Read by Jo Widdowson
His protuberant belly shone like burnt plum jam. “Need your gutters cleaning? They looks blocked from ’ere.”
Helen, wishing she hadn’t answered the door, struggled to control her gaze. The petunias wilted in the heat, the soil in their pot grey and cracked. Bloody Kenny. He was practically bare. His tone was peremptory despite the smile on his face. He had been obsequious on previous occasions. What had got into him? Her eyes flicked back to the expiring petunias to avoid seeing how his bulging stomach merged with his meaty pectorals. Chains glinted gold against the dense black chest hair. Why did he have to be so naked?
Tattoos decorated his muttony biceps. His cargo shorts and trainers straddled her path. In the July glare, he was like something she had hallucinated; a sperm whale from a pornographic marine burlesque.
“When djew last ‘ave ‘em done?” No longer smiling, he fired the question accusingly at her.
“When you did them,” she said, faintly. It was too hot to think.
“Gotta be two years ago,” he said, “two years!”
Helen felt guilty.
“Seein’ as I’m doin’ a job for your neighbour …” he nodded towards Louise’s house, two doors down. He stared at her.
“Oh… um…” she said, “are you?” Don’t agree.
“Hundred and sixty quid; back and front,” he said. His rubber bullet head swivelled on its mahogany fat-rolls of neck and he emitted a piercing whistle. “Bruce’ll see to it.” He faced her again, his rooster eyes well-fed and watchful.
“I don’t know,” said Helen. Stand up to him. Get rid of him! Why did Kenny always come when her husband was away? It was alarming to think along those lines. She sweated. The avenue baked. Silence.
“Bruce!” bellowed Kenny.
“I have to say that the paint job he did on the windows was …”
“Thass right. Bruce done your upstairs windows,” he said, “I remember now. Last summer.”
“Well he didn’t do it properly I’m afraid.” She was furious at how ineffectual and self-righteous she sounded.
“You never said nothin’ at the time,” accused Kenny. He scowled. “If you adda done praps ‘e could’ve made a better job of it.”
Fuck! How had she managed to let Kenny be in the right? “Never mind,” she said hastily. “The gutters do need a good clean and …”
But Kenny was not to be put off. “Why dint yew say summink when you ‘ad the chance?” he demanded, stepping forward. Her petunias were suddenly in shade.
“I should have done but I was busy I expect, or not there when he finished or something. It needed two coats but he only did one.” More silence. Stumping towards them under the sycamore trees came Bruce, his customary roll-up clamped in his mouth. He carried the long ladder. Her acceptance had been a foregone conclusion, she realised. The miasma from Kenny’s Lynx was rising around her.
“Never mind,” she seethed. Kenny was impassive. Helen was tense.
“Hello Bruce,” she greeted the perspiring monkey sidekick, as he arrived.
“Afternoon,” said Bruce. What kind of hold did Kenny have over this elderly, diminutive man that he was able to make him do these difficult tasks? The huge ladder twisted Bruce’s neck and ribcage. His shoulders were hunched.
“Front and back,” said Kenny brusquely to the old man and: “I’ll come by for the money later on,” he told her, and turned on his heel and left. Sweat, or maybe suntan oi,l gleamed on his enormous back.
Bruce held out his filthy bucket. “Could I trouble you for a drop of hot water in there?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said, “shall I make a cup of tea?”
“Yes please,” said Bruce. The creases of his face were ingrained with dirt. He had no teeth. “Three sugars.”
It struck her as she went inside, that Bruce, for some reason, was a slave. Kenny never helped. To her, Bruce looked unfit for work. He was certainly even more decrepit this year. His clothes were those of a down-and-out; soiled suit jacket, ragged lumberjack shirt, stained corduroy trousers and one green welly, one black; disgustingly smeared and encrusted. What was that from – sewage? Tarmac? Gravedigging? The price that first time they’d done the gutters had only been sixty pounds. The two window frames (a whopping three hundred pounds) looked as if they had never been done at all. God knows what Bruce had used to paint them with, and he’d taken long enough; but it had all peeled off. Kenny was an evil overlord. She put the kettle on then took Bruce the bucket of water.
By the time she returned with a mug of tea, Bruce was aloft, scraping crap out of the gutter and letting it rain down on the paving in her front garden. “Here’s your tea!” she called, leaving the mug on the low wall. She went back in to get water for her petunias. Every year Kenny would return, bullying her into accepting his botches, bullying Bruce into risking his neck to perform them and pocketing larger and larger amounts of her cash to buy more gold chains, more tattoos, more kebabs and beer. The soles of her feet slipped sweatily sideways off her flip flops. As the watering can filled up, she took the flip flops off. The floor felt cool and sane on her skin as she trod back out to the petunias. The water disappeared into the soil and reappeared seconds later in a rivulet at her feet. It took three more watering cans before she was satisfied that the soil was fully sodden. The flaccid petunias flopped in a heap, their leaves dull.
