The Lubetkin Legacy

Berthold: Candlewick Dressing Gown

I woke up next morning to the sound of rain drumming on the rusting lid of the barbecue on the balcony. I was a year older. Violet in her silk pyjamas was gone and Inna was standing over me in her ghastly sea-green candlewick dressing gown with a cup of weak instant coffee and a grumpy expression on her face. There were still traces of gravy in her hair.

‘Oy, she no eat nothing!’ she moaned. ‘No golabki no kobaski no slatki! Skinny little blackie bird!’

I was still in the sitting room, still fully clothed. My neck was cricked from the too-short sofa, my mouth tasted of wet dog and my gut was smouldering like a volcano, probably from the slatki, but mercifully I was still alive. There was nothing but a mess of dirty plates and glasses on the table to remind me of the night before, which I hoped Inna would soon tackle.

‘Put it down there, Inna,’ I gestured her to put the cup on the coffee table beside me, while I shrank back into the glooming peace of my thoughts.

The instant coffee was lukewarm by the time I drank it; then I staggered into the bathroom for a pee. I vaguely remembered that I had already been once or twice in the night. I should really talk to Dr Brandeskievich about my prostate. Does George Clooney have these problems? I wondered. It would be good to have a man-to-man on the topic, to share mutual misgivings about the onset of mortality. I seemed to remember that on one of those bathroom trips I had glanced out of the window and seen a ghostly figure — or a figure and its ghost — standing in the grove, staring up at the flats, the light from the street lamp lighting up a double blur of white hair like a halo, but maybe it was just a hallucination brought on by the toxic slatki.

Inna interrupted my reverie with a typically crude allegation. ‘You no make love on to nice-looking girl because you love man. I understand. No problem wit me.’

‘Look, Inna, how many times do I have to repeat …’

She pursed her lips and stared out of the window at the relentless rain. I followed the line of her gaze and caught sight of something that set my sluggish heart pounding. There at the kerb behind the cherry trees, a little red car was parked and a woman wearing green was getting out of it, unfurling an umbrella. She made her way along the winding path through the cherry grove towards the flats.

‘Inna! We have a visitor!’ I yelled.

‘Wait!’ Inna said. ‘I quick quick dressing!’

‘No need. You’re fine as you are.’ The sea-green candlewick dressing gown and gravy-crusted hair could only add to the impression of senile dementia. ‘This time you are my mother, Okay? Not sister. Mother. A bit confused.’ I flapped my hands and rolled my eyes.

She nodded and mimicked.

‘Remember your birthday?’

‘First of March, 1932!’

‘First of March, 1932!’ echoed Flossie, understandably irritable at being woken up by having the tablecloth yanked off her cage.

There was not even time to dash into my bedroom and put some fresh clothes on. I smoothed the crumpled front of my shirt, where the rose-silk angel had so recently laid her lovely head. On the cream M&S 100 % cotton I found a long curly black hair, which I removed and folded into the breast pocket close to my heart.

Then the doorbell rang. Ding dong!

Mrs Penny was wearing the same green dress she had been trying on in Oxfam when we last met, the buttons straining a bit over her breasts. Her plump bare ankles, made shapely by the high heels, bore the same ghoulish flea-bite stigmata as before.

‘Come in, Mrs Penny!’ I shook her lettuce-limp hand. ‘Please meet my mother, Lily!’

Inna scuttled up in her sea-green dressing gown, flapping her hands and rolling her eyes.

‘Hey ho! First of March, 1932!’ she cried.

So far so good.

‘It’s so lovely to meet you,’ gushed Mrs Penny, shaking out her wet umbrella and propping it by the door. ‘I’ve heard so much about you from your son. Actually, I think we nearly met the other day, when you were getting into a taxi in the rain. You seemed in a bit of a rush.’

‘We were going to a friend’s funeral.’

‘Hey ho! Rain it! Rain it! Every day!’ added Inna with gusto.

‘I hope you don’t mind me dropping in like this. I was just passing, and I thought we could resolve the transfer of the tenancy now. It’s a good idea to change the tenancy over while you’re still … er … with us in mind as well as body, Mrs Lukashenko? Not that you won’t be with us for years to come. But you never know what is waiting around the corner.’

Inna peered around the corner into the hall and shook her head. ‘Nobody there.’

‘Quite.’ Mrs Penny smiled and produced a clear plastic file-envelope from her shoulder bag. ‘I’ve brought the paperwork with me, Mr Lukashenko. We’ve got it registered as a joint tenancy all the way back in 1953. Mr and Mrs Ted Madeley.’

‘Look, my name’s not Lukashenko, it’s Sidebottom. She remarried twice. My father was Sidney Sidebottom,’ I said.

‘Sidebottom? That’s a nice name,’ she said without a trace of irony. I looked at her closely. She wasn’t even smiling. ‘When was that? Do we have certificates with dates?’

‘First of March, 1932!’ said Inna.

‘It was 1960. I have the paperwork somewhere. She gets confused,’ I murmured to Mrs Penny, at the same time doing a quick eye roll in Inna’s direction.

She flapped her hands, rolled her eyes and chortled, ‘Hey ho! Rain it, rain it!’

‘Ding dong!’ squawked Flossie, making Mrs Penny jump.

‘Oh, I’d forgotten the parrot,’ she giggled. ‘Have you had her long?’

‘Twenty years,’ I replied. ‘She was a gift from Mother’s last husband, Mr Lev Lukashenko. Isn’t that right, Mother?’

‘Hey ho! Lucky Lily.’ Inna flapped her hand and rolled her eyes.

Mrs Penny made a note. ‘That explains it,’ she said. ‘We’ve had a letter in the housing office from a Mr Lukashenko, claiming the tenancy of the flat. Would you believe it — he said you’d passed away!’

