The Caretakers

THE CARETAKERS

Toying listlessly with a pencil, I couldn't draw a Cobra Gunship. My
mother and father's arguing was to blame.

When I think back, what ruined my wish to draw the helicopter, besides
a complete lack of talent, was not the things said between my parents
when they argued, as I was too young to know their respective reasons,
but the way they said those things: loud.

They were shouters.

My mother refused to open the bathroom door. It locked from the inside
but, on the other side, there was a hole beneath the handle that you
could stick a screwdriver into and then turn the lock. The screwdriver
would only be used in monumentally savage rows. I gathered my father
didn't regard this as one of those as he walked by the cupboard in the
hall where his toolbox was stored and entered the frontroom. He said,
"You're coming to work with me."

He worked as a caretaker for the Greater London Council on an estate in
Camberwell.

"I want to stay here."

"Get your shoes on."

"I want to stay with mum."

"Put your shoes and coat on. You're coming with me."

"But why?"

"JUST DO IT."

He went upstairs and told my mother he was taking me to work with him.
She didn't answer. He repeated himself until she said "I'm not deaf"
and then she swore at him.

I was at the foot of the stairs, outraged that she had agreed to let me
be taken. It smacked of rejection. I started crying. My father saw me
and said: "What's up with you?"

Drying my face and nose with a tissue, he said: "This is a madhouse,
you know that, son? A complete madhouse."

When we were in his grey van he told me he was sorry for shouting at me
earlier.

I wanted to go home.

"Have a sweet," he said, passing me a packet of chewing gum.

"No thanks."

"Your mum needs to be by herself, son," he said, driving out of the
council estate where we lived.

"I can play."

"Yeah. You can play, but she has to have peace and quiet. When she has
a head on her you have to leave her be; honest, I'm doing you a
favour."

We were on Clapham High Road, driving in the direction of Kennington
Park. The movement of the van through the traffic pacified me, although
I wasn't going to talk with my father. For me, my mother was fine when
he wasn't around. His presence caused the shouting and the madness of
the house.

There was nothing else to discuss.

As if I had spoken, my father said: "I know you want to be with your
mum but it's better if we leave her by herself when she's like
this."

------------------

I suppose it was an office where my father had to report in.

There was a camp bed with a dirty blanket for the night shift, a two
seater sofa with torn foam visible, a table and a black and white
portable television set that, despite an aerial nailed to a wall,
crackled with static and interference but was switched on. I waited
outside while my father went in first, presumably to warn the
caretakers to mind their language and keep things half decent.

If he did say that, then they didn't pay any attention. The caretakers
were a raggedy, chainsmoking bunch who orbited the constantly boiling
kettle. "Brews up," they'd say, before deciding whose turn it was to
make the tea.

Dried tea bags and particles of sugar were stuck to a brown tray that
was similar to the trays at school.

A man moved aside on the sofa to let me sit down.

My father said to him: "Can't you put that away for a minute?"

The man said "leave it out" and kept reading the magazine.

My father went to another room to hang his jacket up. The man flashed
the page he was studying and I saw a woman, legs apart, showing the
lot. My reaction caused the caretakers to laugh raucously. I'd only
ever seen pictures of women topless before. Lee Good, in my class, had
collected twenty pages of page-three-girls from The Sun and then
stapled them together. At playtime, he started running and let the
pictures of the women unravel in a stream behind him like the cape of a
superhero. All the boys, me included, ran after the flapping
photographs, wildly cheering Lee as a helper on playground duty, I
don't remember her name, joined in the chase, but in an effort to grab
him.

"All to look forward to, lad," said an old guy with a swollen, vein
streaked nose at the table.

I was grateful to see my father return to the room. He looked at me and
said: "You alright?"

I told him I was fine.

My father scanned the room. To my surprise and pleasure he said to the
guy with the magazine, "We're gunna talk later."

"Give it a rest, Dave," came the reply.

Hearing my father called by his first name was peculiar.

"Come on," he said to me.

"Where are you off to?" said the old man.

"I'm taking him for a walk."

"What if you get a call?"

"Page me."

"Suit yourself."

"I will," he said, holding my hand.

We left the office.

It was bright and sunny outside. You could feel the heat on your skin.
A hot day on a council estate wasn't like anywhere else. The high rise
flats retained the heat and made the air stale. People spilled from
their flats onto doorsteps, stairwells, balconies, patches of grass,
the playground. There were dogs, music, drinking. Space folded in upon
itself.

