A New Life

Out of breath, she hunched on a plastic chair and surveyed her husband’s belongings strewn about the yard. Her arms ached from hefting and swinging. She took a cigarette from her robe pocket. It was bent and fragile and didn’t light easily. When she was done smoking, if she had the energy, she would deal with what remained inside. But even if she stopped here, she thought, this was something. What exactly she wasn’t sure. She smoked and searched for the word. Categorical. That was it. That was the word she was looking for.

His clothes were soaking in the puddle of sludge at the bottom of the otherwise empty pool. His boots and slippers, his mallorquinas and sneakers, were scattered across the warped decking, their toes lopped or mangled. Then in the knee-high weeds were mounds of junk: tools, old televisions with screens caved in, an out-of-date laptop snapped in two, three stoved in mobile air conditioners, a jumble of obsolete remote controls and other electronic gizmos spewing wires, piled sudoku magazines and sepia newspapers, smashed liquor bottles, bent fishing gear, leaky car batteries, dented motorbike helmets, a cracked computer screen – the old kind, before they went flat. Clipboards and crumpled cardboard files stood in a heap, and torn papers fluttered in the breeze and caught in the spears of tall grass. Innumerable other knick-knacks littered the yard, half hidden by weeds. Inside was still more stuff, much of it too difficult for her to move on her own. The downstairs garage was so cluttered you could barely get in: defunct lathes and grinders and lawnmowers, an inoperable motorbike and even a clapped-out cement mixer. The sheer volume made her head throb. But everything she could manage was in the yard.

The dog down the road started up. Its bark was repetitive, machine-like, and chipped away at something in her chest. Then it stopped. She scrunched her finished cigarette under the heel of a slipper and closed her robe against the cool breeze. She felt calmer. Her breathing and blood had steadied. All her husband’s hoardings had been worthless anyway. She wouldn’t have been able to hawk a thing; nobody would have bothered showing up. Not that she’d want them to. She touched the smooth-grained handle of the axe leaning against the arm of the chair. Of all his accumulated trash, it was the only thing she’d found a use for. It felt like an ally. She wanted a new life. When he got home, she would face him.

“What’s this?” he said to himself.

He had clambered onto the roof of the granny flat out back. From that vantage he had a view of the surrounding yards, but especially the yard of the property directly behind. What he saw took him aback. The yard was overgrown with weeds and full of trash. The house, two-storeyed and once prosperous, had black water stains running down its gables and guttering hung loose. Except for dingy clothing clumped at the bottom like a bank of washed-up seaweed, the pool was empty. The sole plant, a fig tree with only half a dozen brown leaves, grew crooked. The place was filthy, he thought. A literal tip. Amidst the neglect, a woman sat on a plastic chair. The pink polyester dressing gown she wore looked like a dog had thrashed it about. She removed a cigarette from one pocket and placed it between her lips. The crumpled set of her mouth made him think she might be unwell, something that had started as invisible and interior and was working its way out. She patted first one pocket and then the other and produced a lighter.

“Good morning,” he called, cautiously. He didn’t know if he wanted to attract her attention or not, but standing up here, he felt it would be bad form not to. The woman gave a start and slipped the cigarette and lighter back into her robe pocket. Although the sun was blotted by cloud, she lifted her hand as if to shield her eyes and then waved like someone at the stern of a ferry.

He raised his hand. “Everything okay?” he said. “We’re the new neighbours. We moved in last week.”

The woman rose, skirted the pool and then picked her way carefully through the chaos of debris. She came up to the wall, shielded her eyes again and peered up. She smiled, more a twist of her mouth. Her lips were coarse and dark, like they were indelibly stained. “Welcome to the neighbourhood,” she said in a sandpapery voice.

“Are you alright?” Something about the situation made him think he ought to make sure.

“I am now,” she said. “What you doing up there?”

“Nothing much. Poking about.”

“Thought you might be snooping.”

He fingered the tips of his shirt collar protruding from his sweater vest. “Oh, no,” he said. “Nothing like that. I was inspecting.” He made a show of scrutinising the wavy aluminium sheeting underfoot, which was covered in mouldering leaves and buckled slightly under his weight. The truth was he had gone up because of the neighbour’s barbecue. Three times since they’d moved in, fumes, which issued from a squat chimney cap poking over the back wall on the neighbour’s side, had penetrated and filled their home with the reek of burnt meat and smoke. Climbing up here wouldn’t solve anything, he knew, but he hadn’t been able to resist the urge to reconnoitre. Now he had been spotted, he couldn’t very well charge straight into accusing someone he’d only just met. He smiled ruefully. “We got the house assessed but not the granny flat. I thought I’d come up and check, make sure there aren’t structural flaws. Before the kids and grandkids come to stay.”

