I prefer the word paradise to heaven, a word which joins us all the way from the Greek paradeisos, giving us one of my favourite ever adjectives – paradisiacal – a word which nobody actually uses.
My grandmother Nellie (who gave me her middle name, and her straight dark hair and skinny limbs) said that in heaven we’d be in white, wearing crowns and waiting around, like in the carol. I knew I didn’t want to wear a crown and I hated waiting around. So I hoped she was wrong. I still have no idea how it works, and I’d like to find out. Like we all would, I guess.
Julia said that heaven would be full of roses and waterfalls and flocks of white doves, which were three of her favourite things.
‘Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest,’ said my grandmother, who liked to talk in bible verses, set off by a word or a thought or a curse on somebody she didn’t like. She particularly liked to divide people into sheep and goats, popping my goat grandfather into the jaws of hell at every possible opportunity because he had gone off with his secretary soon after my mother was born.
My grandmother would sit in the corner of the lounge on Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons, commenting on our lives like a one-woman Greek chorus, whilst also playing with the silver crucifix which she wore around her neck. It had a little Jesus Christ on it, permanently dying. It bothered me.
To make room for the magical Asda Development, the terraced houses on the main road were being taken down, with the residents compensated, very generously, everybody said. The way they did it looked like slicing a rectangular block of Wall’s ice cream, one oblong at a time, and I thought that this was one of my best similes (bearing in mind the name of the brand of ice cream), though nobody else in the family appreciated my brilliance.
Mrs Venditti, who was married to the ice cream-van man, cried as number 3 was sliced, and my mother explained that this was because her baby had died inside that house of cot death. I’d heard this was to do with lying babies on their front, and I asked my mother if Mrs Venditti had done this, by mistake, but my mother said, ‘Can we change the subject?’
‘Why?’ I said.
‘Because I don’t like thinking about dead babies,’ she said.
My father added, ‘Mrs Venditti is also Italian.’
I said, ‘What do you mean?’
He said, ‘Stop asking questions all the time.’
A driver in an old Renault 5 crashed into a minibus of school children because he was watching number 8 fall down, but nobody was badly hurt. A sign went up saying, ‘Keep your eyes on the road,’ except you had to take your eyes off the road to look at the sign. Sometimes, I thought, adults just don’t think things through.
My mother let me wait on the main road in the evenings to meet our father on his way home from work. It made her feel that everything about our life was utterly perfect. Like the families in her second-hand Ladybird books, which continued to proliferate along the shelves of the somewhat over-varnished pine dresser.
The Greens’ house was the last to come down, and all six Greens stood on the opposite pavement watching, as I waited for my father, who soon came walking past, whistling, on his way back from Stanley Hope Uniforms.
‘This must be a very sad day for you,’ he said to Mr Green cheerfully, as if the thought of Mr Green’s sadness made him feel safer inside his own happiness.
‘It’s only bricks and mortar,’ said Mr Green, with his hands in his pockets.
‘It’s a home,’ said my father.
‘That’s sentimental, Stanley,’ said Mr Green.
My father didn’t seem to be able to find an answer for that.
‘Aren’t you worried?’ said Mr Green to my father as his old house crashed to the ground.
‘Why would I be worried?’ said my father.
‘Too much worry, Jilly,’ my father would say when my mother suggested owning a dog, or going on an aeroplane, or having another baby, which was her favourite suggestion through the years.
‘School uniform!’ shouted Mr Green over the noise of the crashing bricks, jerking his head at the place behind the hoarding where the biggest Asda in the whole universe would be.
‘School uniform?’ shouted my father back.
Then the crashing stopped for a moment.
‘Asda sells school uniform,’ said Mr Green very slowly and very loudly as if my father had special needs. ‘Lots of it. And cheap. The whole shaboodle.’
I watched my father’s face, and I saw, for a tiny fragment of a second, a crack run across it, a hairline fracture, like on a china pot. I looked down at the pavement. I didn’t like to see my father’s face break like that. When I looked up, the hairline crack was gone. But my father’s face was covered in a layer of sweat like see-through Uhu glue, which I hoped might mend the crack, although I knew the truth, that cracks grow and split rather than shrink or mend. I had a premonition of my father’s face splitting in two.
‘Better be on our way then,’ said my father to Mr Green, and he shot his arm up in a wave to Mrs Green and the four bored children.
‘What’s a shaboodle?’ I said, thinking I had a new word to add to my S page.
My father didn’t answer Mr Green, and he didn’t answer me. He practically ran home, whereas normally we walked along together, talking about how my day had been at school. His fingers were trembling, and I could tell he wanted to see my mother really badly.
‘Peas in a pod,’ says my mother – still, despite, or maybe because of, everything. ‘That’s what marriage is. For better. For worse. In sickness. And in health.’
‘I need to talk to you, Jilly,’ said my father, with his key still in the door, and I noticed he was panting with worry. I took up my position underneath the serving hatch (an arched hole in the wall) on the lounge side, which enabled me to listen to all their kitchen conversations.
‘Oh, darling,’ said my mother, laughing. ‘Asda can’t compete with Stanley Hope Uniforms!’
‘Really?’ said my father. ‘Really?’
‘It’s the personal service,’ said my mother. ‘Who’s going to measure the kids up at Asda? Who’s going to sew initials onto their shoe bags at Asda?’
‘Really?’ said my father again. ‘So nothing to worry about?’
And he walked into the hall saying under his breath, ‘Nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about.’
‘Were the Greens sad to see their home come crashing down?’ said my mother when we were eating supper.
‘Mr Green said it was only bricks and mortar,’ I said.
‘How heartless,’ said my mother. ‘It’s where they brought up their children.’
‘Mr Green told Dad he was being sentimental,’ I said.
My father blushed.
‘I like you sentimental,’ said my mother.
Julia and I looked at each other, waiting for my mother to kiss my father on his head, on his sweaty hair – which she did. I always found that my father’s hair smelled a bit funny.
‘We have something to tell you, Daddy,’ said my mother.
‘Oh yes,’ said my father, spearing his fifth sausage with his fork.
‘Julia has come home with the Poet of the Week certificate,’ said my mother. ‘It’s a very special award