Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

WE’RE MAKING OUR own beer.”

     “Oh yes?”

     “Takes ten days. Or a fortnight or something. It’s still too sweet; all that sugar. Must let you have a bottle.”

     “Yes.”

     Mendes carried on splashing the tepid soapy water across his rhododendron bush.

     “Greenfly?” asked Welcombe, adjusting his spectacles.

     “No, not greenfly.”

     “How’s your wife? I hear she hasn’t been too well.”

     “Picking up.”

     “Was it the baby? I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t …”

     “S’alright.”

     “I mean if you’d rather not talk...”

     “Excuse me. I think I hear the doorbell.”

     “Doorbell?”

     “Yes. Your dog keeps pissing over my rhododendrons.”

     The van, a Ford Transit, left fourteen hundredweights of sand and nine hundredweights of Portland cement. Its maximum load, the driver informed Mendes. And the gearbox was giving hell and it was hot as a fucking over, ‘scusing his language, in that cab and the whole consignment would take another three runs. “What’re you building then, a pyramid ha ha and you’ll have to help me in, my helper’s down with a bug, or so he says, more likely been on the booze, the Irish bastard, and what with my sciatica ...“

     Mendes helped shift the twenty-three bags of cement and sand, tipped the man and told him he’d take the rest of the load as soon as possible, preferably before the weekend.

     In the sitting room (Axminster carpet, embossed Regency wallpaper) Martha was lying on the couch staring blankly at the ceiling. Mendes poured himself a Scotch, dumped in plenty of ice. “Like one?”

     Martha blinked once in negation. Mendes drank slowly. “That was the man from the DIY store,” he said.

     Martha continued to stare blindly upward. Perhaps she could see her stillborn child there, like a Pozzo cherub, reclined, smiling, Its miniscule penis unashamedly exposed between chubby thighs.

     “I’m going into the back garden. It’s a glorious day. You should come out. Do you good.”

     Martha continued to stare. Perhaps all she really saw was the ceiling tiles.

     Mendes returned to the garden, whisky still in hand. He was relieved to find that his neighbour, Welcombe, had returned indoors. Moodily he surveyed the twenty-three bags of sand and cement. Might as as well make a start, he thought, gulping down his whisky. Returning inside he ran a hose from the kitchen out into the middle of the garden. He then dragged one of the cement bags to the same spot, tore It open, and dumped its contents onto the lawn. Grey clouds enveloped him. He sneezed.

     “Bless you,” said Welcombe, a folded deckchair under one arm. “Doing a spot of building then?”

     “That’s right,” said Mendes, dragging two bags of sand and dumping them likewise.

     “What’re you building, a swimming pool?”

     Mendes shook his head, went indoors and reappeared just as water splashed from the hose.

     “I’m building a wall,” he said.

     “Sorry about the dog,” said Welcombe.

     “S’alrlght,” said Mendes, mixing the sand and cement.

     “I mean I’m sure he doesn’t pick your rhododendron bush intentionally. You know what they say. If you gotta go you …”

     “Yes,” said Mendes abruptly.

     Welcombe unfolded his deckchair, loosened a button at the neck of his shirt.

     “August is always too bloody hot,” he said. And then, “I’m no expert mind, but haven’t you added too much water there? That mixture looks a bit ... watery.”

     Mendes went on with his mixing. After a few moments he picked up a brick from the pile by the shed, and, with great deliberation, cemented and laid it at the perimeter of his garden.

     “How high’s the wall going to be then?”

     “I don’t know. But high enough to stop your dog pissing on my rhododendrons.”

     A further two loads of sand and cement were delivered by the weekend, before the Transit packed up. The man at the DIY said that they’d have to hire another van and would complete the order as soon as possible.

     By the middle of the second week the delivery was completed and Mendes had a wall four and a half feet high to the left of his garden. It occurred to him then that Mrs. Murry, the widowed neighbour to his right, owned a cat that seemed to delight in burying its turds among his lettuce patch, and that while he was at it he might as well do the job right. But he would need more bricks.

     Pleased with the notion he decided to ‘phone the builders’ yard first thing the next morning.

     Meanwhile Martha was meandering about the house listlessly, her eyes vacant, her once slim frame now almost emaciated.

     “You’ll have to snap out of this,” Mendes told her. “You’re killing yourself.”

     “I killed your baby.”

     “God killed your baby.”

     “My baby’s dead,” said Martha matter of factly.

     “Babies die all the time,” said Mendes. “It’s the way the world goes round.”

     But she didn’t seem to hear him.

     August gave way to September and September to October, by which time Mendes’ wall had been completed on all three sides to a satisfactory height of five feet. Only with difficulty could Welcombe now accost him, and not at all Mrs. Murry, her cat or the Welcombe dog. Mendes was feeling justifiably proud of himself. Until the building inspector arrived.

     “You understand of course Mr. Mendes that no-one, no-one, can lay a brick without first obtaining Corporation approval and residential agreement.”

     “I never thought,” said Mendes.

     “We’ve had complaints,” said the man, self-consciously fondling a brown felt hat.

     “Complaints.”

     “I’m sorry. But it’s a standard byelaw of which I’m sure you had some knowledge.”

     “I just never thought,” said Mendes.

     “It’ll all have to come down, of course.”

     “Come down.”

     “We can enforce it you know.”

     “No need.”

     “I’m glad you see it in that light.”

     “Complaints?”

