My Nasty Neighbours (3 page)

A
week later, we were on our way. As we slowed down outside Birmingham Mum and Dad got nostalgic.

‘Look at this traffic!’ exclaimed Dad. ‘Do you remember when it took us only six hours to reach Uncle Albert’s house?’

‘When Helen and Ian were little! When Ian was still in a car-seat,’ reminisced Mum.

They launched into the cute things Helen and Ian had done and said when they were young. ‘Ian’s first word was tractor,’ Mum recalled. ‘Only he used to say “twactor”. Remember?’

Dad repeated ‘twactor’ and chuckled.

‘We’d spend the whole journey counting twactors,’ Mum laughed.

Sad, isn’t it? One thing you can be sure about everyone is that they’ve been young in the past, so why parents get so worked up about it is a
mystery. These conversations about ‘the good old days’ made me uneasy. They showed how Mum and Dad yearned for a simpler time when their kids were little and easy to control. Little kids: little problems; big kids: big problems.

‘I bet Ian isn’t counting twactors now!’ I said grimly. I had a rough idea what he might be doing. I’d seen him heaving a crate of stout up the stairs the evening before we’d left. More mysteriously, Helen was browsing through cookery books. But I said nothing. I didn’t want Dad to turn the car round. I wanted to see Great Uncle Albert’s house again.

The traffic crawled through Waltham Cross, but I didn’t mind. I liked looking at the stone cross that stands in the middle of the junction. Dad told me the cross was built on the orders of an English king. It marked the place where the coffin of his dead wife had rested overnight on the journey south to bury her. That was centuries ago. But here was the cross, still jamming up the traffic – except now the jam was caused by cars – machines that the king couldn’t have imagined. But he’d found a way to make sure his wife wasn’t forgotten. Great Uncle Albert had
lived and died just a few miles away, but who knew or cared? Who would remember him in a hundred years time?

I resolved to find something of Great Uncle Albert’s to keep. ‘You shouldn’t live and die forgotten,’ I said to myself, then realised, as Mum and Dad looked back at me with surprise, that I’d spoken aloud.

T
he car drew up outside Great Uncle Albert’s house. Dad deposited Mum and myself on the pavement and drove off to explore the estate agents and restaurants.

We stood outside the house, and Mum sighed. ‘I remember coming here as a child … This’ll be the last time.’

Small though the houses were, they looked out on a river which gave an almost rural impression to the surroundings. It looked like ‘Coronation Street’ with a bit more grass and water.

‘Cliff Richard used to live in this road,’ Mum told me.

‘Who?’

‘Cliff Richard! You know, “We’re All Going on a Summer Holiday”.’ She actually began to sing!

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ I said hastily, looking
around to make sure that no-one had heard.

‘He was very kind to the old people,’ Mum went on. ‘And the Shadows lived around here too. I once went to a wedding where they were guests.’

‘Great,’ I said, dismissively. If nostalgia was a hereditary condition then I was in big trouble. I headed towards the house. ‘Where do we start?’

Mum pulled herself together.

‘Ruthlessness is the key,’ she told me. ‘If in doubt, throw it out. Look!’ A large yellow skip stood in Great Uncle Albert’s front garden. In fact, it nearly filled the whole plot.

‘I’ve booked that for two days,’ said Mum. ‘I expect to fill it.’

I nodded. I was beginning to realise that this was more a mission of destruction than exploration.

Mum pulled out the bulky keys that Higgins & Stop had sent her and placed a key in the lock. She pushed and pulled on the door. The lock was effective but the door looked as if it would come off its hinges at the slightest shove.

Mum turned to me, ‘It’s difficult to believe Uncle Albert isn’t here to let us in.’ That was
all that it took for me to visualise him in the hallway, heading towards the door. He had an eccentric way of saying hello. The front door would open but he’d already be disappearing into the kitchen. ‘Kettle’s on,’ he’d say over his shoulder. That was the greeting we’d get for travelling across the Irish Sea and two hundred miles to see him. How he knew it was us at the door I never understood. Perhaps he peered out of the window first, or maybe he had so few visitors that he knew it wasn’t anyone else. Perhaps everyone got the kettle’s-on treatment.

When the door creaked opened and we entered the narrow hallway I sensed that Mum wished for that greeting too.

The same musty smell, the same brown wallpaper, heaps of belongings, but no Uncle Albert.

I went into what he had called the ‘scullery’. There was his stove and the famous kettle, dull grey and cold.

Mum had followed me in and was staring around at the familiar objects.

‘Let’s have a look around before we start,’ I suggested.

Mum didn’t reply so I wandered into the sitting-room. There, still, were the bundles of newspapers tied with string, and the familiar furniture – every surface covered with objects to stock a Car Boot sale.

