A Childs War Read Online Free Page A

a model to follow, being so much taller than he was, dressed smartly in his grey school suit, or casually in a sports jersey and short trousers at weekends after Saturday morning school. Alex was left to himself a good deal. The only rule issued, with terrifying sanctions attached to it, was that he should not open the front door by himself but since he could not reach the Yale lock it was of little importance to him. He was free to come and go in all the downstairs rooms and the garden where, again, only those who could reach higher than three foot eleven inches could open the back gate.
    Other people’s houses are just as exciting to explore as other people’s bread and jam is better to eat. There were three rooms downstairs that could properly be called such, as well as a scullery off the kitchen, and a lavatory you reached by going out of the back door. There was an oblong hallway, with the stairs taking up half of it. Then, first on the right, was the front room as it was called, with the best furniture and some rich velour curtains now lined with black to comply with the air raid precautions, which were very strictly observed. The Pattersons practised such hospitality as they were able to in straitened times in this room. The next door off the passage belonged to what they called the living room, which was where most things happened around the big table and there were armchairs on either side of the fireplace. A birdcage hung near the window and a canary called Joey made his presence known at all hours of the day. Joyce talked to the bird incessantly as if he were John’s baby sister. She insisted that its name was short for Josephine but Graham was well aware that it was a male bird. John was now of an age to wonder how he knew. There were two pictures hanging in this room, both landscapes, one in spring and the other in autumn, bought with a staff discount from the store’s picture gallery when Graham worked there. The square carpet had seen better times, but they had had to leave their better carpets in the Motspur Park house in order to get a good rent as long as they were away from it. A single window at one end of the room looked out past the kitchen and lavatory towards the garden. The dairy buildings could be seen on the other side of a five-foot brick wall at the bottom of the garden.
    Straight in front of you as you came to the end of the passage from the front door, you went down two steps and found the kitchen with a large black enamelled range on which the cooking was done and the kettle was incessantly boiling. A shift of a lever on the range would mean that you could have a bath upstairs in twenty minutes on hot days and an hour in the depth of winter. There was a table placed under the window between the scullery wall and the back door. The window looked out over the path and dividing wall to Mrs White’s window, next door. The kitchen was where most meals were eaten. The range was alight on most days: a coal allowance was part of Graham’s remuneration from the dairy because a great deal of it was delivered for the propulsion of the machinery and there was always some to spare, even in those days. The last room in the house downstairs was the scullery off the kitchen with a large stone sink, a concrete floor and a copper for the washing. Joyce had put a gas stove in there, which, now that there were two families to cater for, was to be used more than ever before.
    Monday was a hot day for everyone because lighting the burner underneath the copper was a major task and in the time just beginning neither Joyce nor Edna was prepared to do that more than once a week. If the clothes you wanted had not been washed in this contraption on Monday, then you had to wait for them until after next wash day. Through the scullery window you could see the garden again, all down to grass with just a few flowers by next door’s wall. A huge Ewbank mangle stood outside ready for use after the