by SJ Bradley
A table bucked sharp onto his elbow.
‘Bloody thing.’ Kebby’s voice. ‘Why is it so damn dark in here? You’d think Peter could afford to switch on the lights.’
Mart was quick, leaning to catch the falling lamp. ‘Be careful,’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘We ought to have brought a torch. Anybody hurt?’
‘No.’
‘This is the last time I scratch around here for second-hand furniture,’ Kebby grumbled. ‘Have you found everything you need, yet? At least get a move on. I need to get home for tea.’
12.
Saturday was the most popular day for moving. The one day when everybody optimistically boxes up their things, thinking a move can be done in a single day.
But nobody settled in one day. Even Samhain knew this. It wasn’t possible. He was working five days a week, sometimes six, all the hours Peter gave him, and had seen this fool’s error repeated every weekend.
‘We’re going to get it all done today, then have Sunday to enjoy our new home.’
That was what they said. He heard it over and over.
Samhain nodded, and smiled, and said, ‘Fair play to you. Let’s try and get you sorted.’
He said this knowing that their Sunday would be chaos and unfamiliar light switches, turning on the bedroom light instead of the hall, wondering which switches worked and which didn’t, and looking in every single box throughout the house to try and find the kettle.
A one day move wasn’t possible. Nobody settled in one day, not even him, with his single bag, containing his tools and his t-shirt and his spare clean hoody.
Frazzles had a ping-pong ball that he liked to play with. He was always biting things, and trying to scrape them open with his hind legs. The cat had a favourite cushion on the sofa, which it didn’t like anybody else to sit on, and it had a favourite spot under the bunk bed in the second bedroom, Astrid’s room. It slept there on a faded old Estamos t-shirt, making the same circular shape as Mama Cat, in a dark spot under the desk.
*
One Sunday morning, Samhain said: ‘Do you think she’s ever going to let Astrid come and stay?’
He asked this while the cat scrabbled away at the door from the other side. It made a sound like winter branches on a double decker’s roof.
‘Should I let the cat in?’ she said, but she was already up, the sun landing in a golden slant across her narrow back.
She opened the door, looked down, and asked the cat: ‘Well?’
Frazzles stayed where he was, on the other side of the threshold. Looking up at Marta’s face, beyond her calves into the room, with an expression that said she was a fool.
‘Give it time, Sam,’ she said. ‘You haven’t even met her yet.’
‘And when is that going to be?’
He lay on the bed with a throb creeping up his back from everything he’d moved.
The previous day, he and Kebby and Simon had moved a whole house. An old lady had lived in it from birth until the day after her ninetieth birthday. She’d raised her children in that house, three of them, each with hobbies – cricket, rollerskating, tennis, music. They’d found dozens of broken tennis racquets. Old skates with rattling wheels. They’d found a double bass, and an upright piano hidden under a draping, dusty rug.
Her two eldest children had been arguing in the hallway. A middle-aged man, balding and hectoring, who kept saying: ‘We can’t keep it all, Rachel,’ and: ‘If you’d wanted her to leave your kids something, perhaps you should have visited more often.’
The woman he was talking to was of similar age, but with expensive blonde hair and a fancy coat; she’d kept on stopping to glance over her shoulder at Samhain and Kebby, who ceased working for nobody, and at whatever they were taking out of the house at that moment. ‘That? You can’t get rid of that!’ And: ‘I can’t believe you’re letting them do this.’
Kebby and Samhain had just kept their faces straight, and said nothing.
‘I don’t know, Sam. I’ll ask her again, and see what she says.’
Mart stepped forward a little, out into the hallway. The top of her back sloped in a smooth pebble, her buttocks curving in the shape of a plum.
‘Let’s do something today,’ she said. ‘Ride bikes?’
She, it seemed, never tired of riding her bike. To and from work on it, four miles each way, then during the day, between meetings. Then what did she want to do at the weekend? Ride bikes.
He swung his feet onto the warming floor.
Mart was a red-headed, spanner-carrying angel, somebody not to be allowed to get away. ‘I’ll make us some sandwiches,’ he said.
