The Tenement (20 page)

“… had a terrible time once when I was on a boat,” Mrs Floss was saying. “Everybody was sick. Glasses were sliding down the table. I got to my feet and went flying through the doors, swing doors they were. I landed on the deck and my handbag skidded all over the place. The ship was going down, I thought, and I was sure it wouldn't come up again. I thought to myself, I'm not a good woman. I haven't been a good woman. What will happen if I drown now? The waves were all grey. But it was too late, you see.” She was becoming maudlin now. “The toilet was slippery with sickness. Babies were being sick too.” Her face was reddening like Cooper's. Soon she would weep into her gin. John placed a small table in front of her so that she could lay her glass on it. She looked up at him, “You're a pal,” she said. “I remember when I was young my father, who was working in the fields, sent me to bring a drink to the harvesters” (she had difficulty in pronouncing ‘harvesters'). “My brother was sitting on a bicycle at the gate. He laughed at me when he saw me with the pail. And I threw the pail of water all over him. He started crying and I ran away and hid behind some trees. I stayed there for three hours. And then I heard my father looking for me, and he found me, and he said, ‘You'll be all right, Glenda, I promise you. I'll fix it with your mother.' And so I came out. My mother used to hit me with a broom and my brother was her favourite. She didn't listen to my father, and hit me just the same. My brother was brighter than me. He became an accountant, though he wanted to be a violinist.” She relapsed into silence.

“Oh, he played the fiddle,” said Cooper laughing like a horse. “He fiddled the accounts. These two people ran away with two violins, and do you know what the charge was? Robbery, with violins.”

“A pun,” thought Trevor, “not a very good joke.”

“You know something,” he said, “I was never a good teacher. Oh, I knew my subject all right. Perhaps too well. But I didn't like the pupils. That's the thing, you're not teaching a subject, you're teaching pupils. I remember once, this girl whose work I admired, came to see me. ‘Please sir, I cannot finish my thesis,' she said. ‘What,' I said, ‘you come to tell me that after half the year's gone? Why didn't you do it? I'm ashamed of you.' ‘I couldn't do it,' she said, and she burst out crying. And I was very angry. You see, I thought she had done something to me, I took the fact that she couldn't finish the thesis as a personal insult.” They were all looking at him. Mrs Floss didn't know what he was talking about, but the rest were impressed by the authenticity of his statement. It was as if drink was the Protestant's confessional. For the first time he felt that he was losing his aloofness.

“That's right,” said John. “I understand you. I was once, well, I used to like reading Science Fiction, and this day Linda and I were in Glasgow. And I came to this shop where I saw some second-hand science fiction books and others. When I went into the shop the man got up and he said, ‘Plenty of books here. Three hundred of the best here. At reasonable prices. Over three hundred. You won't get better bargains anywhere.' So I wandered around looking at the shelves. Only the books were overpriced, for second-hand books. Normally I paid thirty pence at the most for a secondhand paper book, but he was asking seventy pence and more. And he kept following me about. ‘Cheap as you can get,' he kept saying, showing me the books and pointing out some special ones. ‘Good reading there,' he said. He was a big fellow and I thought there was something wrong with him. He was eating an ice cream cone: it was a hot day. Anyway, I didn't buy any of his books and he followed me outside, and he shouted, ‘You think you know about books. But I can tell you don't know anything about them.' I thought he was going to attack me. He was foaming at the mouth. ‘I could teach you a thing or two about books,' he kept shouting. And he shook his fist at me. Funny guy.”

“I often think,” said Porter eagerly … “Do you think if you go into a shop and you don't buy anything that the owner of the shop takes it personally?” But this time he felt that he had gone too far. The audience was not interested in a philosophical discussion, in close analysis.

The tenement had grown suddenly silent as if the passers-by had all gone home. “Do you hear the creakings at night in the tenement?” said Mrs Floss suddenly. “You can hear the wood creaking. You never hear it in a new flat.”

“That's the wood contracting and expanding with the heat,” said Cooper magisterially. “That's what it is.”

“Every night I hear it. And cracks. I hear cracks like guns going off. From the sideboard I hear them. About an hour after I put the TV on.”

