Wendy Perriam (8 page)

As if she hadn’t spoken, he continued in his condemnatory tone. “And there are droppings everywhere.”

“They’re not all droppings.” She glanced down at the floor, where tiny moist black rod-things alternated with minuscule white scales. “Some of them are bits of my skin.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s started flaking off. It’s very thin, you see, and …” No, he
didn’t
see, judging by his expression. Most people failed to realize what peculiar stuff skin was - even normal skin that didn’t wear away. It had to be strong enough - resilient and waterproof - to provide a barrier against the outside world, yet on the other hand, it was agonisingly sensitive to the slightest sensation of touch. And it varied so dramatically from place to place on the body: gossamer-frail on the eyelids, sandpaper-rough on the heels, padded over the buttocks, wrinkly-loose on the elbows, taut across the shins. And wasn’t it rather extraordinary that hundreds of millions of skin cells died off every day, to be replaced by new cells, sneaking up behind them? Sometimes, when she tuned in to the process, she could hear the screech of the dying cells competing with the triumphant whoops of the new, and the din in her head became so overwhelming she lay sleepless for nights at a stretch.

“Miss
Mackenzie
!”

She started. He’d been saying something and she hadn’t heard a word.

“I’ve asked you - twice - if you would allow me to examine the premises. I need to make a detailed report.”

Hardly a question of ‘allowing’ him. He was already prowling around the bedsit, as if he owned the place, opening cupboards, peering under units.

“This kitchen area is particularly worrying. I can see teeth-marks on the cereal packets.”

“Of course you can - the cereal is
theirs
. I buy it for them specially. Their favourites are Cheerios and Grape Nuts. I can’t help it if they eat the boxes as well.”

“I’d appreciate it, Miss Mackenzie, if you could try to take this seriously. I’m endeavouring to do a job of work and your facetious attitude doesn’t help the process.”

“I
am
taking it seriously.” So seriously, in fact, she could feel his harsh words piercing through her body - poisoned arrows now sticking in her flesh.

“The more you feed the mice, the more you’ll be landed with.”

“Yes, that’s what Sudu found.”

“
Sudu
? Who’s Sudu?”

“A girl I met at work - last year, when I
did
work. She’s a Buddhist, so she’s forbidden to kill a single living creature - not so much as a house-fly or an ant. The problem is she’s terrified of mice, but her Buddhist teacher, the Venerable thingamajig, said she had to strive to love them rather than fear them. So she tried leaving them food, but of course more and more turned up, and she got into the most awful state, and was tempted to ditch her Buddhist principles and simply put down mouse-traps. In the end, I offered to swap flats with her, which we did three months ago. And the mice are miles happier, because now they’re
truly
loved.”

Mr Beamish paused in his examination of a hole in the skirting board to fix her with a reproving stare. “I cannot impress upon you too strongly, Miss Mackenzie, that mice are
not
, I repeat not, objects of affection. If you carry on like this, you’ll be completely overrun. Female house mice reach sexual maturity at forty-two days old, and can give birth as often as every month. They don’t even have to wait until they’ve weaned their young before they can conceive again. In fact, one breeding pair used in a research study produced over a million descendants in a period of just eighteen months.”

If he wanted to bandy statistics about, well, that was his prerogative, but personally she found it distressing that he should discuss such intimate matters without a trace of fellow feeling for the mice. It must be extremely hard on the females to be pregnant or lactating for so much of their short lives. She had no desire to give birth, having seen what it involved.

“Good God! There’s a nest right here.” He was now investigating her bottom dresser drawer, which she deliberately kept open a few inches, to provide air for Alexandra. The poor mouse leapt out in terror at the monster-man’s approach, and fled back behind the skirting board.

“
Now
look - you’ve upset her, and she’s about to give birth any second.”

He shut the drawer with a bang, then wiped his hands on his handkerchief, as if they’d been polluted. “This really is appallingly unhygienic. You’ll get ill, you know, if you live like this.”

