18. Jul, 2020

'The Man Next Door'

Netty and Linda had on a mint face pack each, to come off at the same time as their highlighter tint rinses, fifteen minutes for each application.  They were sitting in Netty’s bedroom, side by side on the bed.  The teenage girls had spent a long time in Boots making their hair colour selections and honey blond was what they were hoping to enhance their ordinary brown locks with to effect a transformation, along with pearly highlighter eyeshadows and spiky lashed black mascara.  They were looking out of the window, which the bed was right in front of, in case next door’s son came out, a daring older boy who was doing Art at the Technical College and as near to David Bowie as they could get, his hair dyed bright block red and with a blond sweep of fringe.  He was even called David as well.  Netty and Linda were at the age for admiring from afar, although this didn’t prevent every boy of interest (and they were an elusive species for those at an all girls school) being discussed with a forensic attention to detail as to looks, likes, dislikes and character, however little was actually known of him.

They were hyper aware sexually, if inexperienced, with a lubricious interest in alleged promiscuity.  Let any teacher give a lift to another, whether of the opposite or the same sex, within eyesight of the girls, and they were gossiped about as being in the midst of some torrid, tawdry affair to be laughed at. Those teachers you were not afraid of and even those you were, could be laughed at. 

Jackie magazine had been gone through and found lacking, it being a David Cassidy week.  Linda quite liked his soft, girlish looks but Netty despised him for being 'soppy', so Linda didn't admit to it. ' Aladdin Sane' played over on the tinny little record player Netty had, making the girls feel roused and disturbed, ready for a night life they knew nothing of, though it was only eleven in the morning.

Instead of lookalike David, though, as they waited, on the other side, another neighbour came out.

“Look”, nudged Netty.  “There’s Mr Dubinski.  You know what I think?  I think he’s the Yorkshire Ripper!”

“What?” breathed Linda, hardly daring to look but doing so.  “Why?”

“He’s even carrying a weapon, see?”

Mr Dubinski was holding some hedge clippers and at the front, he began snipping at his privet.  Seeing two white faces at the upper window next door peering out, he raised the shears in casual salute.

“Don’t wave back!” cautioned Netty, as Linda was about to return the greeting and they retreated from the window, time being up for both facials and colour rinses, which occupied the next half hour or so.  It was while trying to tong in some flick curls outwards in fringes and around their faces from limply unaccommodating strands, that Linda asked, because Mr Dubinski was still visible cutting the hedge,

“Why him?  Why do you think he’s the Yorkshire Ripper?”

“He’s always out all night,” said Netty darkly.  “And my dad thinks he’s weird.”

Linda thought Netty’s dad was a bit weird himself, so that didn’t necessarily mean anything but, looking out at the cropped dark head and pale face moving studiously down the length of the privet, she said,

“Wow.  Creepy,” and she thought now that, instead of just looking boring, ordinarily grown man-like (being well past the age of her’s and Netty’s interest in boys) that maybe there was something sinister about him.

Just then, Netty’s mum knocked on to ask if Linda would like to stay for lunch with them.

“Only beans on toast, mind,” she said, clear that the offer was only for minimal fare.  “What are you both getting tarted up for?  Are you going into town shopping?”

“Yes, mum,” said Netty.

The grand window shopping circuit of Chelsea Girl, Dolcis shoeshop for the wetlook boots they both craved, Woolworth’s make-up counter for the Miners cheaper range and a tour of the two key record shops where youths in denim jackets would also be browsing, were all on their shared agenda.  Getting ready for public promenading was a serious matter.   Netty’s mum had come in while they were still watching out of the window.

“What are you looking at? Oh,” she added, answering her own question on seeing Mr Dubinski still at work and moving back herself.

“I was telling Linda,” said Netty.  “About him being the Ripper ‘cause he’s always out nights and he’s weird.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, “ said Netty’s mum, but Linda could tell from her manner that unease had crept into her about him too, by osmosis, from Netty and Netty’s dad, even though Netty’s mum was sensible, which made Linda think again that maybe there was something in it.  “He’s not out all night,” went on Netty’s mum.  “He works night shifts at the hosiery factory.”

“There you are, then.  He’s got his pick of stockings to strangle women with,” said Netty with relish.

“That’s not how those women and girls were murdered, now, is it?” said her mum.  “And it’s not something to be talking about like that, as if it’s not real, not to mention saying it could be somebody we know.”

