Transit(37)

‘Will you walk me as far as the Tube?’ she said when we were outside.

She wheezed as we walked, holding her hand to her chest and taking two steps for every one of mine, her high heels clicking rapidly along the pavement. She wasn’t sure if I knew, she said, but she was trying to adopt a child. It was a labyrinthine process, so bureaucratic as to tempt you at every stage to give up, but she had been at it for a few months now and was making progress. The problem was, she couldn’t be put on a waiting list until the house was finished: no agency would even consider putting a child in a home that had live wires hanging out of the walls and no banisters on the staircase. And Gavin’s status was a problem: he either had to be there as a permanent fixture, or gone. The woman who was dealing with her at the agency – her case manager – had become a sort of friend, she went on. She had given Amanda cause for hope; she rang her up all the time to offer encouragement.

‘She says she recognises my capacity for love,’ Amanda said. She gave her unexpectedly merry laugh. ‘A lot of people have recognised that capacity, and made the most of it.’

We arrived at the Tube station and Amanda rested her hand on my arm, panting and beaming. It had been nice to see me, she said. She hoped the building work went well; she was sure it would. If I was free one evening, perhaps we could meet and catch up properly. She searched in her bag for her purse and extracted it with a shaking hand. Then she let herself half-stumbling through the barriers, and with a little valiant wave she disappeared.





It was the day the astrologer’s report had said would be of particular significance in the coming phase of transit.

Tony was demolishing a wall. He stood brandishing his drill at the centre of a storm of dust and noise, a mask covering his nose and mouth. The floor had been lifted: the skeletal joists showed themselves, grey debris in the voids between them. Tony had made a gangway out of planks in order to walk from one place to another. The builder’s van was still in the shop, he said: the insulating boards were being delivered by lorry instead, and the delivery was late. While he waited, Tony was taking the wall down.

‘Is a cook-up,’ he said.

Pavel was upstairs, sanding down the woodwork. Whenever Tony paused the drill the hissing scrape of sandpaper filled the house instead.

‘Pavel in bad mood,’ Tony said, lifting his mask. ‘Is best upstairs.’

Pavel suffered from stomach aches, he added. It was difficult to know whether the stomach aches caused his bad mood or the other way around. Tony tried to make him stay at home but he wouldn’t. His theory was that Pavel was constipated.

‘He all blocked up,’ he said, winking, ‘with Polish homesick food.’

Pavel came down the stairs and walked silently past us to his toolbox. His small boots were thickly coated with dust. He removed a fresh roll of sandpaper from the toolbox and returned wordlessly upstairs with it.

Tony resumed his drilling. He was trying to dismantle the timbers inside the wall but they were stubborn and he had to yank them violently to get them out. One of them came away unexpectedly easily and fell across the joists with a crash. There was a volley of ferocious thumps from downstairs and then shortly afterwards the sound of someone furiously approaching up the steps outside. A series of thunderous knocks rained on the front door.

Tony stood, drill in hand, and we looked at one another for a few moments.

Outside, I could hear Paula’s voice. She was shouting. She said she knew I was in there. She said I should come out: she would spit in my face for me. She had told everyone in the street about me: people knew what I was like, and my children too. She pounded at the door with her fist again. Come out here, she said. Come on, I dare you. Then there was the sound of her returning down the steps and a few seconds later the basement door slammed with such a crash that the whole building shook.

‘I go speak with them,’ Tony said, removing his mask.

He put down his drill and went out of the front door, leaving it open behind him. I heard him knock on the basement door below. After a while I heard the sound of voices. The tone and cadences of Paula’s voice seemed almost to be coming from inside me. Tony did not return immediately and the house started to become cold. I wasn’t sure whether or not I ought to close the door. I went upstairs to my room but found Pavel there, sanding the windowsill. When he saw me retreating he stopped.

‘Please,’ he said, with a minute and courteous inclination of his head. ‘Is finished, come in.’

We stood and looked down together from the window to where Paula had stood on the front steps below. I realised Pavel must have witnessed the whole thing. I asked him if he was feeling any better and he made a wavering gesture with his hand.

‘A little,’ he said.

He started to fold up the dust sheets he had draped across the floor and over the bookcase adjacent to the window. Something in the bookcase caught his eye and his hand immediately darted out to take it. He turned to me with it, his face suddenly lit up, and said something rapidly in a foreign language. It was a book: when I didn’t reply, he held it out to show me.

‘You speak Polish,’ he said, pointing at the cover with his dusty finger.

The book was in Polish, I said, but I couldn’t understand it.

He looked immediately crestfallen. It was a translation of a book I had written: I said he could keep it if he wanted to. He raised his eyebrows and examined it back and front, turning it over in his hands. Then he nodded his head and tucked the book into the pocket of his overalls.