by Alex Marwood
‘Not till Thomas gets here.’ Vesta waves a finger in the air. ‘It’s easy to make young people happy with food, isn’t it?’ she says to Collette, confidingly. Oh, Lord, thinks Collette. Does she see me as closer to her generation than to theirs? She must be the same age as my mum.
Cher’s face drops. ‘Oh, Christ on a bike, is he coming?’ she asks.
‘I told you I was asking everybody. I asked him up there, too,’ she gestures towards the upper ground floor. ‘Although I somehow doubt we’re going to be graced with his presence. I saw him go off with his overnight bag this morning. I think he’s gone off to see his kids again.’
‘Thank God for that. He’s not exactly Mr Party, is he? Between him sitting there staring at the air like he’s trying to catch flies and Mr Chatty going on about the Second World War or something, we might as well pack up and go to sleep now. We’ll never get a word in once he turns up.’
Vesta raises an eyebrow. ‘Said the pot to the kettle.’
‘No, but I’m funny,’ says Cher, with the petulant assurance of the young. ‘He’s just such a… a fuckweasel.’
The side-return gate scrapes open, bangs to. They fall quiet and crane round, none of them sure, really, what a fuckweasel is, but fairly sure that Thomas won’t have liked being called one if he has heard. He can’t not have. Cher’s voice could warn ships on the Mersey.
‘Hello, hello!’ he calls, and his voice is unnaturally jolly. Yes, he’s heard, thinks Collette, but he’s going to pretend he hasn’t. ‘A beautiful afternoon for it!’
He comes round the corner. He’s wearing a polo shirt today – the minor bureaucrat’s smart-casual. It has obviously been maroon at some point in its existence, but has faded to a dark pink. He wears clip-on sun lenses over his spectacles; they’re smudged, and a small chip has come off one corner of the left lens so he has the look of someone who’s fallen on hard times, whose self-maintenance has slid downhill. The scuffed shoes and the slightly dandyish shirt suggest someone who clearly once cared about his appearance. Collette sighs inwardly – he looks like someone who’s lost hope.
‘Well!’ he says, marching across the lawn with a box of Milk Tray held out before him. ‘What a treat! So good to see the garden being used, as well. I love looking down on your little patch of green, Vesta. What a treat to come and be in it for a change. Hello, Hossein, hello, Collette. I’ve brought you some chocolates, Vesta. Maybe not the best present in this heat. I’m sorry. I didn’t think. About the melting issue.’
He doesn’t look at Cher, doesn’t include her in the greetings. Yes, he heard, thinks Collette again. And he’s not happy.
‘They’ll be lovely,’ says Vesta, taking the chocolates. ‘You are kind. Milk Tray! You shouldn’t have!’
‘Not at all, not at all, it’s nothing.’ He rubs his hands together like Uriah Heep and beams around him – at Collette, at Hossein, at Vesta’s begonias, at anywhere other than Cher. ‘Well, it’s another beautiful day, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘Though I suppose some people might find it too hot. Nothing’s ever perfect for everybody, is it?’
He stands awkwardly above them all, looking about for somewhere to sit and radiating an aroma of suppressed astonishment that the chairs have run out. I bet he’s one of those people, thinks Collette, who always gives off a faint air of reproach, one of those people who’s never truly happy unless he’s hard done by.
Collette gives it a go, anyway. ‘Here,’ she hauls herself to her feet. ‘Have a seat.’
‘Oh, no, no,’ says Thomas, ‘I couldn’t possibly. You’re sitting there.’
‘No, you’re all right,’ says Collette. ‘I’m more of a floor sitter anyway. And I’ve been in chairs non-stop today. It’ll be nice to get on to a rug.’
‘No, no,’ he begins again, but Collette practically dives on to the blanket next to Cher. ‘Look, I’m here now,’ she says, and he tuts sheepishly and sits himself down, takes the cup of tea Vesta holds out across the gap. ‘Isn’t this nice?’ he says, again, and this time no one bothers to respond.
‘So can we have some cake, now?’ asks Cher.
‘Yes. Collette, do you want to play mother?’
‘Sure.’
‘There’s a knife in the basket.’
