‘Come along, Arthur,’ he says to the boy, and the boy, still without looking up from his phone, gets up and follows him towards the flats.
Berthold: Unaccommodated Man
It was as I feared. Letting Inna go out in the cherry grove on her own was risky. Although she had obeyed my instructions to the letter by telling Mrs Crazy she was my mother, Mrs Crazy of course smelled a rat, and she was just the vindictive type to go telling tales to the authorities. She stopped me in the grove on my way to Luigi’s.
‘Berthold, who is this foreigner impersonating your mother?’ She pulled herself up stiffly; the polythene shower cap protecting her platinum bouffant sweated in the sun. ‘Your mother has gone through many changes, Berthold, and not all for the better. She may have embraced communism, but she never came from Odessa. I know, because Pastor Cracey and me went there on a deluxe cruise for our honeymoon.’
Bloody hell. Why did Inna have to mention Odessa? It took me a full twenty minutes of RADA-schooled performance with tearful eyes and quavers in my throat to persuade her that Lily was still in hospital and the twisted ankle had turned out to be a multiple-fractured leg — yes, with complications, Multi-Antibiotic-Resistant-Whatsit — and that Inna was, in fact, her sister, tragically struck with dementia, who had forgotten who she was. Yes, dementia made her talk funny. No, they didn’t look alike, that’s because they had different fathers. Yes, I do believe her father was actually of Ukrainian origin — really? Did Inna say she’s from Odessa? Ha ha — I expect she’s been watching travel programmes on TV. What she means is Ossett. Ossett in Yorkshire.
Ossett was a town lodged in my memory as the birthplace of my father, Sidney Sidebottom, Lily’s ex-husband, but I doubted Mrs Crazy knew this. She eyed me with suspicion. Legless Len came to my rescue with a meandering account of his late wife’s illness, which involved dementia, aphasia, amnesia, with a bit of mistaken identity and inappropriate behaviour thrown in, all of which he had endured with wisdom, wit and the occasional whisky. Len can vex the dull ear of a drowsy man, but sometimes it’s useful.
‘Are you sure you’re not getting just a little bit confused yourself, Mrs Cracey?’ I adeptly turned the tables on her, and she flounced off to the communal potting shed.
Still, it was a bad omen.
When Inna came in later with her shopping bags from one of her long afternoon outings, I sat her down and told her we must practise some techniques to enable her to perform the part of my mother better.
‘You see, my mother was often confused,’ I explained. ‘She didn’t know who she was. That’s what we must aim for.’
She looked at me acutely. ‘Lily like Soviet pioneer, Mister Bertie. No confused. I tell this crazy lady I am you mama, she tell me she seen you mother tooken in hospital wit ambulance.’
Bloody Mrs Crazy. She’s the consummate curtain-twitcher. ‘So what did you say, Inna?’
‘I said I seen her in hospital.’
‘That’s good, Inna, that’s very good. I told Mrs Crazy you are my mother’s sister, so naturally you would visit her in hospital.’
‘Aha! So I am mother or sister?’
‘Sometimes my mother, sometimes her sister. I tell you what, Inna, the best thing is to pretend that you are totally confused. Pretend you don’t know who you are. That should cover all eventualities.’
‘Oy, Mister Bertie! You are actor, I am not actor!’
She was beginning to cough and I could see a green phlegm moment coming on, so I grasped her hand.
‘You just have to talk about philosophy, while cultivating an absent expression. Like this.’ I rolled my eyes upwards, revealing the blank whites. I have played many fools and madmen in my time, but my favourite is Lear’s Fool, where the wisdom is concealed inside the madness. ‘Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.’
And unless Inna learned her part, I was in danger of becoming unaccommodated.
‘What is mean un-commandant?’
‘It means homeless. But it also means that we derive our station and our place in society from where we live. Underneath our finery, we are all naked.’
She looked alarmed. ‘You want I be naked?’
‘No, Inna. Shakespeare is full of double meanings. Just pretend to be a homeless madman.’ I flapped my arms and swivelled my eyes. ‘With hey, ho, the wind and the rain! Like you’re listening to the sound of an approaching storm on the blasted heath.’
She listened, cocking her head. ‘I can hear no storm.’
‘The storm is not there. It’s in your mind.’
‘Aha!’ She looked at me beadily. ‘You are too clever for me, Mister Bertie. Better I not pretend nothing, better I just cooking golabki kobaski slatki.’
‘Don’t lose heart.’ I patted her arm. ‘You can do it. Just say anything that comes into your head, and listen for the coming storm.’
‘Like this?’ She slid her eyes upwards and sideways, Kinski-style. I was impressed.
‘God is dead!’ Flossie squawked from her perch.
‘Shut up, Indunky Smeet! Devil-bird! God is not dead, he is risen!’ cried Inna.
It was perfect.
‘Let’s take a break for dinner,’ I suggested. ‘Bring on the globalki!’
Violet: Gillian
Global Resource Management: even the name makes Violet feel overwhelmed by the extent of her new responsibilities. The job is both more challenging and more interesting than she’d thought at first, and she starts to imagine herself growing into it until she too will be storming like a tiger into the Lloyd’s Building and winning contracts by the sheer power of her research.
After her afternoon out with Gillian, she feels a new respect for her boss’s talent. So when Gillian hints one morning over a cup of organic ashwagandha that in a man’s world it’s important for women to dress in a feminine but businesslike style, her heart sinks. Does that mean turning up for work in tailored suits and pussycat bows? Please! She thought her straight skirts and opaque tights were businesslike enough, but apparently Gillian thinks otherwise.
When she mentions her difficulties with the shopping mall proposal, Gillian replies in her schoolmistressy voice, ‘Every risk is insurable at a price, Violet. You have to match the underwriter to the risk. Some of the people we met at Lloyd’s specialise in problem risks.’ Then she gives what is probably meant to be a reassuring smile.
Violet returns to her dossier trying not to show her dejection. She had gone into her new job bouncing with confidence. Now at the end of her first month she is wondering whether she has chosen the wrong career.
Then on the Friday afternoon something miraculous happens.
She is summoned into Gillian’s office to be told that Laura has gone into labour prematurely and has been taken into hospital — and as the Wealth Preservation Unit is under a lot of pressure, would she mind very much taking a temporary secondment to that department starting next week?
Would she mind very much? She struggles to control the grin that tugs at the corners of her mouth.
Berthold: Slatki
Something miraculous has happened.
The beautiful black girl from Luigi’s has moved in next door. I saw her catching the lift, poised behind the closing doors as I approached, like a goddess about to ascend to Elysium. I raced up the stairs and was in time to see her letting herself into the next-door flat with her key. (Since losing my bike, I do sometimes climb the stairs in a fruitless attempt to stay svelte — I hadn’t realised how pissy they were.) Since then, I have been thinking of ways of introducing myself. I must stock up on sugar, in case she decides to borrow a cup. Or coffee. Ah! ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, I’m having a dinner party, and I’ve run out of coffee’. One little-known fact about that iconic 1980s Nescafé Gold Blend ad is that I, Berthold Sidebottom, actually auditioned for the part. Okay, smarmy Tony Head got it, but that doesn’t mean I’m barred from using the lines. Then of course George bloody Clooney got in on the act with that fussy coffee machine and its overpriced capsules. Ristretto! A woman would have to be unbelievably shallow to fall for that.