The Tenement (6 page)

Living in a flat was difficult but he liked it. He liked the sense of movement around him. It was better than living in a detached or semi-detached house, especially after Julia died. He had been frightened the first night as if she would appear to him in the darkness, as if she would scrabble darkly in her room, but he had got over this fear.

There was a shop-keeper with an eye patch whom he called Nelson, and from whom he bought turnips and cabbage and carrots. Nelson said that he was sorry to hear about his wife. She was a nice woman, always cheery. It suddenly occurred to Trevor that he didn't know what his wife had been doing while he was in school. She had known people like this. She had spoken to them every day. She had friends of her own whom he didn't know about. Why had he never thought of that before?

Nelson had said to him, “Apples are a penny cheaper today.”

“As much as that?” said Trevor.

Then he had left. The tenement, tall with grey stone, was his home and would now be for the rest of his days. He would have to look after the bins, the stair, the light. He would have to remember to change the curtains, hoover the rooms, dust them; that would be his work in the future.

The cat sitting like a statue stared at him. He had found it one morning at the bins, shivering wet, and had taken it in. It would sit on his shoulder and nuzzle his face. Sometimes if it didn't want petting it would strike out at him with its thorny claws.

He had got into a routine. He would wake at eight o'clock and have cornflakes and a piece of toast. After that he would switch on the radio. The unions were on strike again; there had been another train smash. Then he would cook his dinner and read in the afternoon. After tea he would watch television. He knew that sooner or later he would grow tired of the routine but for the moment he was simply trying to survive. Routine was sanity. Sometimes he would wake up in the morning, thinking that Julia was lying by his side. The disappointment he felt when he realized that she wasn't was unsettling, frightening.

He had a friend still teaching who would come and see him. This friend was called Richardson. He was tall, vague, unpromoted. The two of them would play chess and Richardson would fall asleep over the board and snore. After about an hour he would shake his head like a horse and apologize. By this time Trevor had forgotten why he had made his last move. Richardson wouldn't leave till three in the morning. Short of putting on his pyjamas Trevor didn't know how he should hint that it was time for him to go. He would sometimes feel that he ought to hit him with a poker.

Richardson would say, “They are thinking of making the school into a community centre. Older people would attend classes. But what are you going to do? Are you going to tell them to walk single file in the corridors?” Questions like this on the margin of things bothered him. He had applied for many promoted posts but had failed to get them. He was always complaining he had no money. “Do you see what the police are getting?” He lost and mislaid things, was a vague wandering presence. And yet Trevor had never beaten him at chess.

“You play chess like draughts,” Richardson would say to him. It was true. He had never made any strategic conquests. His wars were always fought piece-meal. Actually he preferred to do chess problems than play against live opponents. Yet he didn't like Richardson saying this, for he prided himself on his intelligence.

“The high heid yins were at the school today,” Richardson would say. “The litter was cleaned up. It's all a con game.”

A woman called Mrs Blaney answered the advertisement for stair-woman. She was neatly dressed and wore gloves.

“I don't mind if I have a cup of tea,” she said, looking round her at the roomy kitchen. “I have to go and see a friend of mine later,” she said, glancing at her slim watch. The class of stair-woman had gone up, thought Trevor. This isn't what it used to be like.

“What time do you wish me to come,” said Mrs Blaney in a businesslike manner. She might have been a secretary waiting with pencil poised.

“Oh, any day would suit me,” said Trevor.

“Tuesday then,” said Mrs Blaney.

“Tuesday would do fine,” said Trevor. “And what about pipe clay?”

“Pipe clay?”

“Yes, I believe my wife used pipe clay on the stair. So Mrs Floss says.”

“Who's Mrs Floss?” (Suspicious, defensive.)

“She stays next door. She's been here for only a short time.”

“I doubt if pipe clay will be available now,” said Mrs Blaney decisively.

“Oh, you mean whoever made it has stopped?”

