The Lubetkin Legacy

by Marina Lewycka

  ‘Faith sir, I was carousing till the second cock: and drink, sir, is a great p-provoker of nose-painting, sleep and urine.’ There was a murmur of laughter in the audience.

  McReady looked at me coldly. His eyes were very light grey, with hard points of black at the centre. ‘Are you takin’ the piss, Mr Sideboatum? If so, I dinna advise it.’

  ‘Lechery, sirr, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but takes away the p-perrforrmance.’ More laughter.

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re on about. But here’s a couple of jobs to get you started. Come back same time next week. Let’s see how you’ve got on. If not, it will give me great perrsonal pleasure to sanction your JSA, and send you for retraining.’

  He clicked the print button, and handed me two sheets containing details of the Mickey Mouse job and the funeral parlour job.

  ‘Sanction?’ This wasn’t in the script.

  ‘In your case it means cut it off.’ He flicked his fingers across his throat. ‘Next!’

  An aged hunched man, unshaved, uncombed, and reeking of alcohol, shuffled over and slumped in the chair I had vacated, while I shuffled over to the side-room where the computers and printers were chained to desks under the steely eye of a chignoned matron with a cruel mouth and ultra-clean hands who could have been a central-casting Scottish Lady.

  I started to draft an application for the funeral parlour – it was indeed Wrest ’n’ Piece – but an image floated into my mind of Jimmy the Dog at my mother’s funeral, floundering in the mud with an unknown corpse, declaring, ‘We’re helping to prepare the unemployed for useful jobs.’ Not me, Jimmy, not me. I put the sheet aside and reached for the Mickey Mouse application. ‘Drama students or similar sought for retail promotion opportunity.’

  The aged alcoholic who had followed me into the interview was now slumped in front of the computer next to mine, stinking heavily and snoring lightly. His screen read: Retraining opportunities in retail.

  The Scottish Lady approached, rubbing her hands and muttering, ‘Who’d have thought an old man to have so much booze in him.’

  She kicked the back of his chair. He jumped up with a start and stared around him with bloodshot eyes, his glance falling on the paper I had just discarded.

  ‘Aaargh! The graveyard ghouls!’ He leaned towards me and laid a hand on my arm. ‘Don’t touch it without a bunch of garlic, mate!’

  ‘You know the firm?’

  ‘Wrest ’n’ Piece. Worked for them for forty years. Know everything there is to know about laying out a corpse. It was a good firm while old Mr Wrest was in charge.’ He tossed his grizzled locks. ‘Then he died and his daughter took over – with her big-nose boyfriend, James. Decided to expand the business. Privately managed cems and crems, bidding for local authority contracts. Tried to cut their costs. Laid off anybody that knew anything about bodies. Brought in a bunch of young uns off the dole to do it for free.’

  ‘For free?’

  ‘Unpaid work experience. Thirty hours a week.’ He gripped my arm. ‘They wanted me to train them up before I left. Sod that, I said. You’ve got to show a bit of respect for the dead. Mind you, I never got as much lip from a corpse as I did from them young uns.’

  ‘Are you …?’ Through a horror of mud and pain a memory crawled into my mind, ‘… Philip?’

  ‘Phil Gatsnug. That’s me. Master mortician. Artist of the dead.’

  ‘My mother –’

  ‘Yeah, the old lady. Your mum, was it? Awful shame. I did my best, but the young uns messed her up. We had to send her straight to cremation. But you should ask for her ashes. They always give you the ashes.’

  ‘Thanks, Phil. I got the ashes. But how can I be sure they’re the right ones? Given the cock-ups we’ve had so far.’

  ‘Sometimes they do mix ’em up.’ He fixed me with a bloodshot gaze. ‘Whoever they belong to, my friend, treat ’em with respect. It’s somebody’s mum or dad. Say a prayer and sprinkle them in a nice place. Not on your porridge, ha ha!’

  His words struck a chord in me. I resolved forthwith to honour the ashes of the unknown crematee in the hope that someone would do the same for Mother; I would sprinkle them at the heart of the cherry grove that she had loved. Of course, if anyone asked I would have to pretend it was a dead parrot.

