The Law of Damp

'How's your damp?', W. asks. 'Tell me about your flat again. It's shit, isn't it? You've got the worst flat of anyone I've ever met. My God, I don't know how you live there. What's causing it? Do you have any idea?'

It's a mystery, I tell W. I called six damp proofing companies in turn, I tell him, one after another. The water's getting in behind the rendering, says one. You'll have to strip it off, repoint the brick, and render it again. It's the holes in your wall, said another, referring to the long scar left where the lead pipe had to be pulled away.

It's your hopper, said yet another, showing me a thick patch of green on the top of the pipe through which it drained. Ah yes, I said, I tell W., impressed at his observational powers. Do nothing, said another; let the wall breathe. To breathe!, I said, I tell W., but I need to breathe! I need to take a single non-damp breath! I've got spores in my lungs! I'm coated in mildew!

A fifth pressed his nose to the brown plaster in the pathroom. He put his hand on its wet surface. He sniffed. It's condensation that's causing it, he said. Condensation, I said, behind all this? The flat all around us, brown-walled with damp. People underestimate condensation, said the damp whisperer. In a flat like this, with the double-glazing, there's nowhere for water to escape.

He told me about the dew point, I tell W. He told me how the wall comes forward to offer itself to the touch of condensation. I imagined a runner breasting the finish line, I tell W. I imagined a dolphin leaping from the sea.

But the sixth interpreter said he thought it was penetrating damp, the sort that permeates through pasty brick and the gaps between bricks. Penetrating, coming through, a slow ceaseless tsunami, a brown, persistent wave …

Damp calls for a Talmudic inquiry; I go from one wise man to another, from one to another, I tell W., but none is really certain of the Law.