The Tenement

by Iain Crichton Smith

  “I often think,” said Porter eagerly … “Do you think if you go into a shop and you don’t buy anything that the owner of the shop takes it personally?” But this time he felt that he had gone too far. The audience was not interested in a philosophical discussion, in close analysis.

  The tenement had grown suddenly silent as if the passers-by had all gone home. “Do you hear the creakings at night in the tenement?” said Mrs Floss suddenly. “You can hear the wood creaking. You never hear it in a new flat.”

  “That’s the wood contracting and expanding with the heat,” said Cooper magisterially. “That’s what it is.”

  “Every night I hear it. And cracks. I hear cracks like guns going off. From the sideboard I hear them. About an hour after I put the TV on.”

  “It must be Little and Large,” said John. “No, I tell you it’s that woman” (and he named a Scottish singer he disliked). The Ghoul, he called her. “Listen,” he would say to Linda. “The Ghoul’s on again.” When she sang opera he told Linda that she had constipation.

  “I didn’t know you liked Science Fiction,” said Trevor to John. “I used to read Science Fiction. I’ve got some books in the house. Mostly Sturgeon. You can have them if you like.”

  “Ta,” said John. “Ta very much.”

  “You’ll never get his nose out of a book,” said Linda proudly.

  I used to read romances, thought Mrs Cameron, nurses and doctors in hospitals, squires and maidens. How long ago that must have been. Many of them were also set in Greece. There was one she specially remembered about a blind girl who had been haunted by her former lover whom she supposed dead. Devil worship; reincarnation it was. And it turned out that she was the reincarnation of a sixteenth century girl and he the reincarnation of a lord who had lived in a castle and had been a devil worshipper.

  “They have no open-air toilets in Yugoslavia,” Mrs Floss was saying to Cooper. “You have to go to a restaurant. And the same in Italy.”

  “No open-air toilets?” said Cooper incredulously. “I wouldn’t like that. No job for me, eh John.”

  “How are you liking your job, then?”

  “Great. A man came in the other day and he said to me, ‘It’s too hot out there, I came in for the cool.’ Fellow from England he was, with a moustache. And he wouldn’t go out because it was too hot. ‘Can’t stand the heat,’ he told me, ‘ever since my operation.’ He told me that even in the winter time he went about in shirt sleeves. Sweat pouring off him. You never saw anything like it. ‘You can stay here,’ I told him, ‘you can wash your face if you like. Use the facilities.’ And we had a great blether. Turned out he was from the Potteries. He took a professional interest in lavatory pans. But he made mostly vases, he told me. And before that he used to work in a glass factory. He didn’t like Leeds or Liverpool, but he liked Sheffield and Manchester. Great architecture in Manchester, he told me. That was his hobby, you see, studying architecture. Liverpool, that’s a dangerous place, he said. Went to a pub there one night for a beer and I could feel the danger, know what I mean he said.”

  He’s not home yet, thought Mrs Cameron, that must mean he’s really drunk. And she was frightened. Please let me get up the stairs before he gets home. But she was afraid to excuse herself to the company, she was so shy.

  “This Italian was sitting there. Upright against a rock,” Cooper was saying. “You’d have thought he was asleep. They said Italians were cowards and so they were. Interested in music and ice cream. It was very quiet. You could hear the flies. They were moving about his face, hundreds of them. It was very hot. I took his wallet out, and there were these photographs. Fat wife. They say Italians like them fat.” He licked his lips, “I could show you that photograph. I showed it to my wife once. Nice woman that, I said to her. Bit of flesh on her.” He stopped and then continued as if he hadn’t changed the subject at all.

  “This policewoman came and it was late at night. She was all right when I left her, I told her. I’ll be back, I said to the surgeon. Simpson it was, he goes to Saudi Arabia for six months in the year. But this policewoman came to the door. It was very cold. It was just after Christmas. You’ll be home for the New Year, I told her. But she wasn’t.” And his eyes filled with tears. He accepted the drink John gave him. “They should have known at the hospital,” he said.

