NO ORDINARY ROOM
By
Bill Williams
CHAPTER ONE
Jamie’s mum didn’t usually get upset about things, but she had a reason to be stressed out this morning. It was an important day for the Tranter family. Well, it was more than just important because they were preparing to start a new life with a move into the unknown. They weren’t exactly going on a trip up the Amazon or even to Bootle where his dad had been born which would have been interesting because someone had said that is where the bugs wear clogs. When Jamie had first heard about the plans to leave he hadn’t wanted to move anywhere, not even across the road, but he was curious to find out what was behind the strange bit of news his dad had given him. His dad wasn’t exactly the sort to think up something like he had told him, so it had to be true.
Jamie had overheard his parents discussing the possibility of his dad looking for work in the South East and then the following day the surprise letter arrived from a solicitor. Jamie’s dad had been shocked to discover later that he had been left his Uncle Stanley’s house in the small town of Steaderton, in Devon. It seemed to be the perfect solution to their problems; at least that is how his dad had described it. Uncle Stanley had also left one hundred and thirty three pounds and twenty two pence, so he hadn’t been a major winner of the Lotto. His last will and testimony had contained a strange bequest that Jamie be given the key to a room in the attic of the house and the room was to be for his sole use. The bequest to Jamie was intriguing because his dad was surprised that Uncle Stanley had even been aware of Jamie’s existence. Jamie had remembered that Granddad Tranter used a room in his antic to breed his chickens. During one of his sleepovers at Granddad Tranter’s house he was kept awake by a scratching sound coming from the room next to his where the chickens were kept and he remembered wondering if the scratching was caused by mice or perhaps even rats.
Jamie had been thinking about the old man who had watched him play football a few weeks earlier and after the game one of the parents had mentioned that the man seemed interested in Jamie. Jamie had wondered if the man might have been a retired football scout, but now he had a strange feeling that it was Uncle Stanley, but it would have to have been his ghost if it was!
Jamie had eventually come to terms with moving house and having to leave all his mates and now he was looking forward to seeing what was in ‘his’ room. He was hoping that his dad’s suggestion that it must have a train set in it was wrong. He wouldn’t mind if it was a racing car track, but he couldn’t think what it could be because no one had any idea what Uncle Stanley’s hobbies had been because he’d left Liverpool forty years ago and never been heard of since.
One of Jamie’s mates had asked him if he was emigrating to Devon and was it near Australia and Auntie Helen had made some sarcastic remarks about it having no culture. Seeing less of snooty Auntie Helen and Uncle Alistair was going to be a bonus. There had been lots of tears last night when they had said goodbye to Granddad Len and Grandma Dawn. At one point Jamie thought his mum was going to change her mind about leaving when she was clinging on to Grandma.
The Tranter family had lived at forty-two Marie Curie Avenue on the outskirts of Liverpool since they had moved in the day that Debbie came out of hospital with the newborn Jamie just over fourteen years ago. The whole family had been happy in their cosy home and moving away was going to be a big wrench for them all, but unemployment was very high in the area and so it was an opportunity for Kevin to get work, or so he hoped.
Kevin Tranter was thirty-seven years old and claimed to be of average height, but he was less than that. He had stopped playing for his local pub football team last season following a cartilage operation on his knee and had developed a paunch at which mum poked fun at, as well as her finger. The small, bushy moustache came about through laziness rather than fashion or vanity, but mum was always saying that it was his best feature and that’s all that mattered. Well, she said it was a close shave between that, his light brown curls and his cheeky grin. Jamie didn’t know how to react when folks said that he looked like his dad without the moustache.
According to his dad, it was mum’s shoulder length blonde hair that had first attracted him to her and because she had been wearing a red dress at the time, the colour associated with his beloved Liverpool FC. His mum had a nice, kindly face and looked young for her age and not like some of his friend’s mums who often looked worried and tired.
