by Simon Brett
‘Till your client’s released?’
‘Yes. A fortnight to get the mother’s house into a state that would make it suitable accommodation for him when he is released.’
‘OK.’
‘And I said that I knew this … “person” who’s made a career of decluttering. Obviously, the employment of “this person” would have to be cleared with the offender manager – and probably his bosses in the Prison Services. But I think it could make the difference between my client quickly reoffending or actually having a chance to make something of his life.’ Hilary brought her face close to mine. ‘Will you do it? Check out this house for decluttering?’
‘Of course,’ I said, sublimely unaware of what I was getting myself into.
TWO
We left it that Hilary would try to get clearance from the offender manager for my involvement. He was so snowed under, she couldn’t say how long it would take. Employing me would also have budgetary implications, and government departments didn’t have a great track record for the speedy authorization of payments.
I have, incidentally, long since made it a rule that I never work for nothing, however deserving the cause. My conscience is clear about that, because of the time I spend in follow-ups with clients. For instance, in the case of Queenie, I invoiced the Housing Association for my initial consultations and the time I spent rehoming some of the cats, but my continuing visits, like the one that morning, are unpaid. And I have quite a raft of former clients on whom I still keep an eye.
Hilary was going to an eleven o’clock lecture at the University of Chichester Criminology Department, where she’s doing her PhD, so we parted about ten fifteen. I too had an eleven o’clock appointment. I said that, in the unlikely event of Hilary getting clearance from the offender manager that day, I could juggle my diary to get to the Hargood Estate at the end of the afternoon, say about five.
I mentioned that I deal with a lot of different clients at the same time, and the next person on my list could not have been more different from Queenie.
I could have told that from the address, apart from anything else. The house was a substantial Edwardian property in the leafy suburbs, on the way out of Chichester if you’re travelling west, in an area where there are quite a lot of big houses. This one was called ‘Clovelly’, a town somewhere in Devon, I recall. The house wasn’t in great decorative nick, but it was big. Price? Definitely talking seven figures.
The call had come from a woman called Dorothy Lechlade. She was making contact secretly, which is not unusual in my line of business. And she gave me more information than might be expected in a first conversation with someone she hadn’t met before. Again, that is not unusual in my line of business.
In a precise, slightly old-fashioned voice, she told me that her husband was an historian by profession (she actually said ‘an’). Theirs had been a late marriage, he in his mid-sixties, she in her early fifties. Remarkably in this day and age, the first time for both of them. She said that, since each had been living on their own for a long time, there were many adjustments to be made. Many compromises required. People become set in their ways and the introduction of someone else into a single existence almost inevitably prompts discussion, if not outright disagreement.
She hastened to assure me, as if I was about to question it, that theirs was a very happy marriage. However, she was worried that the rooms at the top of the house in which Tobias worked were in need of some reorganization. Was that the kind of service I might provide?
I had assured her that it was. I told her my charges. Her response suggested that money was not something she had ever had to worry about. I then suggested that I should make a preliminary visit, a recce to assess the scale of the job. I asked if she thought it would be better if I met husband and wife together for that meeting.
This idea unsettled her and she got very fluttery as she chose the option of my seeing her for the first time when her husband was out. She was elaborately secretive as we fixed the date. Tobias Lechlade, by long habit, spent Fridays in London, researching at the British Library. He always caught the same trains to Victoria and back. If I were to arrive at eleven in the morning, he would be safely absent. She gave me her mobile number and said she would ring mine if we needed to change our plans – if, say, Tobias was ill on the appointed day. Belt and braces.
The big deal Dorothy Lechlade made of all these arrangements suggested that she was inexperienced in the ways of duplicity.
So did her reaction when I parked the Yeti outside the house at two minutes to eleven. She had clearly been watching for me and scurried straight out and asked if I’d mind parking a little further down the road. She didn’t want to advertise to the good folk of Chichester that she required the services of SpaceWoman. It was not the first time I had encountered that reaction.
