The Lubetkin Legacy (18 page)

It has been raining all night, but at the last minute a patch of blue sky appears. Violet has already forewarned Human Resources at GRM about a follow-up dental appointment, and meets up with the other residents under the cherry trees at 10 a.m. to march to the Town Hall with their petition. A good forty people have turned out. Mrs Tyldesley, the artist lady, has painted a lovely banner with swirls of pink and green around a rather idealised image of the flats. Len leads the procession with a placard tied to the back of his wheelchair: ‘Sod Off Specalators'. He would never have got away with that at Lady Manners, her old school in Bakewell. Despite the tough-talking placard, Len looks a bit pale and puffy. According to Mrs Cracey he has diabetes. Isn't that what Elvis died of? And her Grandma Alison. He should take care. Several grumpy pensioners start squabbling over whose turn it is to push him. Mrs Cracey, steaming up inside her polythene shower cap, with her eyebrows pencilled on in a look of surprise that borders on horror, shoves them aside with her umbrella and grabs the handle. She has a home-made poster with a cut-out image of a crucifixion covered with real stuck-on cherry blossoms, Jesus dying in a sea of pink petals. The slogan, in red felt pen, reads:
He died that we might live
.

The African contingent is led by the young man from Malawi in a too-tight coloured shirt, tapping out a beat on a hand-drum. Some of the Zambians are drumming and dancing too, and a troupe of young people in shorts or ra-ra skirts, wearing face paint, are whooping, blowing whistles and
banging tambourines like a carnival. Three white-blonde Polish girls from the second floor are jigging in high heels – why don't they wear trainers or pumps? A couple of shy Indians are carrying a placard that reads
We ♥ Trees
, and Berthold is carrying the parrot in its cage, God knows why, and trying to teach it to say, ‘
Save our trees!
' though all it can manage is, ‘
Save our dead!
'

Greg's not there, he's at work, to her relief. Having him there, staring at her in that way, would make her feel self-conscious. She's wearing a black, green and red T-shirt in the colours of the Kenyan flag, with a Maasai warrior shield in the middle, and she's in a combative mood.

Greg's son, Arthur, has bunked off from school and is walking beside her in his grey school shorts, skipping up and down in time to the tambourines.

‘What's that on your T-shirt?' he asks.

‘It's a Maasai shield. They're a warrior tribe in Kenya.'

‘No kidding! Warrior Queen! So why are you called Violet? Violets are supposed to be shy. Like that poem we did at school. Do they have violets in Kenya?'

No one has asked her that before. ‘They have African violets, I guess. They're bigger and tougher.' She flexes her arms, showing two tight bulges of muscle.

‘Are you going to have sex with my dad?' No one has asked her that before either.

‘I don't think so. Why do you ask?'

‘I think he fancies you. He likes girls like you.'

‘What do you mean, like me?'

‘You know, sort of …' he looks embarrassed, ‘… sort of … brown?'

One of the pensioners turns and stares.

‘Oh.' She feels a stab of annoyance, but there's no point in taking it out on the kid, who probably doesn't know what
he's talking about. She wants to ask him why they are living in this crummy flat in Madeley Court when Greg clearly has money.

But while she tries to work out a polite way to phrase the question the kid blurts out, ‘We're moving soon? As soon as their divorce goes through, and Dad gets his money back? We're moving to a better place? This flat just happened to come empty when Mum chucked him out?'

‘Why did your mum chuck him out?'

‘She caught him sleeping with the maid?' he mumbles, his hair flopping into his eyes. ‘Now she's having sex with this creep called Julian, who wears cords? It's gross? They do it in the living room or in the kitchen, and they make me go upstairs to my bedroom?'

He talks in an awkward hesitant lilt, making every statement into a question.

She feels sorry for him. ‘Was the maid … sort of brown?'

‘Mmm. I guess so.'

Behind them, a girl with blonde plaits and green face paint is tooting a rhythm on her whistle. The parrot squawks, ‘Save our dead!'

‘What happened to his money?'

‘Mum's got it? She says if he tries to get it back she'll tell the police what he done?'

She pricks her ears up. This is interesting. ‘Why, what did he do?'

Arthur shrugs. ‘Dunno. They won't tell me. Dad says nobody understands that rich people have problems too?'

‘I'm sure.' She tries to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. It's not the kid's fault.

He flicks his hair from his eyes. ‘When we move, you can come with us if you like. Dad says there's gonna be a massive swimming pool? Underneath the house? In the basement?'

‘Thanks, I'll consider it. But I might go to Nairobi.'

‘Why?'

‘My grandma's there.'

‘Wow! Can I come?' He does another little hop.

‘Wouldn't you miss your parents?'

‘Not really. I don't think they're that bothered about me? Like they mostly ignore me? Except if I'm in the way?' His eyes are pale grey, like his father's, but with a watery glint. ‘Have
you
still got a mum and dad?'

‘Yes. They live in Derbyshire. I suppose if I went to Kenya, I'd miss them. Life's complicated, isn't it?'

As they straggle across the main road at the traffic lights, cars honk and flash their lights; the boy steps off the kerb without looking – his road sense isn't good – and she grabs his hand to pull him out of the path of a white van that whizzes up out of nowhere. Then they turn left past a parade of shops and head up towards the Town Hall.

At the Town Hall steps they are greeted by an overweight, sweaty middle-aged man with his hair in a ponytail and a silver nose-stud.