Leanne was a bit like mum, with blue eyes, except her little nose was a bit turned up and she was always changing her hairstyle. She would have changed the colour if dad hadn’t used one of his favourite expressions when he said, ‘No way.’ and then reminded her that she was only eleven years old.
* * *
The family looked sad as they stood outside the house and Kevin pulled the door shut for the last time.
‘Right,’ Kevin said. ‘I think we’re ready for the off and we can say goodbye to our dear old house. I hope the new people enjoy it as much as we have. I wonder if they own that blue van parked a few doors away and they’re just waiting for us to go.’
‘Let’s hope that Betsy is ready as well,’ Debbie said as she looked towards her husband’s pride and joy, the battered Vauxhall Cavalier that always left its calling card in the form of an oil patch.
‘Of course she’s ready,’ replied Kevin confidently. ‘She’s never let me down yet.’
Jamie rolled his eyes because he knew that his dad had never driven the car further than twenty miles, but was an optimist by nature.
Betsy wasn’t going to allow them to leave quietly and there was a thumping sound of metal on concrete as the car bounced off the pavement, followed by the engine backfiring and black smoke spewed out from the exhaust pipe. Debbie looked anxious, but Kevin just smiled and as the smoke cleared he realised that the blue van obviously didn’t belong to the people moving into their old house because it was following behind them.
Debbie looked anxious. ‘I wish you had let me and the kids go by train.’
‘Stop worrying; it’s only Betsy’s way of saying goodbye. She’ll settle down once we’ve burnt up a few miles on the way to the motorway.’
Jamie wondered if the small group of neighbours who were waving at the car were just being friendly or were glad to see them leave.
* * *
By the time they’d joined the motorway twelve miles away, the backfiring had stopped, but some of the occupants of the passing cars tried to draw Kevin’s attention to the smoke trail.
‘I thought your friend Charlie was going to fix the car last week?’ Debbie questioned Kevin as her irritation and embarrassment increased.
‘He was, but I decided I couldn’t trust him really because he’s a Liverpool football supporter.’
‘What!’ Debbie shouted out in disbelief. ‘But you’re a Liverpool supporter.’
‘Ah, but there’s a difference, isn’t there? I’ve always been one, but Charlie supported Everton when we were kids. He only switched to our team when Liverpool starting winning all the cups and so he’s not a real football fan.’
‘But that’s stupid. So we’ve got to pray that we don’t end up spending the night on the hard shoulder or in some lay-by just because of you and your football!’
Kevin laughed out loud. ‘I’m only kidding. The silly beggar sprained his wrist last week. Apparently the nurse who put it in plaster had trouble keeping a straight face when he told her he’d done it combing his hair.’
Leanne looked up from her comic and spoke for the first time since they’d left home. ‘Daddy, are we going to come back and visit at the weekend, so I can see my friends?’
‘Not this weekend, Princess, but perhaps in the school holidays. That’s if you still want
to.’ Kevin took his eye off the road for a second as he turned and smiled at Debbie. Leanne switched her attention back to her comic and Jamie shook his head, but stopped himself from saying, ‘Girls!’
* * *
Kevin had waited until they had reached a quiet stretch of the motorway and were well clear of Liverpool before he pulled in at the service station. He begrudged the prices that they charged, but he had promised Jamie a treat on a games machine. When the cashier announced the bill Kevin asked her if Dick Turpin owned the service station and she gave him a dumb look. Debbie gave him a nudge and her face showed her disapproval, but he still explained, ‘Well, the price they charge is highway robbery.’
The mood of the family had changed when they rejoined the motorway and Leanne was even asking if her friends could come and stay at the new house.
‘Dad, have you noticed that Betsy isn’t leaving a smoke trail anymore?’ Jamie said as he looked out of the back window. Kevin looked in the mirror and saw a blue van, with tinted windows, was following close behind and wondered if it could be the same van that had followed them as they had driven away from their old house. His thoughts were broken by the engine backfiring and his view through the back window was soon obscured by smoke.
