In Bob Skipps’ she said that four children from the Tite Comprehensive had arrived in her house and were at present washing her kitchen walls. She said it again to the man in the fish shop and the man was surprised. It suddenly occurred to her that of course they couldn’t have done any painting because she hadn’t discussed colours with the teacher. She thought it odd that the teacher hadn’t mentioned colours and wondered what colour the paint tins contained. It worried her a little that all that hadn’t occurred to her before.
‘Hi, Mrs Wheeler,’ the boy called Billo said to her in her hall. He was standing there combing his hair, looking at himself in the mirror of the hall-stand. Music was coming from upstairs.
There were yellowish smears on the stair-carpet, which upset Mrs Malby very much. There were similar smears on the landing carpet. ‘Oh, but please,’ Mrs Malby cried, standing in the kitchen doorway. ‘Oh, please, no!’ she cried.
Yellow emulsion paint partially covered the shell-pink of one wall. Some had spilt from the tin on to the black- and-white vinyl of the floor and had been walked through. The boy with fuzzy hair was standing on a draining board applying the same paint to the ceiling. He was the only person in the kitchen.
He smiled at Mrs Malby, looking down at her. ‘Hi, Mrs Wheeler,’ he said.
‘But I said only to wash them,’ she cried.
She felt tired, saying that. The upset of finding the smears on the carpets and of seeing the hideous yellow plastered over the quiet shell-pink had already taken a toll. Her emotional outburst had caused her face and neck to become warm. She felt she’d like to lie down.
‘Eh, Mrs Wheeler?’ The boy smiled at her again, continuing to slap paint on to the ceiling. A lot of it dripped back on top of him, on to the draining board and on to cups and saucers and cutlery, and on to the floor. ‘D’ you fancy the colour, Mrs Wheeler?’ he asked her.
All the time the transistor continued to blare, a voice inexpertly singing, a tuneless twanging. The boy referred to this sound, pointing at the transistor with his paintbrush, saying it was great. Unsteadily she crossed the kitchen and turned the transistor off. ‘Hey, sod it, missus,’ the boy protested angrily.
‘I said to wash the walls. I didn’t even choose that colour.’
The boy, still annoyed because she’d turned off the radio, was gesturing crossly with the brush. There was paint in the fuzz of his hair and on his T-shirt and his face. Every time he moved the brush about paint flew off it. It speckled the windows, and the small dresser, and the electric stove and the taps and the sink.
‘Where’s the sound gone?’ the boy called Billo demanded, coming into the kitchen and going straight to the transistor.
‘I didn’t want the kitchen painted,’ Mrs Malby said again. ‘I told you.’
The singing from the transistor recommenced, louder than before. On the draining board the fuzzy-haired boy began to sway, throwing his body and his head about.
‘Please stop him painting,’ Mrs Malby shouted as shrilly as she could.
‘Here,’ the boy called Billo said, bundling her out on to the landing and closing the kitchen door. ‘Can’t hear myself think in there.’
‘I don’t want it painted.’
‘What’s that, Mrs Wheeler?’
‘My name isn’t Wheeler. I don’t want my kitchen painted. I told you.’
‘Are we in the wrong house? Only we was told –’
‘Will you please wash that paint off?’
‘If we come to the wrong house –’
‘You haven’t come to the wrong house. Please tell that boy to wash off the paint he’s put on.’
‘Did a bloke from the Comp come in to see you, Mrs Wheeler? Fat bloke?’
‘Yes, yes, he did.’
‘Only he give instructions –’
‘Please would you tell that boy?’
‘Whatever you say, Mrs Wheeler.’
‘And wipe up the paint where it’s spilt on the floor. It’s been trampled out, all over my carpets.’
‘No problem, Mrs Wheeler.’
Not wishing to return to the kitchen herself, she ran the hot tap in the bathroom on to the sponge-cloth she kept for cleaning the bath. She found that if she rubbed hard enough at the paint on the stair-carpet and on the landing carpet it began to disappear. But the rubbing tired her. As she put away the sponge-cloth, Mrs Malby had a feeling of not quite knowing what was what. Everything that had happened in the last few hours felt like a dream; it also had the feeling of plays she had seen on television; the one thing it wasn’t like was reality. As she paused in her bathroom, having placed the sponge-cloth on a ledge under the hand-basin, Mrs Malby saw herself standing there, as she often did in a dream: she saw her body hunched within the same blue dress she’d been wearing when the teacher called, and two touches of red in her pale face, and her white hair tidy on her head, and her fingers seeming fragile. In a dream anything could happen next: she might suddenly find herself forty years younger, Derek and Roy might be alive. She might be even younger; Dr Ramsey might be telling her she was pregnant. In a television play it would be different: the children who had come to her house might kill her. What she hoped for from reality was that order would be restored in her kitchen, that all the paint would be washed away from her walls as she had wiped it from her carpets, that the misunderstanding would be over. For an instant she saw herself in her kitchen, making tea for the children, saying it didn’t matter. She even heard herself adding that in a life as long as hers you became used to everything.
She left the bathroom; the blare of the transistor still persisted. She didn’t want to sit in her sitting-room, having to listen to it. She climbed the stairs to her bedroom, imagining the coolness there, and the quietness.
