This is the Life

‘Louis,’ I said. ‘What’s the deal with the kettle?’

‘What do you mean?’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

Louis lived inside but really he was camping out.

On his grease- and left-overs-encrusted gas stove stood a blackened kettle. It was one of the old-fashioned kind that you boil over a hob. Louis did have electricity, but it didn’t extend as far as his hot drink requirements.

‘Louis,’ I said. ‘This kettle has no handle.’

‘Broken off,’ he said.

‘Louis, when did the handle break off?’

He gave another of his shrugs. He had square, solid, powerful shoulders. If you’d been thinking of a fight with him, you’d think twice.

‘I don’t know. Few years ago.’

He went and sat in his Salvation Army armchair and opened up his blue cooler bag and fished out some eye drops for his glaucoma.

‘Louis, how do you pour the water out when the kettle has boiled?’

‘Tea towel,’ he said, with annoyance in his voice, as if I was being deliberately obtuse.

‘So let me get this right, Louis. You have lived for unspecified years with a kettle with no handle that you have to wrap a tea towel around to pour the water out of?’

‘I’m doing my eyes!’

‘Louis, how much is a kettle?’

‘I’ve been busy.’

‘I’m going to buy one tomorrow.’

‘Don’t waste your money.’

‘Louis, a kettle with a handle will make life easier, right? If you make your own life easier, you’re not wasting your money. You’re just spending it on improving your situation, right?’

‘We don’t need handles on our kettles, we’re—’

‘Louis, not having a handle on your kettle doesn’t make you tough. Being tough has nothing to do with kettle handles. Scott of the Antarctic went to the South Pole, Louis. Was he tough?’

‘You’d need to ask him.’

‘Louis, I’ve seen pictures of Scott of the Antarctic and his men in their hut at the South Pole and I swear to God, Louis, that they had a handle on their kettle. They might even have carried a spare handle, for all I know.’

‘Are you making the tea or aren’t you?’

So I made the tea. I had to scour the mugs first. They were stained a deep tannin brown inside.

‘There you go.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’m buying a new kettle tomorrow, Louis. While you’re at the hospital, I’m buying a new kettle.’

‘Don’t waste your money.’

But I didn’t listen to him and I did what I wanted. Who did he think he was anyway? My father or someone?

We ended up with two new kettles. One electric, and one for the gas stove – with a handle. I edged the old one out of the house gradually. First I left it out on the veranda. Then, when Louis didn’t notice that, I carried it down the stairs and left it in the garden. After a week I moved it next to the bin. The following week I put it in the bin. Then, on the Tuesday, I put the bin out for collection.

On Wednesday, when Louis was back from his radiotherapy, he began mooching around the kitchen.

‘You lost something, Louis?’ I asked.

‘My kettle,’ he said. ‘Where’s my kettle?’

‘Right there,’ I said, pointing at the electric one plugged into the wall. ‘Or did you mean this one?’ And there was the new and shiny blue one on the gas hob.

‘No. My kettle. My kettle.’

‘You mean the old burnt black and crusty one with no handle?’

‘My kettle.’

‘Louis, I didn’t think you wanted it any more. I didn’t think we needed it. As we have these nice new kettles. So I’m afraid – it’s gone.’

‘You threw it out? You threw out my kettle?’

‘Louis, it was dangerous, you could have scalded yourself, or set fire to the place, you had to wrap a tea towel around it. It was a liability.’

He just looked at me through his milky eyes, now filled with infinite reproach, and I felt like some kind of murderer for what I had done.

‘Louis, I didn’t know it meant that much to you. I thought it was just an old kettle.’

Without another word, he turned his back on me, and he went to his room and lay down on his bed. The mix of chemo and radiotherapy was very tiring and he spent a lot of the day asleep.

I felt bad. I realised what I had done. It was part of Louis I had thrown away. For years Louis had been the man with the kettle with no handle. People had come round and he had made them a coffee or a tea or a herbal something. And he had poured out their drinks, first carefully wrapping the dirty, scorched old tea towel around the body of the kettle. And they’d watched him do so, and everyone knew that Louis was the man with the kettle without a handle. And so it had been for many years. There had been talk and conversation and many a long hour of putting the world to rights, there in that choked and cluttered kitchen that had seen neither floor cloth nor mop for a decade.

But that had been Louis. That had been part of who he was.

‘You know, Louis, don’t you? The guy with the beard and the kettle.’

Now he only had the beard left and that had been to the barber’s.

I felt bad, like a tyrant, like one who had taken advantage of vulnerabilities. But I couldn’t bring the kettle back. It had gone to the dump and even if I searched I would never find it. It was there with all the other long-gone and inadequate domestic appliances. True, I had bought him a new one, but what use was new when it wasn’t what you loved?

I don’t have much advice to give anyone; I’ve learned very little in my life; but here’s my gem of wisdom. Don’t take a dying man’s kettle away. You won’t be doing him any favours. Nor yourself either.