On The Up

by Alice O'Keeffe

Genres: Women's Fiction; General Fiction

Synopsis

By reading Style magazine, I was training myself not to want things. It was going quite well. I had already found that I did not want a pair of Yves Saint Laurent mules, a chandelier made from plastic antlers, or a diamond-encrusted necklace in the shape of a pineapple. I was still working on not wanting a fitted farmhouse kitchen in warm wood.

Sylvia lives in a flat on a council estate with her not-quite-husband Obe and their two young children. She dreams of buying a house on a leafy street like the one she grew up in. If she closes her eyes, she can see it all so clearly: the stripped floorboards, the wisteria growing around the door...

It's not ideal that she's about to be made redundant, or that Obe, a playworker, is never going to earn more than the minimum wage. As sleep deprivation sets in, and the RnB downstairs gets ever louder, Sylvia's life starts to unravel.

But when the estate is earmarked for redevelopment, the threat to her community gives Sylvia a renewed sense of purpose. With a bit of help from her activist sister, and her film-maker friend Frankie, she's ready to take a stand for what she believes in.

Warm, witty and brilliantly observed, On the Up is about relationships and community, finding a way through the tough times, and figuring out what's really worth fighting for.

(P) 2019 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Release date: November 14, 2019

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 336

Sample

‘SEASON’S Greetings from the Hackney Council Anti-Social Behaviour Unit! You have reached Bill Baker. I am away from my desk until 3rd January. If the problem is urgent please phone the police on 999. Do have a very happy – and peaceful – new year!’

I paused for a moment after the beep, wondering whether to leave a message. Clearly, I had known when I called that Bill was not going to be at his desk. He would be all tucked up and dreaming in his little semi in Enfield, or some other nice, quiet suburb. I had just wanted to do something, to take action. I needed reassurance, and nobody reassured me like Bill.

‘Hi, Bill!’ I said to the answerphone. ‘Sorry for calling so late. It’s just that it’s only three hours before I’ll have to get up, and … it’s been a bad night.’ I paused. I made sure to breathe. ‘I’ve been writing it all down in the logbook, like we discussed.’

The baby stirred in my arms, the tiny shell of his ear moving up and down as he suckled. I hugged his warm body a little closer, readjusted his blanket with my free hand.

‘Anyway. You’re not there. If you do by any chance get this message, do call me back. Any time.’ Then I remembered, and added, ‘Happy new year!’ before ending the call.

I picked up the logbook from its position on the living-room window sill and re-read the entry I had just written.

Incident No. 253. 1st January, 3 a.m.

Wow, I am feeling inspired. I am feeling – appropriately, as I meet this box-fresh year – brand new. Why? Because I’m listening to the uplifting lyrics of ‘New York’ by Alicia Keys featuring Jay-Z. For the 10th time tonight.

So yes, I feel inspired … to break something. Possibly my own head.

Total hours’ sleep: 3 (broken). The Toddler will be bouncing on my poor tired body in another three.

New Year’s resolution: get Dawn some new music.

After a moment’s thought, I added: Something soothing. Mozart?

Sleep felt a long way off, so I flicked back through the pages. Dawn moved in downstairs just before The Toddler, aka our older son Larkin, was born. He was now nearly three. The logbook was started as evidence for the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit, but it had become a record of my entire journey through motherhood so far. The first entry transported me back to when Larkin was just five days old, a red-faced, scrawny newborn, and Dawn’s anti-social behaviour was also in its infancy.

3rd March, 1 a.m., it read. Burning smell. Man’s voice shouting ‘Put it out, you plum.’ Went downstairs. D answered door in stilettos and dressing gown, holding mop. Floor under several centimetres of water.

Ah, I thought nostalgically. Those were the days when I still bothered to go down there to ask her to shut up. The days of hope. I flicked forward a few pages.

16th July, 4 a.m. Thumping. Cause unknown, perhaps D has forgotten to take medication again. Broom against ceiling? Head against Wall? V loud. Hopefully not head.

The more recent entries were terser, in a scratchy ballpoint. On the page facing my current entry was the one from Christmas Eve.

24th December, 3 a.m. 6 straight hours of Rihanna. Happy Christmas, one and all!

In small letters underneath I had written Help. Me.

Should probably Tipp-Ex that out before submitting it to the council.

I put the book back on the ledge, and sank my head against the chair. The living room was dark and, outside, moonlight glittered on the reservoir. I sometimes enjoyed these witching-hour feeds, alone with my baby while the rest of the estate was asleep. Eliot, or That Baby, as his older brother lovingly called him, was four months old, and needed feeding every night at about two or three. I had put the armchair by the window, so I could look out over the water and watch for the family of foxes that lived on the bank.

