Wednesday, December 29, 2010

The Man Next Door. Chapter 21.

Mother: Is the man next door at home or isn't he?

Am I hearing him working on his house, or is it something else?

Sometimes I hear him stapling, up under his roof, but the noise I'm hearing now sounds like such a pathetic attempt at stapling that it must be one of the ghosts next door trying to learn how to use a staple gun.



NEXT MORNING.

Mother: There is no evidence that the man next door is at home, yet his back door is open.


Alpha: Maybe the ghosts next door have learned how to unlock and open his door.


Mother: They could've been fascinated by the challenge of unlocking his back door, which has a padlocked chain that goes through a hole in the back door, around bars of the security door, then back through another hole in the back door.


Alpha: Do ghosts unlock or open doors? Or do they just pass through doors and walls?


Mother: Do they ever pass through walls from one house to another?



ANOTHER DAY

There's a scraping noise that I regularly hear through the wall, in the man next door's roof space. Is it made by the man next door, or by birds, maybe by the pair of Indian Mynahs who hang around, and who could easily get in through one of the open upstairs windows, and poke around in his house?

Last time I heard that noise the man next door must have been at home, because next morning, early, I heard a power saw in use in his back yard, so close to his back door that I couldn't see anything from my window.


Daughter: I don't like the way you spy on the man next door.


Mother: I'm not spying. I'm just noticing what goes on, because the man next door's life is interesting enough to deserve to be noticed.


Alpha: Finishing the work on his house looks like a five year project!


Mother: He must have been working on it that long already.



NEXT MORNING.

Mother: This morning, just after daybreak, I was woken by a racket outside, with lots of scratching and galloping noises, as a cat hurled itself around while chasing birds on our roof.

I didn't get to the window in time to see what cat was involved, but I did see the pair of Indian Mynahs flap to the safety of the chimney top.

I'm hoping that the cat was not the black cat I saw recently on our deck.

I really liked the look of that cat. There was something very intelligent and dignified about it.

Maybe even something mysterious.


Daughter: I know that black cat. It often comes around. It even comes inside the house if the back door is open.

It comes into the kitchen, and if no one is there it ventures into the sitting room, confidently looking in on whoever is sitting there, checking things out and seeing what we are up to.

It probably checks up on lots of other people too.

I see it all over the place, looking at home wherever it goes.


ONE MORNING, A WEEK OR SO LATER.

Mother: Did you hear the loud rumbling noises in next door, and what sounded like a cascade of timber sliding down the stairs.


Daughter: What I did hear was some roofing iron being moved around somewhere in the house.



A FEW DAYS LATER.

Mother: Now there is absolutely no doubt that the man next door is at home.

First I heard him upstairs last night, while it was raining, swearing quietly, and talking to his girlfriend, as he pulled sisalation back up, over the upstairs back window.

Then, today, you can hear loud creaking as he walks around on his high roof.

Sometimes there's the loud noise of a power tool as he screws roofing iron in place, and you can hear the sound of a metal ladder being moved around, and repositioned, in the upstairs back room.

Next thing there is loud hammering and banging.



LATER.

Mother: I was waiting to cross at the lights when a voice behind me said..."That's my neighbour."

I turned, and repeated ...."That's my neighbour!", after I recognised that one of the two men standing outside the door of the pub was the man next door.

"I thought you were up on your roof" ... I said.

The man next door replied with ... "I was, but I just came here to get away from the dust."

"I'll be back up there soon."

I noticed that the man next door was covered all over in grey dust. Even his face was now very grey, rather than red.

Just his pale blue eyes stood out, like headlights, with an other-worldly look about them.

Surprisingly, by the time I got back from my walk, the man next door was back up on his roof.


Daughter: He must be on a roll.


Mother: Just now, when I was in the bathroom, the man next door was walking around near the edge of his roof, almost straight above me. I tried not to focus on him, so he wouldn't fall.


ANOTHER DAY.

Daughter: This morning I woke from the strangest dream.

We were all packed up with food and going somewhere for Xmas.

It was a long, difficult journey on steep, windy roads, through rainforest, and when we arrived and unpacked our things I found that I had forgotten two important items .... a bottle of apple cider vinegar and a bottle of Waterfords Apple and Ginger drink.

Since it had been my responsibility to bring these things I made a decision, and announced ... "I'll have to go back."

After discussion it was decided that the only way was by bus.

Soon after I got on the bus someone warned me, saying "this bus is usually held up by bandits."

"If you have any money they will find it, and take it, and if you resist they will kill you."

I looked in my handbag and found wads and wads of money, which I wanted to hide,

I stuffed them inside the desert boots I was wearing till I had big, wide feet.