“Possibly. An hour, I think, should be sufficient. I have other places to attend to as well.” She sounded like a nurse. Stairs were like decaying patients.

“I imagine,” said Trevor.

“Tuesday then for an hour,” said Mrs Blaney, making a note in her diary. Trevor didn't wish to introduce the sordid subject of money and she possibly assumed that he knew the going rates.

“I usually like my cup of tea afterwards,” said Mrs Blaney. “My clients know that. I read the newspaper from cover to cover. That is how I noticed your advertisement.”

“I hoped it might be seen,” said Trevor.

“Things are not what they used to be,” said Mrs Blaney, as if excusing herself for taking such a menial job, and at the same time showing Trevor that she wasn't just any old staircleaner.

“I have a son in university. They are so selfish nowadays, the young. Do you find that? Have you any children?”

“One son.”

“I see. Much more selfish than we were. I was brought up in the country and when I was young I used to cut bracken all day for a shilling. I used to give my wages to my mother. The young don't pay for their keep nowadays, and if you ask them they say they didn't want to be brought into the world anyway. And they talk of nuclear war. As if that had anything to do with it.”

“I agree with you,” said Trevor.

“You ask them for money or anything of theirs and they won't give it to you, but all your possessions are theirs if they want them. Have you noticed that? I have never seen such selfishness. Do you know what my son was doing when he was home last weekend? Looking for the gold watch my husband left. He kept searching in all the drawers. I said to him, ‘That watch isn't yours.' ‘Why not,' he said. ‘That watch is a mason's watch.' I told him. ‘And the ring is the same. It's got G written on it. You're not a mason, are you?' But he kept looking for it just the same.”

Trevor had made the mistake of giving her a mug with her tea. She kept staring at it and sometimes touching the rim with the tip of her finger as if it was infected. He made a note that next time he would give her the special cups with the blue and white stripes.

“And they're so unmannerly. A friend of mine has a sister who is very hoity toity and she came to visit them. Her son came in drunk and tried to dance with her. She was so ashamed, so embarrassed. He also tried to borrow money from her.

“Oh, there is one thing,” she said. “You could give me my fare for the bus as well as the money for the stair, which I think should be three pounds. I hope you consider that reasonable.”

“I'm sure,” said Trevor, who didn't know much about the economics of stair-washing.

Mrs Blaney got to her feet, slipping on her gloves again. “I shall start next week since you tell me this is not your week for the stair. I shall be here at three o'clock prompt in the afternoon. My son will be back in university. His lecturers of course are as bad as the students. One of them said as he fell over a paper basket in the classroom, ‘You want me to kick the bucket, I suppose.' He comes in late and I believe he's a Communist. Sometimes he doesn't appear at all. They are as selfish as the students. And then I've to make his bed whenever he comes home. He always leaves his room in a mess and the bathroom light on during the night. You can't tell them anything, they know it all. Recently I heard of a girl of twelve who wanted to bring ten friends home for a birthday party. And their boy friends as well, she said. ‘No way,' said her mother. ‘In that case, I'll book an hotel room,' she said. At twelve years old! Well, thank you for the tea.” And she made her way to the door which Trevor opened for her as if she were royalty.

Trevor's son was called Robin. He was married to a primary school teacher and they now lived in Cambridge with a little daughter whom they were bringing up to be exactly like themselves.

One day she said to Trevor, “You owe me ten pence.” It had all arisen from a complicated transaction involving ice cream. But it struck him that at a very early age she was showing the ugly face of capitalism.

His son had been born when he was in the war fighting for Britain. His mother idolized him. His grandfather, who had been a miner, fought with him in mock sport.

When he was ten he asked his father, “Why are we always moving about?”

Trevor had not answered him. The continual shifting had made Robin nervous and the consequence was that he became remote and enclosed. He was now a computer operator. He had always been good at maths but not at English. In fact he constantly failed his English exams till the final year when he had somehow passed his Highers.

His mother would say to him, “Your father will help you with your poetry”, but he refused help. He hated poetry. People were always reading into poetry what wasn't there, or only tenuously.

