The Tenement (3 page)

The day she had boarded the plane returning from Rhodesia she had met a man from Dundee whom she had also seen on the way out. He was about sixty and both times he was drunk. He had confided in her that he was frightened of planes. He had sat at the back, and the next thing there was an awful stramash. He had staggered to the lavatory and was busily engaged in trying to tug open the Emergency Door, which he thought was the door to the toilet, when he had been dragged away by a steward. He had then been placed between two big stalwart passengers for the rest of the flight. If he had succeeded in opening that door he would have blown them to Kingdom Come.

Oh, she had loved Rhodesia. Never again would she find a place that she liked so much. It was ideal for servants. Only their television wasn't very good. It consisted of political speeches by self-important black men. Mugabe always looked tense and arrogant. The bishop was better than him, at least he was dressed in a nicer way. And the big jovial man at least showed he had some life in him: she liked him best of all. No, she would never find a place like that again, though Carol was saying that they would have to leave and they would only be able to take a thousand pounds with them. And they would lose their house and their swimming pool and God knew what would happen to the children, as Carol had hoped to send them to college or university.

And then she had come home to the complaint from the Masons; really it was wicked of them. She had been so pleased with her photographs and her gifts, and she was so sunburnt and she had never felt so well in her gifts, and she had so many stories and they had to spoil it all with news of their crumby flat and their stained wallpaper. Imagine coming down to these ratty flats with their squalid problems when she had flown home from Rhodesia! And in any case they didn't realize that her own flat had been flooded by water: they never thought of that. She had left the carpet as it was, to dry as best it could, and that was the beginning of the neglect. The day of her homecoming she had sat on the bed and cried. And the Masons wouldn't speak to her when they met her on the stair. Oh, the tenement looked rotten and rat-ridden though it really wasn't, but in comparison with the big airy house in Rhodesia it did: she had brought back photographs of it, with the verandah and the beautiful trees and the lovely car they had just outside the garage and Tom waving through the open window of it.

Oh, she had suffered. What did they care about Jim and the crucifixion? Nothing. No one remembered what she had been like when young, how efficient she had been. Why, the owner had wanted to make her a manageress but she wouldn't take the job as the children were growing up and she didn't know whether she could cope or not. Anyway the children were away now and she was alone.

The Brigand had asked her to come and stay with him in the cave. But she didn't want that though the Brigand said that you could get used to it. The cave was along the shore a bit, and she had been there once with him and they had drunk a whole bottle of whisky. He even had candles in the depths of the cave but she couldn't imagine what it would be like in the winter. They said that the Brigand's father was a professor and he had run away from home years before, but you could never tell, there were so many stories, as with Macmillan. Perhaps in his case there hadn't been a girl at all, or a yacht, and the tale had been made up. But when there was no one else to talk to there was always the Brigand. In the olden days she would never even have glanced at him, she would have been horrified to hear of anyone living in a cave. Macmillan had done that too and he would go round the hotels collecting empty bottles to sell for a few pennies. If you gave him any money he wouldn't leave you alone but marched behind you step for step all day as if he were imitating you, mocking you, barking military orders while at the same time singing snatches of Italian opera in the original. There was always a thin rim of froth round his lips.

“You were quite right not to let that girl in,” said the Brigand in his polite English accent. “They have no right to come and impose themselves on you.”

“You're dead right. The liberty,” she said, her nostrils flaring. Though the girl had been nice: it wasn't her fault. But she would rather lie stretched on the floor than let anyone from the Health Department come and see her. They hadn't helped her when she had needed them most. Now they could go to hell and back in a chariot if they wanted to. Where were they when she had the fainting spells? In those days she would sometimes faint while carrying a tray over to a table. The proprietor had been very good, he had allowed her to carry on and eventually the fainting spells had stopped, though they had been bad while they lasted. And migraines too. Awful pains which lit up her face, sparked in front of her eyes. Nothing would cure the pain till the sickness came.

Now there was Mr Cooper in the bottom flat opposite the Masons (who had put in for the flat below when the nurse had died): and his wife had passed away but he seemed to get over it. Mr Porter too had lost his wife but he acted funny: he had been funny most of his life if you were to ask her. Now the Masons had left the middle flat it was Mrs Floss who stayed there. Mrs Floss was always changing the furniture in her flat: she had plenty of money, her husband had owned an hotel. Mrs Brown who had stayed next to herself on the top flat had died too. When she was alive she used to take a taxi out to the cemetery to visit the grave of her husband. She herself never went to Jim's grave, she couldn't bear to. That day she had cried so much (the day of the funeral), and there had been a lot of flowers and wreaths, for Jim had been very popular and obliging, but she had never gone to see the grave again. It was as if his body wasn't really there, as if it had melted in the lightning. She didn't believe in God, she didn't believe that Jim would live again, that she would ever see him again, all that talk was crap: you had your life on this earth, you were lucky or not, that was what it all came down to. Mrs Floss below her often mentioned souls passing from body to body, reincarnation she called it, but she didn't believe that either. Of course since Mrs Floss had lost her husband she had been away on a number of world cruises, she had tons of money, but she had odd ideas. And to see her in the summer in a bikini stretched out on a deckchair on the back green was a sight that one would never forget. She looked like a stranded whale. It almost made you cry laughing. Die laughing.

Carol didn't believe in God either. If God was good he wouldn't give this country to the blacks, she would say. Even He must know how stupid they were. If it was left to them the country would be a mess, chaotic, ungovernable, dirty. And she herself believed that. They would never have cultivated the country, tilled the land, you could see they were incapable of it, all they wanted was bicycles and cars. And they would sleep all day in the sun if they were allowed to. Their minds were so primitive and illogical. One day a black servant had come to Carol and said he was leaving. “Why?” she had asked him. “You have just been given a raise.” “It's because of that I'm leaving,” he had told her. “Because of the raise?” “Yes, you've been cheating me; if I was worth that money, I should have been given it from the beginning.” How they reasoned was beyond one's understanding, Carol would say.

