HOME IS AN EMPTY HOUSE

I never even saw him leave. He had been told to go and I never knew why. Not for certain anyway. It left a vacuum in the house and in my life. But no one asked me, a mere child, what I thought then of the expulsion.
Albert Spear was big in a way my father never was. He stayed in a small room, sharing its landing with the ‘cupboard of death’. Occasionally as children we would dare to clamber into its confines, in amongst the broken picnic table and mildewed tent and wait for the counting to stop. Otherwise it was just a landing, a necessary staging post on ones journey from the second to third floor where our attic bedrooms crouched.
Childhood games, stories read by my grandmother and adult tension, in a house without Television or Radio: These were the things of my childhood as a young boy in the 1960’s. And then one day there was Albert, bearded; that great stomach under those shapeless jumpers and the powerful Jewish drawl, foreign as Israel. I had no idea where he came from. At six years old I only knew he was from a different place where people were big and gentle, somehow blown in by the wind, a Mary Poppins from the world of giants.
It was only years later that I realised the incongruity of the name. But then I suppose he was born before the horror. My family was pockmarked and lame and from time to time folks would come to live in the gaps and craters: In amongst the conflict, witnesses who never spoke of it. Not to me at least.
One day, early on, Albert caught me on the stair. He beckoned to me. Though he was huge, with the growl of a bear, I wasn’t frightened of him. And me, so timid. I was making my way downstairs and he stopped me on the landing.
“Come in,” he said conspiratorially. “Let me show you something.” He took a small disk from a paper sleeve and fiddled it over the awkward spindle of his gramophone. Penny Lane was in my heart and in my ears for the first time. And from that point on I would go to his room whenever I could and enter another world. His world. The world out there, separate from my family.
What had seemed so strange at first: this man, his gramophone; slowly started its journey toward normality and somewhere on that path it met my home life, with its disjointed elders, coming the other way. I found myself looking at my father, my mother, my grandmother and wondering who they were. If perhaps Albert was my real father. Maybe he was the emotional normality that all children crave, without knowing it.

One day I made an announced to the dinner table. It was a repetition of something I had heard.
“I hate Jews,” I said.
Albert in his big, soft, gravely voice said, “I am a Jew.”
I was mortified.
Then I said: “But I love you Albert.” Now this is something that I had never even thought to say to my own father.
Then Albert said: “And I love you,” and after that I never saw him again. The vacuum he had filled, he left behind, and that September I was sent away to school.
I know now that love, like speech, must be learned early or never.

THE BUILDER

Allison slipped the scones in the oven and pushed the door to. Sometimes she got the feeling of being on automatic, shadowing the movements of her earlier life so as not to cease moving all together. She turned from the stove and surveyed the kitchen. It had been tidied enough and the dog and kids always ended up making the place a mess again. It would be pointless to shuffle the same tired knickknacks more. The two cords that ran from her heart out beyond the grave were tugging again today, turning her mind back in on itself, away from the rain outside.
Claws on the wooden floor and a peel of yelps presaged some uninvited guest and Allison straightened up, recalibrating her being in the shift from private existence to public performance. She practiced a brief smile and was momentarily relieved by its easy flicker and the concomitant quiver of her spirits. But it was not the smile that lifted her, rather the thought of his atmosphere entering the kitchen. It could only be Bob. Who else would visit this arse crack of the Malvern Hills in such weather? The kids were still at school and the postie had been and gone. She pretended busyness but knew he would take an age getting from the van and making the short journey across the garden. He always did. Why, she had no idea. The dog was getting frantic as Allison started to fill the kettle.
Bob was her unfortunately named builder, a fact the children took great delight in.
‘It’s Robert,’ Allison would say, ‘not Bob,’ though she called him Bob often enough. To them he would always be: ‘It’s Bob the Builder mum’, and their smugness irritated her.
She had first hired him when deciding to extend the kitchen out into the backyard. Before the cull. She had gone for a two-storey job and to hell with the expense. She made a dining/kitchen area on the ground floor and an extra bedroom on the first, next to the musty, plasticated avocado shower-room. That would have been baby Jeremiah’s room, but, of course, he never made it to needing a bed of his own.
After Adrian and Jeremiah had died, it left just the four of them. That was the four of them and Bob, on those occasions he tired of his first wife and his looming insolvency and stopped by to mooch about or hit something with a hammer.

She had made the tea and they were now sat at the kitchen table with the paraphernalia between them.
“I’m considering hanging myself,” he said as his opening gambit. The rain was falling for the twelfth consecutive day and she herself had been eyeing the shotgun speculatively. Not seriously of course, what with the kids, but it was a fantasy option. Maybe for later.
“Could you find a joist that would hold?” she asked, looking at him with brows uplifted. She had been considering spending the last of her husbands insurance on ‘doing something’ with the stables and had pencilled Bob in for the job.
“Don’t kill yourself yet Robert,” she said. “There are the stables to do.”
“They’re made of wood Allison,” he said emphatically. “They are good for horses and nothing more.” She could tell he hadn’t finished. There was a coup de gras in there somewhere.
“And?” she prodded, tentatively.
“And also…” he said. “Only a psycho would want to take a holiday in this shit-hole.” They were both escapees from the ‘rat race’, from the big city smoke. The dream and reality of escape had turned out to be a disappointing mismatch.
“Fucking hell Bob,” she said. “Where is your Chutzpah?”
“It Chutzpahed,” he replied.
They both sat in silence for a moment savouring the time honoured gag.
“I wouldn’t mind so much,” he went on, gesturing weakly at the drizzled kitchen window, “but it’s June. The summer will soon be over.” Allison looked across at him and saw to her surprise that he was crying. Not sobbing, but one solitary tear had stumbled from a crumpled eye. Allison looked out the window again, giving him a moment to himself. There was a break in the cloud and for a brief second the sun streamed through, improbable rays like some old master: The Descending Dove of Peace, scoring the air. Then it was gone again.
“Would a bunk up help?” she said.
“It has been a while,” he replied. “I thought we might have…” he paused, “moved on.”
“Oh come on Robert,” she said. “Don’t be daft. People like us never move on. Unless,” she continued, her eyes crinkling beautifully with her smile, “you call blowing your brains out moving on.”
He decided to put off the noose for a while longer and instead retreat to the solace of her well-worn sheets.
“I’d like a bunk up,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied. “Maybe even another cup of tea. What do you think?” The place seemed warmer. Robert could smell something cooking in the oven.
“I like spending time with you,” he said. “You’re nice.”