LITMIR.BIZ

       3. Nan Burnett

      The hedge at the front of his grandmother’s house was so high that even his father could not see over it, and instead of a front gate she had a proper door of dark wood, around which the leaves grew in a solid arch. The metal numbers on the door – 122 – were held in place by screws that had gone furry with rust. A spoon-shaped thumb-pad protruded through the keyhole on the right side of the door, and when it was pressed the catch always screeched. Inside there was a slab of greenish concrete on which the underside of the door would scrape, then three steps made of red bricks that had crumbled into a shape like a half-filled sack. From the steps a path of crazy paving zigzagged across the grass, passing a rose bush that grew so few flowers it looked like a ball of wire on which the shreds of a small pink scarf had snagged. Down the length of the garden ran a washing-line held high by a stick of dirty-looking wood, which was planted in the grass near the hollow that had once been a pond. All of this Alexander would remember, and the white rhododendron overhanging the hollow, under which he would find a frog sometimes, and kneel on the soggy ground to watch the panicky pulse in the animal’s side until it sprang away, falling into the dandelions with the quietest of crashes.

      An ivy, rooted under the bay of the front room, swerved under the sills and then spread outwards, covering most of the bathroom window and part of the bedroom’s bay, spilling down over the porch and flowing inwards to the door. Once a month, on a Sunday, Alexander and his parents would visit Nan Burnett, and if the weather was fine his father would be certain, at some point in the afternoon, to lean aside and look down the hallway from the kitchen, remarking: ‘Things a bit wild out front, aren’t they, Nan?’ or ‘Had problems locating the entrance recently?’ or ‘Found any Japs this week?’ And whatever the joke, Nan Burnett would pat the back of his father’s hand and call him a treasure, and his father, standing behind a chair to grasp the topmost rung of its back like the handrail of a captain’s bridge, would order all MacIndoe hands on deck. ‘Action stations!’ he commanded, opening the door from the kitchen to the backyard, which was nothing but a small rectangle of glazed grey bricks, with a tiny shed where Nan Burnett stored the stepladders and the shears, and a gate opening onto an alley that had a crest of grass down the middle and lumps of black glassy rock on its verges.

      Alexander would follow his father back through the house, bearing the shears blade-downwards past the coat-stand and the oval mirror and the line of Nan Burnett’s shoes, with their toe caps turned up like heads, watching the goings-on in the hall. When his father had rolled his sleeves up above his elbows and loosened his tie, Alexander would present the shears and then stand back in attendance, while his father sliced long cords of ivy from the wall and lopped hanks of foliage off the hedge that separated the garden from the street.

      ‘Remove please, toot sweet,’ his father said, glancing back over his shoulder first at his son and then at the tangle of cuttings, which Alexander scooped into his arms and carried out to the yard, where his father would burn them. If ever he was left alone to keep an eye on the smouldering leaves, Alexander would step into the blue, stripy smoke that streamed from the fire, so that his clothes that evening would be soaked with a smell that had come from Nan Burnett’s garden.

      On days when Alexander’s mother had to go up to town or do something else that she had to do without him, she would usually take him to Nan Burnett’s house, and often another visitor would arrive while he was there. Sometimes it was Dot, whose surname he never knew; she lived somewhere further down the street, past the newsagent’s shop, and from time to time she would hand him a twist of paper in which four or five boiled sweets were wrapped. Or it might be Mrs Solomon, Nan Burnett’s neighbour, who brought one of her cats with her in a wicker basket, and had a hairy mole in the centre of her cheek. On a Wednesday it was likeliest to be Beryl Stringer, a woman of his mother’s age, whom he was to remember only for her turquoise woollen bonnet. If he were at Nan Burnett’s on a Saturday he might see Nurse Reilly, who had violet hair and thick legs that had no ankles, and always brought two things with her: a paper bag full of wool and knitting needles, and a small bale of magazines, tied up with rough yellow twine. Always Nan Burnett would place the magazines on a stool beneath the table before taking her own piece of knitting from the basket on the shelf above the oven, and then the two women would sit on opposite sides of the table and the only sounds would be the ticking of the big clock beside the hall door and the jittery clicking of the needles. And once in a while the caller would be Miss Blake, whose name perplexed Alexander, as Miss Blake was no younger than Nan Burnett. Neither her name nor any feature of her appearance lasted long in Alexander’s mind, but one image of her presence did persist, in a scene in which Nan Burnett and another old lady were seated at the kitchen table, each with one elbow on the tabletop, each facing the window that looked onto the yard. There was a pot of tea between them, under a knitted tea-cosy, and

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