TT 3 - A Len in the Loft

Alison Carduggan leans across the rose bed to scatter some bird seed onto the kitchen window sill. She looks on with satisfaction as the pigeon that has been watching her from the top of the hen coop flutters down to peck at the morsels. When she returns to the vicarage kitchen she finds the back end of Len Magma protruding from the cupboard under the sink.
“Can I help you Len?” Alison asks.
“I’m looking for a long piece of wire Mrs Carduggan” Len replies, his head still inside the cupboard.
“Well there’s nothing like that under there.”
“Are you sure?” Len withdraws his head and looks up at her, his big, gold-framed glasses magnifying his eyes alarmingly.
“I’m absolutely sure.” Alison replies. “Will a wire coat-hanger do?”
“Ah, a coat-hanger. Maybe, yes, maybe I could do something with that.”

When Alison returns with the coat-hanger her face is organised for genial banter but the room is empty. "Oh!" She spots an old envelope propped up against the tea-pot. There is a message pencilled on it in capital letters.

Thank you for the coat-hanger Mrs Carduggan, please leave it outside my bedroom door. PTO.

She turns the note over.

I would prefer it being if you do not go into my room. I’m sure you understand this because you are a very kind lady. LM

It has never occurred to Alison to go up into Len’s room in the loft. In fact, up until now, she has felt no curiosity about Len Magma at all. He is just ‘the lodger’, as inevitable and insignificant a part of their daily existence as ‘the milkman’ or ‘the hens’. She takes the coat hanger and makes her way up to the top of the house. She places the hanger on the top step outside Len’s room and is about to go back down the stairs when the thought occurs to her that perhaps she should just take a quick look – it is her house after all and goodness only knows what he might be getting up to in there. She knows that Len has left the house but she still puts her ear to the door and listens carefully, just to make sure. Silence. She taps gently but there is no response. Holding her breath, she turns the handle and slowly pushes open the door.

The room is dark and at first she is alone with the smell that seeps out of the shadows: gents urinal over laundry basket with perhaps just a hint of feline gingivitis. Slowly, however, a picture of loneliness and despair emerges from the gloom: a slack fawn cardigan slumped over the upturned table lamp, a cigarette stubbed out on a wedge of ham and pineapple pizza, stained Y-fronts suspended from the central light fitting. Alison crosses to the window to let in some air but as she pulls aside the mildewed curtains further horror awaits: on the window sill, in the sudden burst of light, stands a Bell’s Whiskey bottle filled with a cloudy yellow liquid. Surely not! Alison sniffs tentatively then recoils, her hand over her nose. Good Lord! It is. It’s urine. This perhaps more than anything else in the room signals to her Len Magma’s return, like an untended garden, to a rank and wild state. So finally Alison contemplates the reality of Len. What it is to be Len; to return alone each night from the pub to this. Alison flings open the window sending her friendly pigeon fluttering into the air.

The Reverand Douglas Carduggan - or, as Alison likes to refer to him in her weekly column in the parish newsletter, ‘The Man in Black’- is working in his study. She rarely disturbs him there but on this occasion she feels justified. She taps gently on the door and opens it. Her husband is leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed. Behind him, the window is open and ivy leaves bob in and out of view. He holds a fountain pen in his hand and a blank notepad is positioned in front of him on the antique cherry wood desk.
“Hello” Alison says gently.
“Oh, hello” He opens his eyes and smiles. “Bit stuck for inspiration for tomorrow’s sermon.”
“How does afternoon tea sound?”
“Ah, now that’s a splendid idea.”
Alison soon returns with a tray of tea and scones and a jar of her home made plum jam. They sit for a few minutes in what Douglas likes to call ‘companionable silence’.
“It appears that Len has some difficulties with personal hygiene.” Alison says at last.
“What do you mean?” Her husband asks.
“Oh dear. Well, I probably shouldn’t have, but I popped my head round his door just now, when I was cleaning, and well, he keeps bottles of urine on the window sill!
“Goodness!” says Reverend Carduggan, “How Extraordinary!”
“He must be quite depressed’ Alison says.

