Field Study

by Rachel Seiffert

  Blue

  The boy arrives early. He is a young man, really; older than he looks. Soft down on his upper lip, no bum on his legs. He has come for the keys, a wad of crumpled notes in his pocket. The neighbour takes him across the landing, keen to get the matter over with. The boy looks the flat over, unhurried, but he’s excited about something. It shows in his skin. The flat is a shell with curtains. In the kitchen the cupboards hang off the walls.

  – You square with Malky?

  The boy nods, the neighbour leaves.

  Kenny hadn’t planned to stay in the flat until he’d done it up, but now he’s here he doesn’t want to leave. He lays his blankets on the floor, takes the curtains off the window and wraps himself up in a warm corner. Streetlights flood the room, the long, bright shape of the window all along one wall. Kenny lies, eyes wide open in his scratchy, cosy curtain nest.

  He spends his first two days scrubbing the place down. The kitchen floor makes him retch; the stink of the muck in the corners where the hot, soapy water has soaked in. He pours neat bleach into a bucket and sets to work. His fingers itch all night, but the clean floor in the morning inspires him to scrub the walls and the window frames, too. That afternoon he goes round friends and family for donations. His granny gives him an old washing machine, and he gets a fridge and a cooker cheap from a friend of his brother’s.

  Kenny’s dad brings the whole lot over in a borrowed van, and they haul everything up the stairs together. Between appliances they drink cans of lager in the kitchen and watch telly on the portable that Kenny’s mum gave him. Her own one from the kitchen. At midnight, they decide to plumb in the washing machine and give it a trial run with the curtains. Kenny’s dad leaves after the cycle finishes, too far gone to drive the van.

  The third night Kenny sleeps soundly. The windows are open and his brother’s sleeping bag undone, night air on his skin.

  In the morning, Kenny climbs up through the attic onto the roof. He spreads his curtains out to dry, half bricks on each corner. He’s not too steady on the sloping tiles, but he enjoys the height and the sun. He looks out over the city for a while, tracing the path of the river, identifying landmarks. Kenny’s never lived so close to the centre before.

  – What you doing?

  A girl stands by the chimney, same red hair as the neighbour across the hall. The sun is behind her head, so Kenny can’t look at her straight.

  – What you doing?

  – Minding my own.

  – What you doing with the curtains?

  – Feathering my nest.

  – What?

  – Never mind.

  The girl shifts from one foot to the other and, when Kenny ignores her, she turns on her heel and goes.

  Kenny lies back down again, glad to be left alone. He allows himself a mid-morning kip to make up for his short night.

  A couple of days’ work gives him enough money for some paint, a duvet and a mattress. He finds some chairs to go with the table he hauled out of a skip, and buys some pots and pans with his giro. Kenny has enough stuff in the flat now to live quite comfortably. Part of him misses the emptiness, the adventure of making do, but he doesn’t think Maria would like it. He needs some rugs for the floor. He has been here for two weeks.

  He calls her from the phone box on the corner, but she knows already. Someone told someone, who told someone else, who told her sister, who told her yesterday. Maria is difficult to talk to this evening and Kenny can’t think straight. He can hear her sipping her tea, tapping her rings on the mug, and his money is running out. He invites her round, giving her directions over the pips. Kenny hangs up and can’t remember if she said she was coming or not.

  The bulb in the bathroom has gone, so he has his bath in the dark. He can hear the people downstairs arguing, even when he puts his head underwater. They keep going until his bath gets cold. He puts the fire on when he gets into bed, and wakes up in the night with a dry mouth and gummy eyes. The people downstairs are shouting again, but Kenny drops off before they finish their row.

  The day is endless. Kenny has the TV on for company. He buys some food to cook for tea and a bottle of wine, but then he remembers that Maria might not want to drink, so he goes out again and buys some orange, just in case, and some candles, which he fixes into a clean ashtray. He sits on the bed for a long time and then goes out to buy a newspaper, but he can’t concentrate. He smokes too much and opens all the windows to get rid of the smell. He tries to have an afternoon nap, but watches TV instead. He doesn’t want to cook until she comes, but he’s starving. He runs out to the shops to get some crisps. The light is going out of the day and when he is back in the flat again, Kenny worries that Maria has come and gone while he was out.

