by Sarah Butler
‘We can’t let strangers go through his things,’ I said.
She sighed and drummed her fingers on the tabletop.
‘We discussed this,’ I said. ‘I’m here. I’ll sort out the house.’
Cee raised her eyebrows. ‘So you’re not planning on getting a job, then?’
‘I’m OK for a bit,’ I said. ‘I’m good at living cheaply.’
‘Well, I guess it helps paying no rent.’
‘Cee,’ Tilly said, her eyes wide.
I glared at Cee and then took a cigarette from the packet on the table, which had somehow escaped her attention, and lit it. She sniffed loudly.
‘Can we not do this?’ Tilly said. I watched her press each fingertip in turn against her thumbnail, over and over.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘In lieu of paying rent on my dead father’s house, I will clear it out, paint it, deal with the estate agents. Earn my keep.’ Cee screwed up her face – she hates not being in control, but I’d cornered her.
‘That’s fair, wouldn’t you say?’ I leant back and blew smoke up towards the ceiling, to give the impression I was making an effort.
And so I spent this morning clearing out his room. I emptied the bathroom shelves of his shower gel, his soap, his shampoo, his shaving foam and his razors. I took the shoes from the bottom of his wardrobe – hard, polished leather – and dropped them into bags, which I had to double up so they could take the weight. I took his clothes off their hangers and bundled them into black bin liners. On the top shelf of the wardrobe I found a cashmere jumper – a woman’s – black, with tiny black beads around the neck. I held it to my nose, but all I could smell was dust.
It’s a short step from throwing away soap to buying magnolia paint. I get the train to Cricklewood. B&Q is just behind the station. A burger van belches greased bacon breath across the car park. I walk under the low-slung porch, past lines of hopeful-looking bedding plants and jammed-together trolleys. There’s a queue at Customer Services, someone starting to raise their voice. I traipse the aisles. Radiators. Lighting. Varnish. Fillers. Tools. Wood. Tiles. Rugs. Curtain rails. Wooden floor samples. Insulation. Paint.
There is an entire aisle of white paint. Stone White. Bone White. Cream White. Aged White. Brilliant White. Sail White. Soft Linen. Crushed Cotton. Jasmine White. Moonlit Snow. Winterbloom. Magnolia.
Tilly and Cee love to shop. They love great big department stores, warehouses stuffed with choice. Those kinds of places make me nervous. They make me think I’d rather have nothing at all. I have no idea how much paint I’ll need. I take two ten-litre tins, suspecting it won’t be enough. I buy a roller and tray, a set of paintbrushes, and three plastic dust sheets.
When I was ten, I got to pick the wallpaper for my room. Maybe we came here, I don’t know, but I remember all those plastic-wrapped rolls of paper, like sweets somehow, and my dad, more patient than usual. It’s your choice, Alice, take your time. I can hear his voice.
When I get back, there is a string of plastic pearls on the wall. Someone has tied bits of rubbish in between the beads – an old conker, a scrap of cardboard, a piece of plastic, one of those roses you used to see people wear in their hair at weddings, and a length of green string. I take it inside and add it to the rest. Gifts. Evidence. I have other things to think about.
Steve was right, the bay tree makes the living room too dark. I leave the paint tins in the hallway and take a pair of secateurs and a roll of bin bags outside. The branches scratch at my arms, but I take no notice. The smell reminds me of Sunday lunches, but I take no notice of that either. I keep at it until the tree is lower than the windowsill, shove the cuttings into the bags and throw them down by the bins.
Then I start on the living room. It’s covered in woodchip, painted a dark red both sides of the dado rail. I unpack the dust sheets; they’re like cling film, like the thin layers of glue I used to love peeling from my fingertips at school. I heave the sofa, Dad’s old armchair, and the coffee table into the centre of the room, and tuck them under the plastic. They seem smaller once I’ve done this.
I bring a chair through from the kitchen and climb onto it to unhook the curtains. I used to hide behind these curtains, in the space between them and the bulge of the bay window, wrap them around me until I was cocooned in the dusty smell of velvet. They are a bastard to get down. I have to support the weight of the material while I prise the plastic hooks from the plastic hoops. It seems improbable that a few pieces of plastic could hold such a weight. When I drop the first curtain onto the floor, the sun rushes in. The room looks off balance.
