Imperfect Strangers

by David Staniforth

  “She must be if she’s crapping behind the settee. Anyway…” I pack away the cleaning implements. “That’s that done. S’pose it’ll have to do,” I say, sniffing a whiff of shit despite the masking aroma of alpine freshness.

  Keith watches as I place bottle after bottle – disinfectant, oxy-lift, deodoriser, antibacterial-finisher, wool-carpet-protector, white-PVC cleaner – back into the basket.

  “That’s a lot of products,” he says. “Do they all do something different?”

  “Of course. Where’s my manners, fretting about the carpet while you’re standing by the door. Come in Keith, sit down a minute.”

  Keith is about to step forward when the look on my face makes him halt.

  “Would you mind taking your shoes off?” I ask, twisting my mouth into a grimace of disapproval.

  He looks down at his shoes: brogues, like the geeky lads at school wore. The look on his face, you’d think I’d asked him to strip naked. And then I realise, my cleaning diligence had not failed me after all. The lingering hint of shit is not lingering, but drifting from Keith’s feet.

  “Hang on,” I say, raising an outstretched hand, as if holding him by the door like a cop would halt traffic. I return with a newspaper, which I separate into sheets and build from it a stepping path from the door to the couch.

  Keith crosses the paper path with some trepidation and sits down.

  * * *

  A fragrance of leather embraces me as I sink into Sally’s fantastic sofa. It brings to mind emotional warmth, like the soft-silky embrace of dark-chocolate, smoothly liquefying on the tongue. It feels like a massage on my senses: soothing, relaxing. I can’t believe I’m here, in Sally’s front room – no not front room – this is an actual living room; it’s a room worthy of being called such. It is a room worthy of such a title, because in here you would actually feel like you are living and not merely existing.

  “Right, then. Okay. No problem,” Sally says, disappearing into the kitchen. Moments later, I hear the tap running. When it stops I hear her rummaging in a cupboard, the sound of pottery clanking and scraping. I hear the tap run again, water sloshed into the sink. I melt further into the couch and inhale the essence of everything that is Sally. The kettle begins to rumble. This is it, she’s asked me in, now she’ll offer me coffee. I’ll say I’d prefer a tea. Or perhaps hot chocolate. I wonder if she has hot chocolate?

  “Tea or coffee,” Sally calls, her voice raised above the kettle’s roar.

  “Erm... whichever is easiest.”

  Idiot. Too late to say different now.

  “I was thinking. And, well, I don’t think Mrs Seaton is senile. Because it’s only at night, when I’m at work that she messes behind the settee, and even then, only if she’s locked in. In the day she does it in garden.”

  Sally’s face appears round the doorframe, her mouth gaping only marginally wider than her eyes. “You are joking?”

  “They all d-do that?”

  “No they bloody don’t.”

  They do, I think. All cats do, but I’m not going to argue about it. Little Keith got used to keeping quiet, when things were tightened. Argue silently, and the cane stays in the cupboard. Sally obviously knows very little about cats.

  Sally’s brow forms a tight bunch. She looks on the verge of saying more when the kettle rumbles to a boil and clicks off. I hear the pour of water. Not long after, Sally walks back into the room her face lit with a pleasant smile.

  “Here you are then, one flask of coffee. Not as fancy as yours I’m afraid; plain old stainless steel is as fancy as I get.”

  No cup of tea then. No hot chocolate. No biscuits. No cosy chat. No cuddle. No asking her out for a drink. No sealing it with a kiss.

  Toldyer. Yer no good. Nasty ugly Keith. Whojathinkyar?

  Shut up.

  “Keith?”

  The soft voice saying my name sounds distant. My wrists are burning. There’s my name again. The voice is female, and as if rising from a tub of water, the sound is suddenly clear in my ears. Sally. I’ve had an episode in Sally’s presence. How long?

  “You alright Keith?”

  “Thanks. Yes. Just thinking. I’ll er... I’ll get going then, shall I? I mean, I wouldn’t want to… I’ll get off. Give you this back in the m-morning?”

