Days 3-10, Part 1
6,991 words total.
Having spent a lot of the week ill with the ‘flu, I’ve had to really step up the pace to keep up. I’m going to split what I’ve done since getting ill into three posts to make it more manageable to read. In this section, part 9, entitled Awful, is something I’m actually quite pleased with. It could use tightening and so on, but it’s bits like that I enjoy writing and remind me why NaNo is worth bothering with at all.
6. The Problem with the Barretts’ Bathroom
The alarm chimed 10:01am. Jim pressed snooze a few seconds later, silencing the clock for ten minutes. He repeated that three times, eventually getting out of bed a little after ten thirty.
There was a plumber in the bathroom so he couldn’t get in for a shower. Instead, he went downstairs and sat at the kitchen table. His mother was making sandwiches, cutting them into triangles.
“Are you expecting someone?” Jim asked.
“No,” said Valerie. “These are for Mr Wallace.” Jim looked puzzled. “The plumber,” she clarified. The kettle boiled and Valerie set about making a pot of tea. “Doing anything special today?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Jim. “I’ve got a lot to get through.”
“That’s nice, love. Can you pass me the sugar, please? Mr Wallace told me he likes two spoons.”
Jim did as he was told. “Do you know when he’ll be out of the bathroom?” he asked. “I could do with a shower.”
“He’ll take as long as he takes,” Valerie said. “He thinks the toilet’s been blocked, and he’s working to fix it. Why don’t you make yourself useful and get him down here for me, Jim. Tell him there’s some tea and sandwiches down here.”
Jim shrugged and left to fetch the plumber. Valerie adjusted her hair in the reflection of the small metal border on the oven’s extractor fan. Four children and fifty or so years had worn her down and she knew it. The picture of her with Camille as a baby that she had on the kitchen’s windowsill showed a different woman to the one that looked back at her now. Her once thick black hair was gone, what remained was almost entirely white, thin and brittle. Her blue eyes had become almost grey. But the most noticeable change was in her skin: entrenched wrinkles criss-crossed over her face, each strikingly pronounced.
Valerie was thankful the small reflection didn’t allow her to see the rest of her body.
“Your son said you wanted to see me, Mrs Barrett?”
“Oh, please call me Valerie, Mr Wallace. Sit, sit!”
Mr Wallace did as he was told, insisting that Valerie should call him Fred. She giggled at that, causing Jim to raise an amused eyebrow at his mother. He’d never seen her flirt before. “I’ve got some tea here, Mr—I mean Fred.” Again, she gave a short nervous laugh. “And sandwiches too. I know it’s a bit early in the day but I’m sure it’s hard work for you, all that plumbing.”
Fred chuckled heartily. “Thanks Valerie. Oh—what have we got here? Cheese? Lovely! And this one..?”
“Ham!” said Valerie, excitedly. Jim took a seat and grabbed a cheese sandwich for himself. Valerie ignored him completely. “And this one,” she continued, pointing at another sandwich triangle, “is strawberry jam!”
“Well, this is all very kind,” Fred said, taking a sip of his tea with one hand and draping a napkin across his lap with the other. Valerie was still standing above him. She was beaming at him. He smiled back politely.
“Oh,” he said. “The toilet is definitely blocked, you know. I can’t understand it. Last time I came, I cleared the whole thing out. It really shouldn’t have happened again.”
“I know you did your best,” Valerie said.
“Well, I should have it sorted in a few minutes, once I get back to it. I’ve already got some of the blockage out. It’s paper, you know.”
“Toilet paper?” Jim said, almost unintelligibly through a mouthful of sandwich.
“No, paper-paper. Printer paper.”
“Oh!” said Valerie. “Well, how on earth..?”
“Looks like someone tried to flush a ream of A4, more or less,” Fred said.
“That’d be Rowan,” Jim said.
Fred looked to Valerie, who explained that Rowan was her youngest son. She added, “I think it was him that blocked it last time, too. I just can’t prove it.”
“Well, um, these things happen…” Fred offered, rubbing some crumbs from his hands. “Look, I should get on…”
“More tea?” Valerie asked. She was so keen that the question almost sounded like a demand.
“As lovely as they are, Valerie, I should say no. I really should get this job finished for you.”
“Mmm,” said Jim, between chews. “Too right. I need a shower.”
Valerie’s eyes lit up. “Go have one now, Jim. Let Mr Wallace have his break. That’s okay, isn’t it?”
Fred shrugged. “You’re the boss.”
Valerie nodded to Jim to go. He stuffed another sandwich into his mouth as he left the room.
“Good,” said Valerie. “Just you and me then, Fred.”
Fred smiled amiably.
“More tea?” Valerie asked again, but the question was meaningless. Before Fred had even opened his mouth to answer, she had already poured him a cup.