She shrugged. There was little point in arguing with someone so completely blind to the beauty of a mouse’s nest. Alexandra had fashioned hers out of torn-up bits of newspaper, lined it with chewed and softened string, and spent considerable time and trouble making it a safe and cosy haven for her young. And the fact she’d chosen a sock drawer showed how intelligent she was - soft woolly stuff on hand to cushion her babies’ tender skin.

Mr Beamish made a note on his pad, wrinkling his nose against the smell again. Next he inspected her bed, and the crate she used as a bedside table. OK, neither was exactly pristine, but the needs of the mice must come first.

“‘You’ll have to call in Pest Control and arrange for these vermin to be exterminated.”

“
Hitler
,” she muttered, outraged. The moustache made perfect sense now. He was nothing more than a one-man death machine. Thank God he hadn’t brought himself to use her Christian name. She had no desire to be friendly with someone who consigned her tiny room-mates to the gas chamber.

“I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I’ve no intention of phoning anyone.”

“Are you telling me you refuse to deal with the problem?”

“It’s
not
a problem, OK? The mice are perfectly happy, and
I’m
not complaining.”

“Yes, but all your neighbours are.”

“It’s nothing to do with them.”

“Yes, it most certainly is.” He put his pad down to wag a bony finger at her. “The mice are going under the floorboards from here to other flats. They can squeeze through a gap the size of a pen or pencil, and you have gaps much larger than that.”

“But why should they
want
to go to other flats, when I give them all they need? Not just lots of cereal, but treats like chocolate Hobknobs and boxes of Newberry Fruits. I know all their special favourites. And they need to eat a great deal. They have a very high metabolic rate.”

Mr Beamish pursed his lips. “I’m well aware of that. What
you
are not aware of, or perhaps refuse to take on board, is that you’re risking your health and safety, and that of other people who happen to live in this same block.” He strode back to his chair and began making more extensive notes, his pen ripping into the paper, as if it, too, were furious. At length, he bunged the folder back into his briefcase and snapped the briefcase shut. “I’m afraid I shall have to take this further. You’ll be hearing from the Council in due course.”

“I can’t wait,” she mumbled, sarcastically, finally closing the door on him. All the noise and upheaval would have seriously disturbed the mice. And
she
was literally shaking. The poisoned arrows had gone much deeper now, skewering her heart and lungs.

Too agitated to rest, she paced up and down the room, trying to work out what to do. If she decided to fight the Council, she’d need a proper action plan, and she’d have to clear the whole place up, as part of her general strategy. These people were so blinkered, they judged everything in terms of tidiness. In fact, while the mice were lying low, she could get rid of all the crates and boxes left over from the flat-swap. Then, if some officious type called, at least his first impression would be favourable.

She stacked half a dozen boxes together and carried them down to the wheely-bin in the back-yard of the flats. With difficulty, and using her left arm, she prised open the lid and stood peering at the contents: broken toys, old newspapers, empty cans and bottles - all classed as trash, discarded. How could she leave her own stuff here? Battered cardboard boxes probably suffered from feelings of rejection as much as did bruised fruit and mouldy cheese.

Plunging her arm inside the container, she retrieved a balding teddy bear. How miserable it looked, with its one remaining eye; its tattered, scruffy fur. And even the newspaper it was lying on aroused her sympathy - the once high-status
Sunday Times
now considered unworthy even of wrapping fish and chips. Her hand closed round a ketchup bottle weeping thick red tears. Easy to call it “empty”, consign it to oblivion, but if plants could suffer - and there was now scientific proof of that - then why not glass or paper? Most people refused to countenance the prospect that what they regarded as brute matter might actually be sensitive, and capable of feeling. Yet, at this very moment, she herself was actually tuning in to the low but keen lament of these unloved, unwanted objects: the heartache of a fishbone, too spiky to be swallowed; the humiliation of teabags, left damp and soggy on top of potato peelings still trembling from the insult of the knife; the pathos of a broken eggcup, regarded as too trivial to mend.

She sank down on to the concrete floor, knowing she must stay - all night, if necessary - hold a solemn vigil in honour of these things, share their pain, their sense of failure. The mice could manage on their own - they had plenty of supplies. Her first duty was down here.