My eyes turned to the mantelpiece. Still there! – the sailing ship made of thousands of strands of delicate glass, woven into shape in clear red, white and blue. When I had first seen it, the ship was bigger than me, and I’d stared up at it on the giant mantelpiece. Ever since, I’d missed no opportunity to steal into the room and gaze at it, until at last I was tall enough to examine it at eye level. Now I could touch it.

There were tiny glass sailors climbing up the ship’s rigging. Their uniforms were moulded perfectly, even to the detail of navy ribbons round their caps.

Pushing my way through the stacks of magazines that were piled in front of the fireplace, I reached over and tried to lift the ship down. It wouldn’t move. ‘It’s stuck!’

Mum came in. ‘Yes, he often did that.’

‘You mean he glued things down?’

‘Yes, so no-one could steal them.’

I gripped the dome and lifted it off. It was covered in dust, like everything else in the house. But inside, the intricate glass ship was perfectly clean, the glass was so fine it was like lace, yet it was a real sailing ship to me. All my life I’d pictured it buffeted by winds on the high seas in the time of pirates and buccaneers. Mum thought it was something to do with the Crystal Palace Exhibition. Now I’d never be able to ask Great Uncle Albert about it. Like most of our family history on Mum’s side, the English side, it was lost …

Then my dream turned into a nightmare. Perhaps I knocked the ship when I removed the dome, but as I looked at the glass ship, it began to crumble. First the rigging collapsed, then the sails. One after another the fine strands fell until there was no more than a pile of red, white and blue glass chips.

I gasped in horror.

Mum looked up from the pile of newspapers she was inspecting. ‘Okay?’ she asked.

What could I say? A dream had fallen to pieces before my eyes.

‘The ship,’ I said inadequately

‘David! How did you do that?’

‘It just happened.’

Mum groaned. ‘You must be more careful,’ she said, because she always said that if I was within a hundred metres of something that broke, not because she cared about the ship.

‘It was old age,’ I said. ‘It just crumbled.’

Mum sighed. ‘It happens to people too. Clear up the bits.’

I swept up the pieces and threw them on the skip.

Dad returned an hour or so later. Most of the estate agents were shut, so he was going to have to try again the next day. Clearing out was going to be left to Mum and me.

Dad had found somewhere to eat though. There was a steak restaurant just a mile away. When we returned to the house having eaten, we were so tired that we just took our sleeping bags, cleared spaces on the floor and slept.

No ghost of Uncle Albert kept us awake. Wherever he was he wasn’t in the house, but I went to sleep wondering if dead people weren’t
just the sum of their possessions.

T
here was no bathroom in the house. The loo was built on to the outside of the scullery. The cistern was still filling noisily and I was heading back to the scullery, when I heard a voice.

‘You’ll be Fred.’ An artful, wizened face was showing over the back fence. ‘You’ll be Fred,’ its voice said again. Was this an identification or a prediction?

‘Sorry, no,’ I answered.

‘Not Maud’s youngest?’

Thanks to the way Great Uncle Albert had confused our family, I was ready for this. ‘No, I’m Albert’s sister’s daughter’s youngest.’

‘Albert didn’t have a daughter.’

‘No, Albert’s sister’s daughter’s …’ I gave up. The old fellow was either eight feet tall or he was having to stand on something to look over
the fence. ‘I’m David,’ I said.

The head disappeared, and, three feet shorter, its owner arrived at the beach gate. ‘I’m Cyril Bently. I’ve been Albert’s neighbour for fifty years.’

He opened the gate and edged me towards the back door.

Mum and Dad weren’t keen on visitors, but Cyril Bently sat down at the table in the back parlour and seemed set to stay.

That was enough to get Dad moving. He took me out to a nearby café for breakfast, but when we returned old Cyril was still seated at the table, newly piled high with Great Uncle Albert’s possessions.

‘Mr Bently’s been telling me how he won a medal,’ said Mum, ‘and I’ve given him a few little things to remember Uncle Albert by.’ Four cushions, a big clock, a copy of Constable’s ‘Haywain’ and three pairs of boots.

‘We often had tea together,’ said the old man, eyeing the huge brown teapot.

‘Would you like the teapot, as a memento?’ said Mum, reverently.

‘What medal?’ I asked.

‘I will take the teapot. Those cups match it, I think.’ Mr Bently nodded and pointed.

‘What medal did you win?’ I asked again.

‘Would you like the cups too?’ Mum asked. ‘David, don’t delay Mr Bently any longer,’ she said, fixing me with a look.

‘No,’ Dad agreed. He tried to pile the cushions, clock and boots into the old man’s outstretched hands, but it was obvious he couldn’t handle the lot.

I grabbed them. ‘I’ll help Mr Bently with these,’ I said as he shuffled reluctantly towards the door.

‘Make sure you come back immediately,’ Dad said loudly, then, more softly, he added, ‘alone.’

