The Lubetkin Legacy Read online

  Marina Lewycka

  * * *

  THE LUBETKIN LEGACY

  Contents

  By the Same Author

  Berthold: Sweet sherry

  Violet: Curtains

  Berthold: A blue butterfly

  Violet: Mary Atiemo

  Berthold: Mrs Penny

  Berthold: Daffodils

  Violet: Karen

  Berthold: Silk

  Berthold: George Clooney

  Violet: Pictures

  Berthold: Luxury modern skyscrounger

  Violet: Risk

  Berthold: Unaccommodated man

  Violet: Gillian

  Berthold: Slatki

  Violet: Cherry blossom

  Berthold: Wrest ’n’ Piece

  Berthold: Jimmy the Dog

  Violet: La Maison Suger

  Berthold: What a piece of work is a man

  Violet: Planning

  Violet: A patch of grass and a few cherry trees

  Berthold: A coffee jar

  Violet: Towel

  Berthold: Mud

  Berthold: Gauze and ashes

  Violet: Dralon

  Berthold: Gobby Gladys

  Violet: Seven dwarves

  Berthold: May 6th

  Violet: Niha

  Berthold: L’Heure Bleue

  Violet: Cholera big leak

  Berthold: Silk pyjamas

  Berthold: Candlewick dressing gown

  Violet: Placards

  Berthold: Birdcage

  Berthold: Slapski

  Violet: Horace Nzangu

  Berthold: Money troubles

  Berthold: Eustachia

  Violet: Luigi’s

  Berthold: The Scottish play

  Violet: Chainsaw

  Berthold: Chainsaw

  Violet: Len

  Berthold: My crappy jokes

  Violet: Print

  Berthold: Odessa

  Berthold: Smøk & Miras

  Violet: Decisions

  Berthold: Bertie Bean

  Violet: East Croydon

  Berthold: Swish swish

  Berthold: Stacey

  Berthold: Cherry cutter

  Berthold: Priory Green

  Berthold: Lucky

  Berthold: Teddies

  Violet: Karibu

  Berthold: Pigeon fancy

  Berthold: Benefit fraud

  Violet: Kenya AA

  Berthold: A perfect day out

  Violet: Bulbul

  Violet: Kibera

  Berthold: Happiness

  Violet: The chair

  Berthold: A flat in Hampstead

  Violet: Flamboyant

  Berthold: Gravity

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  By the Same Author

  A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

  Two Caravans

  We Are All Made of Glue

  Various Pets Alive and Dead

  For Kira, Maya and Yanja

  ‘Nothing is too good for ordinary people.’

  Berthold Lubetkin, architect of the

  Finsbury Health Centre, 1938

  Berthold: Sweet Sherry

  ‘Don’t let them get the flat, Bertie!’ gasped my mother as they carried her away on the stretcher, clutching my hand as though she was clinging on to dear life itself. Through a haze of grief, regret and Lidl own-brand sweet sherry, I played the ghastly scene over and over in my head, sifting my memory for details.

  It had started out like any other day, with an early morning walk to pick up the newspaper and a pint of milk. I stopped for a latte at Luigi’s on the way back, one of my small indulgences – one of the very few, I should add – the intense aroma of coffee a blast of pleasure in my unexciting world. I finished, paid and stepped out on to the pavement when suddenly a white van sped up out of nowhere. A pigeon that was foraging for scraps on the road a few feet away couldn’t lift off fast enough. I heard the thud of impact. The bird fell, stunned, then it started desperately batting with one wing. I could see that the next passing vehicle would make it roadkill so I bent to pick it up. It flapped and struggled in my hands but I gripped it tight and carried it to the garden at the front of our block of flats, where I set it down on the grass under a cherry tree. As it fluttered away, I noticed it only had one leg; a raw pink stump protruded from the grubby under-feathers where the other should have been. One of life’s little casualties – like me.

  As soon as I entered the flat, I sensed that something was wrong. Flossie, our African grey parrot, was hopping from foot to foot in her cage squawking in her strange dalek voice.

  ‘God is dead! First of March, 1932!’

