The Lubetkin Legacy

Violet: Seven Dwarves

Greg comes back to Mrs Cracey’s flat on Monday evening and presents a bundle of papers and some clipboards with a flourish. Len and Mrs Tyldesley are there too. Mrs Cracey pours five glasses of whisky, and declares that the garden of the Lord always blooms better with a little irrigation. Violet cheers and clinks glasses. Getting involved with the cherry tree campaign seems much more worthwhile than helping HN Holdings siphon money out of Kenya into Horace Nzangu’s British Virgin Isles company.

Armed with the clipboards and petitions, they go out knocking on doors. Everyone signs, and some people even agree to write individual letters. Afterwards she goes back to Greg’s flat for a coffee. He has one of those hi-tech coffee-making machines like Marc’s that hisses and makes a lot of noise then produces a fragrant black dribble of coffee. It must be a man thing.

‘Where’s Arthur?’ she asks.

‘He’s with his mother,’ says Greg. ‘He stays with her half the week.’

Her stomach flutters a brief warning. She felt comfortable in the flat when Arthur was there, but being alone with Greg is not on her agenda. He is a lot older than her, with a complicated marital history and an appraising eye. This is not a man she wants to get involved with.

‘That must be tough. For both of you.’ She glances towards the door just in case she needs to make a quick exit.

‘It takes a bit of getting used to,’ he says.

They perch on stools in the kitchen; she stirs half a teaspoon of sugar into her coffee, which is a bit too strong and makes her pulses race. He doesn’t talk about his marital problems or his work: he talks about his passion for sailing, and his ambition to sail around Cape Horn.

‘Does Arthur like sailing too?’ she asks, as if saying Arthur’s name will bring him into the room with them.

He laughs. ‘I’m working on him, but he prefers Minecraft.’

She remembers the forlorn look on the kid’s face as he stepped out into the road, hunched over his screen.

‘What made you take up the cause of the cherry trees, Violet?’ he asks.

She tells him about the eruption of new building in Nairobi. ‘The sheer arrogance of it. They think they can get away with it, because nobody will object. Or because they’ve paid somebody off. How about you? How did you end up living here?’

It seems odd that someone who seems to have money is living in a place like this. But Greg, like her, had only recently arrived in the flats, and, like her, he isn’t planning to stay long.

‘I’m having some building work done on my house. It ran into problems and I had to move out in a hurry.’

‘That sounds bad.’

‘It is. Structural. You?’

‘Mm. I was staying with a friend before. In Croydon. I can’t really afford it here unless I find some flatmates,’ she adds with an embarrassed giggle.

Apart from the coffee machine, his flat is even barer than her own. It does have curtains, but no beds. Greg and his son had been sleeping on inflatable mattresses on the floor.

‘You can borrow some of mine,’ says Violet. ‘I’ve got seven of everything.’

‘Seven?’

‘The previous occupants were dwarves.’

He laughs. His teeth are even and white, with pointed canines. His sleek dark hair is greying at the temples, his cheeks and chin perfectly chiselled, handsome in a George Clooney sort of way.

But way too old for her.

Between them they heave and manoeuvre two beds, two desks and three chairs out of her flat, into the lift, and across the walkway to his flat. The move takes them the best part of an hour. At the end of it they are breathless and exhausted.

‘Let me take you out for dinner,’ he says.

She hesitates. The thought of good food in a proper restaurant with attentive male company is tempting, but she mustn’t get herself into a situation she can’t get out of. There is something quick and hungry about him which reminds her of Marc. She’s learned her lesson.

‘Thanks. But I’ve promised to skype my grandma in Nairobi.’

She closes the door of her flat and sets the latch and the chain. She still doesn’t feel quite safe here at night; the strange noises from the flat next door and the shouting in the street after the pubs close always put her on edge. She lowers the blue sari curtain and whisks up two eggs for an omelette, planning to skype her grandma after dinner. Then the doorbell buzzes.

She jumps up, her heart pounding, and listens. It buzzes again. Lucky the chain is on. Probably it is just Greg with a spare bundle of petitions, but you can’t be too careful. She opens the door on the chain and peers through the crack out on to the concrete walkway where dusk is already drawing in. The shadowy figure standing there is almost invisible, dressed all in black; a stray beam of light from her kitchen window glints on a pair of diamanté-framed spectacles. It takes her a moment to recognise the old lady from next door.

‘Allo, Blackie, I am next-door Inna,’ the old lady croaks. ‘You vegetable?’

Calling her Blackie is one thing — she guessed from the old lady’s tone that it was meant more descriptively than offensively. But no one has called her a vegetable before. What does it mean?

She opens the door. ‘Vegetable?’

‘You it it? I cook golabki kobaski slatki. Tomorrow half of seven.’ The old lady’s face crinkles up into a smile.

‘Oh, I see.’ Though she doesn’t see at all.

‘I am mother-sister from Lily.’ Behind the sparkly spectacles, her dark eyes dance bright and merry.

‘Mhm?’

‘I cook. You no vegetable, okay?’

‘Okay?’

The old lady chortles and disappears into the dusk rubbing her hands. Seriously weird.

She closes the door and slices a tomato and toasts some slightly stale bread to go with her omelette, half regretting that she had turned down a proper meal in a restaurant. Then she skypes her Grandma Njoki in Nairobi.

‘Violet! Violet mpenzi!’ A blurred and pixelated image of a wrinkled brown face with rubbery pink gums and pearly-white false teeth fills the screen of her laptop. ‘When you coming to visit us in Nairobi?’

‘As soon as possible, Nyanya Njoki! I’m saving up.’ Which is not entirely true, but suddenly seems like a good idea.