by Mike Ripley
At least she offered to make lunch: smoked tofu on toast. I had helpfully suggested that she add red pesto, sliced tomatoes dusted with white pepper, fresh basil and Worcestershire sauce, but she just looked at me like she was the only one who had worked up an appetite that morning and she was going to do it her way. Pah! Call that cheese on toast?
‘You said Springsteen’s howling had woken you up the second time,’ I explained. ‘When I arrived, that’s what you said. What woke you up the first time?’
She paused to think, one hand on the grill-pan handle, oblivious to the wisps of blue smoke curling around her lobster-shaped oven glove.
‘That would have been Mr Nassim,’ she said. Then she nodded to herself to confirm it.
‘Toast’s burning,’ I said.
I refilled my glass and resumed my seat in the doorway, reassuring myself that there was no way Springsteen could get out of the cat flap, across the landing and down the stairs before I could seal myself back in Fenella’s flat. Not on three legs he couldn’t. Surely not.
‘So what did Nassim want?’ I shouted kitchenwards.
Nassim Nassim is our esteemed landlord, and it’s not that he has a name so nice you have to say it twice, it’s just that no-one can pronounce his family name. When he first introduced himself, he knew it would be a problem and said ‘Just call me Nassim Nassim,’ so we did.
‘I’m not sure. Lisabeth talked to him just before she went to work, but I don’t think she got much sense out of him,’ Fenella called back over a clattering of plates. ‘You know what Nassim’s like.’
‘Indeed I do, and I won’t have a word said against him.’
I meant it. The old boy might be getting on nowadays and suffering from more than his fair share of ‘senior moments’ in-between power naps, but he’d always done right by me. After a small favour I had done for his great-niece years ago, he had pegged the rent on my flat and turned one blind eye on my incorporation of a cat flap and another on the No Pets rule. After all those years, I was paying maybe a fifth of the rent that he could realistically get these days and that the other tenants were undoubtedly paying. He was Top Man was Nassim Nassim.
‘He had somebody with him from the Council,’ Fenella was saying, ‘from the Rating Office. Is that right? A Rating Evaluation Officer or something. Does that sound right?’
‘The senile old fart!’ I shouted. ‘Doesn’t he know better than to let a Valuation Officer in here?’
‘I don’t know about that.’ Fenella handed me a plate boasting two blackened squares with white circles on them. They looked like sides of a dice. ‘Lisabeth said she was really, really nice.’
‘She?’
‘There’s no need to shout.’
In a fit of pique she made to take the plate back. I should have let her.
‘Did she go in my flat?’
‘I don’t know, I never saw her. Look, Angel just hear my lips: I never saw the person. I never saw Mr Nassim. I was in bed, trying to sleep.’
I kept a straight face at the ‘hear my lips’ – just as she had – and pretended I was enjoying the mildly flavoured rubber charcoal she had served up.
‘Working late nights again?’
She nodded.
‘Don’t those chat line phone calls wake Lisabeth?’
I knew that Fenella and her posh voice had progressed from cold caller to call centre sub-station to chat line hostess without actually realising what was going on. She just thought it faintly surprising that she got paid for talking to complete strangers about her school days and especially what she wore for PE lessons. She didn’t seem to have noticed anything odd about most of the calls coming late at night after the pubs had chucked out either. I had seen three mobiles on recharging stands in the living room. Business must be good.
‘Oh no, I set the phones to silent ringing,’ she said calmly, pleased that I was taking an interest in her career. ‘And anyway, it’s all text these days.’
‘Text?’ I said warily.
‘Text messages. I’m in three different TCRs – text chat rooms – a night now. My job is to keep the text flowing, though honestly, some of the spelling! And they use numbers for words, you know. Like four – the number four – stands for “for” – as in f-o-r. And the number two is “to”. It takes a bit of puzzling sometimes.’
‘Have six and nine come up in any combination?’
‘Several times, now you mention it, but this is just an experiment. If it proves popular, I could get a computer and go online as they say.’
