2009 - We Are All Made of Glue

by Marina Lewycka

  “They’ve tooken me cigs off of me.”

  “Who? The nurse?” About time, I was thinking.

  “No, them.” She pointed to the youths, who were both smoking hard, their heads bent over their hands, as though their lives depended on it.

  I went up to them. “Did you…?”

  “She’s bonkers,” said the one who had his leg in plaster. They ignored me and carried on smoking.

  “You’re better off without them,” I tried to console her. “They’re not good for you.”

  She stared at me silently, a look that combined desolation and contempt.

  “Okay, I’ll get you some more. Do you know where my friend is? Mrs Shapiro? The lady in the pink dressing gown?”

  “They’ve tooken ‘er away. This mornin’. She give ‘em some proper lip, too. You should’ve ‘card ‘er carryin’ on. Swearin’ an’ all. An’ I thought she were a lady!”

  She tutted disapproval.

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “Never ‘card naffink like it. Filfy tongue, she’s got on ‘er. They gonna put ‘er in ar ‘ome. Best place for ‘er.”

  “Do you know the name of the home? Where it is?”

  “Nightmare ‘ouse.”

  “Nightmare?” That didn’t sound good.

  “It’s where they all go. Bin there meself. Up Lea Bridge way. Not many comes aht alive.” She shook her head ominously and started to cough.

  “Thanks. Thank you very much.”

  I made to go, but she held on to my coat.

  “Yer won’t forget me ciggies, will yer?”

  §

  There was no Nightmare House in the telephone directory or on the internet. (Well, there was, but it turned out to be a video game.) I telephoned Ms Baddiel and left a message, but she didn’t ring back. Eileen said mysteriously that she was ‘on a case’. I was furious and frustrated. Should I go to the police and tell them my friend had been kidnapped by Social Services? I could just imagine their faces. Should I write to my MP? See a lawyer? It came to me that the only person who might be able to help us was Mark Diabello. He’d know what happened in situations like this; and he had a strong interest in making sure Mrs Shapiro’s house wasn’t sold from under her.

  Ever since our last encounter, I’d been avoiding him and not returning his calls. It’s not just that I’d decided he wasn’t my type—I’d come to the conclusion that I wasn’t his, either, and that I was only one of dozens of women he slept with in the line of business. I guessed he was probably much more interested in Canaan House than in me. Still, I swallowed my misgivings and dialled his number. It rang just once.

  “Hello, Georgina.” (My number must be on his mobile.) “Nice to hear from you.”

  There was something in his voice that reminded me of…Velcro. I felt a flush rise in my cheeks. If I got him to help me, would we end up in bed again? And was that what I really wanted? I pushed the awkward questions to the back of my mind.

  “Mrs Shapiro’s disappeared,” I blurted. “She’s in a nursing home, but I don’t know where.”

  He didn’t seem surprised. “Leave it with me, Georgina. When are we going to…?”

  “Thanks, Mark. Got to dash. Someone’s at the door…”

  §

  Before he could get back to me, though, Mrs Shapiro found a way of contacting me herself. One day when I went around to Canaan House, I found a letter on the that inside the door; I almost didn’t pick it out among the junk mail. It was a used envelope, addressed to a Mrs Lillian Brown at Northmere House, Lea Gardens Close. The address had been crossed out, and her own address written in. There was nothing inside the envelope except a scrap of paper torn off from the corner of a newspaper, with two words scrawled in what looked like black eyebrow pencil—HELPME.

  4

  Adhesives Around the Home

  27

  The breeze-block fortress

  Northmere House was not really a house at all, but a squat square two-storey institution, purpose-built out of plastered breeze block punctured at regular intervals by square windows that opened wide enough for ventilation but not for escape. The only access to the interior was via a sliding glass door operated by a button behind the reception desk, which was guarded by a fierce middle-aged woman in a corporate uniform.

  “Can I help you?” she barked.

  “I’ve come to see Mrs Shapiro.”

