Selfish People. Lucy English

his cigarette. He smoked roll-ups and they always went out. ‘You go there to see Bailey. Ponce-bag Mr Sexy Lycra-shorts.’

      ‘Al, I do not.’

      ‘Was he at the Project today? Was he?’

      ‘No … I mean yes … he came in to collect some keys.’

      ‘What did he say?’

      ‘Nothing.’

      ‘He said nothing? The other week he had you out all night and now he’s saying nothing to you. What do you feel about that?’ He put his feet on the floor and straightened up.

      ‘Nothing.’

      ‘Nothing? Nothing? Is that all you can say? Don’t you feel anything? God, you amaze me.’ He tossed his fag-end into the sink and rolled himself another. ‘Your boyfriend’s ignoring you and you feel nothing?’

      ‘I’ve told you this a dozen times. I don’t even know why I did it. I just felt …’

      ‘What? What did you feel? You tell me you feel nothing!’

      How can I explain this? I felt I was myself and I didn’t belong to anybody.

      ‘What?’ he was yelling. And she started to cry because she was tired and it all seemed impossible and where was the end?

      Al hated her crying. He smashed the table and made the cheese dish jump.

      ‘Don’t break it!’ sobbed Leah. There had been too much broken crockery lately.

      ‘Is this all you care about, bits of china? Don’t you care about me?’

      This made her cry more. She could only think about being alone and peaceful. He was storming up and down the room banging his fists on the wall. ‘Tell me!’ he screamed, loud enough to wake up the whole street.

      ‘Tell you what?’ sobbed Leah.

      He stopped. ‘You are so fucking stupid I don’t believe you. Look at you. You’re pathetic. All I want to know, it’s so simple and you can’t answer me, is why did you go off with that … ponce. OK you didn’t bonk him. OK you don’t fancy him …’

      ‘I don’t. He’s got big ears, he’s ugly and stupid.’ She wasn’t looking at Al but at the table and the cheese dish. She had found it in a junk shop and wasn’t it pretty with flowers and gilt. She wanted to pick it up and protect it. ‘Bailey’s thick,’ she said, trying to calm herself. ‘He wears stupid clothes. He’s an idiot.’

      Al relit his cigarette. ‘Then why did you go off with him?’

      She looked at him and his hungry tired face and his matted hair. ‘I felt I wanted something different.’

      ‘Different?’ He picked out the word and inspected it. ‘In what way?’

      ‘From this,’ she said softly. ‘I wanted something different from this.’

      ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Goodnight.’ And he walked out of the kitchen and out of the front door. She waited. He was given to storming out and storming back in again, but this time he didn’t. She went upstairs. She felt defeated and insignificant. On the landing was Jo, her eldest child.

      ‘Where’s Daddy?’

      ‘He’s gone for a walk. It’s very late. Go back to bed.’ She hated it when the children woke up in the middle of a fight. Jo was ten, he was skinny and pale. His pyjamas were too small for him and showed an expanse of bony leg. She wanted him to go away. She opened her bedroom door. ‘Go to bed, dear,’ she said. He looked baffled and half asleep. She felt a pang of pity for him. ‘Be nice to Daddy in the morning.’

      It was Thursday and the last week in November. Leah was in the bath. It was her day at the Project. She stayed in the water until it was quite lukewarm. She wanted to be queen of the fairies in a bubbling stream, but she wasn’t, she was Leah in a mouldy bathroom in Garden Hill.

      She dressed in her brightest clothes. An egg-yellow jumper and pink leggings. She still felt blank. She put on bright pink lipstick and a coral-coloured coat and went outside.

      Garden Hill wasn’t much of a hill and even less of a garden. There were four roads. Garden Hill, at the bottom, Arthur Road, Clarence Road and Walter Road, all named after turn-of-the-century local dignitaries. At the top of the hill were two modern tower blocks also named after forgettable notables. They were built on the site of a large house and gardens demolished in the fifties. Older residents could remember it. A late Victorian heap owned by a successful draper. Around his house terraced rows had crept up right to the garden walls until he was so hemmed in by urban life he sold up and moved elsewhere. There had been an orchard but all this had gone to the tower blocks.

      Looking up the hill Leah could see the blocks in the mist. Ugly grey shapes hanging above the houses of Walter Road. The end of Garden Hill had been bombed in the war and there was now a children’s playground, with four swings and a seesaw. From here, on the other side of the railway line she could see all of Bristol. She looked as she always did. The sky was low and heavy, the buildings were shades of grey and the air, too, felt heavy and damp. She could see her breath and she walked on.

      The road went under the railway line in a sudden steep lunge and from here on it was flat. This was Brewery Lane. It led to the Project past the tyre sales depot and the masons’ yard. Above it was the railway embankment. She walked along past the stone dust and the fumes of burning tyres, then suddenly there was a country hedge and rowan trees. This was the Garden Hill Project.

      It was on four acres of land bordered by Brewery Lane and, on the other side, a huge printing works. It was most unexpected to find a part of the countryside here, but here it was. Twelve years previously a group of local people got fed up with this piece of land earmarked to be a lorry park and they took it over and turned into allotments. Then came the community gardens, the pond and the wildlife area. The Council gave them a grant to make a community centre. When Leah moved to Bristol the Garden Hill Project was bursting with children, old people, plants for sale, vegetables for sale, soup, tea and cakes and sports sessions. Leah worked in the office. She was also on the committee.

      The office was a poky room in the old Brewery building. It was not a nice place to work. Lesley answered the phone, booked the various rooms and typed letters, usually at the same time. Barbara dealt with petty cash and salaries and Debbie worked with the children. The phone rang all day. Staff came in to collect keys, management came in to collect staff and anybody else who had a problem or a query. Today, the cleaner was off sick and several mothers were complaining about a dirty floor in the play centre. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Lesley, ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ and soon everybody in the office was apologising. Lesley and Barbara were working mothers with teenage children. They dressed in smart clothes as if they worked in a proper office and not a badly lit room with wobbly shelves crammed full of files. The women left. Barbara made coffee. The phone rang.

      Then Bailey burst in. ‘The floor ain’t been swept!’ He was furious. Lesley disappeared to the bank; Barbara was suddenly busy with the accounts. This left Leah. He was the last person in the universe she wanted to see.

      ‘I’ve got a class at two and I’m not doing it on that bloody floor!’

      ‘The cleaner’s sick,’ said Leah. Bailey was wearing his best lime green tracksuit. His hair was in a red band. He seemed to fill up the whole room.

      ‘I’m not doing a class on that floor!’

      ‘The cleaner is sick,’ said Leah.

      ‘That’s your fucking problem.’

      Barbara coughed. Bailey wasn’t her favourite person. He made a fuss every week about his pay cheque.

      ‘There is nobody to clean today, we are very short-staffed –’ began Leah.

      ‘Then there’s no bloody class, that’s it, I’m off!’ and he slammed the sports hall keys on the table.

      Oh