  ‘So you resigned from your job?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, and according to this austerity Nazi,’ he waved his arms in the direction of foxy McReady, ‘it makes me voluntarily unemployed, so I’m not entitled to any money for three months. I’ve been living off tinned beans from the charity food bank for the past fortnight, but it runs out tomorrow. I’ll have to go and scrounge some bread off the pigeons in the park.’

  ‘But with your skills, surely you’d find another job easily? People are dying all the time. Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die.’

  ‘Not enough, mate. Besides, all the big money is in weddings: funerals they want to do on the cheap. I won’t compromise, see? I like to do a good job.’

  I felt a sudden bond of kinship with this wounded man, this fellow soldier injured in life’s battle against the mean, the slick, the self-serving, the ‘it’ll have to do’ mentality. Despite the odds stacked against him, he had tried to do the right thing by my mother. I was glad that he’d been the last person to handle her mortal remains.

  ‘Mmm. Thanks for trying, pal. Maybe you should set up on your own.’

  ‘Good idea, mate.’

  With a heavy heart I completed the application form for the Mickey Mouse job, signed it, and gave it to ‘Them’ to process.

  When I tiptoed out of the Job Centre, Phil Gatsnug was asleep again, his head resting on the keyboard.

  I got back to Madeley Court around five o’clock of a sultry afternoon; I had wasted most of the sweet day in the airless Job Centre. Legless Len was hanging around in the grove enjoying the last of the sunshine that dappled through the cherry leaves.

  ‘How did it go, pal?’ I asked him.

  ‘Great.’ He tipped up his Arsenal cap so I could see his shining face. ‘Telephone sales. Well-known legal firm. My job will be informing the public of their right to redress for wrongful mis-selling of financial services. Not bad, eh? I’ll be glad to be off benefit and earning again. Like the man at the Job Centre said, it’ll build my self-esteem and boost my aspirations.’ His face glowed. ‘He said he’s incredibly passionate about aspiration.’

  Had I been wrong to sneer at Len’s dreams? There were jobs out there, even for the legless. If double amputation was no impediment to employment, why should a slight stress-stutter hold me back? Maybe Nazi George truly had my best interests at heart and all I really needed was a kick up the backside. My eyes watered with gratitude and resolve. Mickey Mouse, here I come!

  ‘Well done, Len! Great! When d’you start?’

  ‘Straight away. Self-employed. Flexible working. Zero-hours contract. How about yourself, Bert?’

  ‘Yeah, I sent off an application too.’

  Inna was in the kitchen, slapping minced pork for kobabski about on a chopping board, mixing in crushed garlic and finely chopped herbs, ready to force through a wide funnel into a skin made from the gut of some unknown animal. Her neat, newly black plait was coiled at the back of her head, and a frown of concentration sat between her stern black brows. In the weeks that she had lived with me, her cuisine had become more sophisticated, though using the same basic ingredients.

  I told her the good news concerning the flat, and she laughed and wiped her hands on her apron before giving me a hug. Then we tipped back a glass of vodka to celebrate.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the tenancy transfer was all but complete and I soon wouldn’t be needing her services any more.

  Violet: Chainsaw

  Violet is woken earlier than usual on Monday morning by a strange sound, a persistent whining rather like a dentist’s drill; only it isn’t inside her head, it’s definitely coming from outside. She lies in the semi-dark a
nd listens, trying to work out what it could be but feeling too lazy to get up and find out. Then a nearer, more familiar sound startles her. It’s Pidgie tapping on her window, not the usual friendly ‘Hey, let’s have breakfast’ kind of tapping, but an urgent, wild hammering with his beak, beating with his wings against the glass. She draws back the blue sari and looks out.

  There he is on the balcony. She throws a bit of bread down for him, but he ignores it, and hops on and off the parapet with his one foot, flapping his wings dementedly. Then the whining sound starts up again and she sees to her horror that a man with a chainsaw is sitting in the cradle of a cherry-picker truck backed up close to Pidgie’s tree.

  ‘Stop! Stop!’ she screams, but her voice doesn’t carry, or the man ignores it.

  Still in her pyjamas, she runs to the next-door flat and hammers on the door. The old lady, Inna, opens it, and behind her, peering over her shoulder and wearing only the bottom half of a pair of paisley pyjamas, stands Berthold. He looks startled.