  “Do you remember that spastic woman who was nearly raped here?” he asked. They remembered.

  “Well, the woman she was visiting never speaks to her now. Keep away from my house, she told her. She acts as if the spastic was a prostitute or something. And when the policeman went to see her, she said, I know nothing about it. I heard nothing. I don’t want anything to do with her. She’s a bad woman. And she slammed the door in his face. Would you believe it? So she’s got nowhere to go now. It was the only house she visited, you see. Sometimes I think about that bloke who nearly raped her. But what could I do? I heard the scream, I had to do something, didn’t I?” There was self-congratulation in his voice. “But if he’d tried anything on me I’d have fixed him. I’ve got friends. I’m not worried. He had a scar on his face. Disgusting bugger.” And he swallowed more whisky.

  Cameron made his way up the road staggering and singing. After a while he stopped and his face became set and angry. He had heard from Mrs Miller, with whom he had had a drink at the station buffet, that his wife was visiting the Masons. She herself had avoided the party as she had no intention of celebrating the birth of a child: she considered the Masons lucky and herself unlucky. Linda Mason had her husband beside her: she had lost hers when not much older than Linda. She raised her glass mockingly to Cameron as she told him about his wife.

  Cameron could hardly believe that Greta would have the impudence, the nerve, to visit the Masons and to do it moreover behind his back. If she was doing so now, then she must have had contact with them before. Perhaps she had given the Fenian baby a present, she who had herself remained childless, infertile, barren. He would drag her from that house and hammer her: he looked forward to the night with satisfaction. The aggression surged in him clearly: he had his honest pretext. Mrs Miller’s mocking burning face shone in front of him.

  When he arrived outside the close, he stood for a moment, swaying and considering. Perhaps what he should do was smash the window which fronted the street. But no, better would be to open the door and see the expression on his wife’s face. He stood there and breathed in and out for a while, preparing himself. He closed his big red fist. He could taste the moment inside his mouth. Now they were all happy in there. Then in a short while there would be din, noise, confusion. He had every right to drag his wife out of there: she had betrayed him. He went out into the wind and rain and earned money for her: and she associated with Fenians, his mortal enemies. He thought perhaps he should go upstairs and put on his blue finery, but that would be a waste of valuable time. He banged on the door, shouting, “Come out of there, you Fenian bastards.”

  There was a sudden silence as if those inside were stunned. He basked in it for a moment. Then the door opened and John Mason was standing in front of him.

  “You’ve wakened the baby,” said John. His face was white and set. His whole body was trembling.

  “My wife, you’ve got my wife in there. Send her out here or I’ll go in myself,” said Cameron. He kicked the door with his boot. He was glad he had wakened the baby.

  “You’ve got twenty seconds to get out of here,” said John trembling more than ever. “That’s all you’ve got.”

  “What do you f…ing mean? I want my wife sent out, you Fenian bastard.”

  Mason looked down at the door on which Cameron’s boot had left a scar. It was as if he could hardly believe what had happened.

  “Look,” he said, “you’ve wakened the baby. I’ve given you your chance. You’re an old man. Go up the stair quietly.”

  “Listen, you Fenian bastard. Tell your Fenian wife to send my wife out or …”

  Before he could say any more John’s head thrust fo
rward and butted him in the face, from which blood suddenly poured. Then John punched him in the stomach. As he fell he kicked him viciously. He had gone berserk with rage.

  “John, stop it,” screamed Linda behind him.

  “Stop it,” shouted Greta Cameron, rushing out to see her husband lying on the stone. She beat on John’s body with her small fists. After a long while he heard voices which seemed at first to come from a distance, then closer. He drew a deep breath and stood there silently. There was blood on his shoe.

  “You … you ruffian,” Greta Cameron was shouting, “You’ve killed him.” There was blood on Cameron’s face and head, but he was breathing. His wife bent down to touch his forehead. She swayed and seemed about to faint.