‘Okay.’ She reaches in and closes her hand around a handle that sticks out from under a chequered teacloth. Feels a tiny jolt of surprise as it brings the whole cloth with it. It’s a chef’s knife, best part of a foot long: a pointed end and an edge that looks like it would cut silk in mid-air like a Samurai sword. ‘I thought I was just meant to cut the cake,’ she says, holding it up, ‘not stab it to death.’
‘Sorry,’ says Vesta. ‘My old man was a butcher. I’ve got all sorts. Knives, sinew scissors, cleavers…’
Hossein bursts out laughing. ‘It suits you,’ he says, looking at Collette. ‘It’s like it was made for you.’
Collette wrinkles her nose and makes a stabbing gesture through the air. They grin at each other and Vesta sees a small, indefinable moment pass between them. Then Collette bends to cut the cake.
‘So tell me, Collette,’ asks Thomas, ‘what brings you to our fine neck of London?’
This is why I didn’t want to come. Questions. They’re going to ask me questions. And I don’t know what to tell them. She lets her hair drop forward and cover her face, pretends to be concentrating on making the slice just so. ‘Oh, you know,’ she replies. ‘This and that. I’ve been abroad for a while. Just getting myself back together and working out what to do next.’
‘Do you come from here originally, then?’
No harm in telling them that, surely? Millions of people come from here. ‘Further over,’ she says. ‘Peckham, really. Over towards the Elephant.’
She sees the shutters of lost interest clamp down. No one cares about Peckham. London has invisible borders way beyond the north–south divide. To someone from the south-west, anything east of Brixton might as well be Berlin. It’s one of the reasons she had Janine sent to the home she did, one of the reasons she hopes she may get away with staying here: that in London terms, Leyton is as far from Ealing as Mars.
‘So what brings you to Northbourne?’ asks Vesta. ‘That’s a bit of a way from home, isn’t it?’ She can count the number of times she’s been to the West End herself on her fingers and toes. Even now she’s got a pensioner’s Freedom Pass, she can’t think of any reason to go.
‘I – my mum’s in a home. In Collier’s Wood. This seemed like, you know, near enough, but far enough away at the same time, if you get my drift.’
Hossein grins. ‘Oh, yes,’ he says. ‘I know what you mean.’
‘In a home?’ asks Vesta. ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, love. That must be hard.’
Collette shrugs. ‘It is what it is. But I didn’t want her to… you know. Alone. Not that she knows who I am, really, any more.’
‘Dementia? How old is she?’
‘Sixty-seven.’
‘My God!’ Vesta looks stricken. ‘But that’s younger than me!’
Collette doesn’t know what to say to that. It’s never really occurred to her that someone of Vesta’s age would think themselves still outside the zone when it came to the diseases of old age. ‘It’s her heart,’ she says. ‘It’s because of her heart. She’s got heart failure, and it’s affected her brain.’
What do you say? That she lived her life on a cocktail of prescription drugs and high-tar cigarettes and London Gin, and now she’s paying the price? A memory of Janine’s slack face swims up before her, and she wants to cry again. It’s not been much of a life, has it, Mum? I wonder if you ever wanted anything different for yourself?
‘My granddad had that,’ says Cher. ‘It sucks.’
‘How much longer do they think she’s got?’ asks Thomas, and the party freezes. Even Cher looks a bit shocked. You don’t encompass impending death with strangers. Not unless you’re in a hospital. He doesn’t seem to notice the change in atmosphere: just sits forward with his elbows hooked round his kne
es, curious. ‘Only, I work for the Citizen’s Advice,’ he says, ‘two days a week. It’s not something we handle, but if you need, you know, to know what to do, I’m sure I can find out.’
What a funny man, thinks Collette. I honestly think he actually means well. ‘I – thanks,’ she says. ‘Not much longer, I don’t think. It’s hard to tell.’
She glances up and is surprised to see an expression that looks like deep sorrow in Hossein’s eyes. Gosh, she thinks. You’ve seen some stuff, haven’t you? There’s someone you really, really miss. Then he looks away, awkwardly, and starts arranging the remaining patisseries on to the empty sandwich plate.
‘Who’s for cake?’ she asks, brightly.
‘Me,’ says everyone.
Chapter Sixteen
The Landlord’s settee is made of leather. Black leather, bought at the height of the 1980s black-leather boom and still going strong with its wipe-clean ways and smudged chrome frame. He bought it on the Tottenham Court Road when he still thought of himself as up-and-coming, soon after his aunt died and he became a man of property. Now, he just likes the feel of it beneath his naked buttocks.