  When the buzzer goes he doesn’t get up immediately. He stands next to the entry phone and counts to ten, and then he answers.

  – It’s me.

  – Okay.

  Maria takes a while to get up the stairs. When she gets to the second floor, Kenny can watch her over the banister.

  He hasn’t seen her for over a month and she’s showing now. Skinny woman with a big belly. She is walking like his sister did when she was pregnant, only her back is still straight and her legs look good. She pauses on the landing and looks up.

  – Do you want a hand?

  – I’m okay.

  When she gets to the top floor, she stands in front of him for a couple of seconds to get her breath and he doesn’t know what to do.

  – Can I come in, then?

  Kenny is proud of the flat, clean and bright with its improvised furniture. He shows her everything, lingering in the kitchen with its washing machine, hurrying through the bedroom with its double bed. Maria is quiet, nodding, non-committal. Kenny wants her to smile at him and say nice things like it’s good to have a gas cooker.

  – I’m starving.

  He gets her a cup of tea and a biscuit to tide her over, and she sits in the kitchen while he cooks. He asks after her family and she smiles while she answers, but she’s not being friendly. There are long silences between them, and Kenny tries to look busy with the food. He sets the table and she sits with her hands folded on her belly. Then he opens the wine but says she can have orange if she wants, and she says a glass of water will do.

  – I didn’t ask you to do any of this, you know?

  – No, I know.

  This throws him a bit, but Maria is more relaxed now and they eat. Kenny has some wine and feels a bit better.

  – I wanted to do it.

  Maria nods but she looks out of the window. He thinks she might be laughing at him, but the moment passes. He spoons the peaches out of the can into bowls and they both help themselves to ice cream. She has a sip or two of his wine without asking, and then she picks up the peach tin from the side and spoons more ice cream into the leftover syrup and eats it from the can, leaning back in her chair. She tells him about work and friends, and he tells her about family, and neither of them mention the flat or the baby.

  Maria says she wants to watch TV, but when she sees that there is only the double bed to sit on, she changes her mind. They stand in the narrow hallway, both embarrassed and then Maria says she wants to go home.

  Kenny helps her into the cab. Maria looks like a kid on the back seat. A kid with a pillow stuffed up her jumper. She smiles at him and then she’s off.

  Kenny lies in the bath and can’t cry. He brings the candles in to the bathroom, dripping water through the flat. He drinks the rest of the wine, rolls a damp joint that is a job to smoke but is just the trick, and he can forget it all until the morning.

  It’s Sunday and he goes to his mum’s for dinner. He eats a lot and helps his dad wash up, then he falls asleep on the sofa watching the sport. His mum asks if he wants to stay over, but he’s too old to be sleeping in bunk beds so he goes back to the flat. He buys lagers on the way and drinks a skinful so he can forget it all for a little bit longer.

  Kenny spends a day in bed. He goes to sign on. H
e does a day’s work for his brother-in-law, who gives him a sofa and some paint. He repaints all the doors in the flat, and starts on the skirting boards. Then he phones Maria.

  She sounds happy to hear from him and they chat for a while about this and that. She tells him her dad’s got work again and he says that’s really good news because it’s been about three years hasn’t it, and she says, over. Kenny can hear that Maria is smiling while she talks about how happy her mum is and how everything will be easier now. It makes him smile too and forget to listen properly, and so he nearly misses it when Maria says she’d like to come over tomorrow evening. He says fine, and then they say goodbye and Kenny’s back in the flat before he knows it. He sits in the kitchen and stares at the TV.