Moving had been his wife’s idea. In Sant Cugat they had friends in the walkers’ club, twice-weekly dance classes, he was building president, their children and grandkids lived close by. But his wife had been raised in a village; she’d always had it in mind to retire to the countryside. Not that he considered this the country. It was more like a suburb. For the sake of an hour’s drive north, he didn’t see the point. Starting over. It made him weary to think about.

The neighbour was rubbing her front tooth with the side of her forefinger, like she had something stuck there. He noticed a missing bottom tooth, which put him in mind of the recent expense of his wife’s dentures; but unlike his wife, who fussed over her appearance with an assortment of little bottles of cream, this woman’s face was sallow, her skin rubbery, and for a second time it struck him that she appeared ill. As if to confirm his suspicions, she coughed, then winced and swallowed. With the back of her hand she wiped her mouth. “Maybe my husband could check your roof,” she said. “He’s a builder. Or he was.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” he said.

“Used to be lots of things. Says he’s retired now but there’s two more years before he gets the pension. He’ll be at the bar with his brother right now. Like clones, those two. Thick as thieves.”

He depressed a loose rivet with the lip of his sneaker.

“Neither have done a thing since the crisis,” she said, drawing her robe tighter. “Just scheme and gossip. One thing after the other. This morning he swiped my money. I stash a little away, for emergencies. Must have found it and woosh – gone.” She looked around her at the clutter. “God knows what he’s doing with it. Won’t answer his phone.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, mostly to himself.

“Did build our house,” she said, shrugging almost imperceptibly. “But that was before.”

“Well,” he said. He wanted to go back inside. He didn’t wish to get involved. “Everything’s looking okay up here –”

“You must have quite a view,” she said. “Bet you can see into everyone’s yard from there.”

He lifted his head, pretending it had only occurred to him to look now. “Yes. But I didn’t come up –”

“I don’t mean to imply,” she said. “Just, it must be good to see things up high. A fresh viewpoint. Sure from up there things don’t look so –” She pressed the overlapping lapels of her robe against her sternum as she searched for the word. “So up close.”

He shrugged. “We’re from Sant Cugat. To me everything is new.”

She dug her hands into her pockets, a finger slipping through a hole. “I’ve been here since forever,” she said. “Can’t even remember the last place we lived. It’s like a past life.” Her eyes showed a glint of the sky’s grey as she contemplated the pine tree in the adjacent yard, as if a memory might be dangling there. A pigeon cooed and beat its wings. Sharply, she looked back. “Hey,” she said. “Think I could come up and see?”

He glanced back towards his house. Inside, in what was going to be a storage room, his wife was unpacking boxes and crates. When he’d left her, she had been folding lavender-scented linen, stiff from ironing, and laying them on cupboard shelves. From the living room where he had set up the stereo, Schubert’s Sting Quintets filtered up the stair and down the hall. He ought to go back and help. About this thing of his with the smoke and the neighbour’s barbecue, his wife had tried to talk him down. She’d said, “Must we repeat the same neighbour troubles again? You’re not president here. Can it at least wait until we’re settled?” But the sense of invasion irked. What impelled was the need to mark what was theirs; to establish a perimeter over which things like the neighbour’s greasy smoke had no right to encroach. The inside, he’d thought, could wait. But maybe his wife was right. The woman was foraging in weeds and out of them hoisted a metal step ladder.

“That’s not a great idea,” he said.

“Only a moment. I want to see is all.” With her foot she nudged the legs apart, knocked the brace straight with a force that made him blink, and clunked the ladder flush against the wall.

“The roof won’t hold us both.”

“Give me a hand up,” she said.

What was he to do? Push her down? He eased himself onto one knee and reached for her hand. “Be careful,” he said. Kneeling close to the edge, he had a view of the offending barbecue. It abutted the wall and was built from smoke blackened cinderblocks. A blow or two with a sledgehammer, he thought, or a stiff shove –

The woman panted as she climbed and stopped halfway to yank her robe closed and retie her belt. But when she gripped his arm and gingerly trod on the top of the wall, the robe bulged again and he glimpsed tender, sagging flesh. With a little lunge and grunt she hopped onto the roof. The sheeting creaked. “Stand where the rivets are,” he said. “That means there’s a beam underneath.” Unsteady, they stood, clutching one another’s arms for support. A compounded stench of cigarettes and cooking grease rode off her.

“You really can see a lot from up here.” She touched his shoulder for balance and let out a dry laugh. “Just look at it,” she said, surveying her back yard. “Hard to believe.” She fell to coughing. A deep, moist, bronchial hack. She gripped his shoulder tighter.

