Living In Perhaps by Julia Widdows Page A

ground. Tillie went on with her
washing-up, glancing over her shoulder, untroubled, and Tom
hopped up and down in the doorway, and then, laughing,
sprinted off down the hall like a dog that really wants to be
chased.
    They even arranged their house differently. I just assumed that
the biggest bedroom was reserved for the parents, the couple, the
heads of the household. At Gloria and Stella's the bigger bedroom
automatically belonged to Gloria and Eddy, even though the high
marital bed was so seldom busy. Stella was banished to the back
room, being single. And Bettina, who spoilt Mandy in every way
possible, still claimed the bigger bedroom for her own. It went
without saying. Until I knew the Hennessys.
    It was Tom who occupied the big upstairs front room. The
curtainless windows let in all the sun. He had louring posters on
the wall, Che, and amorphous bubbling shapes, and Dalí's soft
clocks. He lay on his bed and threw darts at Che's handsome
warrior features. The room smelled of socks, and old cardboard,
and something sweet and sour. Tillie and Patrick were relegated to
a smaller room at the back of the house, where all the furniture
was pressed up against the walls to make way for their bed.
Barbara had a room downstairs which she referred to as the study.
' I sleep in the study.' It looked like an ordinary bedroom to me,
though desperately untidy. This was another shock – that you could
have a bedroom downstairs in a house that was not a bungalow. And
Isolde had stepped through the blue curtain into next door and
taken up residence in one of her grandparents' spare rooms,
gradually moving all her possessions through after her.
    Right at the top of the house Patrick had opened the attics,
painted them white and made them into a studio. A long breeze
blew through all day, and here he painted, or in the garden if the
weather allowed it. It was Patrick I'd seen through the hedge that
day, preparing one of his big canvases. I often caught sight of him
down by the summer house, hammering and stretching and
sizing. It was what he did, while the children ran round him,
slamming tennis balls and jumping on molehills, playing poker,
swearing, kicking open doors. And while Tillie washed up and
washed clothes and squeezed dough and sat on the back step with
one of her home-made cigarettes (the type of cigarettes I thought
only men were allowed to smoke) and looked at books and taught
us things.
    Now that she knew my name, Tillie sang out, 'Carolyn-nie,
Caro-lina,' when she met me in the hallway or the kitchen. She
always seemed cheerful, energetic, girlish. There was one day I
remember particularly, when she seemed so full of light, and
everything amused her.
    Barbara and I were perched on the kitchen table, eating apples,
and Tillie was drying knives and forks with a frayed tea towel.
'Where do you live, Carolyn?' she asked.
    'Oh, not that far ...' I said. I glanced at Barbara. I knew she
would kill me if I got any closer than that to my address. Heaven
forfend that Barbara should be the one to introduce something
suburban into the Hennessy household.
    'You're at the Wren as well, then?'
    'No. I know Barbara from piano lessons,' I replied, glad to tell a
truth.
    'Would you like some ice?'
    Tillie must have seen the perplexed look on my face, and went
into peals of laughter.
    'Look, I've made some ice cubes. What do you think?'
    She opened the fridge door. She had laid out the ice cubes on
three plates, blue and green. The cubes were made from frozen
orange squash, lemon squash and lime cordial. I thought her taste
in colour exquisite then. We sat on the veranda in the shade, sucking
ice cubes till our cheeks hurt.
    It was that same afternoon that Tillie asked about my reading
matter and pulled out the huge book on Dutch masters especially
for me. She hefted it on her knee and said, 'I think, Carolina, that
you'll like this.'
    And nobody before that day had ever consulted my tastes, or
entertained a single thought about what it