Chapter 31 #2
I thumb to the listings. The wrecks. Cheap ones, every one a job. Damp, bowed walls, kitchens from 1985, gardens lost under bramble.
‘They’re falling down.’
‘That’s why they’re cheap. I fix things.’ Shrug. ‘Worst house on the road, I’d make it stand.’
Celyn scrolls. Stops on the last one. The small room at the back, the north window. Says nothing. Sees it. I watch them see it.
‘Both names,’ Celyn says. A term, not a question.
‘Both names.’
‘You put the deposit, fine. I’m not too proud to take the start. But I pay my half after, every month, to the penny.’ The chin comes up. ‘And I want a garden.’
‘A garden.’
‘A scrap of one. Grass. Room for a chair and a cheap barbecue and the people who’ll actually turn up.’ A beat, the wet in it. ‘And the cat.’
‘Dave’s coming.’ Didn’t need asking. ‘He’s nobody’s. You feed him. He’s not staying behind.’
Celyn looks at me. A long one. The mouth doing the thing, the wet and the bright at once.
‘Ron.’
‘What.’
‘Is this a proposal?’
There’s the word. The one I couldn’t get to. The thing the job and the house and the deposit and the bloody cat have all been standing in for, because I haven’t got it in me to say it the way it’s meant, no ring, no knee, a tablet and a damp survey and a man who can’t talk.
‘…Might be.’ Throat tight. ‘Doing it badly.’
‘Terribly,’ Celyn says. ‘Worst one in history. A job email and a house with rising damp.’
‘Is that a yes.’
Celyn climbs into my lap. The weight I know to the gram. The red nails either side of my face, holding my head like it’s load-bearing.
‘Yes,’ Celyn says. In the word, not just the hands. ‘To the badly-asked everything. Both names. My half. My garden. My cat.’
‘Our cat.’
‘Don’t push it.’
I hold on. The hoodie, the stubble against my cheek, the weight in my lap I know to the gram now, the way Celyn’s head fits the curve of my neck.
‘Peckham,’ Celyn says. Into my neck.
‘Peckham.’
‘I’ve never been to Peckham.’
‘It’s alright. Good buses. Decent pub on the corner.’
‘Is there a Tesco.’
‘There’s a Tesco.’
‘Then I’ll survive.’
The window, the bar, the light warm and amber off the sign. The corner table. The table where a stranger sat typing and I watched for thirty minutes and never felt the floor go out from under me.
Dave’s on the bin outside, the judging face, deciding none of this is his concern. He’s wrong. He’s coming too.
Manchester doesn’t end. It stays. The corner table stays, the bar stays, the three years Celyn made a self out of nothing all stay. But the home, the writing room, the spare mug, both names on the deeds, that gets built somewhere south. A wall a week. A year of Sundays.
Celyn’s gone quiet against me, the crying done, the laughing done. A tired person in my hoodie, head on my chest, breathing the way people breathe when the day’s finally over.
The tablet’s still open on the cushion. The house in Peckham, the bowed wall, the north room.
The agent can wait till Monday. The offer, the survey, one phone call between here and there.
Celyn called it a proposal. I did it terribly.
No ring, no knee. A man who can’t say the word, so he buys a wreck with a room in it and lets the room say it for him.
Two bags. That’s what I came up with.
I’m leaving with more.
Handover day, Victoria North. Snag list signed, keys in a bag with a brown tag, a man from the client in clean boots photographing the lobby on his phone. Eighteen months, and it ends with a signature and my lanyard in a tray.
Pub at five. Dave buys the first round, which the lads will be telling agency kids about for years.
Gaz does a speech: ‘Right, well. He’s off.
’ Dean puts the hand on my forearm, once, same place as before.
Jay shows me his phone, a five-a-side league in Bermondsey, ‘if you’re short of a game down there. ’
Thomas waits for the coats. At the door, the hand out, nothing with it. No speech, no offence taken or given. A handshake like a snag closed late: past deadline, but closed.
I take it. You take the hand that’s offered. The delay’s not mine to price.
Lewisham, Saturday. Mum’s house to pick up the box I left under the stairs two years ago. The drill, the spirit level, Celyn’s in the car.
A city car on the street. The dent in the rear panel from the Tesco car park, first month he had it.
Dad’s car.
Front door’s open, Mum’s in the kitchen, and in the hall, the stepladder, the toolbox. Sean, up the ladder, screwdriver in his teeth, fixing the ceiling light that’s been dodgy since March. He doesn’t live here any more but he fixes it because fixing things is the only language he’s got left.
‘Ron.’
‘Dad.’
Screwdriver comes out of his mouth. He climbs down two rungs. The hall. The coats on the hooks. The carpet that’s been the same carpet since forever.
The front door’s open behind me.
‘Ron? Is it good.’
Celyn, on the path. Jeans. Converse. Red lipstick. The earrings.
Sean looks past me.
His hand tightens on the screwdriver, the other on the ladder rail. A grip. A man holding on to the last solid thing in the room.
Three seconds. The hallway, the carpet. The ceiling light still hanging by one wire.
Sean looks at Celyn.
Then at me.
Then back at the ladder.
‘Light’s been dodgy since March,’ he says. Climbs back up, the screwdriver to the fitting, the hands doing the job.
Mum comes out with two mugs, sees the three of us, puts the mugs down, says ‘Ron, the box is under the stairs,’ and goes back to the kitchen.
I get the box. On the way out, Sean’s still on the ladder. I pass underneath. Close enough to smell the aftershave, the cheap one, the blue bottle, the one he’s used since before I was born.
‘Cheers, Dad.’
The screwdriver turns, the fitting clicks.
‘Mind how you go,’ he says. To the ceiling.
I put the box in the boot. Get in. Celyn’s hand on my knee before I’ve got the key in.
Dad’s car in the mirror, getting smaller. The house getting smaller. The man on the ladder, fixing a light in a house he left, in a hallway where his son just walked past with a person he doesn’t understand.
Mind how you go.
But the door wasn’t shut.