A is for Angelica

by Iain Broome

  I listened hard at work too, when things were different. When I had a job to go to, an office to work in and meetings to attend. But those things are gone. Cressington Vale is my office now. It’s better than a real job. There are no conversations with colleagues who are younger than me, who feign interest in my weekends. No sitting at a desk, watching through a gap in a blind as they leave early to drink together. No listening to other people’s conversations through thin, fabricated walls. No waiting for someone else to do his or her job properly so that I can do mine. There’s none of this. These are things that used to happen. These are things that will never happen again. My life is different now. I don’t go to work. I don’t have an office. I stay at home, hide behind curtains and make notes. I wait for something to happen.

  For example, the average bay window for a house on Cressington Vale is approximately three and a half feet from the floor, so when someone sits in their front room to watch the television, or eat their dinner on a tray, I only see them from the neck up. Each day I make a list of the time each head-in-the-window becomes a body and gets up to close the curtains. Ina Macaukey is always the last. She sits and crochets in the light from her television. Its colours always changing. When all the curtains are closed, I make supper, read the newspaper or go upstairs and sit by the spare room window. That’s where all the action is. It’s where I keep my files. I can see up and down the street, over the trees in the road and occasionally into bedrooms. I avert my eyes at the slightest sign of nakedness. I’m never indiscreet. But there have been incidences. First there was the ‘vicar’s wife’, and then the unpleasantness of glimpsing a penis at number nineteen. I turned away, but not quickly enough to avoid registering the offending member as not belonging to Peter Smith, as perhaps I might have expected, what with his wife, Janice, closing the downstairs curtains just half an hour before. I never say anything though. These matters are not my business. Not any more.

  I used to be part of the neighbourhood watch committee. I was watch coordinator for fifteen years, six months and twenty-five days, appointed following a spate of muggings in the local area and around six weeks after the previous coordinator resigned. She’d been one of the victims. Before then I’d been watch secretary. My responsibilities included planning meetings and taking minutes. I also set up and provided a reminder service, where I would ring committee members approximately three hours prior to a meeting. I’d let the phone ring twice and then hang up. To track attendance I created spreadsheets, which I ruled out by hand and completed in pencil, then traced the lines with a thin marker.

  These days there is no neighbourhood watch. In fact sometimes it feels like I’m the only one who does any watching at all. Cressington Vale is a quiet street and one of the oldest in town, tucked away from the new housing estates. But misdemeanours take place on quiet streets. They still need rules and boundaries. So I keep a file labelled ‘Suspicious behaviour’, which I add to almost every other day. It’s a dossier of unusual happenings. Most involve neighbours. Like when Andrea Turner returned home late from work with a towel wrapped round her head. She’d been to her first aqua aerobics. Or when Don Donald, my oldest friend, left his mattress on the front lawn. He’d been bitten twenty-seven times in the night and only on his legs. He said he wanted to give it some air.

  I’ve found that if you ask directly, people will explain themselves.

  Cigarettes

  Angelica has been here less than a week. She’s changed everything. The snow has gone. I haven’t made a single note on anyone else since she moved in, apart from Benny. I’ve still made notes on Benny, and I’ve still hidden behind curtains, but I’ve only been looking for her. Everything else seems incidental. Like two people speaking at once. Eventually one of them gets lost, drifts away.

  Angelica lives on her own and smokes outside. She always smokes before she goes to bed. She’s doing it now, sat on her doorstep. It’s half past eleven. I’m watching her from the spare room. The night hides the colour of her clothes. I can see her perfectly clearly, but she’s in several shades of grey. She takes long hard drags of her cigarette and blows smoke into the sky. I think about our conversation again. The day she moved in. The boxes in the street and Angelica marching with her scissors in her hand, ordering the removal men here, there and everywhere, mucking in, taking boxes into her hallway, putting them down, using her scissors to slice through the masking tape. She’d open a box, see what was inside and write on it with a marker pen, and I’d wonder why she hadn’t done that when she packed. The removal men drove away at four o’clock when it was getting dark. Angelica sat slumped on her doorstep, same place she’s sitting now. Her hair escaping from her ponytail, loose around her neck.

