A Dog's Life(49)

I was walking in the park with Deidre one morning when she revealed that the builders were working in, and redecorating, the large house above the shop. I asked, in all innocence, if she and Sissy were having a new bathroom fitted. The very word ‘bathroom’ sent her into an immediate rage. ‘Bathroom? Bathroom? We’ve never had a bathroom, and we’re not getting one now. No, we’re not having a bathroom fitted. I should think not.’

I had obviously caused offence, for she said nothing more, but fumed loudly instead. I, too, had grown up in a house without a bathroom, and remembered the complete bliss of taking a long, hot bath when I stayed with my mother’s friends – the elderly couple who cared for me on those days my mother was working late.

We followed the dogs, who were happily sniffing every tree, before I ventured another question.

‘Forgive my asking, Deidre, but where do you wash?’

‘At the kitchen sink, of course.’

Of course. It was at the kitchen sink in Battersea that I washed and scrubbed myself to my mother’s detailed instructions – ‘Back as well as front,’ she exhorted. We called it a ‘strip wash’ for you took off your clothing one piece at a time, washing each part of the body in turn, ending up with the feet, which you placed – one foot, then the other – in the now-scummy water. Of course.

‘The kitchen sink was good enough for us when we were kids, and good enough for us today.’ This was a fact, an unassailable fact, beyond argument, beyond logic.

‘I love my bathroom.’ I said. ‘There’s nothing better than a long soak when you’re tired and aching.’

‘I don’t want no bathroom.’ Her tone, at once both chastising and smug, hinted that I was decadent.

‘Bathroom,’ she muttered, contemptuously. ‘Bathroom.’

I learned, in the park again, that the sisters shared a bed on the first floor. The upstairs rooms were seldom occupied, except on ‘special occasions’, the special nature of which Deidre did not disclose. They had been redecorated, ‘just in case’.

It was Deidre’s habit to stick a card in a cauliflower with the message NICE WITH A WHITE SAUCE. Rhubarb was similarly honoured: NICE IN A PIE WITH CUSTARD. Carrots were SAID TO BE GOOD FOR EYESIGHT, while AN APPLE A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY. Sissy, who did most of the cooking, remarked to me whenever I bought Jersey potatoes, ‘They’re dirty little devils when they’re cold.’ I purchased Jerseys only from them in order to hear, and relish, this gnomic observation.

At the end of Sissy’s life, when her sight was fading, a neighbour drove the van to market. Trixie, or Tricksy, ‘passed over’ first. She had rarely seen a vet, for the sisters were as contemptuous of medics as they were of bathrooms. The limping, worn-out dog was distressing to look at, particularly when Circe – who was roughly the same age – was so lively. Deidre found herself another animal, who now follows her sluggishly around the park. Sissy ‘passed over’ and Deidre closed down the business. She lives alone in that Victorian pile, still sleeping – I assume – in the bed she shared with Sissy; still washing at the kitchen sink, and still covering a boiled cauliflower with a nice white sauce.