Stalin was a Time Bandit

Stalin was a time bandit. In 1929 he introduced the five day, six week month, effectively abolishing Sundays. At that time Soviet workers were struggling to create an industrial economy and ‘le weekend’ was a foreign concept to them. However, the Sabbath was still very much ingrained into the collective consciousness, and they did not appreciate the revolutionary interference.

We live traditionally. We do not like to deviate. The USSR eventually conceded this point and, in 1940, the Gregorian Calendar was re-introduced.

Father stood frying eggs in the kitchen. Mother was in hospital. I knew something was wrong because he never usually cooked. The tiled floor was slate cold in winter, despite the cheery yellow squares. Fat spattered out of the pan. Little dots seared into my skin as they landed. I was only waist height.

Mother’s womb had gone bad. She blamed me. “I wish I’d had an abortion.” I did not know what an abortion was. I did not like the word. It sounded all stretched.

The hot eggs melted the butter on the bread and burnt oil soaked into the dough. Where the whites were not cooked properly trails of snot bled across the skiddy surface. The yolk oozed under pressure.

The kitchen was small, with just about enough room for a sink and cooker. Mother hated the kitchen and was always complaining about its size. We had an old fashioned pantry, shelved from floor to ceiling, where all the food was kept. Plates, cups, cutlery, etc, were stored in the sideboard that squatted in the dining room. The washing machine, a twin tub, was in the garage, along with an industrial mangle. I liked the mangle. Its rollers were very pale, because mother scrubbed them with bleach. The iron work, beautifully cast, was painted dark green. I helped her feed sheets, and the like, into its jaws and watch them emerge from the other side, flattened into submission.

It was also my job to set the table. I think Mother must have scrubbed everything with bleach, because that was also pale. It had the capacity to stretch out and seat around 20 people, although god knows why, because I don’t recall anyone ever coming to dinner. The tablecloth and napkins were very white. We each had our own designated napkin, as they were not washed after each meal and it was important that we got our own dirt back.

Mother was a competent cook, rarely swerving from the staple ‘meat and two veg’. We ate chops, stew, roasts and more chops. Father did not like “That foreign muck”. For breakfast, on Mondays, we had bread and dripping, made from the fat of Sunday’s beef. I liked it with salt and pepper. It was one of the few meals that I could never get enough of.

We tended not to have deserts, because father’s catchphrase was “I’ve been telling you for 30 years, woman, I’m a dinner man, not a pudding man”. Despite his protestations, occasionally rice pudding, or fruit with condensed cream, or a pie with custard, would be served. Once every so often a trifle made it onto the menu. I hated all of these. Milk, in whatever form, churns my stomach. I had a particular loathing of custard, especially cold and lurking by damp sponge, under a blanket of fresh cream. There is something incredibly disgusting about trifle, the way all the layers slide about against each other, like some giant, mushy, tectonic shift, lubricated by fat and slime.

After dinner I got ready for bed. I was told to ‘top and tail’ myself, which I assumed referred to my face and my arse. I was frightened of my arse. It had bitten my finger once. I did not like brushing my teeth. In common with her fear of everything “New fangled,” mother did not entirely trust the efficacy of toothpaste, preferring the ‘old fashioned’ method of using salt. I was always drawn to my father’s smoker’s toothpaste, with its pinky vim action. It made my teeth ache and squeak, the same as if I was chewing my jumper cuff.

I only had a bath once a week. It was a strange experience, because the hot water contrasted so violently with the cold enamelled cast iron. When I sat I felt the icy surface against my bottom. If I laid back my shoulder blades froze. It reminded me of how the colour of knives felt.

My father had a dagger that he kept on the windowsill of the top landing. It had a silver blade and a golden ornate handle, decorated with jewels. As I slid it in and out of its black, leather scabbard it made a noise like breathing. I showed it to some boys from school one day and they laughed. “That’s not a dagger, it’s a letter opener.” They were wrong, because father opened all his letters in the study, so why would he keep an opener that far away?

The toilet was separate from the bathroom. It was cold in there and unpleasant, mainly because the carpet felt a bit stiff and was fraying around the foot of the crapper. Father said it was alright to call it a crapper, in fact, that was technically correct, because it was “After all, the invention of Thomas Crapper”. Mother insisted that we call it “The lavatory”.

“Oh dear what can the matter be?
Three old ladies stuck in the lavatory.
They were there from Monday ‘til Saturday,
And nobody knew they were there.”

Rosie was full of funny rhymes.

“Higher up the mountain,
Greener grows the grass.
Down comes and elephant,
Sliding on its elbow.”

I was scared of getting stuck in the lavatory, even though I knew I would probably get rescued almost immediately. I could not possibly have remained hidden for nearly a week. Surely someone else would have cause to use the facility.

