‘I know,’ said Flora.
‘As far as she’s concerned I got it all wrong. Forgot Finn,’ said Al.
‘Sounds like you need a diary,’ Flora couldn’t help interjecting. Posy thought that Al wasn’t really the diary type.
‘Would you like me to leave the Dyson here, so you have time to do the whole house?’ Flora asked.
‘I don’t know when I last hoovered the children’s bedrooms,’ Posy said. She had been hoping that Flora might spring into action and do it all for her. Flora, of course, had a cleaner. She had forgotten what domestic drudgery was really like.
‘Are you off somewhere?’ Posy asked.
‘I have a client in half an hour.’
‘What do you do?’ Al asked.
‘Perfect Solutions,’ said Flora. ‘Here’s my card.’ She pushed it across the Parousellis’ sticky oilcloth at him.
‘ “Perfect Solutions”,’ Al read. ‘“Events organised. Clutter cleared. Storage sorted. Problems Solved.” I could do with some of that.’ He noticed that it ended with Flora’s phone number and e-mail address. As if he’d be the sort to e-mail. He put it into the pocket of his jeans. ‘Cheers,’ he said. Then Frank came in.
‘Hi everyone. Any tea left, Pose? Whatcha doing then, Al?’
‘I thought we were having a practice.’
‘Tomorrow, mate.’
‘Sounds like you need Perfect Solutions,’ said Posy.
‘We could go through a few now,’ said Frank. ‘I’ve got a pupil in an hour, that’s all. You don’t need me, do you, Posy?’
‘Isobel’s asleep.’
‘Ah. OK.’ It seemed to Frank that if she didn’t need help with childcare, Posy didn’t need him at all.
‘Come on then, bring your tea,’ he told Al and they headed for the back door. As he passed the back of Flora’s chair Al caught the scent of lemons, or maybe it was limes, something bright and clean and sweet and sharp.
Out in Frank’s shed they rolled up straight away.
‘So, is Flora seeing anyone?’
‘Don’t think so. Don’t really know. Don’t think she could find anyone perfect enough. Don’t even think of it, mate.’
‘If I hadn’t blown it with Caroline and Finn … Too late now though.’
Frank started to play, soft, dark notes. Al took his sax out of its case. I will always have you, he thought as he brought it to his lips. It shone gold in the sunlight.
When Frank’s pupil arrived, coming through the side gate and knocking on the window of the summer house, Al left. He went back through the kitchen, hoping to see Flora. Only the Dyson remained. Posy was sitting feeding the baby in what he realised was her typical pose. She had a catalogue of expensive-looking wooden toys and one of trampolines open in front of her.
‘That looks pretty good,’ he said and was immediately embarrassed. Did she think he meant the breastfeeding? ‘I mean that trampoline,’ he quickly added.
But all she did was whisper ‘mmm’. She was stroking the baby’s hair, and didn’t want to distract her by saying anything louder. She didn’t know why she was even looking at the catalogues. The children had enough toys and they would never be able to afford a trampoline. She had just finished her book, and she loved reading junk mail, so soothing.
One of the best things about feeding her babies had been the amount of enforced sitting down and reading time. She had learnt how to turn a page in complete silence so as to not disturb the sleepy infant. Strange how long the feeds took. No wonder the Parouselli babies never had bottles. When James was a baby she’d read all of Thomas Hardy (apart from Jude the Obscure, of course). She would never choose anything too unpleasant in case it somehow got through the milk. Jane Austen, Barbara Pym and Elizabeth Taylor were ideal. She often hid her book if Frank came in and pretended that she was concentrating on the baby. How self-indulgent it must look, her sitting there, endlessly reading.
Al climbed the stairs to the bedsit that had been home since Caroline booted him out. It was in a block called Stanley Mansions which, since its elegant beginnings, had been further divided into many small, sad compartments. Caroline wouldn’t let Finn visit him here, so either they stayed at Caroline’s or hung out on the Common or in cafés or at playgrounds. Finn had been there a few times until Caroline had visited and was appalled (her word) by the squalor (also her word). She said that she didn’t want Finn seeing his daddy somewhere that was so dirty and sad. He could see her point. But now that he was on his own, why bother? There were about two thousand CDs on the floor; these, along with a few towels and one set of sheets, were all that he had taken away from their marriage. He had almost forgotten the wedding with all the presents piled up on a table. Let her have it all.