Inna shrieked involuntarily, and rolled manic eyes in my direction.

‘Totally nuts,’ I said with a discreet hand-flap in her direction. ‘He was only after her money, you know. And the flat. Mother divorced him. Isn’t that so, Mum?’

‘First of March, 1932!’ Inna flapped her hands.

Mrs Penny made another note. ‘So he’s not living here?’

‘Absolutely not! I’ve been here for eight years, and he’s never been near the place. He went back to Ukraine, I think.’

‘That’s funny. Mr Lukashenko’s letter was posted in London,’ said Mrs Penny. ‘He gave this as his address.’

My heart skipped a beat. The bastard! He must have got someone over here to write it for him as soon as he received my invitation to the funeral.

‘Who this Lucky Skunky?’ asked Inna.

‘Your ex-husband, Mother. You’ve forgotten him already. No wonder. She hasn’t seen hide nor hair of him in years. Have you, Mother?’

I caught Mrs Penny’s eye and tapped my temple with my finger, though Inna was doing such a good job my gesture was superfluous.

‘Husband dead,’ she sighed. ‘Oy! Good man, good hair, good whisker, all dead.’

‘Three husbands! No wonder she gets confused,’ Mrs Penny looked from me to Inna curiously.

‘That’s why we wanted to change the tenancy agreement sooner rather than later, Mrs P-Penny. She’s not going to get any less confused. It can only get worse.’

Under her scrutiny, I could feel my stress level getting stratospheric. My pulse was pounding; my brain had become a compost heap of rotting recollections in which truths and untruths copulated promiscuously.

‘Hm. Quite.’ She chewed her biro. ‘Are there other family members who might have an interest in the flat? Siblings? Grandchildren?’

You don’t know the half of it, I thought, but I didn’t mention the twins. Why complicate things? Their tearful claim that the flat had been their childhood home was obviously a lie, since it wasn’t built until 1952 or 1953. At most they could have lived there for a few months before their mother dumped philandering Ted Madeley and moved on. As for the story that his marriage with Mother was bigamous, I doubted it was true. But even if it was — who could prove it?

‘I don’t think so. What do you think, Mother?’ I said.

‘First of March, 1932!’ she affirmed.

‘With the current housing shortage in London, you’d be amazed the lengths people go to. We have to be so careful.’ Mrs Penny narrowed her eyes. ‘There have even been cases of people pretending a dead relative was still alive.’

‘Unb-believable!’ My heart skipped a beat. ‘B-but surely, as her only child, I have rights?’ My old stutter was knocking at my jaw, threatening to undo all Mother’s careful therapy.

‘Usually the spouse is the successor, if there is one. According to our guidelines, there can only be one succession per tenancy, apart from by marriage, where it’s automatic. In your mother’s case, with all the divorces and name changes, we’ll have to line up all the ducks.’

‘Ducks? Two divorces. The first husband died.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘Of natural causes,’ I added, to preclude any doubt.

‘That helps. What about utility bills? Whose name are they in?’

‘Only Mother’s. I can’t lay my hands on them right now, but I can forward them.’

I’d cleared out all that old stuff when I prepared Mother’s room for Inna, but more would inexorably arrive, as is the way with bills.

‘And do you have evidence of relationship and residence, Mr … er … Lukashenko?’ She bit her biro so sharply I heard it crack.

‘Berthold Sidebottom. My father was Sidney Sidebottom, her second husband. I’ve got my b-birth certificate somewhere. My name’s not on the b-b-bills, but I do have corresp-pondence at this address going b-back years.’

‘Lovely!’ said Mrs Penny. ‘May we see?’ Suddenly, with largesse to dispense, she had become royal.

I dashed into my bedroom and riffled through the shoe box where I kept my papers. There was library membership, dental appointments, invitations to auditions, the hire purchase agreement for my bicycle, even my pitiful bank statements. I could have found more, but I didn’t want to leave Inna alone with Mrs Penny for a moment longer than was necessary.

When I rejoined them in the sitting room, Inna was saying, ‘First of March, 1932,’ and Mrs Penny was shaking her head, ‘Would you believe it!’

I wondered what the question was.

‘That’s pretty.’ Mrs Penny pointed to the shiny brass casket on the mantelpiece. ‘Is it antique? Your mother was just explaining it contains ashes, but I didn’t get her drift.’

‘Yes, it’s …’ My mind went blank.

‘God is dead!’ Flossie prompted.

‘… it’s a p-parrot. A deceased parrot. Flinna was her name. Originally, we had two, but one died.’

‘Shut up, Inna!’ squawked Flossie.

‘Take no notice,’ I chuckled, ‘she gets confused. Here, here are some p-papers showing my address.’

I fanned out a handful and held them in front of her. All those official-looking bits of paper brought a smile to her bureaucrat face at last.

‘May I?’ She pulled out a chair, sat herself down at the table, and went through them one by one, ticking boxes on the green printed form headed Tenancy Transfer, making notes in her file. I could feel my chest tighten as I watched. It’s at times like this that I would normally get the sherry bottle out, but we’d polished it all off last night.

‘We can complete the procedure later, if you could drop by my office one day next week with your birth certificate and your mother’s marriage certificate to your father. Originals, please — we can’t accept photocopies.’ She handed me a card. ‘Are you happy to hand over the tenancy of this flat to your son, Mrs Lukashenko?’

Inna glanced from her to me. ‘Is council flat. I like him privat.’

I felt like leaning across and slapping her. It would be just like her to bugger it up at the last minute.

Fortunately, Mrs Penny took that as a yes. ‘If you could just sign here, Mrs Lukashenko.’

She pushed the green form, and her blue biro, across to Inna, who picked them up and signed her name: Inna Alfandari.