A Ten To One chapter! Read it now! 1.10 – Shaun (written by Luke Beddow) As he climbed the stairs, Shaun ran through the residents on each floor. When he had first started working at the flats, he had made a deliberate effort to learn the names of everybody in the building, and he was proud of his ability to remember each of them. A few of them remembered his, and when they said hello to him in the hallway, when they complained about the weather, Shaun smiled because he knew that in less than a year, he had become a part of their lives. Not that he felt much like smiling today. Before long, Valerie would be knocking on his door again, and he wasn’t sure he would have anything to tell her. He swept a sweaty hand across his hair. His tools crashed around in his holdall as he walked. By now he had reached the top floor. He pushed through the green fire-doors and knocked Mr Popescu’s letter box. The door swung open, and Shaun realised this was the first time he had spoken to the old man without a chess board between them. “I’ve come to look at your… er…” Shaun trailed off; the old man stared at him, rubbing his grey stubble. “Yes! Yes,” he said suddenly, “come in.” Shaun stepped into the flat. His trainers pattered on the plastic runner. He followed Mr Popescu through the living room. The armchair looked like it had been made from old hotel curtains, and a polished, wooden chess set sat on a small table in the corner. On the TV, a man in a bow tie looked over his glasses at a silver teapot. “Can I get you a drink?” Popescu asked as they entered the kitchen. “Tea please,” Shaun responded, “two sugars.” “Suit yourself.” Mr Popescu hit the switch on the kettle, then took a bottle of single malt whisky from a cupboard and poured some into a small tumbler. Shaun looked around the kitchen. There was a pan of cold water and peeled potatoes on the side. At the sink, a thin line of water trickled from the tap into the washing up bowl. The old man handed Shaun a mug of dark, reddish tea. It was strong and bitter, and the sugar only made it sickly. When Popescu left the room, Shaun put the mug back on the side. The old man settled heavily into the armchair in the other room. Shaun opened the cupboard under the sink and pushed aside the cleaning fluids to find the water meter. He turned the stopcock and the sound of running water ended, then he emptied the washing up bowl and put the plug in to stop screws falling down the drain. He took three Tupperware boxes of varying sizes from his holdall and put them on the kitchen counter next to a stack of open letters. Shaun thought of Valerie. Would the letters have any information that might keep her away from him? Mr Popescu was busy with his antiques show. Shaun looked at the letters for a long time. He liked to think of himself as a professional – there was no way he could go through a residents belongings. But then there was Valerie. Shaun shook his head and took one last look into the other room before he picked up the pile. He thumbed past a water bill, a bank statement, two fliers from competing pizza places and a sheet of vouchers for the nearest Morrisons before he found the letter. The address was handwritten and the stamp was unfamiliar. There was a neat tear across the top of the envelope. When Shaun took the letter out, some photographs fell on the floor. The page was a wall of consonants which he could not decipher. Stapled to the back, a dark photocopy of a map showed empty fields, a town called Gherla, pencilled crosses and notes in the same unfriendly script. Shaun picked up the photos. Trees. A patch of ground. It meant nothing. He slotted the envelope back into the stack. “So where are you from?” Shaun called into the other room. “You know, originally?” “Romania,” the old man called back, “why?” “Just wondered.” Shaun knew nothing about Romania, except that it was where Dracula came from. “Do you miss it?” “No. Not what it had become. I miss having a home I could talk about in the present tense. Don’t you?” Shaun took a flat-head screwdriver from one of his lunchboxes and used it to prise the top off the leaky tap. “This is my home,” he said. “Is it? The other boys race their cars along the seafront. They go and drink beer and stagger along the street outside my window at two in the morning with a young girl’s waist in one hand and a bottle in the other. You don’t do any of that. You play chess and drink tea. This isn’t the right town for people like us, but here we are.” “What do you mean ‘people like us?’” Shaun called back, searching for the right Phillips head screwdriver. He swore under his breath; the screwdriver was missing. Shaun never misplaced his tools. He thought about using the next size down, but he didn’t want to damage the head of the screw. When he was a child, Shaun’s mother used to keep her tools in the bottom kitchen drawer. He looked at the drawers in Popescu’s kitchen and shrugged. He’d already read the man’s mail. Opening the bottom drawer slightly, he slid his hand under the papers and the takeaway menus. “We’re survivors,” said the old man. “Out here without family, without friends, alone.” “I have friends…” Shaun broke off. He had grasped something heavy, metallic, and he pulled it from the drawer. He was clutching a gun. His instinct was to pull away as though it burned to touch, but fear kept it in his grip. Slowly, he laid it on the chopping board and stared at it. It was like something from a spy film – dark rubber and bright, unreflective metal. Even resting, there was a menace to it. It was hypnotic. Shaun realised he hadn’t spoken for too long. What if Popescu suspected something was wrong? “I have friends.” He tried to sound normal. “A few anyway. I like it here.” Five minutes earlier, that had been true. A damaged screw-head no longer seemed important. He needed to leave. He unscrewed the tap with shaking hands, and as he changed the washer he tried to think of reasons the old man might have a gun. Perhaps it was replica? Maybe Popescu had a licence? Were gun laws different in Romania? Surely Mr Popescu would never shoot anybody? Shaun realised that the only way he could find out was to check whether the gun was loaded. He waited till he had packed away his tools then picked the gun up carefully. It was heavier than he had first thought. As he turned it over in his hands, he imagined trajectories from the end of the barrel. Shaun wondered what it would take to stop a bullet. A few inches of plaster? Concrete and floorboards? He adjusted his grip, kept his fingers far from the trigger. There seemed to be a catch at the base of the handgrip. He squeezed it and pulled. The magazine slid into view, revealing a row of bullets. He placed the gun back in the drawer, trying hard to remember how he had found it. “All done,” Shaun said as he walked back through the living room. By the time he heard the old man’s ‘thank you,’ he was out of the front door.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 17:32:19 +0000
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