by Matthew Ross
As if to prove my point, unprompted, she seemed compelled to add, ‘I’m the breadwinner in my family. I earn the money, and he stays home like Daddy Daycare.’
I didn’t like her to begin with, and now I liked her even less. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with career women, far from it. My problem lies with people that think that to get on they need to treat everyone around them with contempt: much like her, much like Mr Wilkes. All I’m saying is just a little respect goes a long way, we’ve all got a job to do and a role to play. It makes things so much easier if we all show each other a little appreciation, otherwise all you end up doing is pissing everyone else off, like she has now. Anyway, I was keen to get her back on topic.
‘Ms Fuller, according to this paperwork from you, you owe quite a significant sum, can you please tell me when it’ll be paid?’
She fanned out the invoices in front of her, read them all, before looking back up at me. She shocked me with her answer: ‘Never.’
Now she was really giving me the hump, and Charlie sat beside her looking as confused as me.
‘This one here, redecorate garden room following leak. We haven’t had a leak. This one, room 1/7, full redecoration for incoming resident. She’s been in that room for over two years and has no plans to go anywhere. All of them, they’re all bogus,’ and before I could say anything, she picked them all up and ripped them in half. I was speechless at her arrogance. Charlie looked stunned.
‘Now I’d like you to leave, otherwise I will call the police and ask them to make you leave,’ she said.
Outside, I found Disco having a fag with the Receptionist of all people, gossiping away like the best of friends. I told him we were leaving.
‘What’s happening?’
‘I’ve got absolutely no idea, but come on we’re off,’ I said and started marching. Disco bid farewell with the promise to call her later.
‘Wait,’ a voice called out from behind us. I stopped and looked back to see Charlie scuttling after us. Disco shrugged and carried on without me.
‘Don’t go, look, I can sort this out,’ he said, ‘Did Tommy say anything to you? About me? No, no, never mind… Did he have anything, you know, for me?’
‘What’re you talking about?’ I asked, but by now he was crossing and uncrossing his arms in embarrassment.
‘No, no forget I said anything. But… if you find anything from him for me, I can give you purchase orders, as many as you like, next time come straight to me, I’ll sort them out, not her.’
‘So, what about these ones?’ I said, showing him the clutch of jobs that hadn’t been done yet.
‘Yes, I’ll pay you for them. In return, for, you know…’ He kept looking around him as he spoke, pausing any time anyone was remotely within earshot, ‘You, you know, you give it to me and I’ll get them paid, right away, there and then, not her, forget about her.’
I didn’t understand what he was talking about, and I honestly didn’t have the stamina to find out. There was a heat inside me, my face was burning, my hands were beginning to tremble, I knew this feeling, nothing good comes from it – the milk pan bubbling before it boils over. To my relief, the impatient Disco was banging on the roof of the van telling me to get a move-on, and without another word to Charlie, I walked away before he could say anything else and before my rage erupted.
‘What’s been going on?’ said Disco, as we pulled away ‘You looked like you were about to start a fight.’
I explained about Kate Fuller’s obnoxious attitude, about her ripping up Tommy’s invoices.
‘So, we’re not going to be working there then?’
Based on the balance of probability and all things considered, I told him it was highly unlikely we’d be working in there any time soon.
‘Shame,’ he said. ‘According to Helen it’ll all be buttoned up with framework contractors once they’re sold next month.’
‘Helen? Who the bloody hell’s Helen?’
‘Helen! On reception, back there. Helen.’
‘How’d you get talking to her then? When I left you, she looked like she wanted to stab you, when I come back it’s all “Helen says’’.
‘I don’t know, just did. Here, you’ll never guess who her next door neighbour but one is?’ I shook my head. ‘Tim!’
‘Tim?’ I said with fond, nostalgic tones, ‘Good old Tim. Golden Lamb?’ And so we spent the afternoon toasting absent friends.
All in all, it had been a pretty dismal day, and by the time the mini-cab turned into my cul-de-sac shortly after seven I couldn’t wait to get inside and hide myself away until tomorrow.
The cold dark night was suddenly illuminated with supernova brightness thanks to the lamp on the front of my house triggering as soon as my foot hit the path. It filled my boozy head with thoughts of Harpo’s fox. The brilliant white light dazzled me and made my hand difficult to steer. I was finding it a challenge to get the key in the lock. The brass tongue wouldn’t line up with the latch. I’d made a couple of near misses and now with it held firmly in both hands I gently made my third attempt.
If … only … I … could … get … this … bloody … door … open.
This had become a matter of principle. I would not be defeated. I directed all my concentration on it. I became focussed, so much so I didn’t hear the approaching footsteps behind me. I don’t think I fully noticed the first blow to the back of my head – there was no mistaking the second though.
It caught me squarely just behind my ear and knocked me off my feet. Even as I clattered on to the path, face scraping against the concrete, my hair falling into the dirt, I still don’t think I realised what was happening.
