Idlebones

Next Door Part 3

October 19, 2006 – 23:10

I busy myself with my half built rockery in the garden for the rest of the evening, making use of the bright summer dusk. By ten o’clock, with the sun losing it’s heat and finally disappearing behind the slates of my roof, I sit back on a the sleepers proping up the mound of earth and light a cigarette. I’m dressed only in three quarter length shorts and am happily caked in soil from the newly constructed flower bed, and sit like a small boy, one leg tucked underneath me and the other kicking the heel of a paint splattered trainer against the wood.

Our garden is long and narrow, green and lush now. The plot of land only the width of our little terrace house that in the past six months I have dug flower beds into and re-laid sods of grass over, has been transformed from the wilderness that was here when we moved in, into a habitable little oasis betside my neighbours overgrown meadow next door. My flower beds lie parrellel to a 6 foot wall that borders our properties. Untrained trees and wild brambles hang over my wall, natures bullys leering over the wall as if scoffing at the my well groomed garden. Tonight, I have planned to finish my rockery, open a bottle of Wolf Blass, and settle into the quite corner I have uncovered at the bottom of the garden, and read my book until the stars come out.

As I sit there, voices begin to drift from the house next door. Raised, angry voices. I try to immerse myself further into my book, but the voices continue, rising and falling as the argument gains momentum. I recognise Sarah, my neighbour, as the drunken slur that is berating her husband Mark over some comment he’s made over her drinking. She is large and frightening to Marks small, lean frame. He is tanned and slim from his labouring job as a bricky, to her lolling, obese, pale palour. I meet her occasionally over the back wall as she hangs out the washing in the small concrete patio area behind the back door. She engages conversation with an opening of “God save us” whenever she catches my eye, before plunging in one diatribe or and other about foreigners or the landlord, jobs and the social welfare, and generally how sick shes feeling today as I wince at the odour of stale alchohol that drifts over the wall. Pink or black lingerie is generally swinging in the breeze behind her head as she lights another cigarette with the tail end of her last.

She pounded my door one late night a few months back. I threw on a dressing gown and desended my stair to open my door, bemused by the sound of a thuding knock at 4 in the morning. She stood there, leaning over the fence between our front gardens staring at me with one eye, the other lazily focused somewhere above my left shoulder.

“God Save us. Did ye hear that noise?” she said, her voice faltering as if wrecked by some recent trauma. She looked as if she may crumble into an emotional heap at my feet at any minute.

She was dressed in her pyjamas, one arm clasping her top about her bossom as her belly poured out over the waist of her bottoms. Her other arm was pressed against the side of her face, holding back the tangled knot of black curls that normally fell about her forehead. If it wasn’t for the cigarrette held between the forefinger and index finger of this hand, curls of smoke drifting into her hair, I would have been convinced she was sleep walking.

“What noise?” I had asked her, looking about the street for signs of disturbance. I was somewhere between horrified and appalled as she inclined her head to look past my shoulder into my front room, as if she wanted to be asked in for a chat.

“That banging noise. And that screamin’ Didn’t ye hear it? Jaysus, mother of god, did ye not hear it?” she continued, still furtively looking over my shoulder as if she expected to find the root of the supposed noise in the shape of a party going on behind me.

I folded my arms and leaned against the door post.

“All I heard was you banging on my front door” I said, matter of factly, not wanting to antagonise her.

She flicks her eye back to me, the other seemingly still scanning my front room.

“I didn’t bang your door!” she said defensivley, a look of horror on her face, as if i just accused her of murder.

“You didn’t bang on my front door?” i said, looking at her hard. Surely she didn’t expect me to believe this.

“Then who did?”

I made a point of scanning the street once more. It was desserted, save for the figure of Ashram behind the counter in the 24 petrol station accross the road. I’ll have a great story to tell him tomorrow when I pick up my paper, I remember thinking. I returned his wave as he caught me looking in his direction, no doubt laughing to himself as he spotted my doorstep companion. The next morning he had been in great humour
(Pakistan had just beaten England in the cricket) and I had shared in his mirth about it as he mentioned my midnight caller.

