Life was shit. That was Colin’s first thought of the day. Now here he was making his way round Ali’s corner shop picking up milk, bread and a ‘Daily Express’ that he wouldn’t read. Old habits die hard. Outside the November drizzle ran down the shop window. Ali watched his progress with mournful eyes.
“My family was sorry to hear about ...” he started to say as Colin approached the counter.
“Yeah, thanks,” Colin replied brusquely, occupying himself by sorting the change from his pocket and handing it over for his purchases.
Ali placed the milk and the bread in a thin blue carrier bag and passed it over.
“It is terrible weather,” he said his voice still heavy with sympathy.
Colin gave him a quick smile. At least Ali tried. Since Mary’s funeral people shied away from him as though death was contagious. Not knowing what to say, they said nothing. Colin had become invisible.
He tucked the newspaper into his coat, picked up the bag and head bowed, prepared to meet the elements. The streets he walked along were less glamorous versions of Coronation Street. Dampness clung to the brickwork and oily water ran along the gutters. It took him right back to childhood streets and the smoke of hundreds of chimneys mingling with the autumn air. There was no smoke now, everyone had modernised. His thoughts went around the loop and made a connection to the crematorium. Another wet miserable day. He was suddenly overwhelmed by the remembered stench of chrysanthemums and damp woollen coats.
He walked down Crimea Road and along Sebastopol Terrace until he reached the area that had been gutted in the Sixties. His block of flats stood with eight others in Balaclava Square. Six floors high, four flats to a floor and totally utilitarian. Who said the Sixties were swinging? At least he and Mary hadn’t had to live in the tower blocks with their twelve floors and built-in dilapidation.
Colin could feel the rain start to trickle down the back of his neck. The weather matched his mood.
It would be great if he could donate the life he didn’t want to someone who really needed it the way people donate blood or a kidney. A dying scientist on the verge of a cancer cure; a mother who wanted to see her children grow up. It didn’t work like that but it should. Yes, he thought to himself life really was shit.
As he approached the shabby entrance to the flats depression crushed him. Mary had run the residents’ association that made sure the communal areas were clean. Already, in the short space of time that she had gone, there was rubbish gathering. Fag ends, beer cans, a polystyrene burger box. Across the lift doors someone had sprayed ‘Zigger 924’ in red paint. Colin sent a silent apology to Mary for not having the energy to do anything about it.
He pressed the ‘up’ button and stood and listened. He was rewarded by the clank of machinery which meant that the lift was still working. Its unpredictability drove him mad. The lift arrived and the doors slid open emitting an unpleasant smell of stale smoke and paint. ‘Zigger 924’ had been at it inside the lift too. If the CCTV cameras had worked someone would have seen the cut and run artist but there were funding shortfalls so Zigger wouldn’t have made it to the silver screen. Colin stepped into the lift and pressed button ‘4’.
“Wait for me Mr Evans,” an anxious voice called and he turned to see Tasha Grey scurrying across the hallway, two heavy shopping bags swinging from her arms. It was Mary who called her Tasha. He didn’t know her that well. She was stick thin, always in a rush, always breathless and with eyes that flickered nervously.
“Hello,” he said neutrally, “awful weather.”
“Yes,” she said almost dropping the bags on the floor and staring firmly at her feet. “I was sorry about ..”
“Yeah, thank you,” Colin said. He wondered how long it would be before people started to forget.
He pressed button ‘5’ for Tasha and looked up quickly at the sound of running footsteps across the entrance hall. It was a youth, he wondered briefly if this could be “Zigger” the self-publicist. The lad was wearing a black baseball cap well pulled down and a fake Burberry scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face. He looked like a guerrilla in a training film or, Colin reflected, someone on a ‘Crime Watch’ reconstruction. At least he didn’t start to apologise to Colin for his wife’s death.
The boy stood there not making eye contact. He didn’t press any of the lift buttons. Colin didn’t think he had seen him before but it was hard to tell without getting a proper look at his face. He was jittery though. His lips were moving silently and his fingers were opening and closing at his sides. He was making Colin uncomfortable.
