Asking For Trouble (2 page)

She was trying to get herself somewhere permanent to live and a job. The refuge was full and she felt she couldn’t stay there much longer. The palm of her left hand was badly scarred where her husband had forced it down on a glowing red hotplate during a row about his dinner being late. The scars were unsightly and had impaired the hand’s flexibility. She was conscious of it and always told anyone who asked that she’d done it herself, by accident. She’d told me the truth one evening after she’d come to live at the house. I’d expressed amazement that she’d stayed with him so long and put up with so much abuse.

‘It’s not easy walking out with two kids,’ she’d said.

But she had walked out when he started hitting the children, as well as her. She said he had a drink problem. In my view he had a head problem. But it had underlined for me, if I’d been in any doubt, how precious my independence was.

As for the house, that stood all by itself at the end of a row of redbrick terraced others. It was older than the terrace, we thought early Victorian, and once it must have stood here in a big garden. All that was left of the garden was a patch of jungle at the back and a litter-strewn strip between the front of the house and the pavement. There were holes indicating posts for railings but those too had gone. The house had dirty white stucco facing, dropping off in patches, a pillared front entrance, sash windows which stuck and a water-logged basement. When it was new it must have been graceful and welcoming. Now it was like the dishevelled old baglady who lived down the street, out of tune with the world around, kept together by grime and makeshift repairs. All the same, we’d been prepared to take it on and make something of it.

Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to. Within weeks, we were informed by the council, which legally owned it, that the house was scheduled to come down as part of redevelopment plans for the area, and there was nothing we could do about it. We’d asked the council, when we’d moved in, to give us a regular tenancy, a request which they’d ignored. Now a stream of communications couched in official mandarin fluttered through the letterbox, and the council cut off the electricity, just in case we still hadn’t got the message. They hadn’t turned off the water but perhaps they hadn’t needed to, since they were calling in the bailiffs.

Nev suggested we try to get the house listed as of architectural interest. We wrote to English Heritage and the National Trust. They thanked us for our letter but the house wasn’t interesting enough and they didn’t want it.

One by one, the people moved out of the terraced houses, leaving empty, boarded-up shells. We hung on like legionnaires in a desert fort. It became a battle of wills between us and the rampaging Rif warriors as represented by a string of council officials.

The uncertainty caused a shake-out of residents. The council, hoist with its own petard, rehoused Lucy and her children, one of whom was asthmatic. Declan, too, had left, to go no one knew where, though he spoke vaguely of having heard of a group needing a bass guitarist. There’d been a couple of mean-looking blokes at the door asking for him about a week before that, so we reckoned he was in some kind of trouble. But who wasn’t? We never asked people personal questions.

Terry, however, had arrived, a small damp figure with dark blond hair, parted centrally and falling to either side of her pinched little face, like spaniel’s ears. Her appearance coincided with the electricity being cut off, so that for me, from the start, she symbolised the deterioration in our situation. It was uncharitable of me to think that way, but, as things turned out, dead right.

On that Monday morning, until the moment we were handed our final notices to quit, I hadn’t thought things could get worse. The manager of the mail-order packing department where I’d been working had the usual idea of squatters, and he hadn’t been able to get rid of me fast enough. There had been nothing wrong with my work – despite the fact that it was boring and badly paid. I’d never turned up late or skived off early. I never broke anything, or packed the wrong item by mistake, or sent off something totally inappropriate to a customer for a joke. But he claimed I hadn’t been ‘completely frank’ about my circumstances and ‘the company had a policy’.

I wouldn’t have taken that job if I could have got any other. I was earning hardly more than I would have got on the dole and the conditions we’d worked in were like something out of Dickens. But it was better than no job. Now I was unemployed, technically homeless and soon to be literally so, and thoroughly fed up.

Our silence seemed to rattle the man from the council, who added, ‘Look here, you’ve really got to get out by Friday. The bailiffs will put you out by force if necessary. The police will be on standby and it won’t be any good climbing up on the rooftop or putting your feet into bags of cement or anything like that.’

We all just looked at him. A remark like that really wasn’t worth answering. Even Squib wouldn’t have done something like that.

Nev said, ‘Anyone who got up on this roof would fall straight through it! You’ve got to be joking.’

