by Will Wiles
These are cleaning products for the flat and for the floor, Oskar had written. Yes, Oskar, that was obvious. There is a book, Care of Wooden Floors, on the shelf with the architecture. That was a little more helpful.
The book was at the far end of the lowest shelf, almost invisible next to the fat, heavy monographs of European and American architects. It was a slender brown hardback. On the front cover was a line drawing of a man easing a floorboard into place with an expression of Zen passivity. Already the book was putting me at ease. It looked like an artefact from the fatherly world of Hayes car manuals and Protect and Survive leaflets. It would know what to do. I opened the book. There was a note from Oskar inside the front cover – more than a note, a decent-sized letter, filling at least one side of A4 paper with writing that was more expansive, less controlled, than his usual style. At the top was a heading or caveat written in small capitals, perhaps fitted in as an afterthought:
IF NOTHING HAS HAPPENED TO THE FLOORS, KINDLY
DISREGARD THIS NOTE.
Underneath that:
My Dear Friend,
IF YOU HAVE JUST SPILLED SOMETHING, WIPE IT UP WITH A WET CLOTH IMMEDIATELY! DO NOT DELAY! DO NOT LET A STAIN SET!
But if you have found this note you have found this book, and so it is probably too late. You tried water, and it did not work. The floor is stained. Maybe this book can help, but I do not think you will be capable of repairing the damage.
My bowel clenched, and my face heated. I bit my lip. I do not think you will be capable of repairing the damage? How dare he? I knew Oskar’s arrogance, his casual dismissiveness, but fresh instances of it never lost much of their sting. Now I wanted to smash a couple of bottles of red on the floor and use their jagged necks to score my name on the boards.
But I wasn’t going to do that. I was going to fix the damage, without a trace, and get away with it. It would be a silent, secret victory, but I would always know. Then I was going to lie through my teeth about the cat. It went out and never came back. Perhaps it was Oskar’s prolonged absence that did it, a little twist of guilt. If the cleaner contradicted me, I would call her crazy. My story was far easier to believe. No body, no crime. Habeas Bagpuss.
The note went on:
The floor was expensive. The best way to care for something like that is not to damage it. If anything has happened to the floor, please call me and let me know.
Why? Why, if the damage was irreparable, if caution had failed and the opportunity to make good the situation had passed, why did Oskar wish to be told? What could he advise that had not been expressed in his many notes? What did he propose to do? Return home immediately to inspect the disaster site and exact retribution? It wasn’t impossible. More likely the request was an expression of his desire to micro-manage everything. Plus I was sure he would not want to miss an opportunity to do some judging and blaming.
I continued to read, fuming and marvelling at the length of the note:
If there is an answer, it may be in this book, but you may be doing more harm than good. It is essential that you call me before attempting anything, I may be able to help.
Now he was just repeating himself.
The floor is important to me in many ways. When I got this flat, the first thing I decided to do was put in a new floor. It meant a total remodelling. Everything was changed: new floor, new kitchen, new furniture, all redesigned according to my wishes. There were old floorboards. They were worn and battered. Many people like that. I think you would like that. But I preferred new. Everything had to be perfect. I could make an island of perfection, and from there the rest of life could be perfect too. There are complacent sayings: ‘Nothing’s perfect.’ This is not true. The floor is, was, perfect. So was the flat. So was life. It takes a little effort to start things perfect, and then some effort to keep them that way. I remember our conversation in the pub – that the standards I expect of people are too high. It was like an arrow in me. I am used to being disappointed, and I believed that eventually I would meet people who would not disappoint, and those around me could be cultivated so that they did not disappoint. You told me to lower my opinion of humanity. You told me to think less of humanity! It is so simple to prevent damage to the floors. Maybe you will. But I write this note because I think it is a real possibility that you will somehow damage them anyway, so perhaps I am already lowering my expectations. Maybe this is a test.
There are instructions in the book, but I urge you to call me.
Your friend, Oskar
Was Oskar cracking up? But the note had been written at least a week ago, so: had Oskar cracked up? I tried to imagine him in the flat, a day or two before going to California to be humiliated and possibly ruined by legal specialists, obliged to leave his beautiful flat, his perfect sanctuary, in the hands of someone he did not have faith in, mapping out disaster scenarios in his mind and writing notes to cover the possibilities. Trying to maintain control. How long had it taken him to get it all on paper? I had found dozens of notes, and there were certainly more to find. A day of writing? Two?
I flipped the note over, meaning to get started on the book, and found yet more written on its back:
When something goes wrong, you can trace back to a moment when it could have happened differently, a moment when a word, or silence, or an act, or a stillness, could have changed everything.
I am thinking now of the floors, and this book.
This book is full of ways to ‘correct’ things that have gone wrong, but it is all false. It can all be described in the words ‘do not do the wrong thing in the first place’. When the wrong note is struck on the piano, you cannot later ‘correct’ it, make it look like it was never struck – it cannot be un-struck. You will always know.