  “Bastard,” John was saying over and over.

  Trevor Porter gazed down at Cameron, feeling sick. His mind was in a turmoil of emotions. On the one hand he was glad that Cameron was lying there like a felled oak. On the other, he was frightened by the violent battering that John had inflicted on him. Inside the house the baby was crying. Linda ran in, leaving the others at the door.

  As Trevor stood there, he thought of his wife, and Cameron’s body stretched in front of him reminded him of her. He even felt a curious pity for Cameron: he suddenly looked old and empty, not at all terrifying. John had been much fitter when the time came, much more aggressive.

  Mrs Floss said to him, “He deserved it.” Her face was shaking with excitement. “He should never hit a woman.” John leaned down as if he were a doctor inspecting a patient and said to Cameron, who perhaps was not even hearing him, “Don’t ever touch my door again or I’ll give you another doing. I’m not your wife. I hope you’re listening, you fat bastard.”

  Cameron lay there almost posthumously in the silence.

  Then John said, “We’d better take him upstairs. Will you help me?” he asked Trevor and Cooper, who had been gazing at the fight with a mixture of amazement and satisfaction. He seemed to have forgotten his army days or perhaps he saw in Cameron the Italian he had watched so carefully in the desert.

  “You watch what you’re doing. Be careful,” Mrs Cameron was shouting as they lifted him up, bumping into the wall with its green scarred paint, as they climbed the stair.

  “The door’s open,” Mrs Cameron was saying. They made their way through the flat as if they were carrying a corpse and laid Cameron on a bed. His wife immediately dashed to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Then she came in.

  “Out of my house,” she shouted to John, “hitting an old man like that and not fighting fair. Out.” She pursued them till they were on the stair again. They walked down the stone steps in silence.

  “We’re witnesses,” said Cooper eagerly. “It was him or you. We saw it.” He glanced worshipfully at John.

  “What if she sends for the police?” said John.

  “She won’t send for the police,” said Trevor definitely.

  “Why not?”

  “I just know. She won’t have anything to do with the police.”

  “Bastard,” said John, “waking the baby. He’s an animal. Want to come in for a cup of coffee?”

  “No thanks,” said both Trevor and Cooper. “It’s after eleven.”

  “Okay then.” John suddenly felt the responsibility of a family. Out there he had been defending it. He and Cameron were quite like each other, thought Trevor, one defending, the other attacking. He looked around him. For the first time he saw the tenement clearly as old and crumbling. There were white patches on the ceiling upstairs. As they descended they met Mrs Miller toiling upstairs, clutching the bannister. She was obviously drunk. A rancid smell came from her fur coat.

  “Good evening,” said Trevor, forgetting that it was later than that. She didn’t answer. For a moment he felt an immense pity for her returning to her empty unlighted flat. They heard her trying to fit her key into the lock and then she suddenly shouted, “F . . k off the lot of you.”

  Defiantly she stood there at the door, staring down at them, her face palely powdered. She was indomitable, masterful. In a strange way Trevor couldn’t but admire her. “Silly old trout,” said Cooper. They continued their descent.

  Trevor stopped at his own door. “Good night,” he said to John. “You had to do what you did. He won’t tamper with you again. He won’t live it down. He looked just like an exploded balloon. Maybe you’ve done some good.”

  “I don’t know,” said John, “You never know with people like that.”

  “She should leave him,” Cooper insisted eagerly. “She should move in with Mrs Floss. I wasn’t joking.”

  “Good night, then,” said Trevor. He opened and shut the door behind him. He switched on the light in the lobby.

  The house was large and quiet. All he could hear was the thin crying of a baby from below. He made himself some coffee and as he did so, he thought of Julia. Funny how when he had seen Cameron lying there – all that he longed for – the outstretched body seemed an anti-climax, and the battering not sufficient for the pain that he had inflicted on himself and his wife. Not at all an equal exchange for these long nights of fear, frustration and anguish. How suddenly old and fat and out of condition Cameron had looked. And what viciousness he had seen in John’s revelation of aggression. He shouldn’t have hit the man’s head with his boot. But at the same time he had been defending his family, as Trevor had not done. When Cameron had burst in like that he himself had stood up, sublime in his drunkenness, and would have fought him, but John had forestalled him. Or he believed that he would have fought him.

