by Alan Spence
The keeper he had seen a little earlier passed by again.
‘Closin in a few minutes sir,’ he said.
As he headed out into the snow, his head felt clearer, though the taste of the wine was still sour in his mouth.
Greensleeves
The ice cream van it was with its harsh metallic jangle. She could only just recognise the tune for what it had once been. Not that coarse parody, stilted and mechanical, a tin brashness, a gaudiness of noise. But somewhere in it, all but lost, was an echo of something old. Still to be heard through all that distortion. The faintest of memories of times long past. She heard and she remembered. The tune was called ‘Greensleeves’.
She must have learned it first at school. So many years. Half a century and more. But further back than that it went, all sadness and grace, all minstrels and knights and ladies in high towers, imprisoned.
And this was a tower high enough. Twenty-two storeys of concrete and glass. Boxes on boxes, and hers right at the top. Half way to Heaven as the young man next door would say. People on the lift were always saying things like that. Whoever was nearest the door would press the buttons for everyone, repeating the numbers like a bingo-caller. Legs eleven they would say, or Lucky for some, thirteen. Like a language all of its own. For her floor it would be Top of the house, or All the twos, or sometimes Two little ducks. That was the one she liked best, though she thought a two was more like a swan. Two little swans. Swans were like the tune again, the way it used to be. Played on a flute, bending and gliding. Curve of the swan’s neck, dipping to meet its own reflection. Ripples on an old pond. Swansong.
At first she’d been terrified of the lifts, the rickety way they clanked and jarred from floor to floor. But gradually she’d become used to it although sometimes the fear came back, especially if she was alone. The lift would creak and shudder its way up and up and she would feel the emptiness below her, increasing as she got further from the ground, suspended, supportless, a sheer black drop into nothing at all.
But the lifts were about the only place she ever saw her neighbours. It was like passing through a strange town and just catching glimpses of the people who lived there. Descending or rising through layer after layer, and every layer a few more lives she would never know. Sometimes people were friendly, but there were times too when nobody would utter a word, all lost in themselves. Strange the atmosphere when nobody spoke, everyone staring straight ahead or looking down at their feet, anything rather than catch another’s eye. Sometimes it was just surliness, like the young man from the seventeenth floor with his neat suit and his newspaper and his rolled umbrella. He never seemed to talk to anybody. Others she thought were just shy, like the little apprentice from the ninth. More often though, the people who didn’t talk just seemed too tired or preoccupied to make the effort, coming home deadened and tense after a day’s work. Then at other times it was all bustle, people babbling away, children chattering and crowding on with footballs or scooters or bikes. Sometimes it was nice at weekends, people coming home in the evening, glad for the moment to be free. She liked it then, everybody was happier, more relaxed, more ready to talk and joke and laugh. But the lift would gradually empty towards the top and by the time it reached her floor she was usually alone again. Sometimes at the weekends though it became a bit chaotic, and the lifts were always breaking down because too many people would crowd on at once. And there was always sure to be somebody loud and drunk. At times it could be really disgusting, with people being sick or even using the lifts as toilets. And then the poor caretaker would have to clean up the mess. Only the other day the big Highlander from the fourteenth had caught somebody at that.
A young boy it had been.
‘Staunin therr bold as ye like,’ he’d said, ‘pishin in the coarner! So ah took um bi the scruff a the neck an rubbed is bloody nose in it! Told um if they acted lik wee dugs they’d get treated like them. Dirty wee tikes!’
She’d thought that was a bit cruel and maybe a bit coarse as well, but she couldn’t help laughing with the others. The Highlander was an ex-policeman. A fine big man she thought. She could imagine how angry he must have been at the boy. The lifts were always marked with their slogans, strange symbols, their own names, the names of their gangs. The Highlander called them cave-paintings, said the boys were animals. The slogans, scraped and painted, were spreading to other parts of the building. Even downstairs, right outside the caretaker’s office, where the sign said No Ball Games No Loitering, the walls had been daubed and sprayed. But at least it wasn’t as bad yet as other blocks she’d heard about. According to the papers and the television, some of them were already on the way to being slums. She’d even heard people on the bus talking about these blocks here as if they were slums. Two women it had been, sitting just behind her.
‘And I mean,’ one had said, ‘you should see some of the children, running about wild. Like wee savages. And as for some of the language!’
‘Mind you,’ the other had said, ‘you can’t really expect anything else. They’re all just shifted out from Partick and Govan, and all these dirty old tenements are just falling to bits. It’s not as if they’ve ever known anything better.’
She thought of her own home over in Ibrox. Near enough to Govan, but nowhere near to being slums. A decent red sandstone block, clean and solid and old, with tiles in the close and polished wooden banister-rails and stained-glass windows on every landing. The one on her landing had the head and shoulders of a young knight or squire, panels of twining flowers on either side, yellow, red and green, and up above patterns of red and blue squares. The whole close was always quiet, and the daylight that filtered through the windows was tinted and softened by the coloured glass. The back court itself, when seen through windows like these, was a bright painted garden, a landscape tinted and framed.
