2009 - We Are All Made of Glue

by Marina Lewycka

  At about seven o’clock in the evening, the phone rang.

  It was an old woman’s voice, hoarse and throaty.

  “She’s in ‘ere.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Yer pal. She’s in ‘ere. But she ent got ‘er dressin’ gahn wiwer.”

  “I’m sorry, I think you’ve got the wrong number.”

  “Nah, I ent. She give it me. You’re ‘er what comes to ‘ospital, int yer? Wiwe posh voice? She give me yer number. That lady wiwe pink dressin’ gahn. She says she wants ‘er dressin’ gahn agin. And ‘er slippers.”

  I realised in a flash that it must be the bonker lady.

  “Oh, thank you for contacting me. I’ll…”

  “An’ she says can yer bring some ciggies wiv yer when yer come.”

  The telephone beeped a few times then went dead. She must have been calling from the hospital payphone.

  I glanced at the clock. There was maybe half an hour of visiting time left. I’d given back the key to her house, so I bundled together my own slippers, a nightdress and Stella’s dressing gown.

  “I’ll see you in a bit, Ben,” I called upstairs as I set off for the bus.

  The snow had already melted and the air was surprisingly mild. I walked quickly, avoiding the slushy patches on the pavements. The newsagent by the bus stop was still open. Should I get some cigarettes? Or would it make me into a peddler of disease and death? Probably. But anyway, I did.

  The bonker lady was hanging around in the foyer when I arrived. I saw her approach a departing visitor and cadge a cigarette off him. She was still wearing her fluffy blue mules, now more grey than blue, and her toes poking out into the cold air looked bluish-grey too, the yellow toenails crustier than ever. Feeling like a smuggler delivering contraband, I handed her the cigarettes and she pocketed them swiftly. “Tanks, sweet’eart. She’s in Eyesores.”

  It took me a while to track Mrs Shapiro down to Isis ward. I could see at once that she was in a bad way. Her cheek was bruised, one eye almost closed up, and she had a dramatic bandage around her head. She reached out and gripped my arm.

  “Georgine. Thenk Gott you come.” Her voice was weak and croaky.

  “What happened?”

  “Fell down in the snow. Everything brokken.”

  “I’ve brought the things you asked for.” I took the things out of the bag and put them in her bedside cabinet. “Your friend phoned me.”

  “She is not my friend. She is a bonker. All she wants is cigarettes.”

  “But what happened? I telephoned earlier to see whether you needed anything.”

  “Somebody telephoned to me in morning. Said my cat was in a tree stuck up in the park.”

  “Who telephoned you? Was it somebody you know?”

  “I don’t know who. I thought it was Wonder Boy stuck. Poor Wonder Boy is not good up the trees.”

  “Was he stuck?”

  “Don’t know. Never seen him. Somebody bumped me, I slipped and fallen. They put me back in the krankie house.”

  Visiting time was over, and people were already making their way towards the door.

  “You will feed him again, will you, Georgine? Key is in pocket, same like before. Look out for the Wonder Boy. Thenk you, Georgine. You are my angel.”

  I must say, I felt rather grumpy for an angel. Neighbour-liness is all very well, but there are limits. Still, I took the key out of her astrakhan coat pocket again and joined the tide of visitors flowing towards the exit. Had it really been an accident, I wondered on the way home? Or had someone lured her out into the snow and pushed her over? What was it Mrs Goodney had said? “Wouldn’t want to be held responsible if she had another accident…?”

  Ben was still up when I got back.

  “Somebody phoned for you,” he said.

  “Did they leave a message?”

  “He said can you call him. Mr Diabello.”

  “Oh yes, the estate agent.” I kept my voice absolutely expressionless. “I’m trying to get him to value Mrs Shapiro’s house.”

  “Funny name.”

  “Yes, that’s what I thought. It’s a bit late. I’ll call tomorrow.”

  Should I or shouldn’t I? I remembered with a shiver the brazen conduct of the Shameless Woman frolicking in scarlet panties, wriggling wantonly in the grip of Velcro—was that really me?

