Living In Perhaps by Julia Widdows Read Free Book Online Page B

of stones.
    'Only don't say you live next door.'
    'Why not?'
    'Because we don't like the people who live in this road. They're suburban .'
    'Oh. OK.'
    I dropped off my satchel at home and said, 'I'm playing out.' I
ran off again before my mother could say, 'Playing out where ?'
Not that she usually did. It was just my guilt that made me dash
away.
    Barbara was sitting on the kerb, waiting for me. She jumped up,
grabbed my hand, and pulled me past the laurel hedge and in at
the peeling gate, which today was propped open with a brick.
    The house was tall, with steeply pointed gables and
symmetrical windows and a wooden veranda all the way round.
The two front doors stood side by side. There was lots of fancy
fretwork, just like a gingerbread house, which could have done
with a lick of paint; and on closer inspection the windows – no
net curtains at all – weren't very clean. We ran up the front steps,
and they juddered beneath my feet like the steps of the old
passenger bridge at the station. My stomach felt the way it did
when a train went under the bridge while I was on it: flipping over
with nerves and excitement. Barbara kicked open the left-hand
door and we stepped into the darkness of the hallway.
    A long staircase was straight ahead and at its foot was a doorway
with a heavy blue curtain across it, trailing on the floor. She
swept this aside and we were in the next-door hallway, the other
half of the house, at the foot of their stairs. This hall was dark too,
with pictures all over the walls, and a table full of sprawling plants
in lead-coloured bowls. Barbara cantered down the passage
towards the rear of the house, with me following close behind,
grabbing at the back of her cardigan, fearful of being left alone in
such a strange place.
    The kitchen was full of light. There was a big window with glass
shelves set across it and striped spider plants cascading down the
panes. Barbara took a glass from the draining board, filled it with
water, downed half of it, opened her mouth to yell 'O-ma!', and
then finished off the water. She didn't offer me any. She rinsed out
the glass and turned it upside down again to drain.
    I heard a slapping, slippery noise behind me.
    ' Oma! ' Barbara cried out joyfully.
    Oma was composed entirely of circles. Her face was round, her
wire-rimmed spectacles were round, the top of her body with its
sloping shoulders and shelf of bosom was round, and her great fat
stomach, covered with a sky-blue pinafore, was another circle.
Her skirt was ankle-length, and her mannish cotton shirt was
filled to bursting. The noise I'd heard was her trodden-down
slippers. I thought she looked repulsive.
    'My little Baba!'
    She took Barbara's cheeks in both her hands and pressed a kiss
on Barbara's nose, which was about the same height as hers.
    I leaned back against the cupboards, making myself small in
case she did the same to me. But she took no notice of me at all.
    Oma was Barbara's grandmother. She lived with the
grandfather in one half of the house, and Barbara and her parents
and brothers and sisters lived in the other half. Of course Barbara
didn't bother to explain this at the time, just left me to work it out
as best I could.
    The house had originally been two properties but when the
family moved in they knocked a doorway through in the downstairs
hall and another upstairs, for ease of movement. Such
casual vandalism impressed me, especially since the upstairs
doorway was still unfinished, a rough hole gashed in the brickwork,
with no curtain across. The two families maintained
separate households, with separate sets of furniture and meals,
but when they felt like it they stepped through into the looking-glass
world of the other house and had a chat or borrowed a pan
or sat down and cuddled a child.
    That first afternoon we stayed in the grandparents' half of the
house. It was very quiet, and half light, half dark, like the paintings
by Rembrandt I later saw in books. Much later. It smelled of
strange