__________
N e i g h b o r s
The first time I had anything to do with him was about this time
last year, during the heat wave. I remember the refuse collectors had
gone on strike. Swollen bin-liners lay heaped on the streets, and,
through the open window of my office, I could smell their ripening
contents. A fly, stupidly trapped behind one pane of the window,
buzzed irritably, batting from side to side of the frame.
I was having trouble concentrating on my work. I kept finding myself staring blankly at the spreadsheet on my computer screen, trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing. I'd only recently moved into my new house and had yet to feel settled there. The combination of an unfamiliar bedroom, with its bare floor and bare walls, the hot, sticky nights, and the various worries which went along with becoming a home owner, had resulted in several sleepless nights. I must have been drowsy because when the phone on my desk rang, it shook me as if it had been an alarm clock.
It was the receptionist. She told me a man had arrived and was asking to see his housing officer, which was me. She gave me his name, and more importantly, his address: we organise our business around properties rather than tenants. She told me he wanted to make a complaint:
"He says that his flat smells," she said.
My heart sank. After a few years in this job, you get to hear some things over and over again, you get to know what they mean. When a tenant complains about strange smells it means one of three things: sometimes it means there's actually a smell; sometimes it means they're suffering from paranoid delusions - that neighbours are trying to poison them by injecting noxious gases through invisible ducts in the walls, or something equally far-fetched; but usually it simply means the tenant is lonely and unhappy and wants to talk to someone. When things go bad, they start to smell. I suspected this was the problem with the man from the middle flat, 76 Lower Ashley Road: his life had gone bad.
I said I'd be through in a minute. I pulled the relevant file from the cabinet by the door and flipped through its contents. Number 76 was one of a Victorian terrace of houses we'd bought fifteen years ago, during the slump in the market. Extensive renovations had been made at the time, so, if there was a smell, it was unlikely to be anything to do with the building. He'd been occupying the middle flat right from the beginning and, until now, had never had cause to complain.
I went through to reception. He was sitting there, in this chair - we'd just bought these strange new chairs for reception, all tubing and canvas, don't ask me why - and he was sitting in this chair, afraid to move in case it sprang shut and trapped him. Despite the heat, he had a tweed jacket on, a jacket so heavy and fibrous it made me itch just to look at it. He wasn't wearing any socks and his ankles were red and swollen. And he smelt. There was no getting round it. He smelt like unwashed clothes in a charity shop. He smelt like alcohol. He smelt like tobacco.
I introduced myself, asked him to come through. I helped him out of the chair. He gripped on to my arm, steadying himself, and I could feel the damp heat of his hand through my shirt. I was relieved when he let go.
He was born (it said in the file) in 1938, the same year as my father, which came as a shock. He looked much older. But then, our tenants tend to. We get people who've spent their life in and out of prison, or care; we get single parents and long-term unemployed. People worn down by their lives. He'd been in that flat fifteen years and hadn't had a job all that time. This was the first time he'd come in to make a complaint, so I owed it to him to listen. That's all you can do with these people, listen, make the right noises. You can't solve their problem, there is no smell, you can't change their lives. I knew that and I think he did too.
Anyway, we talked for about an hour. I kept him on the subject otherwise I'd have been there all day. I couldn't sort out things he should have been talking to a doctor, or a counsellor, about. All I could help with was the flat. We started off with the smell. He couldn't be more specific than just saying the flat had a "bad smell". Was it any particular room? At any particular times? The whole building or just his flat? What sort of a smell? Had anyone else noticed it? "Who else would notice?" he said.
And it wasn't just the smell, there were noises as well. People using the stairs late at night. Playing music. Talking loudly, arguing sometimes. The woman downstairs waking him by running her bath in the morning. The sound of her television. He reported various other offences that were really no more than people getting on with their lives. He was telling me what I'd guessed before I even saw him. Everything he said was a coded version of the same truth: he was lonely and unhappy.
I listened. I said we'd send someone round from maintenance to check up on the smell. There was nothing I could do about people using the stairs, or pouring baths, but if the music continued to be played at an unreasonable level, after eleven o'clock at night, then he should make a note of exactly when, and where: he should keep what I called a "disturbances diary". That would give us the evidence we needed to take action. This was a concession, an acknowledgement that I'd heard and understood his distress; I doubted any of the occupants of number 76 were breaking their tenancy agreement, but, since he almost certainly wouldn't keep a diary, I wouldn't have to do anything either.
