Kitty

Moving Home

Moving Home

2018

Kitty let her eyes rove across the mountain of sealed boxes stacked neatly along the back wall of the landing, their contents summarised in scrawls of thick black marker-pen. More still were lined up in the bedroom, with others dotted around the kitchen. Every room of the four-storey Victorian terrace in Blackheath, London had been dismantled; the fittings and fixtures had been plucked off walls and gathered from shelves, cloaked in bubblewrap and secreted away inside the cardboard boxes, ready to emerge in their quite different new home. It felt odd, packing up a lifetime of memories. She hadn’t banked on it being so emotive, but with each new box filled she felt swamped by recollections. Some of her happiest times had been spent in this house, playing with the kids when they were little, on the sitting-room rug that now stood, rolled and bound with tape, waiting in a corner. And she’d had some of her saddest times here too, curled up in the chair in the sitting room, waiting for the next big showdown, crying silently and wondering how she’d got it all so wrong.

Kitty had no idea she had so much stuff.

Lots of it belonged to the kids, admittedly. She had unwittingly become the custodian of the crap they didn’t want in their own homes. Everything from ski gear to boxes of books, camping equipment and even a spare rabbit hutch – God only knew where that had come from! Not that she minded, not really. Having their things around her allowed her to believe at some level that they still lived there, and that in itself was a comfort.

Moving house, however, was a good chance for a clear-out. It forced her to investigate long-abandoned corners and dusty cupboards that bulged, mostly with rubbish. It was surprising that after years of taking up precious space in her home, the value of certain things was no more than the fact of their having been around for a long time. She sent the clutter to the tip without too much consideration. At least where they were moving to was big, with plenty of storage. Although, last she’d heard, certain individuals already had their eye on several of the outbuildings, which would apparently be perfect for a woodworking studio, a workshop and a potting shed, if she remembered correctly. She smiled at the image of them set up and cosy in a family home; the giddy swirl in her stomach was that of a teenager and not a fifty-two-year-old woman. She rather liked it.

It was early morning. Sophie, who had popped in as promised to help with the lifting, called down through the open loft hatch. Kitty was grateful for her stopping by.

‘Are you ready, Mum? This is getting heavy.’

Kitty stretched up her arms and steadied herself against the aluminium ladder, which felt none too secure. ‘Yes, drop it! The anticipation is killing me!’

‘Here it comes.’

Kitty braced herself and gathered the sturdy plastic box into her arms, which were still strong, muscled. Sport, and swimming in particular, had proved to be the kindest thing she’d done to her body over the years.

‘What’s in it?’ Sophie called from within the dusty confines of the loft.

‘Give me a chance! Good Lord, are you this impatient with your pupils?’ She laughed, trying to imagine her daughter in her role as teacher, a department head, no less.

‘I am, actually – they’re all petrified of me.’ Sophie laughed.

‘Poor them.’ Kitty smiled with pride.

She lugged the box across the narrow landing and heaved it onto her bed, before pulling it open and showering the duvet with dust. As she peered inside, her heart fluttered and she felt a whoosh of excitement in her chest. She looked up at her daughter, who now stood in the doorway of the bedroom. ‘Oh, Soph! Oh, how lovely! These are my old photographs. Mainly from when I was little, and a few from school, I seem to remember.’

‘Ooh, marvellous – snapshots from debauched parties and your misspent youth, I hope?’ Sophie rubbed her hands together and flopped down on the bed next to her mother.

‘Hardly!’ Kitty laughed. ‘More likely me in the swimming pool or playing Scrabble with your grandad – that kind of thing.’

She ran her fingers over the collection of images, some dog-eared and others sporting the sticky ring of a carelessly placed glass of squash. Some were in black and white, others had gone sepia-toned where the colours had faded. But every one of them took her back to a particular place in time; she could recall the decor, the time of year, even the scent of summer grass or winter fires.

‘I know you all snap away now on your phones quite frivolously, but in those days photographs were only taken by a sturdy camera and they felt quite important. They were printed and some even got framed and made it onto the mantelpiece, and they were always hung on to; they were precious things. Not like now when you have thousands of them sitting on that tiny screen and you delete them willy-nilly.’

