The Beginning - Upstairs

 

The second floor of a house hovers. Whatever holds it up is mysterious. The connection between the ground and it is air. 

The stairs in this house are steep. There is a sharp turn at the top to take you to the landing place. At the end of the long landing there is a small, patterned window with a mirror on a ledge. It is spotted black, corroding all along its edges. Mother stands before it and puts make-up on each day, looking into it. The face looking back is not Mother, it's someone who looks like her but her expression is wrong. It is slightly twisted and a bit frightening for her little girl.  

The bathroom is stark and bright, a large silvered lightbulb gives off heat, but not enough. The toilet opposite is sometimes an office where the secretary hands out bills for payment on Izal paper. Further along, the back bedroom is stuffed with beds. Its door is closed during the day so she knocks and asks if the guest is comfortable today. By night, television broadcasts are given from there and she will present the news. 

The airing cupboard opposite is voluminous and dark and not to be entered, except on a dare. Someone will arrive shortly and demand that you come out in a terrifying voice that requires you to hide until they depart. 

The front bedroom has a large family living in it, and she would like to check the children aren't interfering with the precious articles collected by the exotic aunt and uncle who travel the world. These are stored in the large, dark, shiny wardrobe in straw baskets and wooden boxes and must not be disturbed. 

In the box room next door, lives a very old, very thin lady who is always very pleased to see the little girl. Her face lights up as she comes in and stands by her bed, though she has been crying and as the child hands her a tissue, she whispers ' don't tell your Mam Aggie ' and though that is not her name, the child nods and takes the tissue from the old lady's frail hand. She gently pats the covers over her stomach and as the old lady's face forms a wince, the child's face falls into sadness. She blows the old lady a kiss as she walks out of the room backwards and carefully closes the door until tomorrow. 

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The Beginning

 

It was a post war mid terrace with a back entry between the two houses on one side and the two large bedrooms sharing a wall above it so that you were subjected to each others' noise if you made any. 

A decent size for an average family - 3 beds with one a box room. They were larger than average, with 4 adults, two children and another adult who came and went on a fairly regular basis. It was the same for a lot of families round there. Musical beds and put-you-ups was a feature of most of their lives. You had to go where the work was.

So, a little on the small side for the grown-ups perhaps, but a vast playground for a small child and her imagination. 

She decided it was a hotel, possibly after over-hearing some remark, and would enter each room as if. In the dining room was a table always covered with a green chenille table cloth whose dangling pom-poms tickled her permanently bruised knees as she would reach forward to dip her licked finger into the glass sugar bowl which sat in state in the middle next to the glass salt and pepper shakers and the jar of piccalilli. Quietly she would complain about the food and walk out with her head in the air just like she'd heard complaining people would do. 

In the outside loo lived the Drake. He was a fine slender fellow dressed in bright red trousers, with a sleek black top, his head an elegant noble shape, long pointed nose, impeccable deportment. He greeted her with a silent nod from his place in the corner as she sat down on the toilet from where she would pour out her heart to him. He listened intently and then sometimes as a thank you she would take him out for a turn around the garden afterwards, but forgetting her manners, she might lean hard on him, pretending to limp like her uncle sometimes or even pretend he was a rifle gun as she'd seen her brother do. She would prop him back up in his corner with a sorry sigh and smooth his ruffled trousers before she left saying she'd see him again tomorrow and no messing then. 

The pantry was a secret passage way. You stepped in through the back door, sideways to the left, and disappeared into its ethereal whiteness. Chicken wire covered a small, square window. Shelves held plates, one for butter, another for cheese and sometimes cooling pies. Sometimes there was a rabbit hanging on a hook. This was very mysterious. Sometimes the smells were nauseous. 

The washing machine was a robot who also knew all her complaints and delights and she would press his buttons and pull his levers each time she passed, occasionally giving him a sweet or a special stone she'd found in the garden, once the pink stoned ring she'd got in a cracker because she felt so sorry for him trapped in the kitchen all the time.

If her Nana's slippers walked past, she might sniff the air and say pooooo !!!!! for which she would get harsh words from Mama but you could always hear quiet chuckling as they walked away, pom poms giggling. 

Mother seemed to be always in a different room, never where you wanted her to be and at mealtimes she stopped being Mother and was the Billy Goat Gruff trip-trapping back and forth from the kitchen to check on whether you were eating your chow and if you weren't you would get embroiled in an argument about why which would end with the small girl standing up tall and insisting she'd rather stand on the bucket than grow up to be a big girl.