I release the roller and tray from their plastic packaging, then get a knife from the kitchen and lever open one of the paint tins. I remember painting the bedroom at Kal’s – how proud we’d been when we’d finished. I hate the thought of some other woman waking up inside those walls.
A slash of new white across old red. I stand back and laugh, then turn to look at where the bay tree used to be. It’s lighter in here – different. There’s something in my throat. I let it out in a kind of hum. And then, because there is no one to hear me, I start to sing: Alice, Alice, Alice. Don’t run down the rabbit hole, I can’t bear to see you go. Stay here with me, Alice, Alice, Alice. I load the roller with more paint, and carry on.
I have to shuffle the chair around the room so I can reach up to the ceiling. I get paint on the skirting boards, and all the way up my arms. It takes me two hours to do one coat, and when I stand in the centre of the room to survey my work, I see how the red paint blushes through the magnolia and the corners are scarred with brush marks. Would he hate me for it? I want to phone someone – Kal – for reassurance. But I won’t.
There are four hours to wait until I can do a second coat, so I make a cup of coffee and smoke three cigarettes. I scrub the paint off my hands, forearms, face, then take the key from the nail by the back door and go out into the garden.
My father’s shed is tucked into the far right-hand corner, swamped by ivy. Inside, it smells of soil and cigarettes. Cottony spiders’ webs cling to the wooden slats. In the bottom drawer of the old dresser, bleached by water and age, I find a matchbox, which rattles when I pick it up. It’s full of seeds. Tiny black bullets. They are different shapes: some perfect circles, some narrowed at the end like arrows, others like tiny orange slices. There are paler ones mixed in – like miniature dried peas. In the drawer above the seeds I find four green plastic seed trays, and half a bag of compost.
* * *
I finish the second coat. You can still see the red. Can you still see the red? The paint fumes stir a headache behind my eyes. I sit on the plastic-covered chair and stare at the wall where the map used to hang. Tilly took it. I can imagine it above the fireplace in her living room – Westminster 1720, the river bent like a bony elbow, dotted with boats; the city petering out into fields. It feels as though the room is holding its breath, looking at me reproachfully – like I’ve done something wrong. It’s just a room, in a house that’s about to go on the market. It is just a room in a house.
You can still see the red – a shadow of it, if you look hard.
I go back to the shed. A light rain has started. I stand for a minute and listen to the quiet tap against the roof, then collect up the matchbox, one of the seed trays and the compost.
I put everything on the kitchen table and sit down. When I empty out the seeds they rush across the tabletop like they’re trying to escape. I pick one up and hold it close to my face. It refuses to tell me anything. I get up and pour myself a glass of wine. My eyes are as heavy as piled-up snow. My skin feels numb and my body aches from the painting. Outside, it’s almost dark. The rain is setting in, spitting thin steady lines across the windows.
What I need to do is sit down with my father and ask him—
Why did you say you’d kept nothing of Mama’s?
Why wouldn’t you talk about her?
Did you blame me, for her driving that day?
When will I stop feeling like thi
s? Like I’m walking along a ledge, about to fall off ?
Why do I wake in the night and feel as though this house is angry with me?
He’d have no time for questions like that. He was a man who got on with things without thinking or talking too much about them. He’d have given me his confused look. His who-is-this-girl, why-can’t-she-be-more-like-the-other-two look. His Alice, you-need-to-get-your-life-on-track look.
I don’t plant the seeds in any kind of order. I tip compost into one of the trays, spilling dry brown onto the tabletop and the kitchen floor, then fill an empty wine bottle with water and dribble it in lines across the soil. The water seeps out onto the table, and I mop it up with kitchen towel. I find a newspaper and lay it underneath the tray. Then I press my fingertip into the surface – one, two, three, four, five, until I stop counting. One seed in each hole, and then a layer of compost over the top. I want to be a tiny black seed. I want to tuck down into rich, wet soil and have nothing to do but grow.