  It’s late when he wakes up. He has a bath and cleans the windows. He doesn’t want to sit around waiting like the last time, so goes for a walk in a park which is something he would never normally do. Then he gets a bus across the centre of the city, sitting on the top deck. On the way back, he gets off at the river and walks across one of the bridges. It’s late afternoon when he gets to the other side and he realises he has no money left to buy anything for dinner. He gets a bus to his mum’s to borrow a tenner till he gets his giro. She’s hurt because he’s in a hurry, so he promises to come for Sunday lunch.

  When he gets back, Maria is sitting on the step outside the block, but she’s not annoyed. Tells him she was early, thought she’d wait a bit. She looks relieved.

  They cook dinner together and eat in the kitchen, not saying very much, but feeling quite cosy. It gets dark and they wash up, and then Maria says she would really like some chocolate.

  She is lying on the bed when he comes back from the shop. He throws the sweets on the mattress and sits down next to her. She has a sip of his lager and eats her chocolates and they watch a film together and she falls asleep. He stares at her belly and her breasts and her legs for a long time and then he covers her up and goes to sleep on the sofa. He hears her get up and go to the toilet, but she doesn’t come into the living room, so he doesn’t go back into the bedroom.

  She stays for breakfast and helps him finish the skirting boards, but after lunch she goes home. Kenny washes up and then he has a bath and he thinks about Maria. About all the times they slept together before, and how he doesn’t know if sleeping together now would be a good idea or not, but he wants to all the same and he hopes she does, too. He’s already been in the flat for a month.

  It’s Saturday and he’s got no money, so he spends the day in bed half watching telly, mostly thinking about Maria. He needs to pay the rent soon. He needs some money for food and fags and bus fares. When the baby comes he’ll need ten times more. He does some maths on the back of an envelope and it all adds up to needing a job. Sunday lunch tomorrow: he’ll ask his brother-in-law.

  His brother-in-law says he’ll ask his boss, but he can’t promise anything. His sister tells him to look in the paper like everyone else and his dad tells her to be quiet. She is for a minute or two and they all eat, but then she says that Kenny shouldn’t have got Maria pregnant in the first place if he doesn’t have a job, and Kenny’s dad swears at her. Kenny’s mum leaves the room and then Kenny’s dad gets angry and Kenny’s brother-in-law just carries on eating and Kenny thinks that would be me if I was married to Maria and sitting in a family row. He has to pay the rent, and he owes his mum a tenner, and he knows she worries, and he has to chew every mouthful twenty times to distract himself from throwing the dishes around the room. Sprouts in the shag pile, gravy on the walls.

  Kenny’s dad comes round and takes him in to work. Only there’s nothing for him to do and Kenny thinks his dad is probably paying him out of his own pocket, which is like taking five tenners off his mum and giving her one back. After the second day he tells his dad he’s got some other work. Kenny’s dad knows he’s lying, and Kenny knows that he knows.

  He goes to sign on. Pays the rent, gives his dad a tenner for his mum, gets a bag of fifties for the meter and buys a week’s worth of bread and beans. He gets a paper every morning and takes a pile of coins to the phone box to call for jobs but there’s nothing doing. It rains a fair bit that week and Kenny wishes he had a phone so Maria could call and it wouldn’t be up to him to swallow his lump of pride every time. He holds out over the weekend, and then on Sunday night the buzzer goes.

  Kenny goes down this time and keeps Maria company up the stairs. She’s a bit bigger again and she looks good, even in the damp stairwell.

  They settle down on the bed quite quickly and turn the TV on but leave the light off. The room gets darker and they get under the duvet where it is warm, and Kenny feels Maria’s legs next to his, her belly pressed against his ribs. They share a can of lager and stay like that until it gets late and they’re both sleepy. Maria slips to the edge of the mattress and takes off her trousers and socks. She leaves her knickers on but takes off her bra under her T-shirt. Then she gets back under the duvet. Kenny kicks off his jeans and turns the telly off. The room is quiet and dark and neither of them moves for a while. Kenny really needs to pee now, but maybe Maria will fall asleep while he’s out of the room. He puts a hand on her arm. She breathes steadily and doesn’t move. Kenny gets up quietly and goes to the bathroom.