I was feeling a little sorry for our visitor so I asked him if he wanted a cup of tea. We’d only just brewed up. Nev had lit a fire in the hearth with a load of kindling he’d got from chopping up an old wooden garden seat out the back and we had the kettle going, hanging from a hook screwed into the arch of the grate.

Declan fixed that up when he was living here. It was at the time the electricity had been cut off. He said his granny in Ireland had cooked for a family of thirteen all her life, just using a pot hanging from a hook. Declan was full of stories like that. You couldn’t believe half of them. But the other half, which sounded just as mad, you could believe so you never knew which were true and which weren’t.

We didn’t do all our cooking in the hearth. We had a stove fed by Calor gas bottles. But that cost money to run and so, whenever we could, we used the open fire.

He refused the tea but he didn’t look so nervous. Instead he looked pompous and I stopped feeling sorry for him. ‘We’ve written several times explaining what would happen. You’ve had several stays of execution. We’ve done everything we could to be reasonable. All these houses are due to come down. The others are already empty. The squatters in those saw sense and moved out. Only you lot stay on. We’ve explained all this till we’re blue in the face. You must have had the letters.’

‘I know all that,’ I said, trying to sound ultra-polite and reasonable. ‘We understand the council’s argument, but we’ve got our point of view, too. We’re homeless. Or we will be if you put us out of here. Will the council house us?’

‘We can’t,’ he said wearily. ‘We haven’t got anywhere. Mrs Ho and her children had priority. Of the remaining four of you, Miss Varady, you’re the only one who could argue you have any real link with the borough at all, and that’s pretty tenuous! All we can do is put you on the list. We’re not responsible for the other three. You and they will have to try the private sector.’

‘No private landlord would take us on. And we couldn’t afford the sort of rent he’d charge if he would! Look, we keep the place clean,’ I went on. ‘We don’t hold wild parties or do anything you wouldn’t do yourself. We don’t let other people doss here. We’re really very good tenants. Or we would be if you’d let us pay rent and put us on a regular footing. That’s all we ask. What’s wrong with it?’

‘The house is due to come down within the next six months. In the meantime, it’s unsafe, not up to habitable standard. The electricity has been cut off.’ He didn’t look cross or unpleasant, just rather tired. ‘We explained all that in our letters, too. You did read them, didn’t you?’

Squib spoiled things then, by saying, ‘Yeah, we used ’em to make spills to light the fire. Saved on matches.’

The housing official went red in the face and read us the riot act again, and then he drove off. Only just in time. While he’d been inside the house, talking to us, I’d been able to see, through the window, a couple of kids hanging round his shiny new Fiesta, and in another few minutes they’d have been inside it. The last he would have seen of it would have been the exhaust fumes and a squeal of skidding tyres.

We held a council of war after our visitor had left. We knew we had to go, of course. We just didn’t know where. It was the end of summer and none of us fancied being out on the street just as the cold weather was about to start. Anyway, it was a lot less dangerous living in a squat, even one with an unsafe roof and dry rot in the staircase, like this one. As the man had said, we didn’t qualify for any help.

Terry sat on the bare staircase, twisting a strand of hair round her finger and waiting for someone else to suggest something, so that she could criticise it. She was the world’s greatest whinger, evaded housework and always jibbed at parting with her share of the house-keeping money. Looking at her I just wished she’d disappear and Declan come back. At least Declan was good at fixing things and good company as well.

It’s dangerous to wish. Sometimes your wish is granted and then you’re stuck with it.

She had noticed my scowls and immediately made herself look small and helpless. It was something she was very good at and which had led us to adopt her in the first place. I was the actress in our company, but that girl had missed her vocation, believe me. She peered through the curtains of hair and said pathetically, ‘I haven’t got anywhere else to go.’

‘None of us has!’ I snapped.

We all got up and trailed back into the main room. The three of them sat around looking at me, just like hopeful puppies. Each one of them was nursing a mug of tea. We each had our own mugs and no one ever drank from someone else’s. It was a house rule.

Nev asked, ‘What do we do, Fran?’ in a trusting sort of way which made it all so much worse.

It was always down to me in the end. The trouble was, I was really out of ideas. I had to say something. They expected it. So I said, ‘If we could get an old van, we could go on the road.’