Samhain rode a bike with a rattling chain through puddles of light more golden than syrup. Mart was way ahead of him, along a cobbled street between the houses. She wore a long white dress, fine as parachute silk, and when she pushed her right leg down he could nearly see her knickers through the fabric.
The path didn’t look like much. It was a cobbled street between the houses, which came to an end at the edge of the old mill. ‘It’s this way,’ she said. A short metal fence with a gap, winged bows at handlebar height. ‘Bit of a pain to get through.’ Mart reared her bike up on its back wheel to get it through the fence.
Boats with black sides. Roses on their cabins, white and pink. On the sixth boat a woman stood on the deck, doing something with a thick rope, twisting it around and around, mooring her boat to the land.
‘I had no idea this was all here,’ he said. The grass by the path was high. It bowed and waved like a corps de ballet. They were on the canal tow path.
‘Yeah,’ Mart said. ‘Not many people do. If you go that way,’ she said, pointing her thumb back behind them, ‘it’s the quickest way to town.’ She leaned right down to her handlebars, calves straining. They were coming up to a sharp hill for the locks.
The climb was sharper than he expected. Edges all green and thorny, tangled stalks with fruit coming, still aphid-green. In autumn, he and Astrid would be able to come down here, and pick enough berries to make a pie.
Gravel spat under his wheels. He looked, sweating, at the huge wooden gates at the hill’s top, the levers and sluices; his bike slowed no matter how hard he pushed. Pain spiked his heart like a wire barb. She was already at the top of the hill, waiting, bicycle leaning between her legs, and the sun shining through her billowing dress like a flag.
He got off and pushed the rest of the way.
‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she said.
The light was against him; he heard Mart’s feet on the ground, the soft click-click of her bike as she pushed it further on the path. He blinked hard, saw her raised chin, the shape of her neck as she looked into the treetops, fingers spread out into the air.
‘It’s perfect,’ he said.
By evening, she was gone.
Mart didn’t stay over often, and never on a Sunday. Mondays were her early start, and she had said she was going to call in on Charley on the way home.
He couldn’t get used to the quiet in the flat.
Nobody banging away, fixing things. No sound of sandpaper or sawdust flying all over the floor. No clink of bottles or shouts up the stairs. At this time on a Sunday, there wasn’t even the sound of traffic outside.
Just Samhain and the cat, Frazzles, and whatever music Samhain put on to cover up the silence.
The cat padded in, seeming to want something. It sat on the rug, staring at him, blinking slowly. As though it had a need, and Samhain ought to know what it was. So Samhain got up to see whether the bowl was empty, and Frazzles jumped up onto the sofa, into the warm spot he had left behind.
‘You tricked me,’ he said.
Frazzles yawned and licked his lips, and settled himself into a soft circle.
Later, a knock.
‘Now then, boyo.’
At the top of the stairs, Frankie with a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand, and a set of shot glasses in the other.
‘Brought you a housewarming pres
ent.’
Boxed glasses: Frankie had even stuck a bow on the top corner.
‘For fuck’s sake Frankie, if you’re coming in, come in. Don’t stand there dithering. The cat’ll get out.’
‘You and your cowing cats.’ Frankie was fast – he shoved the bottle under his arm, and scooped Frazzles up with his free hand. ‘Look at this tiddler. Bit bigger than when I last saw him, eh?’ Inside, and Frankie kicked the door closed, slamming it with a noise fit to rattle the whole house. ‘And the landlord doesn’t mind you keeping pets?’
‘He doesn’t know.’
‘That’s the spirit. Anyway, thought I’d pop by, see how you were settling in.’ Frankie unlaced his trainers, set them side by side by the door. ‘See, I’m housetrained. Bet you didn’t know that, did you?’ He shook the bottle. ‘Drink?’
‘You go ahead. I’ll get the kettle on.’
Now loose, Frankie’s feet gave off a smell that could flatten a tower block. ‘That’s not like you.’ Frankie crept flat-footed forward, peeking his way around the living room door. ‘Got it looking cozy in here, mind. Marta help?’
