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The Lodger
By David Gardiner This story may be reproduced in whole or in part for any non-commercial purpose provided that authorship is acknowledged and credited.
I met Mrs. Ellwood in the hallway this morning. She opened her door just as I was stooping down to pick up the letters from the mat. I’m sure she did it deliberately. Mrs. Ellwood is a very nosey woman.
“Oh, good morning Mr. Ludwig,” she said, all bright and cheerful, “are you feeling well this morning?”
A strange question to ask that, when you think about it. A very revealing question. Why shouldn’t I be feeling well? Did I ever say I was ill? Of course not. The reason she says: “are you feeling well?” is that she makes assumptions. They all make assumptions. Because I don’t go out at the same time they do, because they don’t see me leaving in the morning, or coming back in the evening, because I don’t have visitors, they assume that I’m ill. That there’s something wrong with me. They have no right to make assumptions like that. The way I live my life is my own business. If I want to stay in, I stay in. If I don’t want people up in my room, messing around with my things, then I don’t have them up there. My business, you see. Nothing to do with Mrs. Ellwood. Nothing to do with any of them.
I didn’t say anything to Mrs. Ellwood. Just handed her her letters. Why should I answer questions based on assumptions that she has no right to make? They were all for her except one. The one that wasn’t was for Mrs. Creighton, the landlady. It was just an invitation to apply for some sort of credit card. If I wanted to I could make assumptions about Mrs. Ellwood based on the number of letters she gets every day. I could assume that she’s a blackmailer, or an agony aunt for a women’s magazine, or a compulsive answerer of lonely heart adverts. But I don’t assume anything like that because I don’t have the right. I don’t know anything about Mrs. Ellwood’s life and she doesn’t know anything about mine. That’s the way I like it.
My room is the smallest one in the house but it has the best view. Mr. Stephen’s room has a front window as well but there’s a big conifer directly outside it so I don’t think he can see very much. I can see right down the road in one direction. Not so far the other way because of the same conifer. I suppose Mr. Stephens should ask Mrs. Creighton to have it cut down. I don’t think she would though. Her window is at the back, downstairs. It doesn’t make any difference to her. Anyhow Mr. Stephens is hardly ever in his room. He just comes back to sleep in the late evening. You can tell when he’s there because he turns on his radio. He listens to the news, mostly, and classical music. He keeps the volume low, all I can hear is a kind of faint rumbling through the wall.
I’m glad that my room is small. I don’t like big spaces. My room at Roundways was small as well, and it had a good view from the window. Better than this one. Fields, and trees, and a little stream winding through a valley. Of course the bars spoiled it a bit.
I can cook in my own room here. I have a little electric hob and a sink to do the dishes and an electric kettle and sharp knives and everything. They didn’t let me have anything like that at Roundways.
Mrs Creighton has a daughter who visits her every now and then. I think she must live quite far away because she doesn’t come very often, and when she does she always stays for a few days. Mrs. Creighton’s daughter has long straight brown hair, down to her shoulders, and she wears low-cut dresses and short skirts. She’s a lot thinner than her mother. Her neck is fine and delicate, like the spout of a fine china teapot. I could snap that neck with one hand, in the blink of an eye if I wanted to. I wouldn’t want to of course. Why would I want to do a thing like that? She wears those white trainers, like all young people seem to nowadays. They don’t go with the skirts. Somebody should tell her.
I prefer to go out late at night, when there aren’t very many people around. Spaces don’t look so big at night. The scale of the world becomes more comfortable. I leave the house very quietly. I know which steps and floorboards creak and I don’t walk on them. I open the front door very quietly. I oiled the hinges of the front door myself. I’m a very considerate person. I walk to the all-night supermarket on the dual carriageway if I need any groceries. I can get there in about half an hour, if I’m in a hurry, but I’m not usually in a hurry. I just take my time and enjoy the walk, make a little detour into the park, perhaps, or down the alleyway behind the flats on Leeson Street. It’s hard to get away from the street lights in a big city like this, but I’ve found a few places where you can. You would be surprised what goes on in a big city, in very dark places, very late at night.
Mrs. Creighton asked me if I was happy here a few mornings ago. I told her I was very happy. She seemed almost... disappointed. Maybe she doesn’t like my being here. Maybe she would like me to leave. But that doesn’t make any sense. My rent is paid monthly without fail by the Social Services. I don’t smoke or drink or make noise or have strangers in my room or make a mess or cause anybody a problem. She should be pleased to have a lodger like me. Isn’t it funny how people don’t know when they’re well off? She’ll never have another lodger as good as me. You’d think she would be grateful. You’d think she would appreciate how considerate I am.
There are other places that I go to as well as the supermarket of course. There’s an apartment in one of the blocks on the William Randall Estate. There’s someone I visit there. The lift always smells of urine. But that’s private, you don’t need to know about that.
I go down to the towpath as well sometimes and walk along by the side of the canal. It’s very peaceful down there, just one or two houseboats tied up, and now and then an old homeless man sleeping under one of the bridges. When I first used to go there you would see a few younger people as well. There was drug-dealing going on there. That and worse. I like to think I’ve been instrumental in some small way in cleaning it up. People don’t go there very often now. Not late at night. Not after that unfortunate business with the Australian girl student. You probably read about it in the local paper. Young girls shouldn’t go out late at night like that. It isn’t safe.
There’s only one place that I ever go in the daytime. Apart from the library, of course. I usually drop in at the library while I'm out. It isn’t open at night, like the supermarket or the apartment on the William Randall Estate. If I didn’t go to them they would come to me, and I don’t want them to do that. I don’t want the people in this house getting to know about my business. Or people coming up to this room, messing around with my things. They ask me how I am and I tell them I’m very well and they give me my medication for the next fortnight and I take it home. That’s all there is to it. And for that they get paid quite a lot of money. They get to sleep at night as well. Not like the nurses at Roundways who had to pull back the blind on my door and look in every half hour. They have it easy down at the clinic.
I suppose you’re wondering what it is I do in here all day long. I know Mrs. Ellwood wonders. She thinks about me a lot. A couple of times she has knocked on my door and tried to see into my room. She makes up excuses, like there’s a package for me, or she needs to borrow something. That’s why I like to get to the mail before she does in the morning, so that she doesn’t have an excuse. In fact she doesn’t seem to try it any more. I think I’ve got through to her.
No, it’s very simple really. I like to sit quietly and think. People don’t do that often enough you know. I read a lot too. I’ve always liked reading. And I have my albums and my collections that I like to keep up to date. I buy the papers when I go to the supermarket for my groceries, if there’s anything in them that I want for my albums. I cut things out and I paste things in. It doesn’t make any noise or keep anybody awake. It’s a very considerate hobby. I cut out pictures and articles that interest me, and little mementos. Things like a student identity card and a couple of Australian dollars. I’m quite a sentimental person I suppose, where that sort of thing is concerned. I didn’t really want anything but the girl insisted. As a sort of souvenir, and a mark of gratitude for tackling the man with the knife.
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