by Alex Marwood
‘Would you care to repeat that?’
‘I said,’ he says, slowly, so she can’t mishear, ‘that I’ll come in my own good time.’
‘So you’re refusing to make the property habitable?’
‘I didn’t say that. I said you’d have to wait until I can get there.’
‘I don’t, you know. Shall I call out Dyno-Rod myself? I could do that, and give you the bill. Only I don’t have any money.’
Well why don’t you pay them out of all the cash you’ve saved by paying me a peppercorn rent all these years, he thinks. Christ, why can’t you just die?
‘Oh, just go to your hotel,’ he snaps. ‘Whatever. Who cares what you do, anyway?’
‘I’m sure the council will care.’
‘You seem to think the council has magical powers,’ he says. ‘It’s a local council, not the United Bloody Federation of Planets.’
‘Don’t you dare swear at me! If you want to go on the bad landlord register —’
‘There’s no such thing,’ he snaps, and hangs up.
He takes his specs off and polishes them with the hem of his T-shirt. Bloody Vesta Collins. I’m forty-six years old and she’s still talking to me like she did when I was twelve. Busybodying about, telling me what to do and forgetting whose house it is.
I wish she’d bloody die, he thinks. She’s old enough, for God’s sake. She’s been retired and hanging about the place all day for bloody ever. Never been anywhere, never done anything, just sat there in my basement wagging her finger. There’s no use for her. Bloody old woman and her sensible shoes and antimacassars. Why can’t she just take the eight grand and bugger off? Nobody wants her. It’s not like she’s got any reason for staying round here. No family, no kids, no job. Nothing. It’s just pure selfishness.
He hauls himself off the couch and groans as he does so. His weight is really getting to him, these days. He hasn’t been near a doctor or a set of scales in years. The last time he did, he had passed the twenty stone mark and he knows that nothing has come off since. His arches fell years ago, and his knees seem to bend and unbend more slowly with each passing month. I’ll be on a stick soon, he thinks, and I’ll still be subsidising that old bag to go on her holidays in Ilfracombe. Says she doesn’t have the money for a plumber, but she’s never short of cash for a wash-and-set on a Wednesday, is she?
The old bitch has given him indigestion. He stomps through to the bathroom and swigs a tablespoon of Gaviscon straight from the bottle, waits for the advertised cooling that never comes, takes another swig and lets out a burp. Right, he thinks. I suppose I’d better call Dyno-Rod. I don’t want her calling the council on me.
He goes to the computer to look up the number, Vesta nagging at the back of his mind. She doesn’t seem to be able to take a hint, he thinks. I’ve given her enough, over the last couple of years. The cockroaches and the leaking bathtub upstairs, the burglary, the Weedol in the herbery… that rat was a stroke of genius. Why on earth does she stay? I wouldn’t. I’d’ve been gone months ago. She’s stubborn, just bloody stubborn. Looks like I’m going to have to step up my game before I end up having to lay out a grand on a new boiler for the old bitch.
I wish she’d just bloody die and get out of my hair, he thinks again as he picks up the phone to dial, then his finger stills over the keypad. The water heater, he thinks. Bloody ancient. The Corgi man said as much the last time he was in for servicing. Said it wasn’t far off failing its MOT completely.
Maybe, he thinks, I can help it on its way.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Vesta doesn’t go to a hotel. She can’t bear to not know what’s happening to her home, can’t leave Cher, can’t face the thought of not having her things around her. It’s a miserable evening spent moving as many of her belongings as aren’t soiled to the front room and proofing the door with blankets against the stench. But still the smell elbows its way through. In the toilet, the lavatory overflows with its backed-up load and the floor is an inch deep in filth. Even the bath has regurgitated, and lies half full with stagnant sludge. No point in trying to clear it up. While the drains are still blocked, any attempts to deal with the results will be rendered pointless the moment someone upstairs forgets themselves and flushes their cistern. It would be like cleaning the Augean stables. Literally.
