before touching the grey sand. The sand was unhappy. It looked poorly sick all the time. A green handrail wove next to the steps. I never had the courage to touch it. The paint was covered in carved initials, decorated with lumps of hardened chewing gum and topped with seagull droppings. Yackety yack. Hundreds and thousands of lumps. Hacky yack yack. Paul Hodgson (Number 2) told me that his uncle caught an incurable disease from touching that handrail. He said that his uncle’s hand had dropped clean off. I wasn’t going to risk it.
To me, the Coast Road seemed to go on for ever and ever and ever. I was told that it was a perfectly straight road, which travelled from the seafront and through four villages. You could catch a bus on the Coast Road. The road passed by my school, up the slope, close to my house and then on through village after village into lands that were unknown. Into lands that sounded magical and exciting. North Lymouth. Marsden. Hingleworth. Coastend. Mrs Hodgson (Number 2) told me that Coastend was famous for its cheapness of tricks. A magical place.
I lived in Disraeli Avenue, in between Gladstone Street and Campbell-Bannerman Road. The neighbours all said it dizz- rah- el -lee (four chunks) Avenue. My mother’s house was a semi-detached on a street with 31 similar-looking houses. They looked identical but I knew that they weren’t. There were differences.
Thirteen had red front doors. Seven had green front doors. Five had blue front doors. Seven had yellow front doors. The garages matched the front doors. Except for Number 17. Mr Lewis had a yellow front door and a green garage. I didn’t know why.
green,
red,
red,
yellow, green, red, red, yellow, yellow, green, red, red, red,
green, blue, blue,
red,
blue,
green,
yellow, red, blue, blue, yellow, green, green, red, red, red,
yellow, red, yellow.
I wanted the numbers to fit better. I wanted the colours to fit better.
It should have been sixteen red front doors. One half. Eight green doors. One quarter. Four blue doors. One eighth. Four yellow doors. One eighth. It was simple. The colours could look really nice. I had worked it all out.
red,
red,
green,
red,
green,
red,
blue,
blue
green, red,
yellow, red, green,
red, yellow, red,
red, green, red,
green, red, blue, blue,
green, red, yellow,
red, green, red,
yellow, red, red.
I wasn’t happy with Mr Lewis (Number 17). His colours didn’t match. Maybe he didn’t realise. I wished that I had the courage to talk to him about it.
There was a little wall in front of the garden. A dwarf wall. A dwarf wall for Snow White’s friends to play on. There was also a drive for my father’s Mini. There was a garden to the front and a slightly larger one to the back. The front lawn was just big enough to squeeze onto it a folded tartan picnic blanket. The soil surrounding the perfect square of grass was always packed with flowers. I watched the flowers. I noted them all in a little lined book. It was green and lived on my windowsill. Thorny rose bushes, coordinating colours and then down to a mixture of blossoms. Depending on the month.
Gaillardia ‘Burgunder’.
Shiny red flower, with light yellow centre.
June-October. 30cm.
Dahlia.
Really orange and red.
June-November. 60cm.
Narcissum ‘Amergate.’
Orange outside with a darker orange
in the middle.
March-April. 45cm.
I liked to write things down. In the green notebook that I kept on my windowsill. Flowers. Colours. Number plates. Full names. Times. Routines. All of the first chapter of Danny Champion of the World. So I wouldn’t forget.
Hold your palms out. Let me read your fortune.
I see that you are destined for great things.
Love…yes. A great love.
Children…bend your little finger…
Ah. I see a boy and a girl.
It’s all here. Written within your palm.
Aunty Maggie lived at Number 30 Disraeli Avenue and every Monday she looked after me. Her hallway walls were jam packed with black and white photographs of her darling husband Samuel. Who passed away in his prime. They were all the same photograph, but in different-sized frames. Aunty Maggie had never been blessed with children. I didn’t understand. Before my mother died, she liked Aunty Maggie. Aunty Maggie used to make boiled rice for my mother. She’d cook it to a fluffy perfection in one of my mother’s pans. Then. She’d walk along Disraeli Avenue. Number 30 to Number 9. Both hands clutching the black handle of the steaming pan. My mother used to pretend to my father that she had cooked it. My father used to like Aunty Maggie’s feathery white rice.
When Aunty Maggie looked after me. I would sit in her pink room and she would open a cupboard brimming with untouched toys. They were shiny and perfect. Treasures. Aunty Maggie was always old. Always one hundred and ninety-five years old and her face was a web of wrinkles. I wanted to run my finger along the tracks. Round and round and round and round. I never did. Her breath was smelly. Mint. Toothpaste mint. And about her lingered a flowery scent. Sweet and lasting.
In the pink room, where everything was pink, I was surrounded by smiling faces on photographs of school children who sometimes visited. I would play with her Bible Fuzzy Felts and sip at milky tea. I was on my best behaviour. As I left she would always give me a shiny fifty-pence piece. A whole shiny fifty pence. I was rich. Aunty Maggie spoke with a swish accent and her house was always tidy. Always. She used to watch me from her window and I knew that she longed to be my mother. I was glad that she was not my mother.
On February 1 1981 I was seven years, two months and eight days old and it was within the first year after my mother’s death. Although Rita was nearly always in my mother’s house, I still visited the neighbours after school. Aunty Maggie was expecting me. As I entered her house, cigar smoke was swirling from her pink room.
She had a guest.
Eddie was her brother. He was fat. He wore brown and his big belly was forcing the buttons on his shirt to cling to the holes. His trousers stretched