The view from this window was my favourite thing about living in Priory Court. From the outside, the estate looked like your average low-rise 1950s council block: six floors on three sides of a square, striped with walkways looking out over a tarmacked forecourt and, beyond that, the traffic rushing along the High Street.

Only we, the residents, and possibly a few estate agents, knew that the reservoir was even there. You couldn’t see it from the road. But from our living rooms we could watch the water as it changed colour with the light, from silver to deepest midnight blue, reflecting the sky, giving us a sense of stillness and space. This view was our little secret; Obe and I called it the Hackney Riviera.

On Dawn’s balcony downstairs, a man with a cracked, throaty voice was shouting loudly into a phone.

‘Nah, it’s one of those old blocks off the High Street, the boys are all coming here, let me get the address, hold up …’

The balcony door creaked, letting the bass loose into the night. The vocals whined through a wall of Auto-Tune. Dawn only ever played two songs, at unpredictable times of the day and night, and always at top volume: ‘New York’, and ‘Diamonds’ by Rihanna. After three years on constant rotation, I knew them so well that they played over and over in my head, even when it was quiet.

Obe and I had decided not to go out for New Year’s Eve, as staying up late didn’t appeal much any more. At this rate, I thought bitterly, I could have been better rested if I had gone to an all-night rave.

With a quiet click, Eliot let go of my nipple. His eyes were closed, but his lips still moving – dreaming a lovely breast-filled dream. I stroked his soft caramel cheek with my finger. Dawn’s noise didn’t bother him. Priory Court didn’t bother him. Nothing bothered him except food, sleep and cuddles. How ridiculous, I thought, that adults were supposed to teach babies to walk, and talk, and think, and be like us. ‘Don’t ever let me teach you anything,’ I told Eliot silently. I often talked to him like this, communicating directly, mind-to-mind. ‘What adults really need to do is learn to be a bit more like you.’

Wrapping him carefully in his blanket, I lifted him onto my shoulder and carried him ten steps down the skinny, windowless hall to the bedroom. The noise from downstairs was more muffled in there, just an insistent thump of bass and the odd shout. Somewhere under the bunched-up duvet lay Obe.

‘Hey,’ I whispered. ‘She’s at it again.’

From beneath the duvet came a muffled grunt.

‘Isn’t it keeping you awake?’

There was an angry flap, and a tousled afro emerged. ‘The only thing keeping me awake,’ he said, ‘is you.’

Chastened, I put Eliot carefully down in his cot and climbed into bed, tugging the slightly-too-small duvet firmly over to my side. I closed my eyes and tried to become one with the beat. My whole body ached, torn between the opposing poles of sleep and rage, but with some effort I directed my mind towards my well-worn happy place.

I am walking through a large, white, spacious living room. In front of me are French windows, which I open, and step out onto a paved patio, furnished with a wrought-iron table and chairs. It is a sunny day, but the patio is shaded by a pergola, from which deep purple blooms of wisteria hang like luxuriant grapes. I cross the patio and sink my feet into a soft lawn. As I walk towards a potting shed at the end of the garden, my garden, I can hear birds trilling, and the bees buzzing in the blooming lavender.

Peace. Finally, after a long and confusing series of misunderstandings, the world makes sense again. This is my place. It is quiet, it is tranquil, and it is mine. My house. My garden. My life.

Clinging to this alternate reality as if my very existence depended on it, I tumbled gratefully towards sleep.

‘Mummy!’ came the yell, followed by an agonising blast of light hitting the back of my retina. Larkin’s face loomed towards me, chubby and cheerful. ‘It’s my birthday!!!’

I grabbed back the duvet and cowered.

‘Obe!’ I croaked. ‘Obe, please!’

Obe made an irritable I’m-not-awake-yet noise.

‘You’ve got to get up, babe. I can’t do it, not yet.’

Larkin started bouncing on the bed, casually jabbing at my kidneys with his foot. ‘It’s my birthday!’ he cried. ‘I’m getting my presents!’

‘Obe, please!’

‘All right, all right.’ There was a rustle and an arpeggio of grunts as my not-quite-husband heaved himself into a seated position.

For a few blissful moments, the bouncing ceased, and I retreated into warmth and darkness. But just as I was about to drift off, another cold blast of light as Larkin lifted the duvet and got in beside me, wriggling and kicking. His body, warm in its Batman onesie, radiated energy. From the moment he woke until the moment he dropped like a stone into sleep every night, The Toddler never stopped bouncing.

He grabbed my cheeks between two hands. ‘Can I have my presents now?’