I didn't tell him he was one of the lucky ones. I knew the woman downstairs, the one who upset him by bathing. You couldn't have a better, more responsible person. And I knew the couple upstairs. There was nothing wrong with them either. He couldn't have had better neighbours. I told myself this because otherwise I'd have started feeling sorry for him, and in my job you can't afford to feel sorry for people.
Back at the start, I used to care about my tenants. That was my reason for choosing this career: I cared about people and wanted to help them. But I got too involved. You can't do that. You have to look after yourself first. I had enough on my mind as it was, what with my own house, which I'd just bought, and which wasn't exactly trouble-free.
My computer started to bleep - to save power, after sixty minutes without input, it shuts itself down. Before doing so, it bleeps as a warning. I reached across and pressed the space bar. The spreadsheet floated back on to the screen. I used the interruption as a way of bringing our meeting to a close. I summarised what he'd told me and the action we'd be taking. I took him back to reception and out through the main doors. Just as we got outside, he clutched hold of my arm.
"We could go for a cup of tea," he said. He used his free hand to point at the Salvation Army hostel across the street. "You and me?" That showed the difference between us, the world he lived in. But he must have known his request was hopeless. His grip on my arm loosened. I detached myself, made my excuses.
The receptionist made a screwed-up face at me once he'd finally gone. "Phew!" she said, waving her hand in front of her face, "I'm glad he's out of here." Well, so was I, but hearing my secret thoughts so openly confessed made me feel suddenly guilty. And the funny thing was, his smell had stopped bothering me.
I remembered something I'd read somewhere - about how your sense of smell works. You don't notice your own smell, and once you've adjusted to the smell around you, you don't notice that either. You only notice new smells; something burning, a tiger crawling towards you. Something which indicates a change you should be aware of.
I was still thinking about him when I got home that evening. I switched on the TV - I always try to get home in time for Neighbours, it makes something to come home to - but couldn't concentrate. It wouldn't have hurt me to have had a cup of tea with him. I needn't have gone to the Salvation Army place, we could have used our own canteen. I'd spent an hour stopping him every time he tried to moan about his relatives, how they never had any time for him, and now he probably classed me the same way. I switched off the TV, went through to the kitchen, put the kettle on to boil.
To be honest, a cup of tea didn't really appeal. My parents had visited at the weekend, to approve of my new home, and had left behind, along with various oddments of furniture they wanted to pass on, a bottle of sherry. They'd refused to let me open it then: it was for the housewarming, for sharing with my friends, they insisted. I thought about opening it now. I thought about taking it out of the freshly-lined kitchen cupboard, cutting free the plastic around the top of the bottle, pulling out the cork, pouring myself a glass. Sherry, sweet, alcoholic, was exactly what I wanted.
In the end I decided against it. Perhaps the continuing influence of the man from 76 Lower Ashley Road was having its effect. He'd almost certainly been drinking that morning, in his comfortless flat. I could sympathise with how he felt: my own house still felt empty and strange. Less than three weeks ago I'd been in a shared house and I missed the old lifestyle, always having people around. I missed being in the student area of town, where everyone seemed to know everyone else, but becoming a homeowner had seemed like the right thing to do. My parents had been putting pressure on me to settle down. Anyway, the plan was to get someone in once I'd sorted myself out and finished off some decorating tasks.
This situation hadn't changed much the next time I heard from 76 Lower Ashley Road, about a month ago. I'd got my place done up. I'd had someone in and then had to get her out again. We'd got on well enough to start with, but she turned out to have some serious problems and was doing everything she could to suck me into them. It got to the stage that I was uncomfortable in my own home. I had to ask her to leave. The experience had been unpleasant and upsetting and I was reluctant to risk going through the same thing again. The last thing I needed was for my home life to involve the same aggravations I had to deal with at work. So, I'd decided to live alone for as long as I could afford it. To save money, I'd given up the car and had cut down on going out. That's how things were.
This time the receptionist put through a phone call, from the woman in the ground floor flat, the one who took baths. As soon as I'd worked out who she was, I felt guilty - I hadn't heard again from the man in the flat above hers, but knew things wouldn't have got any better for him. She apologised for disturbing me. I said not to worry, what was the problem?
"Well," she said, sounding rather embarrassed, "it's the smell."
Unlike her upstairs neighbour, she was quite specific. The smell, a foul, rotten stench, which came from upstairs, had started two days ago, and was getting steadily worse. The couple in the top-floor flat had noticed it too.
"What about the man on the middle floor?" I asked.
