Read Online From Under the Overcoat by Sue Orr - Free Book Online

sign first went up. With two careful, fat, curved strokes, the 3 in the telephone number became an 8.

    THE INSIDE OF OUR house was not quite as much of a disaster as the outside, but not far off.
    Downstairs was sort of okay. There was the big lounge,where for some unknown reason the wallpaper had managed to stay stuck to the walls in most parts. Then there was the dining room and the kitchen, with its old coal range that we weren’t allowed to remove. My mother got around that by having a second stove put in next to it, and a microwave on the bench. The bathroom looked good — one of those old clawfoot baths, gold taps and stuff — but when you turned on any of the taps, there was a huge clatter in the pipes before the water came spurting out. Sometimes you got hot water, sometimes you didn’t.
    Right throughout the house, except for the kitchen and bathroom, was blood-red carpet. Apparently it was the original carpet, which is why no one was allowed to replace it. In some places, like the big lounge, it had stayed red but elsewhere it faded to a dusty brown.
    Upstairs were the two bedrooms. That’s where the wallpaper was the worst. Layers peeling away. I don’t know why it was so bad up there, maybe different people who lived in the house had decided to renovate, started taking wallpaper off, then got nailed by the Heritage Committee and had to abandon their projects.
    One of the bedrooms was Mum’s. The other one was mine. If you walked into my room, all you saw was books. There’s a bookshelf that ran the whole way round the room, except for the doorway and windows of course.
     
    WHICH BRINGS ME TO my father, and what I think I remember.
    Dad was a writer. He never went to work. He had stayed home with me when I was little. He wrote books, though I’m not sure that any of them got published. I’ve never seen one.
    During the day, Mum would go off to work in her accountancy office and Dad would work at the table. He used to get me to draw the pictures for his stories.
    We had parties — big gatherings of proper writers and musicians, Dad’s friends — and Mum glowed and laughed in the middle of things. Yes, you read that right. My mother glowing and laughing. I can hardly believe I’m describing the same person, but back then she liked associating with important people, so it makes sense. I’m pretty sure I’ve remembered that correctly. I have a picture of it in my mind, it must have come from somewhere.
    It wasn’t all good times. There was fighting, usually about money. Mum screamed at Dad about bills and the bank, and Dad just smiled and hugged her and said things like Don’t worry, it’ll all be alright, Martha.
    Every night, I would choose a book, and Dad would read it to me in bed. All our favourite books — his and mine — were on the shelf in my bedroom. This is my main memory of him; I can remember going from picture books through to chapter books. The last book on the bookshelf was Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield . It was dark blue, with gold lettering and lines on the cover. It was one of Dad’s books. His favourite story, he told me once, was ‘The Doll’s House’. He said the story had originally been called ‘At Karori’ and he made me promise I’d read it when I got older. Which I will do, although I’ll have to get another copy because when he went away, his books disappeared.
    I was five, or four maybe, when he left. It happened one night, while he was reading to me. The usual rule with the big books was one chapter a night. But Mum had a lot ofpressure at work, and she had started going back to the office after dinner, so sometimes Dad would just read on.
    That night, Mum came to the doorway. She was still in her work suit, but she had freshened up her lipstick and brushed her hair. I could smell her perfume, Chanel. I was surprised that she would waste it on work. Her most precious thing was her Chanel. So yes, I was surprised about the wastage of the Chanel, for