Back in his flat, the lower one of two in a converted Victorian terraced house, he tore up Willis’s card and, for good measure,
burned the pieces in an ashtray. He followed that by going into the pint-sized garden that came with the apartment and lighting a ceremonial bonfire of anything that connected him to the army
– commission papers, regimental documents, pay slips, medical board reports. He would have tossed his old fatigues on to the flames as well if the woman above him hadn’t shouted out of her window that what he was doing was illegal.
Taking breaths to compose himself, Acland raised his head to look at her, shielding his eye with one hand. He’d avoided her as far as possible, put off by her excessive show of friendliness on the day he took over the lease, and the way she reminded him of Jen. He could have tolerated any other tenant, but not a woman who demanded attention.
She’d arrived at his door with a bottle of wine, entered without invitation, shortened his name to Charlie and insisted that he call her by her nickname, Kitten. In short order, he learned that she was a thirty-five-year-old divorcee with two children, that her ex was a two-timing bastard, that she was lonely, that she thought Charlie’s eyepatch was ‘cute’ and that she was always up for a night out as long as somebody else paid.
After an hour of making an effort to be polite – he was about to spend six months with this woman as a neighbour – Acland’s responses became increasingly monosyllabic. There was nothing about her that attracted him. She even looked like Jen. Blonde, vacuously pretty with large mascaraed eyes, and a body like a beanpole, clad in tight jeans and a cropped top. She drank most of the bottle, but couldn’t hold the alcohol and veered between vicious remarks about her ex’s new wife and clumsy, slurred attempts to tell Charlie she found him attractive. When she asked him coyly if she was outstaying her welcome, he delivered a curt yes and her mask slipped abruptly.
Playful flirting gave way to hissing antagonism. She was only trying to be friendly. What sort of woman did he think she was? Acland listened to her without comment, wondering what she’d expected from him. Sex? Admiration? Whichever, he turned from being ‘cute’ to ‘sick’ in the time it took her to stumble to his door.
Her subsequent spite took the form of petty nuisances – intrusive noise from upstairs, litter thrown into the garden or in front of his door, watching to see when he left and when he came in. On the outside, he presented a frigid indifference; on the inside her behaviour ate away at the fragile respect he still had for her sex. The whole experience was a dangerously negative one for a man as alienated as Acland. In the end, her only achievement was to reinforce his distrust of women.
He saw a movement in the upstairs window of the next-door house and shifted his gaze from Kitten to their elderly neighbour. It was hard to tell from the man’s disapproving expression whether his grievance was with the bonfire or with Kitten’s colourful language about Acland’s criminal behaviour.
‘You’re a fucking moron!’ Kitten finished angrily. ‘I’ll call the police if you don’t put that bloody thing out now.’
Behind her, Acland caught a glimpse of a child’s anxious face. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘It’s not illegal, it’s just not encouraged in case people like you complain. The police have better things to do than explain to a screeching harridan that she’s got her facts wrong.’ He saw the child pluck at her sleeve, then jump away to avoid a vicious jab from her elbow.
‘It’s the summer, for Christ’s sake,’ she hissed. ‘Do you know what the temperature is? We’ll all go up if a spark hits the fence. Can’t you see that? Or are you blind in both fucking eyes?’
Acland looked at the fire. ‘It’s under control,’ he murmured, using his foot to nudge the remains of a cardboard folder towards the dying flames.
‘No, it’s not. My baby’s choking on the smoke. Do you want me to sue you when he gets asthma? You’re so damn selfish. Don’t they teach you about climate change in the army?’
‘There’d be no point. You don’t count pollutants when an oil well blows up, you just count the corpses. Have you ever seen a body burned to the bone while it’s still alive? The stink’s so bad you can’t go within ten yards without breathing apparatus. All you can do is watch the poor bastard die . . . and that’s not pretty.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ she said angrily. ‘I don’t want my kids having nightmares.’
‘Then don’t pretend one little fire in London does more damage than what’s going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every time a Tornado takes off the ozone layer takes another hit.’ He watched his army medical card melt and curl. ‘War destroys everything. Better your children understand that now. It’ll give them a chance to enjoy their lives before the world goes up in flames.’
But she wasn’t interested in philosophy. ‘Don’t you tell me how to raise my kids. At least they don’t run around the streets half-naked and shout their heads off in the middle of the fucking night. You’re a headcase. It wouldn’t surprise me if you’re the gay killer. You’re psycho enough for it.’
Acland hadn’t realized that his terrifying awakenings from nightmares were loud enough to carry to the floor above. He squinted up at her again. ‘What gay killer?’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know.’
He eyed her for a moment, then trod out the ashes with his shoe. ‘You should see a psychiatrist,’ he said. ‘Someone ought to tell you that the reason men don’t want to have sex with you isn’t because they’re gay. It’s because you’re a complete turn-off. Your husband proved that by leaving.’
‘Bastard!’ She threw something at him – a china ornament – but it missed and fell with a thud into some weeds by the fence. ‘You don’t know anything about me.’
Acland’s fingers itched to retrieve the missile and launch it back again – there was no way he would miss – but he held himself in check. ‘I know enough not to want to know any more,’ he said with sudden resolve, heading towards his french windows. ‘I’m out of here as soon as I’ve packed my stuff.’
*
He rued his spur-of-the-moment decision as soon as he was back inside. With five months of his tenancy left he would be paying rent on an empty space until the agents could be bothered to advertise for another occupant. But there was no going back on it. The bitch upstairs would have a field day if he changed his mind.
In any case, he knew he couldn’t go on like this. Something had to change. At times the pains in his head were unbearable.
He resisted any impulse to take up Jackson’s offer of a bed. If he thought Kitten would gloat over a change of mind, he could just imagine what Jackson would say if he crawled back in under twenty-four hours with his tail between his legs. He was more inclined to listen to Robert Willis’s voice inside his head, even if burning the card had been an attempt to cut his ties with the man.
‘We can all walk out, Charles – it’s the fashionable thing to do these days – it’s asking to be let back in that takes courage.’
On another spur-of-the-moment decision, he called a cab and gave the driver the name of the road that Willis’s colleague, Susan Campbell, lived in. ‘Which number, mate?’
‘I can’t remember. Just go slowly when we get there. I’ll recognize the front door when I see it.’