A City of Strangers

by Robert Barnard

  “Did you see who was round viewing The Hollies?” he demanded, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice. “The Phelans, from the Estate!”

  “My God!” said Daphne Bridewell. “They are bad news. But how on earth could they think of affording a house like that?”

  “There was talk in the Belfield Arms of a pools win.”

  “It would have to be that, or Sun Bingo.”

  “There were four children with them.”

  “They’ve got six.”

  “There were three girls and a toddler.”

  “There’s two other boys. Michael—he’s about twelve—is apparently quite a bright boy. The girl in my flat is his teacher, and she’s very interested in him. The only ones I had to do with when I was at Burtle Middle School were Kevin and June. He was an animal—indescribably nasty—and she was a tart, or one in the making.”

  “Mrs. Eastlake says we’ve got to do something.”

  “Mrs. Eastlake?”

  Daphne Bridewell was stiff with astonishment.

  “Yes, she rang. First time I’ve spoken with her in years. It was she who first saw them. She thought we ought to get together, I think—maybe make some plan of campaign.”

  “Well,” said Daphne Bridewell, opening her garage, “keep me informed. I’ve got to go. Council subcommittee. I can see why Rosamund is concerned. But I don’t see what anyone can do, if the Phelans can put down the money.”

  That depressed Algy. As he walked back into Rosetree Cottage he thought that if Mrs. Bridewell, a councillor, didn’t think they could do anything, the situation must be pretty hopeless. He wondered who else he should talk to. There was someone in the basement of The Hollies, but he had seldom seen her, and never met her; in any case, she would be a lodger rather than an owner, like the man in his own basement flat, whom he had hardly spoken to, and never with any pleasure. There was the university fellow in Ashdene who would surely be concerned if he knew, but he’d never done more than wave on his way in or out, and had been there hardly more than eighteen months. The Packards he knew better—they’d been in York House seven or eight years, and he often swapped words with Mrs. Packard if she was in her garden. The husband—he couldn’t remember his name—was manager of Foodwise, in town. He was sometimes abrupt, but he seemed a capable young chap.

  Algy went into his dark little hall and fetched the telephone directory. Why was everything printed so small these days? He noted the number down on a bit of paper, then went back into the hall to ring.

  “Could I speak to the manager, to Mr. Packard, please?”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “My name is Algy Cartwright.” He added, thinking that young Packard might not recognize his name: “I’m a neighbor of his.”

  There was a pause, and then a brusque “Yes?”

  He thinks I’m using the fact of being a neighbor of his to complain to the top about poor-quality vegetables or a moldy jar of fish paste, thought Algy miserably.

  “Mr. Packard, I’m sorry to bother you, I know you’ll be busy, but Mrs. Eastlake was very worried and I—well, to cut a long story short”—Algy Cartwright was getting flustered and losing his thread, conscious of clicks of annoyance from the other end of the line—“the empty house next to me, you know, Pickering’s house, The Hollies, well, today it’s been viewed by a family from the Estate. You probably wouldn’t know them, a family called Phelan—”

  “What?”

  “Yes, and it does seem as if they would be very undesir—”

  “You mean viewed to buy?”

  “Yes. They had the key.”

  “Christ Almighty! . . . Look, Mr. Cartwright, I’m busy at the moment. Will you do something, and do it now? Go round to all the people in the houses, all of them, and tell them there’s a crisis meeting at my house tonight. Seven, let’s say—no, seven-thirty. Tell them to strain every nerve to be there—this is an emergency. Got that? Right. See you then.”

  Algy put the phone down. If he’d thought about it he might have been offended by young Packard’s peremptory tone, but he didn’t think about it. He felt invigorated, alive. It didn’t even occur to him for some time that if the meeting was at seven-thirty he would miss Coronation Street, and when it did, it didn’t particularly bother him.