  She tapped a few strokes on her keyboard and said, without raising her eyes from the screen, “She’s not allowed visitors.”

  “What do you mean she’s not allowed visitors? This isn’t a prison, is it?”

  My voice was a bit too shrill. Calm down, I told myself. In—two —three—four…

  “That’s what it says on her notes. No visitors.”

  “Why not? Who made that decision?”

  “It’ll be up to matron.”

  “Can I speak to her?”

  She looked up at me finally, a cold, indifferent look.

  “She’s in a meeting.” She indicated a row of pink upholstered chairs along the wall. “You can wait if you like.”

  “And if I just go for a wander around while I’m waiting?”

  I tried to sound cool, but my heart was pumping away, making my voice wobble.

  “I’ll have to call security.”

  From a window in the lobby I could see through to a central courtyard with a square of trim corporate grass, surrounded by a concrete path which led nowhere, and four benches, one at each end. The access was by way of another pair of sliding glass doors on the far side of the courtyard, presumably also button operated. Through the glass, I had a glimpse of a corridor, with doors opening off it. In one of these breeze-block cubicles Mrs Shapiro would be sitting in her bed waiting for me to free her. Somehow I had to get a message through to reassure her that I was trying. She would still be bandaged up, I supposed, and hopefully receiving some kind of medical care in here.

  I sat on the pink chair and waited for a while, wondering what to do. The place was eerily quiet, the sounds all muffled by the thick pink carpet and closed double doors, the air dead, with a synthetic smell that was sweetish and chemical. From time to time, a lift discharged someone into the lobby and the guard-dog lady pressed her button to let them exit the building. Some wore nurses’ uniforms, some the same corporate skirt and jacket as the guard-dog lady, and there was a woman with a stethoscope who looked as though she might be a doctor. They all seemed busy and preoccupied. It dawned on me that the impassioned human-rights-violation speech I was composing in my head was going to cut absolutely no ice here.

  On a low table next to the pink chairs was a bowl of polished waxy fruit, no doubt intended to reassure families that their incarcerated relatives would be getting a wholesome diet. I picked up a bright green apple—it was the same colour as Mrs Goodney’s jacket—and bit into it, hard. The sound of my crunching filled the lobby. The guard-dog lady glared at me. When I’d finished it, I placed the apple core on the reception desk and left.

  Walking to the bus stop, I racked my brains for ways of springing Mrs Shapiro. I imagined a video-game scenario with the two of us haring along the corridors dodging security guards and ampoule-armed matrons, violins playing wildly on the soundtrack as we burst out through the sliding glass doors down to the Lea Bridge Road and on to a passing bus.

  There’s something magical about sitting in the front seat up on top of a double-decker bus, wending among the tree tops. I could feel the tension seeping out of my shoulders and neck as we swayed along high above the road, like riding an elephant. As we crossed the bridge I caught a glimpse of the slim glassy curves of the River Lea as it slipped into London. All around me the sky was full of scudding clouds that fleetingly turned to pink when they caught the sunlight—not the dead chemical pink of Northmere House, but a bright transient gleam of colour like an unexpected smile. I thought of the young woman pregnant with her baby, sitting on the stony hillside, watching the sunset redden over the western sea, wait
ing for her lover. Now she was locked up in that breeze-block fortress waiting for me to release her.

  The bus jolted and turned as we came out from among the treetops at Millfield Park, and for a moment the whole skyscape opened up in front of me, turbulent, vivid, with apocalyptic shafts of light breaking through the clouds. Somewhere it was raining. A coloured arc glimmered briefly and disappeared. For some reason, tears came into my eyes. I remembered my strange conversation with Ben. Liminal. A time of transition. The threshold of a new world. Poor Ben—why did he take everything to heart so?

