Falling for London

by Sean Mallen

  They listened sympathetically but with no commitment.

  Even if I was able to get an increase in my expense allowance, there were still critical issues to be dealt with. Isabella’s patience with Fuckland Buckland was at an end. Every time she pointed out the flat’s many deficiencies, and this was several times per day, I would respond that if my posting was extended, we would definitely look for something better. For now, it had the advantage of being only ridiculously overpriced as opposed to the ruinously overpriced alternatives in the neighbourhood. I pleaded with her to delay any precipitate action until we learned the status of my contract.

  And there was the not-so-small matter of Julia’s school. The new corporate owners of the Royal had promised minimal disruption, but key staff members were already quitting for new, more secure jobs. The building was in the midst of massive renovation, surrounded by scaffolding, with Julia’s class moved out of the building into a drafty, cold portable with minimal space. The homely but venerable and welcoming Royal was being transformed, the name soon to disappear as it morphed into a school for older children.

  When the chair of the parent council had had enough and pulled her girl out, Isabella took over the position and jumped into the fray, trying to hold the new owners’ feet to the fire to properly maintain the place. When her outrage peaked, she and her new American friend, Carolyn, marched into the office of our MP, the redoubtable Glenda Jackson, and demanded she do something. The two-time Oscar winner listened gravely and intoned in her mellifluous voice that she would look into it. Jackson later wrote a letter, to little effect.

  Julia had secured a place in another of the corporation’s schools for the fall, but her teacher, Miss Eisele, told us that she feared it might be too big for our daughter — she would be in one of several classes in her age group, with no guarantee that any of the friends she made at the Royal would be in hers.

  In sum, we did not know whether we were staying in London, where we would live, or where our daughter would go to school.

  As if that was not already enough, the sky fell in.

  It was now March. The daylight hours were growing noticeably longer, almost making you forget the bleakness of December when darkness fell at 4:00 p.m. There were days that were downright mild. No one moves to London for the weather, but I welcomed a winter where I rarely had to put on a heavy coat.

  As spring approached, the blossoming fellowships with other expatriates helped carry us through the cascades of teeth-grinding frustrations. To her everlasting credit and to our collective benefit, Isabella had worked hard to nurture friendships in London — through the school, through her sewing classes and her singing group. Among the best were Carolyn and Jon from New Jersey. Their older daughter, Addie, was a classmate of Julia’s, an astonishingly bright girl who had already read all of the Harry Potter books and was becoming a rare and treasured commodity: a friend who was an enlightening and positive influence. Julia shunned the Potter books at home, but Addie’s enthusiasm was turning her into a Hogwarts fanatic.

  Her mother, Carolyn, was both wryly funny and unassuming, belying her Ivy League law degree and sharp mind. She had given up a career as a corporate lawyer in favour of motherhood and a passion for clean, whole food that she expressed in an elegant blog.

  London is replete with expatriates. The lucky ones build friendships to help each other survive the experience. We were lucky. Carolyn, Jon, Roxane, and Dave, and a few other parents from the Royal, were now fast friends, our children equally drawn to each other.

  So, when Carolyn had to return to the U.S. to be present for her mother’s surgery, Isabella was keen to show support, offering to pick up her girls after school, give them supper, care for them until Jon got home from work, and even sleep over to assist with the morning run.

  At first I was dubious, thinking it all a bit too much. But soon I understood that it was a fine and good thing to do, an investment in a friendship that sustained and lasted.

  Jon negotiated with his employer to get mornings free and gratefully told Isabella that the sleepovers were not going to be necessary. But Julia had already set her heart on it, so they agreed to do one night. She packed three bags, enough for a week’s vacation: stuffed animals, toys, dolls, and even a few clothes.

  On Day 2, I joined them after work for supper at Carolyn and Jon’s apartment, a meal prepared by that other key member of our expatriate band, our Calgary friend Roxane. Something about being fellow foreigners in a great city of the world brought out the generosity in us all.

  There was to be no sleepover this night, but Julia displayed adroit methods of obstructionism in avoiding our calls to go home. We knew Jon was desperate to get his kids to bed, but our daughter continually ignored our calls to get dressed — lying on the ground, finding new things to play with. Both of us were on the verge of blowing up before we finally got her out the door.

  All was forgotten upon arrival at Fuckland Buckland.

  I slipped my key into the front door and expertly wiggled it just so, in order that it would not jam — a skill learned through several weeks of trial and error in which I was frequently trapped outside with an armload of groceries.

  Flicking on the hallway light, I admired again the Ikea shade that we had bought at our own expense to disguise the bare bulb. It gave us a clear view of the hallway that was growing filthier by the day, thanks to the renovations upstairs. The dirt-coloured carpet was now coated in a thick layer of construction dust.

  More cracks had appeared in the ceiling above our door, the ancient plaster suffering from the incessant pounding from above. We had taken little comfort from the assurances of the building management company that it was in no danger of collapse. It was now two months since the renovator had promised to put up battens to assuage our foolish concerns of danger, and they had yet to arrive.

  It had been a long day and Julia was going to bed late for a school night, so it was with some weariness that I opened the door and flicked on the light.