  I’m going to go and speak to her.

  What can I say?

  I could tell her that the cake was from me.

  She can see me coming.

  She’s going to speak first.

  ‘Thanks for the cake. You shouldn’t have gone to the trouble.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t tell anyone else. And you should’ve knocked.’

  ‘It was late.’

  She leans back against the door. It comes ajar and she’s in colour. Her toenails are painted, each one a different shade.

  ‘Where’s your husband?’

  She leans forward again and the door closes. She’s back in greyscale.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You’re wearing a ring.’

  She folds her arms to hide the ring with her jumper. It’s a huge jumper. It looks soft to touch.

  ‘We’re separated.’

  ‘I see.’

  I shouldn’t have said it. I should have waited. I can feel my skin losing moisture. I’m sweating through my clothes and I can see the snap-twitch of Ina Macaukey’s fingers out the corner of my eye. Her dark old face hung over her embroidery.

  ‘Who’s the boy that lives next door?’ she asks.

  ‘Benny. Benny Martin.’

  ‘That’s it. Benny. I knew I’d forget.’

  She unfolds her arms and takes another drag from her cigarette. She does it smoothly, all in one movement. The grip, the inhalation and the release. One hand puts it in, the other takes it out. It looks even better close up.

  ‘Why do you want to know about Benny? Have you seen him yet?’

  ‘He helped me with some boxes.’

  ‘I see. When?’

  ‘Couple of days ago. He seems a nice boy.’ I nod, she smiles.

  ‘He was in the papers not long back.’

  ‘Oh really? What for?’

  ‘Stealing.’

  ‘Seriously?’ she says, like I’m lying.

  ‘Yes, but it’s all sorted now.’

  ‘Well good. He seemed all right to me.’

  ‘I’m sure he did. His mother is in the Women’s Institute.’

  ‘She seemed all right too.’

  ‘You’ve met?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Right. I see. She’s only in her forties.’

  ‘So am I, Gordon.’

  Angelica stubs what’s left of her cigarette out on the doorstep. She stands up, pushes the door open with her bare heel, and for the first time I notice that she’s taller than me. Even without shoes. And now she’s stepping inside the house. Our second conversation is ending and I still haven’t thought of an opening line, my reason for speaking to her. My mind has gone blank.

  ‘Is there anything else?’ There is nothing else. I have nothing to say to her. I shouldn’t be here anyway. I should be at home. I shake my head like a schoolchild. ‘Good. Goodnight then,’ she says, and turns away from me.

  As the door closes, I whisper, ‘Sleep tight,’ and hope she doesn’t hear me.

  Then a voice comes from behind the door, ‘Don’t worry. I will.’

  Note: Angelica’s toenails far left to far right – 1 to 10 – red; yellow; turquoise; orange; red; red; orange; turquoise; yellow; red. Note end.

  N
ext morning I get up, feed Kipling and take him for his walk. We get to the end of the street and he cocks his leg against his tree. He seems to be recovering. Cressington Vale has eight trees. Horse chestnuts. All of them growing through holes in the pavement, apart from one that grows out the road. It’s always been like that. Cars have to wait for traffic coming the other way. Children swerve round it on their bikes. Hedgehogs get flattened. And Kipling urinates against it every day. It’s his tree. I wait for him to finish and then we carry on walking, along Tickle Brook and up through the cemetery to the dog mess bin. Last night, I fell asleep writing in Angelica’s file. I woke at seven this morning, fully-clothed and soaked in sweat. The spare room is a mess. There are papers everywhere. I’m going to tidy up when I get back, before Kipling treads on them or rips them to shreds. First job on the list. After that, I’ll put him out in the back garden. Then I’m going to B&Q to find out how much chainsaws cost.

