To Throw Away Unopened by Viv Albertine

Author:Viv Albertine [Viv Albertine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571326235
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2018-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

It’s true that, despite all the tales Mum told us about our wonderful, strong grandmother, Frieda was very cold towards Pascale and me. I never questioned her attitude, not even to wonder if all grandmothers were like her. She was just ‘Nanny’ and not very kind or friendly.

Pascale and I shared a bedroom on the ground floor of Frieda’s Victorian house, and during the long summer nights I’d lie in bed listening to high heels snapping at the pavement as women clacked past. We always seemed to be in bed so early in those days. On every fourth or fifth step the heel would scrape along the ground. That sound, like a chicken clucking or a throat clearing, fascinated me. I’d count the footsteps until it happened again, trying to decipher a rhythm, but there was never any pattern to it. I thought that scrape was all part of wearing women’s shoes and looked forward to making the same noise myself when I grew up. I had nothing much to worry about then except foxes under the bed. Outside the window a lamp post shone through two cherry trees, throwing dappled orange shadows that danced on the sage-green curtains. I told Pascale that the spindly, sparsely blossomed cherry tree was hers and the luxurious, blossom-laden one was mine. A hollow victory as she was too young (we were five and three) to know one was better than the other, or else she didn’t mind. Pascale adored me when she was young. She thought I was clever. I also told her six was the highest number in the world, that she could have six as her special number for a treat, and I’d have ten.

The spring Vida turned five I took her to see grandmother Frieda’s house in Woodland Gardens. The cherry trees were still there, their polished brown trunks with thin grey splits slightly taller and thicker, the canopies of branches heaving with pink clusters. I felt as if I’d travelled in time and was in two places at once: inside Nanny’s house in 1959, listening to the high heels on the pavement; and outside in 2004 with my daughter, running around the cherry trees. I’m glad I didn’t know how my life was going to turn out when I was that child lying in bed staring at the curtains. I’d have been terrified of the good things that happened just as much as the bad.

Vida and I played with the drifts of fallen blossom for an hour, tossing them in the air like confetti, piling them into heaps, constructing castles and pathways and tucking them into our hair. That afternoon is one of the happiest memories of my life.

Lucien In those days it was the talk of the neighbours that Kath’s mother wasn’t taking a bit of notice or interest and in fact disliked her two little grandchildren. Kath couldn’t wait to get out of there, she even had to go and ask her mother if it was alright to flush the toilet at night.

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