Oh yes: it was my building. My own, the one that I’d remembered. It was big and old and rose up seven floors. It was off-white at the front too, with windows but no balconies. Its main entrance had a kind of faded grandeur: wide, chequered steps ran from the street to a double doorway above which was carved in stone relief the building’s name: Madlyn Mansions.
I stood in the street looking at my building. People were coming and going through the double doors pretty regularly: normal-looking people, old and young, half white and half West Indian. Residents. After a while I walked up the chequered steps to the door and peered inside.
The building had a lobby. Of course. Almost straight away I saw my concierge’s cleaning cupboard-the one I’d sketched out in my diagram, with broom and mop and Hoover leaning across one another inside. It was six or so feet to the right of where it should have been, but it was the right kind of cupboard. On the lobby’s other side was a little concierge’s booth: a cabin with a sliding window in it. I could see a concierge, a small black man, talking to someone inside the cabin. Both these men’s backs were turned on the main doors-which opened now as a middle-aged West Indian man came out and, seeing me standing there, held one of them for me.
“You going in?” he asked.
I glanced towards the concierge again: his back was still turned.
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”
I took the door from the West Indian man and stepped into the lobby.
The street’s sounds disappeared, replaced by the hollow echo of this tall, enclosed space. The sudden change felt like it does inside an aeroplane that suddenly descends, or when a train enters a tunnel and your ears go funny. There were footsteps echoing from somewhere up above and then the murmur of the voices of the concierge and the man he was talking to. The lobby’s floor was grainy-maybe granite. It wasn’t quite right, but I’d be able to change it. I strode quickly and lightly over it, still glancing at the concierge. He was more of a porter than a concierge, but I’d change that too. I’d replace him: it had to be a woman. I could picture her body now: it was middle-aged and pudgy. Her face was still blank.
At the far end of the lobby from the street doors the floor turned into a large, wide staircase. This was perfect. The patterning on its floor wasn’t right either-but the dimensions were perfect. The banister was too new, but I’d get it ripped out and replaced in no time. Looking up, I saw it dwindling and repeating as it turned into each floor. I stood at its base for a moment, watching it dwindling and repeating. It was exciting: the motorbike enthusiast’s flat was just a floor away, the pianist’s only two; two floors above that was the liver lady. I could even see the edges of my own landing as I craned my head back and looked up. I felt a tingling start up in my right side.
Eventually I looked down again and saw a door at the foot of the staircase. Above the door, carved in relief just like the building’s name above the front door, only slightly smaller, was the word Garden. I tried this door: it was open, and I stepped into a courtyard. Perfect too: it was large, with trees and bushes, enclosed on all four sides by buildings, by their backs. To my left were several sheds; I’d have those pulled down to make way for the patch of ground the motorbike enthusiast would use. When I stepped further out into the courtyard and turned round to look up at the building, I could see the pianist’s window; three floors above that, the windows to my bathroom and my kitchen. The building facing mine on the courtyard’s far side was similar to mine-equally tall but not identical.
“Good,” I said quietly to myself. “Very good. What colour are its roofs, though?”
This question couldn’t be answered straight away: from here the angle up to the facing building’s roof was too sharp to see the slates, or whether their level rose and fell. I could see hut-like bits protruding from it, though, their tops. That was good too, I thought: they’d have doors in them, most probably, for access to the roof. Just what I needed for the cats: to get them out there so that they could lounge around.
I took one last look at the courtyard, breathed in deeply, went back through the garden door and started up the staircase. The black-on-white recurring pattern wasn’t there, as I mentioned earlier; nor were the wrought-iron banisters with their oxidizing hue and blackened wooden rail above them, but their size and movement-the way they ran and turned-was perfect. The flats started on the first floor. Their front doors were the wrong size: too small. Another thing to change. I recognized my pianist’s one, though. I stood and listened at it for a while. A kind of grating was coming from inside-very subdued, probably pipes and water.
I moved up the staircase, past the boring couple’s flat, on up to where the liver lady lived. Her door was the wrong size, like all the doors, but the spot beside it where she’d place her rubbish bag for the concierge to pick up as I went by: that was just right-minus the pattern, of course. I listened at her door as well and heard a television playing. I walked around the spot she’d place her bag on, looking at it from different angles. I saw where I’d come down the staircase just as her door was opening. Standing there now, I could picture her in greater detaiclass="underline" her wiry hair wrapped in a shawl, the posture of her back as she bent down, the way the fingers of her left hand sat across her lower back and hip. The tingling started up again.
It just remained for me to walk up to my floor. I did this and stood outside my own flat. I listened at the door: no sound. The occupants were probably out at work. I tried to X-ray through the door-not to see what was actually inside but to project what would be: the open-plan kitchen with its Sixties fridge and hanging plants, the wooden floors; off to the right the bathroom with its crack, the pink-grey plaster round it, grooved and wrinkled, the blue and yellow daubs of paint. Then the bit of wall without a mirror where David Simpson’s mirror had been, the bathtub with its larger, older taps, the window that the scent of frying liver wafted in through.
I stood there, projecting all this in. The tingling became very intense. I stood completely stilclass="underline" I didn’t want to move, and I’m not sure I could have even if I had wanted to. The tingling crept from the top of my legs to my shoulders and right up into my neck. I stood there for a very long time, feeling intense and serene, tingling. It felt very good.
What snapped me out of it eventually was a door closing with a bang on a lower floor. I could hear someone coming out and walking down the staircase. I moved on to the end of my landing; there was a floor above it, with two normal doors and then a smaller, padlocked one. Cat access huts as well, perhaps, I reasoned. Seven or so feet to my door’s right there was a window: I leant against it and, forehead on pane, looked out across the courtyard. From here I could see that the facing roof was flat, not staggered. It wasn’t red either. There were three cat access sheds on it in all, ten or so feet apart. I pictured the cats lounging: two or three of them at any given time, spread out across the roofs I’d have made staggered-lounging, languorous and black against their red.
I’d seen all I needed to see. I spun off from the window and walked straight down to the lobby without pausing. I walked straight across this, too, and out into the street. I found a phone and called Naz.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“I’ve found it, yes,” I told him.
“Excellent,” he answered. “Where?”
“In Brixton.”
“In Brixton?”
“Yes: Madlyn Mansions, Brixton. It’s behind a kind of sports track. Near a railway bridge.”
“I’ll find it on the map and call you back. Where are you now?”
“I’m on my way home,” I told him. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
I walked back to my flat. There was a message on my answering machine already, but when I played it, thinking it would be from Naz, it turned out to be from Greg. I lay down on the folded-away sofa bed and waited. Eventually Naz phoned.
“The building is privately owned,” he said, “and leased out to tenants. The owner is one Aydin Huseyin. He manages this and two other properties in London.”
“Right,” I said.
“Shall I enquire whether or not he’s interested in taking offers on this property?” Naz asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Buy it.”
We got it for three and a half million. A snip, apparently.