She eats with Cher: feeds her Heinz tomato soup and a soft white bread roll, spoon by spoon, crumb by crumb, letting her suck her way to nutriment through swollen lips, then comes down to her stinky basement and crawls, exhausted, into the makeshift bed she’s made on the settee. She leaves the front window open, to try to get some clean air into the room, and falls, despite the unfamiliar sounds out in the street, into an uncomfortable doze some time before midnight.
She dreams that she’s up in Cher’s room and they have barricaded the door with the bed. Someone is trying to get in. The door handle rattles in its socket and fingernails scratch, scratch, scratch at the panels. And they can hear breathing. Breathing, breathing, breathing.
And then, in the dark, something tells her that the sounds are real.
Wakefulness runs through her like cold water. She’s lying on her back, knees drawn up under her blanket, scanning the night with her fading ears. She looks around, wildly, can’t place where she is for a moment before she remembers what has happened.
It’s all right, she thinks, and settles back against the cushion. Just a sound in the street and a silly dream, someone passing by. You’re not used to it, you’ve been sleeping in the same bedroom for so long you’re bound to —
A sound from the back of the flat. Unmistakable. The sound of her back door opening.
No. No, no, no. It’s just your mind. Just —
A floorboard creaks in the kitchen. Someone is coming in.
Vesta’s body defaults into foetal position on the cushions. She pulls the blanket uselessly over her face, as though it will protect her. Oh, no. Oh, no, no. What do I do? I can’t get out. He’s in there between the outside and me. I’m old and stiff. If I try to run up the stairs, he’ll catch me while I’m still trying to get the door unlocked…
Slowly, slowly, she works her way off the couch and creeps to the door. Maybe, at least, I can hold it shut. If he comes this way I’ll sit against it, push with all my weight, and maybe he won’t be able to…
She presses an ear against the door, holds her breath. She’s wearing nothing but a nightie, her dressing gown still hanging on the back of the bedroom door, her clothes lost in the darkness. Maybe if I turn the light on, make a noise? Maybe he’ll go away, if he knows I’m here?
And maybe he’ll come looking for me.
He’s in the kitchen, but the lights are off. She’s emptied the lower cupboards, piled pans and serving dishes and cake tins on the surfaces in case the flood should worsen. It’s crowded and chaotic in there, hard to navigate, especially in the dark. She hears some extremity of him catch something, hears it fall to the floor with a metallic clatter that seems to go on for ever and ever.
Silence. Oh, God, he’s listening.
Vesta freezes. Holds her breath, hears the pulse race in her ears. Shut up, shut up. I can’t hear anything. I don’t know where he is.
In the house, nothing moves. She doesn’t even know if Collette is in, but there’s no sound from upstairs. From the window a slight draught of air suggests that it’s late. There’s no one to hear me, she thinks. No one’s awake. Oh, God, why did I put those bars on the window? I thought they would keep people out. I never thought that they would keep me in.
The intruder moves again, more boldly. He must have decided that no one has heard him. He thinks no one’s going to come. Just like that time before. No one came then. Why would they now?
He’s moving away, towards the back of the house.
What’s he doing? There’s only the bathroom back there. There’s nothing there.
And once he’s found that out, he’ll come this way.
Suddenly, as the first wave of panic d
ies back, she feels a surge of defiance. Hold on, she thinks. This is my home. It’s the same man who broke in before. Come back for more. Come back to get more stuff off the little old lady. From my house.
Well, he’s not bloody going to. If he thinks he can just carry on trying to scare me, he can damn well think again. My mum and dad went through the Blitz in this house. I lived here when it was nothing but junkies and dealers up this way, when half the houses were squats – and no one dared try coming in here. What’s happened to you, Vesta? Where’s your backbone?
She casts about for a weapon with which to defend herself. The fire irons, bright polished brass, still live by the fireplace even though it was converted to gas in the 1960s. I’ll give the bugger a clout, she thinks, and send him on his way. Use the same poker he used to smash my mother’s statues with. That’s what I’ll do. There’re enough victim women in this house without me adding to it. I’ll give him a thick ear and a nasty fright, and he won’t dare try it again.