  ‘Come in. Please.’

  ‘The cherry trees! They’re cutting them down! We’ve got to get everyone out there!’

  He runs back into the flat to look out of the front window. She follows. Down there in the cherry grove two men in hard hats are waving chainsaws; a bulldozer with a raised platform on the front is positioned directly under Pidgie’s tree. But what are those three large mushroomy-looking things that seem to have sprouted up overnight on the grass between the trees? They look a bit like tents.

  ‘Excuse me; I’d better get some clothes on.’ She races back next door and pulls on her jeans and T-shirt.

  By the time she gets down to the grove, Berthold is already there. He is still wearing just the bottom half of his pyjamas, and around his bare waist is a bicycle chain, locked securely on to the trunk of Pidgie’s tree. The sawing has stopped.

  ‘Oh, Berthold!’ She flings her arms around him. ‘You’re a hero!’

  By now it’s eight o’clock and half the population of Madeley Court has gathered in the garden. They are jeering and shouting and banging tambourines, and Mrs Cracey is waving her umbrella. A half-naked man from one of the tents is shouting at the chainsaw men in some foreign language.

  Suddenly everyone stops and stares as a girl emerges from the tent wearing a skimpy shift that is open to the waist, with a plump naked baby clamped to her breast covered only by a veil of dark hair. She sits down on a bench under a tree, cradling the baby in her arms. It is a moment of pure magic amidst the pandemonium: the baby’s eyes are shut, his jaws are moving rhythmically, a milky leak dribbles down her breast and the baby stretches out tiny fingers to stroke his mother while she gazes down at him with a faraway look in her eyes. Then the baby stirs, whimpers and burps up a big gob of curds; the spell is broken.

  At about eight fifteen she catches sight of Greg Smith striding towards them in his suit, his mobile phone pressed to his ear and a peeved expression on his face.

  ‘Hi!’ He breaks into a smile when he sees her. ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘They’ve started cutting down the cherry trees! Can’t you do anything to stop them, Greg?’

  ‘Probably.’ He puts his phone back into his pocket, and marches up to the workmen. ‘Where’s your permit?’ he barks.

  ‘We don’t need a permit,’ says the one driving the bulldozer.

  ‘Of course we have a permit, don’t we, Dez? We’re not cowboys,’ says the younger one, who has taken off his hard hat to reveal an auburn pigtail.

  ‘Not cowboys, not gyppos,’ adds Dez, looking pointedly at Berthold.

  She knows ‘gyppos’ is a racist term for travellers, but she cannot see why it would apply to Berthold in his paisley-pattern, M&S-style pyjamas.

  The two men rummage through their pockets for a permit. ‘I’ll have a look in the van.’ The one with the pigtail sprints across the grass and comes back a moment later with a printed form.

  Greg takes it out of the man’s hands and unfolds it. She cranes over his shoulder.

  ‘I think the date’s wrong,’ she says. ‘The council meeting isn’t until next week.’

  ‘Well spotted, Violet. I’ll take a copy and check whether this is valid. Thanks.’ Greg folds it into his breast pocket. ‘If it’s not valid, you realise you’ll be personally liable for any damage to council property. That includes parks and gardens. Sorry – must rush!’ he winks at her, and strides off.

  The workmen look put out. They pack up their tools and amble away towards their van.

  She feels a bit sorry for them. She glances across at Berthold, still chained to the tree in his pyjama bottoms, and feels a bit sorry for him too.

  ‘Why don’t you get your clothes on and come for a coffee, Berthold?’

  ‘I can’t. I left the key upstairs. Can you go and get it off Inna?’

  Berthold: Chainsaw

  ‘Oh, Berthold!’ She flung her arms around me. ‘You’re a hero!’

  Twice in one week. Things were looking up. First the plump Eustachia (I couldn’t bring myself to call her Stacey) and now the slender Violet. It was a triumph of Clooneyesque proportions. Yes, it was almost worth the discomfort of the bark of the cherry tree grating against my naked back, and the particularly annoying twig digging in just beneath my left shoulder blade.

