All Mrs Malby dreaded now was becoming senile and being forced to enter the Sunset Home in Richmond, of which the Reverend Bush and Miss Tingle warmly spoke. The thought of a communal existence, surrounded by other elderly people, with sing-songs and card-games, was anathema to her. All her life she had hated anything that smacked of communal jolliness, refusing even to go on coach trips. She loved the house above the green-grocer’s shop. She loved walking down the stairs and out on to the street, nodding at the Kings as she went by the shop, buying birdseed and eggs and fire-lighters, and fresh bread from Bob Skipps, a man of sixty-two whom she’d remembered being born.
The dread of having to leave Catherine Street ordered her life. With all her visitors she was careful, constantly on the lookout for signs in their eyes which might mean they were diagnosing her as senile. It was for this reason that she listened so intently to all that was said to her, that she concentrated, determined to let nothing slip by. It was for this reason that she smiled and endeavoured to appear agreeable and cooperative at all times. She was well aware that it wasn’t going to be up to her to state that she was senile, or to argue that she wasn’t, when the moment came.
After the teacher from Tite Comprehensive School had left, Mrs Malby continued to worry. The visit from this grey-haired man had bewildered her from the start. There was the oddity of his not giving his name, and then the way he’d placed a cigarette in his mouth and had taken it out again, putting it back in the packet. Had he imagined cigarette smoke would offend her? He could have asked, but in fact he hadn’t even referred to the cigarette. Nor had he said where he’d heard about her: he hadn’t mentioned the Reverend Bush, for instance, or Mrs Grove and Mrs Halbert, or Miss Tingle. He might have been a customer in the greengrocer’s shop, but he hadn’t given any indication that that was so. Added to which, and most of all, there was the consideration that her kitchen wasn’t in the least in need of attention. She went to look at it again, beginning to wonder if there were things about it she couldn’t see. She went over in her mind what the man had said about community relations. It was difficult to resist men like that, you had to go on repeating yourself and after a while you had to assess if you were sounding senile or not. There was also the consideration that the man was trying to do good, helping children from broken homes.
‘Hi,’ a boy with long blond hair said to her on the Tuesday morning. There were two other boys with him, one with a fuzz of dark curls all round his head, the other red-haired, a greased shock that hung to his shoulders. There was a girl as well, thin and beaky-faced, chewing something. Between them they carried tins of paint, brushes, cloths, a blue plastic bucket and a transistor radio. ‘We come to do your kitchen out,’ the blond boy said. ‘You Mrs Wheeler then?’
‘No, no. I’m Mrs Malby.’
‘That’s right, Billo,’ the girl said. ‘Malby.’
‘I thought he says Wheeler.’
‘Wheeler’s the geyser in the paint shop,’ the fuzzy-haired boy said.
‘Typical Billo,’ the girl said.
She let them in, saying it was very kind of them. She led them to the kitchen, remarking on the way that strictly speaking it wasn’t in need of decoration, as they could see for themselves. She’d been thinking it over, she added: she wondered if they’d just like to wash the walls down, which was a task she found difficult to do herself?
They’d do whatever she wanted, they said, no problem. They put their paint tins on the table. The red-haired boy turned on the radio. ‘Welcome back to Open House’, a cheery voice said and then reminded its listeners that it was the voice of Pete Murray. It said that a record was about to be played for someone in Upminster.
‘Would you like some coffee?’ Mrs Malby suggested above the noise of the transistor.
‘Great,’ the blond boy said.
They all wore blue jeans with patches on them. The girl had a T-shirt with the words I Lay Down With Jesus on it. The others wore T-shirts of different colours, the blond boy’s orange, the fuzzy one’s light blue, the red-haired one’s red. Hot Jam-roll a badge on the chest of the blond boy said; Jaws and Bay City Rollers other badges said.
Mrs Malby made them Nescafé while they listened to the music. They lit cigarettes, leaning about against the electric stove and against the edge of the table and against a wall. They didn’t say anything because they were listening. ‘That’s a load of crap,’ the red-haired boy pronounced eventually, and the others agreed. Even so they went on listening. ‘Pete Murray’s crappy,’ the girl said.
Mrs Malby handed them the cups of coffee, drawing their attention to the sugar she’d put out for them on the table, and to the milk. She smiled at the girl. She said again that it was a job she couldn’t manage any more, washing walls.
‘Get that, Billo?’ the fuzzy-haired boy said. ‘Washing walls.’
‘Who loves ya, baby?’ Billo replied.
Mrs Malby closed the kitchen door on them, hoping they wouldn’t take too long because the noise of the transistor was so loud. She listened to it for a quarter of an hour and then she decided to go out and do her shopping.
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.