by Claire Peate
Seven
I staggered out of the door with four filled bin liners: the first stage of my cleaning up in preparation for the new lodger. I was almost overcome by the amount of cleaning that had to be done, but at least I had made a start. Phase One in my Moving On Plan: not that there was actually a plan…
“Awright there, darlin’.” Babs stubbed out her fag on our garden wall and put down the large white sheets of plastic she’d been cutting.
“Evening, Babs. What are you doing?” I pointed to the cuttings.
“Nothin’!” she said sharply. “Just somethin’ for me grandson and nothin’ for you to go lookin’ at. Anyhow,” she softened no doubt having seen the effect of her outburst on my expression, “I’ve not seen yer man round ’ere the last few days. Lovers tiff is it?”
“No, Babs.” I heaved the bags down the path. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Aw and the way you two were lookin’ at each other that day you went mental in yer front garden. There’s summat there, you mark my words.” She peered over the wall to see what I was hefting down my path. “Clear out is it darlin’?”
“Charity shop.” I said. “Old clothes. Things I’m not going to wear anymore.” Because I was never, ever going to go out anymore.
“Never say never darlin’,” and in the blink of an eye the old woman sped down her garden path, up mine and stood beside me opening up the bags. “You don’t mind, do yer love? If it’s going to the charity shop I might as well have first look, eh? Charity begins at ’ome don’t it? And if not, next door to yer ’ome.” There was a whirl of clothes, mostly going-out clothes or clothes I’d worn when I was twenty and couldn’t wear now I was almost thirty without risking a serious mutton/lamb combo. Each piece that Babs pulled out and examined had a particular memory either of when I bought it – with Beth – or when I last wore it out – with Beth.
The clear out had been a painful experience. But one of Amanda’s magazine articles – “Why Clutter Causes Heartache” – had been very firm about the need to clean as a first step to moving on.
“You look all in. Everythin’ all right with you?” Babs said, clutching a never-worn cherry-coloured basque that Beth had persuaded me into buying. Babs walked over the bared earth of my front garden and up to my bay window to admire herself in the reflection.
“Oh. Yes. Fine. Everything’s fine thanks,” I said, trying my best not to look horrified at Babs-in-a-basque.
She eyed me suspiciously. “Yer not in trouble are yer?”
“No!” I felt pretty confident that the kind of trouble Babs knew of in her world was something I would never experience in my own.
“Is it that friend of yours what got knocked up?”
“Any news this week?” I decided diversion was the best course of action as usual.
“It’s been a quiet one, this week.” She pulled out a sequined mini skirt and put it on one side with the basque. “Man threw himself under a train at the station at New Cross Gate yesterday. Selfish bastard.”
“Did he die?”
“Course he bleedin’ died, Edda! Not many people live after the London to Brighton’s run over their noggin! Apart from that, it’s been quiet. Oh I like this! I do like this! What is it love?”
“It’s a belly dancing costume.”
“An’ are these real coins?”
“I think they’re fakes.”
“You do this belly dancin’ then do yer?”
“I used to. With my friend. With Beth.”
“Well I’ll ’ave that an’ all. Reckon me boyfriend will love that!”
She put it on the side and I fought hard to keep my head clear of any possible Babs/belly dancing images that were threatening to appear.
“So, how’s it going with the room to let?”
I stared at her. “How do you know about that? How on earth could you possibly know that the room was advertised now? I only told you I was thinking about it.”
“Oh, I never reveals me sources.”
I shivered. It was all very well learning things about other people, about the death and sex and drugs in SE4 but now that I was the focus of such gossip – in my super mundane way – I didn’t like it at all. How did Babs know everything? It felt as though she was in my head.
Did she know about the secret society? She could well do – after all she’d seen Guy in the garden with me… Though she’d never come clean on what she knew or didn’t know about Eustace Fox.
“The lodger search is going fine thanks, Babs. I’m interviewing next week.”
“You be careful, young Edda.” Babs shook a gold lamé blouse at me. “There’s bad people out there.”
