Marnock Road

It was a bit silly, to be honest.  It was never going to work out for us, but my girlfriend had been exploring alternatives to buying a flat we could just move into.  These included property auctions and repossessions as well as wrecks that needed extensive renovation.  My complete absence of DIY skills any more sophisticated than those required to put up pictures (and even that’s been known to go wrong) didn’t seem to put her off.  She likes a bargain and what were the reality's limitations to stand in her way?

Marnock Road was two of those things.  It was a repossession and a wreck, but it was a four bedroom house for under £300 grand which seemed ridiculously cheap.  It was right next to Crofton Park station and a couple of hundred metres away from Mr Lawrence’s wine bar and Jam Circus, a bar with occasional pretentions but generally a good vibe, as well as the parts of the high street that don’t sell alcohol. 

The agent offered to be ‘completely honest’ and pointed out that it had Japanese Knotweed growing in the garden.   That didn’t sound too promising.  In my former life as a sales rep for construction media I had several clients who cleared brownfield sites.  The best solution for Japanese Knotweed seemed to napalm.  We went to see it anyway, that we knew it was too early, we weren’t done planning, but something had to be first and it might as well be something too good to be true.

It was early November and already getting dark by the time we arrived.  The plastic front door to the tall old Victorian house had a hole where the window used to be.  There were no electrics inside, nor water, nor gas which was something of a surprise.  In hindsight, if your property has been repossessed then obviously you’ll stop paying the utility bills sometime before they come to drag you out into the street, but the sight of red and white hazard tape strapped to the boiler, the cooker, the taps, the toilet made it feel sinister, as though a crime had taken place there.  I’d arrived on my bike so we used its lights to try and peer through the gloom, like detectives looking for fragments of bone amongst the dust.  She took the front, white light, I the rear, red which added to the things I saw out the corner of my eye, casting devilish shadows.

2006:  Piotr lay on his bed and smoked.  In the small room the fug clustered around the lampshade hanging from the ceiling.  The shade covered a light which no longer worked.  The only light he had came from a small bedside lamp scavenged from Deptford market and the fuzz that eked through the window from the street outside and the station opposite. 

‘The next training approaching platform one will be the...’ the electrified woman’s voice paused for effect and Piotr joined in, ‘...delayed eighteen-thirty-six to Ramsgate.’  It was dusky out as people shuffled around their lives.  He liked to watch the trains drift in and out, onwards to their destinations.  Places like Ramsgate, places in the countryside that he’d never have time to see, but that he liked to imagine.  Ramsgate, it sounded like an old market town, atop a hill, renowned for its cattle.  He couldn’t think what it would be like in the twenty-first century.  Down below the passengers disembarked and some fluttered down his street, their umbrellas bearing the mist of the early autumn rain.

Next door a stereo kicked in.  Screeching guitars of the sort favoured by teenage boys.  A brief bark of guttural vocals and Piotr’s room shuddered.  He used to bang the wall, but had stopped once the plaster felt as though it would fold under his fist.

‘Michael!’ something almost unrecognisable as human squawked from lower in the house and the music dropped to a faintly menacing growl.  Eighteen seconds, he thought.  Quicker than usual.

Soon it would be time to go for a drink.  The three of them, united by country and circumstance, would go to the local bar where most ignored them, but some gave distrustful glances for no other reason than their accent and the paint splatters on their clothes.  Sometimes it made him want speak to them, to try and understand how he threatened them, but usually he was just glad they had a table, alone in the corner.

A car pulled up outside.  Heavy bass throbbed so much that the very tyres struggled to grip the tarmac.  Inside were three boys shovelling greasy food into their mouths.  The windows were lowered and the music’s intensity grew.  The boy from next door went out, the door slamming behind him, his music still rumbling away in the bedroom.  The boy in the passenger seat dropped his foil food container out of the window.

‘No,’ came the screech from inside and out she bustled, the Mother brimming with righteous indignation.  ‘You’re takin’ a liberty.’  She picked the foil up and then tried to stuff it back through the window.  There was much shouting from inside the car as they tried to resist before the driver could get the vehicle into gear and away.  She stood in the street, foil at her feet, arms folded in triumph of having tried.

Piotr sat down on the bed again and lit another cigarette.

The knotweed was, apparently, more or less under control, thanks to the plastic netting traipsed across the front garden.  More problematic was the sagging joist in the roof, the unfortunate bounce to the lounge floor, the cracks in the plaster skipping through the floors, the missing slates from the lower roof, visible from the upper stories, the damp seeping through the walls and the fact that the dining room had been converted into a bedroom with an ensuite.  Over the months we would become more used to trying to wrap your head around something’s potential, but as a first look it was terrifying.

‘It’s a shame,’ the agent said.  ‘It’s a really handsome road, but for some reason many of the houses are really run down.’  That particular place was a classic example of a greedy landlord.  Divide the property into bedsits, each with a lockable door and limited shared facilities, rents run relatively cheaply on an individual basis, but still cumulatively more than could be got for a family in the house.   The profits margin increased further by letting it run to rack and ruin.  Every time a tenant moves out, leaving their room a state, the deposit is kept and then the next one moves in with no repair done.  Cracked windows, peeling paint, missing panels in doors.  It was a house that had missed being owned, thrown from temporary resident to the drifter passing through.  It had been pimped out and it showed all the wear, the dead-glow behind the eyes, the track marks on the wrists, of never being cared for.

A builder had already made a cash offer which was being considered by the vendor.  We hadn’t got to grips with how repossessions worked, but, it was obvious that they’d sweep in, renovate it again into separate bedsits, sell it back to a landlord and the whole mess would begin again.  That sort of thing never ends, like an addiction it just keeps gnawing for more until there’s nothing left to give.