THE NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR

John Davidson lived in one of the fourth floor bed-sits and was 74 years of age when I first met him.

Once a grand house in a grand part of Bristol it had now been divided into accommodation for people best described as ‘poor’. Long ago the attic floor had housed the servants of slave traders and was reached by a steep narrow wooden staircase giving access to four bed-sits with windows cut into the low angled roof allowing views of the sky and rain water to drip down. Each of these tiny apartments had a door leading onto the dark airless landing which had been painted a shade of Thames blue. Much of the paint had peeled to reveal previous layers of brown.

It took a month of moving in to establish even a nodding acquaintance with my three neighbours, an Irishman who had the largest flat, a German widow who had at least three cats and, John Davidson who lived directly opposite me. The idea seemed to be that we keep ourselves to ourselves and this arrangement suited me just fine. I had recently made a fool of myself in another city and had decided to run away and cover myself in work and study. It is what they call "a long story" or "the stuff of life". I don’t know where this expression originated but it is certainly not the one you wish to hear when you are right in the middle of the stuffing process. My days were filled with earning enough money to pay the rent and my evenings with classes of further education which became less and less interesting and were not very educative. The nights were spent unsuccessfully trying to forget and forgive.

My room was overcrowded with tasteless furniture. For some reason there were four chairs which left insufficient space for a sagging bed, a table,a sink to wash in and a little electric cooker called a "Baby Belling". Mr. Belling had carefully designed this apparatus for rooms the size of mine and had been thoughtful enough to provide an oven just large enough for two pies. Hot water and all electrical appliances, the “Baby Belling” and a two bar electric heater, required coins to be inserted into a meter almost continually.

Life suited me pretty well, work was totally undemanding and I had committed myself to two years of study for the first time since leaving school, the subjects were absorbing but the teaching methods something of a bore. I was able to borrow books from the student library and would read several each week. Diverging thus from the strict curriculum I managed to keep myself amused. Happy to be alone with my own miserable melancholy I fitted very well into the general spirit of the household.

Of my fellow neighbours it was John who I encountered most frequently and we exchanged the time of day on our little landing. He had the unmistakable air of a bachelor and there were plenty of clues to indicate that he managed to live without an iron or ever visiting a dry cleaner. Often there were tufted areas of grey hair that he had missed while shaving on his lower chin, close to his ear and just below his nose. No one was available or intimate enough with him to point this out. I can imagine that he had been very handsome as a young man with an erect bearing that had become a kind of stoop with his neck and head permanently protruding forwards. He walked, or shuffled, with the aid of a stick while somehow maintaining the bearing of a military campaigner, one or two medals dangling from his tweed jacket would not have been out of place.

Perhaps every other month he visited a hairdresser and for a few days had an even parting on the left side of his head, this soon disappeared leaving a tangle of grey and white hairs. It was with some difficulty and many pauses that he slowly climbed the four flights of stairs to our landing and I often found myself stuck behind him. I felt somewhat awkward squeezing past to dash ahead of him and so I invariably offered to carry his little brown bag, containing the shopping he had purchased at the corner store, up the remaining flights of stairs. The faded canvas bag had a single strap by which it hung from his right shoulder crossing his chest and enabled him to carry his supplies and keep both hands free. In his left hand he had a walking stick and with his right he could grip the banister rail and move slowly from landing to landing by placing first his right foot on a step and then his left.

He spoke softly and slowly with traces of a Northern accent that he either tried to conceal or that time had worn away. After five or six such meetings he invited me for tea in his room. I think I was the first visitor he had received for several months or possibly years. His bed-sit, like mine, was over cluttered with shabby furniture leaving very little floor space. I found a spot to put his bag of shopping on the small sink while he found a teapot, cups and saucers, and even a little blue and white striped jug for milk from the back of a cupboard. When the metal kettle had boiled it blew steam through a whistle attachment on the spout. We sat on either end of his little table that was sensibly covered with a well-worn plastic sheet and waited for the tea to brew.

I soon found myself in a one way conversation by telling him about my life, my attempts to study and something of my plans for the future without learning anything about him. He reminded me of the Caretaker in Pinter’s play who was always off to Sidcup to collect "some papers" which did or didn’t exist. I had the clear impression that either Pinter himself or the actor I had seen portraying the character had actually met John.

