Berthold: Cherry Cutter

Eustachia left early in a whirl of polyester, perfume and hastily applied lipstick. I took my time, knowing there was no coffee to look forward to and not even any money to go out and get some, until Inna surfaced.

I checked my emails, nothing much there – who the hell falls for these ridiculous Ukrainian bride ads anyway? – then I put on my paisley pyjamas to pad to the bathroom, turning the radio on to blot out the sound of Inna and Lookerchunky, who were still arguing. Sticking my razor-ready chin out in front of the bathroom mirror, I brooded over a new complexion imperfection – does Clooney have these red spider veins yet? – and the ghastliness of growing old. Then I heard the front door slam. I put my head out to see what was going on.

Inna was standing in her nightdress in the hall, gazing at the back of the closed door with a look of utter desolation on her face. ‘Why you do this to me, Bertie?’

‘Do what, Inna? The man is a scoundrel. A rogue. An impostor. We don’t know who he is. I’ve probably saved you from a fate worse than death.’

Though judging from what I had heard last night, she had already experienced a fate worse than death, and rather enjoyed it.

‘I say everything you tell me – mother, sister, friend, crazy – all I pretend it like you tell me. But you – why you not pretend some little thing for me, Bertie?’

‘Look, Inna, we need to get one thing clear. That man is not moving in here. No way.’

She said nothing, her mouth set in a sullen pout.

‘And another thing – why are we out of coffee? You know I need coffee in the morning if I am to function at all. It’s not too much to ask, is it? Look, I’m sorry …’

Her eyes were filling up with tears. Was I being too harsh?

‘… but I thought we had an agreement, Inna.’

‘I make agreement wit Lily, you mother. I make promise to Lily. I leave my lovely flat in Hempstead for livink in stinking council flat wit you! Oy!’

‘Mother wanted you to move in here?’ I had half suspected this.

‘She say to me, Inna, look after my son. He good man but useless. Witout me he will be starving of hunger. When I die he will be put out on street from under-bed tax.’

‘Mother said that to you?’ It’s nice to know that one’s parents have such confidence in one.

‘Lily good Soviet woman, like saint in heaven.’ Tears were coursing down the runnel-grooves in her cheeks. ‘She tell me you homosexy. I understand. You no marry. You need woman in house.’

‘Mother told you I was homosexual?’ Could this be true? I edged back to the kitchen, where the kettle was hissing and screaming for attention.

She followed, shuffling in her slippers, berating me in a mournful shriek that echoed the cadences of the kettle.

‘But I see you like lady. You chase first after black one, then after fatty one. What I can do? I think soon you will marry and I will be out.’

‘Ssh, Inna! There’s no need to shriek. Can’t we have a rational discussion?’

But she was having none of it.

‘I like nice man, nice flat, nice life. I write letters in Ukraina newspaper.’ She began to wail again. ‘Oy, I understand! You think I too old, you think Lev too young for me!’

‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

‘Young, old – love got no barricade for age! Look George Clooney! He forty-year-old man marry beautiful young wife.’

‘Actually, Inna, George Clooney is fifty-three.’

My correction was lost on her. ‘I more younger than Lily,’ she moaned.

Something dawned on me.

I said, ‘But Inna, this man, this Lookerchunky, he’s not the man my mother married. He wasn’t her husband. For all we know, he might be married to someone else.’

‘Not husband? Oy!’ Inna crossed herself fervently, as if I’d accused her of adultery. ‘So who he is?’

‘I’ve no idea. Maybe a relation or an acquaintance. Maybe just someone who read a story about a nice flat in London and a woman on her own, and decided to take a chance. The world is full of chancers like that. You can’t be too careful, Inna.’

She reached down two cups, filled them both with boiling water, and placed a tea bag in one of them, musing out loud, ‘All night he make love like big man-horse of Queen Ekaterina.’

‘Yes. All night. I heard. Look, Inna. That’s all well and good. But it still doesn’t give him the right to come and live in this flat.’