I put the seed tray on the kitchen windowsill, next to the flowers – the silver one and the pink one that’s dying in the wine glass, the green hat, the string of pearls, and the bottle tops. I want to pour on more water, but I’m afraid of drowning them. I know nothing about gardening. Kal never let me near his plants after I killed a cactus he swore was indestructible. I stand and stare at the dark soil, as if I’m expecting something to happen. I am worried that nothing will happen. Maybe they are too old. Maybe they are already dead.
Ten things I will say to my daughter
1) I’m sorry.
2) Do you have the thing with the colours and the words? Did I give you that?
3) Did he ever tell you, about me?
4) I tried.
5) I don’t know how to say all this.
6) I have looked for you, you have to believe that.
7) I don’t hate your mother; I can’t.
8) Are you OK? Did everything work out for you?
9) I have dreamt you, for your whole life.
10) I’m sorry.
I scan the register for Anton’s name, but it’s not there, and when I look around the room I can’t see him. There are a couple of people I know – Lady Grace with her purple dress and tattered pram; Bob, who always has a smile, regardless – the others I’ve never seen before. The crypt smells of tomato sauce and instant coffee.
‘Do you know a man called Anton?’ I ask the girl at the desk. She has a long, thin nose and dark hair scraped back into a bun. She can’t be more than twenty.
She frowns and then shakes her head. ‘Anton? I don’t think so.’ Her voice is from Newcastle. I wonder why she’s here.
‘He’s Polish,’ I say. ‘About my height, but bigger than me, broader.’
She shakes her head again. ‘Maybe you can ask around,’ she says and gestures to the room.
I move from table to sofa to kitchen. In the end I find someone who knows him. He introduces himself as Hunter – like the posh wellies, he says, and guffaws.
‘Anton? The Polish dude?’ he says.
‘He has a daughter,’ I say.
Hunter slaps his thigh. He’s wearing dirty white trousers, a size or two too big. ‘That’s the man. The girl with the pigtails, right?’
‘And a blue dress.’
He looks at me sharply. ‘Hang on, you’re not a paedo, are you?’
‘He’s my friend. I wanted to ask his help.’
Hunter nods. ‘Dude’s got a job.’ He leans back in his chair and nods again, like he deserves congratulations. ‘Dagenham,’ he says. ‘Building houses. Told me he’s saving up for a ticket home. Got some shit to sort out with the missus.’ He shakes his head now. He has long grey hair tied back in a ponytail with a piece of string. ‘Why people bother with all this marriage bullshit is beyond me.’
I don’t know whether to believe him.
‘The man’s even got a sofa to sleep on,’ Hunter says. ‘Temporary, like.’
‘How do you know all this?’
Hunter narrows his eyes at me. He has wild-looking eyebrows. ‘They say if you want to know something, you come to me.’ He lifts his shoulders and drops them. ‘You take it or leave it.’
I nod. Either way, Anton is not here.
‘Now.’ Hunter pulls himself out of his chair and slaps me on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get ourselves some of this fine establishment’s hot food, and you can tell me what kind of help you’re looking for.’
Dinner is bean stew with tomatoes and slices of white bread. Hunter eats with fastidious neatness, wiping his lips after each mouthful on a piece of kitchen towel.
‘So?’ he says. ‘Knock me out.’
I tear off a piece of bread and dip it into my bowl, watch it soak red. ‘I’m meeting my daughter tomorrow,’ I say.
‘OK.’
‘And, well—’ I feel a sudden swoop of panic. ‘I mean, look at me.’
‘You’re a good-looking fellow, Daniel. And you’re not a cider man, I can see that.’
‘I’m still a tramp.’
‘Ah.’ Hunter holds up his fork. ‘And this is news to the daughter?’
I crumble bread into my stew.
‘How old is she?’ Hunter asks.
‘Twenty-eight.’
He nods, knowingly. ‘And you haven’t seen her in a while?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘It always is. She know who you are?’
‘I just want to look respectable. I don’t want to screw it up before it’s started.’
‘Of course.’ He looks me over.
‘I was going to ask Anton.’ I laugh. ‘I was going to ask him to cut my hair. See if he had a razor.’
Hunter laughs too.