  He pees in the dark and brushes his teeth and decides to talk to her in the morning.

  Maria rolls over when he gets under the duvet and puts a hand on his stomach. He touches her fingers and then strokes her arm, and then he rolls over and strokes her back. He can’t see her in the dark, but he knows her eyes are open. He kisses her and she puts her hands on his chest. Kenny takes his T-shirt off and then he takes hers off, too. She is uncomfortable, but he thinks she’s beautiful.

  He isn’t sleepy. He wonders if it was the right thing to do. She doesn’t say anything, but lies very still next to him. After a while, she rolls onto her side and goes to sleep. A little later, she rolls over again, putting her back to him. After that, Kenny goes to sleep, too.

  In the morning he cooks breakfast and they eat in bed. Kenny reads the paper while Maria has a bath. His brother comes round with the paint and an eighth. They whisper in the narrow hall so Maria won’t hear. Kenny’s brother smiles, pats him on the elbow and says he’ll leave them to it.

  Maria gets back into bed to read the paper and Kenny makes a start on the bathroom. She comes in after a while with a cup of tea for him and he asks her if she likes the colour. She nods, but doesn’t look too certain, so Kenny says she can choose the colour for the big room if she likes. Maria shrugs.

  – Blue.

  – If it’s a boy.

  – Yeah. Whatever.

  She comes back in a bit later with her coat on. The paint smell is making her a bit sick, thought she’d go for a walk, buy a pint of milk.

  __

  Kenny waits.

  He doesn’t turn the lights on when it gets dark and he doesn’t cook himself any dinner, he just lies in the bed. He can’t cry and he can’t sleep. He lies very still and smokes his brother’s eighth.

  At the end of the week Kenny cashes his giro and paints the living room blue.

  He goes to the phone box and calls his brother to see if he can stay over. He rings his mum and says he won’t come for Sunday lunch, but he’ll see her soon. Early evening, Kenny hands the keys back to the neighbour and walks out of the estate onto the main road.

  Architect

  The architect was young and enthusiastic, energetic and ambitious. He had a quiet passion for space, for dimensions, for awe. For comfort, for splendour and for ease. This passion was undimmed by the pragmatics of fire escapes, minimum sanitation requirements, cost-effective building materials, and optimum car-parking arrangements.

  The architect’s designs were singular. His drawings and his gracious manner somehow inseparable. Bureaucrats with construction millions would comb their hair and run a checking tongue across their dentures in preparation for their meetings. Those clients who fell for his designs invar
iably also fell for him.

  Small articles had begun to appear in specialist journals, respectful in their appraisal. The architect was treading a unique path and considered himself a lucky man: success and all its grand gestures, though still distant, seemed inevitable.

  Today, however, is different.

  All week the architect has struggled and strained, but what he has produced bears no relation to his expectations, and he feels critical of every line he has drawn. Although he can name each fault, he cannot make improvements.

  It has never happened before and he is determined not to let it worry him.

  Another project requires his attention. A simple matter of redrawing the car park. Twelve executive spaces are required, not ten. He allows this task to stretch over three working days. A minor incident on the face of it, but his boss is puzzled. Upset, even, though he does not show it. The partners discuss the architect over pub lunches and the secretaries start sugaring his coffee in sympathy, falling silent when he walks by.

  The architect tells himself it’s nothing, that he just needs a break. He rings his brother and goes for the weekend. They are drunk, they are sober. They talk women, politics, work out an old grievance and resolve again to visit their father more often. Each feels happy with the time spent together.

  The weeks go by, as they do, and the architect keeps busy. Long hours with little time for brooding, reflecting. Returning home from a conference, he reads his first newspaper in days. A new public building on the front page. Half the world throws hands up in horror, the other half claps hands in praise, and the architect skims the articles, avoiding the fact that he has no opinion.

  Evening falls and he allows himself another look at the newspaper. The building is a puzzle to him, a shape. He cannot assess scale, proportion, quality. His mind’s eye sees no interior. A cold cloud gathers in his belly. He cooks dinner and watches TV.