Winterton Blue (7 page)

The advert had described the flat as a ‘studio apartment'. After the shared house, and the other tenants complaining about the ‘fire hazard' he'd supposedly created under the eaves, Lewis liked the sound of a studio. He had a mental image of a cool, white, empty cube, with light flooding in through an enormous sash window. He would not be sharing with anyone else, and if he did well in his new job with FoodToGo, he'd have no trouble managing the rent. Lewis thought that anywhere would be preferable to the YMCA, and was elated when he saw the outside; a shady courtyard with a view of the common in the distance: not like living in the city at all. But he took one sure look at the interior, and let out a slow breath: it was brimming with
things.
He saw at once the life of another person, locked into every object, peeling away from the walls in the afternoon grey.

He placed his kitbag on the cooker and the doorkey back in the lock where he knew he could find them both again, and then he set to work. He stood in the centre of the room and made an inventory. Not on paper or out loud, but in his head, where it wouldn't interrupt the words coming out of the woman's mouth. She was telling him about hot water and council tax and a rent book which she would go and buy from Smith's next time she went shopping. She was asking him if everything was alright, which required a nod, and then
she was leaving through the door which led onto the yard, which he could also enjoy any time he liked, she said.

Lewis remembers it as the worst place, because until then he had deluded himself into thinking that his desire for nothingness was a
lifestyle
choice. This was supposed to be a fresh start in a new home; immediately it made him feel ill.

When the landlady had gone, he stood in the centre of the room and completed the inventory.

Two armchairs, table, five dining chairs in differing styles (that's four too many) a television set on a coffee table, a second coffee table under the window with a lace doily on it and in the middle of that a heart-shaped pomander with a gold thread attached so if you held it up it would twirl, and if put your nose to the holes it would stink of old. There was a corner cabinet full of . . . stuff. He couldn't remember the word for bric-a-brac even though he searched for it, stumbling over tête-à-tête and bring-and-buy: this troubled him. An assortment of pictures and embroidered hangings covered the walls. The carpet was obscured by two hair-matted rugs. Floral curtains. A clock in the shape of a teapot saying Time For Tea. Everything spoke to him of a life once lived. It was unbearable.

He set to work in the kitchen, but he was so vexed that he might have missed something in the studio area, full as it was of things, that twice Lewis had to stand between the rooms and go over the inventory again. The kitchen was worse: hundreds of jars with crusted lids under the long counter, and Tupperware boxes covered with a film of greasy dust. There were stacks of plates with geometric designs in orange and brown; and in the cutlery drawer, an armoury of stained metal implements. He couldn't countenance the bottles in the cupboard. Even though he knew he should rinse them out and recycle them, that it would please his landlady to see that he was taking care of the environment, he couldn't do it. He took a breath, and threw the bottles and jars into a large black sack, and when that was full, into another.

After the kitchen, he would set his sights on the studio; but the kitchen and the plastic sacks and the surreptitious carrying of them down to the end of the lane, the endless indexing—all this exhausted him. The teapot clock said half-past seven. It was still light outside, but Lewis thought it would be reasonable to go to bed. He lay down in the dusk and listened to the falling birdsong.

By the Friday, he had almost finished. He left one table, one dining chair, and a telephone point about which he could do nothing. The kitchen was bare now apart from a fridge-freezer, cooker, saucepan, and kettle. On the worktop, in a straight line, Lewis had washed, dried, and placed a plate, a knife, a fork, two spoons (one large, one small), and a single cup and saucer. Nothing there he couldn't count. There was one thing that bothered him. The bed in the studio was small and suited his needs, but along the wall was a large leatherette sofa in bruise pink. The landlady, when she came to collect the rent, stood in the kitchen and tried to keep her face. She had said he could make it his home, she had said that. Lewis would use it in evidence. It was previously her mother's flat, she'd said, it would be completely understandable if he wanted to thin things out a bit. The landlady kept her face, right up until he said he wanted to get rid of the sofa. She had managed to find space for everything else he had discarded. The sofa would have to stay.

Something to sit on, she said, When you want to relax.

