The Lubetkin Legacy

Berthold: Smøk & Miras

Next day I was still feeling a bit queasy, maybe from the slitki, and I decided to treat myself to breakfast in bed, which I hoped Inna would make. But despite repeated hints, at eleven o’clock she suddenly expressed a need to go out. She applied a dab of lipstick and rouge, tied a headscarf over her newly black hair, rammed a bulging brown A4-sized envelope into her bag and headed out mysteriously into the late morning.

‘Where are you going, Inna?’

‘Hempstead. I got business. Back soon, Mister Bertie.’

Maybe she was going to stock up on prussic acid, though Eustachia, I noted, seemed unaffected by the slatki, even though she had eaten six of them. But now I grew curious about the contents of the brown envelope.

‘What sort of business?’

‘Mind it own business,’ she snapped.

I got up and made my own breakfast, wondering what she was up to. Business. I wished I too had some business, somewhere I needed to go to, or a script to be working on. It was at least four months since I had trod the boards. I had had no response to the Brent Cross Mickey Mouse application. The need to be usefully employed itched like a skin disease of the soul. For all his nastiness, Nazi George had stirred a hunger in me for meaningful activity, a role in the great drama of our national life. Maybe I should write my own part in my own play; but what would I write about? I stared out of the window at the cherry grove with its winding path between the trees, now gloriously heavy-leaved, pregnant with summer, timeless yet vulnerable. The hero would be a middle-aged man seeking a renewed meaning in life who chains himself to a tree in defiance of the cataclysm of post-modernity. It was a great subject; but hadn’t it been done already? As I was sketching out a dramatic structure in my mind, the doorbell rang: Ding dong! Ding dong! Ding dong!

It was Legless Len, in his wheelchair, his thumb still jabbing aggressively at the bell.

‘Whoa, Len. One ring is enough. You’ll waken the dead!’

An unfortunate slip of the tongue for one recently bereaved, but Len didn’t notice.

‘Listen, pal, I’m having a bit of trouble. Can you lend me a tenner?’ Before I could answer, he grasped the wheels of his chair and rolled himself into the flat.

‘I’m a bit strapped for cash myself, Len.’ This was embarrassing. ‘I thought you were working in tele-sales.’

‘Nah! Got sanctioned off, didn’t I? Benefit stopped. Just like that.’

‘What happened?’

‘Zero-hours contract. Got to be on call twenty-four-seven. Didn’t go out for four days. Waited by the phone, but the call never came. Then yesterday, when it all kicked off down in the grove, I went to see what was going on, and, would you believe it, that’s when the buggers phoned from the Job Centre. To make sure I was still available for work.’ He took off his Arsenal cap and combed his fingers through his hair, which seemed thinner and greyer since I had last seen it. ‘Do you reckon one of them Romanians grassed me up?’

‘I think that’s unlikely, Len. You’d need to speak a bit of English for that.’

‘Well, someone must’ve done. Why d’they pick just that moment to phone?’

‘It’s a mystery. Sorry I can’t help, pal. I haven’t got any work myself.’

‘I’ve heard it’s the immigrants that’s undercutting us.’ He lowered his voice as though he was imparting confidential information, though I had read the same sentiment recently in the newspaper at Luigi’s. ‘If you don’t give a foreigner a job, next thing you know the PC brigade’s got you up against the Court of European Rights.’

‘Yes, Len. The country’s going to the dogs. I blame the foreigners and the budgies.’

He rubbed his forehead. ‘Why the budgies, Bert?’

‘Why the foreigners, Len?’ I smirked. ‘They can’t be benefit scroungers one minute and undercutting our wages the next.’

As I unleashed this devastating repartee, an unpleasant thought popped into my head. I was due for another visit to the Job Centre soon. Would I now be dragooned into the Wrest ’n’ Piece back-to-work Training Programme? I wondered how Phil Gatsnug had got on since my last visit.

‘But can’t you bank on the food bank at times like this, Len? Apparently there’s plenty of baked beans out there for the taking. I’ve got a spare tin of tuna, if that’s any help.’

‘Thanks for the thought. It’s not food I need, Bert, it’s electricity. My bill’s overdue. They’ve cut me off. I need to keep my insulin chilled. I had a funny turn yesterday.’

‘I’ll ask Inna when she comes back.’

‘Thanks. I’d appreciate it.’

Len wheeled himself back over the threshold and down the walkway towards the lift. Thank God he had not accepted the tin of tuna. Far from being ‘spare’ it was, in fact, all that stood between me and starvation, at least until Inna got back.

I closed the door behind him, and that’s when I noticed a slim purple envelope lurking on the doormat. How long had it been there? The postman used to come first thing in the morning, but now, thanks to the collapse of civilisation as we know it, he can come at any time during the day. Soon, no doubt, it will all be delivered by drones and even postmen will be a thing of the past.

I bent to retrieve it. It was a letter from Smøk & Miras Promotions informing me that all the promotional vacancies at the Brent Cross Shopping Centre had been filled, but inviting me to an interview at 12.30 p.m. today for a similar opportunity to promote a new brand of coffee at major railway stations. Coffee — that was my thing! It could be my first step to Clooneydom! I glanced at my watch. It was 12.30. The address was near King’s Cross. Normally, I would have hopped on my bike, but as fate had cruelly unwheeled me, I grabbed my jacket and raced down the stairs to the bus stop.

It was 1.15 when I arrived at the fourth-floor (no lift — puff puff) office of Smøk & Miras Promotions in a slim Georgian house on a cobbled side street overlooking a building site behind King’s Cross. A lean young man in his mid-twenties with a shaved head and a strangely tattooed scalp was sitting on a high swivelling chair behind an enormous computer screen in a box-sized office with bare walls, a skylight and a black canvas folding chair. There was a not-unpleasant smell of coffee and musky aftershave.

‘Hi! Come in, Berthold! Cool name! I’m Darius. Have a seat.’ He shook my hand and indicated the black chair, which was low like a deck chair, so my face came up to his knees.

‘Sorry I’m late. I only just got your letter.’

‘No problem. The other guys didn’t show either. What it is — right — we’ve got totally a new concept in coffee, which is that it comes from beans!’ He swivelled to face me with a radiant expression.

‘Cool!’ I feigned surprised enthusiasm.

‘What you have to do — right — is hang out in the station forecourt at the rush hour between seven and ten a.m. and four and seven p.m., wearing a Bertie Bean outfit, and handing out free samples. Like these …’ He passed me a small cotton bag, which looked as though it contained six coffee beans.

‘Cool!’ My heart froze. Bertie Bean. Oh, horror, horror, horror!

‘We pay twenty quid for the day, cash in hand. No deductions.’

‘Isn’t the minimum wage —?’

‘That’s the apprentice rate, man.’ His voice was slightly high-pitched, as though the stress of lying had contracted his vocal chords.

‘But I’m —’

‘You may as well start at King’s Cross. Come here just before seven on Monday and pick up your costume. How tall are you?’

‘Er, six foot, actually.’ (For your information, that’s an inch taller than George Clooney.)

‘Cool.’

He jotted it down on a Post-it note.

‘See you on Monday, right. Seven o’clock.’

‘Cool.’

As I descended the stairs after my cursory interview, I heard him locking the door of the office.

Seven o’clock. That meant getting up at six. It was several years since I had been out of bed so early. It would be a challenge.