  “No. It’s okay, really. Keep it. Least I can do, after that business with Steve. I never use it anyway. You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  I walk to the end of the path and hear her say “Bye.” But I don’t turn. How long? I wonder, as light from around the edge of the doorway narrows to blackness. How long? I fret, as her key turns in the lock.

  At the entrance to the park, I pour the coffee into a pile of damp leaves. The rising smell, so much like burnt toast, sticks in the back of my throat like a fish-bone memory. The word-snakes start writhing, hissing, slithering, coiling and choking. I can hold them back. I know I can. I held them back on the doorstep to Sally’s house. I held them back when she leaned across me. It was hard, when the perfume on her wrist curled into my nostrils, but I managed it. When she bent down to put her shoe on the step, while waiting for her to stand upright, I dared myself to steal a kiss. I pictured grabbing her shoulders and planting my lips on the soft swell of hers and drawing her in like they do in films.

  Whojathinkyar? she sniped, snaked into my mind, threatened to drag me under. But I didn’t let her. Thankfully it brought me to my senses. What a mistake that would have been. Did I actually think she would melt into my arms? Life is not a film.

  Her toes looked amazing: delicate, the nails painted in kingfisher-blue, metallic, manicured, shielded by a fine-meshed stocking only a shade darker than her skin. That image drove the word-snake from my mind, but it caused a stirring in my groin. The image of her partially naked feet was so intimate, and only slightly marred by the rising stench of the dog’s excrement.

  My hand twitched in my pocket and I had to form a fist to make certain it stayed put. I stayed by the door while Sally went into the kitchen, pressing the door home with my shoulder, keeping the hand that so badly wanted to touch in my pocket. The insistent urge to grab Sally gradually dissolved. I then allowed my hand to relax, drew it from my pocket and wiped the cold sweat from my brow onto the back of my burning wrist.

  Thank goodness I think, feeling the big toe of my right foot poking through the hole. Thank goodness she didn’t make me take my shoes off. I will have to buy new socks. Arthur is not going to be happy, I realise as I look at my watch before looking into the darkness of the park and realising I can’t possibly go the long street-lit way to work.

  “See you soon, Sally. Sleep tight.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  Cleanliness is next to painfulness, I tell myself, silently correcting the phrase mother always used. I avoid letting my eyes delve into the darker shadows under bushes; if it gets too scary; I close my eyes and picture Sally’s toes, or her left eye with the little green island. I stick to the path, setting a steady pace. Not too fast though. Go too fast and it makes the shadows follow; the sound of falling feet attracts them. Stick to the path.

  Led down the path.

  I don’t deviate my eyes to look, but I know they’re there.

  Led down the path.

  The shadows are insistent. They’re following, slithering through the shade of the bushes. They’re trying to get into my mind: the shadows and the bad memories that ride on their slithering backs. “You hold them back, little Keith. You hold them back for me.”

  Led down the path.

  Is that the sound of my own footsteps getting louder? Are my footsteps pounding faster, or is it my heart?

  Led down the path.

  “Hold them back, little Keith. Please. Please hold them back” I don’t want your memories.

  That time with Heather Unwin begot a helter-skelter of slippage. If our lives up until then had been a difficult climb, from that point on it spiralled downward. Spiralled with sic
kening compulsion. It was a slippery slope; all down hill; all snakes and no ladder. Heather didn’t even lie about us. She didn’t have to.

  “That’s not you. It isn’t you, is it, little Keith?”

  Of course it’s me.

  “No it isn’t. You don’t talk like this. You’re a little boy; you don’t know words like begot and slippage and how to construct metaphor.”

  Yes I do. You read all the time, you read so many books, and you learn, and I learn what you learn. I know what you know, but you... You refuse to know everything that I know. And now there’s a woman in our lives and I want to know about her. You think I’m a child, but in reality I am as old as you. I want to know things, grown up things. What do her tits feel like? What does her cunt-suck taste like?

  “Stop it. I don’t want it. You don’t talk like that; do you hear me? You don’t talk like that, especially not about Sally. I won’t have it; do you hear? I don’t want it. I don’t want your pain, and I don’t want your anger.”

  Nor do I.