She herself had been given a raise by the restaurant manager. “Because you are a nice efficient girl with a pleasant manner,” he told her. “Because you are conscientious,” smiling through his pencil-thin moustache. Of course he had fancied her but she hadn't fancied him. He had tried to make her, but she took the raise and kept out of his way as much as possible. Then he had been caught cooking the books because he was keeping a mistress and she hadn't seen him again. Over sexed he had been but a good manager too: the over sexed ones always made the best managers. He let you get on with your job but he had that eye. Of course since Jim, there would be no one for her. Not like that.

She had even thought of joining the Catholic Church. They helped each other in their trouble. What had happened was that a young girl who had started as a waitress in the restaurant had a baby and the baby died. The baby had been in an incubator for five days and had faded gently away while being taken to the big Children's Hospital in Glasgow in an ambulance: its heart had given out. Anyway the girl had been heartbroken but the priest had been magnificent. He had told her that the baby was an angel in heaven and the girl had such faith that she believed him and was comforted. They had buried the baby in a coffin the size of a shoe box and they had baptized it before that. The Protestants believed that you began in sin, and continued in sin. So she had nearly joined the Catholic Church and she had even gone to hear one of their services in the Cathedral by the sea where there was a crib and the Virgin Mary holding the Child Jesus in her arms. And the girl had said to her, “One night, I went to the Cathedral and I saw the Virgin Mary holding the baby out and it seemed that she was offering it to me instead of my own. And that was when I got better.” She too had a Health Visitor come to see her and the Health Visitor had said, “Don't keep that photograph of your baby in front of you all the time” (the photograph had been taken while the baby was in the incubator and you couldn't approach too closely in case you imported human germs to it). But the girl hadn't shifted the photograph from where it was and the Health Visitor never referred to it again.

Winter nights were the worst. It was so cold in the flat. And sometimes she would think that Jim was there. One day just after his death, the kids being in school and she herself coming into the house during the dinner hour, she had heard someone talking in the flat. She opened all the doors but still the talking went on, though no one could be seen. It was a man's voice too, quite low, and she thought, My God, Jim has come back from the dead. But it wasn't that at all. It was in fact the radio that she must have forgotten to switch off in the morning, though she had turned it down, and the voice was coming from that. It had given her a terrible shock. Maybe one of the girls had left it on. They were always leaving things on, lights, radios, television.

Anyway she was quite happy in the restaurant, drinking her coffee. And she would watch the sea, or the people passing on the road. There was always something to be seen. Once, there had been a huge storm, and seaweed strewn all over the road, and in the shops. Tree trunks had been torn out of the ground, the seawall had been twisted as if by a giant hand.

And she would sometimes think about the people in the flats. Mrs Brown, who had used to take the flowers to her husband's grave, had been so mean that she wouldn't even buy the local paper. She herself had to lend her her own copy, but now she had stopped buying it. When Jim was alive she would say, “Poor woman. She's got nobody. I don't mind lending the paper.” But she wouldn't say that now.

“My God,” he would say, “she doesn't deserve to have anybody visit her. She's got plenty of money and she won't spend it. She uses our bin sometimes.” Which of course she did and had put empty bottles of sherry in it though she claimed that she didn't drink.

Always sniffing about with a brush in her hand cleaning the stair as if no one did it but herself. The queen of the tenement. And so meek and mild too with her face coloured red from the blood pressure. Always picking up bits of paper as if they were treasure trove and saying that people should stick to their own day for the washing. And doing a bit of weeding since no one else bothered about the back green. When they had visited her house on the day of her death they had found all the rooms tightly crowded with furniture, like a second-hand shop. It was as if she had been building a fortress to keep the world out. And yet her house was spotless though crowded, with a smell of Mansion Polish.

So that was herself, now, who stayed in a top flat, with Mr and Mrs Cameron on the same landing: and below her was Mrs Floss and beside her was Mr and Mrs Porter: and below them was Mr Cooper and beside him were the Masons, the ones who had complained about their stained wallpaper.

She'd better remember: fix it all in her mind.

Mrs Miller         Mr and Mrs Cameron

Mrs Floss         Mr and Mrs Porter

Mr and Mrs Mason         Mr Cooper

She had noticed for a while the two young people who came into the restaurant and often sat at the table next to her. One was a tall boy of about seventeen who wore school uniform of a navy blue colour with yellow edgings on the jacket. She thought he was a prefect. (Neither of her own children had been prefects.) With him was his girl friend who was almost as tall as himself, wearing the same colour of uniform. They would come in at lunchtime and sit opposite each other holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes. The boy always came in first and then the girl. And they talked a lot. What did they find to talk about? Stories about school probably. They never spoke to her but she imagined that they would notice her, wonder about her. In their presence she felt more lonely than ever. They reminded her of her own children but they were more polite, perhaps the son and daughter of professional people.

For much of the time she pretended that she didn't see them and stared out of the window at the sea where a tinker piper often played to the tourists in his ragged tartan. When the tide was out there were papers and plastic cups to be seen lying on the shore. When the tide was in the sea rose to the horizon, silver and glittering, and sometimes one could watch big ships passing. The winter days were long and dark. In the summer time, however, there was much to see. There were so many tourists from so many different countries, wearing the national dress: Indians in saris, Americans in white jackets, and white hats, just as in
Dallas
. The place in the summer seemed to blossom, become alive. It was a smallish town of perhaps ten thousand people. In the summer, however, it was increased to about twenty thousand.