  Our jaws dropped.

  The grand reception room was a shambles. A huge patch of Victorian-era plaster had given way in the ceiling and collapsed. The dining table, sofas, and carpets were layered with rubble.

  Our laptops, rashly left open on the dining-room table, were coated with a thick layer of dust. The same dust storm had turned the puke-coloured carpet the same shade of dun grey as the hallway. The overhead lighting fixture had swung from its position in the centre of the ceiling and gouged a divot out of the wall — in exactly the spot where my beloved daughter’s head would normally be positioned as she watched television.

  “What the …?” was my Shakespearean comment.

  Julia screamed, “MY LIFE IS RUINED!”

  She ran into the closet, emerging with an umbrella that she opened to protect against any further calamities from above.

  “I DON’T WANNA LIVE HERE ANYMORE. WE’RE GONNA DIE!” she wailed, cowering under her bumbershoot.

  Isabella was euphoric, seeing it as our ticket to break the lease and escape.

  “YES! Now we can get out of this dump!”

  I saw her point. But also saw no reason to celebrate.

  “Uh … I’m thinking this is just going to be one giant headache.”

  I got on the phone with Upstairs Landlord, told him what had happened, and said I would forward pictures. He sounded as stunned as us, told me not to bother with the pics, and added that he would be there first thing in the morning.

  Each step into the room revealed a new aspect of the catastrophe. Both our laptops were covered in dust and bits of rubble. The bright red rug Isabella had bought at Ikea to give the room a splash of colour was now a dusty grey. I took a long look at the dent in the wall that was gouged out by the light fixture that would have clobbered Julia had we not been out for the evening. Shock began to turn to anger.

  We forwarded pictures of the disaster to friends back home, the landlord, and the building management company, which had so patronizingly told us
that there was no way the ceiling over the door could collapse. I reminded them of the promised battens that had never appeared.

  There had been no sign of cracking in the reception room ceiling, no warning of the imminent cave-in. It was only Isabella’s generous offer of help for a friend that had us out of the flat when the sky came tumbling down.

  Sleep was impossible. Julia was too frightened to be in her room alone so she crawled in between us. As she snoozed, Isabella and I stayed up for hours talking about the implications of what had happened and a plan of attack. But we were in a foreign country, with only a passing understanding of our rights.

  Somehow, I dozed off for a brief, unrefreshing sleep. I awoke before dawn and stared blankly at the ceiling for a time, wondering what the fuck could possibly happen next. Radiating out from one corner of the ceiling was a crack in the plaster. That’s what the fuck could happen next.

  We needed to get someone official to declare that the flat was dangerous and uninhabitable, and in the meantime the guys upstairs needed to stop work before they brought down more disaster upon our heads. I fired off an email to Upstairs Landlord, asking politely that his workers down tools until we sorted out the potential dangers, a message I passed along to his guys when I heard them arriving. They looked at me blankly, shrugged, and carried on up the stairs. Within minutes their hammering continued.

  Stepping over the rubble, I made my way into the dust-covered kitchen to make a bit of breakfast for us all. Isabella took Julia to school while I awaited Upstairs Landlord.

  He arrived, grim-faced, striding past me into the reception room to survey the mess.

  “Have you asked your guys to stop working?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “I think you should tell them to stop.”

  “No.”

  Fuck this.

  “Then I’m going to have to call the police.”

  Boom. The floodgates opened to reveal all that had been churning in his mind overnight.

  “Then call the police!” shouted Upstairs Landlord. “No insurance company in the world will cover that … we weren’t even working when it came down.”

  The ferocity of his response put me back on my heels. I managed to blurt out something about how we just wanted our costs covered for the damage and our accommodations while we searched for a new place.

  “No … no way,” he ranted.

  Now, I found myself trying to calm him down.

  “I suppose this is stressful, but we’re not trying to gouge you. We just want —”

  Another interruption: “I’M NOT STRESSED BY THIS,” he screamed. “You want, my guys can clean it up and patch it in a day. What’s stressing me is that you’re trying to use me to get out of your lease!”

  Now I became pissed, reminding him that we were the ones who had the ceiling cave in and that it was only luck that had us out of the place when it all happened, otherwise we might all be in the hospital. This did not cause the conversation to flow any more fruitfully. After a few minutes of back and forth he strode out.

  I sent an email to Isabella: “Huge argument with Upstairs Landlord.”

  Her response: “We need legal advice ASAP.”

  I placed a green garbage bag over a dusty chair, brushed the detritus off my laptop, and Googled: “legal advice Camden.”

  The first place that came up said that due to budgetary reductions its hours had been slashed — not open until 1:00 p.m. I called the second legal clinic and got an answering machine that advised they opened at 10:00 a.m. It was already 10:10.

  My political instincts kicked in and I looked up the local Camden councillor. Turns out that these are only part-time jobs, but I managed to get through to a sympathetic assistant, who promised to call a “building control” officer, who would come to inspect and if necessary shut down an unsafe workplace.

  By this time Isabella had returned. A friend from her sewing class put us in touch with a lawyer, who gave a quick and free consult over the phone: very difficult to break a lease, even in the face of this kind of catastrophe, but we could make a claim in small claims court for our damages.