Obe gently lifted the duvet, picked Larkin up, and kissed him. I gazed up wearily at them, two of the three men in my life, their matching ’fros framed by the grubby white light seeping through our too-thin curtains. ‘Larkin,’ Obe said, ‘it’s not your birthday. Not until the twenty-third of February. Nearly two months.’

‘Oh.’ Larkin’s face momentarily fell, but he was used to this daily disappointment: he’d thought it was his birthday every morning since Boxing Day. ‘Can I have my presents anyway?’

‘No,’ said Obe firmly, carrying him out of the room. The drawer banged and the cupboard creaked as I heard him get the cereal and bowls out. I closed my eyes and tried to drift off again, but in the cot beside the bed, That Baby was stirring. Any minute now, he would greet the new year with a hungry cry.

New Year’s Day was warmer than it should have been, but that almost went without saying. The summer had been a scorcher, the hottest since records began. On the news, Australians were standing in the burned-out remains of their homes, or picking their way down the cracked, parched beds of dry rivers. In north-east London, the impact was less dramatic. Just a slow drip, drip of things being slightly off-kilter: the crocuses blooming at Christmas; so much rain that the park’s new trees had rotted before they even put out leaves.

Eliot and I were back in our customary position, he suckling, me watching sheets of rain sweep across the reservoir. Meanwhile, in the kitchen next door, Obe brewed our first strong coffee of the morning. An iron band of tiredness was tightening around my temples, and The Toddler was bouncing up and down the hall: THUMP THUMP THUMP. THUMP THUMP THUMP. The one good thing about having a neighbour as noisy as Dawn was that I never had to tell him to be quiet.

‘Let us go, then, you and I,’ said Obe, to nobody in particular, as he unfolded the table and sat down. He suited his full name, Oberon – a legacy of his father, a postman and frustrated actor who had named both Obe and his sister Titania. Shakespeare’s Oberon is King of the Fairies, but the name also means ‘bear-like’. My Obe had both of those qualities: otherworldly, but also solid and huggable. While other people got caught up in everyday concerns, he kept his eyes firmly fixed on the horizon.

Right now, for example, he was thinking about poetry. During our nearly four years together, I had learned that in any given gap in the conversation, Obe would be thinking about poetry.

He stirred his coffee carefully; the cup was so full that every stir risked overflow. I worried about the amount of coffee we were consuming, that it was getting out of hand. Over the last few months I had started to worry about a lot of things, both large and small. Somehow the largest things seemed to bleed into the smallest, and vice versa. Like the weird weather, for example, and the fact that if Obe died suddenly of a coffee-related heart attack I’d be left on my own with two kids, and I doubted I could cope with that, especially if some kind of environmental apocalypse was on the cards.

‘Do you think we should give up coffee for new year?’ I said.

‘When the evening is spread against the sky,’ murmured Obe, gazing into his cup. ‘Like a patient etherised on a table. Let us go!’

‘I mean, starting tomorrow, obviously,’ I went on, finishing my coffee in three heavenly gulps. I passed That Baby to Obe and took a deep breath, making a mental list of all the things I would have to do before we could get out of the door. In another lifetime, I had skipped gaily out into the world carrying nothing but a handbag. Now, I was an explorer preparing to leave base camp. The terrain was hostile; I couldn’t rule out crocodiles. Every move involved planning, and equipment, and supplies. Motherhood, after all, was about survival.

Meanwhile, Obe was now in fully caffeinated fun-dad mode.

‘Morning, fella.’ He pulled a face at Eliot.

‘Bah. Dah,’ said Eliot, and reached for Obe’s nose, which he loved to grab.

‘Not the nose, man.’ Obe dodged the claw-like grip, burying his face in squishy baby tummy while Eliot cackled with joy. ‘You’ll never take the nose.’

‘Dah,’ said Eliot, and blew a raspberry, his latest trick. As Obe laughed, Eliot, quick as a flash, hooked his claws into his father’s nostrils.

‘Noooo!’ cried Obe, grasping his face in mock horror. ‘The teeny-tiny razor-sharp nails!’

More cackles as he put Eliot across his knees and tickled. Sensing he was missing the action, Larkin came bouncing over. ‘Tickle me, Daddy! Tickle me!’

To a soundtrack of their shrieks and giggles, my preparations began. I cleared up Larkin’s cereal bowl, wiped the table, wiped the floor and the wall. I looked for the waterproofs in the normal place – they weren’t there. After five minutes of fruitless searching I found them in the cupboard with the plastic bags. I changed Eliot into his rainsuit, and then cleared up the breakfast things, including the fancy coffee-maker that Obe, every single morning, left unwashed in a drift of coffee grounds next to the sink.

