This is what I remember of my Grandmother’s living room. It was the first room of the house, and so the red and green stained-glass front door opened directly onto the cream woollen carpet. Grandma would always get het-up when anyone walked into that room with muddy boots. “Tsk tsk!” she would say, and shooed the muddy-booted entrant back out of the room. I didn’t blame her; this seemed to happen more than you would expect, and so over time a slightly darker patch lay on that cream carpet, by the front door. I remember Grandma leaning over on her hands and knees, with a vinegar bottle, scrubbing at the dark patch until it was almost cream again. At least I remembered to take my boots off. We had a shoe rack next to the door where I put my black leather school shoes, our winter boots, and any visitors’ shoes. We kept our other shoes inside, like slippers, or Grandma’s high heels for special occasions. After I moved out, Grandma got rid of the woollen carpet. It made us both sneeze anyway.
To your left as you entered the room were two armchairs. Grandma’s was dark blue with pink and purple flowers. Hers was terribly comfortable. Mine was beige leather. It was an option, if I wanted my own place to sit, but usually I snuggled up next to Grandma. She was as soft as the chair. Opposite the armchairs, to the right, was an old stone fireplace. In the middle of the wooden mantelpiece was a tremendously loud ticking clock, and then some photographs and ceramic ornaments of small birds and dogs, spread out either side of the clock. Many a night would we sit in her armchair, the warmth of the fireplace having a soporific effect on the entire room. The clicking of her knitting needles and the steady tock of the clock were dulled by the crackling fire. Sometimes I would fall asleep in this familiar position, but Grandma couldn’t possibly carry me to bed: I was a boy of seven or eight, and quite tall. So she would gently nudge me back into the world of the living room, and guide me to bed, holding my hand. There she would sing me back to sleep. Her voice was not particularly beautiful, but it was comforting. She had a simple way of singing, each note with a touch of vibrato. My favourite lullaby was ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ by Judy Garland. I thought Grandma sang it far better than Ms Garland. This opinion will never change.
We spent the most time in the living room. A small box television sat twiddling its thumbs in the corner until we turned it on again. Grandma liked to watch nightly news. I watched cartoons. But the most fascinating thing was a high shelf, positioned above the armchairs. It was so far up, neither of us could see what was on it from any angle, and Grandma used a stepladder to retrieve the peculiar objects that sat up there. I was never allowed to see what Grandma brought down from that shelf. And I cannot think of any other houses I have been to in which there was a shelf, and no one could see what was on it. Very peculiar.
One night I woke up to the sound of Grandma pulling her stepladder out from under the kitchen cabinet. I heard her slippers shuffle against the woolen carpet of the living room. She grunted as she put the stepladder down. Something was taken off the shelf. Two things. They were placed on the coffee table. I heard Grandma close the back door and walk out to the back garden. Of course I wanted to see what she had brought down, and so I remember pulling back my covers and creeping down the hall. I squinted at the warm light of the living room. Grandma’s armchair was pulled close to the coffee table, and on the stained wood of the table lay the two things Grandma had gathered. Two tin jars.
One jar was bigger than the other. They had the same design, elaborately imprinted into the metal. A cockerel of the finest feather, standing between two sprigs of olive. Red and white stripes across each side edge. The smaller jar was labelled tea and the larger, sugar. My little heart was thumping and I had not known, at the time, why. Possibly because of the intrigue of finding something that had been isolated for so long, up on a high shelf, out of sight. The jars were unopened. I sat down, and without thinking whether loose sugar or tea would fall out, I quickly tried to pull open the small tea jar. I heard Grandma cough outside, which made me jump and drop the jar on the cream woollen carpet below. Its lid was stubborn. Suddenly, I heard the screen door slam. Grandma was coming back through the kitchen, and so I scrambled to pick up the tea jar and race around the corner, out of the living room. But Grandma knew I was there.
She sat down in her armchair with a sigh, and called for me to come and sit on her lap. Hesitantly, I came to her arms and gave her back the tin. She opened it in front of me and pulled out a piece of paper, which read “To my love, I miss you”. Slowly and silently, Grandma picked up the sugar jar and opened its lid too. Inside was a photograph, one of a man. His skin was tan, his hair was dark, and I could see the warmth in his eyes, despite it being in black and white. He was young. Grandma sighed, and at that same time there came a knock at the door. I kept quiet as Grandma got to her feet. I followed, still in my sleepwear.
And I still remember this moment, more clearly than anything else that sat in Grandma’s old living room. She turned the brass door handle. There stood an old man. There stood the photograph.