“Yes, but I’ll interview them and—”
“Some of ’em,” Babs continued, “looks as nice as pie. Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. But thems the ones you ’ave to watch for. Evil people, Edda, believe me, evil.”
“OK then.”
“Heard a bloke, Deptford way,” Babs paused to light a fag, “took a lodger what he’d never met. Lodger was a dodgy lookin’ geezer from Bermondsey, need I say more? Anyhow, ’is neighbour ’ears screaming in the night. No one sees the bloke for a few days, lodger acting all cagey and stuff. Turns out ’e’s gone an’ killed the bloke ’cause ’e wouldn’t watch Grand Designs on the telly. Killed ’im ’cause of the TV! And then to get rid of the evidence and what not ’e cuts the body up an’ cooks it. Sick bastard. Mark my words, Edda, it ain’t always a good idea. Anyway, I’ll ’ave these clothes ta. Charity shop ain’t gonna miss what it never ’ad is it?”
I had lost the ability to speak.
Babs twirled the ash off her fag. “Edda…”
I took a deep breath. “Yes, Babs?”
“Why was you askin’ last week about Fox Estates?”
“I don’t know,” I said and at that point I really didn’t know. The tenant-baking-the-landlord story had knocked me sideways and I couldn’t think of anything except for the fact that I was willingly taking myself down a road that ended in me being covered in pie crust.
“I’ll tell you what that man Eustace Fox is,” Babs said in a low voice and I focused back on the here and now: she was ready to tell me what she knew! “He’s a homosexualist!”
“Really?” I pretended to look surprised.
Babs was nodding. “Not that that’s anything these days. Takes all sorts. Specially round ’ere. Anyhow’’ he’s having it away with this bloke who’s ’igh up in the Council – bastardsthelotofem,” she added, cementing my firm commitment never to tell Babs what I did for a living. “My friend lives in a flat opposite ’im. She sees everything. That bloke ’e’s with comes and goes at all times. Drives one of them fancy red covetable cars, Mercedes Benz it is – sports car with one of them roofs what go down an’ up again. An’ I’ll tell you another thing,” she was into her stride now, “he collects them police signs.”
“I know!” I checked the door behind me and took a step towards Babs, “I know!” I was so relieved that someone else knew this.
Babs looked surprised. “How d’you know? You ain’t seen him? My friend she sees him. Sees him creepin’ out at night and takin’ ’em back to ’is ’ouse.”
“Well, when I went to a party at his house…” I enjoyed the look of surprise on Babs’ face for once. This was something Babs didn’t know… “I saw them all stacked in his understairs cupboard. Lots of them. Fifty or more.”
“Well I never did,” Babs lit a thoughtful fag.
“Why do you think he hoards them?” I said.
“I reckon ’cause it’s crimes ’e’s committed.” Babs gave it the full weighty tone, “It’s written reminders of what ’e’s done. Souvenirs, innit.”
“My friend, Beth, thinks it’s because he doesn’t want the bad publicity for Brockley: it could put people off buying property in the neighbourhood. She’s probably right – why would a successful business man in his sixties snatch bags and car jack?”
“Why does me neighbour
on the other side eat dogs? I don’t know. There ain’t no logic in the world, Edda. But what I will say is,” she put a cold bony hand on my arm, “You be careful, young girl. I don’t like ’im.”
It struck me that a lot of people around me were warning me to be careful. Was I really living so dangerously by joining a secret gardening society and getting a lodger in? Was I sleepwalking my way into peril or was it simply that I had surrounded myself with people who fretted too much?
“Babs I know you mean well but, to be honest, you do tend to see the worst in people sometimes. Well, most times. Really. Maybe your radar might be a little – skewed?”
“I tell yer what. Friend of mine, another one, tried to sell ’er flat with that Fox Estates business of ’is. West Indian woman she is. Nothing wrong with that. But he – he wouldn’t ’ave nothin’ to do with her. Apparently,” Babs stood close beside me and I gained the full benefit of the decades of chain-smoking cheap fags and PG-Tips on her breath, “he couldn’t bring himself to stay more than a few minutes there. Said it wasn’t his sort of flat. Wouldn’t have anything to do with her. Racialist. That’s what he is.”