  26

  A gummy smile

  On Saturday, after Ben had left with Rip, I changed into my old jeans, put a torch and a screwdriver into my bag just in case, and walked over to Canaan House. This was my chance to have another good poke around. I was determined find out Mrs Shapiro’s real age and to discover the identity of the mystery woman in the photo. There were two places I hadn’t investigated yet—the front room with the boarded-up bay window and broken light, and the attics. I fed the cats and cleaned up the poo in the hall. Then I started to search systematically.

  The catch on the front-room door was faulty and it hung slightly ajar. I pushed it open. The smell—feral, feline, fetid—was so overpowering I almost backed away, but I held my handkerchief over my nose and stepped inside, shining the torch around with my free hand. The beam fell on a high ornate ceiling with its defunct chandelier, a huge marble fireplace with a fall of soot spilling on to the hearth and, on the mantelpiece, an ornate gilt clock whose hands had stopped at just before midnight. There were two sofas and four armchairs, all draped in white sheets, a carved mahogany sideboard with glasses and decanters—one decanter still with a few centimetres of brown viscous liquid that smelled like paint-stripper—and over by the window a grand piano, also under a sheet. I played the torchlight around the walls; they were hung with paintings—gloomy Victorian oils of Highland scenes, storms at sea, and dying animals—quite different to the intimate clutter of personal pictures and photos that covered the walls in the other rooms.

  The bay window was covered by heavy fringed brocade curtains; an ugly box-shaped pelmet, covered in the same brocade, was sagging away from the wall, and when I looked up I could see why. A huge crack ran from the ceiling above the lintel right down to the floor, with a cold draft whistling through it. At the base, where it disappeared into the ground, it must have been several centimetres wide. It must be the roots of the monkey puzzle tree that had caused the damage, I thought. No wonder she wanted to cut it down.

  Seating myself at the grand piano, I raised the dust sheet, uncovered the keyboard—it was a Bechstein—and struck a few keys. The melancholy out-of-tune twang reverberated in the silence of the room. There were books of music in the piano stool—Beethoven, Chopin, Delius, Grieg. Not the sort of stuff they listen to in Kippax. In the front of the Grieg piano concerto a name was handwritten in copperplate script, with old-fashioned curlicues on the capitals: Hannah Wechsler. In the front of the Delius lieder was another name: Ella Wechsler. I remembered the photograph of the Wechsler family seated around the piano. Who were they? As I leafed through the music a piece of paper fluttered to the floor. I picked it up and held the torchlight to it. It was a letter.

  Kefar Daniyyel near Lydda, 18th June 1950

  My Dearest Artem,

  Why you do not reply to my letters? Each day I am thinking of you, each night I am dreaming of you. All the time I am wondering if I was doing the right thing coming here and leaving you in London. But I can not undo my decision. For this will be our place of safety, my love, the place where our people gathered out of every country where we have been exiles can be living finally at peace. Here in our Promised Land our scattered nation who have been swirling round the globe for many centuries like clouds of human dust are finally come to rest. If only you would be here, with us, Artem.

  You cannot imagine, my love, the joyful spirit of working not for wages or profits but for building a community of shared belief. We will get old and die here, but we will build a future for our children. They will grow up fearless and free in this land we are making for them—a land without barbed wires, out of which no person ever again will drive us away.r />
  At last we are moving from our temporary house in Lydda into our new moshav here at Kefar Daniyyel on a west-facing hillside overlooking the town. A few hectares of barren wasteland and a trickle of water, an empty abandoned place, but it will be our garden. In the east the sun is rising over the mountains of Judea and in the west is setting above the coastal plain with its fields of wheat and citrus groves. At night we see the lights sparking in the valley like Havdalah candles.

  In the morning before the sun is too hot we are working outside clearing stones away from the hillside and preparing terraces for autumn planting. Yitzak has obtained some seed-stones for a new type of fruit-tree called avo-kado which he believes we can establish here once the irrigation problem is solved. The men are laying a water pipe that will bring life in this empty land that previously supported only a few dozen of people and their miserable livestocks.