  Mum had still been in bed when I went out, but now she was sprawled on the carpet in the living room, her eyes closed, a thin sour-smelling drool leaking from her mouth. The sherry bottle on the table was half empty. I felt a twinge of anxiety, sharpened by irritation. Oh fuck, it was only nine o’clock and she’d been at the bottle already.

  ‘Mum? Are you okay?’

  ‘You’re on your own now, son.’ As I leaned to button a cardigan around her shoulders, she grasped my hand.

  ‘Don’t let them get the flat, Bertie!’

  ‘Who, Mum, who?’

  She sighed and closed her eyes. Most likely she’d overdosed on sherry – it had happened before – but I called the doctor just in case.

  Dr Brandeskievich, a whiskery old cove who I suspect had once been Mother’s lover, applied the stethoscope to her chest with more diligence than seemed strictly necessary, all the while making tutting noises that got trapped like the morsels of breakfast in the thicket of his moustache.

  ‘Poor little Lily. Better send you off to hospital.’

  While he called an ambulance, I packed an overnight bag for her.

  ‘Don’t forget my make-up, Bertie!’

  Mother’s vanity was endearing. Yesterday you’d have said she looked good for her eighty-two years, but today everything about her was altered – her cheeks and lips had lost their colour and her eyes seemed to have shrunk deeper into her skull, so she didn’t look like my mother at all but a tired stranger acting out an impersonation. How had this sudden change come about? It had crept up on her so gradually that I had not noticed the point at which my indomitable mother had become a frail old lady.

  Then the ambulance arrived and two guys lifted her on to a stretcher. I watched them out of the window walking the stretcher down the winding path through the cherry grove. A gust of wind lifted the blanket, and Mother’s white nightdress fluttered like a moth. I felt a sob rising in my throat.

  Dr Brandeskievich laid a steadying hand on my shoulder. ‘Let me know if you need something to help you sleep.’

  As the sound of the siren faded in the street outside, a sinister silence of bottled-up anxiety settled over the flat; even Flossie was quiet as if listening for her mistress’s voice. They have a strange Dom‒sub relationship, those two. In her bedroom, the lingering scent of L’Heure Bleue and a trail of discarded clothing on the floor accentuated her absence: fluffy high-heeled mules; a white cashmere shawl with visible moth-holes; a cream silk slip with a mysterious brown stain; a pair of creased satin French camiknickers. There was something queasy about this wanton display of my mother’s undergarments. I left them where they were and went and made myself a tinned tuna and lettuce sandwich in the kitchen.

  Later that day I phoned the hospital – it was the same hospital she had retired from more than twenty years ago – to be told that Mother was asleep and comfortable now; I could visit her on the ward tomorrow. After I’d put the phone down, the silence in the flat jangled in my ears. I wished I had taken up the doctor’s offer of sleeping tablets, but I had to make do with
half a bottle of Mother’s sweet sherry, which made me feel nauseous without sending me to sleep.

  ‘Goodnight, Flossie.’

  I tucked her in under a tablecloth to keep her quiet during the night, as Mother used to do.

  ‘Goodnight, Flossie!’ she replied.

  Violet: Curtains

  The morning sunlight pouring in through the window wakes Violet much too early. The previous tenants seem to have taken everything – even the curtains. She dives back down under the duvet which Jessie lent her. It’s warm in bed but the flat is cold, and she needs a pee. The carpet under her bare feet feels sticky and the smell from the bathroom is disgusting.

  Still, it feels good to have her own place after a month of sleeping on Jessie’s sofa, and the daily commute from Croydon was a grind. This ex-council flat in Madeley Court is fifteen minutes by bus from her office. It’ll do for now.

  She cleans her teeth, then splashes cold water on her face, pats it dry on her T-shirt – her towel is still in her suitcase – and smiles at her reflection in the smeared mirror screwed to the wall. Despite the dishevelled hair and the zombie-like smudges of mascara around her eyes, she likes what she sees: a young woman with a quick smile, white teeth and healthy skin; a young black woman, twenty-three today, who has just started a good job at a respected City firm, a job she has trained for and worked for; a job she thinks she deserves, but can hardly believe she has got. What she really needs now is a coffee.