That was how she liked to remember it. Like another age. The stillness of a summer afternoon. It had been a fine building. Even the storm of a few years back hadn’t damaged it at all. But the area was due for redevelopment, so down it had to come to make way for a supermarket or a wider road or another block of flats.
One afternoon, a month or two after she’d moved, she’d been back in Ibrox to go to a jumble-sale. When she’d passed by they were pulling the building down, grey rain drizzling on the wasteground where half a street had been. She’d stood and watched as the workmen heaped spars of wood on a bonfire and bulldozers and lorries cleared away the rubble. The ground had shaken, a terrible rumble and crash as another wall crumbled and fell in a cloud of choking yellow dust. The dust cleared and the building stood, laid open like a doll’s house, and there where the second storey had been was one wall of her home, old layers of wallpaper peeling, tattered edges flapping in the wind. And where the fireplace had been was the back of a blackened hearth and a broken chimney and a line of soot left by every fire she’d ever burned. And the whole ruin flickered and wavered in the haze of the workmen’s bonfire, crackling and hissing and spitting in the rain.
A fire was something she missed here, the glow of it in the evening, the stories she could read into the dance of the flames. Now she had the television to look at and the under-floor heating to keep her warm. It was good though on winter mornings, not to have to rake out ashes and footer with paper and sticks and fumble with matches when her fingers were so numb and cold. But she did like a fire to sit by. Still, the heating was good for her plants. She had four, in pots along the windowsill – geranium, some ivy, morning-glory and a small spiky cactus – and all of them were thriving. In the geranium pot there were even some weeds flourishing, tiny blue flowers and a thick tangle of leaves. She hadn’t had the heart to cut them, she’d just let them grow like the others. She thought the seeds must have come drifting in through the window, and by some miracle had settled on this few inches of soil, and that was reason enough to let them live.
She stirred herself to get up and go into the kitchen. She filled a small milk-jug from the tap and, carrying it through,
watered each plant in turn and stood looking at them, content, the shapes of flower, stem and leaf, just so, against the evening sky. Somehow she always thought it added something to the landscape, to see it framed by such graceful shapes, to see them silhouetted against it. And the view from these windows was one thing she was grateful for, some consolation for all the rest. She would never tire of looking at it, the houses so far below stretching away on all sides. And there were the hills of Renfrewshire, away to the left across the river, and there to the right the hills of Dumbarton and Kilpatrick. And from here you could still see it was a valley, the river winding down through it, now hidden behind buildings, now glinting and flowing through shipyards or open ground, past tenements and factories, on through patches of green, traces of how it had been before, when all of it was farmland, or wild, like the hills.
Sometimes she was amazed at how much there was to see, how much there was going on all at once. She would be looking down at the blue train clattering out towards Balloch, she would follow it out till her eye was caught by faraway streams of traffic, then a gull would flap and glide up past the window, up into the open sky, the sky she could look at forever. All day long she could watch it flowing, watch the weather turn and change, lose herself in the colours and shapes. Now the clouds would come bulking and threatening up the valley, bringing the rain up steadily from the west, now the sun would light on a patch of hillside away across the river, now the clouds would drift on and the whole sky would clear.
The sun had gone now, down behind the hills, and all the streetlamps were lit. By the light of the lamps nearest, a few small boys were still playing football, directly below in the playing area, a fenced-in rectangle of red ash. They weren’t allowed to play on the grass but they didn’t usually pay much heed and the caretaker was forever chasing them. They were always up to something. If it wasn’t trampling the grass it was barging about the drying-area upstairs, or running and yelling in the entrance-hall, or playing in the lifts. One of their favourite tricks was to press all the buttons so that the next one to use the lift would stop at every floor. That was one that seemed to annoy everybody, and the boys were always in danger of being thumped for it.
A sudden rap at the letterbox made her jump. She wasn’t used to having unexpected visitors and she was flustered, wondering who it could be, as she hurried to answer it. It was the young man from next door.
‘Hello,’ he said, smiling. ‘Ah wis wonderin if ye had any change fur the telly.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Ah’ll just away an have a look.’
She came back fishing out coins from her purse.
‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘A two-shilling bit. Ah’ve actually got two but ah’ll be keeping one for maself.’
‘One’s jist fine,’ he said. ‘Thanks a lot. Here yar then, ten pence.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Ah don’t think ah’ll ever get used to this new pence business.’
‘Aye, it’s a lot a old nonsense,’ he said.
‘Is there something good on the television the night?’ she asked.
‘Ah don’t really know,’ he said. ‘We shove it oan at teatime an that’s it oan fur the night.’
‘Och well,’ she said, ‘it’s good company.’
‘It is that,’ he said. ‘Well, thanks again.’
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Cheerio!’
‘Cheerio!’
From the newspaper she saw that there was a quiz programme just finishing. Then she had a choice between a programme on current affairs, a comedy show and an old film. She decided to watch the film. She had seen it years before, but that didn’t matter. She could barely remember it. It was called Grand Hotel. She liked the old films best. She hadn’t been to the pictures in years.