‘Welcome, people of Madeley Court! My name is Councillor Desmond Dunster,' he yells into a megaphone. ‘I'm the elected representative for your area, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you who voted for me at the last election. And even if you didn't vote for me I hope you will vote for me next time. I want to assure each and every one of you that I am working hard on your behalf, and I totally support your petition about … about the important matter which you have brought to my attention. I am a firm believer in closing the loop between the people and their elected representatives and I promise each and every one of you that I will strive my utmost …'

What a trog. He goes on like that for ten minutes in a voice like a dentist's drill.

‘Gerr on with it!' shouts Len.

‘Amen!' shouts Mrs Cracey.

Berthold rests the parrot cage on a low stone wall, and sits beside it staring at the sky with his usual glum expression. Arthur sneaks up and pokes a twig through the bars of the cage. ‘God is trees! Trees is dead! Ding dong!' The parrot goes mad, flapping its wings against the cage.

The tambourine girls, fed up with listening to the speech, start up again.

Bored, she strolls away from the crowd, along the pavement and around the side of the Town Hall, attracted by a patch of green that looks like a small park. Beside an entrance to the grey building that houses the Planning Department, a couple of guys are hunched over cigarettes, puffing away furtively, trying to maximise their nicotine intake in the shortest possible time. One of them is Mr Rowland.

‘Hi!' She approaches.

They look up like guilty schoolboys; one of them stamps out the stub of his cigarette and vanishes through a door. Mr Rowland, who still has two inches of nicotine to inhale, smiles sheepishly and says, ‘He goes on a bit, Councillor Dunster, doesn't he?'

She laughs. ‘But will he
do
anything?'

Mr Rowland shakes his head. ‘M-m. He'll kick it into the long grass. Of which there's no shortage around here.'

‘How can you be so sure?'

‘Because he's just been on the MIPIM jolly at Cannes. That's an international property conference where the big global property developers pour cheap champagne down the gullets of local authority worthies and persuade them to sell off old municipal housing estates for redevelopment into luxury
housing. He'll take the petitions and stick them in the bin, then come election time he'll tell you how he did his best, but the other parties were all against him. And I'll tell you something for nothing – it won't stop at the cherry grove. They're after the whole site.'

She catches her breath. The brazenness of it.

‘And can't
you
do anything, Mr Rowland?'

‘Me? I'm out of here next month. I'm sick of kowtowing to clowns like that. I've got another job lined up.'

‘With another Council?'

‘With Shire Land. One of the biggest developers in London. Qatari owned. As a matter of fact, they're the ones that have got the application in on Madeley Court.' He takes a long last draw on his cigarette.

‘You? You'll be working for them?' She stares, and his boyish looks seem to flicker and fade into something familiar and sleazy. All the cheerful high spirits she set out with this morning evaporate in that final puff of cigarette smoke.

‘I'm getting married soon. I've put a deposit down on a flat. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.' He grinds out the end of his cigarette under his shoe, and disappears into the building.

The meeting has already broken up and people are straggling home, so to cheer herself up she decides to run back along the canal.

She gets home an hour later, quite out of breath, with a warm glow in her limbs and a film of sweat on her face, ready for a shower.

Violet had disappeared. Though we'd barely exchanged a word, I'd walked behind her all the way to the Town Hall, carrying Flossie in her cage, which was bloody heavy I'll have you know. I don't really know why I brought her, but she's good on slogans, and women I've noticed are often drawn to fluffy things. However, Violet was stuck in conversation with that weird kid, of whom more later. I planned to approach her when it was over and walk back together, stopping at Luigi's for a coffee and neighbourly conversation. After our sweet, romantically chaste night of the rose-silk pyjamas, I knew I must take things slowly if I wasn't to scare her off. A lovely girl like that is always surrounded by men wanting to get her into bed. Not me. I was different. I was caring, sensitive, a big soul, a good conversationalist, a good listener, a good neighbour and friend, a good … whatever it took.

But then I had a crisis with Flossie. I was sitting on the wall waiting for that donkey, Councillor Desmond Dunster, to plod to a halt. The rank insincerity of his speech reeked of all that is wrong with politics today, all the scurvy self-flattering, gut-grinding, media-mouthed crap they peddle in the belief that we, the people, are too stupid or irresponsible to be trusted with the truth. I wished Mother was there and we could have lobbed a few heckles together. My injured eye was bothering me, and Flossie was stressed by all the whistling and banging of the tambourines. Suddenly the kid who'd been walking beside Violet came up and poked her with a stick and sent her flapping around, beating her poor wings against the
bars of the cage. I could have strangled the little sod, but all I did was clip him around the ear. Like Sid used to clip me. Never did me any harm. But the kid made such an outcry – don't they teach them self-control nowadays? – and said he was going to report me for child cruelty. Everyone joined in: Mrs Crazy said the parrot needed its neck wrung; Inna called the kid a hooligan element; Legless Len called me a child abuser. By the time the kid and Flossie had both calmed down – he apologised to Flossie, and I had to apologise to him – Violet had vanished. And so had Inna.

I walked back to the flat alone lugging the cage, which seemed to have doubled in weight. It was almost supper time and I was getting hungry. Why did Inna choose the most inconvenient bloody time to disappear on one of her walkabouts? Where had she got to?

Flossie had recovered from her earlier trauma and was snoozing on the perch in her cage. Rather than waiting for Inna to come back, I decided to take this opportunity to nip down to Luigi's, have a decent cup of coffee, and meditate on the ghastliness of life. I'd just slipped my jacket on when the doorbell rang.
Ding dong!

My heart thumped. Violet? The postman? Inna who had forgotten her key? Mrs Penny?

I steeled myself and opened the door.