“Was there a problem with your friend’s flat?”
“Only that it was ’ers and she was Jamaican. You look at ’is shop up there on the Brockley Road. You look at them fancy ’ouses and posh flats in ’is window. There ain’t a single one there for the likes of you an’ me. They’re for aspirating folks aren’t they? Folks what work in that Canary Wharf an’ the City an’ earn a thousand pound a month.”
“As much as that?”
“Some of ’em. So next time you’re passin’ you just take a look. You think about it.”
“I will. Thank you, Babs.”
“’e don’t want us.” Babs picked up the clothes she wanted and made to leave. “’e don’t want the likes o’ me and my lot in Brockley.”
I went back into my house, sat down, and spent a long time pondering and staring at the phone across the other side of the room. Was I mixing with the wrong sorts? Was I going to be made into Landlady Pie? If ever there was a time to call Beth it was now. But she would be busy – she was always busy these days – and even if she was at home and had time to talk to me she wouldn’t properly listen to what I had to say. She was well and truly on Planet Pregnant.
I got up and made myself a cup of tea. I would not call Beth. I would be fine without Beth. I could manage on my own without Beth for goodness sake…
Beth walked back into the lounge and flopped beside Jack on their old Habitat sofa. They were watching TV. The room was dimly lit by Beth’s Ikea floor lamps and the blue light of the TV flickered on their faces. They looked very content: very sufficient.
But Beth looked tired. My heart went out to her: there were dark smudges beneath her eyes and her hair was wild and bouffant, just like it always got when she ran her hands through it too much. Today had obviously been a difficult day for her.
Half an hour earlier I had cast caution to the wind and walked over to see Beth. I had to: I needed to talk to her about the secret society and the lodger and everything that was on my mind. It was ridiculous sitting at home worrying whether or not I should call her – she was my oldest friend. We shared everything. Of course I should go and see her. But I’d only made it as far as the path to her front door. Because seeing Beth and Jack cosied up in their front room in the early evening I realised that I couldn’t intrude. Because I wasn’t intruding on two people I was intruding on three. On a family.
Things weren’t the same any more.
I was still dithering – wondering whether I should pluck up the courage to ring their bell and impose on them with my petty babyless worries – when I heard a noise from down the street. There had been very few cars passing at that time in the evening and there had been no pedestrians at all, so the noise put me on full alert and I stepped back into the cover of dense fir trees that ran along the side of Beth’s path.
Maybe it was just a dog-walker. Or a jogger. Stranger things had happened in the borough of Lewisham. But nevertheless it paid to be careful: after all there had been a cupboardful load of police signs in Eustace Fox’s house.
I peered out between the heavy branches and up towards the main road. Under the orange pools of the streetlights I could just make out that the noise had come from a lone man, with no dog and no running shoes, and he was walking in my direction. More ominous than the lack of dog and trainers was the fact that the man was dressed in a long dark trench coat that skimmed the pavement, topped off with a wide-brimmed black hat pushed low on his head. A man in disguise: a man who wanted to blend in to the night. A man who wanted to look like a villain in a graphic novel.
I lowered an overhanging branch and drew back further into the tree, sitting as far back on the wall as I dared to go without risking falling off and into Beth’s front garden. No one would see me now unless they specifically ruffled the branches to look for me. And who went about ruffling branches late at night?
Men in long black trench coats and wide-brimmed hats…
“I just can’t believe she was outside my flat when it happened,” said Bethan Smedley, 28, of Manor Avenue, Brockley. “I’m just so glad to be moving out of Brockley and into the safe, semi-detached-off-road-parking-suburbia of Surrey to raise my child…”
Hardly daring to breathe I waited as the soft tread of the Brockley Ruffler came nearer. And nearer. He had crossed over and was walking on my side of the road.
