The Apartment Store #3

Chapter 2, Part 1; in which Lydia gets a new neighbour

The Apartment Store is the story of Lydia, a little girl who lives in a ramshackle attic apartment, in a ramshackle apartment building, down the ramshackle end of town. All Lydia wants is a proper Christmas, but it doesn't seem likely until a new tenant arrives in their building and changes Christmas for everyone in it.

The Apartment Store is a book length Christmas story of twelve chapters, split into twenty four episodes for Advent.

The next morning was a Saturday, which meant usually that Lydia got to stay in bed as long as she liked, which was long. She wasn’t supposed to, but her father had to work in the shop and usually went downstairs before she got up. Every Saturday he would shout as he left for her to get up and make herself useful and every Saturday she would do no such thing but instead wriggle herself down into a hollow under the covers and crack open a book, especially in winter, when the flat was cold and rain beat against the window all morning but still couldn’t get at her, all warm and snuggled up among her pillows.

But not this Saturday. This Saturday, she was woken by the sound of feet on the stairs leading up to their landing. But what were they doing there? No one lived on this floor but Lydia and her father, and those weren’t his footsteps. In fact, she could hear him in the bathroom right now, singing in the shower.

And not just footsteps. There was something banging, too, in time to the steps. Steps, then a bang. Step, step, thud; step, step, thud. Someone was pulling something up the stairs. Something heavy, and someone heavy, too. Mr Krebs, she realised. She recognised his footsteps now, not his usual relentless trudge up the stairs but coming today in little bursts, dragging whatever it was with him.

And then he was on the landing, pulling something across the floorboards and after him came another sound. Another set of footsteps, lighter and more erratic, as if the person kept stopping on the stair and then running to catch up.

Then a door opened - the door to the other, empty attic apartment, Lydia realised, and the thing was dragged inside, and the other footsteps followed it and the door was closed again. She lay still and listened. Her father had finished his shower and stopped singing. Through the walls and closed door she could hear Mr Krebs’ low, rasping rumble of a voice.

Her father opened the bathroom door and then the door to their apartment.

“Lydia,” he called, softly.

She listened.

“Lydia,” he called again.

“What?”

“Come here, quickly,” he was trying not to be too loud. She climbed out of bed and put on her dressing gown, peering out round her bedroom door. Her father’s hair was still wet from the shower and stuck up on top of his head in a damp exclamation.

“I think we’ve got a new neighbour,” he whispered.

Just then the door of the other apartment open and Mr Krebs stomped out. He scowled across the landing at them. Lydia didn’t like him being able to see all the way into their apartment.

“You’ve got a new neighbour,” he growled, “Keep the noise down.”

He turned and stamped off down the stairs. The words

“Rent due next week,” floated up after him.

“We’ve definitely got a new neighbour,” said her father, raising his eyebrows.

Lydia didn’t want a new neighbour. She didn’t want someone else intruding on everything they did, making noises through the walls, and talking on the landing. She didn’t want to share their attic. She certainly didn’t want to share their bathroom. She had secretly always been hoping that eventually Mr Krebs would let them just have both of the tiny apartments in the attic and that she could have one all to herself and finally get away from her irritating father and all his irritating habits. And now, not only was she not going to, but she was going to have someone else’s irritating habits added to her father’s to irritate her. They didn’t need anyone else in the building, they were quite happy as they were. They didn’t want a new neighbour.

Her father had pulled on his trousers and was struggling into his ratty old blue jumper.

“Let’s go and say hello,” he said.

“No,” said Lydia, “Let’s not.”

Her father frowned at her.

“That wasn’t actually a question,” he said, “That was rhetorical, because we are absolutely going to say hello because it is polite and nice and neighbourly. And besides, I want to know who they are. Come on.”

And he crossed the landing and knocked on the door.

“Hello?” He called. No one answered. He knocked again, “Hello?”

“I heard you,” said a mournful voice, “Rent next week. I heard you.”

“This isn’t Mr Krebs, you’ll be pleased to hear,” said her father, “We’re your neighbours.”

“I have neighbours?” said the voice, “Other people live in this misery?”

“You have neighbours, at least,” said her father, “I’m Door.”

“You’re a door?” Said the voice, now sounding more surprised than miserable, “This dump talks?”