After the tea had "mashed" and we had drunk our first cup we began to speak of our neighbours. As John had lived here for six years he was able to contribute much more information than me. The Irishman he said had a beautiful flat, very large with two windows on the sunny side of the house but he got more noise from the traffic. It seems that two young girls had lived in my flat before me but "they didn’t quite fit in" and that the landlord had asked them to leave. He was able to tell me a little about the German widow who I had hardly seen and I learnt that she had been here for twelve years and was related to the landlord in some way; John estimated the cat population in her room to be four or five.

He was reticent to tell me much about his own life on this occasion but said that he was happy enough and spent much of his time in the library particularly in winter and in the park during summer. Each Christmas all the people who lived on the top floor were invited by the Irishman into his flat and had a wonderful Christmas dinner and some drinks. He said he would like to find a downstairs flat but they were much bigger and far too expensive. When he was too old and "crotchety" to walk upstairs he supposed that he would be re-housed by the council and put into a home.

"I will hang on here for as long as I can, I think I’m good for a few more years, I don’t want to be a burden on the state. I had a fall ten years ago and now I have arthritis and lumbago, really I should go somewhere warm to live but need to hang on here for another month or so."

His room was mostly filled by a single bed and the obligatory four chairs but in one corner under the skylight there was a table housing an old-fashioned ribbon typewriter and on either side of it folders containing reams of papers. I had often heard the sound of typing coming from his room as I walked past his door both during the day and sometimes at night. It was a very slow methodical one or two finger tap tap tap followed by a tingling bell and a crunching sound when the carriage was moved to begin a new line. This activity would sometimes continue for several hours and had often aroused my curiosity, as I could not think what on earth could be occupying so much of his time.

While we drank our tea,I told him that I was always happy and available to help with shopping and said he was welcome to come over and see me at any time. On leaving I suggested that he come round on Sunday for lunch and we could have a little meal together. John thought this was a lovely idea.

The following Sunday morning when I went shopping for the newspaper I purchased an extra pie but was unsure if John would either remember or care to visit. At about 12.30 pm there was a knock on the door and John was standing outside with quite a beam on his face. He carried with him the tang of Tiger Balm which masked a tinge of stale urine.

"Come in John and sit down. I need some time to get everything ready and you can read the Sunday paper while I’m cooking.” Clearly Mr. Belling had planned for such occasions and I was able for the first time to fill the little oven and use both heating rings to full capacity.

John didn’t speak as I endeavoured to cook mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables and gravy, this was quite an ambitious and delicate operation but I even managed to warm the plates. I glanced at John from time to time and saw that he was engrossed with the large Sunday paper and all its supplements and seemed to be reading it in its entirety. As I brought the plates and food to the table I explained that this was the first time I had cooked for two in my flat, he took a great interest and enjoyment in his meal and spoke little as he ate. I had the impression that such a lunch was a rare occasion for him and he seemed to eat everything as though he was tasting it for the first time.

When we had finished eating and were sitting with cups of coffee at the table and the plates and pots were in the sink he looked around the room and said, “The trade was triangular apparently. Trinkets, alcohol, cloth on the Outward Passage, to pay for the merchandise of course. The actual cargo was branded and stowed for the Middle Passage. Like sardines. It must have been horrible for them I imagine. On the return journey the ships brought rum and molasses back to England. I’m sorry, rambling away again mate. Living alone in this house...my mind wanders some times.” I thought it best to say nothing. Then he picked up the travel section of the paper and asked if I had seen an article about two English girls who had gone to Belize to work as teachers for six months. I told him that I had not read the piece which he passed to me and as I was glancing through it he said, "That’s where I’m going, Belize, they speak English and it will be nice and hot."

This sounded rather unlikely for a man in his seventies and I thought he had no idea of the enormous distance involved perhaps confusing it with somewhere fifty miles away. Rather than pursue the matter I thought it wise to try to change the subject by asking him what he had been doing that morning.

"On Sunday mornings I go to the churchyard, that’s where I have my little job. After the funerals are well and truly over I collect all the old wreathes and clean them up, take all the old flowers off and give the wire a bit of a polish. First thing Monday morning I take them round to the florist who gives me a little bit of money and then uses them again. I suppose you could say that I am in the recycling business it means I have a few bob for extras to supplement my pension. Some people might think it’s a bit morbid but I wanted to save up for my own funeral. I have been doing it for years and now I will use my savings for a passage to Belize. How much do you think the fare will be for the ship, or is it better to go with an aeroplane?"