  Chapter

  FIVE

  Algy Cartwright was unusually active for the rest of the day. He scurried hither and thither around the houses in Wynton Lane in a manner that rather resembled the behavior of one of those elderly characters in a television sitcom—quirky, lovable, and patronized—who suddenly discover a purpose in life: a neighborhood watch scheme or bringing up an unbearable grandchild. Algy bustled, as he had had no cause to bustle since he had retired from work. He flowered.

  As a matter of courtesy he decided he should first tell Mrs. Packard of the proposed meeting at her house that evening, in case her husband had been too busy to communicate this to her. He found, indeed, that she knew nothing about it. She received the news with a smile that was slightly quizzical, eyebrows raised, and she said she thought the whole thing was probably a joke on the Phelans’ part. Mr. Copperwhite (or Doctor or Professor—Algy was unsure about university titles) was not in, and neither was his girlfriend (or live-in lover, or common-law wife—Algy was unsure about the usage in that sphere too). Daphne Bridewell was still at her committee meeting, but Algy left a note in her letter box, and as luck would have it met Carol Southgate coming home from school as he walked down the path. Carol was surprised at the news, had heard nothing about a pools win from Michael Phelan, and agreed that the Phelans would make appalling neighbors. However, she felt that, as one of the Phelan children’s class teacher, she really could not join in any concerted action against them, if that was what was contemplated. Algy Cartwright had to agree, and thought she seemed a very nice young lady.

  The woman in the basement flat of The Hollies was home after five. She said her name was Valerie Hobbs, smiled a mechanical smile of sympathy when she was told of Algy’s mission, but said she was only there on a short-term lease from Dr. Pickering while she looked for something bigger, so she didn’t feel it concerned her, really. Algy said he understood. The lodger in his own basement flat Algy would have preferred to leave out of things: He was a man of thirty-five, an inspector for the gas board—lonely, reclusive, surly. But Lynn Packard had said lodgers too, so Algy made the attempt. When the man answered the door and was told of the meeting, he simply muttered “No concern of mine—I don’t give a bugger,” and shut the door again.

  Those were the only basement flats occupied. So it would be the householders alone who took action, which was logical since the threat was to them. It only remained to talk to the Copperwhites (he preferred to think of them as that in his own mind). Evie Soames was on the phone in the hall when he rang the bell at six, but she waved him through to the study, where he found Steven at his desk, surrounded by piles of essays, in front of him a plate holding what Algy recognized as a Marks and Spencer’s prepared meal. He too was on the phone. Two lines in the one house, thought Algy, impressed. Steven Copperwhite was obviously surprised to see him, but he motioned him to a seat, while he went on talking into the phone about putting positions on ice and reshuffling junior posts. Algy preferred to stand, and he wandered around the room looking at the books in the bookcases, and then—not finding these very interesting—at Steven’s group picture of Balliol in 1957.

  “Recognize him?” said Steven, finishing his phone call and coming over. “Bob McLennan—used to lead the SDP, or part of it. And that chap there—”

  He pulled himself up. He was intensely proud of having been to Balliol, and had all too frequently in the past regaled visitors with details of the men who had been there “in my time.” But the fact was there were few notables: a good second-rank novelist, a Conservative MP of repellent right-wing views, a notable Indian writer. It wasn’t much of a haul. Recently a visitor to whom he had given his spiel had remarked that it would make more sen
se to talk not about the effortless superiority but about the effortless mediocrity of Balliol men. Steven had been mortally offended and had resolved to keep more quiet on the subject in future.

  “But you won’t be interested in my college chums,” he said genially. “What can I do for you?”

  When Algy had explained—haltingly, for he had an obscure feeling that he had just been put in his place—Steven exploded satisfyingly.

  “You can’t be serious! My God! The Phelans! Oh, yes, I’ve heard about them. They’re poison. You’re quite right—Packard is quite right—to be concerned. This has got to be stopped.” Hearing a noise in the hall he strode over to the door. “Evie! Do you realize the Phelans have been viewing The Hollies?”