Douglas puts down his cup and saucer. ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right. And I rather suspect he, you know’ he mimes a tipping action with his wrist, ‘likes a drop or two.’
“I wonder if he has any family.’ Alison says. ‘Someone who might help him”
“Does he want to be helped, do you think?”
“Well…” This throws Alison for a moment. “Well, surely he can’t be happy, living like that. And sometimes, just one person showing an interest…”
“Well, if anyone can do that, my dear, it’s you.” says Douglas, mopping up the last of the scone crumbs with a pudgy finger tip. He returns to his note-pad but Alison hasn’t finished.
“Perhaps if he had a nice hobby. I was thinking, we could make a little workshop for him in the barn. I’m sure all your old woodworking tools are still out there somewhere, underneath all the junk.”
“Do you think he’d be interested in that sort of thing?”
“Well, I don’t see why not. He’s nothing much else to do.”
“Well, why don’t you mention it to him. I’m sure he’ll be most grateful.” Douglas grasps his notepad and begins scribbling decisively. “And I’ve just thought of a splendid woodturning metaphor for the love of Jesus.”
Alison gets up and leaves discretely so as not to disturb the ‘MIB’ when he’s ‘online’ with ‘The Chap Upstairs’.

Alison decides to make an immediate start on the workshop for Len. When she opens the barn door it is in a far worse state than she remembers and the thought of clearing out all the old junk and restoring it to cleanliness and order suddenly fills her with an unusally deep feeling of satisfaction. She tries the switch by the door and is surprised to find that the light still works. She has brought with her a small radio which she turns on and tunes into Radio 4. A deep, warm, cultivated voice annnounces the first in a six part series on the history of the wheelbarrow.

For the next couple of hours Alison systematically goes to work on the barn, only pausing now and again to push her hair out of her eyes. She stacks all the old off-cuts of wood into one corner. She clears the top of the workbench and places all the small tools in the shelving unit Douglas has built in the corner. She sweeps the floor and tips the mounds of dust, wood-shavings and rusty nails into a bin-liner which she secures with a sturdy knot and deposits for collection at the side of the house. By the time she has fetched a bucket of warm soapy water for the window it is beginning to get dark. She wipes a clean swathe through the film of dust and uncovers on the other side of the glass the sight of Douglas ambling towards the barn, hands in pocket and whistling to himself. He opens the door.

‘My goodness - what a transformation!’
‘I think this will make a lovely little den for Len’ Alison squeezes her sponge out in the bucket.’
‘Oh, you’ve gone and cut yourself, my dear.’
Alison raises her arm and sees a nasty cut, still bleeding slightly. There are dried trails of blood that spread out towards her elbow and large patches of red-brown blood on the rolled up sleeve of her blouse.
‘Goodness - what a mess you’ve made of yourself.’ Douglas says, his words aspirated by a slightly patronising little laugh.
‘Oh yes’ Alison clutches her arm awkwardly against herself, ‘silly me’ and she feels more foolish than alarmed.

Once Alison has washed the dried blood away the injury looks much less severe but it’s a deepish cut. She sits on the lid of the lavatory and dabs at it with some antiseptic cream, then cuts off a length of elastoplast. The dark pink strip looks alien against her own pale, freckled skin. She watches a waffle of brown blood dots appear in the weave of the fabric. Alison puts the first-aid box away and opens the bathroom door but is prevented from leaving by Len who stands facing her in the doorway.
‘Oh!” she places her hand over her heart, gasping slightly. ‘Sorry Len, you made me jump.’
‘Hello Mrs Carduggan.
Alison makes a little move forward but her lodger doesn’t step back so she has to converse with him from the bathroom doorway.
‘How are you, Len?’
‘Fine’ his voice is nasal and monotone and a flat ribbon of greasy dark hair falls over one lens of his spectacles. Alison struggles to think of further comments.

‘Oh, Len, there was something I wanted to mention to you. Douglas used to have a carpentry workshop in the barn, I mean nothing special, but perfectly usable, but he doesn’t really have the time any more, and well, I know you’re quite handy with things, always looking around for bits of wood and wire and so on and so I was wondering if you could make use of it for a little ‘atelier’’ she laughs nervously - does Len knows what an atelier is? - ‘….a little workshop.’ She finally pauses for breath. ‘Well, anyway, if you’d like to, you’d be more than welcome.’
‘Ah, Mrs Carduggan, you and your family really are the most kind people..’ Len trails off and for a horrible moment Alison thinks he is trembling slightly.

As she gets ready for bed that evening, Alison notices a streak of dried blood on the side of the wash basin. At first, she is inclined to wipe it off with a spit dampened tissue but then it occurs to her that this is a bit of a ‘Len’ thing to do. When Douglas, who is in bed reading Conversations with God, comes to see what’s keeping her, he finds her in her nightdress, feverishly cleaning the entire bathroom from scratch.