“Well it could be.  How do we know it isn’t?” said Netty chippily.

Mr Dubinski, unaware of this stain darkening his reputation, had finished clipping and was by now surveying the level of straightness he had achieved.

“Come on downstairs in a few minutes and I’ll have the toast and beans done,” said Netty’s mum, popping her frosted highlights and bubble cut perm back out of the door.

Netty’s mum was quite young and trendy.  Linda’s mum didn’t have time to be because she was always involved in local campaigns for things and just had her hair longish and scraped back in a ponytail with a bobble.  This was embarrassing, because leafleting could pop up unexpectedly and you could come across her on the street haranguing people with slogans when you were going past with your friends, for example, or she might insist on bringing pamphlets and petitions to pass around on parents’ evenings.  It was worse for Linda’s brother, Ian, because their mum insisted on going to the local football matches with him, which made him squirm because her interest was, as he and Linda both felt, feminist related and therefore discernably bogus, laying him open to the scorn and pity of mates.  Also, she had no scruples about leafleting the crowd when in the stands, which was altogether humiliating and showing up for her twelve year old son, who was quite old enough to go on his own, thank you, if she’d let him.

“Good job one of us loves sport, eh, Ian?” she would exclaim, ramming the team colours’ woolly hat on her head to further make the point.  “You know what your dad’s like.  He wouldn’t know a football from a boiled egg!”

This was also something which Linda felt for Ian about because, although true, he would have much preferred his mum not to keep declaring it so often and so publicly as she did.  Linda often wished her mum were like Netty’s mum, or other more ordinary and conventional mums and not given to taking controversial stances, never mind who she was talking to.  Linda liked to fit in.  The girls ate their beans on toast and returned upstairs to finish themselves off with lip gloss and blusher.

By the time they left the house, fringes and side curls flopping despite Elnett hairspray and really not at all as honey blond as they had hoped, Mr Dubinski was outside again, this time mowing the patch of lawn at the front.  He nodded at them as they went down the path but Netty marched sternly forward ignoring him, so Linda did too, apart from one quick sideways look, swiftly averted.  Linda didn’t like being so rude, so while Netty’s swish past was all attitude and spunk, hers was a self conscious slinking of the ashamed sort.  She felt an imminent awareness of him close by as a man and a stranger, a threat, with his pale face and dull, dark hair, tall and grown up in casual flared brown slacks and a v-neck jumper with a white border over a self coloured fawn shirt.  The details of him were all things she noticed and somehow clocked up, with as much physical awareness of the body beneath as she would have had about lookalike David, had they seen him.  It made her deeply uncomfortable and she glanced back at Mr Dubinski as if this were somehow his fault, with a sense that he was pervertedly imposing his sexually adult maleness upon her deliberately, obscenely, even.  Grown men were just dad people, or teachers, and not on that kind of radar.  Linda didn’t like it at all.  Her glance behind at him caught his attention and he looked back for a moment, dark eyes and pale face blank, before he returned to his mowing.  Linda shuddered.

“You’re right, Netty,” she said.  “He is weird.  Maybe he is the Yorkshire Ripper?”

“Yeah, I know,” said Netty but her mind was elsewhere because the bus was coming.  “Quick, hurry!” she urged, as they rushed to the stop.

In town, they eddied about browsing, trying on clothes in Chelsea Girl, barging in and out of the Western saloon style red doors to the communal changing room because that way they could pretend to themselves they were buying things.  In Dolcis, the knee high wetlook black boots were shinily alluring on the stand, tight on the calf, platform soled and far too pricey for them but a search of the indoor market didn’t find cheaper imitations up to their fashionably critical standards.  They hung about in the two record shops for quite a long time, nudging each other and hovering near mostly indifferent boys.  Neither girl was geared up for initiating conversation themselves, although Netty would have had the confidence to respond had some other party begun first.  After anticipation, it was disappointing but they would have another couple of boys they thought they ‘fancied’ to discuss and hanker after later.

Eventually, it was time to leave and it had started raining.  When they reached the bus stop, they had just missed one, its tail lights blurring off in the drizzle and so they were the only ones waiting there.  A car pulled up alongside them and the driver wound down his window.  Mr Dubinski’s flat dark eyes and pallid face looked out at them.

“Hop in,” he said, “and I’ll give you a lift home.  A shame for two young ladies who set off looking so lovely to get home drowned wet.”