By the time we were all ready to leave, the caffeine high had worn off, my body felt like lead, and all I wanted to do was go back to bed. Obe took a final swig from his stone-cold cup, stood up and clapped his hands.

‘Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets!’ he cried, giving me a frazzled grin. I sometimes wondered if he even knew who did all the clearing up, who washed all the clothes, who opened the bills and paid them and filed them, who made sure the kids had snacks and drinks and changes of clothes. Perhaps he thought it was the fairies.

‘There will be time, there will be time …’

There was indeed a time, a carefree time, not so very long ago, when Obe had landed in my life like a lunar spacecraft. It was the morning after a big night at a festival; my sister Lou had persuaded me to sign up for eight hours of litter-picking in exchange for a free ticket. Looking out over the carnage – thousands of squashed plastic cups, fuzzy outcrops of mud-matted clown wigs, a couple of capsized shopping trolleys, an orange rash of road cones, and something that looked like the insides of a giant accordion – it was impossible to remember why this had seemed like a good idea.

‘Here,’ said a voice from somewhere above my head. ‘Take one of these.’

A bear-paw was extended out in front of me, with a small white packet of pills in the palm. I looked up and met a pair of shockingly kind golden eyes. The face around them was chestnut brown, high-cheekboned, topped off with a chaotic fuzz of curls. It radiated a kind of serene joy.

‘What are they?’

‘No idea,’ replied this vision. He, like me, was clutching a bin bag, but the carnage didn’t seem to be fazing him. ‘I just found them on the floor.’

I popped a pill out of the packet, and looked at it closely. Ritalin, it said, in tiny print.

‘What does Ritalin do?’ I asked, and his face crinkled into a smile, which intensified the dazzling effect so much that I blinked.

‘Not sure, but I just took three of them and I’m feeling fine.’

I still don’t know what Ritalin does, but when we kissed later that afternoon, it was with a particular concentrated focus. We were telling each other something with that kiss, something so deep that six months later I was phoning Obe in shock after two lines appeared on the little white stick.

With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps we could have done things differently; waited to have a family, got ourselves financially stable first, got the house and the car. But that was a line of thought that didn’t really get me anywhere.

We left for the park, Obe pushing the double buggy. But when the lift doors opened on the ground floor, the front wheels met an obstacle. I peered over the top; it was Dawn, lying curled in a foetal position on the tarmac, snoring lightly. I had to credit Dawn with some brave fashion choices. Despite being overweight and in her fifties, she was wearing a tight silver mini-skirt and high heels, and had bright blue eyeshadow smeared liberally over the top half of her face. Her bird’s-nest hair was strung with tiny beads of drizzle.

‘Don’t worry now,’ came a voice from above. ‘She just sleeping. She all right.’

Winston was peering down at us over the parapet wall. I’d never been quite sure whether Winston had appointed himself Priory Court’s concierge, or whether he had some more sinister reason for always hanging around outside his flat on the first floor, watching people come and go. It was probably best not to know. That morning he was braving the weather in a fetching zebra-print dressing gown. At his slippered feet was a half-empty bottle of Wray and Nephew’s.

‘She’s not that all right, is she?’ I said tetchily. My temples were throbbing; the caffeine hangover was kicking in, and the iron band was tightening around my head. ‘It’s raining. And we can’t get the buggy out with her lying there.’

‘Just wake her up then,’ said Winston, lighting a cigarette and leaning out to get a better look. Obe squeezed around the edge of the buggy, crouched down, and shook Dawn carefully by the shoulder.

‘Dawn! Dawn, it’s me, Obe, from upstairs. Time to wake up now.’

Dawn’s eyes snapped open. ‘Am I in Disneyland?’ she said.

‘No, Dawn. You’re in Priory Court, and you’ve fallen asleep outside. Let’s get you up and into bed, shall we?’

Dawn sat up slowly. The lift doors were opening and closing repeatedly on the front wheels of the buggy, and beneath the rain cover I could see Larkin’s face, peering at me questioningly. I gave him what I hoped was a cheery smile, and went to help Obe. We hooked one arm each beneath Dawn’s shoulders and heaved, managing to get her upright, then staggered to the lift, wedging her into the small space where the buggy wasn’t.

‘Easy as you go,’ called Winston, helpfully.

The first floor clanked past. When the doors opened on two, I got out with the buggy and Obe half-carried Dawn out to the front door of her flat. He leaned her against the door frame and fumbled in her pocket for keys. Dawn opened her eyes and, with a yellow, wrinkled, toothless, but radiant smile, bent over unsteadily to inspect That Baby. I winced as she reached out a long-nailed finger and chucke. . .