‘Yeah. I’ve got an early start tomorrow.’ Kebby was calling for him at seven thirty, so they could make a two-hour drive to some guy’s storage unit in an industrial estate, to move a load of old tractor and car engines. Then they were driving another two hours to put it in another storage unit in an industrial estate somewhere over the Pennines.
Frankie put the bottle, and the cat, down on the kitchen worktop.
The cat, who had never been up there before, started sniffing its way towards the cooker top.
‘Yeah?’ Frankie slapped a hand over his freshly shaved head.
‘For God’s sake, Frankie.’ Samhain grabbed the cat, and put him down on the floor. ‘He’ll burn his little paws.’
‘It isn’t switched on.’
‘No, but it was earlier, and he won’t understand... never mind.’
‘This is a nice place.’
Frankie was poking around, hidden from sight, but not more than a metre or so away. He was in Astrid’s room, the bathroom; he had his nose in Samhain’s room, where the duvet was probably still on the floor.
‘If you stand in the right spot, you can see all of it at once,’ Frankie went on. ‘Kitchen – bedroom – living room – bathroom – second bedroom.’
‘That’s right.’ The kettle clicked off. ‘No grand staircases or hidden back corridors.’
‘You should come back and visit,’ Frankie said. ‘Old place isn’t the same without you.’
Steaming water, bloating tea bags, hot mugs. Peppermint tea bags floated like bubbling swim shorts. ‘Don’t know when I’ll have time,’ Samhain said.
‘Well.’ In the living room, Frankie was fiddling with the record player. ‘You just come whenever you can, that’s all.’ His old friend was staring at a set of needles on the amp. ‘You got this working yet?’
‘Record player works,’ Samhain said. ‘Buzzes like a motherfucker, though.’
This stereo had come to him through several pairs of hands. Ten years ago, to some person, it had been new. Eight years ago, Marta had found it in a charity shop. She’d used it for a while, and then it had spent some years in a box at the back of a cupboard, when she and Jeff had moved in together. Last month, she’d found it again, and brought it here.
When Samhain had hooked it up, he’d seen why nobody wanted to keep it any length of time. Something about it rattled like a faulty lawnmower, and the record player seemed to bust a driver every sixth or seventh record.
‘It’s a piece of crap,’ Samhain said. ‘I think I need to get–’
‘Soon have this sorted.’ Frankie had produced a screwdriver and soldering iron, and was jemmying the casing loose with a screwdriver end. ‘Can’t have you going without your music, can we?’
13.
The old arts college wore within it a fading spectre of its past self. Everything was sixties, rectangular. Doorways and corridors and rooms climbed off one another at right angles.
It was all joined by a single corridor, a square skeleton which boxed in the large downstairs studio. Every staircase and doorway came off this hall.
‘I’m Aiden.’ A wiry man in his sixties with long grey hair, wearing navy dungarees, came out of the studio door. Like all the doors, it was a peculiar turquoise colour which, you could tell, had once been bright. ‘Come in. Everything’s already packed.’
The sun landed on huge boxes in the centre of the room; rows of easels leaned against one another like tripping goalposts. ‘I promised the students all an A if they packed up their own studios.’ Whiskered carp swam up both his forearms.
Each box was named. Phaedra Vanderbelt. Rose Hart. Thomas Porter-Woodsley.
‘Right then,’ Kebby said. ‘Shall we get to it?’
Those were the names of kids who’d never done a hard day’s work in their lives. Putting their own things in boxes had probably been the toughest thing they’d ever done, and now here were Samhain and Kebby, doing all of the real work.
‘Ah’ll get these.’ Aiden picked up a stack of easels. ‘Honestly, can’t believe ah’m doing this. Didn’t think ah’d be here this long.’ He spoke softly, with a Boro accent. ‘When ah first came, ah said to meself, just do a couple a’ years, then get somethin’ else.’ The easels cracked against each other gently, as they stepped outside. ‘Never did ah think ah’d still be here, thirty years later, moving things out so they can refurbish the place.’
