Transit(33)

He laughed loudly. I asked why Pavel wanted to go home.

‘He’s homestruck,’ Tony said.

Homesick, I said.

Pavel was the other man the builder had sent along with Tony to do the work. He was a small, quiet, melancholic person who I would sometimes see sitting on my doorstep in the grey dawn reading a book while he waited for Tony to arrive. On the first day, Tony had explained that he would be doing the demolition and ripping out, and Pavel would do the rebuilding and making good.

‘Destruction –’ Tony had grinned widely and placed his hands on his own chest, then pointed at Pavel – ‘construction!’

Pavel came out to help Tony unload the car. They stood and considered the bags of cement and Pavel asked a question.

‘English!’ Tony commanded. ‘Speak English!’

Tony told me that today they were going to be taking up the floor. I asked whether there would be a lot of noise. He grinned.

‘Hundred per cent,’ he said.

I went down to the basement flat and knocked on the door. There was the sound of the dog yapping and then, after a long time, the heavy approach of footsteps. Paula opened the door. At the sight of me, her face assumed an expression of distaste.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

I started to explain that there would be some noise today but she spoke over me.

‘John’s been on the phone to the council to complain,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you, John?’ she called behind her. ‘He’s asked them to come out here and put a stop to it.’

She folded her arms and stood in the doorway looking at me.

‘It shouldn’t be allowed,’ she said.

There was a shuffling sound and John appeared behind her.

‘Get out the way, Lenny,’ he said hoarsely to the dog.

‘People like you,’ Paula said, to me, ‘make me sick. The way people like you carry on.’

‘The thing is,’ John said, ‘we’ve lived here nearly forty years.’

‘I hear you stamping about,’ Paula said. ‘You probably don’t even take your shoes off. You probably put high-heeled shoes on specially. You had someone up there the other night,’ she said. ‘It was a man, I heard him. Disgusting.’

‘I’m ill, you know,’ John said.

‘I heard you with him,’ Paula said. She gave a silly high-pitched little laugh in imitation and fluttered her fingers at her own cheek. ‘You think you’re fooling people but you’re not.’

‘I’ve got cancer, see,’ John said.

‘He’s got cancer,’ Paula said, pointing her finger at him fiercely. ‘And you’re up there dancing around in your high-heeled shoes and throwing yourself at men.’

‘I’m not well,’ John said.

‘You’re not, are you, John?’ Paula said. ‘But some people don’t care whether you’ve got cancer. They just carry right on.’

I tried to explain that once the floor was soundproofed there would be less noise between the two flats.

‘Oh, I’m not listening to you,’ Paula said. ‘I get enough of it living down here, listening to you all day and all night. It makes me feel sick,’ she said, ‘the sound of your voice.’

She was growing aroused: I watched her big body writhe slightly, her head twisting from side to side, as though something inside her was rising and unfolding, wanting to be born. She was, I saw, goading herself on: she wanted to traverse boundaries, as though to prove to herself that she was free. I stood there in silence. Her mouth was gathering itself and puckering and I sensed she was entertaining the idea of spitting at me. Instead she gripped the edge of the door and leaned her face towards mine.

‘You disgust me,’ she said, and with a great violent heave she slammed the door shut as hard as she could.

I went back upstairs. Tony had a hammer in his hand and had begun to lever up the plastic tiles. I told him that perhaps they shouldn’t do the floor today after all. He didn’t stop: he carried on levering up one tile after another and tossing them into a pile beside him.

‘Up to you,’ he said. ‘But I talk to them yesterday. They say it okay.’

I said I was very surprised to hear that.

‘She bring me and Pavel cup of tea,’ Tony grinned. ‘She ask why no one looking after us.’

Well, I said, today she’s threatening to phone the council and complain.

Tony stopped working and sat back on his knees, the hammer in his hand. He looked me in the eye.

‘Me and Pavel,’ he said, ‘we take care of it.’

I went out and walked towards the Tube station. It had an old lift that rose and fell with ponderous slowness between the platform and the street. The station was scheduled for closure the following year so that a new lift could be installed: a sign at the entrance stated that this closure would last for nine months. Every morning and evening smartly dressed people poured in and out of the station mouth, commuting to work or to school. They carried briefcases and satchels and coffee cups, talking rapidly on their mobile phones while speeding along the pavements, so that the impression was of a series of precisely timed manoeuvres into which their daily routine had been distilled. The station was so integral to this routine that I wondered what they felt when they passed the sign warning of its future absence.