The other house Part 1
This story is in two parts!
Children often experience their own lives almost as fairy-tales. They take on guises alien to their actual environment. They flee from reality, spinach, homework or whatever. I was certainly no exception. This story is based on experience. I make no apologies for my fertile imagination and hang to dark, and sometimes tall stories. But this story is also a therapeutic exploration of the child’s mind i.e. mine. On reflection, I think I needed my make-believe world in order to cope with the real one that revolved round my terminally ill father. That is one of the reasons I loved the theatre. Escapism. But probably existential.
I can still hear them, the footsteps on the pavement, clickety-clack, clickety-clack. Percussive echoes of stiletto heels. A magical sound inseparable from the grown-up sophisticated world to which I dreamt of belonging one day.
The owners of the footsteps wore crimson lipstick and bleached their hair the colour of my breakfast cereal.
I remember vividly the day they moved in. The old house opposite us had been empty and neglected for as long as I could remember, until one day a gang of workmen moved in and restored it to its former glory.
It was fit for royalty.
On that fateful day which was to change my life, I went to school as usual and came home at my normal time. As I turned the corner into our road I saw a vast removal van parked outside our house. Not associating it with the other house, I rushed home, and was relieved beyond belief that we were not having our possessions pushed and heaved into its confines.
No furniture at all was going into the van, but plenty was coming out of it. Beautiful period pieces wrapped lovingly in blankets were being carried like children up the driveway and into the other house. I stood transfixed until the stares of the removal men started to embarrass me. I ran home and into our kitchen and waylaid my mother, who was busy with some chore or other.
I bombarded her with questions, but I don’t remember much about what she said in reply, except that now two people would be living in the other house, a mother and a daughter.
I remember thinking how nice it would be to have someone across the road to play with. In my childish mind all mothers were about the same age as mine and their daughters about the same age as me.
Soon it got dark. Watching through the landing window, I saw the van move off and could hardly contain my curiosity about the new residents across the road. I asked if I could knock on their door, but my mother forbade it and I was sent to bed because I looked flushed.
Next morning I waited at our gate for the little girl I thought lived there to come out of the old house and run to the school bus with me. But she didn’t, and in the end I had to rush like mad so as not to miss it myself.
Then school took over my thoughts until it was time to walk back up our steep road at my usual home-coming time. I didn’t cross at my usual place, but instead walked very slowly past the other house and tried to peer into the grounds without turning my head.
Imagine my disappointment when I saw that the French windows had all been hung with thick impenetrable lace curtains.
There was no sign of life.
I said nothing to my mother, for fear that she would again forbid me to do what I wanted. I had already decided to ring their doorbell if the little girl didn’t come to school next day.
Accordingly, when I came home the following afternoon I threw my satchel behind our hedge, pushed the wrought iron gate of the old house open and crept stealthily up the driveway. I swung the polished bronze door-knocker until its eyeless gargoyle hammered against the newly varnished front door.
I was still aghast at my own audacity when the door was opened from within and a beautiful lady came into view.
I hid my hands behind my back and held my breath. I had never seen anyone so immaculately dressed and painted. Almost immediately, a second lovely lady, somewhat older than the first, appeared behind her.
I waited tongue-tied and fidgety for something to happen, dizzy from the indescribable fragrance which emanated from the house and drifted into my numbed brain.
Our house usually smelt of cooking and washing and I couldn’t imagine what lifestyle could have induced that smell of orchids and mimosa which exuded from the rose-coloured entrance-hall behind the two angels.
Had my feet not been stuck to their step, I would have turned tail and fled.
Over the shoulder of the younger lady, the more mature one asked me what I wanted in a kind, amused tone of voice.
I took a deep breath.
“Can I play with your daughter?” I ventured, addressing my query to the younger lady, as she seemed a more suitable candidate for the role of mother, though I couldn’t really imagine either of them having time to do anything else but take care of themselves.
The younger lady burst into laughter like a tinkling bubbling cascade, which I might have likened to the chinking of champagne glasses, had I had any experience of such things.
My own mother laughed contralto when she could find anything to laugh about, and all the other women I knew from my mother’s sporadic social work or family visits performed a repertoire of tee-hee-hees which did not sound remotely like this spontaneous explosion of joyfulness.