I listened hard for sounds of ruffling.
And then there was silence. He had stopped walking. I sensed he was very close, I could hear his breathing and then – cutting through the silence of the night – the loud grate of metal on pavement. What the bloody hell was that? Was that the sound of a weapon?
I gripped the tree. There was more silence. Could he see me? Was he watching me? The hairs on the back of my neck rose. What was the metallic noise and why was he silent now? Suppose the man had watched me hide in the tree and knew I was here? Suppose he had been watching me all the time I had been staring into Beth’s flat. Suppose he had been biding his time…
In the silence I heard him take a deep breath and then begin walking again. And then I saw him. He was straight in front of me. If I wanted to I could reach out and touch him. But I didn’t want to. And then, thank God, he walked past. He was gone, his footsteps padding, heavily now, down the road.
I let out a long, measured, silent breath. He hadn’t noticed me. I had escaped unruffled.
My legs tingled from cramp, my hands were sore with the effort of tightly gripping the tree trunk and I had two hamster-sized slugs on my thighs. I leant forward, still making sure I was well hidden by the foliage. The man had crossed the pavement and in a few seconds he would be gone from view, but before he disappeared he passed beneath the last street light on Manor Avenue. In a flash the streetlight illuminated a large metal police sign tucked under his arm. That was what had caused the metallic scrape. The fact that the man was carrying the enormous sign had meant his footsteps had been laboured since he’d passed me. It was Eustace Fox! I recognised him now, his gait, his build. It was so obvious, of course it was Eustace Fox. And when I recognised who it was I felt enormous overwhelming relief. Yes it was odd – creepy even – that he was going out at night and taking police signs off the streets in the area, but he was only doing it to protect the good image of Brockley.
Probably.
It was strange, I thought as I watched him disappear around the corner with his sign, this whole new secret Brockley that was opening up. It was as though I had been sleepwalking my first few years in the area when I’d been with Beth. All our going-out and the nights-in we’d had were so introverted that I’d never got to properly know the area or its people at all – and Beth probably less so than me: she would never talk to Babs and avoided the Mini Mart and Launderette: “in case I catch South London disease and there isn’t a cure”. But the more I was looking around at the place I lived in, the more it
fascinated me. There were sign-stealing toffs and handsome guerrilla gardeners and, of course, there was Babs’ criminal underworld…
I so wanted to tell Beth about all the things I was finding out. And about the fact that I’d just seen Eustace Fox out and about stealing police signs in the dead of night. Because, however much Beth found South London distasteful, she would love to know more about it. As long as she wasn’t immersed in it, as long as she had her get-out clause of Surrey. But how could I tell her what I had just seen? I could hardly knock on the front door now and say, ‘Hey, Beth, I was just hanging outside your flat when you’ll never guess what I saw…’
So, feeling rather sheepish, there was no option but to slip off the wall dispose of the monster slugs and, with dead legs, stagger back home as quickly as the pins and needles would let me, looking not unlike a cowboy who had spent far too long on a very wide horse.
Eight
With new determination I tried to focus on the forthcoming lodger situation, and the imminent interviews that would take place next week. Only after I had concentrated my energy on preparing for the lodger could I think about the secret society meeting, because, as Amanda’s magazines advised, it was important not to take on too much at once when in an emotionally fragile state. Piling on the activities would end up with a visit to a nice padded hospital where the nurses spoke softly and carried tasers.
So the secret society and Guy the artist and Eustace the sign-hoarder were pushed to the back of my mind and the new lodger situation took over.
In preparation for the lodger, every evening after work, like a modern day Cinderella, I got into my rags and trudged up the stairs to the top floor to clean. But, unlike my distant hazy childhood dream of being Cinderella, there was no fairy godmother hanging around on the landing and waiting to bibbity bobbity boo me into a Vera Wang dress and a blacked-out stretch limo. There was just Finley, watching disdainfully from the threshold as I sweated on my hands and knees in the bedroom and bathroom that were going to earn me nothing more romantic than £500 a month. Less tax.