     “Why yes. You’re blocking the sunlight from your neighbour’s chrysanthemums. Mr. Welcombe I believe. They’re wilting and dying you see.”

     “It is October.”

     “Nevertheless,” shrugged the man, his felt hat now sadly out of shape, “you should have obtained approval. The wall will have to come down.”

     Mendes withdrew every penny he had in the National Westminster some twelve hundred pounds - over a period of two weeks (the minimum). It did not occur to him to consult Martha. He was, after all, doing it for her. Or at any rate for them both.

     He installed the largest freezer he could purchase (thirty-two cubicfeet) with an Independent power supply and stocked it with what perishables he considered necessary. He then purchased tinned food and fruits, hydrated soups, potatoes, eggs, etcetera and packets of seed and plant bulbs: all these by the gross. In all, these supplies took up the two spare bedrooms.

     Meanwhile nineteen further loads of bricks, sand and cement had arrived, and were continuing to arrive at the rate of two loads per day.

     By the beginning of November the front and side doors and windows had been more than adequately bricked up to a depth of two feet. And Martha by this time had shed some of her lethargy and was beginning to talk about a ‘new’ baby. All of this cheered Mendes.

     By the first cold sleets of early December, Martha was lending herself energetically to the task of extending the garden walls, having left her former somnambulism entirely behind. Indeed, they tackled the job almost with enthusiasm, endeavouring to achieve their first twelve feet by Christmas Eve.

     They ignored Welcombe’s shouts, the Corporation inspector’s threats and even the stern dictates of the local constabulary. Once or twice outraged ‘outsiders’ had attempted to climb over the wall, only to be physically rebuffed. Martha threatened all with the law of trespass which, she insisted, still held good until such time as the local police station sorted out the mess and arranged a warrant. This was apparently taking some time, for which Martha and Mendes were grateful. Christmas was always a bad time for such wrangles.

     The two worked night and day, uncomfortable as it was, catching catnaps only, and by the twenty-fourth had surpassed even their expectations, having extended the walls to almost fifteen feet, this being on a par to the eaves of their home.

     They retired, exhausted but happy, to the dim generator light of their sitting-room to spend Christmas in peace and quiet.

     Mr. Welcombe’s chrysanthemums had meanwhile wilted and died, but it was, after all, December.

     “Are they still at it?” Mrs. Murry adjusted her tinted glasses and squinted at Mr. Parfitt the milkman.

     “At it?”

     “The wall.”

     Mr. Parfiti shrugged, stepped back a few paces, and looked up beyond Mrs. Murry’ a roof. He could see the Mendes’ wall from here, perhaps fifty feet high.

     “It’s hard to tell,” he said. “It’s so damn high I just don’t know any more.”

     “I saw it on the telly last night,” Informed Mrs. Murry. “They said that by employing triangulation or some such they estimated that the “wall was now just under sixty feet high.”

     “Yes, I saw part of it,” said Mr. Parfitt. “And Mrs. Huller in the next street, you know Ainsbury Avenue, says that it’s still growing.”

     “And how would Mrs. Heller know a thing like that? Even the authorities believe that the Mendes’ have stopped building.”

     “She says that the shadow was only halfway across her garden at noon yesterday, and already it’s now moving Into Mr. Johnston’s.” Mrs. Murry nodded knowingly. “I believe that might have something to do with the elevation of the sun. Still. Mrs. Heller is the maths teacher at the local primary so she should know what she’s talking

     “Should,” agreed Mr. Parfitt, handing back Mrs. Murry’s payment card. “Well, must be off. I’ve me collections to get in, wall or no wall. Good day.”

     “Good day,” said Mrs. Murry, scrutinising her card carefully.

     It was the middle of March, the fourteenth to be exact, when Martha first indicated that she would not be able to help Mendes build his wall for very much longer.

     “You think it’s high enough?” he asked.

     “Good lord, no,” said Martha, “we’ll build until every last brick is used.”

     And strangely there seemed to be plenty of bricks. An almost indefinite number in fact.

     “You’re not feeling ill?” asked Mendes anxiously.

     Martha shook her head and smiled. “It’s just that I’m expecting another baby,” she said.

     Mendes climbed down from his precarious position on the wall and kissed her. “What’ll we call him?” he grinned.

     “It might be a girl,” said Martha. And they both laughed.

     “What are they going to do about it is what I want to know,” said Mr. Welcombe morosely.

     “I don’t know I’m sure,” said the Co-op delivery boy. “They say knocking it down would be dangerous. Likewise tunnelling, because of subsidence. I’ve even heard that the army might be called in, though I think that’s just a rumour.”

     “They could drop someone from a helicopter,” said Mr. Welcombe hopefully.

     The delivery boy shook his head. “Can’t see it. Would you sign here please,”

     Mr. Welcombe signed. “Once it’s past noon,” he moaned, “I never get to see the sun. It might as well be midnight.”

     The delivery boy tore off a docket and gave it to Mr. Welcombe.

     “Must be awful I’m sure,” he said.

     “You said it,” said Mr. Welcombe as the delivery boy hurried away. I wouldn’t mind it so much, thought Welcombe as he closed the front door. But what with my chrysanthemums getting no sunlight, and my bloody dog pissing on them, my garden has no chance of growing. It’s like a Tundra scrub land. Even the grass is dying. Glumly, he set about making a cup of tea.

     In fact, the only thing that kept on growing was the Mendes wall.