Outstanding Matters Read online

  OUTSTANDING MATTERS

  By

  Neil Coghlan

  KINDLE EDITION

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  Outstanding Matters

  Copyright © 2010 by Neil Coghlan

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  Blurb

  As the apocalypse approaches, Max, as head of the resident committee, has some very important issues to deal with. With anarchy spreading outside the building and fear and apathy inside, Max's final wish is to chair the final meeting and win over the cynicism that confronts him.

  OUTSTANDING MATTERS

  By Neil Coghlan

  On the Thursday, it rained. The low pressure system that had stalled stubbornly in the Bay of Biscay and soaked Aquitaine to the bone trudged its way northwards over the Channel and Hendon had seen fourteen hours of incessant precipitation, covering all varieties from spit-on-the-wind up to beating downpour that appeared to come as much from the ground as from the gloom above.

  The lawns in front of the Cherry Tree View building mopped up the water greedily, a grassy sponge six inches high with a sodden rot of early autumn leaves on top. Max Headley, returning for lunch on his last day at Statham Securities and Insurance, viewed the scene with disdain.

  The front garden was the public face of Cherry Tree View, the twenty square yards that said something important to the rest of Hendon, even if Hendon had increasingly not been listening. The usual baize of lawn told of organisation, clipped neatly around the flower bed edges and kept to a strict two and a quarter inches. The two broad splashes of colour provided by irises, violets, crocuses and sage, to the left and to the right, represented, for Max, the variety present in the twelve one-bed flats. They even had an Indian at Cherry Tree View. And the single gnome, poised at the top of a slide, small fishpond awaiting him should he ever decide to push off, told the others in the very ordinary Cavendish Road that those at Cherry Tree View were as open to whimsy as the next block of flats.

  Max stood under his umbrella, which twitched every now and again in the squalls. In seven years as chair of the Cherry Tree View Residents' Committee, he'd never seen the gardens in such a state. He watched the water dripping off Nigel the Gnome's bony cheek and run in random rivulets down the slide and into the pond where their two goldfish, Gully and Slip, nosed the surface, as much covered with the mulch of autumn leaves as the lawn was.

  "Well, this is just not acceptable, is it?" he said, twirling his brolly a couple of times to shake drops from it and walking with purpose towards the entrance doors. "Not acceptable at all."

  Max took the lift to his fourth-floor flat. There was a mirror just inside his door and, as was his habit, he stood there looking at himself for a minute while he lay his brolly in the corner on a folded newspaper and hung up his coat. There, under a fast receding white hair line, Max could still see faint echoes of the handsome man he had once been. He still had the Hollywood chiselled jawline, the blue eyes. There was something still there.

  He walked over to his answering machine and lightly tapped the number zero that was burnt into the display, unblinking, immovable. He picked up the receiver, then laid it down again.

  "Mozart, what have you been up to?" he said, turning. "Been working on that novel of yours, hmm?"

  Max moved his cat from her favourite perch atop the typewriter and prepared a notice for the corkboard in the lobby.

  "There will be a meeting of the residents' committee tomorrow, Friday, for discussion of several very important issues, not least the disgraceful state of the garden and the consequent urgent need to fill the gardener's position forthwith. Please come to the old caretaker's office at 7PM sharp."

  After going back downstairs and pinning the notice to the wall, Max took out a large silver key and opened the door to the right. Inside, the room was at they'd left it a week ago. Three tables had been pushed together to form a long table around which a dozen or so chairs were placed. The only evidence that this used to be the caretaker's room was a board with twelve hooks on, empty now of the keys they had held for years.

  Max locked the door behind him and found Cynthia Loseley reading the notice.

  "I hope there will be maximum attendance tomorrow, Max. There are some outstanding matters that need our urgent attention."

  "I think this is a good opportunity to really focus some energy on those very issues you mention, Cynthia."

  Cynthia nodded at Max, a gesture that spoke more of her hope than her belief, and then headed for the stairs. In her late-fifties, Cynthia had given up her post in the payroll department of a middle-sized haulage company in Finchley at the start of the month.

  So often left marooned by the ebbing tides of fortune, Cynthia's years in and out of institutions had left her with an estranged grown-up daughter in the States and few friends outside Cherry Tree View. Now she lived for her Dachshund, Stubbs, and her role as secretary on the residents' committee.

  Max read over his announcement once more, checking for the fourth time that, today of all days, each apostrophe was in its correct place. Satisfied, he walked into the waiting lift and pressed the number four. As the doors closed and Max checked the alignment of his cardigan's v-neck in the mirror, the lobby of the Cherry Tree View was left once again in silence, save the sweet metallic trickle of water in the drainpipe outside.

  Cherry Tree View, Max liked to think, was a rung or two above most blocks of flats in Hendon or any other wet London suburb on that grey Thursday afternoon. Though it had suffered broken windows and burglaries in recent troubled times, it had patched itself up to the best of its abilities and looked essentially how it had for most of the last twelve years since the committee was formed.