That was it – no salutation, no signature. After pouring a glass of water from the bottle I had bought, I took the book to the sofa. Next to me were the claw-marks of the deceased cat. Was it the dead cat, or the living one? I suspected the dead one. The other had not yet reappeared – surely it was hungry by now? The day was arching overhead, and the patches of light cast by the tall windows had narrowed from kites to sharp, long slivers.
I opened the book again, taking out Oskar’s note and laying it on the coffee table. The introduction had large, friendly type and a colour photograph of the author, a large, friendly type squatting on a floor of glowing boards that matched his golden hair. There was a pristine paintbrush in his hand.
Wood, the text read, is a magical material. It continued, in a jaunty fashion:
Unlike other flooring materials, real wood has a life of its own. Literally! It had a life as a tree before it became your floor. When you choose a wooden floor, you bring a bit of that life into your home. As a craftsman, I can tell you that no other material is so flexible to work with, and so pleasurable to handle, as wood. Every tree, and every piece of wood, is unique. And every wooden floor tells its own story. Properly cared for, your wooden floor will be yours to enjoy for decades – and a treasure to pass on to the next generation.
That’s the key to getting the best from your wooden floor: Care. You should care for your wooden floor as you would care for a fine piece of furniture – maybe the most important piece of furniture that you own. Treat it with love, and it will glow with love.
Oskar’s floor was a beautiful thing, certainly. But did it glow with love? Fighting my instinct to look at the wine-blemish near the sofa, I took in an immaculate expanse of board near the bookshelves. It was pale and clean. The slightest blush of wax or finish made the surface shine with reflected light, which picked out the minimal texture of the grain. If it was broadcasting love of any kind, it was on a higher frequency, only perceptible to a more advanced human being. An atavistic impulse swept through me, again. How destructive could I be? How much ink was there in the house? There was plenty of wine, but I would be needing some of that. If the wood was not well guarded against stains, was it very fire-resistant? Or I could just leave. I thought of the airport, its myri
ad possibilities, the freedom it offered me. There was bound to be a late flight to London that I could catch. I thought of the airport’s metric hectares of hard-wearing terrazzo, designed to withstand the footfall of millions without changing. Lock the door and drop the keys through the letterbox. But there was the cat to consider – even if I had exhausted my sense of duty towards the apartment, I still felt responsible for the surviving cat. Wherever it was – surviving, I hoped.
Any wooden floor will, over time, show some signs of use. This gentle wear and patina is part of its vital character – part of the spirit of the wood.
Yes, wood has a spirit! Before the coming of Christ some primitive Europeans believed that trees were inhabited by spirits. The belief can also be found in many tribal societies in the world today. And traces of it can be found in our own, modern, culture. Have you ever heard someone say ‘knock on wood’ or ‘touch wood’ to ward off bad luck? That’s belief in the spiritual power of wood. Pagans believed that tree spirits, or dryads...
The book sagged in my hands. This spiritual mumbo-jumbo was very far from what I expected. I had expected, I wanted, a hard-edged practical manual, not this wafty New Age nonsense. My stomach sinking, I skimmed through the next dozen pages.
...Judaism and Christianity share the ‘tree of knowledge’, and Buddhism has its ‘Bodhi’ tree, the fig tree under which Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment...
...Yggdrasil, the Norse ‘world tree’...
...the cedar totem poles used by the Native American peoples of the Pacific Northwest...
...healing properties. Acetylsalicylic acid, better known as aspirin, is derived from willow bark...
...druids used mistletoe...
...the Golden Bough, which Aeneas and the Sybil gave to the gatekeeper of Hades...
...shard of the True Cross.
Someone was clearly out of his tree. I turned back to that author photograph – the idealised blond hair, a mystic glimmer in the eyes, smiling mouth neatly filled with perfect white teeth. It was unlike Oskar to have looked to this particular nutcase for guidance about his floors. Very unlike Oskar. And there was something about the author, about the writing, about the flavour of his dementia, about those teeth. That cloying folksiness, the inane, chatty style, the mix-and-match philosophy. On the back cover:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Chandler Novack is a craftsman, educator, writer and life coach. He is the author of 20 books, including Care of Wives, Care of Husbands, Care of Children, Care of the Inner You, Care of Paintings, Care of Vintage Cars, Care of Antique Furniture and Care of Swimming Pools. Through his books and his teaching, he has brought his unique lifeview of holistic self-care to more than 10 million people worldwide. Chandler lives in California with his wife and five children.
