attributed to stupidity and bribes. From time to time the knotweed rumour resurfaced. “You can’t keep down knotweed,” Evan said. “Especially not if it’s mutated.” No actual white worms had been spotted, or none that anyone had admitted to. The residents felt trapped and baffled. They didn’t want public attention, yet they wanted to sue somebody; they thought it was their entitlement.
Al caught sight of Mart, down at the children’s playground. He was wearing his brickie’s hat, and he appeared so suddenly in the middle distance that she wondered if he’d come up through one of the secret tunnels the neighbours were speculating about.
“How are you doing?” he yelled.
“Okay.” Her feet were moving sideways and every which ways, but by tacking to the left then abruptly changing course she managed to manoeuvre herself down the hill towards him. “Are you working here, then, Mart?”
“I’ve been put on digging,” he said. “We’re remediating, that’s the nature of it and the job description. Did you ever have a job description?”
“No, not me,” she said. “I make it up as I go along. So what’s remediating?”
“You see this soil?” He pointed to one heap. “This is what we’re taking off. And you see this?” He pointed to another heap of soil, very similar. “This is what we’re putting down instead.”
“So who are you working for?”
Mart looked wild. “Subcontracting,” he said. “Cash in hand.”
“Where are you living?”
“Dossing at Pinto’s. His floor got put down again.”
“So you got rid of the rats?”
“In the end. Some pikey come round with a dog.”
“Pikey?”
“You know. Gypsy fella.”
“What was his name?”
“He didn’t say any name. Pinto met him down the pub.”
Al thought, if a man is always no more than three feet from a rat—or is it two?—how does that feel from the rats’ point of view? Do they spend the whole of their lives in trembling? Do they tell each other nightmare stories about a gypsy with a terrier on a rope?
“How’s the old shed?” Mart said. He spoke as if it were some foolish indulgence of his youth.
“Much as you left it.”
“I was thinking I might get the odd night there. If your friend had no big objection.”
“She does have a big objection. So do the neighbours. They think you’re an asylum seeker.”
“Oh, go on, missus,” Mart said. “It’s just for when Pinto says, Mart, take a walk. Then we could have a chat again. And if you’ve got the money we could get a takeaway.”
“Are you remembering your pills, Mart?”
“On and off. They’re after meals. I don’t always get a meal. It was better when I was living in your shed and you was bringing a tray and reminding me.”
“But you know that couldn’t go on.”
“Because of your friend.”
I will continue to do a good action, she thought. “Wait there, Mart,” she said. She went back into the house, took a twenty out of her purse. When she got back, Mart was sitting on the ground.
“They’re going to be water-jetting the sewers soon,” Mart said. “It’s due to complaints and concerns.”
“You’d better look busy,” she said. “Or you’ll get the sack.”
“The lads have gone on their lunch,” Mart said. “But I don’t have a lunch.”
“Now you can get one,” she said, handing over the bank note.
Mart stared at it. She thought he was going to say, that’s not a lunch. She said, “It represents a lunch. You get what you want.”
“But I’m barred.”
“Your mates will go for you.”
“I’d rather you made me a lunch.”
“Yes, but that’s not going to happen.”
She turned her back and plodded away. I want to do a good action. But. It won’t help him to hang around here. On the doorstep of the Collingwood she turned and looked back at him. He was sitting on the ground again, in the freshly dug soil, like a gravedigger’s assistant. You could spend your life trying to fit Mart together, she thought. There’s no cause and effect to him. He feels as if he might be the clue to something or other, made up as he is out of bits and pieces of the past and the fag end of other people’s phrases. He’s like a picture where you don’t know which way up it goes. He’s like a walking jig-saw, but you’ve lost the box lid to him.
She was closing the front door, when he called out to her. She stepped outside again. He loped towards her, his twenty screwed up in his fist.
“Forgot to ask you. If in case of a terrorist outrage, could I come in your shed?”
“Mart,” she said warningly, and began to close the door.
“No, but,” he said. “It was at the Neighbourhood Watch last week.”
She stared at him. “You went to the meeting?”
“I sneaked in the back.”
“But why?”
“Keep my eye on Delingbole.”
“I see.”
“And the message was, in case of terrorist outrage or nuclear explosion, go indoors.”
“That seems sensible.”
“So if there’s one of those, can I come back and live in the shed? You’re supposed to stock up with a first- aid kit to include scissors, a wind-up radio—but I dunno what one is—and tins of tuna fish and beans, which I have, plus a tin opener to open them with.”
“And then what do you do?” She thought, I wish I’d gone to this meeting.
“Then you sit tight, listen to the radio, and eat your beans.”
“Till such time as?”
“What?”
“I mean, when is it safe to come out?”
Mart shrugged. “I suppose when Delingbole comes round and tells you. But he might not ever tell me because he hates me. So I’d just starve to death.”
Alison sighed. From under his brickie’s hat, Mart rolled a fallow eye at her. “Okay,” she said. “How about this? In case of terrorist outrage or nuclear explosion, never mind the shed, you can come and live in our house.”
“But she won’t let me.”
“I’ll tell her you’re my guest.”
“That won’t make no difference.”
He shows sense, Al thought.
“A bloke was here,” he said, “looking for you. Yesterday. In a van.”
“Oh, that would be the courier,” she said. They were expecting some more party packs from Truro.
“You was out.”
“Funny he didn’t leave a card. Unless Colette picked it up and didn’t say.”
“He didn’t leave a card, he didn’t leave a trace,” Mart said. He clapped his belly. “How about tea?”
“Mart, get back over there and start digging. These are testing times. We’ve all got to put a bit of effort in.”
“You wouldn’t give me a hand, would you?”
“What, with the digging? Look, Mart, I don’t do outdoors, horses for courses, I’m in here earning a twenty so I can give it you. What would your mates say if they came back and found me doing your job for you? They’d laugh at you.”
“They laugh at me anyway.”