Sarah was plodding her way down her driveway when I turned my gaze back to her. With heavy clumps of her slippers, she turned right and headed towards the front door of the appartment adjacent to her house, her arms wrapped tightly around her midrift as she waddled towards the door. As I closed my own door, I could hear her muttering to herself.

“Jaysus mary, mother of god….”

It was that night, I have suddenly remembered, that I had had that horrible dream for the first time. I had thought nothing of it at the next morning. Just another nightmare brought on by stress, too much cheese, far to much alcohol, and my habit of sitting up late reading. It occurers to me that repetitive nightmares are unusual. I remember cleaing wine I had spilled on the kitchen floor at some point, probably while rushing for the front door in my half-sleeping state, before climbing the stairs for bed.

Again, tonight, I am woken by a nightmare. It’s 4am when I look at the clock, my head fizzing and throbbing from alcohol. Again, the fading images of the dream linger long enough for me to make out the steely flash of the blade. This time the force of the nightmare had shot me into a sitting position on the side of the bed, both feet planted firmly on the carpeted floor. I’m clutching my t-shirt to my chest as I slow my rapid breathing.

Downstairs, I mull it over, restorting the scenes in my head, while I stir a pot of milk, warming on the hob. It had been the same dream, but somehow different. Like a film shot from two different angles. As I try and piece the events together, I struggle to find the last missing piece. The part that caused me to wake this time. Before, I have always awoken at the point where I see the blade in Sarahs hand. The glint of moonlight along its shaft the trigger. Tonight, however, the blade flashes, and then dissapears into the shadows once more, and I was left still looking at her.

Ah, thats why it seemed different. The angle was different. I could see her head in more profile, as if I was standing on my own kitchen roof, looking accross at her. I was almost at the same level with her as she…..

I drop the ladle as a cold shudder sweeps over me. I have to shake my head to banish the sudden eclipse of fear that has just thrown a dark shadow over my mind. The ladle has clips the edge of the pot and clatters onto the black glass of the hob, trailing a slippery tail of white skin from the heated milk.

The jet black silloutte of my neighbours head, turning slowly to face me is there, at the front of my aspect. Her eyes, solid white orbs, over an arc of white, luminous teeth. Her lips pull back taunt against them in a ferocious, lupine grin, as she glares at me from the window.

I can’t go back to bed. I know I won’t sleep now, so I busy myself at the hob making breakfast for myself. Four sausages, two slices of toast, buttered to their edges, and one fried egg. My sandwich made, I settle in front of Sky news with my hot milk and watch the morning arrive through the open curtains of my front room. Outside, a door creaks. It causes me to pause, one hand on the remote, the other bringing the sandwich to my mouth. A glance at the clock on the mantle piece assures me that it is 4.30am. I sit for awhile, contemplating the noise, until eventually, it is followed by the muffled click of a door being pushed too. I have to look, theres no denying my curiosity. At the window, I pull back the curtain to reveal the orange glow of street lights against the antique pale glow of the sky above the town. In the dim light, i can see the shambling figure of Sarah, waddling accros the road, pushing a babies buggy before her. its an incongrous sight. I watch her as she practices the safe crossing of the junction, looking once to each side before pushing the buggy forward and folowing it with quick, mumbling steps.

Its not unusual, i have to remind myself. I have often left my house at 5am to catch a plane, work bidding me to arrive at London at an ungodly hour as it often does, and witnessed her early morning walks in the past few weeks. I take it to mean her child is not sleeping. She has no car, so sometimes she has to walk the baby in the early hours to help him sleep, i imagine. This is particularly early, but given my own reason for being awake at this time, I shouldn’t be surprised. Except, this time, there is something that makes me linger at the curtain. I can’t explain it other than to say that she appears furtive. Nervous even, rather than the tired, careless form I have come to expecet. Her head darts one way, and then the next, as if looking for watchers.

I watch her departing shadow, an idea welling up inside me. A dark, subversive notion that I instantly shake from my head, as I fling the curtain shut.