‘It’s just, I’ve not bothered with all that for a while now,’ I say. I watch Hunter eat. He has three rows of pale wooden beads around his right wrist. He must think I’m a fool.
‘I like you, Daniel,’ Hunter says at last, laying his spoon neatly across his bowl. ‘I’ve got a good feeling about you. What do we need? Scissors. Razor. A jacket, and a bit of shoe polish. You finish up. I’ll be back.’
I make my way through my stew as Hunter works the room. By the time I’m done he’s back with a rusty-looking razor blade, a comb, a pair of kitchen scissors, a battered newspaper and a roll of kitchen towel.
‘Boss says we’re not to make a mess.’ He raises his eyebrows and smiles. ‘Now. You trust me?’
‘I’ve never met you before.’
‘That’s not really the point, is it?’ He picks up the scissors. ‘I’m thinking short back and sides, agreed?’
I swallow.
‘Let’s get this show on the road.’ He pulls my chair out from the table, spreads sheets of newspaper around me, and wraps a length of kitchen towel around my shoulders. Someone brings over a glass of water from the kitchen. Lady Grace rocks her pram and smiles at me. A couple of guys joke about Hunter being a poofter. He shakes the scissors at them and laughs.
Hunter splashes water onto my hair and starts to pull the comb violently through it. I try to keep my head straight. Gradually, it gets easier.
‘My mum used to cut my hair,’ I say.
‘Don’t think I’m going to tuck you up and read you a bedtime story too.’ Hunter takes hold of a section of hair and I hear the scissors slice through the strands.
‘Have you done this before?’ I ask.
‘It’s only hair.’
‘It’s just—’
‘I know.’ He’s working quickly now. I can feel his fingers on my head, my neck, folding back my ear. I remember my mother. She always coughed when she was nervous and I had to concentrate not to flinch at the sound. She used thin silver scissors; I remember the feel of the cold blades pressed flat against my skin.
Hunter stops cutting. He walks all the way around me. ‘I could do with clippers,’ he says. ‘But it’s OK.’
I reach a hand to my head. I realise, as I run my fingers over my cropped hair, that I never really touch my head
, not any more.
‘You want to look in the bathroom?’ Hunter says. ‘Or wait till I’ve shaved you?’
‘I can do the shaving,’ I say.
‘Sure you can, but I’m on a roll, Daniel. Treat yourself. Imagine you’re in one of those posh barber shops.’ He slaps his cheeks. ‘A shave, a moisturise. Hey, look at this lady.’
I turn and see the girl from the reception desk behind me. She is holding a can of shaving foam and a disposable plastic razor. She smiles at me. ‘I hear you have an important meeting tomorrow,’ she says.
‘That’s right.’
Hunter dances towards her and takes the foam and the razor. He is camping it up now, having a ball. ‘A bowl,’ he shouts, waving a hand. ‘I need a bowl of warm water.’
Even with the foam and the fresh razor, my skin’s so rough and dry it’s not a comfortable procedure. Hunter leads me to the bathroom once he’s done. We stand next to each other, and I see he’s younger than me, by quite a bit. The grey hair’s deceptive.
‘Good enough?’ he says.
I run my hand across my cheek, around my chin. ‘You did a good job,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’
‘We’ve taken ten years off you.’
I look at myself and can’t help but think of sheep when they’ve just been shorn – all pale and vulnerable-looking. I catch his eye in the mirror. ‘You got kids?’ I ask.
He drops my gaze. ‘We need to sort you out with a clean jacket,’ he says. ‘And you should wash. I can guard the door if you want.’
‘Why are you helping me?’ I ask. ‘I mean, I’m grateful, I’m really grateful.’
Hunter dips his head to one side. ‘That’s enough, isn’t it? Gratitude.’ He leans on each syllable of the word – dark purple, like a bruise.
I undress slowly. I am not used to being naked and it doesn’t feel right. The water takes an age to run hot, but eventually I get a sinkful, and coat my hands with soap. It smells of apples. I wash as quickly as I can, trying to avoid the sight of myself in the mirror. It takes a whole stack of green paper towels to get myself dry, and then I use another stack to scrub at the worst bits of my shirt and trousers before putting them back on. The wet patches of cloth press cold against my skin.