By the time I felt the kick between my shoulders forcing the air out of my lungs I knew I was under attack. Another kick, same place. I coughed and retched, unable to draw a breath quick enough. Reactions took over, pleading with me to get away, I rolled on to my hands and knees steadying myself, but another kick, this one to the ribs, knocked me flat again. The kicks flew in, all down my side, stamps pounded on my back. It was coming so fast, so ferociously that I couldn’t tell whether it was one attacker or many, but I could only hear one muffled voice over the top of my groaning.
Stamp, ‘You can’t have what kick belongs kick to stamp me,’ kick ‘Bastard kick thinking stamp you can kick take what’s stamp mine, I want what’s stamp mine.’
The paving, cold and damp against my face, burned as my ear dragged across it. My hands were under me still trying to push up to a standing position and the pain ripped through me when my elbow was crushed under foot. I thought I heard a far-off second voice calling out, and force of reflex caused me to turn towards it just as the heavy foot connected with my cheek.
20
I came to propped up in a hospital bed, squinting into the bright glare overhead. My face felt tender and every breath hurt. My clothes had been removed and replaced by a thin hospital gown, and becoming aware of this made my skin shiver. I rubbed the goose bumps on my forearm until the pain across my shoulders forced me to stop.
I sat still, silently, whilst the rest of the ward swarmed with noise and activity. I tried to understand my surroundings, but looking around made my head swim. I held myself upright and motionless until the nausea wore off. I drew in a few long deep breaths, that old cure-all, and tasted dried blood in my mouth, metallic and earthy.
‘Hello again,’ said a voice beside me. I carefully twisted around and was surprised by just how happy I was to see Perry. ‘We must stop meeting like this!’
Looking back, I know the first rule of trying to pull your hot new next-door neighbour is laugh at her corny jokes, but at the time I figured, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t worth the pain my ribs would have had to endure – jeez, I must have been more hurt than I realised. Instead I asked her what happened.
‘Initial thoughts were you were in a fight, but your hands and knuckles are undamaged which suggests you were attacked instead.’ I murmured that this much I
knew, ‘You were brought in by a man who didn’t stay, he dropped you off and left. It happens from time to time, they’re concerned, but not enough to get involved with the paperwork.’
I didn’t remember anything beyond being on the ground, I had no recollection of how I got there, and certainly not of a guardian angel, did she get a name or a number?
‘No. All he said was he’s a driver. One of the porters helped him carry you in and then he disappeared off into the night.’
Perry offered me a flimsy white plastic cup, and I gratefully took a sip from it. The water tasted warmish.
‘Do you want this?’ she offered a moulded cardboard bowl. I took it and gratefully spat, it looked pale pink under the harsh lighting. There had been blood in my mouth. My tongue checked my teeth, they were all present and standing firm, but the coarse texture my tongue detected suggested I must have bitten my cheek at some point.
‘As I say, your Good Samaritan dropped you and ran. We don’t know anything.’
She paused, picking her next words with great tact, ‘Because you came in through… let’s call it an unusual route – no ambulance, no 999 calls – the police haven’t been involved. It’s up to you if you want to them to be.’ Another cautious pause. ‘Would you like us to report this for you?’
I told her no, I hadn’t seen anything, it would be pointless. I didn’t tell her our kind don’t go to the police, and that we sort our own problems out. Instead I told her I wanted to go home.
‘You can soon, the doctor wants you observed for a couple of hours to make sure there’s no concussion. Look, I finish at one a.m., so if you can wait until then I’ll give you a lift home.’
She gave me a couple of painkillers and left me to sit quietly. Robbie Williams sang ‘Angels’ on a constant loop inside my mind as I drifted in and out of sleep.
Half past one, and Perry was helping me out of her small Fiat, leading us towards our adjoining houses. As we got closer, I noticed something.
‘Look,’ I said, pointing at my keys dangling from the door like a lonely Christmas decoration, ‘I managed to get it in the lock after all.’
21
I’d had a broken night’s sleep, and then, finally, when I’d got off, I was roused by the doorbell. I ignored it and rolled over. It rang again. And again. When it was clear they weren’t going away I began to haul myself out of bed in the usual manner, but the sleepy ache around my ribs suddenly woke up and filled my head with white pain. Slowly I lifted myself into a seated position and then with great care twisted around until my feet touched the floor. The doorbell rang again.
Now standing, I shuffled like a hundred-year-old man until I could find a rhythm and pace that didn’t hurt. Still the doorbell rang. Eventually I made it to the front door. The doorbell was ringing again as I opened it. Perry.
‘Ah look at your poor face,’ she said, and reached up to hold my cheek in the palm of her hand. I wasn’t used to such kindness but welcomed it gratefully. ‘I’m just leaving for work now, thought I’d check in to see how you are, make sure you’re ok.’
She did that rising inflection at the end of her sentences again, I wasn’t certain if she was asking me or telling me, so I muttered, ‘I’ll be fine, a few painkillers and I’ll be right as rain,’ before remembering my manners. ‘Thank you.’
She smiled, and that alone made me feel a lot, lot better. She said she’d look in again later, and waved goodbye as she walked towards her car. I closed the door. It hurt to smile, but this time I didn’t care.
