| The warden led us in single file along
a narrow line of paving-slabs that ran past the huts. Every so often, four steps
led to a front door. We could hear people inside, shouting at children.
'The overcrowding has to be seen to be believed,' he said as he shook his head forlornly. We squeezed to one side as a sullen woman passed us, carrying a bucket of coal. She had the look of someone who was old before her time. The warden went up the last set of steps, opened the door with a jangling bunch of keys, took one off the ring and handed it to me. 'There you are. Home Sweet Home. There's a bath in that hut by the trees; get the key from me when you want one, ' he said, and he came clown the steps, leaving us room to go up. 'I hope you can make a go of it, ' he said. 'At least we've got you a bit of furniture.' We walked into a square 'cell' with a table and two chairs and a two-seater settee. No two of anything were the same; it all looked like furniture from a charity shop, which I suppose it was. There was a double hotplate on top of a low cupboard, and a dead black stove against the back wall with a scuttle beside it containing a few lumps of fuel. The adjoining 'cell' had a double bed with a pink plastic mattress cover, glistening like wet salmon. There was a cupboard that hung open because the door catch had gone. Inside the cupboard were two meagre blankets. The bedroom was freezing. I struggled to shut the top flap of the window, but it was jammed open by rust. There were bits of yellowing sellotape all round the wall near it, where previous inmates had tried to block the draught with cardboard. I sat on the bed with my head in my hands, wondering how long we would have to spend here before we found a real home, and noticing, as I glanced sideways into the front room, that a thin film of dust was blowing under the front door. We took the plastic cover off the mattress because it looked worse than the stains underneath. The blankets smelled, but we had to keep warm somehow. We had been in this place exactly a week when, on returning in the evening, we went up to our front door and heard children's voices and a transistor radio. We peered round the door at a jumble of people and things and colours. The people turned round and we all looked at each other. The muddle resolved itself into a huge woman and a little man, and two small children. They had a lot of stuff, mostly carrier bags and laundry bags with clothes spilling out, and a couple of buckets full of kitchen equipment which we'd have been glad to have ourselves. They didn't want to share with us any more than we did with them, but that's what the warden had told them to do. We argued about it, though it seemed ridiculous to quarrel over accommodation which none of us really wanted anyway. QUESTIONS: |