This is my
mother's memory, not mine. Its appeal, for me, is in that little family of
three, with me waiting to happen. My father paid for that house and told mum
that's where they would be living. She trusted his judgment. Love the whole
romance of my young parents, mum 25 and dad 27, taking horse-drawn transport
from Ripon, North Yorkshire, to Netheredge, Sheffield, albeit in a
blizzard. Mum would never have called
herself a writer. She wrote loads of letters home - back to England - but
didn't embrace 'creative' writing until she was in her early sixties and joined
a writing group. This is something she wrote:
We'd changed horses at the inn where we had stayed
overnight, but after the long ride over the Yorkshire moors this last long
incline had almost beaten the willingness from these once fresh beasts as they
stamped and sweated, snorting at the entrance to the drive.
We arrived by carrier, together with bits of
furniture, at dusk, in a snowstorm in February 1956. The driver, Miles, was so
eager to seek out a friendly place to stay overnight he barely paused for a
drink after delivering his load, so pressing was his need to depart.
My need, too, was desperate: to investigate inside
this huge stone terrace house I had never seen. I was somewhat dismayed at the
size of the bare, unwashed windows blinking a reflected firelight of welcome in
the gloom.
It was a route march from the brass-kerbed step
inside the front porch down the bare wooden floors to the distant kitchen and
my first acquaintance with 'the cupboard'. When in haste I opened the door,
thinking it was another room, I bumped into smelly shelves. Later we realised
how fortunate it was that I had tried the cupboard door first as an almost
identical door led to the cellar.
It is another story entirely, that first year in our
first home, that mausoleum of a place we never quite converted into a comfort
zone. The task was daunting, but we were too young to know that and we were in
heaven.
The kitchen cupboard, however, haunted me. Its
cleaning was just too big to tackle. But after we discovered that the slightly
sulphurous smell, which occasionally permeated all the rooms, emanated from
within its depths, I recognised the time had come. No two ways about it.
Meanwhile I had established nodding terms with the
woman next door. Her back door faced ours, and I ventured to discuss the job in
hand and she offered, on loan, a step ladder to ease the task. On noticing my
advanced pregnancy she sent her son round with the ladder and possibly to get
him to suss us out.
The ladder was a help. We literally moved mountains.
The cupboard, on investigation, was stacked with all
the things the old man, the previous owner who had lived alone, didn't want or
couldn't sell. Jars were leaking or smashed and stuck. Packets were opened and
moving! The wretched smell was everywhere. The top shelf was stacked with
blocks of white Windsor soap, hard as rock, and rusted tins of mustard and
pepper powder. There were four shelves, four feet wide and three deep in the
top cupboard, and one shelf separated the darkened abyss below.
The cleaning and subsequent sterilization of the
cupboard became our project; our raison d'etre. Remember there was no radio or
television. What was a threat to our existence in the beginning became a
challenge. We worked on it together, my husband and I, in the early evenings
when Reggie was in bed. It became our leisure time when we plotted and schemed
and made plans for the future after the baby was born. Sometimes we were cross
and raised our voices in frustration, angry that anyone could have left all
this filth, not just in the cupboard but the whole house, for someone else to
move. More importantly, could it be done before the baby was due to be born at
home in September?
One time when we were both in the cupboard we heard a
voice. We were more than shocked, but stayed close and silent, keeping even the
noise of breathing to a minimum. It was a strange sound but definitely a voice;
a tinny voice. What was it saying in that Punch and Judy animated fashion? Was
it really saying, through clenched teeth 'Doyouwantacupoftealove?' How
disappointing, we thought and laughed fit to burst.
We heard the same question over and over. During the
day, on my hands and knees, wedged inside the cavern, I took comfort in the
closeness of the unexplained voice. As I discarded ancient shoes and smelly
slippers of pre-war vintage, some with socks still in situ - I never looked for
feet - I never felt alone. The mud, muck and grime of years came forth and was
vanquished. Afterwards when the scraping and sanding was over, of course we
surmised that our inside cupboard wall was one and the same as the cupboard
wall in our neighbours' home, now with visible cracks as we had scraped the
paint and mortar away.
We did eventually finish the cupboard cleaning. Of
course we did. It was beautiful, painted flat white inside and out, and
sterile, oh so sterile. What a boon it proved to be in our less-than-furnished
kitchen and dining room. We were left with a dilemma though. Should we make it
known we would love a cup of tea?
The happy ending came after Judith was born at home
in September. I was out in the back yard when a face appeared over the wall; a
smiling face with clenched teeth. I introduced ourselves, the new neighbours
from way back. Straight away she invited us to visit, and then and there, in
her kitchen, I came face to face with the voice from the cupboard.
Mrs Baker had a budgie in a cage hanging adjacent to
her kitchen cupboard door. Much to Reggie's surprise and delight and my almost
suppressed mirth, the budgie said with no prompting, in perfect mimicry of Mrs
Baker's speech, 'Do you want a cup of tea love?'
We could hardly wait.
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