  Mondays were my worst days for missing Ben—two days still to go. They never warn you how much your children are going to hurt you; they never warn you about that needle-keen love-pain that gets in under your ribs and twists around just when you’re trying to get on with your life. It was already four o’clock—home time. Would Ben be back at Rip’s by now, eating Choco-Puffs and talking about his day at school? At the next bus stop, a load of schoolkids clambered on and joined me on the top deck, gabbling and laughing and throwing stuff at one another. Did they worry about Armageddon and liminal times? Actually, with kids, you can never tell.

  As soon as I got home, I put the kettle on and while it was coming to the boil I listened to the messages on my answering machine. There was one from Mark Diabello asking me to ring when I had time, one from Nathan at Adhesives in the Modern World, reminding me of the new deadline, one from Pectoral Pete—no idea what that was about—and a bald peremptory three-word message from Rip, “Ring me straightaway.” Like hell I would. I tried to delete the one from Rip and accidentally deleted them all. Now I’d have to remember to phone them all back. Another time. I put a tea bag into the cup and looked in the fridge for milk. Drat. I’d run out. I was still fuming at Rip’s message—at the tone of his voice. Once, not so long ago, he’d have left a message with love. What had happened to all that tenderness?

  I hunted around for some powdered milk, and ended up pouring myself a glass of wine instead. Then another. The silence of the kitchen closed in on me. Two days still to go. Then the phone rang. It was Mark Diabello.

  “Georgina, you’re at home. I’ve been…er…making a few enquiries. Shall I come round?”

  I should have made an excuse and put the phone down, but the wine had made me weepy, and the treacly sweetness in his voice filled me with unexpected longing. No, not for sex—I just wanted someone to be nice to me.

  “Sorry I didn’t ring you back. I’ve been feeling…”

  I didn’t get the end of the sentence out. A big sob rose up in my throat and washed the words away. He was around within ten minutes.

  I suppose I’d been hoping for a little tenderness, but I could see from the way Mark Diabello looked at me on the doorstep that sex was what was on offer. He led me straight into the bedroom, where he noted with a murmur of approval that the satin and Velcro handcuffs were still in position from last time. Then his shirt was off, and my top was off and his trousers were off and my skirt was up and…what happened next was far too disgusting to describe. He went through all the stages like someone working through a car service manual, and I surrendered with all the abandon of a Ford Fiesta having its eighty-thousand-mile service.

  As the bedclothes cooled against my skin and my eyes adjusted to the dimness in the room I noticed that his clothes were folded up on the chair, while mine were all tangled in the duvet. Circling me in his arms, he stroked the hair back from my forehead.

  “Georgina, you’re a very sensitive woman. I like that.”

  “I like you, too.”

  I forced myself to say it, but the words felt wooden and clunky in my mouth. I rested my cheek on his damp chest that smelled of sweat and musky soap and chlorine.

  He ran a finger down my cheek. “You’re special. I mean…different. I’d like to see more of you, Georgina.”

  “Mmm,” I murmured non-committally.

  The touchy-feely talk was probably fake, I’d concluded, and all he wanted from me was sex.

  We hadn’t spoken about Mrs Shapiro and Canaan House last time, as if by tacit agreement, as if our relationship floated above the world and its sordid concerns in its own enclosed bubble. But there was something so purposeful about those neatly folded clothes.

  “You know, Mark, I still wonder about that house…”

  “What do you wonder, sweetheart?”

  “…what you and your partner are up to.”

  “I could ask you the same thing, you know, Georgina. Why did you come to me in the first place to have it valued? She’s not your aunty. It’s obvious she doesn’t want to sell—so why the sudden interest on your part?” He propped himself up on one elbow, studying my face. “I keep asking myself—what’s in it for you? Why did you start this whole thing?”

  I gasped. He thought…he thought I was like him. Mrs Goodney, I remembered, had made the same accusation.

  “I didn’t start it.” I had a sudden vivid recollection of the rusty-gate voice talking into the mobile phone. I remembered the phrase she’d used to describe Mrs Shapiro—an old biddy. “It was the social worker who started it. She wanted to put Mrs Shapiro in a home and make her sell the house. She was going to have it valued by Damian at Hendricks & Wilson. I heard her say it.”