  The committee had not cancelled the building's direct debit with the local electricity board and those that would read Max's punctuation-perfect notice today would do so by the light of a single hundred-watt bulb that burned guilt-free above their heads. Though the post office had now stopped residential deliveries, the rack of polished oak mailboxes was a testament to the hard work of divorcé Kevin Howells on the third floor, a dab hand with a new duster and a can of lemon oil. His own apartment was a homage to what could be done with a dead tree and some nails and glue.

  Cherry Tree View was trying, in short, to put a normal face on a difficult time for all.

  ***

  Max arrived at the caretaker's office at ten to seven the following evening. Waiting outside were Cynthia Loseley and Barry Marsh. At thirty-two, Barry was the fledgling of the building and being only four years younger than Jane Hoare, a divorcée from the third floor enjoying a voracious relationship with make-up, he was used to being the butt of innuendo and whisper.

  "Evening Barry, Cynthia. I think Jane's coming down, Barry. I saw her this afternoon."

  Barry inspected his shoes, having learnt that silence and lack of engagement was the best course of action. He needed as few reminders as possible of his clumsy-pawed advance on Jane in the lift eighteen months ago, an event nobody else in the building knew of. Even that blushing grapple, brought about by a misconstrued touch on the arm, had only ever been about Barry refuting his parents' assumptions about him.

  Max unlocked the door and the three filed into the room, Max putting himself at the head of the table. While Max was shuffling through his papers, Nitin Bhasin walked in and sat next to Barry.

  "Evening, Yul," said Bar
ry to the gloriously bald Nitin.

  Nitin, whose presence prompted Max to exalt the ethnic diversity at Cherry Tree at every opportunity, lived with his girlfriend Samantha in flat 6A, the only couple in a six-floor collection of either wouldn't ever marry or wouldn't ever marry again. Samantha had refused to attend committee meetings and thought them absurd, "especially now". Nitin, having only been in Hendon for a mere thirty-eight years, was keen to avoid accusations of being an outsider, so attended for both of them. He would sit next to Barry and spend the time grinding his molars.

  Nitin disliked everything about Cherry Tree View, but he had nothing on Samantha, who would work herself into a froth of rage one day, hysterics the next, talking about the "gross disfunctionality" of the building, as she would call it.

  "It's just an ordinary place, Samantha, in an ordinary part of town."

  As a member of the planning committee in the local council's department of social services, Nitin was the last of the building's residents to stop working. Today had been his final day.

  As the clock moved around to seven, two others walked in and mumbled greetings to the four already seated. Kevin Howells, of wood polishing fame, wore a fabulous yellow cardigan that Barry couldn't take his eyes off. Kevin had left his job at the local school last week. Were it his choice, he would've continued teaching his humourless brand of geography and social studies to empty classrooms, but the government decree of the 16th, which had covered education, health and housing, had brought the shutters down at Leewood Comprehensive and Kevin had retreated to his wood-filled flat 3B to enjoy quiet, dull hours of daytime TV and the odd damp smell he'd never managed to eradicate since his wife had fled with his savings and a French teacher.

  With Kevin was Colin Baxter, a widower in his fifties whose daily routine comprised hours looking through photo albums bursting with sunny photos of Rhyl, Yarmouth and Minehead. His wife had died last year and he'd comforted himself in recent weeks with the knowledge that she was 'some place better'.

  "In times like this," he'd said to Max earlier that day, "you realise she went first for a reason. She never would have coped with all of this."

  Colin went everywhere, summer or winter, wearing a light anorak in army green, the perfect shade to flaunt the impressive variety of dandruff, hair and scabby flakes that fell from his scalp.

  Max checked his watch.

  "Jane not coming?" he said, looking at Barry, who simply shrugged his shoulders. "Well, six is about par for recently, isn't it? Shall we get started?"

  Cynthia sat with pen poised, a fresh sheet of cream letter-headed note paper waiting.

  "The first issue on the agenda is the garden. I'm sure you all noticed how, well, tatty it's been looking recently, especially with all this rain that we've had and the fallen leaves and whatnot. Now, clearly we'd like to be able to persuade Norman to come back for the final week, but I fear that's a forlorn hope. He's with his wife in Ealing and isn't returning my calls, so I want to suggest this evening that we put all our energies into tracking down a new gardener, obviously on a temporary basis. I really want to get that garden, especially the flower beds, looking dapper."

  "Oh yes," said Cynthia, oozing support.

  "So, if any of you know of someone who would be suitable, just let me know. I rang up the Gazette to put an ad in for tomorrow's edition and they told me there wasn't going to be one!"

  "That's a crying shame!" said Cynthia.

  "Well," continued Max, "we'll have to find some solution. That grass out there is looking like the bloody Amazon."

  A hand near the end of the table was raised. It was Nitin.

  "Max, while I recognise getting the front garden looking trim is of utmost importance, I think perhaps tonight we should also discuss the vacant flats."

  Cynthia rolled her eyes, a tutting caricature.

  "Is that alright with you, Cynthia?"

  "Well, yes, Nitin, but that's not how we do things - "

  "It's fine, Cynthia," said Max, "We can talk about the vacant properties. Nitin?"

  "Well, when I mentioned it to you last week, there was only the flat up on the first floor empty, but now Carol's gone off to be with her ex in Glasgow, 5B is empty too."