‘Has anyone suggested using a webcam on you?’
‘What’s a webcam?’
‘Never mind. Great tofu by the way,’ I lied, not realising you could actually spoil tofu. ‘So you didn’t see this Valuation Officer, then?’
‘No, I told you. Lisabeth dealt with her. Why don’t you ask Mr Nassim? He was the one showing her around.’
‘Good idea. Well done that girl.’
‘You can stay here if you like and use one of the phones. I’ve got to do the shopping, but Lisabeth’ll be home soon. If you want to stay until Springsteen wakes up. I think it’s sort of sweet of you.’
It was, now I thought of it, but I couldn’t face explaining my presence to Lisabeth.
‘Thanks, but I’ll wait on the stairs so I can be nearer to him in case he needs me. Pass the rest of the wine would you?’
I was halfway through the second bottle of Cahors and had finally remembered how to sprawl comfortably on stairs (how quickly one forgets one’s youth), when Inverness Doogie showed up.
I heard him long before I saw him as he must have had eight or nine attempts at putting his key in the lock of the front door. Then the door swung inwards and he stood there swaying, trying to get the key out of the lock. I wasn’t sure this was a good idea, as it seemed to be the only thing holding him upright. He had a leather jacket over his white chef’s coat and chequerboard trousers and in his left hand he clutched a bottle of the Macallan by the neck. From his waist dangled a striped tea towel the way chefs wear them through their belt to wipe things with. Doogie’s was notable as it appeared to have caught fire quite recently.
He succeeded in yanking out his key, rocked back on his heels then weaved two steps into the house and leaned on the payphone on the wall for support, his eyes widening as he focussed on me lying on the stairs, wine glass in one hand, book in the other.
‘Honey, I’m home!’ he slurred loudly. ‘What the feck are you doing here? Amy come to her senses an’ thrown you out then?’
‘No, she hasn’t,’ I said snottily. ‘Though I haven’t seen her since breakfast, so she might have. How’s yourself, Doogie? Hard day at the office?’
He climbed the stairs carefully and sat down a couple of steps below me, proffering the bottle of Macallan.
‘I have curtailed my shift for the day,’ he said haughtily, ‘due to an industrial accident. This evening’s diners will simply have to get by on whatever scraps my understudies can gather together.’
‘Been cooking one of your specials again?’
‘Aye. American guy. Comes in with his missus, eyeballs the place and demands to meet the chef, so they wheel me out front of house. The Yank hears my accent and says “You’re Scotch”, like I’d be fookin’ surprised. Then he asks if I can do him a genuine Aberdeen Angus steak, a big, thick one just like him. An’ I says ‘course I can and I can leave the horns on but would he like it the real Scottish way?’
‘Let me guess – that involves buying a whole bottle of single malt, right?’
‘Ab-so-fucking-lutely, which puts it on the wee-bit pricey side. But money’s nay object to this chuckleheed, an’ he puts doon his Gold Amex card and says to bring it on.’
‘And this would be a steak flamed in malt whisky, something like that?’
He wagged the bottle at me like an admonis
hing finger.
‘A steak marinated in malt whisky, broiled in malt whisky then served at the table into, and this is the clever bit, a plate of burning malt whisky. I think I’ll call it Steak Sea of Fire when I get ma own restaurant.’
‘Check your insurance policy first,’ I advised. ‘And to drink with it ...?’
‘Malt whisky,’ we both said together.
‘But,’ said Doogie, smiling, ‘the really clever bit was keeping his missus happy while he was tucking in.’
‘You got her drunk as well?’
‘Nay, no. She was on the mineral water. I intoxicated her simply with the force of ma personality, a free run at the sweet trolley and a few tales of the Highland Clearances and life back in Bonnie Scotland. Naturally, she was “Scotch-Irish”, so she lapped it up. Did you know there were more Caledonian societies in North Carolina than there are in Caledonia?’
