in a white cloth. To my horror, it looked like a wizened dead baby, but on closer inspection turned out to be a large salami. The woman handed it over with a little bow and said a few words. The audience clapped.

Inna, who was still standing beside me, whispered in my ear, ‘She say thank you for save our home and baby.'

The young woman then embraced me, pressing her magnificent tits against my bare chest, which was quite nice, though unfortunately she was now fully clothed. Having become accustomed to these female gestures of affection, I was beginning to realise what George Clooney has to put up with.

‘He say you big hero, chain yourself on tree, stop workmen knocking down tent,' whispered Inna.

‘Oh, tell them it was worth the suffering,' I said nobly, gulping down the now-tepid coffee which Violet had brought.

‘Is it okay?' she asked.

‘Perfect,' I said, though it was weak and too sweet, and I had to stop myself from saying ‘like you'. But here was the puzzle – even when she brushed against me with her breast, when she stood so close to me that I could smell the soap on her skin, even when she touched me with her ethereal hands and wiped the bird shit from my brow, even when my love blazed up through all my being, the beast below did not stir.

Inna had approached the semicircle of campers and was talking very fast, with fulsome hand gestures; they responded in kind.

‘What language are they talking, Inna?'

‘Romanian,' she replied. ‘They from Turda. But they come to London for fruit picking.'

‘Turda?' I couldn't resist a snigger, though I know it's infantile. ‘Not much fruit around here.'

‘Aha! I tell them this cherry is only for nice flower, not for ittit.'

‘Tell them the best place for fruit picking is Kent. Apples, pears, strawberries, the lot. But how come you speak Romanian, Inna? I thought you came from Odessa, in Ukraine.'

‘I born in Moldova.' She coughed and crossed herself. ‘In between Ukraina and Romania, one time belong Russia, another time Hungary, another time Romania. After war Soviet Republic. Everything mixit up.'

Two bright pink spots of emotion coloured her cheeks. She looked uncannily different from the withered crone I had met at my mother's deathbed.

‘Moldovan language speak like Romanian language, but write in Russian-type writing,' she rattled on. ‘In my school, people speaking Romanian, Russian, Ukrainian, Moldovan. Four languages plenty for one brain, English too much for me.'

‘You've been at the feast of languages, Inna.' And she had indeed stolen the scraps.

‘Aha! One day, I will tell you my story! But now we must break chain!'

Even as she spoke, the Y-fronts guy, now fully clothed, came up to me and grinned. His teeth flashed gold. His gone-to-fat muscles bulged under his T-shirt. Then he gripped the bicycle chain in two places and pulled.
Pthatt!
In one tug I was free.