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I remember the stairs in that flat, the carpets were
dirty and when we moved in we had to clean it top to bottom. We had been there for 18 moths and the
landlady had put the place up for sale, trying to cash out we assumed, as
prices were already starting to slide. We had a meeting with her to go over the
property a few weeks later and despite the fact that she was around the same
age I was she spoke to us angrily, was demanding, as though we were children:
perhaps not children but subordinates, which I suppose we were, as tenants. In
the battle to make money, especially in the battle over money from property we
had been defeated and had now become a resource. Perhaps she was so hostile due
to repressed guilt of some kind, knowing our life and labour went to building
her and her children's comforts and assured futures at the cost of our own. But
I doubt it.
More likely she viewed us as failures, below moral
consideration, low-status males slipping toward our forties and fifties with
the little charm we had had pretty much all used up. We were at the bottom of
the pecking order.
But perhaps not that far down, really. Not compared
to the person who was waiting for me on the other side of the door. The bottom
was much lower than we imagined. We still had some way to go until we got
there.
But we did get there.
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