My attempt to change the subject hadn’t really succeeded and I looked at airfares in the travel section of the newspaper. "I think you would have to fly all the way to Mexico and then take a bus for a few days through Guatemala, the fare works out at about £500 return. You know it’s a very, very long way.”

"Oh no I don’t want a return ticket; it will be instead of moving to an old folk’s home. I have got at least eight hundred pounds in my Post Office savings. Next week I will go and get a passport and buy a ticket".

"What are you going to do with all your things?" I asked him half entering into the spirit of the idea and half humouring him.

"Well now I’m just going down to pay my rent and give the landlord two weeks notice. I haven’t got so much stuff really, just bits and pieces I got from jumble sales. I will take my umbrella and a towel with me and take everything else down to the charity shops if they will have them. Do you want to have a typewriter? It works very well and I don’t need it anymore because I’ve finished.”

It was dawning on me that I was in the presence of a very sweet but never the less rambling old man.

"What else do you think I should take, my umbrella, a towel, it will be very hot won't it?"

"Yes, it will certainly be very, very hot. I should think a hat would be a good idea."

"Oh yes a hat, I have got a trilby and a cheese cloth cap, they would do nicely. Do you think I could use my pensioners pass on the bus in Mexico?"

Now I thought his fantasy had gone far enough and was determined to change the subject. "Why don’t you need you typewriter any more, I often hear you typing when I come home from work?"

"I have written a book and now it’s all finished. Because it’s finished I can go away and don’t need the machine, I can go and do anything I like; there are so many things I want to try."

"You didn’t tell me you’d written a book, is it very long?"

"I took it down to the printer, they said it was 350.000 words and one of the longest that they had ever seen. The girl behind the counter asked me if I had typed it all myself. I said I hadn’t just typed it, and explained that I had “written” it and that there is a big difference. I’ll go and get you the typewriter now and that will give me a start for moving and there will be less to do next week." I offered to go with him and said I would store the machine for a while until he wanted it back. In his flat he gave me not only the heavy black machine but also the piles of paper onto which he had typed, or written, and we brought them all back to my room.

"Now that’s made a good start, you can see that there is not really much more to clean out here. All these papers you can take down to the rubbish, I had to have proper photocopies made before I took them all to the Bodlean library last week. It’s a massive library and they will keep them there for hundreds of years."

"Wouldn’t that be a shame if I throw away all the papers you have written? It must have taken you a very long time?"

"Yes it took me all my life really but I managed to type it all out in just six years. You see I had to learn Greek, Hebrew and Sanskrit and some pages are all written by hand because I couldn’t do it on a typewriter."

"Don’t you want to have it published so that people can read it after so many years work?" I asked.

"Oh no, nobody will want to read it. I couldn’t expect anyone to print and publish it; it’s not that kind of book. Anyone who could understand it would not need to read it.”

"Well, I’d certainly like to try, what is the title?” I asked leafing through a massive pile of double spaced sheets of paper.

"Oh no, it doesn’t have a title, it’s not that kind of a book."

"What did they say at the library when they saw it didn’t have a title?"

"They didn’t mind, weren’t bothered at all, it’s not that kind of a library. They keep a copy of everything that’s written for hundreds of years, it’s a sort of storehouse. They just put my name and "untitled". They made me have proper copies of everything though and I numbered all the pages and filled in a form. Now I’ve got a number, an ISBN number I think it’s called, so it’s all been done properly."

"I’ve heard of books without titles but never one that’s not intended to be read."

"Oh yes there have been several, you don’t read them, you eat them. People don’t like to eat them because they taste very bitter in the mouth and burn the stomach."

Once more I thought it time to change the subject and asked him how he was going to get a passport.

"First of all I have to have my birth certificate and then some photos and then go to a doctor or someone for a signature. It’s all quite simple these days and then I will have to go to a travel agent and buy a ticket."

I asked him if he would like to take the travel supplement of the Sunday paper to read but he said he wasn’t too bothered. "The typewriter needs a new ribbon because half of it is worn away and only the red part works because I never used that."

Continued in part two