  Don Donald

  It’s Don Donald. I owe him a jar of pickled onions.

  ‘All right, Gordon? How are we?’

  ‘We’re fine, Don. How are you?’

  ‘I’m good. Very well, in fact.’

  Don Donald has lived on Cressington Vale all his life. His wife ran off with another man in 1984. He’s been alone ever since. If I stand here long enough, he’ll start talking about her. He’ll tell me about her long blonde hair and her large chest. When she told him that she loved him. When he took her to the seafront in Blackpool, got down on one knee, asked her to be his wife. Then he’ll say, ‘Two weeks, Gordon. Two weeks and she’d gone.’

  He tilts his head to one side. His face looks dirty, covered in folds and creases. He’s trying to look sympathetic.

  ‘So. How’s things?’

  ‘Things are fine, Don.’

  ‘Everything going all right?’

  ‘Going fine, Don. Things going all right with you?’

  ‘Oh, very well.’

  ‘That’s good then,’ I say, and think about when we were younger. When we stood on this street and talked about the weather, or the football, or the chances of us ever getting the council to come and move the tree in the road. I think about when his wife first left. How I sat on a chair next to his bath while he lay in cold water for nine hours, talking and crying. I barely said a word. He didn’t need me to.

  ‘You should open your curtains, Gordon. Let the light in.’

  ‘Where are my hedge trimmers?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘You borrowed them.’ Don looks at the floor. Then at the sky. Then back at me again.

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Gordon. I don’t remember.’

  ‘I want them back.’

  ‘I’m not sure I have them anymore.’

  ‘I need them.’ He takes his hands out the pockets of his pyjama bottoms and scratches his head.

  ‘I can look for them.’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘All right then.’ He stands there, puts his hands back in his pockets. I keep looking at him. ‘You want me to find them now?’

  ‘I need them.’

  He turns, shuffles back across the road and into his house. I hear the loose change in his pyjama pockets, his slippers scraping across the concrete. They sound like someone tearing paper.

  Note: Cressington Vale = 14 paces wide. My garden = 10 paces. Don’s drive = 12 paces (approx). Total = 36 paces. 36 paces = 40 seconds (approx). Note end.

  I’ve tidied the spare room and made space on the bookcase for Angelica’s file. Now I’m downstairs, behind the curtain, looking out for her. I’m also looking out for Don. It’s almost one o’clock in the afternoon. He should have come back by now with my trimmers. It’s a beautiful winter’s day – freezing cold and bathed in sunshine. I look up at Angelica’s bathroom window. Frosted glass. The sun reflecting. It leaves a neon circle in my field of vision, like a light bulb floating, which takes about a minute and a half to disappear. I watch the empty street. I have a notepad on the windowsill and a pen in my hand, but there is nothing for me to write. I have a headache. I need to make lunch. I squeeze the end of the pen to make the ballpoint disappear. I fold the notepad shut. As I turn away from the window, a door opens. Angelica? No, it’s Ina Macaukey. She’s bending over. She’s picking up her milk. She’s in her nightdress. I squeeze my pen again, flick through my notepad and check my watch. I scribble down the time.

  Half an hour later, I walk to the kitchen and switch the kettle on. I take my watch off, place it on the worktop and roll up my sleeves. I turn the tap and rinse my hands, glance through the window. There’s a football in my garden. Annie Carnaffan put it there. She throws them over the fence and at my kitchen window. She lives next door. She must be nearly ninety. I believe she does it on purpose, although I’ve never seen it happen, so I have no proof. I’m sure it’s her. That’s just the way she is, a nasty piece of work. I don’t have a file on Annie Carnaffan. In fact, I don’t have a file on anyone who lives on my side of Cressington Vale, because I can’t see their windows. So I watch the opposite side of the street, where the action is. I make lists pages long. On anything and everything. And see the pattern of things, the way it all works. Systems and stability. Rhythms and recoveries. I have all these things on file. One file is thicker than the rest.

