The Week Hartley Did It Himself
For thirty years Hartley had had things done for him. Not in a grand way. He ran a small surveying firm on Portland Street in Manchester, twelve people and a leaking roof, and Nandi had managed the office for twenty-two of those years.
He had his shirts pressed because a bag went out on Mondays and came back on Thursdays. He got the car serviced because a date appeared in his calendar and a taxi appeared behind it. When the boiler made a noise like a dropped spanner, he mentioned it once, and some weeks later the noise had stopped.
Then Nandi went to her brother’s wedding in Durban, and was away for eleven days.
She left a list, because she was used to leaving lists, and he was used to being handed one.
He managed. That was the thing he wanted noted afterwards: he managed perfectly well. He had the shirts done at the place on Oldham Street and collected them himself. He got a key cut. He had the windows cleaned, and stood in the rain while it was happening, because he was not used to standing about while other people worked. He made his own dental appointment, which he had not done since he was twenty-four, and he was not used to waiting eight minutes on hold, and he waited them.
On the Thursday he had the boiler looked at. The engineer arrived at eight, worked for two hours, said “All done,” and left.
By Friday every line on the list had a tick beside it.
Nandi came back on the Monday with a suitcase full of other people’s wedding cake and looked at the list on his desk.
“You got it all done,” she said.
“All of it.”
“How’s the boiler?”
“Fixed.”
“No,” she said. “How many winters?”
Hartley opened his mouth and found nothing in it.
Every year for twenty-two years she had come back from the boiler, the garage, the printer, the landlord’s agent, carrying something that had never been the point of the visit. The boiler wouldn’t see another winter. The garage was moving to a bigger place in March, so book early. The man at the printer’s daughter had started at the college. That was how the firm had always known things a year before they happened, and it had never once been written down.
He had had everything done that week. He had not had a single conversation.
Nandi rang the engineer. Hartley heard her laugh at something, and say she was sorry to hear it, and ask after somebody’s mother. She put the phone down after nine minutes.
“One more winter,” she said. “Two if it’s mild. And he’s retiring in March, so we’ll need somebody new by then.”
None of that had been on the list. None of it had ever been on the list. Hartley looked at the neat tick beside “boiler” and understood that he had done the week properly, and had learned nothing at all.