Ira, our cat, adopted the lavatory as her base. She had very long white hair and if I stroked her I would end up sneezing my head off. She felt like cotton wool. If you looked at her it was like she had this big fat body, but if you squashed all her fur down she was really quite skinny.

There was something wrong with her. She did not have the right amount of pads on her paws. Paulette had got her of someone. My sisters were always bringing cats into the house. Sometimes they had to hid them in their rooms.

I liked Rosie’s room best. It was purple, with a depth. I felt like I could slide into her walls, as if they were water. Toulouse Lautrec paintings hung everywhere. Cancan girls, with their red underskirts and red lips, kicked out a fire. They were easy in their laughter. And there was a man, smoking, wearing a smeary hat. His face was orange, patchy. He had blue eyes. He looked straight at me while I sat on the bed.

She had lots of perfume. Her favourite was in a white box with bright green stripes. “Do you know what ‘Rive Gauche’ means?” she asked. I shook my head. “Left bank.” I thought of frusty wood panelling and men in suits. “No, the left bank of the Seine, silly”. She sprayed some perfume into the air and walked through its mist. “Paris is so romantic,” she said. She had not been there, but the posters said so, and Henry Miller. She knotted a silk scarf around her neck, letting the tails fall against her shoulder. When she was out I hunted through her drawers, sniffing at her things. Paris must smell like my sister’s neck.

She had tights, all thin and gauzy, glittery legs dreams. I put them on, but they rumpled up at my ankles and reached to underneath my armpits. Her underwear felt like the cat, a big thinness, all silky soft to the touch. Her jewellery box was a treasure trove. There were lots of different coloured beads nestled together. Some were fat and chunky, very sure of themselves. Others were strings of tiny glitter. She wore lots of these at the same time, looped over and over. They lay against her chest. She looked like a delicate Christmas tree, or lights in the distance, at night, when you are in the car and wanting to go to sleep.

Paulette’s room was less inviting. She was scrupulously tidy and private. She did not like me going in there, for whatever reason. There was something sparse about Paulette. She had no interest in art or reading. Everything was very organised with her, right down to her rigid arrangements and agreements. But she was a good girl, not like Rosie. She never got into trouble or had fanciful ideas.

My parents’ room was brown. It smelled brown. Being right at the front of the house it was the largest room, with a big bay window and chimney breast. Father had installed two ‘wardrobes’ in the alcoves. They were meant to be ‘built in’. He was busy. He did not finish the job. Rough curtains hung were the doors should have been. Mother’s fur coat caught the sun and faded down one side. She was not best pleased.

Sometimes I lay in their bed. I could see the shadows of the headlights of the cars that were driving up our road. At first I heard the engines and a trickle of light would seep into the room. As it got nearer, and louder, the illumination grew brighter, sweeping down the walls and across the ceiling, taking the shadows from the curtains with it. If the moon was high and penetrating, the whole room was flooded all night.

In the morning mother went to get father’s cup of tea. He sat propped up, his knees making a tent out of the sheets and blankets. I was quiet as he smoked. It was not a good idea in our house to talk to anyone first thing, because they were all like jungle animals who had been woken up at the wrong time.

During the week father went to work, quite early. At the weekends he stayed at home and did things around the house. Even though we were quite well off, he still had to make most of the repairs himself. He let me help him. One Saturday he sent me crawling under the floorboards with electrical cable tied around my waist. It was very dark. I did not know where I was going, I just had to follow his banging. Another time we were both on the roof. I could see quite a lot from my vantage point. I particularly liked the look of the slate tiles. They were thin and a wonderful blue-grey colour. They were like rocky ice. Mother shouted at him. She didn’t think I ought to be on the roof. “What if she falls?”
“She won’t fall. It’s quite safe up here.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because I’m up here and you’re down there. Stop your moaning, woman, let the child alone.”

Mother never really did though, let me alone that is. I bothered her. She had not expected to be looking after a young child at the age of 50. I was a ‘mistake’. The doctor had told her she had polyps. She did not even know she was pregnant with me until I was nearly ready to be born. Of course her periods had stopped, but she was 43 and “Going through the change,” or so she thought.

Father was as pleased as punch. Punching pleased him. I was the child of his dotage. He spoiled me. In many ways I was too small a vessel to contain all the love he wanted to lavish on me. Mother thought it was her turn though. She had brought up his other two children, and suffered the anguish of the two who had died. This was meant to be her time. She envisaged Spanish classes and Spanish holidays, not measles and wet knickers. She had waited for life to begin at 40, and when it had not, fervently held onto the belief that perhaps it had just been delayed for 10 years. I remember her looking at me once and saying “Do you know, by the time you’re 18 I’ll be nearly 60?” I was not entirely sure what she meant by that, except the number still seemed small to me, and very far away.

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