‘FRAU ROTH, HELLO? Hello! Frau Roth!’
Almost eleven, godknows how long they’ve been calling her! She must have dozed off, her bare legs and buttocks have a chill ‘wind-fingered feel to them. For a ludicrous instant she almost expects to be spanked, even the swish of the old cane-plaited carpet beater is in her ears again, cutting through the air. Her mother had often threatened her with it, wielding it above her head, but there was only one time when she’d actually been in earnest, and the soreness afterwards had lasted several days. Celia had been doing magic in her room; she’d heaped some earth, including a small worm and some decomposing leaves, on a kitchen plate, then sprinkled a few of Walter’s hairs and fingernail clippings on top, to be ritually burnt with a candle flame while she was singing, her incantations: ‘Father, come home! Come home! Brother will take your place.’ The loud singing was what had betrayed her.
Celia rushes her knickers and leggings back on, pulls the blouse down over her hips as she stumbles out into the corridor, past the blare of trumpets and cymbals from the radio she has the presence of mind to turn off.
‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you,’ she says to the assistant who’s been flipping through the art-deco calendar on the door opposite, the door of her own bedroom. Her voice has a gasping edge to it and he looks at her lazily, the hoods over his eyes rolling up and down like shutters in slow motion.
He grins. ‘Hope I didn’t wake you.’
‘For your information,’ Celia states, pausing to think of an excuse, ‘for your information, I was sorting through my late mother’s wardrobe.’ She sighs and crosses over to him, reaches out to straighten the calendar that’s dangling there all crooked. Surely he can’t have guessed, surely not? Her hand has come to rest on the side of her face where she feels a sudden itch. ‘What is it, anyway?’
‘No offence,’ Dominic gives a sly half-shrug at the creases in her blouse and the flushed ridge-patterned imprint on her cheek which she seems to be trying to hide from him, ‘just wanted to ask for some binbags and, if it’s not too much bother, a cup of –’
But the woman’s already turned away and is stalking off down the corridor, her green-clad legs looking as stiff and glossy as two freshly painted lengths of wood. Dominic grimaces after her and raises his cap in silent salute. She’s worse than the little old ladies with their rattling trays of cups and saucers and shameless banter. If nothing else, she’ll be good for a laugh with his mates at the Bluebeard Club tonight. He’ll have a gulp of coffee from his thermos instead.
In the lounge, meanwhile, Alex is kicking limp strips of wallpaper into drifts, whistling along to ‘Message in a Bottle’ and surveying the damp walls and ceiling. Twelve years at least since the last major overhaul, the Roth woman had said (plus, he’d reckon, not too many young visitors either). The plaster is cracked above the window and the fireplace, and there’s the occasional hole – nothing excessive, though. Nothing his All Purpose Polyfilla can’t put right. The paintwork won’t need stripped. A bit of sugarsoaping, a rub with ammonia to get rid of the ingrained dirt, perhaps a little sanding here and there. The only bugger is the cornice and matching rosette in the centre, same as in that perfumed room next door. Not the usual fleur-de-lis but tulips, for God’s sake – he falls silent and slowly marches round the room, his head thrown back – all kinds of bloody tulip shapes. With spiky snarls of leaves and pointed petals asking to be sponged one at a time, please, coquettishly threatening to break off at the first touch.
Alex tosses his hair. It’ll have to be Dominic’s job; he is more patient and, for all his clowning about, more fastidious, a sucker for tricky problems (no wife and kids to rile him, before and after work). That’s that then, Dominic’s the man. Alex starts whistling again and slaps out the rhythm on the covered-up furniture. With the wind so strong today, the place should dry out soon enough and they’ll be able to get on to the lining and painting well ahead of schedule.
‘Goddammit. Dammit! DAMMIT!’ Celia crumples up sister-in-law Lily’s blue aerogramme, then her own unfinished reply, three sheets so far of black pen on bright fuchsia, and hurls the fistful at the clockface behind the kitchen table. The paper balls bounce off the plastic casing with crisp dry pings, innocuously enough. Never budging from her chair, she watches them skitter across the white-tiled floor towards the open doorway.
She’d received Lily’s letter on Saturday, two weeks after the raging-bull phone call with Walter and his aggressive roar: ‘Mother’s flat is yours now? Yours alone? What a bitch!’ Hoping for some kind of apology, she’d found herself trembling slightly as she slit open the envelope. Then she’d read and re-read the cluttered frilly handwriting which said to accept the family’s ‘deepest sympathy, once again’, and gave a ‘round-up of our latest news’, trying to explain away Walter’s outburst as a ‘temper tantrum, nothing more’, and sending his love (in absentia, for he seemed to be on some trip or other to do with his wine-growing business). Not even a hint of an apology. ‘GODDAMMIT!’