“It must be Little and Large,” said John. “No, I tell you it's that woman” (and he named a Scottish singer he disliked). The Ghoul, he called her. “Listen,” he would say to Linda. “The Ghoul's on again.” When she sang opera he told Linda that she had constipation.

“I didn't know you liked Science Fiction,” said Trevor to John. “I used to read Science Fiction. I've got some books in the house. Mostly Sturgeon. You can have them if you like.”

“Ta,” said John. “Ta very much.”

“You'll never get his nose out of a book,” said Linda proudly.

I used to read romances, thought Mrs Cameron, nurses and doctors in hospitals, squires and maidens. How long ago that must have been. Many of them were also set in Greece. There was one she specially remembered about a blind girl who had been haunted by her former lover whom she supposed dead. Devil worship; reincarnation it was. And it turned out that she was the reincarnation of a sixteenth century girl and he the reincarnation of a lord who had lived in a castle and had been a devil worshipper.

“They have no open-air toilets in Yugoslavia,” Mrs Floss was saying to Cooper. “You have to go to a restaurant. And the same in Italy.”

“No open-air toilets?” said Cooper incredulously. “I wouldn't like that. No job for me, eh John.”

“How are you liking your job, then?”

“Great. A man came in the other day and he said to me, ‘It's too hot out there, I came in for the cool.' Fellow from England he was, with a moustache. And he wouldn't go out because it was too hot. ‘Can't stand the heat,' he told me, ‘ever since my operation.' He told me that even in the winter time he went about in shirt sleeves. Sweat pouring off him. You never saw anything like it. ‘You can stay here,' I told him, ‘you can wash your face if you like. Use the facilities.' And we had a great blether. Turned out he was from the Potteries. He took a professional interest in lavatory pans. But he made mostly vases, he told me. And before that he used to work in a glass factory. He didn't like Leeds or Liverpool, but he liked Sheffield and Manchester. Great architecture in Manchester, he told me. That was his hobby, you see, studying architecture. Liverpool, that's a dangerous place, he said. Went to a pub there one night for a beer and I could feel the danger, know what I mean he said.”

He's not home yet, thought Mrs Cameron, that must mean he's really drunk. And she was frightened. Please let me get up the stairs before he gets home. But she was afraid to excuse herself to the company, she was so shy.

“This Italian was sitting there. Upright against a rock,” Cooper was saying. “You'd have thought he was asleep. They said Italians were cowards and so they were. Interested in music and ice cream. It was very quiet. You could hear the flies. They were moving about his face, hundreds of them. It was very hot. I took his wallet out, and there were these photographs. Fat wife. They say Italians like them fat.” He licked his lips, “I could show you that photograph. I showed it to my wife once. Nice woman that, I said to her. Bit of flesh on her.” He stopped and then continued as if he hadn't changed the subject at all.

“This policewoman came and it was late at night. She was all right when I left her, I told her. I'll be back, I said to the surgeon. Simpson it was, he goes to Saudi Arabia for six months in the year. But this policewoman came to the door. It was very cold. It was just after Christmas. You'll be home for the New Year, I told her. But she wasn't.” And his eyes filled with tears. He accepted the drink John gave him. “They should have known at the hospital,” he said.

“Do you remember that spastic woman who was nearly raped here?” he asked. They remembered.

“Well, the woman she was visiting never speaks to her now. Keep away from my house, she told her. She acts as if the spastic was a prostitute or something. And when the policeman went to see her, she said, I know nothing about it. I heard nothing. I don't want anything to do with her. She's a bad woman. And she slammed the door in his face. Would you believe it? So she's got nowhere to go now. It was the only house she visited, you see. Sometimes I think about that bloke who nearly raped her. But what could I do? I heard the scream, I had to do something, didn't I?” There was self-congratulation in his voice. “But if he'd tried anything on me I'd have fixed him. I've got friends. I'm not worried. He had a scar on his face. Disgusting bugger.” And he swallowed more whisky.