‘Yes, but we get to choose the best pictures, edit them, even, so we wouldn’t end up with something like this!’ Sophie held up a picture of Kitty as a small child in a hand-knitted Arran jumper. Her hair stuck up at odd angles and her eyes were half-closed. The whole image was blurry. It was less than attractive.

‘True! But I like the authenticity of it. That’s exactly what I was like – a bit boisterous, too fidgety to sit still for a camera and always wearing jumpers like that. I was probably eager to get to my pony or to run off somewhere.’

She delved into the box and pulled out another image of her with her head close to the beautiful broad forehead of a pony.

‘Oh, Sophie!’ She sighed, turning the image outwards so her daughter could see. They both laughed. ‘Will you look at that! That is a look of pure love!’

She had written on the back: Kitty Dalkeith Montrose aged nine and a half with Flynn.

‘I love how I’ve given my full name lest there be any doubt!’ She peered more closely at the picture. ‘You can’t see it here, as my arm is hidden, but I had just come out of hospital. I remember being desperate to get back to Darraghfield. I think this was after the fifth operation on my arm. I hated being away from home, the food was terrible and there was a very strict ward sister who put the fear of God into me, put the fear of God into all of us! She was revered throughout St Bride’s – you remember St Bride’s, don’t you? The local cottage hospital up there.’

‘The one where Nana went sometimes…?’

Kitty nodded quickly and continued. ‘Your nana and grandad would come and visit me for an hour every night. That was all they were allowed. They’d take a painted green metal chair from a stack by the door, just the one, mind, as per Sister’s rules, and take turns sitting on it. And they’d try and make me laugh, cheer me up, right up until the five-minute warning bell for the end of visiting time, and then your nana would sob. She cried so easily…’ Kitty paused, close to tears herself now, at the memory of her mother.

‘She’d weep and go on about how I might have been killed that night, when I was seven, but I always thought she was exaggerating. I do know I hurt my arm so badly that it took six operations over about four years to get it to this.’ She held out her arm, which was far from straight, far from perfectly fixed.

‘Funnily enough, the thing that bothered me most was that I’d been promised a shotgun for my tenth birthday and I was so looking forward to it, but I knew that with my wonky arm I wouldn’t be able to shoot straight. The idea of not being as good a shot as Ruraigh and Hamish… God, that was more than I could bear. They teased me so much.’

‘Even then?’ Sophie smiled.

‘Yes, even then.’ Kitty shook her head and was surprised by how maudlin she felt. ‘Just talking about the hospital takes me back to that room – I can smell the antiseptic in the air and remember the layout of the ward.’ She ran her hand over the bone that was permanently bent. ‘I’ve been told that if I’d been taken to a bigger hospital, with specialist surgeons and all that, you’d never be able to tell I’d hurt my arm.’

‘Instead you were probably sawn open by a rank amateur at the cottage hospital who was over the moon to be dealing with something other than frostbitten fingers, haemorrhoids and babies with croup.’

‘Probably something like that.’ She smiled.

‘I rather like your wonky arm, Mum. It’s just another thing that makes you unique.’

‘Oh God, Sophie, is that the kind of cliché you offer your students?’

‘Only the shit ones who need a bit of bolstering.’

‘You are funny.’

‘I’ve got to go.’ Sophie glanced at her watch, then back at her mum. ‘Do you know, I’ve never seen you this happy. It’s wonderful.’

Kitty looked up at her. She was overjoyed that her daughter approved of this new beginning. ‘Thank you, Soph. I love you.’

‘Love you too. Don’t bother coming down, I’ll see myself out. I expect you’ll sit here for some time working your way through those.’ She nodded towards the box of photos.

Kitty pressed the one of her and Flynn to her chest. ‘I wish I had time, but this old house isn’t going to pack itself up.’

‘Will you miss it, Mum?’

Kitty took a second or two to formulate her response. ‘I will miss the happy memories that I have of you and Olly being little, and I’ll miss Blackheath’s lovely shops!’ She smiled, briefly. ‘But I think I’m overdue this change and it will be good to live free of all the ghosts that lurk in the drawers and cling to the curtains.’

‘But you don’t regret everything , do you? I mean, you can’t, it’s too much of your life.’

‘Oh, Soph, not only do I have so much to feel thankful for, but I try to regret nothing. It feels pointless. I do wish I’d had more courage at times. I wish I’d listened to my instincts. But regrets…? Not really.’