  My love I have some big news I hope will persuade you to come now even if you did not want to before, for our love will have a fruit. Arti you will be a father. I am with a child. Many evenings when the air is cool I am going up to the hilltop at Tel Hadid and watching the sun setting over the sea, and thinking of you living there beyond the sea and your baby growing here inside of me. My dear love please come and be with us if you can, or if you cannot come at this time please write me here at Kefar Daniyyel and I will understand.

  With warm kisses,

  Naomi

  There was a smudge at the bottom of the page, which might have been a kiss, or a tear.

  The letter was written in small neat handwriting on both sides of two sheets of thin paper folded together. Had it been hidden, or lost? I read it through again. Her English had been better then, I thought. I folded it back along the creases, and put it in my bag. I could picture the poor sad girl sitting out on the hillside carrying her baby inside her, watching the sun setting over the sea, and dreaming of her lover. But the story still refused to fall into place. Did he go to her in the end? Or was it Naomi who came back? Was he married to someone else? And what happened to the baby?

  Curiously I rifled through the music books to see whether any more letters would fall out. The Delius songbook fell open at a page that had an English translation beneath the German original.

  I have just seen two eyes so brown In them my joy, my world I found

  There was a time when Rip used to call me his brown-eyed girl, and I remembered how he would sing along to the Van Morrison tape when we were driving in the car to France, with Ben and Stella strapped in the back, and our bulky frame tent and camping gaz strapped to the roof rack. And I would squeeze his hand, and the kids would roll their eyes and snort in derision at this display of adult soppiness. What happens to love? Where does it go, when it’s not there any more? Rip’s love had all dribbled away into the Progress Project. Probably I was also to blame for letting it happen—for letting my eyes become less brown.

  The light of the torch was beginning to flicker; the battery must be running low. I switched it off and climbed the stairs to the first-floor landing. The nine doors were all closed. I gathered together Mrs Shapiro’s grey-white satin nightdress, pink candlewick dressing gown and Lion King slippers from her bedroom. Standing on tiptoe, I could just see that the Harlech Castle tin was still on top of the wardrobe where I’d left it. Then I closed the door behind me and opened the door that led up to the attic.

  I’d not been up here before, and I’d sneered inwardly when Mark Diabello had talked about the penthouse suite, but as I climbed the steep dog-leg stair, light poured in from two high rounded gable-end windows and a vast light-well in the roof, revealing wide beamed eaves branching off into rooms with sloping ceilings and magnificent views over the treetops towards Highbury Fields.

  The rooms, however, were full of junk—heaps and bundles and cardboard boxes, all piled dustily on top of each other. My heart sank. It would take ages to search through this lot. I opened one of the boxes at random—it was full of books. I pulled one out and flicked through the pages. Saint Teresa of Avila: A Life of Devotion. Not my sort of thing. Other boxes contained crockery, cutlery and some rather ghastly china ornaments. A cupboard that looked promising had nothing in it but rubber bands and jam-jar lids—dozens of them—and some pre-war recipe books and magazines. There were no documents or photos, or letters or a diary that would fill in the gaps in Mrs Shapiro’s story.

  On my left a narrow doorway opened on to a spiral staircase that led up into a small round room. This, I realised, was the fanciful little turret perched on the west side of the house. It was barely large enough to fit an armchair, and that’s all that was in there, a wide armchair upholstered in faded blue velvet with claw feet and a scrolled back, and by it a little carved table in front of the window. As I sat down on the chair a cloud of dust rose up around me making me sneeze. I looked out over the jungly rain-washed garden, imagining how pleasant it would be to sit here on a quiet afternoon with a cup of tea, a Danish pastry and a good book; and then out of the blue I felt an intense sensation of presence—of someone else who had sat here looking out of the window just as I was. Whose chair had this been? Who else had sat here looking down into the garden? My restless hands had been stroking the velvet and now I felt something unexpectedly hard against my fingertips—a coin. It was one of those big old-fashioned pennies with a picture of Queen Victoria, pushed down the side of the chair. I carried on feeling with my fingers and pulled out a paper clip, a cigarette butt, and a small crumpled photograph. I smoothed it out. It was a picture of a baby, a beautiful brown-eyed baby. I couldn’t tell whether it was a girl or a boy. Somebody’s hands were holding it up under the arms as it grinned gummily into the camera.