  As she talked, stray pieces of plaster continued to drop from the ceiling. We started coughing with all the dust in the air.

  By now her jubilation from the previous night had been replaced with cold anger.

  “I thought if our ceiling fell on us that people would want to help.”

  She called the police, who promised to arrive within the hour, then they called back to say they would not be coming but would forward our case to Camden building control — the same people the councillor’s assistant contacted.

  I sent out another email to friends and colleagues, complete with a photo gallery:

  “Here’s what you get for $3,450/month in London: cracked ceilings, drafty windows, cacophonous rattling washer-dryer, filthy common area, lady downstairs who plays the same music every night at 11:00 p.m. and who thinks English neo-fascists have great ideas, and now, the coup de grâce, a collapsed ceiling in the living room.”

  My Queen’s Park pal Randy wrote back immediately: “You should dust more. Maybe buy a Swiffer.”

  Some eighteen hours after I had emailed him about the disaster, the landlord finally picked up a phone to call.

  “I’m sorry but it appears your flat is ruined,” I advised. He admitted that he had never spoken to Upstairs Landlord, despite all my reports of cracked ceilings and debris falling through the fireplace.

  I told him that we now wanted to leave the flat as soon as feasible and asked if he would be willing to allow notice of less than two months, given the calamity that had befallen us. He bobbed, weaved, changed the subject, and when I persisted, claimed that he needed to check with his estate agent. My bullshit detector moved into the red zone. He was not going to budge, but did not want to say it.

  In early afternoon, the official from Camden Building Control arrived on the scene, displaying all the decisiveness of a career bureaucrat.

  I wanted the flat declared as dangerous and unfit for human habitation, but he hesitated. “Well, the reception room would certainly appear uninhabitable,” he declared tentatively, gazing at the pile of rubble, the hole in the ceiling plaster and the bits that continued to fall. No shit, Einstein.

  But he seemed dubious about the rest of the flat, despite the cracks in the ceilings both in the master bedroom and outside the door in the hallway, despite a ceiling collapse in the bathroom the year before, and despite the plaster avalanche that had just befallen. I explained that I was not a structural engineer, but two collapses with other cracks showing might possibly suggest there was a risk of another.

  When we persisted, he asked for a broom and used the handle to probe the bedroom ceiling. With a gentle touch, it poked right through the plaster directly above our bed.

  “Hmmm,” he observed, evidently unconvinced unless it all caved in right in front of him.

  “Well, it’s up to your landlord to call a surveyor to get a professional opinion.”

  I dialed the landlord’s number, got him on the phone, and handed it over to Mr. Building Control, who in turn advised our landlord that he needed to call in a surveyor immediately. It seemed, listening to one side of the conversation, that our landlord was in no particular hurry, clearly not intimidated by this flaccid functionary from local government.

  We heard a commotion in the hallway outside. Upstairs Landlord’s workers were busily putting up drywall over the cracked plaster over our door. This would be the work they had promised to do two months’ earlier, work that the building management had said was merely to put our foolish colonial minds at rest because there was no chance in hell of any plaster falling.

  Mr. Building Control went out to talk to them and then upstairs to Upstairs Landlord, returning with the renovator’s complaint that we were the real problem in the whole affair — that we were obstructing his efforts to conduct repairs in our flat.

  Ah yes, of course, clearly it was ent
irely our fault that the plaster in our overpriced, crappy flat collapsed and we were so sorry to be of such inconvenience to the lying, flat-flipping scoundrel, and we must certainly apologize for ruining the day of our absent, uninterested landlord. Utterly unreasonable of us to expect some kind of restitution and support after having the apartment rendered uninhabitable, our laptops possibly wrecked, our furniture and belongings despoiled, and our lungs filled with toxic dust.

  After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I pushed him for some kind of official declaration that we could not safely live in the place. He remained doubtful of the dangers in the bedroom. It was too much for Isabella. She grabbed the broom, hopped up precariously on the bed and furiously poked at the ceiling, easily creating several more holes to reinforce the point.

  Out of breath, red of face, and teetering on the mattress, she glared at Mr. Building Control and said, “SEE?”

  Unimpressed, he said he would write a report on what he had observed.

  Our journey through British bureaucracy and what might laughingly be described as the justice system for tenants had led us exactly nowhere. The pounding above continued, our landlord was evading responsibility, the contractor who had caused the cave-in was blaming us, and no one seemed to give a shit. Oh, and we had no place to stay.

  Searching for temporary accommodations proved tricky. The bed and breakfast down the street was booked, as was another nearby hotel close to the Swiss Cottage Tube stop. How was it that no rooms could be found in north London on a Tuesday in March?

  Finally, I found a discount hotel near the Belsize Park Tube that had a room for two nights. I stayed in the ruined flat to pack while Isabella went to pick up Julia and Carolyn’s girls at school.

  While she was out, she started firing email rockets, arguing that we should refuse to allow Upstairs Landlord to start repairs until we got satisfaction on our demands.

  “I don’t think it helps our cause to be obstructive,” I responded with what I thought was a reasonable tone.