Helen of Orpington

Boys next door

  I did not know Mrs lovall very well at all, didn’t want too. She was not like the other people in the Close, she dressed ‘loud’ and chewed gum that revealed mid-priced capped teeth while she spoke to you. She told me on the first time I met her, that she was getting divorced and that she would live next door with her two sons; Jed and Jake. They were eighteen and twenty respectively, arrogant and pushy. They would have friends over and park their cars across our drive, preventing Kenneth attending the golf-club meetings on alternate Thursday evenings. One such Thursday, Kenneth was pacing about as it was getting late, and there was still no sign of the cars being moved. With a final look at his watch Kenneth marched out of the house. Once next door, asked very politely if someone could possibly move the car blocking the drive. The chap who answered the door laughed in Kenneth’s face and either Jake or the other one called from the back room; ‘tell him to go fuck himself’.

  They had far more money than we did. Ms Lovell spent money, lots of money, but that was not my business. She went on holidays for long periods of time leaving the ‘boys’ to turn up the stereo to outrageous levels, precluding any idea of sleep on our behalf. They would have parties in the back garden, sometimes climbing over the fence into our garden to retrieve a football. Once in the garden they would laugh, making rude gestures at us as we looked out the window helpless.

  We spoke to Mrs Lovell, her reply was to laugh and say ‘they are just boys enjoying themselves’ adding ‘you are only young once’ which seemed a contradiction, as she was in her second teen-age. The noise and disruption went on and on. When we politely asked them to turn down the music they would turn it up, even while we stood at the door. Someone in the street must have called the police, as the patrol car pulled up at the house around 3am one Sunday morning. The music went down for the length of time the police stayed but reverted to blaring as they turned the corner of the close. The boys threw rubbish over our garden thinking it must have been us that called the police. Things continued until we could no longer sit in the garden. The music up so loud that prevented any conversation would have us sitting inside the house even on the hottest days. One afternoon, thinking next door was out, Emma lay out in the garden in her swimsuit, hearing a noise turned to look up at the next doors upper windows, only to see one of the boys masturbating. They had taken photographs of her and put one of them through the post box. Once again I told Mrs Lovell of this intrusion and that we would go to the police if things continued. She, tanned orange from head to toe, dressed in white leather, just laughed as always, saying that ‘boys will be boys’.

  We would sit on summers’ days, looking out on our once lovely tended garden, now over grown from lack of use. The name-calling and noise kept us in, Kenneth would park the car around the corner and walk home. Emma would walk on the other side of the road from the arrogant chumps, but they still called out and made fearfully rude signs to her. Never once did we see them going to work or college, we wondered what they did for work or how they got their money, we guessed it was the estranged Mr Lovall. New cars and hi-fi equipment would come and go. Motorbikes would be revved up and ridden around the back garden then forgotten, but it was the music that got to Kenneth more than anything else. One day when the rock music was at stadium level in the garden, Kenneth called the police. They did ask them to turn it down which they did for at least ten minutes. The police explained that day-time noise is difficult to enforce, adding:

  ‘It’s after midnight the law kicks in, and really, at the end of the day not much can be done about it’. I went out to get the washing in about 6 that evening and the oldest one looked over the fence just watching me, he leered at me ‘ don’t think you can move, if someone comes to see your house we will scare them away-tough shit lady-you’re stuck!’