He could have said he didn't want to relax, but he said, instead,

I lie on the bed to relax.

This is—was—a furnished let, she said, A new tenant might want a sofa, even if you don't.

The words frightened him; Lewis saw them as a kind of threat. So he tried to live with the sofa.

At work, he made an effort not to think of it. But all the time, while he was arranging the boxes of finger food and mini cartons of cold soup and meat pieces on sticks that had
to be Trayed and Cling-filmed as per instructions—Twenty on each platter, no more, no less—he saw the sofa, breathing in his space. After his shift he moved it into the hall, so he wouldn't have to look at the shape of it in the dark.

FoodToGo had employed Lewis because he said he could drive a van, because he was very clean—presentable, said Mrs Dunn, at the interview, You are very Presentable. And, because they paid minimum wage minus deductions for training and uniforms, they had a rapid turnover of operatives. He was trained, in fifteen minutes, to unwrap the food from the boxes and place it onto metal trays, adding a garnish of parsley at each end (Very Important, she insisted, Don't forget it). Lewis had to count each item of food before covering the tray with cling-film. He was good at this. Finally, he had to tick off the list of completed items—The Menu—which were bound for this party or that private view, and sign it.

When the training was finished, Mrs Dunn gave him a set of keys and showed him the van. It was old, and the inside smelled of stale fat. She saw him eyeing the rust and the dents, his look of distaste as he sniffed the air.

You won't even notice it after a while, she said, with a laugh.

I'll notice this, said Lewis, waving a hand at the skeleton hanging off the rear-view mirror.

You're meant to, she said, It's a little aide-memoire. No speeding, no boozing on the job, no stupid driving—or that's how you'll end up.

Lewis was about to tell her he didn't need his memory jogging, but then she bared her teeth again,

Besides, he reminds me of my second husband, she said.

She gave him a map of the area so he wouldn't get lost, although none of the food was hot, nothing would go off if he did get lost and was, say, half an hour or so late. When he arrived at the venue, he was to unpack the trays, set them out on whatever surface he was instructed to use, remove the cling-film, and disappear.

The idea was that he would then go on to deliver another Menu to another party, but it was a small business, and often Lewis found himself at a loose end, hanging about outside, waiting. Sometimes he went to a pub, but when the noise was no longer bearable, he sat on a wall, took out his book, and read. He tried not to worry about the sofa, although occasionally in the dead time he went back to his flat just to stare at it, like a drunk coming home for a fight.

He spent his first week's wages on food; bought a loaf of organic bread and wrapped it up, two slices at a time, in the cling-film he'd stolen from FoodToGo. He put them in the freezer. He bought dried beans and UHT milk. He bought apples and put them on the windowsill opposite his bed, where the view beyond the common was of a distant hill and some trees. To the left of the view was a tall, grey office building. Lewis wanted to remove this from the picture. He cut out a triangle shape from the back of his rent book and stuck it on the glass. It was dark green. From the bed, it could have been another hill.

FoodToGo sent him across town to a gallery where an artist was having a show. When he arrived, two people were waiting, looking at their watches but smiling with relief. They were pouring wine into stem glasses, and offered him one while he set about unwrapping the trays. He accepted, and steadied the wine on one of the trestle tables set up to take the food he'd brought. There was something odd about the trays this time. He counted the sausages on sticks: twenty on each tray. He counted the chicken nuggets. Twenty. The sandwiches. Twenty. He went back to look at the sausages, and saw they were of different sizes: they looked unbalanced. He ate one, pushing the little wooden stick into his back pocket, but the balance was still unbalanced. He ate another. He had recently become vegetarian, but they tasted good. He ate another. His pocket was filling with sticks. While the two hosts sat behind the tabletop in the foyer, Lewis ate another and another. The more he ate, the less balanced it
looked, even though he tried moving them around, angling them, making a pattern. He finished the sausages and put the tray back in the box, spread out the remaining trays to disguise the lack. There was a raw feeling in his throat, like heartburn. The sausages, when they came back up, were as pink as the sofa.