  He sat up, his limbs suddenly taut.

  “You should have told me that before. It’s a well-known scam. All the estate agents have their contacts in Social Services. That’s how we get to hear of properties with potential before they go on the market—old people going into homes, deceased estates, mortgage foreclosures. There might be a client in the wings, an investor or a developer, who’ll pay a good price for the tip-off.”

  My brain was struggling to keep up. The shameless red panties were crumpled under the bedclothes. Then I remembered something else.

  “Actually, that social worker had a man with her the first time. He could have been a builder—1 think she was showing him the house. She must have been talking to him on the phone. But surely…what if Mrs Shapiro has a family?”

  “They do a deal with the family, Georgina—cash sale, no questions asked—the family get their hands on the money, and they get the house off their hands. There’s always someone in every family that’ll take that line. People—how can I put it?—in my line of business you tend to see them at their worst.”

  “But I still don’t understand why the family goes along with it.”

  “If their old dad or aunty goes into a nursing home, the money from selling their house is supposed to pay the home fees, right? At five hundred quid a week or more, that can soon gobble up an entire estate that the family hoped they would inherit. But when the money runs out, the Council takes over the payment for the nursing home. So they get the valuer to put in a false low valuation. He gets his cut. They sell it cheap to an associate, based on the low valuation. The relatives pay the nursing home fees until the money from the phoney sale’s all gone, and the Council takes over the payments. After a few months, they can put the property back on the market at its true value, and they pocket the difference.”

  I tried to follow what he said, but all I could see was a gyre of money and bricks swirling around in my head. I was wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.

  “But that’s just a rip-off.”

  “You’re very innocent, sweetheart. I like that.”

  He kissed me on the forehead in a way that made me feel suddenly queasy.

  “You’d better go now. Ben’ll be back soon. Anyway, I don’t think she has any family.”

  He threw me a sharp look, as if he knew I was lying about Ben, and reached across for his underpants—sleek dark Lycra that perfectly denned his manly parts, as the shameless woman might have observed—but she’d gone off somewhere, and Georgie Sinclair was back home.

  “So the social worker could just be flying solo,” he said.

  “You mean, robbing solo?”

  “That’s one way of seeing it. But look at it from the social worker’s point of vi
ew—they don’t get paid much, do they?” He slipped his arms into his shirtsleeves. “Not many perks. And it’s a pretty thankless job. Then once in a lifetime an opportunity like this comes along. Who’s she robbing? There’s no family. The old lady doesn’t need millions, she just needs a nice, safe, clean home. Why not help her and help yourself at the same time?”

  I was shocked. “Aren’t social workers supposed to care for the elderly?”

  He laughed, a cold laugh. “Nobody cares for anybody in this world, Georgina.”

  He was buttoning up his shirt now. The bleakness in his voice was like the mineral aftertaste of black treacle. I felt an unexpected pang of pity. Poor Mr Diabello with his sleek beautiful body and his sleek shiny Jaguar—condemned to live in a universe where nobody cares. I kissed his wrist where the black hairs curled out from under the starched white cuff of his shirt.

  “I thought you cared for me.”

  “That’s different. You’re different, Georgina.”

  He bent down and kissed me so gently that I was just beginning to think he might mean it after all, and my undisciplined hormones started up their chatter. Then he raised his head and I saw the glint of his eyes darken from gold to obsidian. “So just out of interest—what did Hendricks & Wilson value it at?”

  “Seven million,” I hazarded.

  “You’re lying to me.”

  “You might be lying to me.”

  He laughed, tilting back his head to knot up his tie, so I could see the attractive growth of five o’clock shadow, even though it was only four o’clock, dappling the handsome cleft in his chin. The Velcro was chafing against my wrists.

  “Mark, you’ve forgotten…”

  “Oh, yes.” He reached out and undid the fastenings. They dangled limply from the headboard as he made his way out into the dusk, and I retrieved my tangled clothes.

  28