No sooner had the lift doors closed than Zigger, as Colin was now thinking of him, produced a knife from inside his coat and pushing Tasha into a corner tried to drag her shoulder bag away from her.
“Give us yer bag,” he screeched like a character from a bad film.
“Let go,” Tasha screamed back hanging onto it.
Colin felt as though he was watching street theatre. It didn’t feel real.
“Look here sonny.” He found himself speaking lines out a third rate TV drama.
“Don’t you touch me,” Zigger riposted turning one shoulder so the knife was pointing at Colin while retaining his grip on Tasha’s bag.
“Come on, come on,” Colin said suddenly realising the danger of this. “Give him the bag. It’s not worth getting hurt.”
“No,” Tasha gasped, “Carl’ll kill me if I lose the money. “ Then gathering her strength she yelled in Zigger’s face, “You’re not bloody well having it.”
The boy lunged at the lift buttons, presumably to stop their ascent. The lift, not usually responsive to button pushing, not only stopped but all the lights went out and somewhere above the machinery seized up.
Colin took a deep breath. He couldn’t imagine a worse scenario. He was now stuck in a sealed container in pitch darkness with a neurotic woman and a mad boy with a knife.
“Whaz ‘appened.” That was Zigger.
“Oh my god, Carl’s going to kill me.” That was Tasha.
“It’s going to be alright,” Colin said, more to hear the sound of his own voice than anything else.
He felt his way to the control panel and ran his fingers over the buttons. One of them must be an alarm he thought, although quite what it would do he wasn’t sure. He pressed each button in turn but there was no distant sound of bells or a disembodied voice asking what was wrong.
“Wha’ we gonna do?”
There was no point in telling Zigger it was his fault they were stuck like this.
“Hang on, I’ve got my mobile,” Colin said feeling excited that there was going to be an early resolution to the situation. He wrestled it from his pocket and fiddled with it.
“Damn, no signal,” he said.
“Mine needs charging,” came from Zigger.
“I haven’t got a mobile,” Tasha said softly.
“We’ve got to stay calm,” Colin said assuming authority. “Let’s all sit down on the floor and try and relax. Somebody’s bound to notice the lift has jammed.”
“You’ve got to be joking. This lift is always bloody well out of order. Only your Mary bothered about things like that.”
Tasha was right, but Colin felt he had to keep positive.
“I tell you what we’ll do,” he said. “If we sit quiet we’ll probably hear someone going up the stairs and we can bang on the lift doors and shout.”
He nearly flew out of his skin when Zigger started shouting
“Help! Help! Get us out!” and thumping his fists and feet against the floor.
“Don’t,” Tasha said, the anxiety cracking her voice. “What if the cable breaks and we go down to the basement.”
“That wouldn’t happen,” Colin said confidently. “Too many safety devices.”
He crossed his fingers. They skimped on everything else in the flats so it was likely that the lift was bog standard and ran on elastic bands.
Zigger stopped his pounding and the three of them sat in silence. Colin couldn’t remember when he had ever been anywhere so dark. Even at night there was the orange glow of street lamps but in the confines of the lift he couldn’t see a hand in front of his face. It was like being lost in space, buried alive, sealed in a box, a coffin, a casket. Dear god Mary, what had he got into? He took deep breaths to ward off the rising panic.
“Isn’t there a trap door in the roof?” Tasha asked. “There is in the films. People climb through and then go up the lift shaft.”
Colin stood and tentatively stretched up to the ceiling, running his hands over the cold metal.
“No, sorry, it all seems solid up there.”
He sank back to the floor secretly grateful. He was appalled at the idea of scrambling up cables in a lift shaft like the hero of some adventure movie. He was too old for this kind of thing.
“If Carl gets home and I’m not there, he’ll go crazy.” Tasha’s disembodied voice floated across the darkness to him.
“Does he hit you?” Colin didn’t know why he said it. It was what he was thinking and it came out.
“Course not,” the denial came too readily.
And Colin knew at once that she was lying. Mary had helped at a refuge and he bet a pound to a penny that’s where she’d met Tasha. They sank into silence again but Colin could hear Zigger shuffling about and he wondered what he was up to.
“D’you think its getting hot in here?” Tasha asked.
“Bound to be a bit warm.”