“Isn’t she quaint?” remarked the laughing lady to the other one.
Then she turned back to me and said in a regretful voice,
“I haven’t got a little girl.”
“But my mother told me a mother and her little girl had moved in here, so I thought…..”
I tapered off, not being able to think of anything else to say.
“Ah,” intervened the older lady. “Now I understand.”
I waited with baited breath for her to continue. I was transfixed by her sky blue unwavering eyes. She chose her next words carefully.
“This is my daughter,” she said slowly, resting a caring manicured hand on the younger lady’s silken shoulder.
I don’t know how I got back home. My eyes were brimming over with tears of disappointment and humiliation and I was in a terrible quandary because that very morning I had told everyone at school that I had a new friend, but was keeping her name a secret for three days as part of our vow of eternal friendship.
Now I would be exposed as a liar. Everyone would jeer at me and ridicule me and refuse to play with me.
Or would they? What if I were to keep up the pretence until a suitable moment arrived when I could safely dispose of the myth?
I rushed up to my room to rehearse what I would say at school next day. I stood in front of the wardrobe mirror the way I always did when I was solving a problem. When I was satisfied with my performance, I washed my tear-stained face and went down to tea.
After school next day I walked very fast as I approached the other house, then I dropped my satchel deliberately right in front of their garden gate. I knelt down to pick everything up and while I was doing this I peered through the wrought iron bars, hoping against hope that the front door would swing open and give me a glimpse or a whiff of the objects of my curiosity and admiration.
But nothing happened. The other house was as silent and motionless as a graveyard.
Next day it was Saturday, and as usual I was sent on errands by my mother, who never managed to get everything she needed when she went shopping herself. I had to hurry, because sometimes she would remember even more things she couldn’t possibly do without. I would trudge up and down the road three or even four times, until nothing else came into mind and the weekend round of cooking and baking could safely begin.
As I was turning the corner into our road for the third time that morning, carting a bagful of carrots and cooking apples and puffing and blowing from the long drag up the steep road, I was amazed to see the two ladies just in front of me. I slowed down so as not to overtake them, and observed them from the perspective of silk stockings with miraculously straight seams and elegant high heels which reminded me of shoe adverts.
There they were, strolling home, admiring the front gardens as they went, pointing to shrubs and flowers, discussing their merits, comparing and adjudicating. They were in perfect harmony with each other, sharing the burden of a heavy shopping basket which looked to be full of wine bottles and cellophane-wrapped goodies. They opened their gate and walked up their drive, unlocked the front door and disappeared from view.
Still tingling with excitement, I walked past the other house again instead of crossing the road further down, as I used to do before they moved in. There was neither sight nor sound of anyone, but I could swear that the aroma of their hypnotic scent still filled the air they had so recently breathed.
From then on, I took pains to time my errands so that I could see them every Saturday and started to think seriously about whether I should ask them if I could run some for them, too.
But as the weeks went by, their twosomeness became more and more mysterious. They were quite unlike anyone else I knew. I had never before shown any interest in any of our neighbours. But then, they were only ordinary people, like you and me.
The two ladies, on the other hand, were unique. I could not imagine why they had chosen to come and live in our boring little town. I started to speculate as to where their husbands might be. After all, in American films the beautiful women had gorgeous husbands, one after another, not to mention all those other mysterious strangers who crossed their paths and who were called lovers by everyone except my mother, who refused to call them anything at all.
To add to the overall enchantment, the spell-binding quality of the two ladies grafted itself inexorably upon their house. The images became entwined. The other house gradually became as secretive as its occupants.
Spring turned into summer, and summer into autumn, but I still hadn’t plucked up courage to ask the ladies if I could help them with their shopping, such was my awe of them.
Their garden, tended by unseen hands, had burst into a blaze of tropical flowers, the like of which I had never seen before. To my childish mind it seemed that everything the two ladies touched turned into something magical.
All that was missing from their lives, and therefore from mine, were the heroes I had read about clandestinely in “True Story” when I was supposed to be fast asleep.
Little did I know that my romantic curiosity was soon to be gratified.
End of Part 1
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