  Then Mrs Crazy had arrived on the scene wearing a shower cap over her stiff faux-blonde bouffant, purple-coated, fully bejewelled, and armed with two umbrellas. She immediately set about the chainsaw man, who dropped the saw on the ground, where it whirled and whined until the other hard-hat risked his fingers to catch it and turn it off.

  While they were arguing between themselves, a flap opened at the side of one of the tents, and a man emerged, a tall overweight man with shoulder-length hair, wearing nothing but a pair of saggy, baggy Y-fronts.

  He yawned, scratched his head, and exclaimed, ‘Ce fucking este acest fucking zgomot? Du te fucking de aici!’

  His language was incomprehensible but his meaning was not. The second hard-hat, the one who now had the saw in his hands, raised it in a threatening way and said, ‘You’d better get those tents moved. We’re clearing all these trees, and you’re in the way.’

  The Y-fronts man said, ‘Nu am nici o fucking idee despre ce este fucking vorba. Du te fucking de aici! Am incercat sa fucking dorm!’ He fished a box of matches and a bent cigarette from the pouch of his grisly Y-fronts, straightened it out and lit it.

  ‘Did you hear what I said, mate? You no speekee English? Fuckee offee back to your own countree.’ The hard-hat switched the chainsaw on and waved it about some more.

  The Y-fronts man puffed meditatively.

  ‘Chill, Dez.’ The second hard-hat removed his yellow helmet and shook his head. A thin plait of hair secured with a rubber band tumbled on to his shoulder. ‘We don’t want to get into no fights.’

  Mrs Crazy, not persuaded by his pacific rhetoric, thumped him on his un-helmeted head with an umbrella. He staggered and fell against the tent. The tent flap opened again and a young woman crawled out on her hands and knees.

  ‘Ce se intampla? Cine sunt acesti oameni?’

  She looked about the same age as Violet, with dark eyes and long, glossy black hair cascading Magdalene-like down her shoulders, which was just as well because she seemed to be wearing nothing at all apart from a pair of red polka-dot panties.

  ‘Du te inapoi in cort, Ramona! Nu ai nici o fucking modestie!’ the man yelled at her.

  The young woman threw him a look and withdrew into the tent, only to re-emerge a few minutes later with a baby.

  It was at this point that Violet lost the plot. She rushed up to some sharp-suited, up-himself creep who was taking a short cut through the grove on his way to the City while talking loudly in an Eton drawl on his mobile phone, and asked him to help. He ordered the hard-hats to stop, and they backed off in the deferential way of the working classes confronted by their natural superiors. Violet gave him one of those sweet girly looks, and I thought she was g
oing to throw her arms around him too, but fortunately she didn’t, and off he went on his indomitable way.

  ‘Costum fucking grozav,’ said the underpants man admiringly to his departing back.

  Then the workmen zoomed off in their van, and there was now no conceivable reason for me still to be chained up here almost an hour later. It had been a mistake to trust Inna with the key. She had said she would follow in a few minutes with some coffee and toast, and bring the key to unchain me at the right moment. What in God’s name had happened to her?

  While not wishing in any way to make light of Jesus’ suffering on the cross, there were certain parallels in our situation, which put me in a meditative frame of mind while I awaited my release. I thought of my dear mother embarked on her fearsome journey to the undiscovered country, her ashes mixed with those of strangers and scattered to the winds by unknown hands. Yet there was a kind of consolation in the mixing: she was what you’d nowadays call ‘a people person’; she wouldn’t have wanted to travel that way alone.

  The years she had lived at Madeley Court had been rich with love, friendship and mutuality – years of believing that a better world was possible if we would only give it a try. Years of pre-school playgroups and after-school crèches, allotment gardens and tenants committees, tombolas for Africa and India, fasts to free Mandela, anti-nuclear coffee mornings and solidarity barbecues. When the first Jamaican family had moved into the block in 1968 and Enoch Powell had warned of ‘rivers of blood’, Mum had plied them with rivers of tea. My childhood had been lived in a world designed by Berthold Lubetkin and charmed into being by Aneurin Bevan – paternalistic maybe, but untainted by cynicism and self-interest. An uncynical tear sprang to my eye. Chained with my back to the road, my eyes feasted on the fine proportions of Lubetkin’s building, the private spaces and the communal spaces interlinked, the winding line of the walkway through the gardens uniting his vision.