  “Yoo-hoo! Anybody there?”

  I jumped. I’d left the front door open, I remembered. Guiltily, I shoved the coin and the photo back down the sides of the chair and made my way down the stairs. Mrs Goodney was standing in the hall with a smug smile on her face.

  “I thought I’d find you here. Having a good snoop around, are we?”

  She was wearing the same pointy cube-heel shoes and an ugly raincoat with a slightly scaly texture in almost the same shade of lizard green. I suppose someone had once told her the colour suited her.

  “Mrs Shapiro asked me to feed her cats. She gave me the key.”

  “Feeding them in the bedrooms? I don’t think so.”

  I blushed, more with fury than embarrassment, but I kept my mouth shut.

  “Anyway, you can hand the key over now, because we’ve established that you’re not in fact the next of kin. She’s got a son.”

  I caught my breath—the baby! But there was something about the way Mrs Goodney looked at me that made me think she was bluffing. Or fishing for information. Well that was a game two could play.

  “But I don’t think he’ll be coming over from Israel to feed the cats.”

  She blinked, a quick reptilian blink.

  “We have our links with international agencies, you know. We’ll be inviting him to help sort out his mother’s business when the house goes up for sale.”

  “You can’t put it up for sale without her consent.” Or could she?

  “Of course, he’ll have an interest in the property, too—the son.” She watched me closely with her lizard eyes. “In the meantime, she’s in the care of Social Services. She said, by the way, that she doesn’t want you to visit her any more.”

  Her words sent a tremor through me. Had Mrs Shapiro really said that? It was possible—she was cussed enough—but somehow I just didn’t believe it.

  “So,” Mrs Goodney held out her hand for the key, “I’ll be taking over the care of the cats.”

  Violetta appeared, as if on cue, purring and rubbing herself against Mrs Goodney’s legs, and I noticed Mussorgsky creeping towards the bottom of the stairs, waiting for the right moment to sneak up to the bedroom. I realised Mrs Shapiro’s bed was their love nest. I realised also from the way Mrs Goodney looked at them that her idea of care would be to c
all in the Council’s pest control department.

  “I’m not going to hand over the keys without her written permission.” I tried to make my voice sound snooty, but this just annoyed her more.

  “I can always get a court order, you know,” she snapped back.

  “Fine. Do that.”

  Could she?

  §

  After she’d gone, I locked up the house carefully, putting the new key from the back door on to my key ring, grabbed the carrier bag I’d filled with Mrs Shapiro’s stuff (of course that would have made the perfect reason for me to be looking around upstairs, but you never think of those things at the time, do you?) and headed straight for the hospital. I raced around the antiseptic maze of corridors looking for Isis ward. But when I got there, she’d gone. Someone else was in her bed. I looked up and down all the bays, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  The nurse on duty was another teen-child, thin and harassed.

  “Where’s Mrs Shapiro? She was in that bed.” I pointed.

  The teen-child looked vague.

  “She’s gone into a nursing home, I think.”

  “Can you tell me where she’s gone? I brought some things for her.”

  “You’ll have to ask in the social work department. It’s in the same block as physio.”

  She pointed vaguely in the wrong direction. Just the thought of the smug smile on Mrs Goodney’s face if I went there to ask made my blood boil.

  Maybe the bonker lady would know. I hadn’t seen her in the lobby when I arrived, and when I went back to the ward where I’d first met her with Mrs Shapiro, I couldn’t find her anywhere. I thought she might be down in the foyer cadging cigarettes, but she wasn’t there either. I walked over to the porters’ desk, but I realised I didn’t even know her name. Then on my way out I spotted her hanging around outside the main entrance doors, by the No Smoking sign. She seemed to be involved in an argument with a couple of youths wearing baseball caps, one of whom had his leg in plaster. She grabbed me as I came out.