Marina Lewycka: The Lubetkin Legacy

A sudden squawk from Flossie interrupted my train of thought. ‘Shut up, Flossie!’

Yes, Flossie was right — I must shut up. Despite her niceness, she was the local agent of ‘Them’ — the shadowy bureaucracy that Mother had warned me about — probably on a reconnaissance mission.

‘She sup-ports me too,’ I replied. ‘We look after each other.’

‘I’ve got this tenancy registered to a Mr and Mrs Madeley,’ she said. ‘Is that right?’

‘She remarried. She’s now Mrs Lukashenko.’

‘Luckychinko? That’s a pretty name. Chinese, is it?’

‘Ukrainian, actually. Her last husband was Ukrainian.’

‘Mm.’ She scribbled something in her file.

Mrs Penny was impressed, as most people are, by the sitting room with its rooftop view over London towards the City. My father, Wicked Sid Sidebottom, Mum’s second husband, who’d been a bit of a handyman when he wasn’t being wicked, had put up the bookshelves in the living room, giving the flat a genteelly bohemian air, though the books were mostly his thrillers and Mum’s romances, interspersed with a few leather-bound classics for gravitas. The floor was carpeted with Persian rugs, rescued by Lev ‘Lucky’ Lukashenko, her last husband, from a fire-damaged warehouse — they still retained a faint whiff of their smoky odour. The walls were cluttered with pictures and photographs which had fascinated me as a child, though now I barely noticed them. Without wanting to appear snobbish, I would guess it was a notch above your average council flat.

‘My, it’s spacious! May I?’

Without waiting for a reply, she opened the door to my bedroom and stepped inside. There was something so presumptuous, so rudely intrusive, in this action it was as if she had yanked down my underpants to examine my private parts. Worse, in fact, because at least I can confirm that my privates are clean. My room was as untidy as Mum’s but in a different way. Dead coffee cups, stacks of newspapers and theatre magazines, sports shoes, T-shirts and cycling gear instead of soiled silk.

‘I’m afraid it’s a bit of a mess.’ Why the hell was I apologising to her?

‘Don’t worry. You should see some of the places I visit, Mr Luckyshtonko. Is that another bedroom you’ve got through there?’

Alarm bells started ringing in my head and Mother’s last words rang in my ears. I remembered the beep … beep … beep and the terrible groan when it stopped.

‘It’s just a small study.’

What I didn’t say was that when Howard lived with us — he was my father’s son by a previous marriage — that little study had been my bedroom. What was it Inna had said about the under-bed tax? My heart thumped. While Mrs Penny was taking notes, I decided to make a pre-emptive move.

‘I would like to register the tenancy in my name. Would there be any p-problem with me taking it over from my mother?’

‘Hm.’ Mrs Penny sucked the end of her biro nervously. ‘No, not normally a problem, Mr Lucky-s-stinker. You need to satisfy certain conditions. For example, you would need to demonstrate your relationship with the tenant, and you would need to provide evidence that you have actually lived here as your main abode for the last two years.’

‘Fine. No problem.’

‘But in the challenging currently prevailing climate of acute multi-causal public sector housing defectiveness, I mean deficiency, and a major increase in the number of deserving qualified decent hard-working local families on local authority waiting lists, the Council is spearheading a multi-fanged, I mean — pranged. No, sorry, I mean a multi-pronged initiative. To counteract incidence of under-occupancy in the borough.’ She spoke too fast, mangling the words between her teeth. ‘It means that a tenant in receipt of housing benefit might incur an under-occupancy charge. According to the Council’s newly formulated criteria, this flat could be classed as having too many rooms.’

‘Too many rooms?’ She should see where George bloody Clooney lives.

‘I’m just doing my job,’ she murmured, blushing rather sweetly and lowering her head to flick through her file. ‘But don’t worry, the rule doesn’t apply to pensioners. Your mother is still living here, isn’t she?’

‘Yes.’ As I said it, a spasm tightened my jaw. But it was too late. The word had bolted. ‘She’s just popped out to the shops,’ I added, for realism.

Mrs Penny smiled. Her face was pretty, her features delicate and doll-like, despite her age. ‘Oh, where does she go for her shopping?’

‘Er … just around the corner.’

‘I live locally myself. The area has improved so much, hasn’t it? There’s even a Waitrose not far away.’

‘Mm.’ I made a mental note to avoid Waitrose from now on. ‘She goes out quite a lot.’

‘Important to keep active at her age. How old is she, by the way?’

‘Eighty-two.’

Mrs Penny made another note.

‘Well, the easiest thing would be for her just to sign a little form to put the tenancy jointly in your names, in the event of her death or mental disability. But no rush. Just keep us informed of any change of circumstances, won’t you, Mr Looka-skansko?’

‘Of course.’

She stowed her notebook in her handbag.

I watched through the window as she crossed the grove and squeezed herself into a small red car parked on the far side. Then I flopped down on the sofa. The whole encounter had been far more stressful than I had imagined. Fortunately the sherry bottle was not quite empty.

‘God is dead!’ Flossie called.

‘Shut up, Flossie.’

‘Shut up, Flossie,’ Flossie retorted. The Dom‒sub relationship only applied with Mum. She and I would have to fight it out now.

‘Shut up, Flossie. I need to think!’

What I was thinking, as with a trembling hand I poured the last drops of sweet sherry into a chipped crystal glass, is that frankly, when you think about it, one dotty old lady is pretty much like another, isn’t she? If a substitute were to appear in Mum’s place, who would know the difference?

One thing you can say about the English weather — it keeps you on your toes; it toughens you up to face the general spitefulness of life. Although it was almost mid-April, black clouds were bunched above the church spire as I cycled back to the hospital later that day, and a sudden cannonade of hailstones forced me to seek shelter under a greengrocer’s awning. Bunches of bright daffodils winking from a bucket caught my eye. Good idea. She’d appreciate them.

In the bed where Mother had died yesterday, a new occupant was already installed, a slight grey shape on the freshly laundered palimpsest. But where was the old woman Inna?

‘Sss! Mister Bertie! Come here!’

She’d been moved to a bed by the window. The cardboard bowl had less than a centimetre of mucus. I realised she must be on the mend. Her hair was pulled back into two neat silver plaits coiled around her head and she was wearing elaborate cat’s-eye spectacles whose frames sparkled at the corners with diamanté. Behind them her eyes were bright and alert. Even her skin had plumped out so the wrinkles appeared less deep. I guessed that at one time she must have been an attractive woman, with bold dark eyebrows and high cheekbones. Even now, as she turned away from the light, traces of beauty lingered in the curves and hollows of her face.

‘Hello, Inna. I came to see you.’

She accepted the daffodils with a gracious nod, and patted my hand. ‘Aha, you already missing you mama, poor Mister Bertie. She was great lady. Almost like saint.’ Her eyes rolled heavenward.

Although I loved my mother, I couldn’t help feeling that Inna was exaggerating a bit. She can’t have known her for much more than a day.