Lewycka - We Are All Made of Glue

TO BE PROOFREAD

Title:

We Are All Made of Glue

Author:

Marina Lewycka

Year:

2009

Synopsis:

From bonding to bondage, from B&Q to Belarus, along with seven smelly cats, three useless handymen, two slimy estate agents, social workers, and a bonker lady, this is the story of a very unlikely friendship. Georgie Sinclairs husband has walked out; her sixteen-year-old son is busy surfing born-again websites; and all those overdue articles for Adhesives in the Modern World are getting her down. So when Georgie spots Mrs Shapiro, an eccentric old Jewish emigre neighbour with an eye for a bargain and a fondness for matchmaking, rummaging through her skip in the middle of the night, its just the distraction she needs. And although they mistrust each other at firstGeorgie doesnt like the look of that past-its-sell-by-date fish, while Mrs Shapiro thinks Georgie needs to smarten herself up and grab a new husbanda firm friendship is formed over the reduced-price shelf at the supermarket. Then Mrs Shapiro is admitted to hospital and to Georgies surprise, she is named as her next of kin. But sorting out Mrs Shapiros semi-derelict mansion in Highbury, home to seven stinky cats with agendas of their own, is no easy job when the handyman called in to change the locks turns out to be not what he seems and his two assistants, the Uselesses, are doing more breaking than fixing. And what about the two slimy estate agents (one with a charming taste for bondage) who start competing to trick Mrs Shapiro into selling her rickety old house, or the social worker determined to commit her to a nursing home? As Georgie steps in to help her new friend, she finds herself unravelling a mystery which takes her from Highbury to wartime Europe to the Middle East, and learning a bit about DIY along the way.

Adhesives in the Modern World

The gluey smell

T he first time I met Wonder Boy, he pissed on me. I suppose he was trying to warn me off, which was quite prescient when you consider how things turned out.

One afternoon in late October, somewhere between Stoke Newington and Highbury, Id ventured into an unfamiliar street, and came upon the entrance of a cobbled lane that led in between two high garden walls. After about fifty metres the lane opened out into a grassy circle and I found myself standing in front of a big double-fronted house, half derelict and smothered in ivy, so completely tucked away behind the gardens of the neighbouring houses that youd never have guessed it was there, crouching behind a straggly privet hedge amidst a thicket of self-seeded ash and maple saplings. I assumed it was uninhabitedwho could live in a place like this? Something was carved on the gatepost. I pulled the ivy aside and read: Canaan House. Canaaneven the name exuded a musty whiff of holiness. A cloud shifted and a low shaft of sunshine made the windows light up momentarily like a magic show. Then the sun slipped away and the flat dusky light exposed the crumbling stucco, the bare wood where the paint had peeled away, rag-patched windows, sagging gutters, and a spiny monkey puzzle tree had been planted far too close to the house. Behind me, the gate closed with a clack.

Suddenly a long wailing sob, like the sound of a child crying, uncoiled in the silence. It seemed to be coming from the thicket. I shivered and drew back towards the gate, expecting Christopher Lee to appear with blood on his fangs. But it was only a cat, a great white bruiser of a tomcat, with three black socks and an ugly face, who emerged from the bushes, tail held high, and came towards me with a purposeful glint in his eye.

Hello, cat. Do you live here?

He sidled up, as though to rub himself against my legs, but just as I reached down to stroke him, his tail went up, his whole body quivered, and a strong squirt of eau-de-tomcat suffused the air. I aimed a kick, but hed already melted into the shadows. As I picked my way back through the brambles I could smell it on my jeansit had a pungent, faintly gluey smell.

Our second encounter was about a week later, and this time I met his owner, too. One evening at about eleven oclock, I heard a noise in the street, a scraping and scuffling followed by a smash of glass. I looked out of the window. Someone was pulling stuff out of the skip in front of my house.

At first I thought it was just a boy, a slight sparrowy figure wearing a cap pulled down low over his face; then he moved into the light and I saw it was an old woman, scrawny as an alley cat, tugging at some burgundy velour curtains to get at the box of my husbands old vinyls half buried under the other junk. I waved from the window. She waved back gaily and carried on tugging. Suddenly the box came free and she fell backwards on to the ground, scattering the records all over the road, smashing a few of them. I opened the door and rushed out to help her.

Are you okay?

Scrambling to her feet, she shook herself like a cat. Her face was half hidden under the peak of the capit was one of those big jaunty baker boy caps that Twiggy used to wear, with a diamante brooch pinned on one side.

I dont know what type of persons is throwing away such music. Great Russian composers. A rich brown voice, crumbly like fruitcake. I couldnt place the accent. Must be some barbarian types living around here, isnt it?

She stood chin out, feet apart, as if sizing me up for a fight.

Look! Tchaikovsky. Shostakovich. Prokofiev. And they throw all in a bin!

Please take the records, I said apologetically. I dont have a record player.

I didnt want her to think I was a barbarian type.

Thenkyou. I adore especially the Prokofiev piano sonatas.

Now I saw that behind the skip was an old-fashioned pram with big curly springs into which shed already loaded some of my husbands books.

You can have the books, too.

You heff read them all? she asked, as though quizzing me for barbarian tendencies.

All of them.

Good. Thenkyou.

My names Georgie. Georgie Sinclair.

She tipped her head in a stiff nod but said nothing.

Ive not lived here long. We moved down from Leeds a year ago.

She extended a gloved handthe gloves were splitting apart on the thumbslike a slightly dotty monarch acknowledging a subject.

Mrs Naomi Shapiro.

I helped her gather the scattered records and stow them on top of the books. Poor old thing, I was thinking, one of lifes casualties, carting her worldly possessions around in a pram. She pushed it off down the road, swaying a little on her high heels as she went. Even in the cold outside air I could smell her, pungent and tangy like ripe cheese. After shed gone a few yards I spotted the white tomcat, the same shaggy bruiser with three black socks, leeching out of the undergrowth of next doors garden and trailing her down the pavement, ducking for cover from time to time. Then I saw there was a whole cohort of shadowy cats slipping off walls and out of bushes, slinking along behind her. I stood and watched her go until she turned a corner and disappeared from sight, the Queen of the Cats. And I forgot about her instantly. I had other things to worry about.

From the pavement I could see the light still on in Bens bedroom window and the computer monitor winking away as he surfed the worldwide waves. Ben, my baby boy, now sixteen, a paid-up citizen of the web-wide world. Im a cyber-child, Mum. I grew up with hypertext, hed once told me, when I complained about the time he was spending online. The square of light blinked from blue to red to green. What seas was he travelling tonight? What sights did he see? Up so late. On his own. My heart pinchedmy gentle, slightly-too-serious Ben. How is it that children of the same parents turn out so differently? His sister Stella, at twenty, had already grabbed life by the horns, wrestled it to the ground, and was training it to eat out of the palm of her hand (along with a changing menage of hopeful young men) in a shared rented house near York University which, whenever I phoned, seemed always to have a party going on or a rock band practising in the background.