so I picked up a few of the shopping bags and went inside, and when I turned round, he was gone.
My room was in the basement, along with the kitchen and a tiny, airless shower room. It faced the street and looked directly on to a wall, and, if I was lucky the passing feet and ankles of pedestrians. It felt strange to be down below pavement level, but the room was large and pretty with an open fireplace filled with chubby candles, and a sofa bed dressed up with satin cushions. It was home to assorted curiosities including an archery target, a double bass missing all but one string and a life-sized papier-mâché pig. Above the mantelpiece was a painting of a meaty nude, who bore a faint resemblance to Auntie Jackie, showing off a lot of underarm stubble and much else besides. More to my taste was a black and white photo on the opposite wall which showed a group of nuns punting on the Cherwell.
“This is usually the sitting room,” Auntie Jackie explained on our tour of the property. “But I’ve tried to tidy it up for you.”
The alternative was a recently decorated room on the first floor, bagged by Rachel because she said she was a fresh air freak and wouldn’t feel safe having the window open at night downstairs. Privately I thought it was more likely to be the double bed and the en suite that had persuaded her, but I didn’t mind. Not really. Auntie Jackie’s bedroom and an antiquated bathroom were also on this storey. The attic room at the top of the house was occupied by the lodger, Charlie, when in residence. He kept odd hours, we were told, because he was a professional musician who worked in the West End, and he liked to practise his trumpet when he got up in the afternoons, but apart from that, and a habit of locking himself out, gave very little trouble and was hardly ever in.
There were more Post-it notes, like the one over the doorbell, dotted around the house, offering warnings and reminders to past and present tenants. NO LOCK said the label on the loo door. DOOR CLOSED = OCCUPIED. Another, beside the oven, advised would-be chefs: TAKE BATTERY OUT OF SMOKE ALARM BEFORE USING GRILL. The most mysterious of all was stuck above a plug socket in the kitchen and said simply: NOT THIS ONE! On making enquiries, I was told that Charlie had once unplugged the freezer for a whole weekend while recharging his motorbike battery, resulting in the destruction of a month’s supply of Weight Watchers’ ready meals.
The whole of the ground floor was taken up by Auntie Jackie’s “business” – Ballgowns, Evening Wear and Accessories for Hire. The front room was entirely given over to dresses of every size and colour: rail upon rail of taffeta, silk, velvet and tulle; sequins, feathers and pearls. In the back were chests of drawers containing shawls and scarves and elbow-length gloves, and above our heads, beaded evening bags hung in clusters like chandeliers. In one corner was a curtained changing cubicle, and the rest of the space was occupied by a workbench and sewing machine, for repairs and alterations. Dad, typically, had got it wrong and told us Auntie Jackie worked in a second hand clothes shop, which made it sound one step up from a car boot sale.
The pride of the collection was displayed on a tailor’s dummy in a glass case. It was a midnight blue strapless dress which flowed out from knee level into a fishtail of hundreds of tissue-thin layers, all embroidered with sprays of silver stars. I wondered why it had been singled out for this attention – it was one of the least ostentatious of the lot – until Rachel gave me a nudge and pointed to a framed photograph on the opposite wall, and it suddenly made sense. In the picture, greeting a line-up of celebrities and smiling her famous, modest smile, was Princess Diana in that very same dress.
“Is that really…?” I asked Auntie Jackie.
She nodded, amused by our gawping. “You’d have been too young to remember, but Princess Diana auctioned off most of her wardrobe for charity in 1997. I’d just got an insurance payout for a whiplash injury – nearly $18,000 – and I blew the whole lot on one dress. I didn’t have the business then – I just wanted it for myself. My husband was hopping mad: he didn’t speak to me for a week. And then within two months she was dead.”
There was a solemn pause as we looked again at the holy object.
“Have you ever worn it?” asked Rachel.
Auntie Jackie shook her head. “Sadly, no.”
“Because it’s too precious?”
“No. Because I’m too bloody fat. Every time I try a new diet I think ‘I’ll be wearing Diana’s dress by Christmas!’ but it never happens.”
“It must be worth a fortune,” said Rachel wistfully She was probably thinking how much stuff she could get from Topshop if she put it on eBay
“Priceless,” Auntie Jackie agreed. “But I’ll never sell it. I could end up living in a cardboard box under the promenade, but I’ll still have my dress. They can bury me in it – it’ll probably fit me like a glove when I’ve died of starvation.”
“I wouldn’t sell it either,” I said. Although I’m the Sensible One, I do have a romantic streak.
Auntie Jackie left us to unpack and “freshen up”, as she called it, while she put away her groceries and began to prepare dinner. I could hear her clattering around in the kitchen cupboards and singing along to the radio, while I hung my few decent clothes in the wardrobe. In the absence of any empty drawers, I left the rest in the bottom of the suitcase, which I pushed under the bed. Various other items from home – my clarinet, music stand, books, tennis racquet – I deposited around the room as though marking out my territory It was only now that I came to unpack that I realised how little I’d brought. We had left in too much of a hurry. The last item to be rehoused was a cream shawl, crocheted in softest baby wool, which I used to cover up a depressed-looking armchair. It was the only thing I owned that my mother had made especially for me, which made it even more priceless in its way than Princess Diana’s dress.
Four Big Sister, Little Sister
Mum died when I was one and Rachel was nearly four. I don’t remember a thing about her of course. I used to think I did, but then I realised that all my memories were photographs. Rachel doesn’t really remember her either, which is even worse. All those years Mum spent playing pat-a-cake with her, and being patient and kind, for nothing! Nowadays, whenever I see some toddler kicking off in the supermarket and the mum trying to negotiate and be all reasonable, I feel like going up to her and saying, “For God’s sake, just smack him! He won’t remember!”
I can’t say I “miss” her because you can’t miss someone you never knew, but sometimes, when school work’s piling up, and things indoors are a bit disorganised, and Dad’s too preoccupied with his job to notice, I can’t help thinking that one parent isn’t quite enough. I suppose it must be like being an only child. You wouldn’t spend all your time grieving about the brothers and sisters you don’t have, but now and then you’d look at those big, boisterous families and feel a twinge of envy.
It’s only in recent years that Dad has talked to us about how he coped or rather didn’t cope when Mum died. He’d always talked about Mum of course, so that we would know how wonderful she was and never “forget” her, but not once about himself and his own feelings. To begin with, Nanny Chris (Mum’s mum) came to stay and look after us while he was out at work. After a while, they had a bit of a falling out because she didn’t approve of the way he let us sleep in his bed, and he thought she was too strict about mealtimes and TV rations, so she went back up to Scotland in a strop and we didn’t see her for some time.
That was when Mum’s sister – Jackie
