New Neighbours.
Ron had started to notice a yellow-grey pall that hung over the town, even on Sundays. Acted's Granox factory was the culprit with its tall cigarette of a chimney. Ron also noticed the acrid smell that filled his nostrils at certain times of day. He thought of it as being like a boot , worn too long in the rain-ammoniac, rancorous and damp.
Ron noticed it but incredibly, no-one else seemed to. Nor did anyone talk about it. But there was no denying the way it pervaded everything, turned washing yellow. made breathing difficult.
There were many things, Ron felt, to which most folk were oblivious.Like the fumes from the passing cars, or the squealing of bus brakes on the corner of Albert Road.
Lily, Ron's wife used to argue with him about the effects of the sulphur emissions."C'mon Ron, don't exaggerate everything" she would say "It won't do you no 'arm. 'Asn't done so far 'as it...mind you the way you go on sometimes I wonder it 'asn't done summat to yer 'ead."
Ron used to swallow Lily's lame, carping remarks with a kind of sadness he felt she couldn't imagine.The ear-pinning, which invariably went on in public was like swallowing the sulphurous air. No-one else seemed to notice it.
"Don't ferget yer piece" she would shout after him sometimes as he left for work "Y'ould ferget yer 'ead if it weren't screwed on, you would."
Or "Don't be 'ome before me or I'll bloody kill yer"
Ron, crumpling inside, would pick up the heavy processed cheese sandwiches which Lily had mustered by duty alone. Curling, the sandwiches would sweat in their cling-film. As an added twist, Lily always knotted the carrier bag she put them in and there was mean-ness in the way she would double-bind the things in elastic bands. The cheese sandwiches were trussed up, the way he felt.
He would open the door hoping to escape before another careless,well-aimed barb struck him. It usually took a few hours at work before the killer remarks finally dissipated. A few jostling, matey remarks from one of the other tool setters at Farrah's would numb the pain, bringing him round in the same way a boxing referee he'd watched one night on television at the works club had brought round a semi-conscious boxer by yelling at him.
This Sunday, the rancid smell was throat-clenching. Ron's eyes smarted. He shrugged his shoulders in an effort to remove the source of the stinging sulphur.
As he made his way through the Cuts to Farrah's, the greater purpose he used to feel was now a blunted knife. He reached the gateway to the main works building, a rather plain, brick affair behind green, iron palings and a billboard declaring the name of the company.
Today, as he had been in the last few weeks, he was troubled by a great, unstoppable melancholy.That sadness seeped through his soul.
He tried to shrug it off by asking Pete Burrows, the tool-setter who shared his bench whether he'd seen a documentary the night before.
"It was fascinating...you know, the world behind the scenes at a police station."
"Oh-agh, must've bin watchin' summat else. Why, were it good?"
"Oh fascinating" Ron repeated.
The day wore on with its small satisfactions Like the time when he had leaned over the bench to assist Pete, whose machine had jammed. Or later, at lunch break when he'd shared a joke
about the stale canteen sandwiches.
"Make British Rail butties look like something they serve in The Mayfair hotel."
The joke was lost on the other three men. They had never heard of The Mayfair Hotel. So Ron opted for the tried and tested formula, rubbed up the accent"They knock my Missus' sarnies into a cocked 'at-yer could walk home on'em."
This time there was a crackle of laughter.
Finally Ron was walking home through the long, blue, end-of-summer shadows. The call of a
blackbird, rich as fruitcake filled him with a dimmed bliss. He remembered, in the flinch of a second his childhood, absurd things like the warmth and safety of a redbrick garden wall he'd leaned against as a child, the rustle of a thrush as she picked between the blades of tall Iris with its faint, warm odour and its dazzling spears. Or even the mystery of the hot snails creviced in dark seams which the thrush was seeking out, then the amusement of seeing their snot-like inner selves suddenly revealed.
But here, now the flinch-of-a-second memory was being overlaid with something else and the rancid boot smell imposed itself. Ron passed the open door of The King's Head. Gusts of laughter came from the snug and the lazy sound of glasses being collected mixed themselves up with blotched effect as Ron transferred his gaze from the bright pub walls to the deep shade of the snug. He wanted to go in but didn't.
He was home. Lily did not even look up.
"New neighbours" she informed him, tilting the back of her head. Her silence meant she was hoarding something, some resentment. Ron was crestfallen. He had bought a box of Milk Tray from the corner shop opposite The King's Head. He planned to run up the stairs with the box then come thundering down with it.
"And all because" he would begin, mopping a heroic brow, then throwing himself at her slippered feet in mock chivalry.
"Lily" he called through a darkened hall, hung with coats and jackets. The simple pronunciation of her name gave him a pleasure which he never would have tired of."Am readin' " she answered without looking up from a magazine. She wasn't.
"Lily, I bought you these...and all because the Lady loves...' he was rushing his words, trying to squeeze them in before she lost interest.
"Seen them Ron, the new neighbours.?"
"Who are they, Lil?' " Ron forced the business of the Milk Tray to the back of his mind where it lodged like a fishbone in the throat.
" A black lad an' a white girl, I b'lieve.". She shrugged defensively."Apparently they've got no kids...yet!" Ron laughed his staccato laugh. He knew only one thing. Whatever he thought or was likely to think of his neighbours, Lily would think the opposite.
Lily classified people by simple means, married, unmarried, widowed and so on. Bob and Anthea Simmons down the road had been 'married for five years, no kids'
The young couple over the road, whose names she didn't care to know were 'living over the brush'. Mrs Ainsworth had 'lost her husband in 1984...'Ron, on the other hand had never concerned himself with the marital status of others. For him people simply co-existed.
Having new neighbours excited Ron. He would meet them, show willing. He might even be able to chat to them when things turned bad between Lily and himself. He installed himself in the drawing room, or as Lily called it the 'parlour', peered through thick brocade curtains at the back of next door's house.
It seemed empty. Except that, from an upstairs window-ledge came the steady pounding of music from a large silver and chrome ghetto blaster that glinted at him. A net curtain like a broken gull wing fluttered uselessly. The room must have been empty.
Weeks passed and the redundant curtain continued to flap from the upstairs window. The thud-thudding, now grittier, still poured from the ghetto blaster. Ron had almost forgotten what, or who had been there before, so thoroughly had these new images imprinted themselves across the screen of his consciousness.The noise seemed to pervade everything that he could think of, followed him round the house. He tried to blot it out but it insinuated itself the more, driving into him with hammer blows.
Tonight was no different. At first the beat pounded into his temples as he lay in the darkness next to Lily. Then the quickening beat, with its distorted bass beat became like the steady drip-drip of water. He imagined each drip falling on his forehead like the Chinese water torture he had read about somewhere and the spot where it fell in his imagination felt nauseous, almost hurting him. It must have been late. Lily had turned in round about midnight, just before him. Ron swiped at his forehead, moving towards her. She was asleep. She often used to joke to Ron about her ability to sleep 'through fire, flood and tempest.' A ghetto blaster was along those lines.