‘Big mouth,’ Kevin said, directing his remark at Jamie for suggesting that Betsy had stopped emitting the usual black smoke. ‘Don’t worry, there’s plenty more oil in the boot. We’ve got our own bit of Saudi Arabia back there.’
Jamie wasn’t very impressed by his dad’s solution and he was remembering his recent school lesson about pollution and global warming. ‘She’s not very environmentally friendly, is she?’
‘If you mean your Auntie Helen, then I agree,’ Kevin said. ‘All that lacquer she sprays on her bonce can’t be any good for the ozone layer.’
‘Where did you learn about the ozone layer?’ Jamie asked, surprised by his dad’s unexpected knowledge of such things.
‘I think it was in the New Scientist magazine,’ Kevin replied casually.
‘Since when did you read the New Scientist or anything else for that matter that wasn’t connected with football?’ Debbie scoffed.
‘If you must know, I subscribe to the magazine,’ Kevin replied.
‘So how come I’ve never seen one in the house?’ Debbie challenged.
‘Well, Pete subscribes to it or gets it off someone, but I always read it.’
Jamie had never heard his dad mention Pete before and asked if he was an old workmate, but Debbie had already rumbled who Pete was and answered for Kevin.
‘He’s Pete the barber and mastermind here probably reads it in between flicking through the pages of the girlie magazines.’
‘A little bit of smoke won’t do any harm,’ Kevin said and then grimaced when he saw the black cloud in the mirror.
* * *
They had made another two stops before Kevin announced that they would soon be in Steaderton and everyone was subdued when they started the last leg of the journey. Each family member was thinking about what lay ahead and the life they had left behind all those miles away. Kevin hadn’t told the family their new address, intending it to be a surprise and he decided not to mention that someone might be following them!
CHAPTER TWO
It was getting dark when Kevin saw the Steaderton sign on the outskirts of the town and the blue van that had been following them had turned off a few miles back and it mustn’t have been the same one that had followed them out of Marie Curie Avenue.
‘Wakey, wakey, we’re here,’ Kevin announced.
Jamie rubbed his eyes and peered out of the car window and saw the magnificent detached house that was covered in ivy.
‘Wow, it’s a mansion. Look, Mum,’ Jamie shouted.
Kevin laughed. ‘That’s not ours, soft lad. We’ve got to go to the other side of the town.’
Jamie looked glum and disappointed, but his sister was too sleepy to take in the misunderstanding. Debbie was relieved that she would not be responsible for keeping such a large house clean.
The tiredness of the long drive left Kevin as he realised that he was within minutes of arriving at their new home. He was excited, but anxious to discover if he had made a terrible mistake by moving his family to a new life. He was a Liverpudlian through and through, as was Debbie. They had always got on well with people from other parts of the country that they had met on holiday and he hoped it would be the same with their new neighbours, but people didn’t always share the same sense of humour.
Kevin turned off the main road out of the town knowing that he had taken a massive gamble. Why hadn’t he visited the house first and checked out the area and schools before handing in the keys to his old house? He had acted on an impulse and now he was praying that his family wouldn’t suffer.
He pulled up beside the road sign and his first impression of the narrow, tree lined street was good, except that it seemed too quiet and there wasn’t a car in sight.
‘They won’t have much trouble stopping people from parking on the pavement here with all those trees and the local dogs must be spoilt for choice,’ Kevin said and laughed before he wound down his window and took a deep sniff. ‘I can’t smell anything, Debs.’
‘Why should you?’ Debbie asked, puzzled by his remark.
‘Didn’t you see all those cows in that field back there?’ he queried. ‘I haven’t seen so many cattle since my last cowboy film.’
Jamie saw the road sign and groaned. ‘Dad, you didn’t tell us we’re going to live in Hog’s End Lane!’
Debbie’s groan followed Jamie’s. ‘No wonder you said it was a secret.’
Leanne was on the point of crying when she said that she wouldn’t be able to give their new address to her friends.
