‘There’s the door. I’ll get it.’
Gwen always got the door.
‘Hello, Mr—‘
‘Simon, call me Simon, please.’
‘Oh, I’m Gwen. And this is Mark, my husband.’
‘Second son, eh, Mark?’
‘Sorry?’
Second son; first son Matthew, second son, Mark. That’s usually what they did around here.’
No, I'm an only child.’
‘Oh. Sorry. I had three brothers. God, we had a lot of fun. I still see them. Right, Gwen, let’s get started.’
He didn't know how that made me feel; I’d always been aware of being an ‘only child’. When I was little, I’d asked my mum a few times why she hadn’t had a brother for me. She’d just looked at me teary eyed and got on with making the meal or unpacking her shopping bags. At times like this, I really resented her for not having a brother for me.
Simon took out his measuring tape and started pacing around the room—from corner to corner, looking at the skirting boards, tilting his head from side to side, frowning, pausing to stare into the distance, cupping his chin in his hand. We stood and watched.
‘What’s in there?’
‘That’s our storeroom,’ said Gwen, opening its door. ‘It’s full of all our rubbish. Well, not rubbish, but, you know, the kids’ things that they don’t seem to want, things that haven’t been moved to the shed. Just things like that.’
‘I know what you mean, I've got too much stuff as well.’ He peered inside. ‘It’s a big area. This is an end-of-roll carpet you're having. You know, I think it might be big enough to do the storeroom too.’ He pushed his way inside. He didn't ask. He reached his tape to the back wall. ‘Yes, it’ll do this as well.’
Gwen beamed with pleasure.
‘That’ll give us a chance to clear it out. When will you come to fit it?’
Simon pulled out a scrappy piece of paper that obviously acted as his weekly calendar.
‘Well, you're in luck. I can be here tomorrow. Eight o’clock okay?’
‘Marvellous!’ said Gwen, taking a quick look inside the storeroom before seeing Simon to the door.
I didn't even want a new carpet. It was Gwen who’d been going on about it ever since last Christmas when her sister came to stay. That was a Christmas—a Christmas and a half. Gwen’s sister knows everything about everything. Well, she says she does anyway. And what she doesn’t know about carpets isn’t worth knowing. They get on well, but she hates me. I think she hated me the first moment she saw me. We met her and her boyfriend outside the Plaza cinema on a double date. Her boyfriend—Ted, who later became her husband, tripped on the steps inside the foyer, fell over and broke his ankle. Gwen’s sister said it was my fault for not catching him, or for not warning him of the step, or for not doing something about the effects of gravity. Whatever it was that I didn’t do in her eyes, it just went downhill from there. That was a long time ago. Ted only gets about using a mobility scooter. And he’s crashed that twice!
Now I’d got to clear out the storeroom. I’d only been in there a few times in the last few years. Gwen sometimes asked me to find something and take it out to the shed—we had a brick built shed in the garden; right at the far end. When the winter came, whatever it was that had been removed to the shed was chewed up by mice and made into nests for them to keep warm in. After a few years most items that were moved to the shed disappeared into fluffy balls of dusty nesting material. The shed was a kind of halfway point to oblivion—it lay between the nothingness of the storeroom and the eternity of the mice’s nests. I didn't even want a new carpet. To be honest, I’d prefer not to have carpets at all. I’d like the quarry tiles with a rug in the middle. You can just take the rug out and give it a shake. No need for vacuuming.
Anyway, I've forced my way into the storeroom. It’s a museum of clutter. I stare at it silently. It seems to stare back, well, more gloat. It’s as if it knows better than me. I give it a really hard stare. It’s as if it has sucked in all the unwanted items in the universe. I move the old eight-millimetre projector we inherited from Gwen’s dad. There are a lot of old reels of film. Goodness knows what was on them. There isn’t even a plug on the lead for the projector. There’re some old musty clothes: a shirt, a man’s jacket, three or four dresses, a packet of letters. I recognise my mum’s handwriting. I think how strange it is that things like that stick as images in my mind. I remember my dad’s handwriting too. I wonder what the letters are about. Love letters maybe? I can’t intrude on them; their privacy pushes me back. I move stuff out into the living room and realise I’ve got to move it on from there as well. I find an old lamp stand—its lampshade encircled with orange tassels. That hasn’t got a plug on the lead either. I wonder where all the plugs have gone? Then I find a couple of boxes full of lights bulbs, and a smaller one full of plugs. My nose is filled with dust and the musty smell of things from the past. Why do things from the past smell of the past, I wonder?
I reach up to a large cardboard box on top of an ill-fitting shelf. I touch it. It falls apart and drops its contents into my arms. Dust flies up from it in a thick, musty cloud. I sneeze and more dust billows up into my face. I stand holding whatever it is in my arms, as if I’m holding a child—a child who has dropped in from the fog of the past.
It’s a cream shawl of some sort—crochet with carefully worked edges bound with silk. There’s no weight to it. It’s as if it has been woven by fairies from the sheerest threads of spider webs. There’s a faded white card pinned to it—the rust from the pin has stained the card’s surface. It has silver swirling scrolls around its edges, and a silver embossed cherub with puffed out cheeks blowing a trumpet. There’s some writing. I recognise it straightaway—it’s my mum’s. I hold my arms around the lovingly made shawl as I read.
To my darling child Matthew who did not survive for one day. Christened and buried at the same time. Keep warm, my dearest, keep warm.