‘I didn’t even know this place was here.’ Samhain shoved boxes onto the van back. They were lighter than they looked: it was going to be an easy day’s work.
‘Well, that’s the thing, you see. People don’t – unless they really want to study art... this is the place to come if you want to study illustration or ceramics.’ Aiden turned, and gestured at the doors. ‘See here, they’ll put new doors in – automatic ones – to make it easier to get in and out. For the students in wheelchairs, see. Or if you’re carrying a piece of artwork. And ah found this old feller in Ather’s Edge who specialises in restoration signs and lettering – that’s all he does – and he’s going to do the sign over the door. It’ll be perfect when he does it, it’ll look right bonny.’ Aiden jumped down off the truck back, and towards the college doors. ‘Ah get a bit excited when ah think about it, how good it’ll all look when it’s done.’ His voice sped up as he talked. ‘Have ya been inside an art college before? Come, ah’ll show you ‘round.’
The lower floor was all classrooms. Big things, linoleum floors. Fake tiles worn to white by hundreds of successive pairs of feet: shoe, after shoe, after shoe, after shoe. The windows were a single glaze, jittering in their cases.
‘That downstairs is the lower teaching studio,’ Aiden said. ‘Where we teach printmaking and lifedrawing and all that sort of thing – and upstairs...’
A wooden staircase at the back led to another two, maybe three, identical corridors, around similar looking classrooms, all with the same, sick tropical colour doors. ‘Print room,’ Aiden said. ‘Individual studios. Ceramics studio. Dark room...’
They passed all these rooms, with their doors partly open, and all their contents already boxed. Samhain couldn’t see what any of them were. It left him quite disoriented.
‘And there,’ Aiden said, ‘is our garden.’ A back window looked out over an interior garden. A slight square of herbs and shrubs, with cigarette butts all the way around the path.
In the upstairs room, space opened out like apartments not yet built. Glass on two sides to the north and east, with a view over the city. Marks had been left on the floor by temporary studio walls.
The whole room smelled faintly of turpentine and solvents.
‘Some view, eh?’ Aiden commented. ‘This is what’s kept me here all these years.’
‘It’s not half bad,’ Samhain agreed.
Samhain’s phone beeped; he could hear Kebby’s footsteps coming up the stairs.
The messa
ge came up as Unknown Number. Hi. Its Charley. Mart came 2 c me. thnk u 4 money. Used 2 buy Astrid shoes n coat.
Aiden strode across the long, empty floor, followed by his own blurry shadow. ‘Ah was a joiner when ah first came here. Used to make tables – cabinets – with these carvings in the edges, more for myself than anybody else. Ah was making these cabinets and they looked a bit plain, so ah said to myself, Aiden, why not carve a ladybird running up the joist? And it got to be a bit of a running joke that ah had with myself.’
Samhain stared at his phone screen, watching it fade to black. Something, he didn’t know what, had changed her mind.
‘We should have started up here,’ Kebby said. ‘We always start upstairs,’ he said to Aiden.
‘Right,’ said Aiden, moving towards the classrooms. ‘Empty this room first?’
Samhain followed, following Aiden’s faint smell of sawdust. A tiny feeling nibbled gently at him, the same feeling of calmness that came from walking out of a stuffy, beer-soaked squat, into an evening of cool air and sparkling stars.
‘You alright there, mate?’ Aiden asked. ‘This building does funny things to people. Ah know it did me, first time ah came in.’
‘I’m fine.’ Samhain grabbed a box. Crinkling with newspaper, clunking with plates.
‘Careful – that’s fragile.’
‘We always are careful,’ Kebby said.
‘He’s right, you know. We are.’
‘The stairs are quite steep–’
‘We can handle it.’ Kebby was already halfway down.
‘Anyway.’ Aiden had another of the boxes. ‘Back to my cabinets – ah wanted to know, what was the most ah could get away with before someone came back on me and said, “Here, this wardrobe’s got a mouse running along the top!”’
‘So what happened?’ Samhain felt his way down the steps, elbow to the handrail, foot tracing the stairs’ edges. ‘Did anybody ever come and ask for their money back?’