Mr Bently and I moved at a snail’s pace along the road.

‘What medal did you win, Mr Bently?’ I asked.

But his only answer was: ‘He probably had teaspoons to go with those cups.’

I couldn’t get another word out of him until I dumped the things in his hallway. Then he said, ‘Silver ones, I’ll be bound,’ and shut the door in my face.

When I arrived back, Dad was hurrying away to the estate agents. His haste was explained as soon as I got inside. Another elderly neighbour was sitting at the oak table.

‘This is Mrs Ridgewell,’ Mum said. It was scarcely an introduction as Mrs Ridgewell was in full flow.

‘So, Cyril Bently’s managed it after all those years,’ she was saying bitterly, but with a hint of admiration. ‘Albert wouldn’t have him under his roof while he was alive and now he’s got his hands on half his belongings.’

‘So they weren’t lifelong friends?’ Mum asked weakly.

‘Lifelong enemies more like.’

‘Did Mr Bently really win a medal?’ I asked.

‘Spent most of the war down an air-raid shelter,’ answered Mrs Ridgewell contemptuously. ‘And not always alone, if you take my meaning,’ she said, nodding at Mum.

‘Yes, well, it would be wonderful to listen to you all day,’ said Mum hastily, ‘but we must get on.’ She almost took the chair from under Mrs Ridgewell.

The old lady kept up her commentary as she
walked down the hall. ‘Not a decent bone in his body,’ she said. Then, turning at the door, she added, ‘No, it was Albert who won the medal.’

The door closed on her. Mum said fiercely. ‘David, not another word about medals! I want you working now.’

I decided on my strategy. I would grab a load of something bulky, like clothes, throw them into the skip, then I would have time to take a look round. I headed first for Great Uncle Albert’s bedroom. I scooped out the contents of the rickety old wardrobe and staggered out to the skip with them.

Then I opened a drawer in a heavy mahogany chest. A muddle of socks, none of them in pairs, faced me. None of them even matched. I tried to imagine Great Uncle Albert wearing unmatching socks, hidden beneath his dark suit. Yes, more than possible.

I heaped the socks into a black plastic sack and opened the next drawer. Underwear. I emptied the contents without looking at them, then opened a third drawer. There was a tangle
of unironed shirts with their arms locked together as if they were fighting. I pulled two apart. They were made of some thick, warm material. They had no collars, just little white buttons where collars could be attached. Before his Oily Rag days, Ian would have liked them. But not now, so I stuffed them into the sack, dragged them all to the skip and emptied them out. As I came back into the house, I found Mum with her head deep inside a sideboard.

‘Found anything?’ I asked.

Her voice came out muffled from the sideboard. ‘Anything!’ she gasped, emerging. ‘What have you in mind? Twenty-year-old bars of soap? Pre-war digestive biscuits? I’ve found them all.’

‘Anything interesting,’ I emphasised. I liked the sound of the biscuits, but I knew Mum well enough to know they’d be in the skip by now.

She was getting exasperated by the heaps of stuff. ‘I’m not going to sort through it anymore,’ she told me. ‘I’m just going to scoop it into bags.’

I nodded. If I could just watch as she shovelled things in, like on a conveyor belt, then I could
pick out anything of interest, like a medal.

‘Did you know Great Uncle Albert had won a medal?’ I asked.

‘Well, Mr Bently’s story did sound familiar,’ she said in a distracted sort of way.

‘What medal was it?’

‘The George Cross.’

‘When did he win it?’ I asked her.

She frowned. ‘In World War Two.’

‘Well, I know that!’ This was hopeless. ‘I didn’t think they handed them out at the Co-op Bakery,’ I answered, hoping to prod Mum into remembering something. ‘But what did he win it for?’ I persisted.

This time her voice came from deep inside a cupboard. ‘Er, bravery, I think.’ And this was the person who disapproved when my Maths report said I should pay more attention to detail.

‘Poor Great Uncle Albert!’ I said. ‘Fancy winning a medal and your family just ignoring it. I bet he died of a broken heart.’

‘Well, he took long enough about it. He lived another fifty years,’ came the cupboard voice.

‘Fifty years after what?’ I asked. ‘Where was he fighting? Was he an officer? Surely you must
remember something.’

Mum reappeared from the cupboard. ‘David, I’m up to my ears in the accumulated dirt and grime of half a century here. As far as I’m concerned, I’m the one who deserves a medal. Now go and get on with something useful.’

‘Just one more question,’

‘Just one.’

‘Did Great Uncle Albert mention the medal in his will? Did he leave it to anyone in particular?’

Mum shook her head. ‘No.’ Then she added, ‘But you can have it if you find it, so long as you get on with some work.’

I was delighted. I would shift every item in the house if it meant I could have Great Uncle Albert’s medal.