Dorothy Lechlade was a tall woman with greying hair cut in a long bob. My mother would have described her as ‘handsome’ or have said she had ‘strong features’, both of which in the Fleur Bonnier lexicon meant ‘unattractive’. I found her rather appealing. I also, in a strange way, seemed to recognize her from somewhere.
She wore a grey pinafore dress over a navy-blue shirt and I was not surprised to hear that she had until recently been head of history at a local girls’ private school. Before that, she insisted on telling me, she’d trained as a social worker. ‘Thought, you know, having come from a very privileged background, I should do something to help people less fortunate than myself.’
Her first job had been in Worthing, but she’d found dealing with abandoned children ‘very distressing’. ‘So many of them just get lost in the care system, it’s heartbreaking. I’m afraid I wasn’t up to that kind of emotional stress. Some of the cases were really harrowing … toddlers whose parents had died in violent circumstances. I’d always said I’d wanted to work with children, but I just couldn’t handle that stuff. I didn’t have the required ability to shut my mind to it when I got home. I’d wake up from nightmares about the kids. I was in a bad way.’ She winced with the pain of recollection.
‘So, I gave it up and retrained as a teacher. That was a more suitable role, in which I could still be of some use to children.’
Her manner was strange. She combined practicality with a slight other-worldliness.
I accepted her offer of coffee and followed her through to the kitchen while she made it. She used an all-glass Cona Percolator, an antiquated device I hadn’t seen for a long time in these days of Nespressos and pods. Looking round the brown-painted space, I got the feeling it wasn’t the only thing that had stayed there unchanged for many decades. I felt certain that she had moved into her husband’s house, rather than the other way round.
As if detecting the direction of my thoughts, Dorothy said, ‘Tobias’s parents lived here, since before he was born. He wasn’t actually born in the house; women went to nursing homes to have their babies in those days. Funny, isn’t it: then a “nursing home” was for having babies, now it’s for the very old.’
She was talking too much, betraying her nervousness. I did not interrupt.
‘But he’s lived here all his life so, you know, he’s quite resistant to change.’
I began to see the scale of the difficulties she might be encountering.
She poured the coffee. I said I was happy with cold milk. It came out of a high cream-coloured fridge with a bulging front, another vintage item.
‘Would you like to drink it down here?’
‘No. Let’s go up and see where the problem is,’ I suggested, tactfully ignoring the fact that the problem might well pervade the whole house. This impression was reinforced as she led me up two flights of stairs to the top floor. While well on the right side of squalid – and believe me, I know squalid – the décor was in need of a little refurbishment. Wallpaper, featuring rather too many large flowers, was faded, scuffed and rubbed at by the passage of the house’s residents. The stair carpets were thinning at the edge of the treads.
/> This should have prepared me for the top floor, but I was still taken aback by what Dorothy’s opening of the door – and switching on of the light – revealed. The attic comprised two rooms which, in the days of servants, were probably their living quarters.
The first one was lined with bookcases, full of dusty tomes which might once have had some order but were now stuffed in higgledy-piggledy – upright, sideways, diagonal, upside-down. Many had also cascaded to the floor, where they joined an undergrowth of more piled-up books, beige files and loose documents, stained brown where their paper clips had rusted. From the landing door, which could not be opened fully because of the books stacked behind it, a thin path – like an animal track through long grass – led to the second room.
Here the chaos was even more pronounced. The large windows which looked over the street in front were almost obscured by piles of documentation on their sills – I realized why Dorothy had switched the lights on. And, though there were fewer shelves, the tide of books and papers had risen to a couple of foot deep in places.
On the desk in front of the window, only just proud of the surrounding litter, stood a manual typewriter whose natural habitat was a museum. Microsoft might have staged a takeover of the entire world but had achieved no foothold in this attic in Chichester. Even the telephone on the desk was a black Bakelite one, its receiver attached by a plaited brown wire.