Linda felt a shock of fear.  His voice had a lilt in it, like Terry and Bob in ‘The Likely Lads’.

“I’m Jack,” the voice on the famous tape sent recently to the police ran in her head.

Mr Dubinski was a Geordie!  She stared at him in horror.  Netty shouted,

“No!  Go away!”  

With a look of startled consternation, Mr Dubinski was about to speak when the car behind him tooted an impatient horn. 

 “Linda, run!” Netty commanded and the girls shot off in panic just as Mr Dubinski, taken aback and under pressure from traffic, drove away again.

The two girls sheltered under the Building Society’s portico until the next bus came and ferried them safely back to Netty’s house, where they ran in, having worked themselves up into a complete state about what had just happened.  Netty’s dad was at home by this time from his rugby club amateur game and post match drinks.  He was a childish ruffian of a man when it came to sorting out the men from the boys.  He saw things in simple terms and was all for going straight next door and battering Mr Dubinski for kerb crawling his girl and trying to pick two children up to murder them.  It was Netty’s mum who stopped him by saying that if they really were this suspicious about Mr Dubinski, it was time to call the police.

Linda could tell right away that she regretted saying it, in that way Linda knew people did when they were taking a course of action which would bring personal trouble down on their heads, but if it was the right thing to do, then you should do it, anyway.  It was a different thing, but nevertheless like at home, where her dad was less fervid than her mum about fearless public commitment to political causes and sometimes had to be persuaded that being known for it didn’t matter.  It did matter, of course, because their post was opened, their phone was tapped and neither parent ever got promoted at work.  Although he said he didn’t, Linda knew her dad minded about that.

It was surprising, Linda felt, how many things could run through your mind in the space of minutes, seconds even, at the same time as other things were being loudly and emotively discussed.  Mr Dubinski’s adult masculinity, which she had physically felt to be a predatory maleness, was making her skin crawl again even as they spoke of him now, with its incongruous difference to the peachy cheeks or androgynously made up faces of the pop idol pin ups she and Netty admired, and the actual distance of any real boys they liked.  By now, she had no hesitation at all about what Mr Dubinski was, what he represented, what she feared from him and when the police came and a policewoman questioned her and Netty about what had happened, she told them how he had stared and leered, undressed her with his eyes was a phrase she used, popping up from somewhere fictitious.  The police took their semi hysteria, by now calmed down but given a factual weight by being listened to, entirely seriously and when they were further told that Mr Dubinski worked nights and hailed from the Newcastle area, the matter was clinched.

The police radioed in and Linda watched through the front window downstairs with Netty and her parents as a police car arrived and after some loud hammering on the front door and shouting, arrested a struggling Mr Dubinski and took him away.  A young woman came hovering down the path, gazing distractedly after the car, turning in shock to look at the neighbouring houses as if in wonder that anybody in them could be the author of this disaster.  She held her collar together nervously in a defensive movement and as she stood, it was clear that she was heavily pregnant.

It hadn’t occurred to Linda that there might be a Mrs. Dubinski and seeing her distressed figure there seemed to show that Mr Dubinski, against all appearances, was an ordinary family man -  one of those far and away grown up people about whom, for Linda, there was nothing sexual at all -  his wife’s pregnancy, strangely, confirming that status because it was a thing belonging to the world of adult domesticity.  She realised, dimly, just then, that the impressions and feelings she had experienced as a reality had in fact been conjured up, not by anything that Mr Dubinsky had done but by herself and Netty, Netty’s dad, the police and finally, even Netty’s mum.  She knew, also, that this was not something she could say, even if she were able to try and put it into words.

“Poor Mrs Dubinski,” Netty’s mum murmured.  “Poor thing” and Linda knew that, as her own mum would instantly have acted on doing regardless, Netty’s mum wanted to go to her but because of what they had all just collaborated in, felt she couldn’t.  

Mrs. Dubinski was still staring about her like a refugee suddenly made homeless when Netty’s dad closed the curtains on the evening, shutting her out abruptly.

“That’s that,” he said.  “About time.”

He put the television on, where they watched ‘The Generation Game’ together as if, a duty done, they were entitled to family cosiness and then, after that, Linda stayed for tea.  She found she was in no hurry at all to explain what had happened today back at her own house, for there, without fail, when it came to light, it would most definitely be questioned.