7. Sleeping Arrangements
Rowan woke up on the back seats of the bus with a pounding head and dry mouth. The upper deck was half full now, mainly with office workers and tourists. He mumbled to himself as he rang the bell and got to his feet, aware but unphased by the disapproving looks from his fellow passengers. He was off-balance, disorented. And to make matters worse, with the bus still moving he found it impossible to walk steadily to the stairs. He stumbled along as if he was still drunk—and perhaps he was—his stomach churning all the way.
He stepped off the bus and into an overcast Camden. It took him a minute or so of being still and taking deep breaths to begin to orient himself. He had missed his stop by at least three miles and he was in no mood to walk back.
It seemed that the best idea was to find somewhere to have a lie down. If he could sleep the hangover off, he could tackle the problem of getting home with a clear head. He walked down to the Lock.
For a while he watched tourists as they tentatively approached the punks for a photo, squealing with delight at the instantly available digital results. Lurking behind them Rowan noticed a small flame haired man. He looked like some kind of troll or gnome, sitting with his back against the wall, crossed-legged, smoking. Rowan couldn’t hear what he was saying to passers-by but from his body language, it appeared as if he was demanding money. He was pointing at his hand and gnashing angrily at them. The punks were ignoring him altogether and the tourists steered clear.
Rowan was about to go over, to see what the guy was all about, when he was suddenly wracked with a convulsion that sent him reeling, causing him to vomit uncontrollably. At the last moment he turned to the wall, just in time to avoid a passing couple. There was no question: he needed to lie down. He crossed the road, passing the flame-haired beggar, who he distinctly heard say, “He looks worse than I do,” to no-one in particular. He wondered around for a few moments before finding a place behind a wall that he could crawl into.
He fell asleep within seconds.
He was woken by the sound of jangling. When he opened his eyes, all he could see was red. And there was a smell—an awful, foul smell. It was the flame-haired man. “Piss off,” Rowan yelled, pushing the little man away. A handful of coins spilled everywhere, they had been thrown down on Rowan by passers-by as he slept and the little beggar had been trying to steal them. “First ducks,” Rowan said, rubbing his head, “now you, you freak.”
“I am not a fucking freak,” the man said. “I am Rod. Arsehole.”
Rowan’s expression became suddenly serious. “What did you call me?” he said.
Rod stepped forward and repeated, “Arsehole.” He was certainly a small man. Rowan himself wasn’t particularly tall, but Rod only came up to his chest. Without any warning, Rowan hit him in the face. He didn’t hit him particularly hard, but Rod reeled back, eyes wide with shock. “Great,” he said. “Well, thanks for that. That’s just what I fucking need, arsehole.” He checked his face for blood, but there was none.
Rowan laughed despite himself. “Just piss off, Rod, okay…” Rowan bent down to pick up the coins on the ground. He could see more than a pound and he was pretty sure there was more lying around.
Suddenly Rod was in front of him at eye-level, kneeling as if he were talking to a toddler. “You think it’s fucking funny do you, arsehole?”
Rowan met his stare. “What are you talking about?”
“You went out and got pissed and passed out here. I have to fucking live here. I’m asking if you think that’s funny.”
“I’m sure you do all right for yourself. I got over a quid for sleeping. I saw you before, shouting at everyone. ‘Give me some money, I deserve it’, was that the gist? I bet you make a hundred pounds a day, easy.” Rowan felt better for getting angry, he could feel the hangover melting away.
Rod slumped back onto the ground. “My bed is a sleeping bag in a shop doorway,” he said, flatly. “Where’s yours?”
“Somewhere similar,” Rowan said.
“Liar.”
Rowan continued to pick up the coins in silence. When he thought he’d got them all he stood up to leave.
“You know what happened to me last night?” Rod said. “I got up for ten minutes, to buy some fags, and when I got back someone had pissed in my sleeping bag.”
Rowan laughed. “Here, take this. Put it towards the dry cleaning bill.” He threw a pound onto Rod’s lap and walked away.
He had no patience for sob-stories, and besides, he needed a drink.
8. A Little About Fred Wallace
Valerie came to know Fred Wallace after her youngest son Rowan blocked the toilet with a large amount of toilet roll. She got Fred’s number from a Janice, an old friend who had employed him to fix a leaking tap and was pleased with his service. Both women agreed that it was difficult to find a trustworthy tradesman in London these days, what with all the foreigners and cowboys around.
From the moment Fred turned up, Valerie was smitten. He was tall and slim like her first husband, who she had loved very much. She managed to keep him talking for a little while after he’d finished working in the bathroom, but eventually he left, explaining that he had another job to get to.
A few weeks passed and Valerie found she couldn’t get him out of her mind. Then she had an idea. She stuffed page after page of paper down the toilet and gave Fred a call. “Mr Wallace, please, it’s an emergency,” she said. “I need you here tomorrow morning.” He told her it was his day off, that he couldn’t make it. But by then Valerie was determined. She was so desperate to see him she offered to pay double. He agreed to come over first thing, of course.