He raised the arm holding the bottle to make his point and lost his grip on the stair carpet, bumping down three steps on his elbow but managing to keep the bottle upright.
‘So how was your day?’ he asked from below, straining to crawl up until he was level with me, putting more effort into doing so than the average mountaineer topping out K2.
‘Been down the vet’s. Somebody kicked the shit out of Springsteen.’
What little natural colour there was under the alcohol glow drained from his face.
‘Shite-on-a-fookin’-stick. Yer kidding me?’
‘No way, Braveheart. He’s in the flat coming out from under the anaesthetic. I thought it safer to stay out here until he’s regained his sunny disposition.’
Doogie shook his head slowly at the awfulness of the world and began to open the bottle of malt as I emptied my glass of wine.
‘What did you do with the body?’
‘I just told you. He’s in the flat coming round.’
‘No,’ he said seriously, ‘I meant the other feller.’
We were on the last of the whisky.
‘Oh, there will be pain, Doogie. When I find whoever did this, I can assure you there will be pain. Not the nice spanking sort of pain but the sharp metal objects inserted and then twisted sort of pain ...’
‘Save me a piece of the scumbag, though, won’t you?’
‘I didn’t know you cared,’ I said, then added: ‘About Springsteen.’
‘Och, I dinna care aboot him personally.’
‘You just don’t like cruelty to animals as a whole. Is that it?’
I suspected my words were slurring now, but I wasn’t really listening.
‘Ahm a chef, yer bampot!’ Doogie roared as if it was the funniest thing he’d ever said. ‘I kill and cook anything that moves. It’s ma job.’
‘I’ve seen you deep-fry Mars bars in batter,’ I said, because it seemed like an important debating point. ‘And Maltesers too. What harm did they ever do you?’
‘The skill is in knowing when to pick ‘em ... That point of pure ripeness. Actually, now you mention it, I’m trying out a new dessert at the moment. It’s quick fried Mars bar ice-creams. That’ll get the food critics sitting up and taking notice.’
‘You’re not wrong there, Doogie. But I’ve had fried ice-cream ... in a Mexican restaurant.’
‘They’ve pinched ma idea already? Where was this?’
‘In Mexico.’
‘Oh.’
There was a lull in the conversation whilst I tried to remember what it was about.
‘So why are you so upset about Springsteen if you don’t really like him?’
Doogie took a deep breath.
‘It’s another legend broken on the wheel of bitter experience,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Who’d have thought that wee furry ball of malevolence would get bested in a scrap? It’s the unthinkable, but it’s happened. Another wee spark of magic has gone out of the world.’
‘Doogie, that’s almost poetic.’
‘Aye, I think I’m getting to the poetic stage. Shall I get another bottle?’
‘I think you’d better, before I begin to believe that this new you really is you. If you see what I mean.’
‘Whisssht! Listen!’
He put a finger to his lips with a surprising degree of accuracy and we both bent our heads and stretched our necks to look along the landing towards the door of Flat 3. From inside, beyond the cat flap, came the sound of tearing cardboard. Then silence.
‘He’s out!’ I hissed, and instinctively we both lowered ourselves down the stairs in a reverse commando crawl until only our eyes were level with the landing.
It was at that point the front door opened and from below and behind us a voice growled: ‘Just what are you two playing at?’
‘Hello, Lisabeth,’ I said, turning my head so I could flash my best smile at her. ‘Had a good day at the ... wherever?’
She was wearing a green short-sleeved sweatshirt and green knee-length canvas shorts with turn-ups and huge cargo pockets bulging with unidentifiable stuff, giving her thighs a stereo effect that would have had most women screaming for a long frock or liposuction. She had lime green socks and khaki desert boots on the ends of her thick ankles.
‘How yer doin’ hen?’ Doogie grinned inanely.
‘Well?’
Lisabeth put her hands on her hips – they didn’t have far to travel – and stared us out. Obviously, those self-assertiveness classes were paying off.
‘We’re caring for sick animals,’ I said. ‘Ask Fenella if you don’t believe us.’
