The place was just by the park and I was early, so I locked my bike and waited on a bench, enjoying the breeze and thinking it would be nice to live here.
At the right time for the viewing, a woman let me in and we sat in the kitchen for a chat – it was a homely kitchen and she gave me a glass of water. She picked up a joint butt from an ashtray and lit the last puff, saying ‘I don’t really smoke’. She showed me her website. She was in the business of making installations out of umbrellas. I said I liked them. She showed me a lot of pictures.
There were quite a few sculpture looking things in the kitchen, maroon paper mache and bits of mannequin wearing strings of flowers, that kind of thing. ‘All this won’t be here’, she said.
Eventually, she started showing me round. We went upstairs. On the landing between the two bedrooms she hesitated with her hand on a doorknob, ‘you know what? I’ve decided you can have my room. It’s bigger.’ She dropped that doorknob and did a 180, opening the opposite door.
Her bedding was white. Across her bedhead was a twisted branch with a few taxidermy ravens glued by the feet, and a bell or two suspended on string. I started feeling doubtful. We went back downstairs for another chat. She got me some more water and checked on the roach in the ashtray.
I began, ‘I don’t think this is going to work.’ She looked crushed. ‘I just need a bit more…space?’ I said. ‘I need to fit a computer in my room. Thanks though, it was kind of you to offer me your bedroom.’ I started rummaging in my handbag for keys.
‘Wait!’ She said. ‘Oh my god, I forgot to show you the attic! There’s another floor!’
We single filed back upstairs, past the bedrooms and up more steep beige stairs. We got to the attic, it was very low and triangular, as in I could only stand up right in the centre line, and the ceiling got lower at each side.
At the far wall was a desk with a massive fawn computer, a printer and a chair. There was a single foam mattress on the floor. It smelled musty. There were clothes hanging on hangers at either side, like at a car boot.
‘Errr’, I said. ‘Oh yeah, it’s my office now‘, she said. ‘But you can have it!’ I’ll be getting rid of all this. She gestured to the desk, mattress and clothes. I noticed on the desk a saucer piled high with dead wasps. I tried not to mention it. ‘Why do you have a plate of wasps in here?’ I asked by accident. ‘Oh!’ She said. ‘Yes!’ She opened the window. There’s a giant wasp nest just out here.’ We stood with our torsos poking up out of the skylight and she showed me the wasp nest. There were only a few wasps floating around.
‘I was going to give my friend a jar of wasps for Christmas,’ she explained. ‘But I never got around to it.’ I started heading for the stairs, and making conversation, I commented on one of the coats hanging around. ‘Oh, I used to have that coat’, I said. ‘Jigsaw right? I lost mine at Black Swan.’ She rushed over to the coat and started taking it off the hanger. ‘Have it! It’s yours! Try it on.’
‘Errr,’ I said. Up closer the coat was a lot more worn than my old coat, and mustier, and a size 14. ‘That’s kind, but you’re alright’, I said, ‘I think it might be too big for me anyway.’
‘Try it.’ She held a sleeve open like a shop assistant and stood in my way. I put an arm in and swivelled into the coat. It felt very loose. I felt dubious. ‘Perfect!’ she said, and made me look in a mirror.
(I flash back to my mum making me try on a pile of clothes Angelo brought home from a skip or somewhere, like too-big brown satin trousers with blim burns in them, and a man’s old tobacco stinking jumper. ‘Gorgeous!’ she would murmur, as though on the verge of tears of joy. ‘Show your brothers.’ And she would make me embarrassedly present myself at the living room door, and make them look. ‘Doesn’t she look stunning!’ She demands. ‘Yep’, they mumble, looking back at the telly.)
‘I’m not sure’, I said, holding the sides of the coat out to show how wide it was. ‘Just take it.’ She said, and I stop arguing, start heading for the exit. ‘Wait!’ She said, standing in the doorway and frowning at my chest. She took a couple of steps nearer and started picking at the chest of the coat I’m still wearing, with her fingernails. ‘Oh no. It’s got moths.’ I look down. There are lots of little holes where moths have laid eggs in the coat and she is trying to pick them out. I take the coat off and give it back.
‘Don’t worry,’ she says, clutching the coat under her arm. ‘I’ll freeze them out!’ I follow her down the stairs. ‘I’ll pop it in the freezer. By the time you move in, all the eggs will have died.’ We get to the kitchen and go behind all the half finished sculptures. She opens the freezer door. I find the front door while she’s still trying to stuff the massive coat into the tiny freezer. It’s so good to feel the wind on my face.