  There’s no coffee and not even a kettle in the kitchen, but a chaos of takeaway boxes with mouldy remnants of food and broken plastic cutlery sticking out, jumbled together with half-empty drinks bottles, fag ends, scratch cards, socks, trainers, a pair of underpants, opened tins, packets of crisps, pizza crusts … her eyes glaze over. The people before her were students. Boys. Typical. Back in the bedroom, which turns out to be not a bedroom at all but the flat’s living room with three beds in it, she pulls on her clothes, locks the door behind her, and goes downstairs in search of coffee.

  A block away on the main road is a small brown-painted café with a striped awning called Luigi’s. She orders a double cappuccino with a croissant and gets out her laptop to check her emails. There is a flurry of messages from her friends, some with ecards attached, and one from her mother wishing her ‘Happy Birthday’ and good luck in her new job.

  Thanks, she writes back, I’ll need it. Her role is trainee account manager in the International Insurance Department of Global Resource Management where her boss is the formidable Gillian Chalmers, a small steely woman with a quiet voice and a tough reputation, who grilled her during her interview and seemed displeased at all her answers. The other interviewer was Marc Bonnier who heads up the Wealth Preservation Unit, who was almost as intimidating as Gillian, despite his chin dimple and a twinkling smile that reminds her of Jude Law. Her friend Jessie once told her that a chin dimple is a sign of sensitivity in a male. It would be nice to work for him, she thinks.

  At the next table in the café, an elderly man is nursing a latte in a glass cup and reading the Guardian. He has a baldish head and a morose expression on his face. Jessie’s mum once said that reading the Guardian makes you morose compared with the Telegraph. Maybe he does not know this. Apart from him the café is empty. On the main road, buses and lorries are thundering past, but Luigi’s is calm and cosy, with soul music playing quietly in the background, the gentle hiss of the coffee machine and the rustle of the old man’s newspaper. She finishes her coffee, and is about to go in search of some rubber gloves and a load of bin liners to start clearing the flat, but instead she gets out her phone and calls the agency in a cool assertive voice that matches her new status as a City worker.

  ‘The flat has been left in a disgusting condition. Please send someone round to clear up and make it fit for habitation. Thank you so much.’ Ha! That feels good.

  Then she sits down and orders another coffee.

  Berthold: A Blue Butterfly

  Next day I cycled over to the hospital, locked up my bike against the railings and stowed my cycle clips in my anorak pocket. The ward was on the first floor, at the end of a long corridor that smelled of antiseptic and had branches named for unpleasant-sounding procedures like Spectroscopy, Oral Surgery, Trauma. In my experience hospitals are like condemned cells, best avoided, but sometimes you have no choice.

  It took me a moment to recognise the frail, dishevelled old woman propped up in bed as my mother. Her appearance shocked me. Dishcloth-grey hair, limp and uncombed, pink lipstick that overshot the edges of her mouth, a dab of bright blue eye shadow on one eyelid but not the other. Dear Mum: even in extremis, she was still trying to look her best.

  ‘Bertie! Get me out of here!’

  ‘How are you, Mum?’

  I handed over my bag of grapes and kissed her, continental style, on both cheeks. The ritual of gallantry perked her up.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me, Berthold.’ She swivelled her eyes around the ward. ‘I want to go in an NHS hospital.’

  ‘This is an NHS hospital. You used to work here, remember?’

  ‘No, I used to work up Homerton.’ Her blue-shadowed eyelid fluttered like a lost butterfly. ‘They’re trying to kill me, Bertie. To get the flat.’ The spark of conspiracy brightened her eyes.

  ‘Nonsense. They wouldn’t …’

  But maybe they would. A stab of panic caught me between the ribs. Mum had always promised that after she died the flat she had rented from the Council, ever since it was built in the 1950s, would pass to me. But lately she had started muttering darkly that there was a plot to take it away from us.

  ‘It’s global capitalism that done this to me, son.’

  ‘It’s probably just sherry, Mum.’