A pair of feet in paint-spotted Reeboks trample in. ‘Everything okay?’ The Reeboks continue, right over the scrunched-up bits of paper, before coming to a dead halt. ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t see –’
‘It’s all right, nothing to be sorry about.’
The decorator’s hair is dishevelled and matted with dust, his black Vandyke streaked cobweb-grey. He is holding a bucket of scummy water. ‘I was just going to empty this in the bathroom when I heard you. Sounded like you were having problems or something.’ He smiles with his sharp teeth and takes a step nearer. ‘Well, I’m glad to see you’re okay.’ He makes no attempt to leave. Simply stands there smiling down at her.
Whatonearth does he expect her to do? Celia wonders. Swear some more? But she feels curiously touched all the same. For a moment she blinks up into the blueness of his eyes. They are unwavering, and no mistake. Twin pins that force her to gaze back more steadily …
Then there’s her mother’s voice, from way back in the past: Watch out, Celia, don’t let yourself be caught with a little sugar-coated kindness or you’ll choke for real. You remember the last time, don’t you?
Celia starts to cough as something seems to get stuck in her throat.
Alex, who has suddenly become aware of his bedraggled state, tugs at his hair with his free hand. He isn’t sure exactly what happened. All he knows is that one minute he was smiling at the woman, the next her body had grown sort of rag-doll limp. Except her eyes, which were fixed on his for what seemed ages. Christ, she was weird! Perhaps his first impression of her wasn’t that far off the mark after all: Psychedelia, the mermaid. Either she’s lost her fish’s tail or else she hasn’t quite learnt to swim yet. Not properly, at any rate. For an instant he fantasises about putting his wife into a trance like that, and his sons. Sheer bliss to shut them up at will.
‘I’ve been meaning to ask you a favour …’ Celia falters.
A favour? Alex begins to feel rather uneasy. She sounds much too pleading; ingratiating almost. He doesn’t want things to move so fast. He prefers her more difficult – more off the wall. ‘Back in a second,’ he says, with affected unconcern. ‘I’ll sling this stuff out first.’ Then he turns on his heel and is gone.
Dirty overalls, filthy hair, stupid beard, bad manners. No-no-no, Celia tells herself as she tries to unsquash the paper balls she’s retrieved from the floor, the man isn’t worth it. He isn’t really her type. No. She is confused, upset in a way she hasn’t been since Franz’s death.
She hears Lehmann clear his throat before he ventures, ‘So, you were saying?’
She barely glances up. Ranged before her on the table are the sheets of her letter and Lily’s aerogramme, a little creased and smudged, yet miraculously untorn. The decorator must have had a wash and general spruce-up in front of the bathroom mirror, he’s come back with his face gleaming. But she doesn’t like him. No-no-no. Doesn’t want to like him. And she is the boss. She’ll be fine. Just fine.
‘Having a wee conference?’ The assistant has joined them. He is leaning in the doorway, cap angled back, poking out some earwax with his little finger and grinning his trademark grin. ‘Ready when you are, Alex. Ladders and board are all yours now.’
‘Well, I certainly won’t keep you from your work.’ Celia gives an awkward laugh. ‘On the contrary, I was thinking of adding to it. That carpet roll in the lounge, would you mind getting rid of it for me? I’ll pay the council charges, of course.’
Lehmann is all business now. ‘Sure, take it away this evening. Together with the first load of shutters you want repainted. Peacock blue you said, didn’t you?’
‘That’s right.’ She smiles rigidly. ‘Yes. Thank you. And could you start with the lounge, the Beauty Room and the spare bedroom, please?’
Before closing the kitchen door, the assistant looks back at her over his shoulder, winks, and says, ‘A piece of professional advice, Frau Roth: you might try a steam iron.’
Celia doubts he is merely referring to the crumpled letters. But she nods anyway. A minute later she is still doing it, nodding helplessly to herself like one of the tiny collapsible bead-and-string toy horses she used to play with as a child. Desperate now to stave off the moment when she’ll have to finish her letter to Lily and Walter, recapturing the conciliatory tone of the first few pages and offering them more of the money her mother had left to her – if that’s what it takes to make Walter happy.