“My name is Door,” said her father, grinning, “I’m Door, I live next door and I’m at your door.”

“I was going to tell you to go away and come back later,” said the voice, “But now I need to know what the hell you’re talking about. The door is open to Door.”

“Here comes Door through the door,” and beckoning to Lydia to follow him, her father entered to apartment opposite.

Inside it was disconcerting because the apartment was the exact mirror image of theirs, so that everything was in precisely the wrong place. The sink on the wrong side, the window facing the wrong way. Also it was completely empty, which somehow made it feel smaller than their crowded and over-stuffed rooms.

Empty apart from a brass bed frame with a bare mattress on it and a huge trunk which had been dumped down in the middle of the floor. It must have been this that Mr Krebs had been hauling up the stairs. The trunk was all worn leather and well thumbed brass catches, reinforced with wooden battens and trussed up with broad leather straps. And it was covered all over with tickets and labels: pictures of palm trees and steamer ships, the names of transportation lines and airplane companies; and destinations and cities all around the world: Venice, Cairo, South Africa and Brazil, the South China Sea and the frozen Arctic.

But on top of the trunk was an even more extraordinary article. It appeared to be a wooden model of a building, made out of all different colours and grains of wood, but unpainted. The building was big - seven stories - and the model was big, too, quite covering the top of the trunk and bristling with towers and balconies and gargoyles.

On top of the bed, however, was something perhaps even more extraordinary. A man. A neat, dapper little man, so small that only the tips of his toes reached the floorboards from his perch on the high bed. He was dressed in a perfectly creased dove grey suit with a single little yellow flower in his button hole. His pepper and salt hair curled neatly behind his ears and his pepper and salt moustache turned up neatly at the ends. He was holding his pocket watch folded up in his hands in his lap and there was a cigar poking out of his breast pocket behind a pale yellow handkerchief. His expression was solemn and yet there was in his dark eyes a sparkle and a mischief that didn’t look quite sad. Not sad at all.

“I’m Door and this is my daughter Lydia,” said her father, “We’re your new neighbours.”

“So I have companions in sorrow?’ said the man.

“I don’t know about that,” said Lydia’s father, “If you want a companion in sorrow you might be better off sticking with Mr Krebs, the rest of us are varying states of more cheerful. Apart from Lydia, that is.”

Lydia shot him a swift kick in the ankle.

“I’m not sure Mr Krebs is any sort of companion, even for himself,” said the man.

“Well, he keeps the boiler going and the roof weather-proof,” said her father, looking up apprehensively, “Most of the time. Anyway, we try and make the best of what’s left. Any sorrow you have will be whatever you’ve brought with you in your trunk.”

“Well,” said the man, “Perhaps Lydia can lend me some of hers.”

“She’s always quite happy to share it out,” said her father, but Lydia wasn’t listening now - her attention had been caught by the model on the top of the trunk. She had just realised she was looking at the back of it. She edged forward and peered at the front of it. She was right.

“That’s the Krampus Department Store,” she said, “It’s a model of Krampus.”

“It is!” said the little man, “You recognise it, then?”

“That’s the man over the door,” said Lydia, pointing at the main doors, over which crouched the familiar devil figure holding on his back a big round clock with three faces, facing up and down the street and straight out over the steps into the store.

“Hard to miss,” said her father, peering over her shoulder, “This is a lovely piece of work.”

“All hand made,” said the little man, suddenly dropping down off the bed and stepping over to join them looking at the model, “Whole team of model makers and carpenters and carvers. Every detail exact.”

“Does it open? Said Lydia, examining the sides of it, “There are hinges here, I think it opens like a dolls house.”

“It does open,” said the man, bending down to look in the windows with her, “And all the floors inside pull out like drawers so you can see all the layout. It’s more than a nice piece of work,” he looked at at her father, “It’s a miracle of the art.”

“But not edible, I think,” said her father, “And I’m guessing it doesn’t have a frying pan or coffee hidden away in it.”

“It is purely and splendidly useless,” said the man, proudly.

“Well, so am I,” said Door, “But I am also hungry. I don’t suppose you would like to join us for breakfast?”

“That,” said the man, “Is the kindest thing anyone has said to me all day.”

“It’s still early, yet,” said Door.