Neighbours

Music:

Webern: Six Little Pieces for Cello and Piano

(Sample)    Messaien: Messe de Pentecote 

Content Warning:

Menace

Transcript

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Neighbours

“Look how tall you’ve grown! Come in, come in! Hello, Pam! Happy New Year. Happy New Year, Martin…”

                                                                             We’re hungry.

            “Er? Who are you? Why are you touching my…Zonia, who are these people?”

            “Oh, don’t mind the neighbours, their harmless. Come in, come i- no, no, not you neighbours. Get back neighbours, it’s only my family who are invited to come inside.”

                                                                             We’re randy.

            “Go away…get off…”

            “Yes, er…they started banging on the car windows when we pulled into the drive. And they dribbled on them as well…look! They’re dribbling at this very moment. They’ve got such big teeth. Beastly!”

            “Come on in, Martin, Pam, come on children, quickly, the neighbours are going to get into the house if we’re not careful…come on, come on, we need to shut the door quickly.”

            “Why are they making that dreadful sound? And looking at us with those frightful eyes? They are quite saucer-eyed, aren’t they? Huge eyes. Huge-eyed”

            “Yes. Come on…get inside, nice and quick. Back neighbours, get back neighbours…shoo, shoo! You’re not welcome neighbours, shoo. Everybody inside….good…phew. Good-o. That’s the first hurdle of the new year successfully navigated.”

            “They’re…still out there. They’re swarming.”

            “Yes. The neighbours will do that, our neighbours. Our neighbours are not like most neighbours.”

            “I can see them. Their standing. All three of them. I can see their silhouettes in the frosted glass.”

            “What’s wrong with them mummy?”

                                                                             We’re lonely.

            “Nothing dear. Just neighbours.”

            “Let’s draw the curtain, the…door sash…oh, they’re moving to the living-room windows. Never mind. Don’t be alarmed everybody. They are rather strange but they don’t mean any harm.”

            “Mummy, I’m scared.”

            “Don’t worry, petal, they’re only neighbours. Zonia’s neighbours… But, Zonia, can they not be told to stop? Is there really nothing that can be done?”

            “Nothing, Pam, I’m afraid. They will stay standing at the windows, looking in, dribbling, for a long while I’m afraid.”

            “What frightening neighbours!”

            “Yes. Frightening. Absolutely frightening…”

                                                                                We’re scary.

            “I know they may seem a little peculiar. But they’re harmless really. Just jealous I think. Jealous of us. They envy us and look up to us, they desire what we have, they want to be inside. Frankly they want to be on the inside, looking out. They want someone to pound and expectorate onto their windows, someone to…to…bother them for a change.”

            “They’re undressing!”

            “What?”

            “Yes, look, they’re undressing. That short, purple one is completely naked. Good grief, Zonia, can’t we call the law on them? It’s indecent. Look, one of them’s got a horn coming out of his groin!”

                                                                            We’re scared.

            “Shall we go upstairs?”

            “Yes. Let’s go upstairs.”

            “No, upstairs is out of bounds I’m afraid.”

            “Out of bounds? Why?”

            “Tenants.”

            “Tenants?”

            “Yes, we have tenants…living in our house. I say tenants, they’re not really tenants. We harbour them, we shield them from the authorities. What does one even call that? Protectees…?”

            “Can’t you get rid of them?”

                                                                           We’re crazy.

            “No, no we can’t. They depend on us for shelter. They are hiding. From the bailiffs. We have drills every morning. At the sound of my foot on the stair, they vanish, they scarper. They squeeze themselves into impossible spaces. They become lampshades, clothes hanging on hangers. Right, into the living room children. Oh, mind that spider Fergus.”

            “The neighbours are still there, pressing their noses to the glass and dibbling and stripping…actually, I now see that they’re crying. They look wretched. They look really wretched. Should I draw the curtains, Zonia? block the view?”

            “No, don’t do that Martin.”

            “Why not?”

            “They’ll go crazy. They’ll start pounding the windows and wailing all the louder.” 

“What about the tenants. Tell me about the tenants?”

“Oh, the tenants. Er, yes…well…well, they live upstairs. They keep themselves to themselves really, they’re no trouble at all really. They’re extremely shy. Extremely shy. Anyway, how about a drink?”

“Yes, alright…”

“We’ve got orange juice, apple juice, cider, beer, Pimm’s, lemonade, iron bru, white wine, Cava, Bacardi, classic coke, ginger and lemongrass cordial, Ardbeg, vermouth…”

                                                                         We’re thirsty

“Juice, please. Lots of juice.”

“Follow me to the kitchen.”

“Come on kids…”

“Right…glasses, glasses…”

“I’ll have something a little stronger actually, Zoni. Did you say you have cider?”

“Yes.”

“Is it dry?”

“I don’t know. I think its cloudy. “Haze” they call it.”

“That’s fine.”

                                                                     We’re unhappy.

“Zonia, what on earth are those…things…those little things in the cupboard?”

“Squatters, Pam. Squatters.”

                                                                     We’re alive.

“They’re waving little flags, Zonia.” 

                                                                     We’re dying.

“Tiny little squatters, a positive infestation. They squat in the cup cupboard. Well, I say “cup cupboard”. The cupboard itself stocks china, crockery and glassware but they occupy the section devoted solely to cups. They breed like vermin, like rabbit vermin, they reproduce at an ungodly rate. No matter how many you kill, nature makes more. They squat in the cups, they void themselves into our cups. They sleep in the cups. Little tiny rat-faced squatters. Sometimes when I am kept awake at night by unwelcome thoughts, I wonder the house. I think thoughts of the chronically illusive tenants upstairs and I am badgered by thoughts of the unsleeping neighbours. They are ever unsleeping, even at night they stand outside the downstairs windows crying and dribbling. I pass the windows. The windows are curtained but I know they are there, just as they always are. I sense their presence, the weight of their presence, I have not yet deafened myself to the soft, otherworldly moan they produce. At any rate, because I am kept awake by so many thoughts, I wander about. I go into the kitchen and make a cup of herbal tea. I take my cup from the cup cupboard and sometimes, more often than not, there is a tiny little squatter sleeping in my cup. And do you know what I do? I boil the kettle and drown the sleeping squatter in the scalding, kettle-water. I put in a tea bag, maybe some lemon, perhaps some cloves. A stick of cinnamon, long as a log, as large as the trunk of a tree in their world. The aromas link arms and rise. And the squatter comes neatly apart in the aromatic water. The facial features float away, the extremities detach, the miniscule innards and sinews and bones all pool outward in a shroud of unclean blood. And I drink it all up. I drink it all down, all of it. I lift the cup up, I tilt it back, and I drink it all down. Anyway, who’s thirsty?” 

                                                                    We’re...we are…