There’s a man in the neighbourhood, or so the story goes, who drew concern when the back of his house caved in. When the neighbours came to visit, they offered to repair the damage.
“Sure why would I need that?” this man said. “I never used those rooms anyway.”
I think about this man often. In him I recognise a kindred soul. Like mellifluous horses clip-clopping through town, we employ blinkers that allow us block out distractions that don’t require urgent attention.
And, sometimes, ones that do.
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Earlier this year the story had come up in conversation with Ross (my boyfriend – the one who drives). Given I consider this man to be my soulmate (the one with the caved-in house, not Ross), you might consider my boyfriend’s reaction important to me. We are, after all, relatively new together. But I was too enthralled in this Beckettian tale to register his reaction. What I did note, was that he didn’t pick up the thread and take it any further. Fair enough.
A few weeks ago, when Ross and I were lying in bed on a Sunday morning, I rose to get myself a glass of water, and he kindly offered himself to the task. He returned and handed me my glass before leaving the room to retrieve his own.
It was seconds after he handed it to me that I heard the crash. The noise seemed to come before I felt the glass slip from my hand.
He reappeared to assess the damage.
The water, as it always does, had grown far beyond that which initially filled the glass. Up the walls it had splattered random designs, and beneath the bed, puddles of water encircled shoes and lost socks. Shards of glass lay among these pools and tangled between the now sopping pink woollen blanket that had slipped to the floor. “We probably shouldn’t pick the glass up with our hands”, he commented, a moment too late.
[ ‘Some of you love sleep more than you love success.’ Bang on!Opens in new window ]
I like to think that Ross and I have an unspoken agreement, that in the morning he will undertake all practical tasks. My brain takes that bit longer to wake up. However, when he asked me to bring a dustpan and brush, I obliged.
I returned moments later with a sweeping brush and an object that looked something akin to an elongated shoehorn. It was the dustpan for which he had asked, but half the pan had broken off. I had discarded the dustpan a month or so back, then swiftly recovered it later that day, after another accident required its use. As to the accompanying brush, that has been missing for at least two years.
My uncomplaining boyfriend didn’t beam his usual enthusiasm upon seeing these items, so I left once again to retrieve whatever other tools I owned.
The vacuum cleaner was a relatively new addition to the apartment. I had bought it about 15 months back after a visit from my friend. She had spent much of her visit commenting upon how often I swept the floor. I protested that I enjoyed sweeping, but she is one of those annoying friends who sees through your lies, including the ones you tell yourself.
“Get a vacuum cleaner,” she said.
So I did.
“Would you not have a normal vacuum cleaner?” Ross asked, his torso hanging over the bed. The thing I had handed him, you see, wasn’t quite the same vacuum cleaner I had bought. The main compartment had ceased working at some point after filling with dust. I hadn’t got around to figuring out how to remove the dust, so instead changed the nozzle. This one worked fine, only it was narrow, and you had to squat to use it. It did mean, however, that I was now back to incessantly sweeping the floor, employing the vacuum cleaner only at the very end of the process to vacuum the pile gathered.
I can’t remember if at this point, I explained the above story to Ross or just handed him the final piece of equipment, a bathmat, before heading into the kitchen to make tea.
As the kettle boiled, I thought about this man once more and wondered if it was of him too that my boyfriend now thought. Either way, I was grateful for Ross’s diligence. Had he not been there, I’d have been sad to lose the use of my bedroom.
