A FEW DAYS later Kirsty called Marlene to tell her what had happened. ‘This doesn’t surprise me. But you’ll cope, Kirst. You always do. Have you been to New Cross to check out the story? Call Zoë or Leanne. How transparent of Luka to talk of repossession,’ Marlene said. ‘He could easily have used one of those legal words that has no meaning.’
Kirsty had been clear about Luka’s sleeping on the sofa. That she hadn’t been feeble about – and had got the instruction in immediately by showing him into the living room on the night he arrived and handing him the sleeping bag. He had a new job as a relief porter in a private hospital. No questions had been asked about his employment status but because the place was at the end of a long suburban lane, miles from a tube station, he had had to buy a second-hand bicycle to get to and from work. There were now two bikes in the narrow hall, Luka’s and Declan’s, and hardly room to get past. ‘Don’t you do enough wheeling with the trolleys?’ Abe said. ‘This place looks like a fucking bicycle shed.’ Kirsty imagined Luka wearing surgeon’s green scrubs – though that wasn’t what porters wore – pushing bed-bound patients in and out of cavernous lifts. All week he had been asleep when Kirsty left for work in the morning. She walked past the closed door in the hall and went straight out to the street, feeling as if she were the lodger, checking out of her own guest house. When she returned in the evening the living room door was still closed, but at that time of day she opened it and went in. She wandered around, trying to maintain right of way, like a rambler following an old path along the edge of a field. She drew the living-room curtains fully and let in the light. Luka’s clothes were in the zip-up bag. A pillow and a folded sleeping bag were placed on top of it in a forlorn pile.
Kirsty looked about dispassionately, as if the room were no longer hers. She remembered the rolls of the dust that used to collect in the corners and round the legs of the furniture, like dry ice blown on to a stage set. They had gone – cleaned up in an early zealous burst – together with Neil’s derelict props: crockery and empty bottles used as ashtrays. But the furniture remained. Kirsty stared at the battered-looking sofa. It seemed to have aged further, used as a bed. The creases in the Indian cloth that covered it were in permanent pleats. Having been shut up for hours on end with Luka inside, the room had regained its former mustiness. She could smell that someone had slept there, but also Neil’s old druggy, alcoholic smells – weed, cigarettes, Nag Champa, wine, whisky – which she had thought her housekeeping and open-windows policy had done away with for ever. The feelings Kirsty had had as a child, of being a stranger in the house, of not belonging, came back to her. She didn’t feel quite at home. Picking up the indistinct sound of voices on Abe’s television, coming from upstairs, she wondered if she would have recognised Neil’s voice if she heard it again.
Sometimes it crossed her mind that she and Abe were there under false pretences and that someone with a better claim would ask for the property back. She imagined a man watching a CCTV screen in a faraway room, idly looking at them – not with sinister intent, but simply looking, killing time, until the moment came to pull the plug on them. Since moving in, Kirsty had received several calls on the land line from people who asked to speak to Neil. Mostly they were cold callers who wanted to inform Mr Rivers that he had won a trip to the Caribbean or to persuade him to change his telephone provider. On one occasion it had been a woman called Dido and another time a woman with an actorly voice who wouldn’t give her name. Kirsty had had to tell these people that Neil had died. The conversations had left her shaky. Neither of the women she had spoken to had known that Neil had a daughter.
Kirsty went down to the basement and saw Luka through the kitchen window. He was propping up the post in the garden fence, always in the same spot of shade, bare-chested, smoking his sprouting roll-ups – looking as miserable and proud as if he were waiting to be shot for a matter of honour. Kirsty found it hard to describe to herself how she felt when she saw him there. Every evening it was the same feeling, which administered a shock, like a jolt from a recurring dream and didn’t increase or lessen as the week went by. It was as if someone had planted a full-size tree which she hadn’t ordered or chosen, but which she knew for certain was impossible to dig up without either killing the tree or wrecking the garden.
Kirsty had to take a deep breath before going out to join him. Having said ‘hi’, she picked up her small garden fork and worked in the shade cast by the shadow of the house. After being stuck in the shop all day, she liked kneeling on an old blanket and grubbing about in the flower bed she had made. The plants were only a few inches high, but they were trusting, wanting to live. Presumably they would have preferred to be somewhere else, a royal park or a sprinkled garden, but they were doing their best. The weeds were tall and tough. Angled and trapped against stones, they failed to come out whole. The thwarted life force seemed to knot and push the stems up thicker, even while she tugged at them. Kirsty prised out the stones embedded in the soil, like nuts in hard toffee, and found more lodged in the layer underneath. They scraped against the fork. She could see Luka’s feet out of the corner of her eye but the rootedness that she had observed in him through the kitchen window seemed more tolerable at ground level. She sensed that he was happy to watch her and after a time she forgot that he was there. When she stood up to stretch her legs, she broke the silence to ask about the hospital. Luka described his duties but left out the smells and pathetic sights. ‘Is it all right dealing with sick people, hour after hour?’ she asked.
‘It is best to be well,’ he said. ‘Like you and me.’ Luka smiled as if the thought of their health gave him pleasure.
The calm ended when Abe appeared. Then Kirsty would have preferred large dogs around the place. The two men took up too much space and played a territorial game of pretending that the other had no right to be there. Abe talked non-stop and Luka was the silent statue – but it was the same game. Kirsty didn’t know whether she was supposed to be referee, spectator or prize.