The Lubetkin Legacy

Violet: Len

While Violet is standing in the semicircle of onlookers in the cherry grove watching Berthold’s liberation, she feels a tug at her sleeve. It’s Arthur; he’s wearing his school uniform but he’s not going to school. He seems agitated.

‘Len’s gone all funny. Come and see!’

She’s already late for work, but she follows the kid to Len’s ground-floor flat where the front door is wedged open with a chair. The flat is untidy, with stuff scattered everywhere, and a bad smell. There are the posters of football players in dynamic goal-scoring poses pinned on the walls, but Len is slumped in his wheelchair in a starkly different pose in front of the switched-off television. His crutches are on the floor, his cap is askew, his eyes are glazed, and his breathing is coming in quick gasps like a drowning man.

‘Len, what’s the matter? Shall I call an ambulance?’

‘Nah. I’ll be all right. No fuss.’ His voice is faint and slurred, so that she has to bend right down to make out what he is saying; as she puts her ear to his lips she notices a strange smell on his breath, sweet and synthetic, like pear drops.

‘I think there’s a bottle of Diet Coke in the back of the fridge. That should do it. I just couldn’t find it,’ he says.

She opens the fridge. There is nothing in there but an opened tin of baked beans, green with mould, a half-empty plastic bottle of gone-off milk and a white carton with a chemist’s label on. The fridge’s power is off.

‘There’s nothing in here. Only some mouldy beans.’

‘No Coke?’

‘I can’t find any. Shall I make you a cup of tea?’ She hands Arthur the key to her flat. ‘Quick, nip up and get some milk from my fridge.’

Arthur disappears, half running half skipping.

‘How long has your fridge been off?’ she asks Len.

He looks confused. ‘My leccy got cut off last week. I should be all right when I start my job.’

The flat is hot and stuffy, with the sun beating in through the south-facing windows.

‘Are you sure?’

‘They cut my benefit because of my spare bedroom. But I’ve got an appeal lodged. And I’m registered with an agency for tele-sales, so I should be all right soon. Just pass me my crutches, love.’

She helps him lever himself out of the wheelchair with his crutches, and he flops into an armchair.

‘Will you just check on the budgies, love? They’re in the next room.’ He nods his head towards an open door, from where there’s a chorus of chirping and a disgusting smell a bit like the parrot cage next door where Berthold and the mad old lady live.

There are three cages in the little room, with four brightly coloured birds in each, all hopping about and twittering. It’s enough to drive anybody mad. Their water bottles are dry and the seed dispensers are almost empty. She takes them over to the kitchen to fill them up.

Just then the door opens and the boy comes back with a bottle of milk. He’s not alone. A young woman is with him — she recognises the girl who cleaned her flat the day she moved in, but she’s not wearing her Homeshine uniform or carrying her brushes. She feels a rush of annoyance. Why is this slum girl following her around? She doesn’t want to be reminded about poverty in Kenya right now. She’s done her bit by refusing to work for HN Holdings. Isn’t that enough? Now she just wants to get on with her life.

‘She was waiting for you outside your flat,’ says the boy. ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’

‘Yes. Find out where Len keeps his tea bags.’ She turns to the girl, whose name she remembers is Mary Atiemo, and says in a firm voice, ‘Look, Mary, in England you can’t just turn up on somebody’s doorstep. You have to ring and make an appointment first. As John Lennon said, an Englishman’s home is his castle.’ John Lennon? That doesn’t sound right. Maybe it was Oscar Wilde. Or Shakespeare. Or one of those guys who go around making up quotations.

‘Please, ma’am, I need your help.’ The girl lowers her eyes and places her hands together in an imploring gesture, which, for some reason, Violet finds intensely irritating. Len and Arthur are staring at her open-mouthed, so she softens her tone a bit. ‘Anyway, I can’t afford a cleaner right now.’

‘I will clean for you for nothing,’ says Mary. ‘I just need somewhere to stay.’

The kettle boils and she makes four cups of tea. Len adds a saccharine tablet and sips slowly, which seems to perk him up a bit, though he still looks pale. She doesn’t know whether it’s safe to leave him, but she promised Berthold she’d join him for a coffee, and she has an appointment with Gillian Chalmers in an hour.

‘Look, you’ve chosen a very inconvenient time,’ she tells the girl. ‘Besides, I’m moving out soon.’

‘I will not stay for long.’

‘I’m sorry. Whatever sort of trouble you’ve got yourself into, it’s not my responsibility. You’ve got to learn to stand on your own two feet. Look, Len here stands on his own two feet, and he hasn’t even got any feet!’ Nobody smiles at her joke.

‘I will do so, ma’am. My feet are good. But I can no longer stay in my room. I will not work for Homeshine Sanitary.’

‘Have you got fed up with cleaning?’ Her Grandma Njoki had told her that slum people were usually lazy, as well as dishonest.

‘Cleaning okay. But now he wants I do other things for clients. Things I will not do. Even though I am poor, I still have my life.’ She lowers her eyes and stares stubbornly at the floor.

Violet doesn’t ask what things, because it suddenly seems horribly clear. ‘Tell me, who is this “he” who tells you this?’

‘Mr Nzangu. The boss.’

So that’s where she heard the name before. Her head spins.

‘Mr Horace Nzangu? But he’s a businessman in Nairobi.’

‘Mr Lionel Nzangu. It is his son. They run a business to help people come to London. But I thought it was for cleaning work. He didn’t say …’

Violet’s heart thuds and she sees now that she has no choice, she has to let the slum girl stay in her flat. But before she can get the words out of her mouth, Arthur pipes up, ‘You can come and stay with us. We’ve got a spare room.’

The girl beams, flashing her chipped tooth. ‘That is very kind. I will clean your flat. God will reward you.’

Violet is left with the guilty feeling that she has not been kind. She wonders how Mary Atiemo will get on with Greg. Should she warn her? But what could she say?

‘I’ve got to go. I’m supposed to be at work.’

She hates being late — punctuality, her Grandma Njoki used to tell her, was among the benefits brought by Britain to backward people. But now she’ll be leaving soon it doesn’t seem to matter so much.

She runs up the stairs two at a time and knocks on Berthold’s door.