  "Alistair's gone from my floor too," said Barry. "Told me he was off to join some commune up on Salisbury Plain for the fireworks."

  "What do you expect us to do with these empty flats, Nitin?" Max asked in a single, long exasperated breath.

  "We've all seen on the TV the problems there are, in Hendon included. There are hundreds of people right in this borough without a roof over their heads. So many buildings have been destroyed in the riots. I think we should throw open our doors and invite those less fortunate than ourselves to have somewhere to lay their heads."

  There was silence in the committee room. Outside, it was now dark and rain had again begun to patter against the pane behind Max.

  "Nitin," Max said. "We all know that's not possible. We don't have the authority to be opening up other people's properties to allow any Tom, Dick or Harry in here. And even if we could, well, I don't think it would be the wisest idea."

  Cynthia sat shaking her head mouthing "No, no, no" even as Max was finishing his sentence.

  "I know it's Carol's flat, Max," Nitin said, "but let's be honest here. She's not coming back, is she? She told us herself she'd prefer to be up in Scotland. And if Alistair's up on Stonehenge, really, what harm would it do?"

  "Nitin, please! Moving on, I would like to discuss the Cherry Tree View Residents' Committee final newsletter. Barry, thanks for the work you did on your word processor, but I wanted to talk about apostrophes this evening."

  Nitin got up and pushed back his chair perhaps a little more brusquely than he intended. He grabbed it before it tipped over and put it under the table.

  "I just need to see to something while you discuss apostrophes."

  He closed the door as gently as possible behind him, the eyes of the others heavy on his shoulders.

  "We've given that lad every opportunity," said Colin, seething in his green anorak. "Am I right or am I right? Cynthia?"

  "You're dead right, Colin. Dead right."

  Max shrugged his shoulders and turned a page in the sheaf he held in front of him.

  "Barry, as I was saying. Sterling effort on the first draft of the newsletter and the minutes from Cynthia, perfect as usual, but right at the top of the thing, you've got the name of the committee with a glaring error. I wonder if you know what it is. Now, look at this."

  He took a marker pen from his breast pocket and turned to the small whiteboard behind him. On it, in pregnant green letters, he wrote residents' or resident's and capped off the line with two question marks, one of which he thought better of and erased with his sleeve.

  "Now, Barry. Treat the apostrophe as your friend. The important thing we must ask ourselves: are we talking about a committee for one resident or more than one resident?"

  Barry glanced up at the clock.

  ***

  It was nearly eight thirty by the time the door to the committee room opened and the five residents of Cherry Tree View spilt out.

  "One final thing, before I forget," Max said, Cynthia faithfully at his side. Barry, Colin and Kevin, almost to the lift doors, stopped.

  "I want to have a final committee meeting on Sunday evening."

  Barry groaned.

  "I'm sorry Barry. If you have something better to do..."

  Max knew Barry had nothing better to do.

  "We just need to round off a few things, cross the T's, dot the I's as our American cousins might say." Cynthia liked that. "I'll put up a notice in the morning - I want full attendance if at all possible. Oh, and one other thing. I'm taking Nigel in and leaving him in there." Max indicated the room they'd just left.

  "Nigel?" said Barry, his face a map of confused contours.

  "Our friendly gnome," said Cynthia, a yellow-toothed smile on her face.

  "Yes, precisely," said Max. "
I'm a little worried, what with some of the people around here getting boisterous, that our Nigel might end up in the drink with Gully and Slip. I'll get him in tonight."

  The three got into the lift. Cynthia offered to help Max with the gnome, which he politely refused, and she took the stairs up to her first-floor flat.

  The rain had stopped when Max went outside.

  "Well, that's a result. Might be a dry night."

  He pushed off from the warmth and light of the porch out into the sea of dark grass. Nigel had been secured to the top of the slide with a couple of cable ties and Max slipped a pair of scissors out of his jacket, carried there since before the meeting for this purpose. He leant over the mesh fence, snipped twice and lifted Nigel into his arms.

  "No more travels for you, my little friend."

  Nigel was very well travelled though his destinations had undoubtedly not been of his choosing. The gnome had twice been fished out of the brook that ran down the side of Sainsbury's and had once been found hanging from a pedestrian bridge over the A41.

  "You'll be safe in the committee room, Nige," Max said to him as he hopped awkwardly back across the soggy leaves to the safety of cement.

  As he neared the entrance doors of the grand Cherry Tree View, Max turned and looked south, towards the centre of London. He hoped things would be quieter tonight, but there again, was the orange glow that had been a permanent horizon feature for a week or more.

  "What are we going to do with them, Nigel?"

  They both watched the scene for another minute, Max wiping a tear with his free hand, Nigel seemingly unaffected by it all. A playful gust of wind danced around Max's legs, first wrapping tight his trousers, then darting up his cold legs. He could feel a few drops of rain in the air.

  "Let's get you inside, eh?"

  ***

  Max was busy on Saturday. He prepared a notice announcing the final meeting of the Cherry Tree View Residents' Committee for seven o'clock the following day. After a few phone calls, he managed to convince an old friend from the British Legion to pop around and rake the leaves and cut the grass.