He kicked aside some cartons that were smeary with the liquor of the takeaways that now were his nightly nutrition. He never got bored because he rang the changes - curry, kebab, pizza, curry, fish and chips, kebab, and so on, ad infinitum. He rejected Thai (fancy, foreign, not filling, too healthy). Al thought that he was managing pretty well now. Straight away after the split he would usually pass out before he had managed to eat much and would wake from the cold at three or four in the morning with the stuff all over his shirt and trousers, the fork often still in his hand. Then he had a phase, when he was trying to get himself together again, where he would buy frozen dinners to microwave, but he often ended up just hacking bits off and sucking them when he got in from the pub as he couldn’t be bothered to wait, and wasn’t really that hungry. So now, a year on from the split, eating something while it was hot was a major achievement and it was possible that he would turn into a fat guy. Often he took a short cut through the cemetery on his way home from one of their regular gigs. There were turnstiles instead of gates. He decided that if he got too fat for those cemetery turnstiles, he would cut back, but he still had a way to go.
But he had begun to feel lonely in a different way. Not just desperately missing Finn, but missing being with someone. It was something he hadn’t expected. It had been a relief to get away from Caroline’s constant disapproval of him. He had just wanted to be his own person, but now he needed a woman in his life. Something made him start piling the takeaway cartons into each other. (So this is why they give babies stacking cups, he thought, this is the skill they need to acquire.) He didn’t have any binbags. He shoved them into some of the takeaway bags and put them by the door, he’d put them out later. He opened the window. He took the sheets off the bed and started to gather all of his clothes. He’d have to take them to the launderette. A service wash would cut out some of the tedium.
When he got back he phoned Flora. He might have guessed that he would get the machine.
‘Flora. It’s Al. I wondered about some of your perfect solutions for my flat.’ He left his number and hung up.
Flora phoned him back that evening, just as he was about to go out. He was glad the call hadn’t come later. It might have been hard to sound sincere with a background of pub.
‘My rates are £50 for the initial consultation, but that is deductible, if you take me on, from the hourly rate of £12.50. Does that sound manageable?’ She knew that he had left teaching and was now doing this and that. He thought that she sounded bossy as well as patronising, but still, she was pretty, and he could do with being sorted out, just so Finn might be allowed round again. It was miserable spending every Saturday or Sunday, whichever Caroline insisted it was to be, freezing in Mayflower Park. Maybe he could get a TV and a stack of videos for Finn.
‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘I’ve got lots of work on, just no time to get sorted. Cash rich, time poor, that’s me.’ Lying toad, that’s me, he smiled to himself.
‘I could come round to agree on what needs doing on Monday. Do you have any time in the day? Otherwise, evening is fine.’
‘I’ve work on in the morning. How about two?’ Afternoon delight, he thought.
‘Two is fine. Give me the address.’
‘Flat 11, Stanley Mansions,
Lodge Road.’
Al spent Monday morning driving for the scrapstore. He picked up sacks of offcuts of wood from pine-furniture makers. Miriam, the scrapstore supremo, said that these could be used for pre-school woodwork activities. He imagined Finn and his buddies let loose with drills and saws. The mind boggled. There was a stack of gold card from the cigarette factory. Nice stuff. He wondered why they weren’t using it. A few more stop-offs and the van was loaded with bolts of fabric that had been printed back to front, the usual reams of paper and card, and some lengths of what looked like parachute material. Perhaps, he mused, Southampton’s pre-schoolers were going to be making their own aircraft disaster survival kits. The sun was warm and he drove with the window down, radio blaring, enjoying being a van man. This certainly beat teaching. He got back to the scrapstore as quickly as he could. He wanted time to have a shower and tidy up a bit before Flora arrived. He mustn’t let her find out what he was really like. He aimed to look appealing, but cool. Not desperate.
