Repairs by Phoebe Thomson

The landlord was there, too, sorting something out with the electrics. His face was ruddy, radiant, and he joked with Sam, and clapped Sam on the back.

Sam laughed; I smiled with my lips and kept carrying damp boxes into the new flat. I liked bracing my body against the weight, and the lightness that came each time I finished with carrying.

When the landlord was gone, I stepped into the kitchen. It had a beef-red lino floor. I opened our new cupboards, looking into each of them. I saw that the previous tenants had left mould spray and a rat trap behind, and suddenly I felt the stress of the new place. The responsibilities felt heavy and greasy and dusty on my shoulders.

I did most of the unpacking. Sam had work. The days were October-damp, rain slicing down often. On the days that we both had off we lay in bed for a long time. Then, around three o’clock, before the daylight slipped away, we would go for walks around our new corner of London.

But mostly our days off were separate. He worked in the bar, and on his Masters, and I worked in the hospital. We hardly ever had times which slotted together. I spent hours doing chores in the half-light, but the flat was still getting dirtier.

One morning before work, I noticed blooms of mould on the bathroom ceiling. When I got home, sweaty from my shift, the bathroom walls were egg-freckled with black marks. I showered with a sense of unease.

The landlord came round the next morning, ‘Just to check in on the place’. It was a Thursday and Sam was at work, but I had a day off. The landlord barely spoke to me, when I opened the door to him. He stepped straight into the flat and looked around it.

I was angry and embarrassed and still in my pyjamas. I stared at him with a polite hostility, willing him to leave. He walked through into the kitchen, tutted at my blender and opened some of the cupboards. I was silent. He wasn’t allowed to just come in without a warning, but maybe I’d missed some message from him. I wasn’t sure, and so I just stood and watched him. His face was a little paler than it had been. His hands were speckled, I noticed, when he fiddled with a windowsill. He coughed painful, brash, coughs whilst he tested the doors and the taps.

The landlord left as abruptly as he had arrived. He grunted in my direction and drove away in his red Jeep. I stood at the front window, worried, for a long while afterwards. Then I shook myself back into optimism. I had a sudden spring of energy. I sorted through the cleaning products under the sink, and found the mould spray.

It smelt of chlorine as I cleaned. I stretched my arms up to their highest point to scrub. I stood in the bathtub to reach some of the mould, and got my socks wet. I padded wetness through the rest of the flat, looking for crevices of mould. I found mould at the back of a kitchen cupboard, and billowing underneath the front window. I sprayed and I scrubbed.

I cleaned the kitchen surfaces and mopped the floors. I cleaned the hob, the tiny moons of oven dials. I cleaned until my hands were parched and it was night outside.

Sam came home, happy, and noticed some of the cleaning, though not all of it. He cooked something creamy and eggy and half-successful. I thought it tasted good, and I told him so, but he wasn’t happy with it. I did the washing up and Sam had a shower.

In the morning, I woke up before Sam and warmed my face on his chest. I lay there a moment and then went to make the coffee.

The landlord came around again the next week. It was my late shift, so I hadn’t gone to work yet. The landlord was here to sort out something about the bins. He wasn’t coughing anymore, and his face was beefeater-red again.

‘Glad you’re feeling better, ’ I said.

‘Mm-hmmph,’ he said.

I stayed with him the whole time, I didn’t like to have him here unattended. He didn’t turn his face towards me at all, until he was leaving. When he did, I had one quick, full, glimpse of his face. I noticed that his eyes were clouded with a whitish film. I stood at the front window and watched him walk away. There was a fly on the window, I noticed. And the windows were quite dirty. I let the fly out, and a whistle of cold air slammed in. In the spare minutes before work, with my teeth already brushed and my hair already done, I cleaned the front window. I listened to a podcast about a murder whilst I cleaned. Then I put my lanyard on and left the flat.

When I got home from work Sam was in bed, asleep. He’d made me stew, and left me a bowl with a note. There was mess on the counter tops, though, which annoyed me. I felt frightened in the kitchen as I ate and cleaned up. The building creaked and coughed. The lightbulb buzzed unkindly. The windows were glossy and dark. They reflected my worried face back to me, as I cleaned. I was feeling tense, I realised. I hadn’t had much company. I’d been alone too much in the flat. I’d have guests over soon, I decided. I’d cook a big meal and we could play a game or chat or drink beer. I liked the idea of it, the warmth of other people here, beside me.

I brushed my teeth hurriedly, scrolling Instagram on my phone for company and distraction. Then I set my alarm and lay down. I fell asleep with my face in the crook of Sam’s arm.

Three weeks later, the landlord came again. He was checking on a crack that had appeared in the external wall. I hadn’t even noticed it, so I wondered how he had known about it. Maybe he spent his time lurking just outside, in his big red car. The bastard. I felt angry and brave this time.

‘You need to let me know before you come here,’ I said.

He was almost silent, and furious looking.

‘It’s my house,’ he said.

‘We pay rent,’ I said.

He looked at me then, with his cracked, angry face. He had a cut in his cheek, a split in his skin. I thought he might burst.

‘Me,’ he said. He was pointing at the building and at himself. His eyes were boggling.

‘Mine, ’ he said.

I didn’t reply. I stood out there, obstinate and distrusting. I wouldn’t go inside, even if I wanted to. I wished that Sam could be there, to witness this all, to back me up.

I stood with my arms crossed and watched the landlord fill in the house’s injury. He looked down into his bag, and then up at the crack in the wall. He’d brought some external and some rendering repair, stuff to heal the split for a little while.

I watched him open the lid and bring out some blunt metal tools. I saw that the two lines –the pale crack in his face and the deep wound in the wall– matched each other exactly. They were the same. My throat and shoulders clenched at the surprise. And, I saw that as the landlord filled the wall in, his face’s wound was also healing.

‘Done,’ he said at last, ‘and don’t you tamper with it.’ He shoved past me roughly, striding past me to the front gate. I stared at him, and he looked at me. Then he slammed the gate behind himself, and I was gratified to see him wincing at the impact as he walked off to his Jeep.

I didn’t prod the rendering. I didn’t do anything. The mould bloomed back, black, in December. I watched it. Once it was there it grew quickly, like ink dropped into water. I didn’t clean it any more. I didn’t want to.

………………..

Phoebe Thomson (she/her) is from South London. Her work has appeared in Best Small Fictions 2021, Litro Online, It’s Freezing in LA!, Bandit Fiction, Brixton Review of Books and Flash Fiction Magazine. In 2020 she completed an MA at Goldsmiths in Creative & Life Writing, through the Isaac Arthur Green Scholarship.

Twitter: @pb_ph0ebe