That's Another Story: The Autobiography Read Online Free PDF Page A

I felt slightly ashamed of this and later felt compelled to explain to Maisie that no dog could ever begin to rival her in my affections and that I didn’t see her in the same light as the dog at all. She replied, ‘No, I know, well, I should think not, I don’t go around sniffing strangers’ bottoms in the street, do I?’
    Strangely, the kitchen was not a kitchen at all. The real kitchen, which was called the scullery, was a tiny room next to it. The ‘kitchen’ was a smallish room; with the sofa now long gone, it was crowded with three easy chairs, one of which, of course, was Grandma’s, their thin foam cushions usually balanced on top of a heap of newspapers that had been stuffed underneath, an attempt at tidying up. There was a large Singer sewing machine on elaborate, wrought-iron legs, upon which our mother made all the curtains as well as a lot of our and her own clothes. In one corner stood a large kitchen cabinet with a flap that dropped down on which we made golden syrup or jam sandwiches when we came in from school, and in the other corner was a big, old-fashioned radio.
    This was of great fascination with its list of exotic-sounding locations like Luxembourg, Lisbon, Hilversum, all printed on a little rectangle of glass on its front that lit up when it was switched on. I loved turning the tuning dial and being plunged into some fuzzy foreign world called Hamburg or Bordeaux, to catch scratchy, distant voices speaking in unintelligible tongues that came and went, as if on the wind. It was a link with far-flung places and yet it was safe and cosy with its walnut fascia and its warm, yellow glow. It was a comfort to hear its familiar drone from other parts of the house. It meant that you were not alone, that life was being lived, and the velutinous voices of the BBC Light Programme or the music from the likes of Whistle While You Work promised that somehow, somewhere, we were in safe hands. The first sound of the day, as I lay in bed, was invariably the low drone of the shipping forecast vibrating up through the floorboards as my mother got ready for work. On Sundays our lunch, or dinner as it was called, was eaten to The Navy Lark , Round the Horne , Beyond Our Ken and Hancock’s Half Hour . We took our meals around the Formica-topped table that was stuck snugly into the bay window, but as we grew older we simply collected our plates and took them off to eat elsewhere, watching television or doing homework, leaving my poor mother, who had invariably cooked the food, to eat by herself, as my father always came in much later. She never complained and was probably glad to be left in peace. My sister-in-law tells of how she came round to be introduced to the family for the first time and to have tea with us. She says that once the meal had been served up suddenly there was no one in the room but herself and my mother and, with my mother nipping in and out of the kitchen, she virtually ate alone.
    The real kitchen, the scullery, was where as small children we stood in the big, old Belfast sink and washed. Water would have to be boiled up on the gas stove as there wasn’t a hot tap. It was where my father shaved. I would stand on a little table next to him so that I could watch at close quarters the very pleasing process of shaving foam and bristles being removed in sharp smooth tracts, revealing the weathered hollow that went from cheekbone to jaw. I can still smell the soap and I cannot deny that to this day a whiff of Old Spice does cause a distant thrill. It was where my mother did her nightly ablutions, shouting high-pitched warnings not to come in as she crouched over a washing-up bowl on the floor, and it was generally where we all washed and brushed our teeth.
    The bathroom upstairs was used only once a week when the immersion heater was put on for the briefest possible time, closely monitored by my mother; otherwise it offered no hot water and was a room in which from November through to May you could