Free The Tenement by Iain Crichton Smith Page A

at the end. She would sit opposite me and say, ‘Who is that man? Who are you? Go away, I don’t want to see you. I want my Ralph back’ (that’s me). And she would say, ‘What house is this? I want to go back to my own house’. She would sometimes hear the cry of a baby in the bedroom during the night. ‘Why don’t you look after the baby’, she would say. Most of the time I was abroad, you see. I was an engineer. She thought I was a stranger who had got into the house. She would say funny things like, ‘What am I to do with my face?’ ‘What do you want to do with your face’, I’d say, and she would say, ‘I want to put it out’. You would give her an ashtray for her cigarette and she would still put the ash on the floor. One time she said, ‘Who do I have to ask permission from to stop smoking?’ ‘No one’, I’d say, but she wouldn’t believe me. She would make you really laugh. Still, she liked the ships in the bottles.”
    Trevor got to his feet, saying, “I just came along to see you.”
    â€œWelcome any time,” said the old man. “Very good of you.” Two old men together, thought Trevor again.
    Butcher was lighting his pipe as he left. Trevor walked down stairs which weren’t pipecleaned. He heard the roar of a TV from one of the flats. A woman was shouting, “Can’t you give me a moment’s peace?” Clothes hung on a rope on the back green, flat and geometrical.
    â€œWould you believe it?” said Mrs Blaney, balancing the cup of tea on her knee. “I asked him for the loan of fifty pence to pay the papers the other day and he wouldn’t give it to me. Refused point blank. Said he was going to a dance. Sometimes he comes in at seven o’clock in the morning. I have to keep awake all night. He’ll throw me a jacket and say ‘Sew a button on for me’, no please or anything else, as if I was a servant. Do this, do that, that’s their style. They’re like seagulls, never satisfied. A little touch of sugar, please.”
    Trevor pushed the sugar bowl across. “It’s not good for me of course. I’ve tried to slim but I always surrender in the end. Always. I saw a diet in the Express the other day, melons and cucumbers mostly. They tell you to take milk, then they tell you not to take it. They tell you whisky is good for you. Mind you, it said in the paper the other day that a tot is good for you. I don’t suppose you’re in for the million pounds? They want to sell more papers, that’s what it is. I don’t know what I would do if I got a million pounds. So many people get a divorce when they become rich, don’t you think? Look at Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.”
    Trevor considered them. He hated Elizabeth Taylor. He thought she was a totally selfish hardbitten survivor. He had a photograph of her on the wall opposite the toilet seat. She was smiling at her fifth husband and saying “This time it’s for keeps.” She was as sweet as a young girl. How did they do it, these people? How did they walk through crashing marriages? He had never wanted anyone other than Julia. He had loved her and she had loved him.
    â€œI have a card with my number on it for the million pounds,” said Mrs Blaney. “But the fact is, I’ve never won anything in a raffle. The number of raffle tickets I’ve bought you would never believe. I’m not a lucky person. Well, thank you for the tea. I’ll be here again week after next. There’s no pipe clay available, I told you that. I don’t know where your wife got it from, I tried everywhere. No pipe clay, they told me, they don’t make it now. It’s like these coloured clips for spectacles, different colours. You stick them on the frames. Well, you can’t get them any more. I’ve asked a lot of opticians. We’ve discontinued that line,