Yet, after only half an hour, her bottom was so sore, she had to change position and, even then, the same problem of her thinning skin arose. If she tried to kneel, her knees bled; if she leant on her elbows, they, too, began to fray. Sighing, she got up again, to see what else might be retrieved. The clutter people tossed away contained their personal history, their past in tangible form. The shirt or dress, for instance, they were wearing at the time of their first kiss, or the books that traced their reading-arc from
Peter Rabbit
to Dostoyevsky.

Having salvaged a volume of poetry, badly torn and stained, she was further shocked to come across some old photos in gilt frames. These were someone’s relatives - mothers, fathers, spouses, siblings - real people who’d once lived and loved. Yet they’d been jettisoned with no concern for the soul or vital essence that might still live on in these likenesses.

If only dustbins worked like compost-heaps: garden waste and kitchen waste going down into the dark, in order to spring up again in new green fertile growth. A similar thing had happened in her own life - her bitter youth and wasted years composting into the deep mulch of compassion. Yet no such resurrection here; only snuff-out in a landfill-site. Indeed, she was appalled at her own callousness in not considering the plight of dustbins
earlier
in her life. There was no excuse at all, given the scale of the problem. Tons and tons of so-called waste must be thrown out every day, and that in just the British Isles alone.

In fact, why was she keeping vigil by this one insignificant wheely-bin in this one small block of flats, when there was a much larger rubbish dump down the lane by the overgrown allotments? She must go there straight away - never mind the cold; the clammy grey mist already blurring landmarks and heralding the night - she must show her solidarity with all things ditched, scrapped, spurned, disdained, cast out.

*

Returning to her flat, at last, she had no idea what date it was, let alone what day. Everything was blurred, as if that clammy mist had never lifted, but sunk deep into her brain. Vaguely, she remembered being ill, lying sweating and delirious beside the rubbish dump. Though the fever must have abated, because she recalled crawling down a path, to take refuge in an empty shed, once used by the allotment-owners. She had stayed there ever since, living on scraps of foodstuffs from the dump.

Now, recovered, and trudging down her familiar street, her overwhelming concern was for the mice. They’d probably had enough food in her absence to manage fairly comfortably, but she preferred to
be
there with them, as mother and provider. She was also worried that, while she’d been away, Christmas might have come and gone, and the thought of “losing” Christmas seemed somehow deeply remiss. She had planned to make it special for them - lay on their own Christmas pudding, dense with fruits and nuts, and mince pies, of course, and marzipan, and a box or two of chocolate brazils. Perhaps she could celebrate it late, but if, as she suspected, it were January already, there’d be nothing Christmassy left in the shops.

As she approached her block of flats, several people glanced at her with ill-concealed distaste. She knew she must look a sight, with tousled hair and filthy clothes, but those were only surface things. She’d once met a man, equally unkempt, who wrote astounding poetry and who, in his youth, had hitchhiked to Calcutta and helped beggars build new lives. Yet “decent” folk shunned him as a “tramp”, as
she
was shunned, at present.

Inserting her key in the lock, she pushed open the front door, only to stop in disbelief at the sight that met her eyes. The bedsit was completely bare - no stick of furniture remained, no rag-rugs on the floor, no curtains at the windows, no crates or clutter anywhere, no cereal, no biscuits, no well-nibbled Newberry Fruits. And there was a completely different smell in the air - not the pungent scent she’d come to know and love, but the harsh reek of lethal chemicals gagging in her nostrils.

Hitler
, she thought! He and his henchmen must have been here, aided and abetted by her hostile, hateful landlord; taken advantage of her absence to destroy her only friends. Aghast, she got down on her hands and knees, to peer into the holes in the skirting, where the mice retreated to sleep. There
were
no holes. Every one had been filled or boarded up. Beyond would be only corpses - pathetic, hapless victims.

Fighting a wave of nausea, she dashed back through the open door and continued running, running, down the street, along the lane, until she reached the rubbish dump and the safety of the shed. And, curling herself into a small ball at the back, she sobbed her grief and outrage to the cold, uncaring universe.