At 4.45 the estate agent is already waiting for him, leaning smugly against his dark blue BMW,
‘Mr. Anderson?’
‘Yes.’
The estate agent extends a hand, ‘Clive Bates, of Mutton and Hennion, pleased to meet you.’
Edward swaps his stick to his left hand and extends his right. ‘How do you do.’
The block of flats is perched on the side of a hill. The flat he is being shown is on the first floor. Access to it is via a metal walkway. To reach the lower flats there are steps from the road above. The windows are large, both at the front and back and, once inside the flat, the estate agent points out the extensive views over the city. ‘You can see right across to the other side of the valley.’
Edward runs his eye up and down the streets that diagonally cross the opposite hill and sees how the trees trace black against the skyline. The bedroom is at the back of the flat and looks out onto a bank covered in moss and grass. He hopes it will be dotted with crocuses and daffodils in the spring.
He takes the flat. He loves it and he wonders, going home on the bus, whether he should have looked at more before making a decision, but his need to get away from Mrs Ingram is so great he probably would have taken the flat even if he hadn’t liked it. Up until a few months ago she hadn’t irked him that much. In fact, he had taken a certain pleasure from the perversity of the situation, thwarting her at every turn, playing a game of rituals. But recently he had begun to long for his own private space away from her intrusion. Suddenly he needed to take control, to cook his own food, put his own soiled clothes in the washing machine, empty his own waste paper basket. To live his own life.
‘Mrs Ingram? I’m moving out.’
There, he has finally said it, after all these years. She is so shocked that her jaw drops open and her bottom set of teeth slide forward. Edward watches, mesmerised, as she plonks herself down on a kitchen chair and pushes them back into place.
‘Well now, Mr. Anderson. I’m sure I don’t know what to say. What on earth! Why! Well, I don’t know. I’m speechless.’ Suddenly, and to Edward’s horror, she begins to cry,
‘What ever am I going to do without you? Since Mr. Ingram died you have been such company for me. You’ll still come for your Sunday lunch, won’t you?’
For a split second Edward thinks to put a comforting arm around her shoulder.
‘No, Mrs Ingram. I’m sorry. I’m going to join an archaeology club. So I’ll be out most Sundays.’
‘Have you met a young lady? Is that what all this is about?’
He turns angrily away, ‘No, Mrs Ingram, I haven’t. I’ll be leaving on Sunday.’
He takes the number off a card in the newsagent’s window: Home removals - cheap rates. When the man answers the phone, Edward asks if he can move him on Sunday. But that is his one day off. He could fit him in on Saturday morning before the match. He accepts his offer. He had wanted to arrive just as the evening was drawing in or, at the very earliest, late afternoon, so that he could wake to a new day in his new flat.
On the Saturday morning as he is moving out, Edward surprises himself by feeling rather sorry for Mrs Ingram. ‘At least you get your house to yourself again, Mrs. Ingram,’ he says.
‘And what if I don’t want it?’ she replies, her bottom lip wobbling.
‘Goodbye, Mrs Ingram.’ He closes the front door firmly behind him. As they drive away he sees her, a lonely figure in a floral pinny standing on her front doorstep.
While they are sitting in traffic on the dual carriageway, the removal man tells Edward that he has five children ranging from six months to twenty years. Edward, curious, asks why.
The man laughs, ‘No idea, mate. Life, ain’t it? As long as I get me fags and a pint on a Saturday night and get to go to home matches, I ain’t really complaining.’
So, Edward thinks, I’m not the only one to be washed along by the tide of life. ‘I’ve never been to a football match,’ he says.
‘Never? You’re kidding me. You don’t know what you’re missing, mate.’
‘Why?’ Edward holds on tight as the van swings onto the roundabout.
‘It’s like being part of a big wave, roaring your team on. Bloody hell, mate, you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s better than sex.’
Could it possibly be, Edward wonders? No. He doesn’t think so. The sun is shining through the windscreen, warming him through.
‘Explain more, I’m curious,’ he prompts.
The removal man thinks for a moment, ‘Belonging,’ he says, ‘It feels like belonging.’
They pull up outside the flat and the man turns to Edward, ‘It’s just as well you haven’t got anything heavy. I usually bring my lad to help but he’s cleaning cars this morning. I don’t suppose you can lift much with that there disability.’
Edward is amused. He’d never heard himself referred to as if he had something extra but he supposed he did, if he thought about it.
When the removal man has left, Edward feels suddenly stranded. Should he go out, get a spot of lunch, see if he can find the courage to go back to the studio? Would she even be there? He shudders. He doesn’t know if he can go back. The late morning light filters through the empty flat and for an instant he is afraid and wonders if he has done the right thing, until he sees a shaft of sunlight catch the stained-glass windows of the church across the valley.
Everything is a new adventure. Even catching a bus with a different number and unfamiliar faces on it. Going to the supermarket and picking carefully through the gleaming rows of strange fruit and veg. Buying soap powder. Choosing through all the peculiar names and then reading the instructions. Putting his books out on the shelves and walking naked around the flat.
He sees a notice in his local newsagents. Good home wanted for cat. She turns out to be an old thing, a tortoiseshell with white paws, and when he comes home from work she greets him on the metal walkway, meowing up at him. She curls her tail around his legs. He lets them both in and when he is seated, she jumps onto his lap.
He smiles to himself, smoothes his hand along the length of her back and thinks, how ironic, if only his mother, like Mrs Ingram, had been sad at his leaving all those years ago, maybe he would have had gone out into the world and made a life for himself.