  He stood by the cooker in the quiet of the night. Upstairs, Mrs Cameron would be wiping her husband’s head and face free of the blood. He was all she had, her child. Tomorrow perhaps, she would make friends with John and Linda again, or she wouldn’t speak to them. One never knew the ways of women. How deep love, if love it was, went. She too had seen her conquering hero lying outstretched on the stone.

  Trevor sipped his coffee slowly. The tenement was so old. It had seen so much: this was only one incident in its tangled history. The door was scarred and losing its paint. The bins overflowed with rubbish. The walls were flaking and so was the ceiling. It was a place for derelicts, though once it had been fresh and fine.

  He prowled restlessly about the flat, from room to room. They suddenly seemed alien. It was as if Julia had been placated by that violence which had created a peace in his own mind. How curiously peaceful he felt. “Rest in peace,” he said under his breath. “You can leave this place now, both of us can leave. This will be our last shift, I promise you.”

  He gazed across at the church, the graveyard, shining in the moonlight. The street was quiet as if exhausted after a death or a birth. The graves had a yellow shine. This tenement was finished. He knew that the Masons would shortly leave, if they could. They couldn’t afford to have Cameron near them. There would only be left Mrs Floss, and himself, and Cooper, and Mrs Miller, and the Camerons, and he didn’t want to stay.

  He said goodbye to the tenement in that yellow light which irradiated the walls. The silence was now so deep that he thought he could hear as far as the end of the world. He was like a flower in a vase, peaceful.

  He went into the bedroom and removed his clothes. Some of Julia’s things were still lying on the sideboard. He listened carefully. There was a new noise. It was the noise of water flowing; another pipe must have burst. The roof, and now a burst pipe. He could hear the noise brimming below the kitchen window. There would be a squabble as to who would pay for its repair. The water was loud in the night.

  He lay in his bed staring up at the ceiling. Lights from passing cars made transient crosses on it, scissoring each other. He heard above him the restless steps of Mrs Cameron as she tended her husband. The baby had ceased to cry. There was a time when one had to leave, when nothing more could be done. A line for a poem sprang into his mind.

  In the time of the useless pity he turned away …

  He must move out of the middle of the
dark wood, out of the waste of rusty wheezing pipes, unfinished roofs. He deserved better than this, didn’t he?

  “Didn’t he?” he asked Julia.

  She didn’t answer, but in the middle of the peace, he was not unreassured. The moon lay gently on her bottles of powder and scent, on her finally discarded things.

  I will leave here, he said aloud. I will begin again. And the words did not sound strange or impossible. I will sell this old flat and buy a new one, a smaller one. Perhaps not even in this town. He was tired of sick pipes, flaking paint, a whole body disintegrating. The use of the tenement was over. It was time to leave it.

  The noise of the burst pipe was a torrent in the night.

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM POLYGON

  BY IAIN CRICHTON SMITH

  Consider the Lilies

  http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00VIGXTJO

  ‘Retrained, finely wrought … Mr Crichton Smith shows us isolation, perplexity, loneliness, a combination of blindness and indifference’ – New Statesman

  ‘Mr Crichton Smith has an acute feeling for places and atmosphere. The wind-blown heaths, the grey skies, the black dwellings, the narrow lives, the poverty – are all vividly depicted … one can linger over the sheer beauty of his phrases’ – Observer

  The eviction of the crofters from their homes between 1792 and the 1850s was one of the cruellest episodes in Scotland’s history. In this novel Iain Crichton Smith captures the impact of the Highland Clearances through the thoughts and memories of an old woman who has lived all her life within the narrow confines of her community.