The sound of a powerful car engine murmurs through the open window. Followed by a satisfying clump of a door closing and two lowered voices.
Too preoccupied to investigate, Tom ponders the room he will decorate first. This one will be Gracey’s room. At the front, first floor, overlooking the lane and its columns of trees. He’ll give it the best of himself. And will need to because the room is a murky space, unchanged since the 70s. A cubicle in which it is easy to imagine an elderly man as a former occupant, intent upon a dour vigil, wincing around a roll-up. He can even smell tobacco.
Between the building’s long periods of lying empty, none of the five previous owners decorated the bedrooms. Maybe because no one stayed long enough. A notion that dims his thoughts with a dread tinted the same tone as the room’s pall. Perhaps there is a deep and meaningful reason why no one liked the house and it lies right before his eyes. Much like a sense of a memory that hovers just beyond full recall, it will soon and suddenly become clear.
No. Stop it.
Everything is going to change inside this house now. And in this room first; the colours, contents, the very character and spirit of the place. Surrounded by toys and walls of ice-cream pink – the colour Gracey requested, her favourite colour for three years and counting – his daughter will reclaim and enliven this space.
Plump duvet on a white bed. Doll’s house over there. Bookcase here, at the foot of the bed. Glow from a night light. A place she will associate with comfort. Imaginary worlds for bears and dolls will be devised. This room will become a stage in the theatre of future play-dates, where her friends will want to come.
His little Gracey will then grow taller and cleverer inside here, the toys and posters changing to reflect her evolving interests. But always, this will be her refuge, where she will dream, think and rest; a sanctuary for his child, his girl, his teen, and maybe a young woman too. More than any other room in the house, Tom wants this one to be special. Beyond all that he is expected to earn and own and provide and be and do, at his age, he wants to know that Gracey is safe, healthy and happy. This room will be a monument to how much she is loved and cherished. The seed of their home’s transformation will start here.
The voices outside hush, yet the tone stiffens as if the exchange grows serious. No words are discernible but Tom is made to think that solemn news is being exchanged. He shifts to the window, the creaks under his feet muffled by an oxblood carpet, dust-peppered and cobweb-smeared, yet unhealthily moist. At a pane of glass, near opaque with grime, he peers out.
From this angle, he is again taunted by the idea that two front gardens could not be more unlike each other. And as if the clouds have parted exclusively above the sharp pinnacle of the neighbours’ roof, even sunlight blesses the garden next door, yet falls short of his dank, shaggy lawn. So neat and regular are the planes and edges of the hedge on the neighbours’ side, the privet might have been shaped by a stonemason. Only a glimmer of a lawn is visible, a baize amidst a rainbow of flowers mustered like ornamental soldiers at clinically ordered verges. The explosions of floral colour even make his eyes smart. The frenzies of bees and butterflies, careening in drunken ecstasy, make him dizzy. But through their gaudy clouds, he can see two women standing at the end of the neighbours’ empty drive.
The older woman must be the female half of the couple next door; she’s small and wears a loose shirt folded at the elbows. Baggy grey trousers are rolled above her bony ankles. Old clothes for gardening that appear to have once belonged to a man.
Her back confronts Tom; a narrow body and hips. She’s not an ounce overweight and the tiny frame is held erect by an enviably straight spine. Her slim muscular arms end in gardening gloves. Only the henna bob that crowns the diminutive figure is shaped in a way that strikes Tom as really odd, though from this distance, seen through a dirty windowpane, he can’t define why.
The woman’s bearing also appears stiff, with a hint of prideful confrontation, as if she is looking askance at the much taller woman before her. A visitor who has parked her black Mercedes across the end of his drive. She hasn’t parked outside the neighbours’ because the dirty caravan consumes that stretch of Kerb. So maybe because his house has been empty for so long, next door’s visitors are accustomed to parking across his drive? Though surely this visitor can see that there is now a van on the drive, a vehicle they’ve blocked in.
Tom’s attention flits to the driver of the Mercedes. Next to his neighbour, two women could not be more unlike each other either.
The visitor presents neat and chic in two tones, black and white. Formal apparel signifying business and money. Something to do with a bank or the law, he assumes. Her raven hair shimmers and is ratcheted into a bun at the rear of a narrow skull. Her figure straddles slender and bony, her silhouette sharply defined by a second skin of tailored suit. Beneath the hem of the pencil skirt, her black hosiery discharges a sheen, the slender calves appearing wet. A texture extending to her patent court shoes.
When the exchange between the two women becomes more intense and the gap between their faces narrows, Tom leans forward. ‘Nosing,’ his mum would have said if she’d seen him standing there, a few centimetres back from the window.
His neighbour offers a plastic bag to the woman in black and the visitor’s respectful facade abruptly melts into an excitement she cannot contain. Despite her professional bearing, an unbecoming eagerness takes her over, as well as a furtiveness that impels her to snatch the bag.
When the article has changed hands, passing from a gardening glove to alabaster fingers with nails clotted burgundy, the suited visitor seems about to weep tears of joy. She even clutches the older woman’s dirty glove to express her gratitude. A hand, if Tom is not mistaken, that was proffered regally.
The visitor dips her arm inside a slim bag that hangs from her angular shoulder. She retrieves a white envelope and pushes it at the older woman.
What follows fires a tingle across Tom’s scalp. A feeling akin to accidentally witnessing an erotic moment between strangers.
The elegant visitor bends at the waist and kisses the old neighbour’s glove, pressing her crimson lips to the back of the grimy fabric. Nor does she hurry to break the contact of her shiny lips on the coarse material, so recently employed in grubbing the soil.
The visitor then performs a slow, deferential bow, her ankles crossed as if she’s curtseying before a queen after an honour has been bestowed.
Wearily, perhaps dismissively, the neighbour merely nods her bobbed head at the obsequious display.
The woman in the suit then withdraws and teeters past the front of Tom’s house to her Mercedes, her posture huddled as if afraid of dropping something precious or fragile.
Frowning, Tom leans further forward. When his forehead bumps the window pane, the elderly neighbour turns swiftly.
Blinking the shock of the collision from his eyes, Tom’s vision settles upon the old woman’s crumpled yet fierce face, the chin raised. In confrontation, if he’s not mistaken.
Before he’s thought it through, he’s dropped to a squat, his face hot with the embarrassment of a spy caught in the act. It’s not only shame he feels but a cramp of apprehension too; even a fear that he cannot account for.