  ‘I didn’t touch a drop, Bertie. Nor any food.’ She sat up, hitching up her nightie with agitated hands. ‘They’re starving me to death. All you get in here is a few lettuce leaves and a pot of yoghurt. And bloody fresh fruit. In the NHS you get tinned peaches in syrup.’ She glanced dismissively at my grapes. ‘Did you bring my ciggies, son?’

  ‘I don’t think you’re allowed to smoke in hospital.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. They’re killing me. It would never happen in the NHS.’

  At that moment, a violent spasm of coughing from the next bed made us both turn around. An ancient crone with grey, wrinkled skin was clearing her throat with a horrible outpouring of phlegm into a cardboard receptacle on her bedside table.

  ‘Shut up, Inna,’ said Mother. ‘That sound is disgusting. This is my son, Berthold, come to see me. Say hello.’

  ‘Nuh, Mister Berthold.’ The crone peered at me between drapes of long silver hair and held out a hand as bony as a bunch of twigs. ‘You lucky you ev lovely son, Lily. Nobody come visiting to me.’

  ‘Stop moaning. Don’t be a Moaning Minnie,’ said Mum. ‘Keep on the sunny side!’ Her voice quavered into her favourite song, which I remembered from childhood. ‘Always on the sunny side!’

  ‘Sunny side! Ha ha! No sunny side round here, Lily.’ The crone struck out defiantly on her highway of negativity. ‘Too many bleddy foreigners. Every day somebody get dead.’

  ‘They’re dying because it’s private.’ Mother pursed her lips severely. ‘It’s wrong to be racist, Inna. We should be grateful to all those coloured people leaving their own sunny climes to come and work for us.’

  ‘Aha! Good you tell me is privat.’ Inna smoothed her sheet with her twiggy hands. ‘I was think we in Any Cheese.’

  ‘No,’ asserted Mum. ‘There’s less death in the NHS.’

  ‘That doctor got pink tie.’ The old lady pointed at a young doctor leaning over an elderly cardiac arrest at the far end of the ward, and whispered, ‘Pink mean homosexy?’

  ‘It don’t make no difference what he is,’ replied Mum. ‘Being queer don’t harm nobody.’

  ‘You always right, Lily.’ Inna cleared her throat and spat again. ‘Good you tell me. I know nothing. In my country everybody normal.’
r />   Then her eyes rested curiously on me and on the crimson T-shirt I was wearing, now faded to a dusky pink from years of washing.

  ‘Take no notice,’ Mother murmured to me, ‘she’s from Ukraine, like my Lucky. Got beetroots on the brain. Emphasism. She gets everything mixed up. Don’t you, Inna?’

  The crone’s wrinkles realigned themselves merrily like an obscure script on her aged face. ‘Better mix it up than dead!’

  ‘We’re all dead in the end.’ Suddenly, Mother reached for my hand, and pulled me down close to whisper in my ear. ‘Are you thinking of getting married again, son? You might need someone to look after you, if I don’t come out of here alive.’

  ‘Ssh. Don’t talk like that, Mum. You’re going to get better.’

  This talk about marrying again had me worried, for Mother had always been hostile towards any woman I brought home ‒ especially Stephanie, my acerbically beautiful ex-wife, on whom I had doted beyond the normal call of husbandly duty. Stephanie had realised right from the start that Mother was her only serious rival and the two had regarded each other with mutual loathing scarcely concealed under a mask of kiss-kissy politeness. When we had finally divorced, Stephanie handed me over into the care of my mother like a recycled mattress whose springs have gone: ‘You can have him back, Lily. All yours. He’s completely fucked.’ Now it sounded as though Mother was preparing to pass me on again.

  ‘The doctor said …’ she pointed in Dr Pink-tie’s direction, ‘he said I’ve got …’ she rummaged in her memory for the right phrase, ‘a fibreglass atrium.’ The words sailed out with an air of adventure like a galleon with sails puffed by the wind. ‘Atrium! Who’d have guessed it? In Madeley Court! My Berthold always said he wanted to put an atrium in there. Or a skylight.’

  There was no atrium in Madeley Court, the block of council flats where we lived, though there was a grimy skylight over the stairwell. And Mother’s claim that she’d had a passionate affair with Berthold Lubetkin, the architect who designed the block after the war, probably had as much substance as the atrium.