Plume

I ran the back of my wrist across my chin. The drilling, which had paused for breath, chose that moment to resume. I hated the pauses in the drilling more than anything, because they invited the thought that the noise might have stopped for good, which was seldom the case. The builders on the other side were now making their own contribution: a hammer-blow, perhaps metal against metal, which repeated eight or nine times, then stopped, then started again. Through the flat, from the direction of the street, came the throat-clearing sound of a diesel engine and a steady rattle of machinery.

I threw the tree an angry glance. It was planted in next door’s back garden, another of their multiple insults. Through the splattered glass of the kitchen ceiling, I saw a flash of white in its black limbs.

A cockatoo, sitting in the tree, looking down at me.

No, not possible.

I changed my position to get a better view through one of the cleaner patches of grimy glass. The white shape ducked from view. I stepped back. There it was again – not a cockatoo, but a white plastic bag caught in the branches.

Pacing back to the sofa, I took my laptop from my shoulder bag and switched it on. The noise was intolerable, something had to be done. What, exactly, I did not know, and as a renter my options were limited.

To: dave@davestocktonlets.co.uk

Subject: Re: Re: NOISE

Hi Dave,

I had never met Dave, my landlord, but he was pleasant enough on email, if he replied. We had corresponded about the noise before and he made sympathetic sounds and said there was little he could do. But emailing him was my only outlet. The owners of the neighbouring houses were never around, of course – even when their homes weren’t the building sites they are now, I never saw them. Even if I could reach them, why would they do anything for me, a private tenant? I was simply nothing as far as they were concerned.

The email got no further than the salutation. Through the drilling, I heard an agitated rattling of my letterbox, then a triple chime on my doorbell. That special knock, this time in the morning, meant I knew at once who it was, and I groaned. Her, one of the ones from upstairs.

I wasn’t dressed but there was little point. The lager had soaked into the T-shirt and contributed to any pre-existing odours.

When I opened the front door I tried to stay mostly behind it. The icy air made me flinch. Her breath was fogging; she was dressed in running gear, a headband holding back dark blonde hair, her top a souvenir from the London School of Economics. She had been jogging on the spot, but stopped when I appeared, and took the headphones out of her ears.

‘Bella.’

‘Jack. Hi, you’re up!’ she said, surprised.

‘Every morning,’ I said. Bella had forced me out of bed on a couple of weekdays before the coming of the drills, and now she behaved as if I had a lie-in every day. If only I did. ‘Hard to sleep with the noise.’

‘I’ve been running,’ she said.

‘Cold,’ I said.

‘Are you in today?’

‘No, sorry.’

‘Really? Not at all?’ Bella said. She cocked her head to one side, a gesture that said: it’s OK, you can tell Bella, just admit that you will be lounging around in your flat all day and all will be well.

‘Really,’ I said. ‘I’m interviewing people.’

‘Ooh!’ she said, flashing her eyes wide. How did she get her lips to be so sparkly? Just looking at them made mine feel like sandpaper. The brick-dust was so thick in the air you could practically see it.

‘New job?’ she asked.

This took a moment to parse. ‘No. No! I’m interviewing people. For my job.’

She frowned. ‘To take over from you?’

I rubbed my eyes, feeling the grit in them. ‘No. I’m interviewing them for the magazine. The magazine I work for. In my job.’

‘Okey-dokey,’ she said, sceptical. ‘Will that take all day? Only we’re expecting a delivery.’

‘All day,’ I lied. ‘Can’t you get it delivered to your office?’

Her face pinched in consternation. ‘Ooh, no. It’s furniture.’

‘Sorry. Why did you arrange for it to be delivered today if you’re not going to be in?’

‘Well,’ she said with a little hauteur, ‘I expected you to be in.’

I felt that she had laid out a space for another sorry from me, but she wasn’t going to get it. ‘’Fraid not.’

She flicked her eyes downward and I made a small shuffle further behind the door.

Smiling brightly: ‘OK. You’re not dressed. I won’t keep you in the cold. Hope your interview goes well!’

I smiled back and started to close the door. She popped her earbuds back into her ears and turned towards the steps back up to the pavement.

‘Bella,’ I said, stopping her. ‘You guys own upstairs, don’t you?’

‘Sure,’ she said, as if startled by the implication that any other living arrangement could exist.

‘Have you complained to next door?’ I said. ‘Both next doors. About the noise. The building work.’

‘No,’ Bella said. ‘We’re out all day working, so …’

‘But, the dust,’ I said. ‘The dirt.’

She shrugged. ‘Thing is, it’s their property, isn’t it, so really they can do what they like with it.’

‘I guess so.’

In truth, I didn’t mind Bella as much as I might. She at least kept her low opinion of me heavily gilded with courtesy and cheer – I imagine she has no idea how she comes across. It’s him I can’t stand, Dan, her husband. A prime Mumford. I would happily murder Dan.

The front door sticks a little when it’s closed, and on occasion it needs a real bang to shut properly. This bang dislodged something from the letter flap, and this something fell with a turn that suggested the beat of a white wing.

A postcard from my parents: pretty toy-like buildings lined up on a picturesque quay. Could be anywhere. Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Stavanger, Lübeck. Five years ago, Dad had retired, and Mum had decided to join him. So this was victory, for them. They shared a belief – a widespread and wholesome belief – in the fixed path of virtue. School, as a path to University, as a path to a Proper Job (proper – an important qualifier, that). All this was the infrastructural spine that supported Marriage, Mortgage, Family and Responsibilities. But what was at the end of this path? What lay at the sun-touched horizon? What was the reward? Retirement, that’s what.

This might make them sound stuffy and orthodox – brittle mannequins of small-minded propriety cursed with a dissolute son. (My younger sister, a pharmaceutical chemist at Sheffield University, has done a little better at cleaving to the path.) Not true and not fair. They were never less than loving and supple in their accommodation of my occasional efforts to remove myself from the path. Their belief in the path manifested itself more subtly. Any unhappiness, for instance, could be diagnosed as deviation either past or planned. Miserable at school? I needed to treat it as a means to an end, the end being university. Restless and unmotivated at university? Again, its only purpose was as a step leading to the next step – head down, push on. Unable to save a mortgage deposit? Perhaps I should consider getting a more solid, more proper job – or moving back to Two Hours Away (by the faster train), the southern provincial city in which I was born. Love life problematic? Perhaps a Proper Job would yield more suitable candidates. None of this advice was delivered with self-righteousness or coercion, it was all meant honestly and kindly. And who could blame them for their belief in a system that had served them perfectly?

But just as the Correct Route Through Life had supplied its own built-in justifications, its completion had robbed it of purpose. My parents had spent their whole lives working dutifully, rewarded daily with the certitude that they were doing the right thing. The arrival of the real reward – comfortable retirement, two decent pensions, mortgage paid off, children through university and out of the house – had deprived them of the satisfaction of dogged, stately progress.

They went a little crazy.

When I was growing up, I never saw my parents argue. They disagreed at times, or frowned at each other, but never did they engage in that basic ritual of relationships, the big argument. Not in my sight, anyway. I have no inkling of what script discussions or creative disputes went on behind the scenes of their performance as Mum and Dad. But on stage, they were pros.