‘When morning come he sing beautiful song from my country. Mmm m mmm m!’ She broke into her wailing ditty. ‘You know this song, Mister Bertie? Soldier depart for great patriotic war, and his beloved Katyusha walk beside riverbank sing it to him.’ She flipped the single tea bag into the other cup and began wailing again. ‘Veestoopila na bereg Katyusha.’

‘Yes, it’s lovely. But we’ve run out of coffee. And milk.’

‘You see, Ukrainian people now living in London, they very nice people but all from West Ukraine. Different religion. Different history. They take down statue from Lenin and put up statue for Nazi.’ She loaded two spoonfuls of sugar into her tea and sipped carefully, sucking in air to cool her mouth. ‘In my country is twenty million dead from fight against Nazi in great patriotic war. Mmm na visokiy na krutoy … My father lost one leg. My Dovik lost all family.’

‘Yes. Splendid. You can tell me the story later. But have you got a fiver I can borrow?’

I pulled on my jeans and T-shirt and stumbled out into the grove clutching Inna’s fiver, thinking it would be imprudent to blow it all in one splendid triple-shot at Luigi’s, though the temptation was there. A fine rain wetted my hair. In my befuddled state, I noticed that something had changed in the grove, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. One of the feral moggies, a damp scrap of ginger, ran beside me, tail in the air, and rubbed herself against my legs. I bent to stroke her but she shied away then vanished into the shrubbery.

On my way back with my bulging carrier bag – it’s amazing what you can get in Lidl for a fiver – I noticed among the cherry trees there was a litter of discarded food packaging, nappies, a black bin bag of unknown contents, a peed-on foam mattress, and a large finely executed turd. Canine? Human? I clicked my tongue in annoyance.

Then I realised what had changed – the tents had gone. They must have left in the night so silently that I hadn’t heard them. Then again, we were making quite a racket ourselves.

Inna was out when I got back. Oh dear. Had she run off in tears to search for the impostor Lookerchunky? Sipping my first proper coffee of the day – it was almost ten o’clock, for godssake – my mood mellowed, and I began to wonder whether I had been unduly hard on Inna, who certainly deserved a mild rebuke for dereliction of coffee duty, but had, to her credit, come up with the necessary fiver. When she came back, I would apologise.

I gazed out of the window. The familiar view was tinted with the sepia of melancholy, to which the flavour of Lidl own-brand may have contributed. Yes, I had behaved badly. I’d been a jerk. I yearned for a glimpse of a forgiving angel skipping along the path between the trees. Where had she been going with that enormous suitcase yesterday? With surprising fondness I also anticipated the stately progress of a Genuinely Good Person, a saver of strays, flea-bitten in the line of duty, coming with a file folder under her arm to rescue me. Or be rescued by me. It came down to the same thing.

Suddenly a commotion at the bottom of the grove caught my eye. A white van had pulled up by the kerb – two white vans, in fact – and men were getting out with heavy-duty tools. Then one of those fork-lift trucks with a platform on the front trundled up, I think they call them cherry pickers. Or cherry cutters in this case. Within minutes, I heard the ghastly high-pitched whine of an electric saw, which was not unlike Inna’s earlier singing. Should I rush down and chain myself to a tree? Without Violet to witness my heroism, the whole scenario seemed a lot less appealing.

The same tree I had been chained to was now under attack, amid a crash of branches and a flurry of pigeon’s wings. Did I owe it to Violet to continue the struggle which she had started, even though she was no longer here? Or was that merely quixotic? While heroism and inertia battled it out in my brain, a wiry figure in a purple coat had no such doubts. Mrs Crazy appeared in the cherry grove with her two umbrellas, and started beating the hapless tree cutters about head and shoulders. One of them went down with a crash. The other got on his mobile phone.

Moments later a police car pulled up behind the white vans. Two coppers strolled down the path towards the scene of tree carnage, and had words with Mrs Crazy. I couldn’t hear what they said, but I could guess. Mrs Crazy listened, started to argue back, then took a swing with her umbrella. In a flash, one of them got her in an armlock. The other whipped out a pair of handcuffs, and between them they bundled her into the back of their car. The whole scene had lasted no more than ten minutes.

Then the chainsaws whined on.