And over everything was a sticky patina of dust.
The only item in the room that had been touched by any form of cleaning was a small free-standing bookcase beside the desk. In this stood, erect as guardsmen, a series of books whose spines boasted their authorship by ‘T.J. Lechlade’. I took a note of the publisher’s name.
Following my eyeline, Dorothy said, with considerable pride, ‘Tobias’s publications. His special period is the Wars of the Roses.’
‘Ah,’ I said, not pretending to have any special knowledge of the subject. My recollections from school history lessons were hazy. I knew York and Lancaster were involved, but which side had which rose I’m afraid I couldn’t remember. It’s one of many things that I’ve got this far through my life without knowing. And my ignorance doesn’t hold me back – the Wars of the Roses don’t often come up in my line of business.
‘You do see the problem …?’ said Dorothy tentatively.
She phrased it as a question and the only possible answer was self-evident. I still said, ‘Yes.’ And then went on, ‘But presumably your husband has his own way of working, and it’s been like this for years? He knows where everything is?’
I was sounding her out, seeing if my intervention was really needed. Though I couldn’t personally have survived more than a few seconds in that environment, I recognized that people are different. And if conducting his life in that level of disorder suited Tobias Lechlade, then who was I to make him change his ways? I don’t feel I have a God-given mission to declutter everything. Some hoarders are not doing any harm to anyone and should be left to their own devices.
‘Yes,’ Dorothy replied. ‘But I’m worried from the safety angle. I mean, you can smell it, can’t you?’
Funny, I’m so inured to much worse smells that I hadn’t really analysed the one in the attic. But now I focused, I was aware of that thick stench of tobacco which used to greet you every time you walked into a pub. I saw on the desk a rack of briar pipes and an ashtray full of ash and dottle.
‘You mean the fire risk?’ I asked.
‘No. The damp.’
I sniffed again and realized what she was talking about. Beneath the predominant pipe tobacco was another fungal layer of smell. Mushroomy, cellar-like.
Dorothy pointed to a corner of the room where – from the top of the wallpaper – there seeped down an uneven black stain. Papers and books had been moved away from the floor beneath, but the damp had darkened the exposed carpet and was clearly spreading.
‘Hm,’ I said. ‘Does it get worse when it rains?’ She nodded. ‘Then it needs sorting. Have you got a reliable roofer?’ She shook her head. ‘I could give you a couple of names. Locals. They won’t sting you.’
I have a list of such essential people. Roofers, electricians, plumbers, decorators, all of whom I’ve worked with before. Most of them called Don, Dan or Dean, for no very good reason. I recommend them to private clients. When I’m working for the local authority or a housing association, I have to work with people they approve. Quite a few of my private workmen appear on both lists. There is no better way of finding the right man for a job than word of mouth.
‘Oh,’ said Dorothy. ‘If you could. I’d be so grateful.’
‘And while you’re getting all that done …’ I looked around at what looked like an explosion in a paper factory ‘… presumably you’d like me to make a start on this lot?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, decluttering it.’
‘What, you mean … interfering with Tobias’s workspace?’ She spoke the words as if I’d suggested painting the Taj Mahal Day-Glo pink.
‘Not interfering. Just tidying it up a bit.’
‘Tobias wouldn’t like that.’ She sounded deeply shocked. ‘We couldn’t do it. It might affect his work.’
‘You mean you don’t want it decluttered?’
‘Well …’
‘Why did you ring me, Dorothy? Why agree to me coming out here? If you just wanted me to recommend a roofer, I could have done that on the phone.’
‘Yes …’
I could tell she was losing her nerve. I went on, ‘Listen, apart from the leaking roof, this place is a major fire hazard. And if your husband smokes up here …’ The stench of tobacco was now becoming irksome. You quickly forget how it used to permeate virtually every building you walked into.
‘But,’ said Dorothy feebly, ‘Tobias has worked up here all his life.’