A while later, Bruce brought the ladder round the back to do the gutters there. At the sink, Helen peeled a pan of potatoes ready for dinner and scrubbed some carrots. At ten to three she went out the back. “I’m going to fetch the kids from school,” she shouted, squinting at Bruce, high above. Her cotton dress was sticking to her and her hair clung warmly to her neck and scalp.
“The rubbish out the gutter’s in your bin,” said Bruce, descending. “This is the last.” He emptied a surge of black debris into the bin, banging the bucket on the edge to loosen every particle. “All right if I leave the ladder here? Kenny won’t be back with the van till later.”
“Yes,” she said, “that’s fine.”
“I’m going down the shop and get a meat pie.” Bruce was running with sweat and smelled terrible.
“You do that,” said Helen, “you must be starving,” and then craftily she added, “why don’t you come back here with your pie and I’ll give you the cash?”
“No. Give it to Kenny,” he said.
Filled with intense pity, she watched him leave. What must it be like at the top of that ladder? She went in and put on her shoes. A mad impulse of fellow feeling for the wretched Bruce had seized her and she started up the ladder. Its wood was hot and solid. Lumps of paint and some unknown tarry substance coated its rungs and uprights. Ten steps up, she was afraid. From here she could see a section of the empty street; the trees bleached by sunlight. On the ground at the bottom she noticed the smoking butt of Bruce’s roll-up. She sighed and gingerly picked it up.
It was time for the school run. The inside of the car was like an oven and she drove off with all the windows open; the hot air fan-roasting her. Parking near the school, she went to the bank. Her flip-flops made sucky noises as they unglued themselves from patches of liquefying tar. She got out the cash for Kenny; the thought of him giving her qualms in her stomach. There was no way he was legal. Surely.
Her children, Brad and Polly, were flushed and listless in the heat and even though she had parked in shade, the car was too hot to get into until they had opened all the doors to let air blow through first. “Come on,” said Helen, “there’s ice-cream in the freezer at home.”
As they turned into their street, Helen saw, with a shock, a scarlet fire engine blocking the way. “Someone’s house is on fire!” squealed Polly. Helen jolted the car to a stop by the kerb, her mouth dry and began shepherding the children towards home, gripping their hands in terror. Behind them a siren wailed; louder and louder. Polly began screaming, sudden tears pouring down her face. “It’s all right, sweetie,” said Helen, “the firemen are there, it’s all right …”
“It’s a cop car!” yelled Brad, trying to jerk free.
“So it is,” she said; heart thudding, amazed at the calm sound of her own voice. She felt emptied out of all sensation inside, like a hollow woman; then immersion in the hive of activity, neighbours pointing, a fireman taking charge of her, Louise removing Brad and Polly to add them to her own brood, in safety, the fireman explaining. “Helen, is it?” Reassuring. “It’s all under control; we just need to check internally …” And then the sight at the back; the charred pile of rungs; water gleaming on the charcoal black remains of Bruce’s ladder. Helen stared; blank as a cat.
“Any idea how your ladder could have caught fire?” said the fireman.
“It’s the builder’s ladder,” she said, “Kenny; the man who does the gutters.”
“Oh. Right.”
“All clear inside, chief!” called another fireman, popping out from the back door.
“Pack up then,” said the one with her, and he moved away with his colleague, talking, and among their words she heard it several times: Kenny; as if there was no mystery at all. He returned to her then, saying: “It’s safe to go inside now, Helen. Are you up to speaking to the police?” He ushered her inside and introduced a policewoman and her male colleague. They sat her down and brought her a glass of water.
“Was anyone here when you left the house, love?” said the policewoman.
“No,” said Helen, “Bruce had finished. He went down the shop to get a meat pie because he hadn’t had any lunch.”
“Why did he leave his ladder?” asked the policeman.
“It isn’t his ladder, it’s Kenny’s. His boss – Kenny,” Helen replied. “He said Kenny wouldn’t be bringing the van back until later.”
“We’ll let you go and fetch your kids back from next door now,” soothed the policewoman. But all Helen could think about was cold vanilla ice waiting inside her freezer; like a talisman. And when she took leave of the police on her front step, she knew her prayers were answered, because the petunias were erect; their mass of white and mauve and pink trumpets extended like taffeta frills, and in the street a breeze was moving in the canopies of the sycamores.
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Kenny by Frances Clarke was read by Jo Widdowson at the Liars’ League Hot & Bothered event on Tuesday, July 14th, 2011 at the Phoenix, Cavendish Square, London.
Frances Clarke loves reading, has published a novel called The Glassblower’s Daughter and a collection of short stories called Unusual Salami, she updates a blog every Friday but can’t get the page to come up as the home page, works for Southampton University and is writing a second book very slowly.
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