Then I looked again in my handbag, and found a purse containing even more wads of money.


Mother: What happened next?


Daughter: That's all I can remember.

I must have been woken up, before anything really bad happened.

Monday, December 13, 2010

The Man Next Door. Chapter 20.

Daughter: I just saw a dead man lying in the street!


Mother: Where?


Daughter: Not far from the station, just past the little shop.


Mother: What did he look like?


Daughter: Middle-aged, with grey hair.


Mother: Maybe he's the man who begun begging there a few days ago. Yesterday he was half lying on the footpath and there was something angry and unpleasant about him.

I guessed he was drunk, but maybe he looked angry because he just wanted to be drunk.

Are you sure he was really dead.?


Daughter: Well, I had a good look at him, and he didn't seem to be alive.


Mother: Not much can be done for him now, if he really is dead.



LATER.

Mother: Since I didn't have time to cook anything for lunch today it was lucky that I managed to buy the last bbq chicken at the shop. On my way there I saw the extremely fat man coming back with his usual purchase of two bbq chickens, and I hoped he hadn't bought the last two.


Daughter: You know, I've noticed that the extremely fat man has a pointy nose and a pointy chin, so that his face looks like the face you sometimes see drawn on the moon.



NEXT DAY.

Mother: I saw the man you thought was dead sitting begging again, in the same place.



A WEEK OR SO LATER.

Daughter: The man I thought was dead has disappeared.


Mother: Yes, I haven't seen him either. I wonder what became of him.

He reminded me of a man I began to see in Redfern Street some time ago.

That man was respectably dressed, but he seemed to be homeless. He would stretch out on the busy footpath, his few belongings nearby in a shopping trolley.

He always seemed to be very angry, and one day, as he crossed the road, he shouted out ..."I wish I hadn't been born!"



ANOTHER DAY.

Daughter: Today I saw the extremely fat man in shorts.


Mother: What on earth did he look like!


Daughter: Better than I expected. His shorts were very long and tapered, and below them you could see very slim ankles, and small, narrow, pointy feet.


Mother: I wonder what he looked like before he got fat, when he worked as a doorman at that posh hotel in the city.

I imagine he got fat after his mother died. Maybe from eating too many bbq chickens.


Daughter: I wonder how he spends his time these days, and what it's like inside his house.


Mother: Maybe his house hasn't changed much since it was built.

He's been living there since he was born, so he knows all about this area,.... what it used to be like and how it has changed. He remembers all the factories that used to be around here, and he told me which ones have been turned into apartment buildings.

He's got so much knowledge to pass on that it's hard to get away from him, once he gets you to stop and talk.

I've only done that once, but I now and again see him waiting outside, leaning on his fence, watching people go by and looking for someone to talk to.

He knows all the details about recent, and not so recent, house sales around here.....how much the houses were sold for,....this time and previous times, ....lots of details about the new owners and the old owners, and even the new owners' plans for the houses.

I wish I'd thought to ask him about our house, and the man next door's house. He would know a lot about the previous owners and about previous tenants.

He could have told me about the cat lady who used to rent our house. Maybe one of her cats got stuck in the space above the stove. It's interesting the way cat bones and assorted debris still sometimes fall down onto  the stove through a crack above it.


Daughter: I hope you will stop cooking on that side of the stove, even though that's where the large hot plate is.


Mother: Before we stop talking about the extremely fat man,.... I heard him talking to someone out the front of our house one day, on a surprising topic.

He knew all about recent court cases involving women who have embezzled money belonging to their employers, then gambled it away on poker machines. He must be very fascinated by that sort of thing.



ANOTHER DAY:

Mother: I've been hearing noises through my wall, and the cru...ack,...cru...ack sound of a staple gun.

The man next door must be at home, and he must be stapling back the fallen strips of sisalation that I've recently seen hanging down from under his roof.

I thought he finished that job a year or so ago, after he removed the ceiling.

At that time, when the light was on upstairs, it was possible to see the blue of sisalation covering the under surface of the roof.


Daughter: He seems to have problems in securing sisalation.


Mother: Yes. Last time he was at home he again covered the glassless window above the kitchen door with sisalation, but now it has slipped right down again so that once more it just covers the wall below the window, and the top of the kitchen door.


Daughter: The man next door doesn't make his presence felt much when he returns home these days.


Mother: He usually has a girlfriend with him, and it would be interesting to see whether it's his old girlfriend, or a new one.

I did see him a few days ago, out the front, at his vehicle.

I was struck by how much redder his face seemed, and how swollen it looked.

Maybe the cause is something other than sunburn.