“Are you okay?” he said.

“Probably not,” she said, dark mouth slick, grimacing or wryly smiling he couldn’t tell.

“The wind’s cool.”

“And imagine, up on your roof in my dressing gown.” She laughed again. Phlegm cracked in her chest.

“Shall I help you back down?”

She let go of his shoulder and, arms held out, stepped gingerly across the creaking roof. “Look,” she said. “Must be from our chimney.” He followed to where she was pointing and saw, beneath where the barbecue poked its cap above the fence line, a black streak ran down the brickwork on their side of the wall. “Any money that’s what it is,” she said.

Strange he hadn’t noticed the stain before. Perhaps he had dismissed it as natural discolouration or had been so fixated on the fumes invading their home the detail had escaped his notice, but now this woman had pointed it out, there was no mistaking the cause. She was nattering on, saying how it was typical of her husband to build something defective; he ruined everything he touched. “Can’t even get a barbecue right,” she said. “And look at our house.” But what was strange, he thought, was that this woman should be so eager to admit something for which she and her husband were clearly at fault. He wondered if he should surreptitiously reach into his pocket and record what she was saying on his phone. As proof, in case things came to that.

“I can clean it for you,” she was saying. “That’s what I do. House cleaning. Off the books, but it gets us by, just about.” She turned to him. She had taken the lighter out of her dressing gown pocket and was grinding the striker wheel with her thumb. “I’ll get that stain off.”

“There’s no need,” he said. A cleaner? Was she trying to be funny? He had already decided this was the first and last time she was setting foot on his property.

“I clean worse every day. You can’t imagine the state of some places. From outside they look spic-and-span. Immaculate gardens, swimming pools, gazebos, you name it. But inside it’s a different story.” She snapped the striker wheel. Her knuckles were swollen, probably arthritic. The notion flashed through his mind that she might fall apart right there in front of him, on his roof. “People are disgusting,” she said. “Animals.”

He glanced once more around her back yard, at the piles of smashed up junk and the rundown house. What was it going to take to get this woman off his roof?

“Really,” he said, “don’t worry about it. A bit of bicarb –”

“You know,” she said, waggling the lighter to indicate his home. “Your house used to be on my roster, back when the previous owners were there. Good people. Nice neighbours. You should have seen the stuff they had. There was this coffee machine. Professional, just like the ones in bars. Better, probably. They had top brand everything. Some days, when I was cleaning and they weren’t home, I’d lie on top of the bed. Not long, a couple of minutes. It was peaceful, like being in a bubble. If I shut my eyes, it felt like –’

“Listen,” he said, “I really –”

“It’s hard to explain,” she said. “Everything felt like it should.” She snapped the striker wheel once more and stuffed it and both hands into her pockets. “Bet you’re just like them,” she said. “You and your wife. I can tell.”

“My wife’s inside unpacking. I should get back.”

“I can clean for you,” she said. “I’ll clean the wall for free, of course. But I mean your house. Once you’re settled.”

“We’re retired.”

“I’ll give you a good rate.”

“We have a lot of spare time. I don’t think we’ll be needing a cleaner.”

“I’m very thorough. The Mustieles never had a complaint.”

He sighed and shook his head. “No,” he said, patience spent. “I said no.”

She gazed back down at her yard. “Okay,” she said. “I understand.” She succumbed to a new coughing fit. Veins and tendons bulged in her neck. She doubled over. He put a hand on her back.

“You’ll catch your death,” he said. “I’ll help you down.”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve got things to finish.”

She shrugged his hand away and edged back to the step ladder. He waited while she knelt and tightened the belt on her robe, and then bent and held her elbow lightly until her foot found the top rung and she could grip the ladder’s side rail. When she was back on the ground on her side of the wall, she peered up. “Offer’s there if you change your mind,” she said. The colour had drained from her lips.

“I’ll put it to my wife, but –”

“I’ll clean your wall though. You’ll let me do that.”

“Perhaps just fix the chimney,” he said, “so it draws properly and smoke doesn’t blow down. We can smell it inside.”

She squinted at it.

“You could do that instead,” he said.

She adjusted her robe and took from her pocket the cigarette he’d seen her slip in there before. She lit it and exhaled. Smoke, the same dirty grey as the sky, clung to her robe before being whisked away by the breeze.

“That’s more my husband’s area,” she said. “Take it up with him.”

He watched her make her way back through the grass and around the pool. It was only when she slumped into the plastic chair he noticed the axe. She placed it across her knees and gripped the handle. From a yard close by a dog barked. Another joined it, then another, each more savage than the last.