My father removed his Embassy cigarettes from a pocket. He handed me
the lighter and I lit his cigarette. That was a ritual we had.

He inhaled, exhaled the smoke. Still angry, I realised, with the
caretakers in the office.

"What do you want to do?" he said.

I shrugged.

"You must want to do something?"

I couldn't tell him what I was thinking and yet he guessed perfectly.
He said: "I've told you Robert, we can't go home at the moment."

I wanted to cry. Feeling lost. Abandoned. This estate was not the
estate where I lived. The caretakers were eerie. I did not feel at ease
in the company of my father.

He dragged on the cigarette. "You don't want to do anything?"

"I do."

"Such as?"

"Anything."

"Okay," he said, looking around, then up at the top of the flats.

He started walking and I followed.

This was the six weeks school holiday and kids my age were everywhere,
riding bikes, playing football, climbing walls, hanging around. They
looked at me and I kept near to my father. I felt awkward needing his
protection. "Where are we going?" I said, as we came to a stairwell in
a block of flats.

"Trust me," he said.

Trusting him went against the grain. I had the suspicion he would get
us into trouble. That a lunatic would appear from the shadows and hack
us into pieces.

My legs ached.

The flats on my estate had four floors. We had climbed seven and there
were another five to go. We reached the top floor and then walked round
the back of the lift shaft to a narrow set of stairs. The passage was
dark and reeked of ammonia. My father pulled from his pocket a large
set of keys. He rattled them and stuck a key into a door that had a
sheet of iron bolted to it. The iron was covered in graffiti.

The lock wouldn't turn.

"Bugger," he said.

"What?"

"I forget which key it is." He tried another. I peered round the side,
interested. Curious. A third key also failed to open the door.

"It won't turn for me. You try," he said, peeling a particular key for
me to take from the set. We swapped places. I put the key into the
grimy lock and heard a bolt click. The hinges squeaked. We stepped onto
the rooftop of the block of flats. Immediately, the air was
cooler.

"You like it?" said my father.

"Yeah," I replied and I did like it, loads. Seeing the buildings, tower
blocks, parks, distance - just to be able to see into the distance was
a privilege.

He held my hand and we strolled near to the edge.

"Over there, that building," he said, pointing.

"Yeah."

"That's the Telecom tower."

"Oh."

We walked along the roof, taking in the scenery like a couple of
tourists. He let me hold the keys and that made me feel important. He
said, "I like to come up here once in a while."

"Where do we live?" I said.

He flicked the lid of his packet of Embassy and pointed. "There," he
said.

"Where?"

"See the tower block there, the brownish one with balconies."

I nodded.

"Right, that's by where your nan and grandad live. Now see the whitish
tower blocks without balconies."

"Yeah."

"Count two of those white ones back from the brown tower block and the
third is on the estate where we are."

I looked and counted. "Are you sure?" I said.

"Positive," he said, passing me the lighter.

I lifted the flame to his cigarette.

He exhaled and said, "Confusing isn't it? They all seem alike."

"Yeah."

We went and sat by the door to the rooftop, in the shade.

"Sorry for all the shouting earlier," he said.

I gave another shrug of the shoulders and picked up a fragment of
glass, rolling it between my thumb and forefinger.

My mother often announced she wanted them to split. My father had gone
to stay with his own mother at her flat near the Oval cricket ground.
He was gone for a total of three days. I hadn't missed him in the
slightest. Many of the kids at my school had parents who were
separated. I was teased because my parents were married and lived
together. What the kids didn't realise was I wanted them to break up.
Either get along or break up, that was my opinion.

One or the other. Simple.

"Are you and mum getting divorced?" I said.

He didn't like the question. "It's arguing, son. We don't mean what we
say."

"Why say it, then?"

"I haven't a clue. You can't help yourself. You get angry, I
suppose."

"You shouldn't shout."

"I know. I know." He dragged on the cigarette and then ruffled my hair.
I couldn't stand it when he ruffled my hair but I think my indignation,
the pompous manner in which I rearranged it, gave him pleasure. He
smiled then very seriously he said: "You do want your mum and me to be
together, don't you?"

Looking at him became difficult. Impossible.

He answered for me, saying: "If we stop arguing you do."

I nodded. "Yes," I said.

"Fair enough," he said.

We strolled about the rooftop one more time and then I locked the door
and we bought a "fly away" football from a Newsagent's on Camberwell
New Road.

He drove to Kennington Park.

They never did split up.