Colin was still trying to sound reassuring.
“How long will the air last?” Tasha was gasping for breath as she spoke.
“There’s plenty of air in here.”
“What if it catches fire?” she asked hysteria creeping into her voice.
“We’re gonna burn up like in a microwave,” Zigger joined in and Colin could sense the boy standing up.
“No we’re not.” Colin said just about hanging on to his composure while swallowing the bile that had risen to his mouth.
“I can ‘ear some one,” Zigger shouted, excited now. “Help! Help! Get us out!”
Colin and Tasha were up on their feet too.
“Help! Help!” they all screamed in unison.
Colin stretched out his arms until he managed to touch both of them.
“Wait,” he said. “Listen, can you hear anything?”
Nothing. Only their own heavy breathing and their hearts pounding in their ears. They sank back to the floor.
“Wha’ we gonna do now?” the boy asked again.
In the darkness Colin shrugged.
“God only knows, and he ain’t splitting,” he said remembering it was one of his mother’s sayings.
Then he added, “I think you ought to give me the knife.”
“Fuck off.”
“What’s your name? I can’t keep thinking of you as Zigger.”
“Wha’ you mean Zigger. You stupid or sumfink?”
“No, no,” Colin shook his head. He was beginning to feel a bit punch drunk. “I saw Zigger sprayed on the lift door, that’s all.”
“That’s a tag,” the boy said suddenly sounding confident. “I know who tha’ is but I’m not telling see.”
“I’m not asking,” Colin said. “Have you got a tag?”
There was no reply from across the lift, only a snuffle and a quick intake of breath.
“Are you okay?” Colin asked unsure who it was.
“It’s not fair,” the wail came from the boy. “I just had to nick a bag an’ then I got in all this crap.”
“You didn’t have to nick a bag,” Colin said exasperated. “Why the hell did you have to?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,”
“Well see, there’s this gang over the tower blocks and they get yer to do fings.”
“Oh I see,” Colin said, although he didn’t. “For Christ’s sake, can’t you do something constructive? Can’t you join the youth club, play billiards or football? Anything but nick handbags. You poor little sod.”
After his verbal explosion Colin slumped back.
“I can hear someone.”
They sat and listened carefully. Definitely footsteps on the stairs. They all jumped to their feet again.
“Help! Help! We’re stuck in the lift! Get us out!”
Someone banged on the outer door and shouted something back but it was too muffled to hear. The footsteps receded. The three of them remained standing, holding their breath, waiting for something to happen.
“Give me the knife,” Colin said again quietly. “Before you hurt someone. We’ll not say anything.”
“Speak for yourself,” Tasha almost spat out. “It was my bag the little bugger was after. If he ever comes near me again I’ll do for him. So help me I will.”
“Say sorry,” Colin said.
“Wha’?”
“Say sorry,” he repeated.
“Sorry.”
“I can’t tell if he means it,” Colin said, “I can’t see his bloody face.”
Suddenly they all burst out laughing at the absurdity of their situation. It was hysteria, fear, relief and very nearly tears. The knife nudged against Colin, handle first, and he slid it into the carrier bag with the milk and the bread.
Now there was more activity outside. Footsteps running up and down the stairs, something levering between the lift doors. And then daylight. The three of them stood there blinking. They found themselves stuck between floors and staring at the feet of their rescuers.
“Come on, let’s get you out of there.” A burly Council worker hauled them all up onto the third floor. “You all alright?”
“Yeah, we’re fine thank you. Yeah thank you very much. It’s really not good when you’re stuck in there.”
Colin looked at the other two. Tasha with her nervous look and the boy with dirty marks round his eyes where he’d rubbed them.
“I’ve got to get on,” Tasha said gathering the bags and heading for the stairs. “Carl ....”
“You take care,” Colin said “And if you need me you know where I am.”
She stopped and met his eyes properly for the first time
“Thank you” she said and even managed a smile.
The boy stood there awkwardly.
“You better get going,” Colin said “before anyone changes their mind. Don’t forget, you keep out of trouble.”
The boy made to go and then turned back.
“My name’s Zac,” he said before running off.
(c) Anne Ayres 2008