None of them replied when he said, ‘What’s in a name?’ and then advised them to look out for number thirty-three.
The car was on the point of stalling after Kevin reduced its speed to a crawl, so that they could read the house numbers. Their new life was about to begin!
‘They’re not very big, but I like them,’ Debbie enthused as she surveyed the terraced cottages. Her excitement grew when she saw that number twenty-seven was the last of the terraced houses and twenty-nine was a lovely detached house with roses around the front door.
‘Oh No,’ Kevin cried out when he saw the house with most of the roof tiles missing and boarded up windows.
‘Crikey, Dad, is that our house?’ Jamie shouted out and he was thinking that he would need an umbrella if he was in his special room in the attic when it was raining.
Debbie was shaking her head in despair as they drew closer and the house reminded her of the photographs that she had seen of bombed out houses in Liverpool. ‘Kevin, we can’t stay there. What are we going to do?’
Kevin started laughing and Debbie was worried that he’d cracked up with stress of moving here.
‘This is our house,’ Kevin announced with relief as he pulled up outside number thirty three which was the house before the one that was in danger of falling down.
‘Did you know that our house wasn’t the wreck next door?’ Debbie asked, thinking Kevin had been joking as usual because if he had then she hadn’t found it funny.
‘Debs, I swear that I thought it was ours and that perhaps Uncle Stanley might have thought I worked in the building trade like my old dad did.’
The house was the same style as the other detached houses, but that was all that it had in common, although number thirty-one next door wasn’t exactly a palace. The small front garden had obviously been neglected for a long time and the grass on the lawn was close to a foot high. The letters on the wooden sign near the front door read, ‘Cox Pippin’, which they discovered later was the choice of a previous owner and not Uncle Stanley.
‘It’s detached, Mum!’ Jamie called out. ‘You can tell Auntie Helen that we live in a detached house and it’s bigger than her semi on the Wirral. I bet she’ll tell you that she doesn’t like detached houses.’
Debbie smiled at the prospect of telling her sister about their new house and watched Jamie who had leapt out of the car and raced ahead of his dad towards the front door. Jamie didn’t bother to look back when his push against the front gate had caused it to fall apart, scattering pieces of rotten wood onto the path and he halted when he spotted the black cat on the doorstep. The cat meowed, came forward and rubbed itself up against Jamie’s leg.
‘I hope the neighbours are as friendly as that puss,’ Kevin said as he joined Jamie at the front door.
‘Can we keep him, Dad?’ Jamie asked. ‘Perhaps it was Uncle Stanley’s.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Kevin laughed at his son’s suggestion. ‘He must belong to one of the neighbours.’
‘No, he’s yours,’ said the man who had appeared from the side of the house. Debbie and Leanne had arrived at the door and all four of them were startled by the man’s voice and the cat retreated behind Jamie’s legs as though it had been spooked by the arrival of the strange looking man.
‘That’s if you’re the new owners,’ said the man and gave them a disapproving look. ‘I was hoping you might be older. We don’t like noise around here. We’re not used to children and we don’t like cars either, especially old ones.’
The man peered over Kevin’s shoulder towards their car before he turned his attention to Leanne and Jamie. He reserved his sternest look for Jamie and only dropped his gaze when Jamie was on the point of saying, ‘What!’
Kevin introduced himself and the rest of the family, explaining that he was Stanley’s nephew.
Rufus Cranleigh told Kevin that he lived next door at number 31 and had just been feeding the fish in the back garden pond, a task he would be glad to get rid of.
‘It’s not as though I like fish, or cats for that matter, but someone had to do it. I might as well tell you now that if that cat strays into my garden then he won’t need to wash himself for a week, if you know what I mean.’
‘Don’t worry about the cat,’ Kevin replied. ‘We’ve got an old budgie cage arriving with our furniture tomorrow. I’ll make sure he’s locked up in that and it’ll save you wasting good water on him.’
NO ORDINARY ROOM Page 1