‘I don’t, but unfortunately Fenella always has,’ she said testily as she clumped her way up the stairs to her flat door. ‘Are you two just going to lie there and make the place untidy all evening?’
As she put her key in the lock she turned her shoulder towards us and we both craned our necks to see what was printed on the back of her sweatshirt. It was a slogan in white saying: ‘AROMATHERAPY – THE FINAL FRONTIER.’
Doogie and I looked at each other and choked back the giggles.
‘I hope Miranda doesn’t come home and catch you like that,’ Lisabeth was saying, turning back to us. ‘You know how ‘Randa’s always saying your behaviour has improved so much since Angel moved out ...’
‘She says what?’ I mouthed at Doogie, who had the good grace to blush.
‘... and you hardly ever play music after midnight any more, not to mention ...’
She trailed off suddenly, her gaze fixed on something above us and to the right of the stairs.
Springsteen was emerging from the cat flap, fluffed-up tail and rear-end first, scrabbling against the door with his back legs so he could haul his plastered front leg over the lip of the flap. Slowly the injured leg appeared and he took a tentative step backwards and arched his back as if he could shake off the offending tube of plaster. Of course he couldn’t, but he found he couldn’t turn either – or some sixth sense told him he would overbalance if he did – so he continued backwards along the landing, the plastered leg held up and in front of him at an angle of 45 degrees.
Doogie and I cowered below the top step as he approached, the tail three times its normal size, swishing silently from side to side. When he was level with us he swivelled around and sat down within inches of our foreheads. Then he howled at each of us in turn, so close we could smell his breath and I knew he had found the tin of salmon I had made Fenella open for him.
Then it seemed he caught sight of Lisabth for the first time, and he fixed her with a stare and let out a long, low growl of pure menace.
‘You’ve trained him to do that!’ squealed Lisabeth behind us, and then we heard her flat door slam.
Springsteen looked down imperiously, the plaster cast on his front leg still jutting up and out at 45 degrees.
‘What?’ I said helplessly, shrugging my shoulders at Doogie.
He just started g
iggling and tried to stand up.
‘Look at him,’ he spluttered, pointing at Springsteen. ‘He’s giving her a Sieg Heil!’
Doogie flung his arm up in a return salute, slipped off the edge of the stair he was on and stumbled down three more before he grabbed the banister, collapsing against it in hysterics.
Springsteen held my gaze for a few seconds more, then lifted himself up and began to walk backwards on his three good legs until his arse hit the cat flap and he pulled himself through it with as much dignity as he good muster, the plastered paw being the last thing to disappear.
Only when the cat flap flapped behind him did I dare laugh.
Doogie said it would be fine to go to his flat for a while. It would give Springsteen time to settle down to having only three working legs, we could have a bite to eat and a drink or two and I could call a cab from there as I certainly wasn’t driving mine home in my condition, was I? And no way would Miranda mind if she came home and found me there. Me casa, su casa ... old and distinguished friend ... matter of life and death ... sick animals in crisis ... anyway, who wore the troosers in this flat?
‘Oh my God, what’s he doing here?’
‘He’s not stopping, luv, just a flying visit.’
Thanks, Doogie.
‘My but you’re looking fit, Miranda. You’ve lost a bit of weight, haven’t you? Don’t you dare tell me you haven’t. I notice these things,’ I said, trying to rescue the situation.
‘You lookin’ at my bird?’ Doogie growled automatically.
‘You bet I am; every chance I get. She never gives me the time of day though.’
All this nonsense kept both of them happy, though in fact I was looking at Miranda as she smoothed her hands over her hips as if searching for the missing pounds I had implied she had lost. She was wearing what I suspected was her one and only two-piece suit, in a grey and charcoal check – which meant she had been somewhere official today – black patent low-heeled shoes and tan coloured tights. They weren’t ripped, and when she kicked off her shoes in Doogie’s general direction, I noticed she wasn’t limping either.