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, naked, and looked at myself properly for the first time. My left eye was swollen, flowering grey and yellow on my cheek beneath it. An angry scab had formed across the bridge of my nose. My nostrils were lined with dried blood, but I found the tension and the cracking of it each time I flared them oddly pleasurable. All down my left side, from my shoulder to my hip, was a patchwork of bruises in varying shades of grey, green and maroon. The bruising to my upper arm bore a half boot print where it stamped across my elbow, a crude rainbow of red, purple and black.
Twisting caused the pain to bite and clamp across my ribs, conjuring up visions of Gnasher from The Beano, my own black dog to suffer, with every movement he would grip me in his jaws. By taking it slowly, I managed to look over my shoulder to see my back reflected in the mirror. Boot prints, full and partial, glared back at me, fierce in their red, raw form. Decorating my shoulder blades were round bruises, perfectly circular – toe punts. That meant one thing for certain – my attacker wore steel toecaps, protective boots, a tradesman straight off site. I examined myself and remembered his words as he booted me up and down the garden path: ‘You can’t have what belongs to me. I want what’s mine.’
I stood at the front window stepping from foot to foot, checking my watch, checking my phone, checking my watch. Where was he? Ten minutes, they promised he’d be here in ten minutes twenty minutes ago. At last, a shabby silver Nissan saloon pulled up, I grabbed the box at my feet and left the house.
I pulled the car door shut and instructed the driver to take me to the Golden Lamb, wincing through the unexpected gnash that bit me, son of a bitch: I’d crouched too quickly when boarding the back of the Nissan, and vowed not to make that mistake again.
‘You remember me?’ I said to the eyes in the mirror once we were in motion.
‘Don’t know boss,’ came the reply from the front seat. ‘So many passengers, can’t remember everyone.’
‘I asked for you specifically.’ I noticed the eyes hadn’t left me since I’d sat down. ‘I asked them who was on last night, in a silver car that picked up at the Golden Lamb.’
The eyes in the mirror narrowed and stayed fixed on me, but the body in the front seat didn’t move.
‘All I wanted to do was say thank you. If you hadn’t stepped in things could have been a lot worse, thanks.’
‘Look man, I don’t want any trouble, I don’t want to get involved.’
‘You aren’t involved in anything, you won’t be, relax. But can you tell me what you saw, who did it? Please?’
The eyes in the mirror looked left, then right. I knew he was debating whether to say anything. I had thought something like this might happen so I opened the box beside me, the one with a Ferrari red kettle on the side, and removed some notes, roughly the equivalent of two day’s money for him. I offered it up to the eyes in the mirror. I heard a long sigh and then he began to speak.
By the time we’d reached the Golden Lamb, I’d learned that Devinder – for that was his name – had indeed been my mini-cab driver home last night. As he was turning around at the toe of the cul-de-sac he saw me, floodlit, on the ground getting a beating. He shouted, hoping it would scare the attacker away, which it did, but then he saw I was in a proper mess. He dragged me to the car, and as Perry had already told me, he took me to hospital. At this point I felt compelled to give him a few more notes to cover the fare to the hospital last night, and a few more to get the upholstery cleaned even though I was pretty sure I wasn’t responsible for most of the unpleasant stains crusting his seats. He couldn’t give any description of my attacker though as he’d taken off in the opposite direction, but I was beginning to form a fair idea who did it.
The van was parked where I’d left it last night, and after thanking Devinder, I was soon on my way again. Twenty minutes later I was outside the white and red hoarding of a large housing development. In about a year’s time there will be a dozen new five-bed luxurious executive homes but right now, behind the gates they’re still shells, some further along in the programme than others.
To my left the houses had been topped out and the windows were going in, they’d soon be waterproof and the finishing trades would be racing through to make them habitable. To my right the bricklayers were finishing off doing the awkward cuts around the gables and the carpenters were still manhandling the triangular trusses into position: the timber preservative treatment gave them a ghostly greenish tinge against the ster
ile grey sky. And directly in front were the halfway houses: their states midway between those left and right. The roofs had been covered in tacky bitumen-coated felt pinned down by thin timber battens. Piled precariously across the roof were stacks of roof tiles, they’d started fitting them at one end and were now beginning to sweep their way across, changing the colour of the roofs from tar black to a warm russet.
I could see Blunt, standing astride the ridge of a roof, one foot on each slope, watching and commanding all around him, the ape-man king of the jungle.
A bored, minimum-wage guard paid from the neck down had seen the van with writing down the side of it and assumed I had business there. He opened the site gates and waved me through without saying a word – and they wonder why theft on building sites is so high.
At the designated parking area, I got out of the van, taking my box with me and looked around to get my bearings. Last thing I wanted was to get too near the works – every site has its own unique combination for protective wear, so I really didn’t want to lose the element of surprise by being bawled out by an overzealous site manager for being in the wrong kit. Instead I waited around the little encampment of cabins and containers, realising it would soon be lunchtime.
Without a sound or signal, the operatives dotted around the site began to drift in towards the cabins at the stroke of noon. Blunt and his crew came down off their roof, dropping their tools at the foot of the ladder, and came towards the mess hut.