  It was our fault. It was always our fault. You are clumsy, Keith. You are stupid. You are bad; dirty; disgusting; horrible; nasty. Oh, why do you tell such lies and make me put you in the wardrobe?

  “So now you have reached that age!” She practically spat the accusation, as she clouted me around the back of our head.

  Silently I asked, what was that for? Silently, because if I’d spoken it out loud, she would certainly have given-me-what-for. That was a learning I made, wasn’t it? It had to be silent, because a what-for always hurts more than the punishment for that which was being questioned in the first place.

  Tears brimmed in our eyes, and I fought to prevent them from falling. I had been quite happy playing with my ball not more than thirty minutes before hand. Standing there, on the doorstep, my tears brimmed as Heather’s mum told our mother a pack of lies. She told lies about how I had pinned her daughter to the ground while she screamed. How it was my idea to hide under cardboard sheeting. How I had tried to rape her daughter. What rape was I didn’t know, not back then, so I thought that maybe I had. How can a person know if they’ve done something or not if they’re totally oblivious to what it is? You can only know what you know. We know what it is now, don’t we Keith? And I didn’t try to do it. It was a lie. Heather’s mother also told how she had caught me trying to force Heather’s legs apart. That was a lie too; I was trying to pull my hand away.

  “You didn’t let the tears fall did you? You kept them at bay, because I’ll-give-you-what-for had a near relative who went by the name of, Stop-your-snivelling-or-I’ll-give-you-something-to-cry-for. Giyersomattercryfer – that’s how she said it, wasn’t it? Like it was just one word. One word slithering from between her nasty thin lips.”

  I felt that I had something-to-cry-for, though. And I did, because she was telling lies. Heather’s mother was claiming that I had done terrible things when I hadn’t.

  “That’s when her obsession over our cleanliness began, wasn’t it?”

  She bathed us in a bath of bleach and cold water. “A cold bath is what you need my lad, with a splash of bleach for the germs.” Tears brimmed in our eyes, but I held them at bay.

  “Giyersomattercryfer. That was why you held them back. Giyersomattercryfer. You told yourself, and held them back.”

  “It’s hurting, Mum,” I told her, but she made us stay in the bath even longer. Then tied our hands with rope.

  Complaint brings harsher punishment.

  “Giyersomattercryfer.”

  When I later built the courage to tell mother that Heather’s mum had lied, she washed our mouth with soap. I never argued again, and neither did you? But I still got the soap.

  I still taste it Keith. When the memories come strong, I taste it. I can taste it now. I tasted it back when you said that really bad word.”

  “Lying is a sin,” she told me. “Boys are dirty animals. They can’t help themselves, but they must be kept clean.”

  “That night, when she dragged us from the wardrobe, when she untied the rope, and you thought it was all over, you didn’t know why she then tied our wrists behind our back. ‘So you don’t fiddle and foul the sheets,’ she said. Fiddle’n’foul. But you didn’t know what she meant. You knew it had something to do with the lies that Heather’s mother had told, though, didn’t you? But you didn’t want to raise the matter again.”

  * * *

  I exit the park with no memory of passing through, and I know little Keith has led me through the shadows. It’s never occurred to me, but I wonder if I talk out loud, and if I do, did I pass anyone as I walked along? And what was I saying if I did? And what did they think when they saw me? You see them. I’ve seen them myself: nutters that amble along, muttering to themselves, shouting out at people who aren’t actually there. Am I a nutter? Am I one of them? Despite the street-lighting, despite being away from the shadows from which the darkest of memories slither, the snakes of my past start to wriggle with my worry of their hold on me.

  Hold them back, little Keith. Please, hold them back.

  Little Keith does not answer. All the way through the park little Keith must have had plenty to say. Little Keith is afraid of the memories too, but they’re his memories, his responsibility. It feels like they are about to rise again, and I try picturing Sally’s home.

  Sally’s house is clean and yet it is a comfortable place to be. More than that, it is homely. While I was there, as nervous as I was, there was not much more than the slightest trace of a word-snake. For the first time ever a remembrance comes from the episode I just had, not the memory of the past, but some of the things that little Keith said, and the way he spoke. He talked more openly, and less like a child. Maybe he was letting me know I can now cope without him. Maybe the thought of Sally, the thought of her sweet-smelling home, is enough to force the horrid past away. Being in Sally’s home helped me to feel better. If only I could have that experience every day.