He still has the smoked glass coffee table that came as part of the set. It sits in front of the settee, within easy arm’s reach of a supine arm-stretch; the whole area within reach of his free left hand is set up perfectly for his solitary pleasures. The tablet computer lives beside the telephone, on the armrest behind his head, and lined up on the table top are an icy tin of beer whose temperature is kept down with the help of a neoprene stubby holder emblazoned with a picture of a windsurfer in front of an improbable sunset and the word AUSTRALIA (he’s not been to Australia, but clearly someone who donates to the MIND shop on Northbourne High Street has), an ashtray, which contains two cigarillo butts and a pile of Werther’s Original wrappers, the remote controls for the TV and the DVD player and a box of tissues. Man-size.
The Landlord loves to come home and shed his clothes. He likes the freedom. He likes the draught from the fan playing over his skin, to be able to lift up the apron of fat that hangs down over his thighs and let his privates breathe. He likes the feel of sweat – and goddamn, this heat makes him sweat – turning to vapour, without the close confines of cloth soaking it up. And he likes to touch himself.
The Landlord strokes himself from shoulder to nipple and marvels at the efficacy of the Internet if you’re curious. It’s not just the things that turn up online that help you learn about people – and he loves to know more about his lodgers than they think he knows – it’s the things that don’t. The fact that Thomas Dunbar’s name no longer appears on the trustee list of the Northbourne Furniture Exchange, and the announcement that the Citizen’s Advice has cut down its opening hours to go with the prevailing Austerity. He’s noticed him about the place more, lately, fussing and gabbling and sticking his nose in. These bits of information look like an explanation. An underemployed nosy-parker is no one’s idea of fun.
On the TV, the Landlord’s camera footage plays out images from the motion-operated cameras he’s set up in two bathrooms. The casual eye would interpret them as smoke alarms, and so far no one has questioned the need for such a thing in a bathroom. Currently, Gerard Bright is lathered up in the tub, shaving his buttocks. The Landlord glances, then glances away. Bright shaves and exfoliates and soaks himself in oils each day of the week. Nothing to see here: just a middle-aged narcissist in a prison made of glass. Besides, Collette Dunne is more interesting in every way. He Googles her as he waits for her to follow her neighbour in.
He can’t find a thing about her. Hossein Zanjani gets thousands of hits, hundreds of photos. The Home Office wouldn’t need to string out ‘investigating’ his asylum claim, if they were just to use Google, though they might be interested to see that he’s writing for every left-wing media outlet that will have him. Even old Vesta has a dozen entries – marketing lists, surveys, the flower rota at the Anglican church. But Collette Dunne? Dozens in the world, millions of hits on Google, but none of them are her. They’re dentists and dancers and strategic consultants. They’re fifty and seventeen and dead, and black and blonde and redheaded, and not one looks like the one in Beulah Grove.
There are only two reasons why someone wouldn’t show up on Google. No one cares a damn about them, or it’s not their real name.
Bright leaves the bathroom, and the TV screen, after a couple of seconds of empty room, goes blank. He fixed motion sensors on to his camera in when he realised that 98 per cent of his DVDs were blank. Then the door opens and the subject of his web-search comes in. She wears pyjamas and a satin dressing gown, her hair tied up into a curly knot at the top of her head. The Landlord pulls up his knees and props the tablet against his thighs. His freed-up hand begins to stray downwards, fingers running over belly, back up again to the cleavage between his breasts, as he clicks through to Cher Farrell’s Facebook page. He likes to use his fingertips; they make him feel like a cat.
Cher Farrell. Now here’s a story. Collette may be pretending to be someone else, but this one, it seems, nobody cares about. Since he discovered this one desultory trace of the girl, the Landlord has developed a taste for Facebook. The place is riddled with pages for missing teens, and no one ever remembers to take them down once the drama is done. They sit there for ever, long after the subject has come home, been found, been buried; pottages of condolence and trolling and digital love-hearts. ‘Come home, Keely, Granny loves you’; ‘OMG XOXOEMMABABE LUV YA 4 EVR DRLIN <3 XOXO’; ‘Deepest condolences from Lesley, Keith and all at WonderPackaging’; ‘I’d give her one if she wasn’t dead LOL’; ‘Come back, Tyra. Nobody’s angry’.