He backed the van up to the rear entrance. How he hated that stupid warning beeping it did when he reversed. Council regulations no doubt. No sneaking around in this baby.
He took the first load in. It was a pile of lino offcuts, weighed a ton. He was sweating like a pig.
There was Posy. Shit! What if Flora were there too and saw him like this? He knew he looked a mess. Probably stank too. He did his best to put the stuff down silently. It was tough. He nearly put his back out. He darted back out and hid by the back of the van. Inside he could hear them wittering on.
‘This is florists’ cellophane,’ Miriam was telling them, ‘just PVA it around some wire and you can make gorgeous fairy wings.’
‘I would never have thought of that.’ It wasn’t Posy talking, and it didn’t sound like Flora.
‘I think we should get some of these sequins.’ Now that was Posy talking. ‘And some of these feathers. They’re beautiful. And some of these rainbow tissue circles.’
‘As treasurer,’ said the first voice, ‘I think I should point out that we must try to stick to the free stuff.’
‘More lentils and cork collages it is then,’ said Posy. She sounded really disappointed. ‘I suppose some of these fabrics are quite pretty. The fabric scraps are free, aren’t they?’
‘Remember it’s variety and texture that are important in collage activities for pre-schoolers. Pretty isn’t what matters. It’s the activity, not the outcome that the children benefit from,’ Miriam told them. It was part of her job description to offer guidance to the scrapstore’s members.
Posy thought that pretty was what mattered. ‘I suppose we could take lots of this wholemeal stuff and snip up some of our own tinsel and bits of wrapping paper.’
‘We’ll have some more gold card in later today,’ Miriam told them.
‘Great. Crowns again,’ said Posy’s accomplice enthusiastically.
‘Our driver should be back soon,’ Miriam told them. ‘He sometimes seems to take the scenic route.’
Huh, thought Al. I’d like to see you humping this stuff around, waiting endlessly at factory gates for some jobsworth who saw you last week to check your ID and get permission from the MD to give you a bag of rubbish. Hell, he was sure it wasn’t Flora in there.
‘Traffic was light today,’ he said as he strolled in with a bag of polystyrene bits. ‘Hi Posy, what brings you here?’
‘St Peter’s committee,’ said Posy, as if that meant anything to him. ‘I wondered if I might see you. Frank told me you work up here.’
‘Mostly on the scenic route,’ he said, with a wink at Miriam. Who had the grace to blush.
‘This is Ursula,’ said Posy. ‘Ursula, Al’ He looked her up and down. A mummy, a helmet-head, and possibly a Kraut with a name like that. Nothing for him here. He might as well get on with the unloading, then he could get off to make his preparations.
‘We’ll definitely take some cellophane,’ said Posy. ‘It’s really lovely.’
Miriam made a mental note to suggest that the St Peter’s committee members be offered places on the next ‘Play Today’ course; and she was sure that she’d told Al that they no longer accepted donations of polystyrene chips.
At precisely two o’clock Flora pressed the bell for Flat 11. She was certain that Al had said flat eleven, she had it written in her organiser (plus she never forgot things like that, or made a mistake) but the name on the bell was ‘Grimley’. She didn’t think that was Al’s name.
He buzzed her in.
She stepped neatly over the drifts of free papers, menus and leaflets and went up the stairs. The red and black lino was, she speculated, probably fifties, and now collectable. Flora had hated red and black together ever since an art therapist at the day centre where she’d done weekly sixth-former community service had told her that juxtaposing them indicated suicidal tendencies. Flora could not forget the story of the patient who usually drew beautiful and accurate pictures of freshwater fish one day complaining to the therapist that he couldn’t get the pike he was working on to look right. The therapist, finding that he had used only red and black, asked for him to have emergency admission to hospital. She was told not to be so silly. When she came in after the weekend she was told that the patient had died after drinking bleach.
There were no windows and it seemed no air. Perhaps Al was the only inhabitant. Flora found number eleven at the top of the second staircase. Al opened the door when he heard her footsteps.
‘Flora, come in.’
