Days 270 and 271

Writing Exercise – An old, inhabited house

…

I was stuck in a time warp.

It may have been amusing back when I was a child, stepping through a broken mirror and imagining i had gone back in time, to an age when the house was a beautiful old mansion.

Once it was a landmark, a place with many rooms and a sprawling, manicured garden surrounding it, with a maze and a lake with fish.

Now it was a frightening outline against a dark, lightning-filled sky, surrounded by townsfolk who wanted the eyesore demolished.

The city authorities had issued a repair order on the house and gardens, and failure to comply would see it declared unfit for habitation and a demolition order.

The thing is, my grandmother, a very sprightly 90-year-old, was determined to fight them and everyone else, often brandishing her trusty old blunderbuss at anyone who dared to breach the front gates.

The mayor’s brother wanted the land so he could finish his condominium conversion and fulfil his promise to the other condo holders that the noise would be gone and a golf course and swimming pool, along with a clubhouse and cinema, would be built.

She was fighting a losing battle.

She didn’t have the money to do the repairs or to fight any more court battles.

My mother didn’t see the point.  The developer had offered five million, enough to get a new house somewhere else.  Gran wanted twenty million, what it was worth.  The authorities were going to resume it for one million.

Such machinations were beyond my comprehension.  I might be older now, but it was still a fairytale castle.  Just the duel curved staircase from the foyer to the first floor was magic.

I had seen my sister descend that staircase in her prom dress like a princess, and could imagine all who came before her.

Standing in the middle of the ballroom, it was not hard to imagine the dances held there, the people doing a synchronised waltz as I had done once when learning it for my prom, the school orchestra playing, and all the boys and girls dancing.

And the parties it once hosted.

Now dusty, abandoned, silent except for the odd creaking of purported ghosts.

There were eighty rooms, sixty of them bedrooms, in two wings over three floors.  Fifteen families were living in the house: my grandmother, each of her eight children, of which my mother was one, twenty-three grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

None of the family left the city where they were born, lived, and most likely would die.  None had ever seen the need to leave.

Until now.

I was sitting on the bottom step of the elegant but decrepit staircase, contemplating whether it would be safe to slide down the banister, when Aunt Ruby skipped down the stairs and plonked herself down next to me.

Aunt Ruby was always in Halloween costumes, or so I thought.  She kept saying she was a Goth, but I had no idea what that meant.

She was also a computer hacker, and I knew what that was.  Every day, we were waiting for the FBI or the CIA to turn up at the front door. 

“Guess what?”

“The cops are coming to take you away?”

It was a running joke.

“No.  Cracked it.  We’re rich.”

Until the cops came and took her away.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

She handed me a piece of paper.  It had the name of a bank that I had never heard of in the Cayman Islands, in the name of some corporation no one could pronounce.

The sum of money $22,176,328.76.

“You are this corporation?”

“After it slushes through forty-three shell companies that will keep whoever it is used for a year.  It’s on its way to a Swiss numbered account, then Cloverville will be born.”

“Cloverville?”

“My money, my name.”  She jumped up and ran off to tell Granny.

…

Of course, having the money and deciding what to do were two very different things. Everyone had a very different idea.

My parents wanted their room, already palatial, to be even more so. I wanted my room to be bigger with my own bathroom, now very tired of being last in line. Maybe if I got up earlier…

Everyone wanted a cafeteria and kitchen separate, modelled on the dining room at the Savoy, but my grandmother liked the current kitchen with a wooden stove that kept us all warm in winter and boiling in summer, and we were all together around a large table.

It also meant that we all wanted servants, but as Aunt Ruby said, people didn’t have servants these days, and we had to do our dirty work, like cooking and cleaning, and she would not be employing servants. Gran could remember the day when there were servants, and she said they had never been treated very well or taken for granted.

People were doing it now, so people could keep doing it after the renovations.

Everyone wanted their own TV, and of course, it was going to be like a motel. A TV in every bedroom. Maybe. Aunt Ruby said the children were not getting a TV; they would get an iPad, and that was it. Parents could go to the Cinema Room.

What Cinema Room?

The basement was being cleared out of 200 years of clutter, and it was going to be a cinema, holding about 100 or so people.

I was surprised Aunt Ruby didn’t want to take over the bedroom that my parents were in. That’s when I learned she was taking up residence in the north tower.

What north tower?

And then there was the moat and drawbridge…

…

©  Charles Heath  2025