Last few days so beached, I’ve thought of my Aunty Gertie…who spent many an hour, many a day, on the loo: that’s the Legend.
Gertie and Rick lived in those long line, red brick houses in 1930s Liverpool. Privet hedge two feet from front door. Weekly polish; front step…Red Cardinal, letter box…Brasso. Enter the tunnel hall. Stairs straight up left. Parlour on the right. Aspidistra defending the netted window. Proud glass cabinet displayed BEST things… Never opened. Painfully untuned, unplayed piano. Musty still, in my nostrils. A funeral room, on hold….
Next door…. Light… Fire… Hub of the Home…The back kitchen… Black iron range…Clock and two China dogs above…Ancient maiden Aunty Lyle sat sitting in hard-backed chair close to ever- boiling kettle. Mum Lil & Gertie … catching up from their loneliness. Me, sitting there!
Gertie ‘lost’ Rick years earlier. Took usual cuppa up to him one Sunday afternoon…Dead in bed…Hair still elegantly Brill-creamed.
To my amazement one quiet afternoon, I spied two discreet tears moving down, down Aunty Gertie’s cheeks.