  That file is for Georgina.

  My wife.

  Asleep upstairs.

  Doctor Jonathan Morris

  Doctor Morris is a suspected paedophile. I trust him completely.

  He replaced Doctor Richmoor and this is his first practice. He’s only twenty-eight-years-old and was accused of manhandling a thirteen-year-old girl within a fortnight of starting at the surgery. She said he’d pushed her against a wall and tried to lift her skirt up from behind. There were parents with placards for more than a week. It turned out she was pregnant and they disappeared. Because it’s not like she hadn’t been manhandled before. Doctor Morris was cleared a few days later. She’d been making it up. But mud sticks.

  I’m here to see him. The waiting room is full of uncomfortable people on uncomfortable sofas. They sit in silence. Their children ask questions like, ‘How much longer, Mum?’, and ‘What’s wrong with you, anyway?’, but they never get an answer, just a dirty look or a slap on the leg. The sofas line the edge of the room like a skirting board. There’s a coffee table covered with women’s magazines, three beer mats jammed under one of the legs. The only time anyone moves is when a name gets called. There’s usually a pause. Then someone stands up. All heads turn and look at the person daring to be next in the queue, sneer until they reach the door-to-the-corridor-that-leads-to-the-doctor. Because they dared to get called in before them.

  I sit as close to the door as possible.

  ‘Steven Johnson, please.’

  There’s the pause. A young woman holds her hand out to the boy sitting next to her. He’s got slug-like snot trails up his sleeves and a shaved head, which means he’s more than likely had nits. He grabs her hand and she drags him across the room. His feet barely touch the ground. She opens the door, puts her palm on the back of his bald head and shoves him into the corridor.

  ‘Hello Mrs Johnson. Hello Steven. Come in. Sit down.’

  He’s left the intercom on.

  ‘How can I help?’

  Turn the intercom off. Please turn the intercom off.

  ‘It’s him. He’s still pissing his pants. He’s making my life a misery.’

  The waiting room moves. The young couple in the corner shuffle closer together. They hold hands and look at the floor. A man in his seventies picks up a copy of Vogue and starts flicking through the pages. A woman starts coughing. Then someone else starts coughing. Now we’re all coughing. But it makes no difference, we can hear everything.

  ‘It’s not uncommon for a child of Steven’s age to have this problem. Have you spoken to him about it? Is there anything bothering him at school? It could be stress.’

&nbs
p; ‘He’s eight-years-old.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. If he’s worried about something, he could still be suffering from stress. That could be why he’s wetting himself.’

  There it is again. Only a politer version. The waiting room shakes. Smiles crack all over. These people are supposed to be ill.

  ‘Steven, is there anything you want to talk about? Are you having problems at school?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you like school?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have any nice friends there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you a good boy for your mum?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mrs Johnson?’

  ‘He’s a little bastard.’

  ‘I think Steven is suffering from stress. I think that you should go into school and have a word with the teachers. In the meantime, there’s something we can do to help.’

  ‘He’ll take anything.’

  ‘We can provide him with special underwear.’

  There’s a shuffling of papers, an opening of drawers, a sound like a telephone struggling to connect. Then there is silence.

  ‘Do you think he knows he left it on?’ says the woman next to me. But I don’t answer because Angelica is backing into the door and pushing it open with her high heel, shaking her umbrella. She’s wearing a long black coat with fluffy cuffs. She has her hood up. Now she’s talking to the girl on reception. She’s taking her hood down. It’s definitely Angelica.

  ‘Gordon Kingdom, please,’ says the voice over the intercom. She’s asking the girl something, but I can’t hear what she’s saying. I think they’re arguing. Or Angelica’s arguing. The girl is smiling. The moment Angelica turns her back, the girl will spin round to the nurse flicking through files behind her. She’ll mouth the word ‘bitch’, or something worse.