  With that thought a slip of an idea slides into my mind.

  CHAPTER

  16

  I’m sitting on the edge of my desk hugging a mug of coffee, when Kerry bursts into the office, her face glowing with fierce brightness. “You’ll never guess what he’s done now?”

  “What who’s done?” I’ve a reasonable idea of the who that she’s referring to, what’s more, I’m glad of an excuse to change the subject and turn away from the look of disbelief etched on the faces of Philippa and Colleen.

  “Patel.” Kerry throws her bag onto her desk then strides across to the group. “He’s only gone and–”

  “Sally’s given Keith a key to her house.”

  Philippa’s interruption puts the brakes on Kerry’s tirade so abruptly that she almost falls over. “You’ve what? Given him a key to your house? You’ve given him a key to your house?”

  “Keith!” Philippa says again, as if there’s any way of thinking that Kerry might have misheard. “And don’t get too close, she reeks of garlic.”

  “So, your landlord’s gone and–?” I take them in with a sweep of my eyes, as I raise the mug to my mouth.

  “Later.” Kerry tilts her head, which means come on, tell me everything.

  I place the empty mug on the table and glance at the clock. “Really... Keith... he’s actually alright.” Another fifteen minutes before work begins. “He’s just...” I take a moment to choose my words carefully.

  “Creepy?” Colleen offers, which, I have to be honest, shocks me.

  “Misunderstood!” I open my arms in a manner almost bordering on apologetic and look to each of the women in turn for a glimmer of acquiescence. Keith taught me that one: I acquiesce to your request, and when I looked puzzled: No protest to your request. You should be a poet I told him, and he was delighted. With the girls there is no acquiescence to be had, although Colleen at least seems to show an ounce of guilt for her recent comment.

  “I must admit, when he first suggested taking Sukie for a walk for me while I’m at work, I was a
bit shocked.” I sweep the watching eyes and shrug my shoulders. “But after a while I thought, well why not? And really, like I said, he’s okay. You should talk to him Colleen; he knows just about all there is to know about Leanne Rimes; I know you’re a big fan.”

  “I like her music. I’ve got some of her albums. But I’m no anorak.”

  “Well you’ve more in common with him than me. He simply loves everything about her. Talked for hours, when she was born, the dates of all her hits. He could write a book.”

  “Keith?” Philippa splutters.

  “A Leanne Rimes fan?” Says Kerry, screwing her face into an origami scowl.

  “Really?” Philippa adds.

  Kerry and Philippa chortle when they look at each other. I shoot them a shut-up glare and turn back to Colleen, as her objection to the whole idea seems to be weakening.

  “Yes, really.” Back to Colleen. “I’ve only got a couple of her tracks on my i-pod. Copied them from that CD you lent me. But he was so enthusiastic that I didn’t like to tell him I hardly know her music, and I’m into much heavier stuff.”

  “So...” Kerry cuts in, her voice sounding as thin and sharp as a razor. “When did all this startling fanzine conversation take place?”

  “I often bump into him in the park, on my way home, when he’s on his way in. So if we’ve time, I sit for a moment and have a chat with him.”

  “And how long’s this been going on?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, Kerry, but a couple of weeks.”

  “He’s not quite right,” Philippa warns.

  “Sounds a bit too convenient.” Kerry rolls her eyes and closes her mouth around a wedge of imaginary lemon. “Bumping into you, accidentally.” Kerry forms double quotes, with her fingers, around the word accidentally. “Sounds like he wants access to your knickers to me.”

  I let out a heavy sigh. I almost say, you’d know more about wanting to get into a girl’s knickers than me Kerry. This is why I didn’t tell them sooner. It’s one thing befriending someone because they’re lonely, but quite another to be judged an idiotic fool for doing so. I now have an overwhelming need to convince them of Keith’s decency, not for how he will look to them, but for how I look to them. “You’d say that about any man, Kerry!”