She thought that Al looked clean, if a little crumpled. She detected a hasty attempt to tidy the place up. This was a good sign. He must mean business. Sometimes her clients were so deeply mired in their clutter that it would appear hopeless to almost anyone but her.
‘Coffee?’ he asked.
‘Yes please.’ He had just washed up the mugs. He hoped she wouldn’t want anything to eat. By the time he’d thought of getting biscuits it was too late. He currently had a policy of not keeping any food. If he was hungry, he would get something when he went out. He gave her the smarter of the two mugs.
‘Well,’ said Flora. ‘I usually start by asking people what it is that they think wants fixing, how they want their life to be different. It often seems purely physical at first glance, a clutter problem, needing repairs done, just needing someone to help make an action plan. Once we’ve agreed on the way forward I can give you a quote and you can let me know if you want to proceed.’
‘This is mostly purely physical,’ Al said, trying not to smirk. Lewdness, he realised, wouldn’t get him very far with Flora. He was going to have to play this very carefully. Watch what he said, not let anything slip about Frank and Melody. Perhaps it would all be too complicated, if anything did happen, but then he couldn’t really imagine Flora hanging out with The Wild Years. He would have to conduct the romance elsewhere. ‘Yes. Purely physical.’
She arched her already highly arched eyebrows a fraction.
‘I often bleed people’s radiators whilst we are talking,’ she said. ‘But I take it you don’t have central heating.’
Wow, he thought, complimentary bleeding of radiators. What a woman!
‘So?’ she said. ‘Where shall we start?’
‘Well,’ said Al. ‘I moved in about a year ago, when Caroline and I split.’
‘Yes,’ Flora nodded, all sympathy. ‘I know.’ He wondered what else she might know about him; he might be on dodgy territory.
‘Well, it’s over with Caroline, there’s nothing I can do about that. And I don’t want to,’ he added hastily, ‘but I need to make it good for Finn. He’s only three.’
Flora knew that Finn’s birthday was actually a week before Tom’s and that he was four. She decided that this wasn’t the time to correct him.
‘Caroline won’t let him come here. Says it’s too depressing. That he shouldn’t see his dad living like this.’
Flora looked around. There was a sinister, unpleasant wardrobe. There was a table, ringed by a hundred thou
sand cold cups of coffee, a white bedside thing, stuffed with books, and the two black vinyl chairs that they were sitting on. These looked hideous and had green foam rubber poking out of gashes in their backs, but were actually very comfortable. There was a Baby Belling with two rings and what Flora took to be an oven. Al had an electric kettle (but she had noticed that it failed to switch itself off), a miniature fridge and a very dirty microwave. There were no pictures, just a hundred blobs of blu-tack and grey shadowy outlines where pictures had once hung. Above the basin were four mirror tiles. The picture Al would have of himself would be smeared, distorted and dissected. She guessed that the radio and music system were the only things that belonged to him.
‘Well it’s certainly not a clutter problem. That makes you unusual,’ she said.
‘Thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Al replied.
‘None intended.’
‘Come on, give it to me straight, Doc. I can take it.’
‘Well,’ said Flora. ‘Have you considered moving out?’
‘That bad, huh?’
‘Well it’s not irredeemable. We could transform this bedsit if you preferred.’
Al didn’t want to say that he was strapped for cash, after all he was supposed to be paying her.
‘Can we try that? I want quick results. I can always take stuff with me if I move …’ he realised that he should have said ‘when I move’, to indicate that his future didn’t lie in this bedsit.
‘Fine. Mind if I take a look in your cupboards?’
Actually he did mind, he minded a lot.
Flora opened the wardrobe and a binbag of dirty washing lurched out at her.
‘Don’t worry. I’ve seen it all before.’ There was nothing but books and CDs beside the bed. No food in the cupboard, just coffee, tea and sugar. The smell of the tiny fridge made her give a long, impressed whistle. The bed had no headboard (Flora considered this preferable to having a hideous one) and was covered by a duvet in a pale green and brown cover that seemed to be trying for autumn and spring at the same time.
Happy Birthday and All That Page 12