Ghostly memories closed in around Anne as she descended the stairs to the ground floor. Although she had visited her grandmother’s house hundreds of times, she had never set foot in the basement. In her Mind’s Eye, it was an undesirable underworld, quite possibly filled to the brim with the hoarding of the years.
Instead of Hades, at the foot of the stairs Anne found an almost perfect preservation of her grandfather’s life. It was as if, after the Doctor’s death, Alice had reverentially sealed up his history.
There was his poker table, his bar, covered in dust, waiting patiently. His examination table, his desk. Peeling floral wallpaper and a prescription pad yellowed with age, proudly bearing his name in block letters.
And, strangely enough, a housekeeper’s little room, empty and bare.
* * *
But now Alice too is gone, and all histories are unstuck and set into motion.
* * *
The housekeeper slept in a little whitewashed room, very neatly made up, in the basement. Her little bed was pushed in a little corner next to a little hearth, and from a little window, she could survey the neighbour’s quite large yard. She had everything she needed, and in this little room, she was reasonably happy.
Often, a little girl was wont to slip off her little sandals (in an effort to preserve the little white coverlet) and curl up on the housekeeper’s little bed. Rose preferred to do her ironing in the little room, and Mary Anne was content to quietly watch her at her work.
There was a clatter at the basement door, and Mary Anne scrambled to peep her head out of the little room. It was after hours and a patient had come to see the Doctor.
We find the Doctor in another little basement room, this one perfectly suited for receiving late visitors. Here, Mary Anne’s father, the Doctor, sat at his desk and fingered his pink prescription pad. The patient perched on the examination table, legs swinging, and complained of one common ailment or another. Here, the wallpaper was of a pleasing floral pattern, desperate to escape the wrought iron bars that braced the window. It—the floral wallpaper—retained its masculinity with hues of blue and green.
Bare feet—Mary Anne’s—feel sticky on the linoleum floor. Pat pat pat.
The smooth cement floor of the whitewashed room cools Mary Anne’s naked feet.
And if Mary Anne ventures elsewhere still in the vast network of this basement (or rather the ground floor, if we are being precise), her bare toes are eaten alive by shag carpet of olive-y green.
On this voracious carpet, the Doctor gathered gentlemen and played cards.
The gentlemen sat around the Doctor’s well-kept poker table and drank Budweiser from the can. Cumulus clouds hung in the air and ashes rained down on the felt inlay from diligently puffed cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. An assiduously outfitted bar was spread opposite the table.
Mary Anne watched the secret and manly proceedings from the stairs leading up to the first floor. Sometimes the Doctor, her father, would call her down and take her on his knee. There, he whispered stratagem in her ear and let her taste his pipe.
* * *
Maybe now we go up the pale blue stairs (the pale blue stairs habitually covered in slugs or the evidence of slugs or the deterrence of slugs in the form of salt) at the back of the house and reach the main entrance. Say we crunch up these salty stairs, pale blue in colour, and we reach a screen door.
Alice was always on the other side of that screen door waiting to greet Anne. CREAK(POP!) the door would spring open, and amidst a sea of clay pots and green gardening foam, there Alice would stand with her arms widespread.
‘Come here to me, my Little An-gel!’ she would squeal. And Anne would sheepishly fold herself into the soft embrace of her grandmother.
Through the porch she is gathered up and brought into the kitchen pat pat pat that sticky linoleum again and ‘tell me all about your week, ohhhhweee my Little An-gel!’
For now, let’s leave Anne and Alice there to catch up.