Cher Farrell’s page hasn’t changed since the last time he looked. It’s not changed, in fact, since it was posted eighteen months ago. It has no likes, no comments, no shares, no nothing; just a photo, barely recognisable with the passage of time, and a barebones appeal from social services. Have you seen this girl? We’ve lost her. We’ve done our bit. Our budgets don’t stretch to more than this, not for someone no one cares about. Even the page admin hasn’t been back for a while, to clear off the spam advertising for sex toys and free iPads. It’s the loneliest Facebook page he’s ever seen.
He looks up to watch his newbie. Collette crosses the room, puts a toilet roll on to the cistern, hoicks up her dressing gown and drops the pyjama bottoms. Sits on the toilet and lets out a visible sigh of pleasure. The time-stamp says it’s 10.17 and her last visit to this room was some time around midnight. Her bladder must be full to bursting. The Landlord caresses the thin line of damp hair that links his belly button and his mons pubis, twiddles it round his index finger and lets it slide out. The image is a long way from HD, too grainy to afford him much view of the dark place between her legs, but he thinks he sees a wisp of hair as she reaches back to the toilet paper. An unusual sight, these days, if it’s so. Young Cher, like Gerard, has skin as naked as the day she was born; scrapes it clean each week with a tube of Nair and a plastic spatula. All the young girls, signalling their adulthood by making themselves look like five-year-olds. He’s often wondered how this fits with society’s obsession with paedophilia.
He slows down the action as she wipes herself and stands up, pulling her trousers up as she goes, but the movement is so fluid, the dressing gown falling across her body beneath her arm, that he fails to see more. Nonetheless, just the thought is enough to make him feel a tiny stirring in his groin. One of the advantages of his peripatetic clientele is the constant chance of change. He’d been beginning to tire of Nikki, her red hair and her heavy breasts; she had heavy thighs to match, and they got in the way of his fantasies.
The Landlord’s fingers stray down, start to tickle at the hood of his penis; to tease his foreskin gently back from the tender glans beneath. Collette crosses to the bath, puts the plug in and turns the taps. The Landlord feels his breath begin to falter in his nose, to speed up. He licks a finger and brings it, spittle-lubed, down to rub in tiny circles around the outlet of
his urethra. As she walks over and looks at herself in the mirror over the basin, takes her hair bobbles out and allows that mass of curls to tumble down about her shoulders, he feels another twitch as his cock begins to harden. He may not have seen it for a decade, but, with a little help, it all still works fine. The Landlord sinks down further into his sofa, and lets his knees fall open, the soles of his feet pressed together, as he takes the whole member in his hand and starts working it to full erection. To someone watching him he would look like nothing other than a frog pinned out on a sixth-form dissection table, but in his mind he is a king.
Collette lets the dressing gown slip from her shoulders, and comes over to the door, below his camera and hangs it on the hook on its back. She looks up for a moment and seems to be staring straight into his eyes. Creamy Celtic skin, dark eyebrows, lips clearly defined, full and strong; the sort of mouth that…
By his head, the phone rings.
‘Fuck!’ He considers ignoring it, but the mood is broken. As Collette Dunne turns back to the mirror and begins to wash her face with some product from a tube, he presses the answer button and holds the phone to his ear. ‘Hello?’
A pause at the other end and then a single beep. A female voice, old-fashioned London accent, the semi-refined cup-of-tea-luv sort of accent you only hear on old Ealing comedies these days, shouts down the line as though trying to be heard without electronic aids. ‘Hello?’
‘Hello?’
‘Mr Preece?’
‘Yuh,’ he says, though he still thinks of Mr Preece as his father.
‘Oh, good. Hello, Mr Preece. It’s Miss Collins, from number twenty-three. Vesta? Vesta Collins?’
The Landlord sighs and shifts and the sofa cushions fart in protest. He really must get that phone taken out of the hall. She’s the only one who ever uses it, and she only uses it for nagging. ‘Oh, right?’
Collette Dunne is testing the water in the bath with her hand and tugging at the back of her top. Trust that whiny old bag to spoil the mood. ‘I haven’t got long, Mr Preece,’ says Vesta. ‘Forty pee, you have to put in to these things before you call, these days, and I’ve no idea how long it lasts.’