  Evie came in, smiled pleasantly at Algy, and stood there coolly—indeed with something of the same quizzical expression on her face that Algy had seen on Jennifer Packard’s.

  “Good Lord! They must have gone up in the world. Or was it just a joke?”

  “Cartwright here heard him say ‘It’s not ours yet.’ We’re getting together tonight. Something’s got to be done.”

  Evie raised her eyebrows.

  “Done? What are you suggesting? That we all arm ourselves with pitchforks to see them off when they move in? The Wynton Lane Vigilantes?”

  “Don’t be facetious, Evie. What we’re going to do is what we shall be discussing at the Packards’ tonight.”

  “Sounds like the sort of thing the Race Relations Act should have outlawed.”

  “Race? What are you talking about? This has got nothing to do with race.”

  “Not specifically, but it’s similar. You don’t want them here because they’re common.”

  “Common? They’re a whole lot worse than common! They’re beyond the pale! Look at what that young brute did to you. And they’ll play havoc with the value of these properties.”

  “That, at any rate, is honest,” Evie said, still very cool and rather amused. She looked at her watch. “I’ve got something on at half past eight. But I can see I’m going to have to sit in on at least part of this meeting.”

  Jennifer Packard handed round the plates of refreshments to the little group, then put them on the two coffee tables so that they could help themselves. She had prepared snacks not too lavish and not too modest—delicious things on cream cheese and cracker biscuits. Lynn always liked her to err on the side of generosity when it came to refreshments, because, of course, they got all their food at a discount from the Foodwise chain. She had prepared, in fact—without being asked or told—exactly what Lynn would have wanted her to prepare.

  Lynn was clearing his throat now.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve called together this gathering—with the help of Mr. er, Cartwright, much appreciated—to meet a situation that I for one would never have foreseen. You could call it a crisis meeting. Mr. Cartwright—Algy—will have told you what this crisis is, and I don’t think I need to spell out the consequences that would follow this family’s moving here: the personal annoyance to ourselves; the risks to our children (I realize that Jennifer and I are the only ones to be faced with that danger at this particular moment in time, but I’m sure you can all appreciate our concern); and there’s also the potentially disastrous drop in property values if one of these houses is allowed—to put the matter bluntly—to become a slum.” He looked around the little group with a gaze of strong-minded concern. “The prospect is horrendous.”

  “You’re right,” said Adrian Eastlake. “Something has got to be done.”

  The remark was both heartfelt yet feeble. It dropped into the atmosphere of the living room with dispiriting effect. Lynn Packard repressed—as he was seldom able to do—his irritation.

  “Exactly. The question is, what?”

  He had been half-conscious as he spoke that he did not have all his audience with him. Now the dissentient voice spoke.

  “I should have thought,” Evie Soames drawled, “that the question in the first instance is not what you should do, but what you can do.”

  Lynn chose to treat this as a purely practical question.

  “Ah, well—it seems to me that there are some avenues that suggest themselves. First of all, the vendor: Dr. Pickering. He was our neighbor here for—what?—six years. One of us could certainly approach him.”

  “But what would be the point?” asked Jennifer Packard, pricked by some impulse of mischief that had presumably been aroused by her husband’s strain of pomposity. “If he is asking a certain price for The Hollies, and if this man can come up with the money, why should he care about anything else? Market forces rule—OK.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” spluttered her husband.

  “It means that you’ve always been against sentiment entering into what ought to be purely commercial transactions.”

  “I wouldn’t call it sentiment—expecting him to have some consideration for us, as ex-neighbors.”

  “But that’s what it is, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve always found Dr. Pickering rather brusque.” said Adrian Eastlake sadly. “And so has Mother.”

  Lynn Packard felt the meeting falling apart. He was conscious of the satiric eye of Evie Soames on him.

  “My point is that we have to explore every avenue. Another possibility is the estate agents whose hands the house is in. Another is the building society they’ll be going to for loans.”