But despite her defiant thoughts, she lacks the courage to cross the room and leave the door unguarded. She has visions of him coming through as she bends in to the fireplace, of being on her before she can straighten up. She leans against the door and scans the stuff she’s brought through, looking for something closer to hand. Her eyes fall on the iron, sitting now on the gateleg table, heavy, old-fashioned, perfect.
She snatches it up, wraps the flex round her hand and listens again at the door. Yes, he’s still out back, in the bathroom. She can hear him moving about in there, a clink of metal on metal that she cannot place. She comes out into the sweaty corridor, moves stealthily up towards him.
It stinks, now the doors are open. Forty degrees of heat and standing sewage don’t make happy bedfellows. She’d be throwing up if the intervening hours hadn’t hardened her stomach. I bloody hate you, Roy Preece, she thinks. First thing tomorrow, if the drain people aren’t here by eight o’clock, I’m going straight round to yours and I’m going to hammer your door down till you bloody well come here and fix it.
More strange sounds. She sees now that he has a torch, and that he’s rested it on the sink to light whatever it is he is doing in the back of the room. All there is there is the old water heater, big and chunky and forty years old, hanging off the outside wall so its exhaust pipe has somewhere to vent. What’s he doing? What on earth is he doing?
Vesta creeps barefoot into the kitchen, recoils at the feel of greasy muck beneath her soles. She treads on something semi-solid, has to bite back a moan of disgust as it squidges up between her toes. It’s slippery underfoot, like wearing leather soles on ice. Now that she’s near him, can see the vague, gigantic shape of him in the darkness, she feels less certain. Grips the handle of the iron tighter and holds it in front of herself like a shield. From the dim light that illuminates the room, she can see that the man is huge: that he fills the space as though it were a cupboard. He’s got a bag of stuff at his feet, and something that looks like a wrench in his hand. And here I am, she thinks, in nothing but a nightie, thinking I’m going to see him off.
For a moment, she considers turning back. I could still make it, if I’m quiet, she thinks. Go out through that open kitchen door and nip out through the garden. Go round the front and knock up the others and… and get them to help. God’s sake, Vesta, you’re sixty-nine, not thirty-nine.
Then he turns to get something from his bag, and catches sight of the white cotton that covers her thighs.
Time slows to a crawl. Vesta feels herself leave her body for a moment, sees herself from behind, a frail elderly woman quailing as the giant unfurls itself in the gloom. Sees herself dying, here among the sewage, being found tomorrow morning, grey and gone and rotting.
She lunges, swings the iron at the end of her arm like a mace, and feels it connect. Hears an ‘oof’ from the burglar and is surprised by how suddenly her forward motion is halted by the solidness of his skull.
Her feet go out from under her. She flies through the air like a cartoon character, arms flailing, and hits the back of her head.
The world goes black.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Collette wakes to the sound of wailing. A woman’s voice, high with panic, calling, ‘No! No! Oh, God, no, no, no, wake up! Oh, God, wake up! Help! Please! Somebody help me!’
Vesta. She’s out of her bed in her top and leggings – her escape clothes – before she is really awake. She has to stop for a second and rest a hand against the wall as the blood rushes to her head and Hossein’s footsteps thunder across her ceiling. Then she slips her feet into her Keds and meets him at the bottom of the stairs.
Hossein’s face is still slack with sleep, his black hair sticking up in tufts. ‘What’s going on?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is it Vesta?’
‘I think so.’
‘I heard someone shouting. Is everyone okay?’
They jump. Thomas has followed Hossein down the stairs so silently that neither of them had known he was there. He looks exactly as he always looks – checked lawn shirt, tan slacks, slightly tinted specs – as though he merely goes into suspended animation at night rather than sleeping. ‘Is someone hurt?’
Hossein frowns and says something in Farsi. Strides past him and bangs on Vesta’s door with the flat of his hand. ‘Vesta? Are you okay? Vesta?’
Whether she’s okay or not, she doesn’t hear him. Just keens into the night, ‘Oh, God, oh somebody help me! Wake up! Wake up! I can’t lift him! Wake up!’
Collette looks over her shoulder, expects the elusive Gerard Bright to put his head out of the door and stare at them with those red-rimmed eyes of his. But the door stays closed. The phone is off the hook, she notices, the receiver dangling by its cord. Funny, she thinks. How did that happen?