It’s difficult to say whether or not Valerie would have made such an offer if she’d known Fred was happily married. Because he spent so much of his time working with toilets and sinks and plugs, he never wore his wedding ring during the day, for fear of losing it.
Aside from his marital status, there was an even bigger impediment to Valerie and Fred getting together: he didn’t find her attractive at all. In fact, quite the opposite was true. That morning, eating Valerie’s sandwiches and drinking her tea, trying to be polite to ensure his double time, all Fred could think about was how uniquely unappealing she was. The word ‘craggy’ came to mind each time he looked at her face. He couldn’t work out if she was really old, or she just looked it. He supposed it was the latter, but in truth he didn’t really care.
Her family seemed odd, too. There was the son who stuffed things down the toilet for a start. And then the other son, who Fred was sure was obsessive-compulsive. He knew all about obsessive-compulsive behaviour because his own brother had it: he used to turn light switches off twice and lock the doors twice and so on. Once he took some powerful painkillers twice and ended up in the hospital. That’s when he was diagnosed. Fred didn’t suppose Jim had been diagnosed, though. All he knew was that when he came around the first time, he saw Jim rolling dice and tallying the results. A six… a two… a three… a six. And today, when he passed Jim’s room, he noticed the tally chart had literally hundreds of entries under each number. He must have rolled the dice thousands of times, and counted what came up on each roll. That’s not normal behaviour, not by any stretch. What could the point possibly have been? Surely if you roll the dice enough times, each number comes up equally? Odd, odd, odd.
But it was in the kitchen that morning that Fred realised the extent of how strange this family was. Once the bathroom was free, he stood to go back upstairs—much to Valerie’s disappointment—when he happened to look up. That’s when he knew he wanted nothing more than to finish the job, take his double-time and get out. For good.
Fred Wallace didn’t get a chance to examine closely, but he would later swear to his wife that saw the words ‘Anal Twat’ scrawled on the ceiling of Valerie Barrett’s kitchen ceiling.
9. Awful
Camille got home around midnight, exceptionally drunk. Nobody was up. She went to her room and took out her diary. It was filled with pictures. She preferred to document her life in drawings than in words. It was her way.
The first thing she ever drew was a squirrel that Rowan had killed. Rowan was seven at the time.
Today she was drawing a woman. The woman she drew had large breasts because it was supposed to be Camille and Camille had large breasts. Elsewhere in the same image there was a man. The penis she drew for him was only a millimetre or two in length. She drew him a small penis because he was supposed to be a stickman version of Mark Selwyn and Mark had a small penis.
Camille always talked to herself when she was drunk. As she drew, she muttered to herself. “This isn’t really working,” she said. “This really isn’t working.”
The stickmen she used to represent the people in her life never had breasts or penises or anything else unless they were necessary to the telling of the story Camille wanted to tell. For example, stickman Mark had one finger on his left hand and no fingers on the other. For the purposes of the story that one finger was the only digit that mattered.
The finger was an almost invisible little line poking out of a little dot that represented Mark’s palm. The finger pointed up between stickwoman Camille’s little legs.
Camille frowned. “Really,” she said, “this isn’t working.”
The artist leaned back and considered the tiny finger carefully. It lacked detail but there wasn’t much she could do about that. She would have drawn the finger incompetent if she knew how. But no matter how hard she tried she just couldn’t think of a way to demonstrate the finger’s uselessness pictorially in the space she had available.
“This isn’t working,” she said. “Really.”
A few hours earlier, Mark’s index finger had been squirming about inside Camille as if he were using it to pick his nose. Meanwhile his little penis flopped listlessly against his sweaty thigh, having unilaterally opted out of proceedings quite a while earlier. Beside the bed lay an empty bottle of vodka, some loose cigarettes, an empty condom wrapper and an empty condom.
“This really isn’t working,” Camille said. She was very drunk and had all her wits about her. “Mark… Really… this isn’t working…”
He moved his finger around a little. His beady, bloodshot eyes scanned every muscle in her face, searching for anything he could interpret as a sign of encouragement. There was nothing forthcoming so he decided to take the initiative.
“Ah-ha,” he exclaimed. “What if I do this?”
Camille yelped. “Fucking ow!” she said. “It’s not a fucking smear test!”
Mark withdrew his hand and looked at the guilty finger despondently. Then he sat upright and lit a cigarette. He couldn’t hide his disappointment.
“Am I… not good?” he asked.
“No, you’re awful,” Camille said, sitting up next to him and lighting a cigarette of her own.
“Really?”
She nodded. “Awful.”
“Awful…” he repeated. The morning flashed through his mind, he remembered how much he had wanted to avoid her, how much he hated her. And now, there he was, naked and shamed. What a day..!
Stickman Mark was finished. He looked meek and feeble compared with big-bosomed stickwoman Camille. His tiny flaccid penis was barely visible, his single incompetent digit notably pathetic. She hadn’t bothered to draw him a face at all.
Camille put her pencil down. She was finished for the day. It was time for bed.