"Well," she said, pointedly, "I haven't seen him recently. I haven't heard him either. I knocked on his door this morning and nobody answered. That's where it's coming from, the smell. I think someone should take a look, you know . . . "
Her speech tailed off into silence. Yes, I did know, but what she said rather took me aback. I didn't doubt that, in this case, the smell was genuine. Everything she said pointed clearly to one thing, something you have to be prepared for if you work in housing, but this was the first time there'd been any suggestion of it on my patch. I collected myself, told her someone would be around as soon as possible, later that morning.
In such circumstances you're glad to have procedures to fall back on. I called up maintenance and arranged for someone to come with me. I might have to break in to the middle flat so I needed to take a witness. And, of course, I didn't want to go on my own. Unfortunately the only person available turned out to be Jerry, our new trainee. I'd hoped for someone more experienced. I had to explain the situation to him rather bluntly and he sounded shocked. I said to meet me in reception. He forgot to bring the master keys with him, which I'd specifically asked him to do, so he had to go back to the workshop and collect them. I waited for him, then we set off for Lower Ashley Road.
Number 76 is one of a terrace of what must once have been fine townhouses reasonably close to the city centre. The original rooms were generously sized, but, now the houses have been converted, that's changed. Inside, all that remains on the original scale are the high ceilings, making the rooms feel awkward and mis-proportioned.
The woman from the ground floor flat let us in. She must have been watching out for us because she opened the front door before we reached it. The smell hit you right away. Not unbearable, but extremely unpleasant. Something inside that building had definitely started to decay. I thanked the woman, she hurried back into her flat.
I climbed the stairs to the first floor, Jerry following me. The smell intensified with each step. I knocked on the front door of the middle flat and waited. Jerry had gone pale and was breathing quickly through his mouth. He looked like he might throw up. In a way, his response made it easier for me; being the senior member of the team, I had to look after him. It was my job. I knocked a second time on the door, harder. Again, no response. I put my ear to the door and listened. Maybe I could hear the sound of a TV, but that was all.
I put the key in the lock. A clause in our tenancy agreement says that, in the event of an emergency, we can enter a flat without obtaining the tenant's permission. This was an emergency. I told Jerry to wait for me in the stairwell. He looked relieved he didn't have to come in with me. Patches of sweat were spreading beneath his armpits, across his T shirt.
I pushed the door open, releasing a fresh wave of smell. Behind me, Jerry made a gagging sound. By this stage, though, I'd become accustomed to the smell and was able to deal with it. If I'd stopped to think about what I was doing, I probably would have found it diffcult to continue, but the situation forced me to adopt a professional attitude, to follow the procedure. I called out Hello, was anyone there? The light in the hall area was on, a single bare bulb, its filament glowing feebly. I could definitely hear a TV. I walked forwards.
He was in the living room, slumped in an armchair, watching television. The top section of the picture slanted sideways and kept sliding to the right, as if trying to peel itself away. The colour balance was all wrong and the screen glowed an almost comical green making the actors look like Martians.
The curtains were closed. A slice of daylight cut through the gap between them, but otherwise the television provided the only source of light in the room, its greenness intensified by a large collection of sherry bottles. There must have been hundreds of them. Empty bottles of sherry, no doubt from the nearby grocer's which doubled up as an off-licence, packed tightly together, most standing, some leaning, a few on their sides. A pathway from the armchair to the door had been kept clear, but otherwise you couldn't move for bottles. He was wearing the same jacket he'd worn when he came into the office. He still hadn't any socks on and his ankles remained swollen, though now they no longer looked red, they were green. A large plastic ashtray rested on one arm of the chair. Several cigarette stubs had missed it and lay dead on the floor. A single unfinished bottle of sherry was wedged between his body and the side of the chair. Superior quality medium sherry, produce of Spain.
I remembered when I'd first seen him, sitting in that chair in reception. We'd had to get rid of those chairs, they were a mistake. At least he looked comfortable now. The whole scene, I suppose, was pitiful, but the sadness I felt for him was like the sadness you feel at the end of a sentimental film. A cloying, indulgent sadness.
I pulled the bottle away from him. It resisted, in the same way that he'd been reluctant to release me when he'd wanted me to go for a cup of tea with him, then came free. I unscrewed the top of the bottle. I could no longer smell decay. What I could smell was the new smell, the smell of sherry. Perhaps I would have a drink after all. I found a tumbler and a mug by the side of the chair. I cleaned them out carefully with a tissue and poured us each a drink. I sat on the floor, leant against the front of the armchair, his legs stretched out stiffly beside me. The lunch time edition of Neighbours was starting.
Tom Guest works as a computer programmer and spends his evenings and weekends either painting pictures or writing stories. This is one of his stories.
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