‘I’d rather doss in a doorway,’ Squib said straight away. ‘I’ve tried that New-Age stuff. Digging holes in mud before you can crap and having to listen to folk music all night long. Forget it.’

‘He’s got a point. It’s all right in summer,’ Nev added. ‘But wintertime, it’s no joke.’

‘The police keep moving you on, anyway,’ Terry tossed in her usual handful of objections. ‘And it’s really awful in a tent when it rains. They always leak. You’d do just anything to get somewhere dry, anywhere. I know, I’ve tried it.’

‘I like it here,’ said Nev wistfully. ‘In this house.’

Squib took off his woolly hat and looked into it. Perhaps he thought he’d find an idea in there. He didn’t, so he smoothed a hand over his shaven head and put the hat back again carefully.

‘I don’t,’ said Terry. ‘It’s got rats.’

‘Everywhere’s got rats,’ said Squib. ‘Rats is all right. I’ve had some really nice pet rats. I had a white one. I carried it inside my coat. It never bit me, not once. I sold it to a bloke in a pub. He give me a fiver for it. Mind you, he was pissed at the time. I reckon that rat bit him, after he got it home. It bit other people. It never bit me. Animals like me.’

That was true. Terry mumbled it was because Squib smelled like barnyard and the animals just accepted he was one of them. The pouty, discontented look on her face grew worse. She had wrapped herself in an old knitted coat she always wore and was sulking. The coat was grubby and matted, but I’d seen the label in it once, and it was a very expensive one. I’d remarked on it and Terry had promptly said she’d got the coat from Oxfam. I hadn’t believed her then and it set me wondering again now. She might have stolen it. She was inclined to be light-fingered although she wasn’t stupid enough ever to touch anything of mine or Nev’s. We probably didn’t have anything she wanted. Only a complete nutter would have touched anything of Squib’s. The dog would have had him in a flash. Even if the dog hadn’t been there on guard, Squib’s belongings wouldn’t invite investigation.

As I said, we never asked people about themselves. If they were desperate enough to want to share a condemned house riddled with dry-rot, illegally and without electricity, then they needed a place to stay, not questions. Only, sooner or later, most people told you something about themselves. Not Terry. She’d never said a word. But whatever her background, there’d been money around there. You could tell. It made me wonder about the coat even more.

We talked about our problem all morning but we didn’t get anywhere. It ended with an argument, not about what we should do, but about Squib’s dog.

Terry said it had fleas. It was always scratching. You could say anything you liked about Squib, but not about his dog. It was a funny-looking dog with one ear turned over and one pointing up. Its legs were crooked. Squib had found it on a pile of rubbish when it was a puppy. He thought someone had chucked it out because it was the runt of a litter. Anyhow, he’d looked after it and it grew up all right except for the crooked legs. It was a nice dog. It was friendly to everyone except when guarding Squib’s gear. We all liked it, except Terry. But she didn’t like anything.

So when she insulted his dog, Squib told her a few home truths. They were well into a squabble when I lost my temper. I always tried to keep my temper in the house because once one person starts yelling, everyone starts. But we were already arguing and, somehow, Terry’s moaning was the last straw. Her criticism of the house itself had hurt. We’d taken her in, given her a home there, and all she could do was to let us know it wasn’t up to her accustomed standard.

I yelled, ‘You’re a real pain in the bum!’ Only I didn’t say ‘bum’. ‘Nobody asked you to move in with us. We let you stay here and I don’t think there’s been one day when you haven’t whinged from morning till night! We’ve all got problems! You’re no worse off than the rest of us.’ Remembering the coat label, I added, ‘I know your type. When you’ve had enough, you’ll just push off back wherever you came from!’

She turned absolutely white. She pushed back the spaniel’s ears and hissed, ‘Shut it, Fran! You don’t know anything about me! You fancy pushing us around, that’s all! Do this, do that! You give the orders and we all jump, right? Well, wrong! I don’t! And that’s what you don’t like. You always act like some kind of Mother Superior! This is a commune, we’ve got equal rights, OK? Equal say? Just because Nev’s a nervous wreck and Squib’s got no brains, they let you do the thinking and talking for them and you think you can do the same for me! You can’t, you don’t and you’d better remember it!’