8

Eric

He didn’t come back. He went out on the Sunday and he didn’t come back. I wondered for a time if she might have him down there but I decided she couldn’t have. He’d cleared off. Just like that. A snap of the fingers and he’s gone.

Mind you, I never liked him much anyway. He was too sort of sharp and couldn’t look you straight in the eye, too shifty for my liking. I’m not saying he wasn’t friendly enough in his way, it was just that he let me down when I needed him most. Still, he left behind a bottle of whisky and you’ve got to be grateful for small mercies. But I’m glad he’s gone. I’m not just saying that.

Anyhow, I’ve got other worries.

It isn’t just the sores that are taking a long time to heal up, or even because of the dog and his noise – no, I got this letter from King’s with my cards in it, saying don’t come back, you’re unsatisfactory. Twelve years. How can anybody say that after twelve years? I went down there the same day as the letter came, but the gatekeeper wouldn’t let me through. You old bastard, I said to him. But he just turned away and wouldn’t speak.

I’ve got twenty pounds in the Post Office and I have to see a man at the Labour Exchange tomorrow. I’ll get another job easily enough. It’s just that I wish Matt was here to advise me. He knew about things like that.

And then there’s the dog. It still troubles me, and I’m going to settle the matter soon. But I drink whisky at night and that helps me a bit. It doesn’t take the noise away, no, but it helps. It acts like a sedative, you see. If you take two or three codeine tablets along with it, then you drop off. Then the noise sounds like it’s coming from miles away instead of just a few yards.

I didn’t think Matt would go without saying goodbye. Just like that. I thought all along that we’d been friends. But now I see what it is. There wasn’t anything between us, really. Sometimes you can think that a person is your friend, but you can be wrong. Nigel and Charlie, for example. I waited outside King’s until after work and when they came out they said Hard luck, Eric, and that sort of thing, but they were in a hurry to get away from me. It was obvious.

Still, I’ll get another job. There’s bound to be plenty at the Labour Exchange.

Now I come to my main worry.

Yesterday, Wednesday, I was walking down Ponsonby Gardens when Mrs Peluzzi came up to me.

She said, ‘Good morning.’

Surprised, I stopped. I didn’t say anything. She had on a pair of dark glasses. I couldn’t see her eyes.

‘We have had nothing but trouble since we first met,’ she said.

‘Well,’ I said.

‘Don’t you think we could try again?’

‘Try what?’ I asked. I wasn’t going to commit myself.

‘Try to be better neighbours?’

I nearly laughed. Better neighbours? We couldn’t have been worse.

‘I mean, we could forget what has happened in the past and we could try again,’ she said.

I had this odd feeling that she was staring at me crazily from behind her glasses. I couldn’t forget her eyes before.

‘Life is too short to bear grudges,’ she said.

‘I’m not the sort to bear grudges,’ I said.

‘Do you think I am?’

I didn’t know what to say.

‘No, we must try again,’ she said. ‘Remember what Our Lord said about seventy times seven?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Why don’t you come some afternoon for tea?’

Later, when I got back to the room, I thought about all this. But it didn’t make sense.

So now I’m going down there for tea. But it worries me. Something niggles me. I’m not sure what it is.

With people, you never know. You never know how they’re going to turn out. I mean, she might be all right. She might not.

But my mother said Never trust a living soul.

And maybe she was right when she said that.