She put her coin in the slot at the back of the television set. At least it would be enough to last till the end of the film. The night before, the money in the box had lasted right up to the beginning of Late Call. The young minister had started very earnestly. ‘Tonight,’ he’d said, ‘I want to talk specially to those of you out there who are old, or lonely, or sick.’ Then the money had run out. The minister had disappeared with a ping, shrunk to a white dot, nothingness, the screen suddenly black. That had given her a funny feeling. She’d thought of the minister in a studio somewhere, smiling at a camera, mouthing into a microphone, not knowing that she could no longer see or hear him. Those of you out there.
When she switched on the set, the quiz programme was coming to an end. The quiz-master was grinning. ‘And so, from all of us here to all of you out there, Good luck, Goodnight, God bless and See you next week. Bye!’ Then the theme music started and the credits rolled up. Glitter of prizes. Treasure. Applause from the studio audience. See you next week. All of you out there. That was what the minister had said. Out there. God bless.
The advertisements came on then. The first was for packets of powdered soup, an old-fashioned iron pot bubbling away over a blazing log fire, a scrubbed wooden table, a heap of fresh vegetables. Rain on the window, a hungry family, steam rising from the pot. ‘Country Fresh,’ said a deep, rich voice.
The next was for soap powder, though she always confused it with one for life insurance and another for margarine. It showed a young family, all dressed in white, leaping and running across fields in slow motion. There were shots of the sun, caught in the trees, gleaming modern buildings, an aeroplane, a white bird. The music was clean and bouncy and bright. A voice was saying ‘Tomorrow’s world . . . Today!’
She was startled by another rap at the door. This time she was even more confused. Two visitors in one evening. The place was never usually so busy.
It was a man selling locks.
‘Ah fit it fur ye as well,’ he said. ‘That’s included in the price.’
‘Well, there’s nothing really wrong with the lock ah’ve got,’ she said.
‘Ah but this is a special mortise-lock,’ he said. ‘It turns four times. They don’t make them any merr burglar-proof than these Missis.’
‘Well, I don’t really think . . .’ she said.
‘Please yerself Missis,’ he said. ‘But ah hope ye don’t mind me askin ye, d’ye live here yerself?’
‘Well, yes . . .’ she said.
‘Aye well,’ he said. ‘Ye only huv tae read the papers these days tae see the kind a things that’s happenin aw the time. D’ye know whit ah mean?’
‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘Maybe ah’ll think about it. But ah don’t know if ah can really afford it anyway.’
‘That’s nae bother,’ he said. ‘Ye kin pey it up every week.’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Ah’ll see.’
‘Fair enough Missis,’ he said. ‘Ah’m roon here every month. Ah’ll maybe catch ye in again sometime.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Cheerio.’
‘See ye,’ he said.
She closed the door and heard him rapping her neighbour’s letterbox.
The film had just started and she settled down to watch it, and as she watched she began to remember it. Not clearly, it was too long ago for that, only a vague stirring as the story unfolded, the hotel and all the people in it, never really knowing each other, all their lives so separate but intertwined. And there was Greta Garbo, all sad and lovely and wanting to be alone, and the thief she was to fall in love with. She remembered that. She remembered they wanted to run away together and she remembered that somehow he was to die. And there was the man with the strawberry birthmark. He just sat and watched it go on all around him, and all he ever said was ‘Grand Hotel. People come. People go. Nothing ever happens.’
At the advertisement break, she got up to put on the kettle for some tea. Then she heard the tune again, ‘Greensleeves’, clangouring through the night air, and she remembered she wanted to buy some milk from the van. In the evenings it came round every hour. She was glad of that; there were no shops open nearby; no Handy Stores or Indian grocers here.
She put on her coat against the chill
and hurried out to the lift. When she pressed the button, the light didn’t go on. She pressed again and again but it was no use. Only the click of the button and a dead, heavy clanking, echoing up from far below. Both lifts must have broken down. She pressed her face up close to the small window, peering into the shaft. She could hear people on the other floors banging the doors in annoyance and raising their voices. The cables just hung, swaying slightly in the gloom.
Sadly, she turned away. Even if she could have managed to get down the stairs in time to catch the van, she would never manage to get up again. Twenty-two flights was too much for her to cope with. Luckily she had never had to try. The lifts had always been fixed in time. But tonight it was getting late. The workmen might not come till morning, and she couldn’t take the chance. She was stuck here. Trapped. Twenty-two floors. All the twos. Two little ducks. Halfway to Heaven. Top of the house.
She stopped and looked out the landing window. The boys had all gone and the playing area was empty. Directly opposite was the next block, lit up against the dark. She remembered then how she’d seen it once, early on a winter morning. It had been so dark and foggy that she couldn’t make out the outline of the building, only the blackness and the lights. At first it had looked as if the lights were just suspended there, hanging in the air. Then she’d seen it as if the whole sky was one vast black wall, with these few lights set in it. That had given her the same empty, bottomless feeling she sometimes got on the lift.
She had left her door open and she could hear the television set blaring. The soap powder advert was on again. She recognised the music. Tomorrow’s world . . . Today. The light in the corridor was bright and cold.
