Other People's Houses by Lore Segal

Author:Lore Segal [Lore Segal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908745767
Publisher: Sort Of Books
Published: 2018-07-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

‘Mellbridge’: Albert

I WENT INTO MY NEW HOME and closed the street door and stood in the hall. The door into the living room-kitchen, in the back, stood open and I wondered if I was supposed to go inside. I could see a square table so large it left only a margin for chairs. On one wall was a tall dresser with dishes, and on the opposite side, a grate with a fire. A large yellow dog in the yard was leaping at the window and barking. Gwenda and Mrs. Hooper were both addressing the closed door to the scullery, which doubled as bathroom.

‘Come on, Albert!’ Mrs. Hooper said. ‘Rover wants to come in and I got to go.’

‘Albert,’ said Gwenda, ‘come on, open up. Ma’s got to get outside to the toilet. Come on, now! Albert?’

‘Oh, there you are,’ said Mrs. Hooper, seeing me in the doorway. ‘What was your name again?’

‘Lore,’ I said.

‘Lorry, eh? Oh. Well, you go on upstairs. Gwenda, take her up, and mind you don’t worry Albert’s things.’ She dropped her voice as if she were speaking behind the back of a sick person. ‘He’s upset, see!’

Gwenda was fourteen, three years older than I. ‘Your ma and dad, they work for a family, don’t they?’ she said as we walked up the narrow stairs.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But in Vienna my father was chief accountant in a bank and my mother plays the piano. She studied in the Vienna Music Academy. What does your father do?’

‘Dad’s a stoker on the railway and he belongs to the union.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Does that Albert live here, too?’

‘Yes. They adopted him out of the orphanage three years ago. Albert’s all right. He’s going to marry Dawn. She’s my sister.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Sixteen. In there is my ma and my dad’s room.’

Mr. and Mrs. Hooper’s bedroom was in front, over the parlor. Gwenda and Dawn shared the room over the kitchen, and the room over the scullery was for me. My room had a wardrobe in it and a bed. It had linoleum on the floor, and was narrow as a passage. (I remember I had a recurring dream, in those days, of apartments vast as the halls of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and in my dream, rooms seemed continually unfolding before me.) I went to the window and looked out over the yard and the strip of back garden. It was as wide as the half-house, with a flagstone path running the thirty-foot length. At the foot of the garden, beyond the privet hedge run wild, I could make out, in the gathering darkness, an open space, a sloping field. ‘What’s that?’

‘That’s the playing field of the County School,’ said Gwenda. ‘That’s where all the snooty girls go. They wear green uniforms, the stuck-up things.’

‘Where do you go?’

‘To the Central School, down by the station. Ma says when school starts I’m going to take you.’

‘Why don’t you go to the County School?’ I said.

‘What, me!’ said Gwenda. ‘With

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