OK. Here’s the problem. Every
time I come back from a holiday, the house stinks.
The porch and hallway smell like
The Elephant House in high summer.
The rest of the house also smells
like The Elephant House in high summer, except one of the elephants
has VAG ROT, and all
the other elephants have died.
The situation has gotten so
bad I dread coming back.
“Please god let the cats not
have shit everywhere”, I whisper to my partner on the journey home from our
most recent holiday. “I don’t think I can take it.”
“Just relax”, says my
partner. `’If they have, I’ll clear it up straightaway.”
My partner doesn’t know me.
If he did, he wouldn’t bandy around inflammatory words like ‘relax’. Conversely,
I know him well enough to know that the very first thing he will do on arriving
home will be to scroll through the list of recorded programmes on the Sky Plus
Planner. He would do this even if he needed to pick the zapper out of a buzzing,
twitching heap of cat shit as big as Ayers Rock.
I shouldn’t say anything but
I do.
“I don’t mind clearing up
cat shit”, I say. “I just hate the smell - the fact that I’ve just come back
from holiday and as soon as I walk into my own home - it’s all totally over.
It’s like a giant metaphor for real life.”
“Fucksakes”, says my partner,
quite loudly now. “Can’t you ever just relax?”
"L.A.N.G.U.A.G.E”, I say. The
kids are watching a DVD in the back of the car.
We
arrive home half an hour later. The front door seems to be hovering in a cloud
of queer neon-green gases. I walk into the porch; hold my breath. When I finally
realize I can’t smell anything, I’m so relieved I could cry. My partner turns on
the TV. He sighs contentedly. He prepares his corner of the sofa.
But it
is as if the movement he makes disrupts something - makes something come alive
- because all of a sudden there IS a smell: a wretched, abominable, fucking pong.
It creeps up my nose and down my throat like some decomposing worm. It is Eau de Hell, no less.
“Oh my
god”, I say. I can’t believe it. It’s totally foul. Worse than usual!”
My
partner ignores me. He wanders off to the kitchen to make a snack.
“I’m
making toast and hummus”, he says. “D’you want some?”
“Don’t
touch the hummus”, I shriek. “It’s probably that.”
I
imagine the hummus, bulging with gases; potatoes liquefying in the vegetable
tray; an array of burst, weeping things. As I put the kids to bed, a number of other
explanations are running through my head, primarily:
- Toxic Mould
- Poltergeist
- Mice
- And last but definitely not least, The Underfloor Void
Back down-stairs, my partner
comes into the lounge, carrying more toast.
“I don’t want you to take
this the wrong way or anything”, he says. “But it says on my phone that you’re,
um, that you’ve got PMT.”
I am
outraged and impressed in equal measure. I can feel bits of my face going in
opposite directions.
“I found this app called My Days”,
he continues. “You put your dates in and it warns you about, you know, ha ha, incoming
storms.”
“What
the fuck has PMT got to do with the fact that the house stinks?” I say.
I don’t
let on how weirdly flattered I am by his decision to download a phone app about
MY menstrual cycle.
“You
know what you get like”, is all he says.
He sits
down in the same position on the sofa. Rearranges a cushion. And then farts.
Within seconds, I get a hit of the same bestial pong as before.
“Oh.My.God”,
I say. “Have you got some kind of exploding anal abscess or what?!!!”
He pulls
out his phone, scrolls over something on his touch screen.
“Just two
more days of it’, he sighs, and eats his toast.