They stare at each other in the dimness of the hallway. Thomas tries the door handle, impotently, as though he thinks it will have magically become one that turns. ‘Back door?’
Hossein shakes his head. ‘It will be worse. I reinforced the frame after the burglary.’
He raises his hand and bangs again. ‘Vesta!’ Launches himself bodily at the door and bounces off it, clutching his shoulder. Tries again.
‘Has anybody got a key?’ asks Thomas.
Hossein gives him the sort of wide-eyed head waggle you see in nightclubs just before trouble kicks off. ‘Has anybody got a key to yours?’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ says Collette. She pushes past Thomas, looks at the door, then stands on one foot and kicks out at the lock with the other. Hossein hears something splinter. Collette kicks again.
She’s half my size, thinks Hossein. This is shaming. ‘Hold on,’ he says, and takes her place. Copies her with his big bare foot, all his strength behind him. The lock gives under his third kick, and the door flies back and bangs against the wall.
Collette is past him and halfway down the stairs before he’s regained his balance. ‘Vesta?’ she calls. ‘Vesta, where are you?’
Hossein pauses to switch on the light. Collette is at the bottom of the stairs, looking wildly about her. The smell hits them like a steam train. Faeces and urine and… something dead. Sweet and dead, like it’s been that way a while. Hossein walks past her and she follows him towards the back of the house, where Vesta’s voice comes from.
She’s in the bathroom, crumpled on the floor, with what looks like a steam iron sticking out obscenely from between her thighs. She’s brown and green with filth, her hair matted down with something unspeakable. Her eyes plead wildly. ‘Help me,’ she says again. ‘Oh, God, I can’t move him. He’s too heavy. I can’t – he’ll drown.’
Behind her, in the gloom of the unlit bathroom, the top of a pair of gigantic buttocks moons at them over the waistband of a pair of drooping sweat pants. The owner is on his knees, bent forward in prayer position, face down in the overflowing toilet pan. He isn’t moving.
‘I hit him,’ sobs Vesta. ‘I hit him! I didn’t know it was him. How could I kn
ow it was him? It’s the middle of the night. What’s he doing here? He shouldn’t be here! And then I slipped. In this… this… it’s… slippy, and I banged my head, and when I came round, he was… oh, God, I’ve killed him! I tried to get him out. I tried. But I can’t shift him. Oh, God, help him! Somebody! Help him!’
‘Shit,’ says Hossein.
Never a truer word. ‘You can say that again,’ says Collette.
Vesta tugs hopelessly at the back of the man’s marquee of a T-shirt. It stretches and compresses the flesh within so that the dimpled buttocks seem to swell and grow. The body bumps slightly and the head bobs in the toilet pan.
‘Is that the Landlord?’ asks Collette.
‘I think so,’ says Thomas. ‘It looks like him.’
They’ve all followed that backside up a set of stairs at some point in their lives. It’s not a memory you easily forget.
‘What’s he doing here?’ asks Thomas.
Vesta looks up at them in astonishment. Tears have etched pink streaks through her green-brown facemask and her eyes shine white in the half-light. ‘Don’t just… Help me, for God’s sake!’
Thomas looks at Hossein, who looks at Collette. Collette looks back at Thomas and folds her arms across her body. Jigs uneasily from foot to foot. There’s no way she wants to touch him. What if someone decides he needs mouth-to-mouth?
‘How long has he been like that?’ asks Thomas, echoing her thoughts.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know!’
‘Well, how long were you out for?’
Vesta suddenly shows a flash of her old self. Rolls her eyes and tuts. ‘Well, if I knew that, I wouldn’t have been unconscious, would I?’
‘Sorry,’ says Thomas. ‘It’s just – well, it makes a difference. To, you know, whether it’s worth…’
The man in the toilet shows no signs of stirring. His face is buried to the ears in effluent and his arms are slack, his fingers trailing across the lino like sausages. The pants have ridden down in the front and Collette can glimpse an apron of fat that extends halfway down his thighs.
