‘So just how concerned should we be?’ The interviewer, a female voice, cut in. I liked this question. I wanted to precisely calibrate my concern.
‘Well, as I say,’ the interviewee, a male voice, said, ‘it’s not really a question of the fuel but the other chemicals that may have been present; now we don’t know what these were exactly, not as yet, but we understand there were substantial quantities of material on the site, and some of these can be, well, you wouldn’t want to put them on your cornflakes, ha ha, but still the question as always is one of quantifying risk.’
One of those morning interviews, then, when the interviewee’s time isn’t particularly important and there are unending minutes to fill. Slightly informative noise had to be created to cover the real interest, the pictures. Not the helicopter any more: footage from the ground, also shot before dawn, of fire crews directing inadequate-looking streams of water into a pulsing orange hell, the ground a reflecting pool in which coiled hoses wallowed.
My can was half empty already, its comforting weight gone, its top warm. I returned to the kitchen and topped it up from the one-third-full can I had found behind the lamp. Waste not, want not. The coldness and fizz of the remaining half of the fresh lager would take care of the flatness and warmth of the older stuff. But as a precaution, I poured it through a metal tea-strainer I kept beside the sink. In the past there had been instances when I had watched, horrified, as a glob of mould had slipped from a too-far-gone can into perfectly good beer. It was heartbreaking to have to pour it all down the sink. And there had been times when I had not washed it away, and they were even worse. But the strainer, found in a charity shop, had been a useful investment. This time nothing was intercepted, and the found beer frothed in a reassuring way. I had three cans in the fridge. That would probably do me for the morning.
‘Chances of a serious reaction are one in a million, one in 10 million really,’ the television voice was saying.
‘Ten million people in London,’ I said to the TV, ‘so one poor bastard …’
I tried to drink from the refilled can, but misaligned the aperture with my mouth, dribbling beer down the front of my T-shirt.
‘Shit.’
I ran the back of my wrist across my chin. The drilling, which had paused for breath, chose that moment to resume. I hated the pauses in the drilling more than anything, because they invited the thought that the noise might have stopped for good, which was seldom the case. The builders on the other side were now making their own contribution: a hammer-blow, perhaps metal against metal, which repeated eight or nine times, then stopped, then started again. Through the flat, from the direction of the street, came the throat-clearing sound of a diesel engine and a steady rattle of machinery.
I threw the tree an angry glance. It was planted in next door’s back garden, another of their multiple insults. Through the splattered glass of the kitchen ceiling, I saw a flash of white in its black limbs.
A cockatoo, sitting in the tree, looking down at me.
No, not possible.
I changed my position to get a better view through one of the cleaner patches of grimy glass. The white shape ducked from view. I stepped back. There it was again – not a cockatoo, but a white plastic bag caught in the branches.
Pacing back to the sofa, I took my laptop from my shoulder bag and switched it on. The noise was intolerable, something had to be done. What, exactly, I did not know, and as a renter my options were limited.
Subject: Re: Re: NOISE
Hi Dave,
I had never met Dave, my landlord, but he was pleasant enough on email, if he replied. We had corresponded about the noise before and he made sympathetic sounds and said there was little he could do. But emailing him was my only outlet. The owners of the neighbouring houses were never around, of course – even when their homes weren’t the building sites they are now, I never saw them. Even if I could reach them, why would they do anything for me, a private tenant? I was simply nothing as far as they were concerned.
The email got no further than the salutation. Through the drilling, I heard an agitated rattling of my letterbox, then a triple chime on my doorbell. That special knock, this time in the morning, meant I knew at once who it was, and I groaned. Her, one of the ones from upstairs.
I wasn’t dressed but there was little point. The lager had soaked into the T-shirt and contributed to any pre-existing odours.
When I opened the front door I tried to stay mostly behind it. The icy air made me flinch. Her breath was fogging; she was dressed in running gear, a headband holding back dark blonde hair, her top a souvenir from the London School of Economics. She had been jogging on the spot, but stopped when I appeared, and took the headphones out of her ears.
‘Bella.’
‘Jack. Hi, you’re up!’ she said, surprised.
‘Every morning,’ I said. Bella had forced me out of bed on a couple of weekdays before the coming of the drills, and now she behaved as if I had a lie-in every day. If only I did. ‘Hard to sleep with the noise.’
‘I’ve been running,’ she said.
‘Cold,’ I said.
‘Are you in today?’
‘No, sorry.’
‘Really? Not at all?’ Bella said. She cocked her head to one side, a gesture that said: it’s OK, you can tell Bella, just admit that you will be lounging around in your flat all day and all will be well.
‘Really,’ I said. ‘I’m interviewing people.’
‘Ooh!’ she said, flashing her eyes wide. How did she get her lips to be so sparkly? Just looking at them made mine feel like sandpaper. The brick-dust was so thick in the air you could practically see it.
‘New job?’ she asked.
This took a moment to parse. ‘No. No! I’m interviewing people. For my job.’
She frowned. ‘To take over from you?’
I rubbed my eyes, feeling the grit in them. ‘No. I’m interviewing them for the magazine. The magazine I work for. In my job.’
‘Okey-dokey,’ she said, sceptical. ‘Will that take all day? Only we’re expecting a delivery.’
‘All day,’ I lied. ‘Can’t you get it delivered to your office?’
Her face pinched in consternation. ‘Ooh, no. It’s furniture.’
‘Sorry. Why did you arrange for it to be delivered today if you’re not going to be in?’
‘Well,’ she said with a little hauteur, ‘I expected you to be in.’
I felt that she had laid out a space for another sorry from me, but she wasn’t going to get it. ‘’Fraid not.’
She flicked her eyes downward and I made a small shuffle further behind the door.
Smiling brightly: ‘OK. You’re not dressed. I won’t keep you in the cold. Hope your interview goes well!’
I smiled back and started to close the door. She popped her earbuds back into her ears and turned towards the steps back up to the pavement.
‘Bella,’ I said, stopping her. ‘You guys own upstairs, don’t you?’
‘Sure,’ she said, as if startled by the implication that any other living arrangement could exist.
‘Have you complained to next door?’ I said. ‘Both next doors. About the noise. The building work.’
‘No,’ Bella said. ‘We’re out all day working, so …’
‘But, the dust,’ I said. ‘The dirt.’
She shrugged.