‘And there’s no reason why he shouldn’t continue to work up here for the rest of his life. Just work in a rather more organized space.’
‘He won’t like the idea,’ she said.
‘Not at first. But he may be persuaded to see the sense of it.’
‘I don’t know. Tobias is very strong-willed.’
I wondered briefly if she meant he was a bully, but somehow her tone was too affectionate to support that reading. ‘Listen, Dorothy, you wouldn’t have contacted me if you hadn’t considered some level of decluttering up here. I’m happy to undertake the job, but only in consultation with you and your husband. From the impression I get of him, Tobias won’t like the idea of your going behind his back. If you want to proceed, call me and we’ll fix another appointment for me to meet you and Tobias together. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll know you’ve changed your mind.’
Dorothy Lechlade seemed to take that on board. As she opened the front door and let some light into the gloomy hall, she asked, ‘Oh, what do I owe you for today?’
‘Nothing. I don’t charge for the first consultation. If you decide you do want to go ahead, then I’ll charge you at the rates we discussed.’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘And thank you.’
I realized, as I walked down the road to the discreetly distant Yeti, what an effort it had cost Dorothy Lechlade to contact me. I also realized that, if their marriage was going to work, she was going to have to take issue with her husband over other things that he might not like.
I didn’t know whether I would ever hear from her again. The chances I would have put at exactly fifty-fifty. But I was intrigued by the Lechlades. I’m naturally curious about people. I couldn’t do this job if I wasn’t.
And I felt confident that I could help Dorothy and Tobias, if they chose to take up my offer. I saw no reason why they couldn’t have a very happy marriage. In spite of everything, I am still by nature an optimist.
But I knew that, if I did start working at Clovelly, it would be a long job.
I had heard the ping of an arriving text while I was with Dorothy and, once in the Yeti, I opened it. From Hilary. ‘Contac
ted the offender manager and the Housing Association. Both happy for you to check out the place today. There’ll be no one there, the mother’s had to go into hospital, so you’ll have to pick up a key from the Housing Association. Now it’s official, I can tell you the released lifer is called Nate Ogden. His mother’s name’s Maureen. I’ve said you’ll visit about five, but since there’s no one there, I guess the exact timing doesn’t matter.’ She gave me the address of the flat on Portsmouth’s Hargood Estate and the landline number there.
The intervening hours were filled like most of my days are. A wasted journey to Arundel, where a brother and sister in their fifties wanted their late mother’s house emptied as quickly as possible so that they could get it on the market and realize their inheritance. I had made it clear to them on the phone that I do decluttering rather than house clearance but, like many people, they just hadn’t listened. I gave them the contacts for a couple of house clearance companies I know to be reliable. They didn’t even thank me or apologize for wasting my time. I got the impression, from the simmering atmosphere between them, that they couldn’t wait till they were once again alone to argue about the terms of their mother’s will.
Lunch was a chicken and sweetcorn wrap eaten hastily (and almost definitely illegally) while I was driving back along the coast to Smalting to visit one of my former clients in a care home. She was a widow whom I had helped downsize from the family home to a two-bedroomed flat, and then helped to choose which few belongings she could take to the small room which was now the extent of her property. She had a daughter in Australia and a son in New York, neither of whom had visiting their mother in West Sussex high on their priority list, and most of her contemporary friends had died. So, I had got into the habit of visiting her at least once a fortnight. I never felt I could stay for less than half an hour. That, I suppose, is another bit of the job that I do for free.
My next call was in Bognor Regis, not the posh bit of holiday brochures and genteel retirement flats. Like most seaside towns, Bognor has an underbelly of unemployment, deprivation and drug abuse. My client there was a girl called Ashleigh. Because of an alcoholic mother, she had spent most of her childhood in care. And before she was eighteen, she had given birth to a little boy called Zak. Though a father was never mentioned, the child’s appearance showed him to be mixed race.