Sky hums to herself as she walks down the attic stairs. At the landing she stops to adjust the sepia photos lining the wall. Carefully she straightens the listing prints, stroking the faces she once knew so well. They are the faces of her friends, her lovers, now trapped for eternity looking out at her. Timeless. She finds this rearranging, this straightening calming, comforting. It doesn’t do to have things squint, everyone looks out of sorts, it makes her feel uncomfortable.
Sky has to straighten the pictures most days. The house is old, it creaks and dips, the steps of the stairs are bowed from years of use. The constant bounding of the boys, her boys, up and down the stairs rattles the pictures on the walls; shakes the dust from the sills. She has no real reason to be up here. Her living space, her apartment is in the basement. But the house is hers and she likes to keep an eye on things. There is a connecting door on the first floor, it’s not as though she has to go outside and come in to do this, this she supposes, might be strange.
The house was divided up when she bought it. The previous owner was an elderly lady, Sky met her, was shown round after tea and biscuits. The old girl had lived in the place for donkeys’ years, since her marriage after the war. Eventually, with the creep of old age she found the place too big for herself, too lonely, the stairs too much to manage. And then in a moment of inspiration the idea had presented itself. She would keep the basement, make a granny flat, have her family come to live with her. So in moved her son and his family, spreading out, filling the rest of the house with noise and laughter once more. And she was safe, safe in the knowledge that family, that help was always just upstairs.
There had been a moment when Sky thought about putting the house back together, making it whole again. But there was only her, and Pickle the cat, she’d planned to rent out the rooms and really this set up made things easier. So she took over the basement and rented out the rooms above. Without really meaning to she has only ever rented to boys. It just happened. Anyway it was easier that way, there was no competition when it came to the décor, no complaining if the water wasn’t always hot, if the bathroom started to get a little damp. She liked their easy-going ways.
It was a great set up. A win-win situation, everyone agreed. With her basement apartment Sky was afforded a bit more privacy, a bit more space, as befitted the owner. She enjoyed her role as ‘landlady’ joked to the first friends that moved in about rent books and rules, but nobody took her that seriously.
Gradually the years passed, the boys came and went. They moved on, paired off, grew up, moved out. But Sky stayed, happy in her basement and with a house full of life surrounding her. She liked the blare of music, the pounding of feet on the stairs. She appreciated having her boys about. There was always someone to put up a shelf, to change a lightbulb, chase away a spider. And she always slept well at night.
One day the house was no longer full of Sky’s university friends, not even the friends of friends. But Sky was oblivious. The links between her and her tenants were so tenuous, so fragile they hardly existed. Had she stopped to think about it Sky would have realised that her boys were no longer her contemporaries, but 10, then 15 then 20 years younger. She no longer heard from the people she was at school with, or at university. They had all moved away, married, had children, bought houses of their own. Houses that they didn’t share. But Sky stayed as she was. Her life was like a record being played over and over again. The faces were different but nothing really changed. She felt happy, she liked her life, her house, its friendly feel. More importantly she liked her boys.
‘Her boys’ - that was how she thought of them. They were her friends, sometimes more. She knew they all loved her, thought of her fondly. She certainly didn’t see herself as their landlady; she doubted they did either. She was too young, too cool. The house was a place of fun, of parties and friendship and at the middle was Sky. Always ready with a glass of wine and a kindly ear to hear how her boys were.
Some of the boys arrived with girlfriends but none of these lasted long. Some, like the feral creatures Sky knew them to be, instinctively sensed that the house and its inhabitants were Sky’s territory. Others took a little longer to loosen their claws. Either way Sky didn’t have to try hard to keep the boys to herself. Occasionally she had helped things along, it was simple enough. A bra slipped between the bed sheets, a pair of earrings left on the nightstand. And there she would be, a shoulder to cry on when the boy’s protestations of innocence fell on deaf ears.
Sky looks at the photos, finally satisfied that they are straight. She turns and opens the door on her left. It is a bedroom, not hers. It belongs to Matt, the new boy, he’s only been living with her for a month. She closes her eyes and breathes in deeply. The scent of boy, of maleness fills her up. She feels her stomach slip and flutter as it always does when there’s a new boy. She takes another breath. She’s not yet familiar with Matt’s smell. Aftershave, deodorant, something slightly fuggy, musky.
She walks over to the bed. Carefully she removes her clothes then crawls under the covers, hugging the pillow to her. The sheets are old, she can smell his sweat, his body on them. A static, electric thrill prickles over her. She shivers. Skin turned to gooseflesh. She lies there a little longer soaking him up. Waiting until she can’t tell where her smell ends and his begins. She gets back up and dresses, moving across to the chest of drawers next to the window. She opens them one by one, they are full of clothes, neatly folded. She is surprised and touched by this. She lifts out a jumper, grey and blue striped, and smells it. It smells clean, freshly laundered. She replaces it and walks over to the desk. Balanced against it is a guitar. Idly she lifts it, fingers the strings, she cannot play but likes the thought of her touch echoing his touch. She opens the desk drawers, rummaging through a tangle of paper, receipts, bills, the everyday detritus that we collect. Satisfied she walks back out onto the landing, carefully pulling the door closed behind her.
Next door is Phil’s room. She goes in. She has been sleeping with Phil for the last six months, it started shortly after he moved in. They were alone one night and drinking, he was drunk, he thought she was too. Phil will soon be moving out, Sky is sad about this, he was her favourite boy but over the last few weeks he’s been staying out more and more. Almost as though he were avoiding her. Inside her is a nugget of anger, she thinks he has led her on. This doesn’t matter though, now she has someone new, she has Matt. He just doesn’t know this yet.
(1283)
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