When he was fourteen he started work in the Co-op in the evenings. He would never give Trevor any money: he turned out to be very mean. Trevor wondered if that was because he felt insecure and felt sorry for him, but later the meanness made him angry. He was always asking what he would get for his birthday, but never gave Trevor a present for his.

He had been laughed at, by the other children, when his father had been teaching in the same school. They bullied him. When he complained, his father told him that he would have to learn to defend himself, but his mother, from a sense of outraged justice, said that she would go and see the headmaster. Trevor knew that his own reason for saying what he said was that he was a coward and afraid to interfere. However, he had prevented Julia from visiting the headmaster. Ever since then Robin despised him as he had expected protection and received none. Trevor felt that Julia despised him as well, as she watched her son being miserable and ignoring his lessons.

That meanness, that egocentricity, where had it come from? Had it come from pain? Did he not have enough energy to think of other people?

Eventually Trevor didn't like his son at all. He thought of him as some kind of monster, mathematical, silent, spoiling his daughter who would become a monster as well. There were one or two occasions when Julia had pointed out a good review of Trevor's poems in a newspaper but Robin wouldn't read them. In fact he made a point of ignoring them.

After his wife died, Trevor had a nightmare. He was in Newark, and firing arrows through a wood, he hit Julia and Robin whose faces were like giant dartboards. Suddenly Robin had the sheriff's face and his wife had a greenish tinge on hers as she ran away from him bleeding among the leaves like a deer. He had wakened up in a sweat.

One day Robin came to visit him. They sat together in the big kitchen with the jars arranged and labelled on the shelves, just as Julia had left them.

“How are you,” said Robin. He was dressed in a new suit and looked like an executive, his black shining hair neatly brushed.

“I'm fine,” said Trevor gruffly. “How are you all?”

“Fine. Sheila sends her love. Are you managing on your own?”

“I'm managing.”

“Still writing?” said Robin contemptuously.

“Not much.”

“I see. I thought when you were once on your own you would write a great deal.”

“Well, I don't. Do you yourself computerize much?”

“I'm here for a meeting. I'll be going back tonight. I thought I'd call in and see how you were.”

“Well, I'm fine. Look around you. Can't you see that everything is neat and tidy? I can look after the flat.”

“You should maybe sell it. It's very large. You should perhaps move into a smaller flat.”

“Why?”

“I thought it would be more manageable and cheaper.”

“No, I shall stay here,” said Trevor firmly.

“I see.”

Was he wondering why he had ceased to move only after his mother died? Sometimes Trevor wondered whether he himself had caused his wife's cancer. Perhaps if you moved too much during your life you got cancer. It was the disease of the wandering deviant cells. Maybe his own poetry had saved him from the cancer. It was true he hadn't written much recently. Loneliness wasn't conducive to great art. Why had Robin come to torment him? Had he come to gloat over him in his solitude? Had he hoped to see the flat in a mess as his own room had once been, with socks lying over chairs, sweaty jerseys and ties lying on the bed, football boots lying aslant on the floor?

“I have a woman who comes to do the stair,” said Trevor mischievously. “She has a son at university doing Business Studies. She is well spoken. I wouldn't be surprised if she read Beckett.”

“I see,” said Robin again. He was always saying ‘I see'. Why did he look like a comic executive? Why was he so humourless, why did he think so slowly, calculate so much? He was perhaps working out that his father would leave him the flat which would fetch a good price on the market. Unless he married the stair-woman. Was that why he had come? He was always thinking about money, he wore a kind of silver armour. Maybe he thinks the stair-woman and myself will live together forever, with our pipe clay, thought Trevor. He smiled and Robin didn't know what he was smiling at, and he felt uneasy. He was an old selfish bastard. He had killed his mother, that was for sure. He didn't know that he and his mother had kept up a close correspondence and phoned each other three times a week. He, Robin, gave her some money but nothing to his old man with his stupid poetry, as if it mattered a damn.