a good sign. Had he been more than fifteen minutes late, I would not have answered the door. He looks reassuringly like a handyman. Stocky, uncombed white hair that manages to be both lank and frothy at the same time, florid face pockmarked like an autonomous wart. The details don’t matter. But the smell did: cheap cigarettes, stale beer, decaying teeth, wood shavings and something acrid that burned my nose, about which I didn’t wish to speculate. He was disgusting, and I could barely resist the impulse to send him away: Shoo! Off you go! Like a stray dog.
My senses are out of control, imperious, undermining. I can smell the decomposing bodies of the flies on the windowsill, the morning light burns my retina, the residue of the morning’s toothpaste coats my gums, my fingertips tingle when they come into contact with hard surfaces. It’s like having a migraine without the headache.
After I opened the door, gingerly, he took a careful builderly look at it, its solidity and sheen, the perfect proportions, depth, weight.
‘Don’t make doors like that any more,’ he said. ‘Shoddy rubbish nowadays.’
I held my hand to my ear to remind him of my deafness, and made a quizzical face, as if he were speaking Mongolian.
He spoke louder, and stepped forward, which I instantly regretted. ‘Shame to muck it about. Security problems I’m guessing? Lot of burglaries round here!’
None of his fucking business, is it? ‘No, not security. Just some changes. I’ll leave you to it. Let yourself out when you finish for the day, and I will see you tomorrow.’
At 5 p.m. I heard the door close, and went down to see how he’d got on. I was pleased – and surprised – to see that he had cleaned up after himself, and the reinstalled door closed with the same satisfying clunk as ever. It now had some new wood, undercoated and primed in dark grey, set where the letter box had been, and the area where the former door-knocker resided was filled in, sanded and painted as well. The new keyhole had been installed, and a set of three keys was on the table in the hallway. There was a newly drilled hole at eye level – he and I were much the same height so I didn’t have to be measured for it – where the peephole would go tomorrow. James Fenimore had carefully taped over it with black masking tape. Altogether, a distinctly workmanlike job.
He arrived at ten the next morning, clutching a takeaway paper cup filled, I presumed, with builder’s tea and lots of sugar. He put it down carefully on the hall table, remembering to put something under it. Keeping the door open, he inspected yesterday’s work and tested that the undercoating was dry.
‘OK so far?’ he asked, in the kind of slow, loud voice one uses for foreigners, recalcitrant children, the stupid and the deaf.
I nodded, trying not to get too close to him. His smell was so invasive that I had not dabbed but sloshed some of Suzy’s L’Air du Temps on my upper lip. When I opened the tiny bottle, it released a painfully sharp memory, not visual but somatic, of my head cushioned between her breasts, her original breasts, smelling of a trace of scent, as blissfully content as a boy can be. And a girl, all those years ago, before we were lost, both of us, lost.
‘Will you do one thing for me?’ I asked James Fenimore. ‘Please go outside and shut the door, and then knock on it as loudly as you can. Maybe five or six times?’
He wasn’t an inquisitive chap, or perhaps he had already marked me down as not merely deaf but barmy. How likely was it that I would be able to hear the door-knocking if I couldn’t make him out at eighty decibels over four feet?
He closed the door, and gave it a few almighty wallops with his knuckles, which must have been severely tried by the experience. I listened carefully, having walked down the hallway into the kitchen. There was a distinct but muffled thudding, to be sure, but it was tolerable at that distance. From upstairs I would hardly have heard a thing. Well-made door that. Don’t make them like that any more.
Greatly reassured, I readmitted James Fenimore, only to find that he recoiled as he passed me in the doorway, stepping back, alarmed, and checking an impulse to raise his hands. His nostrils quivered noticeably, he sniffed. I was wearing scent! And as I hadn’t done so yesterday, I must have put it on just to meet him!
It explained everything. The eccentricity, the fussy taste, the fancy clothes, the fastidiousness. A poofter! And I fancied him! I could see this line of thought pass slowly over his features, as he added one observation to another. He stepped back, and leant against the wall, ready to defend himself. I had a fleeting urge to kiss him on the cheek, just for the fun of it.
‘When you have installed the peephole, send me an email. I’ll be online, and then I can come down and see if it works properly.’
Queer as a coot.
Just after 2 p.m. my email ‘ding-ding’ sounded, as I was making some notes on my current concerns, composing myself in painstakingly extracted bits. I have no job and no life: no occupation, just preoccupation.
My Inbox revealed that Cooper Handyman would be finished in twenty minutes, and reminded me that I had promised to pay in cash, to save VAT. I had ordered an extra cash delivery from American Express in anticipation of this, because my usual fortnightly £400 would not leave enough to cover the bill.
I had purchased the very expensive peephole instrument for $200, when you can get perfectly serviceable ones for a tenth of that, because this top-of-the-range model alters the laws of nature. Your Mr Cooper fits it in your door, and it claims to give you 200-degree coverage. Now I am no mathematician, but even I know that from the flat surface of a door only a 180-degree arc is visible. So, as far as I can make out, the new magical instrument will allow me to see into my own hallway, presumably 10 degrees on each side, through thick brick walls. For the extra $180 I am longing to see how it works. Thus if I stand in the right position, I should be able to see myself looking at myself.
‘It don’t do that, it can’t!’ says James Fenimore scornfully. ‘Just trying to sell it to idiots. Might work if you just held it to your eye, but it’s for a door! Not worth the money you paid for it!’
‘Shall we test it? If you go outside and close the door, perhaps you could stand in various positions while I look though the peephole.’
‘No problem.’
A moment later I was looking through the new peephole directly into Mr Cooper’s face. He smiled uneasily, perhaps concerned that this might be seen as a come-on. And then, with his back against first the left-hand wall and then the right, waved a hand gently, as if the Queen from her carriage.
I cannot imagine what I have done to encourage this skittishness. Does he think all queers like waving Queens? Next thing I knew he would want us to have a cup of tea together, pinkies in the air.
I think he has had enough of me too, and clutching his small cache of £50 notes, shakes my hand, with firm masculine pressure. I allow mine to melt into his. I will wash it thoroughly when he leaves.
‘You take care of yourself now,’ he says warily.
‘You too.’
I tried to suppress a fugitive feeling of gratitude from my tone. After all, he was a good workman, unexceptionable, scratching out a living.
The new door, as I stand on the step to look it over, is stripped of both grace and function without its knocker and letter box. Black, bare, blank, beautiful in its stripped-down brutality. Just spyhole and keyhole. A bit sinister, as if it were guarding a fortress of some sort.
I