California. Also on the back cover: ‘$21.95’. No price in pounds or euros. This book had been bought in the United States and I was prepared to bet everything I owned that it had not been bought by Oskar. There was not a hint of this kind of sickly hocus-pocus in Oskar’s nature, not so much as a wind-chime or joss stick. He was an empiricist – he dealt in what could be seen and measured. No, this book bore the stamp of Laura, that unknown quantity. A gift, then, one that betrayed a breathtaking lack of insight into her husband’s personality. The lines and angles of the divorce resolved into clearer focus – well-meaning efforts to reach out to Oskar’s chakras met with that A-lip sneer, a tide of yoga and yoghurt crashing against a flinty cliff-face. But, based on my limited experience of her, that didn’t really feel like Laura either. Was it a fleeting, unconsidered gift, seized without inspection from an airport bookstore as a flight was called? An unknowable in-joke, with passages that had been read out between gasps of laughter in dimmed light over empty wine glasses? Perhaps Laura had consulted Mr Novack on another matter – Care of Paintings? Care of Husbands? Care of Anal-Retentive Euro Pianists? – and found some help or solace. But, in the long run, not enough.
No wonder Oskar’s note had been discouraging. Feeling a little better about myself, I referred to the contents and turned to the chapter that dealt with stains:
Accidents do happen! We’re human, all of us.
Part of me, the part closest to Oskar, clenched.
I remember when I was building my first home with Allegra...
There was another tsunami of fluff. In its wake, there were admonitions, delivered in the form of homely proverbs and anecdotes, about prevention being the best remedy. Novack’s self-deprecating mode of storytelling mysteriously failed to conceal his Olympian self-regard. But further on, the focus clearly shifted to practical matters – there were bullet-pointed instructions, line drawings, boxed-out tips.
If the stain has had time to set, then you’ll need to remove it with an abrasive. The best is called ‘rottenstone’, or ‘tripoli’, a fine powder that’s used for polishing rocks. Mix some rottenstone with linseed oil to make a fine paste, and then use it to rub away the stain, always following the direction of the grain of the wood.
Book in hand, I walked to the kitchen, where I had left the box of cleaning products.
‘Rottenstone,’ I murmured to myself. ‘Rottenstone or tripoli.’
I did a quick inventory of the box – some cloths and dusters, an aerosol of wood polish, sheets of fine-grain sandpaper, three dusters (one of which was scarred by use and chemicals), a pair of washing-up gloves, a couple of clean paintbrushes, a tin of polish or varnish of some sort and a small, sinister brown glass jar filled with a fine white crystalline powder and covered in warning triangles and hazard signs. Before I had finished looking, I knew there would be no rottenstone. It even sounded invented, made up, a cleaning product favoured by magic elves. I had no confidence in it. Novack would have to do better than that.
If you have no rottenstone, then ground pumice will do, or even a sheet of fine sandpaper.
Sandpaper – that was more like it. A treatment that came from the hardware store, not the Body Shop. I selected a clean sheet of sandpaper from the plastic box and examined the stain. What I needed was a test area where a fix could be tried out before risking it over a larger expanse of floor. There was an outlying splash the size of a five-pence piece that would do nicely.
Sand the floor gently but firmly, in smooth strokes that travel in the direction of the grain.
This almost immediately made a difference to the satellite stain, but also to the floor around it. The stain receded to a stubborn blush, a shadow of what it had been. But this ghost floated in a frighteningly pale oval of naked wood. This snowy patch jumped out at even a passing glance – its interruption of the floor’s quiet shine with a matt interval would be enough to catch the eye even without the colour difference. I was also now painfully aware of how vulnerable this patch was – stripped of even the most cursory protective finish, it was a magnet for dust and defenceless against further spills. And the stain might be seriously diminished, but it was not gone. I sanded for as long as I dared, conscious that I was eating into the substance of the floor, but still a rosy trace lingered. The light from the windows, slashing low and deep into the room, fell across the kitchen floor. In its brightness, sometimes I thought I had finally eliminated that last blush, only to see it again – and blink it away, to find that what I had actually seen was a reddish blob floating behind my eyes, the retinal impression of staring at a shining spot for too long.
My head throbbed. The litre bottle of water I had bought was now empty. Employing the sort of care that nuclear technicians call upon when handling unstable fissile materials, I opened a bottle of wine and poured a glass. It was most welcome. Leaving the glass on the shaped steel draining board by the sink – I didn’t want to risk it anywhere else – I consulted Novack again.
You might not be able to remove a really deep stain through abrasion alone. But don’t panic. Make up a solution of oxalic acid crystals in water, soak a clean white cloth in it, and apply it to the stain for about an hour. EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION – oxalic acid is very hazardo
us to skin. Wear protective gloves throughout preparation and application of the solution. When you’re done, neutralise the acid with household vinegar.
Novack, you magnificent Californian loony, you’ve pulled it off. This proposal didn’t necessitate a trip to Homebase, it needed a trip to the periodic table. Oxalic acid – that was the kind of plain-speaking substance I could have faith in. My confidence surged as I immediately thought of that medicinal brown jar in Oskar’s box, its festive display of hazard icons, and the crystalline matter inside. I looked at its label again, and my trust was redeemed – oxalic acid crystals.
In a past life, I might have paused at this point and given a thought to the environment. The ocean or the aquifers might have selfishly competed for my attention. Not now. At that moment, if there had been a button I could have pressed that would simultaneously obliterate every stain on the floor and every living panda, I would have pressed it without hesitation. I was very serious about cleaning this floor.