FoodToGo had to let him go. Mrs Dunn was plain in her disapproval. Certain items had gone missing, she said, and there had been a complaint. Not about the sausages, or the mess in the toilet afterwards, but the way he helped himself to the wine. As if he were a guest, for God's sake! She told him to drop off the keys when he'd completed his last delivery. She would post him a cheque for the days he had worked.

Lewis drove straight to the flat. He spent the day lying on the bed, sometimes sitting up with his back against the wall so that he could admire the view, which was how he happened to see the change. Outside his window, a lake had appeared. He was not fooled by illusion. Someone had placed an empty glass on the sill; the lip of it was in his picture, catching the light as water does. Later in the afternoon, some time after he'd fallen asleep, other changes happened. Someone's building a bonfire, he thought when he first saw them, then later reassessing his impression, he realized they were chairs, stacked upon each other in a random pattern. Just outside his window, in the yard. In his view. A man was carrying more chairs into the space, until there were forty, or fifty perhaps, in all. He asked the man what was going on, and was told the chairs were going to be restored by the woman's boyfriend. The view from his window was now of an abandoned glass, and chairs.

He lay in his room another full day before he walked up the hill towards the council building. He had no idea what he would do next. The building was small enough to be hidden by a rip of paper from his rent book, but massive up close. On the ring-road, he saw a petrol station where he stopped in and bought a sausage roll and a red canister, which he filled
with petrol at the pump. Back in the flat, he put the apples and the bread from the freezer in his kitbag, stored the beans in one side pocket, and put his book of poems in the other. The remainder of the milk he poured down the sink. The keys to the van were in his pocket. Lewis dragged the sofa through the door and out into the yard, and piled some of the chairs on top of it. He arranged the other chairs in a pattern around the sofa, the backrests facing inwards, the legs kicking the air. Then he reversed the van up to the gate, offloaded the stale trays of food, throwing them onto the pyre he had created. When he finished, he drove back up the hill to the council building, got out and leaned against the bonnet. He took the sausage roll and ate it in two bites. Felt it burn.

Lewis told the therapist about it, start to finish. He was precise, and exact, kept his voice plain. He omitted to mention the blaze, or stopping at the edge of the ring-road to call the fire brigade. Nor did he tell her about stealing the van, having decided that the less she knew, the less she'd be able to tell the police if they came calling. It was their last session, but she wasn't to know that, either. Immediately, Katy jumped to conclusions, fixing on the canister and the council building. She asked him, in an indirect, meandering way, whether as a child he'd had issues with authority: his father, for instance, or his mother's subsequent boyfriends. It was something she did; always trying to interpret the information he gave her as a key to his past life.

I just wanted to burn it all down, said Lewis, attempting to bypass the scatter of language which would get them to the point of the session, All of it. The sofa and the chairs—even the building that spoilt the view. Every single thing. Normally, I don't get to do what I want.

It was then the discussion turned to things he wanted. That was how it went with her, one minute you'd be talking about a bad feeling you had, sitting on a hill, eating a sausage roll, and the next you'd be listing all the things you ever desired
in your life. You'd be giving yourself away. Katy was good at that; so good, so slippery, it felt like it was
his
idea to go and find his mother.

If you wanted to, she'd said, You could certainly put that wish into practice. It would be a form of
exposure,
of course. You couldn't be empty any more; and you'd be making yourself quite
visible.
But perhaps there's something preventing you? Perhaps there are some things you feel the need to run away from? He could have said, You might feel the need to run away, too, if you knew my mother. But after twenty years, Lewis reckoned he didn't know her either; how could seeing her again make matters any worse?

He had driven to Cardiff with a strange feeling of weightlessness, as if he had shed his earth-bound skin. Everything that pinned him down was at last behind him—London and Viv and the bedsit near the station and the sofa in the flat in Wandsworth, Katy and her talk—all that would be ancient history. He would reconnect—he repeated the word aloud, as Katy had suggested—with himself. He would find his mother; he would make his peace. But then he found Manny instead. He'd trusted him. That was his first mistake: right from the off, Manny knew more than he chose to let on.