  “The same consideration that applies to Dr. Pickering applies to the estate agents,” pointed out Evie Soames, with an obvious relish. “Why should they care? If the Phelans—let’s be brave and give them a name, shall we?—can come up with the money, that’s all they will care about. We’ve no certainty they will need to go to a building society for a loan, and if they do the society won’t need us to tell them their business: Anyone with half an eye could see that the Phelans aren’t the best risk in the world.” She got up. “I’ve got to go, I’m afraid. But as far as I’m concerned the question of whether or not we want them as neighbors simply doesn’t arise. There’s nothing we can do. You can’t choose your neighbors. The only conceivable thing you could do would be to club together and buy it yourselves. But then you’d be on dodgy ground when you came to selling it again if you tried to stop the Phelans buying it.” She smiled around, giving them the aggravating impression that she regarded them as comic. “So you’d best resign yourselves to your own impotence.”

  There was general relief when she had gone.

  “It seems to me your good lady is thinking too negatively,” said Lynn to Steven, who sat there sweating and embarrassed, but thankful Evie had not heard herself described as his good lady.

  “The suggestion about clubbing together is the only practical suggestion we’ve had so far,” pointed out Daphne Bridewell, who had also registered and not relished Lynn’s phrase. “Though as a retired person I wouldn’t be in a position to come in on it. Neither, I imagine, would Mr. Cartwright. Banks and building societies don’t rush to give loans to elderly people.”

  Algy Cartwright nodded. Adrian Eastlake looked round in despair. That left three householders. Where would he lay hands on thirty-odd thousand?

  “There’s also the question of the police,” said Lynn, looking down at his notes. “From what I hear he’s the sort of man who must have a record.”

  “I remember some trouble with the police while I was Deputy Head at the school,” confirmed Daphne Bridewell.

  “I can’t say too much,” said Adrian Eastlake, looking around at them pinkly, “because of my job, you understand. But when I had to call on him, I did some . . . background research, and he does have a criminal record. Though of a minor kind,” he concluded lamely.

  So what? Jennifer Packard wanted to say. What was there to stop criminals buying houses? It was one of the things they most frequently used their gains for, and no wonder, the way house prices were soaring. But she had stored up enough black marks that evening already, marks which would be brought up against her when everyone
had gone, so she held her peace. She sat there wondering what they would have done if not the Phelans but an ordinary family from the Belfield Grove Estate had won the pools and decided to buy The Hollies. Nothing, she supposed. Lynn would have wanted to, though. Yet he himself had grown up in a back-to-back, with nothing to spur him on but an ambitious and doting mother and his own rather brutal sense of priorities.

  The talk was now turning general. Frustration at not being able to think up specific measures, combined with Evie’s insistence on naming the Phelans, had led them to home in on the family’s personal and collective awfulness.

  “The eldest boy was always a troublemaker,” Daphne Bridewell was saying. “In fact, he was a delinquent by the time he came to us, and that was when he was nine.”

  “You may remember the newspaper stories about child prostitution in the Carrock area of town,” said Adrian. “I happen to know that the eldest daughter was heavily involved there—she was only thirteen at the time.”

  “How many children are there?” asked Lynn Packard.

  “Six,” said Daphne Bridewell promptly.

  “Catholics, I suppose,” said Lynn, with a moue.

  “Christ, it’s not religion makes them have all those kids,” said Steven too loudly. “It’s to scrounge more out of the Social Security.”

  He pulled himself up short, appalled. He sounded like a Thatcherite. He thanked his stars once more that Evie had gone early. But Daphne Bridewell was nodding.

  “You’re probably right. I don’t believe for a moment that lots of people on welfare benefits have children in order to get more handouts, as the tabloids tell us. They’re not that stupid. But the Phelans are. The only time I talked to the parents, when Kevin and June were in Middle School and creating merry hell there, the father made it clear he resented having to send them to school at all. Bloody waste of time, he said: They should be out earning money. Kevin was then eleven. I got the impression that if we started sending children down the mines again, or into the mills, he’d be first in the queue to register his lot.”