Cameron made his way up the road staggering and singing. After a while he stopped and his face became set and angry. He had heard from Mrs Miller, with whom he had had a drink at the station buffet, that his wife was visiting the Masons. She herself had avoided the party as she had no intention of celebrating the birth of a child: she considered the Masons lucky and herself unlucky. Linda Mason had her husband beside her: she had lost hers when not much older than Linda. She raised her glass mockingly to Cameron as she told him about his wife.

Cameron could hardly believe that Greta would have the impudence, the nerve, to visit the Masons and to do it moreover behind his back. If she was doing so now, then she must have had contact with them before. Perhaps she had given the Fenian baby a present, she who had herself remained childless, infertile, barren. He would drag her from that house and hammer her: he looked forward to the night with satisfaction. The aggression surged in him clearly: he had his honest pretext. Mrs Miller's mocking burning face shone in front of him.

When he arrived outside the close, he stood for a moment, swaying and considering. Perhaps what he should do was smash the window which fronted the street. But no, better would be to open the door and see the expression on his wife's face. He stood there and breathed in and out for a while, preparing himself. He closed his big red fist. He could taste the moment inside his mouth. Now they were all happy in there. Then in a short while there would be din, noise, confusion. He had every right to drag his wife out of there: she had betrayed him. He went out into the wind and rain and earned money for her: and she associated with Fenians, his mortal enemies. He thought perhaps he should go upstairs and put on his blue finery, but that would be a waste of valuable time. He banged on the door, shouting, “Come out of there, you Fenian bastards.”

There was a sudden silence as if those inside were stunned. He basked in it for a moment. Then the door opened and John Mason was standing in front of him.

“You've wakened the baby,” said John. His face was white and set. His whole body was trembling.

“My wife, you've got my wife in there. Send her out here or I'll go in myself,” said Cameron. He kicked the door with his boot. He was glad he had wakened the baby.

“You've got twenty seconds to get out of here,” said John trembling more than ever. “That's all you've got.”

“What do you f…ing mean? I want my wife sent out, you Fenian bastard.”

Mason looked down at the door on which Cameron's boot had left a scar. It was as if he could hardly believe what had happened.

“Look,” he said, “you've wakened the baby. I've given you your chance. You're an old man. Go up the stair quietly.”

“Listen, you Fenian bastard. Tell your Fenian wife to send my wife out or …”

Before he could say any more John's head thrust forward and butted him in the face, from which blood suddenly poured. Then John punched him in the stomach. As he fell he kicked him viciously. He had gone berserk with rage.

“John, stop it,” screamed Linda behind him.

“Stop it,” shouted Greta Cameron, rushing out to see her husband lying on the stone. She beat on John's body with her small fists. After a long while he heard voices which seemed at first to come from a distance, then closer. He drew a deep breath and stood there silently. There was blood on his shoe.

“You … you ruffian,” Greta Cameron was shouting, “You've killed him.” There was blood on Cameron's face and head, but he was breathing. His wife bent down to touch his forehead. She swayed and seemed about to faint.

“Bastard,” John was saying over and over.

Trevor Porter gazed down at Cameron, feeling sick. His mind was in a turmoil of emotions. On the one hand he was glad that Cameron was lying there like a felled oak. On the other, he was frightened by the violent battering that John had inflicted on him. Inside the house the baby was crying. Linda ran in, leaving the others at the door.

As Trevor stood there, he thought of his wife, and Cameron's body stretched in front of him reminded him of her. He even felt a curious pity for Cameron: he suddenly looked old and empty, not at all terrifying. John had been much fitter when the time came, much more aggressive.

Mrs Floss said to him, “He deserved it.” Her face was shaking with excitement. “He should never hit a woman.” John leaned down as if he were a doctor inspecting a patient and said to Cameron, who perhaps was not even hearing him, “Don't ever touch my door again or I'll give you another doing. I'm not your wife. I hope you're listening, you fat bastard.”

Cameron lay there almost posthumously in the silence.

Then John said, “We'd better take him upstairs. Will you help me?” he asked Trevor and Cooper, who had been gazing at the fight with a mixture of amazement and satisfaction. He seemed to have forgotten his army days or perhaps he saw in Cameron the Italian he had watched so carefully in the desert.