A Quiet Life

All was quiet, the sort of quiet that sometimes makes very imaginative people question their own existence and Aunt Lucille wondered or rather hoped that the whole terrible situation was just a dream.

When people have endured a dull and uneventful Christmas they often refer to said day as,’ very quiet. ‘

In Aunt Lucille's case, she did in fact have a very quiet Christmas. Aunt Lucille lives all alone in the very house in which she was born.

Since 1927 there has been a member of the Edmonds family in residence at 17 Clover Rd.

Number 17 is a quintessential Victorian terrace, furnished modestly with dated decor, a home that could quite easily be described as a veritable shrine to wallpaper.


Though the house has three well-defined bedrooms, only the one is ever in use. The main bedroom at the front of the house on the second floor. The heavy salmon pink curtains maintain closure night and day and the bed is turned whenever Aunt Lucille feels the need and remembers her domestic duty.


The old family are all gone now, long dead. Lucille’s parents Edith and Fred, her only brother Bill, her grandmother Olive. Just distant memories. Her habitat could be likened to a child's old dolls house. Once brand new, with tiny figures placed strategically in domestic positions. Now, years later, the child an adult- the miniature furniture has been lost over the years and only one figurine remains. Old dolls, lying prostrate on a broken wooden bed, ho hum, such a lonely life.

Brother Bill was the last to depart this world just three years ago. His daughter Joan, against her better judgement has attempted to keep up contact with her aunt.

"For Dad's sake." Joan always insists when asked why she bothers with the miserable old bat.

It had been 48 hours since Joan had last spoken to her Aunt Lucille. Joan and her family lived just outside London in leafy Hertfordshire. At 47 Joan is a mother and grandmother, and a busy, busy woman with little time for sentiment.

The phone call had begun well, the usual pleasantries cloaked in suspicion and duty.


"We'd love to have you up, but Ron can't drive down and collect you, he's got a lot on, but of course he'll pick you up from the station and take you back on Boxing Day. "

But Lucille was firm. "No thank you, what's the point, you don't really want me there."

Joan insisted and pleaded and argued and fretted and eventually felt an enormous sense of relief when Aunt Lucille finally hung up on her.


“Suit yourself!” Joan spat into the phone fully aware that the intended recipient was no longer listening.


It had been 48 hours since Lucille went down to the cellar to fetch a bottle of Sherry; She needed a drop to calm her nerves after that dreadful altercation with her niece Joan. Such a difficult woman always had been, even as a girl. Bossy and bullying and altogether wretched. Who cares, thought Lucille, who needs them all, I don't.

Usually she left the cellar door on the latch, it was second nature, after all she'd lived in the house all her life, that’s what one did when one journeyed to the cellar - they put the door on the latch. Lucille could vividly recall those long nights spent down there all those years ago, when the whole family had huddled together, quaking with fear as the Blitz illuminated the London night sky.

"Tut, tut, that sounds like Number 11, what say Edith? Do you think they made it?”

"Couldn't be sure Fred, just thank the Lord we're still here."

"Will we have to go to school tomorrow dad?" Bill would ask, eager the answer would be in the negative.


But that afternoon, shortly after slamming the phone down on Joan, her closest relative, Lucille had plain forgotten all about the latch. The back window was open and a gust of wind blasted in from the garden and blew the cellar door firmly shut, locking it fast.

48 hours or there about with nothing to eat or drink but a box of shortbread well past its sell by date and a bottle of flat ginger beer. Unfortunately her longing for Sherry would have to go unrewarded as once down there Lucille remembered she was in fact all out of sherry. Ironically the shortbread had been a gift from Joan two Christmases previously. They'd put it in the post, with a card that read,
"Won't be around this year auntie, we're all off to Tenerife, hope you have a lovely Christmas."
Tenerife indeed, what sort of Christmas was that. Hot, dry, foreign, not right at all.

Aunt Lucille slept when she could, propped up against the damp wall, an old rolled up carpet for a pillow and a bin liner of mildew stained blankets and a motley collection of home made knitted baby booties for a bed.

Lucille used to knit a lot, she found it relaxing and when her niece Joan was born, she knitted countless items of clothing for the little girl.

"Here you are, for the baby,” she said as she offered up at least 20 pairs of booties to her sister in law Irene.

"Blimey Luce, we had a little baby luv, not a bleeding octopus, how many feet do you think she's got?"

Needless to say, there were a few left over. Lucille hadn’t bothered making anything for Joan’s children, her own great nieces and nephews. What's the point, they wouldn't be appreciated. She did send a crocheted shawl for Joan's first grandchild though. Joan sent her a polite thank you card and a photo of the baby, ugly thing, all pink and wrinkled, with a face like a little toad, shame to wrap her lovely handiwork around such an unsightly creature, she thought to herself.

There was a light in the cellar, in was rarely used, so the bulb should last, but for how long? Just how long would she have to stay down there?

Was this it she wondered? Just me, here forever. Will anyone ever find me......alive that is?

What had led to this accidental confinement?


"Can't you get one of your mates to take her out to the pictures, anything will do, a musical or a comedy, she won't mind." Their father suggested more than once to her brother Bill.

"Oh, please do get him to take her off our hands, please, she's not a bad looking lass and she can crochet." Added her mother.

Bill's friend Eric Tapper took up the challenge, he took Lucille for a stroll in the park and bought her tea and a slice of Battenberg in the pavilion cafe.
"Looks like rain." remarked Lucille, "I should be getting back."

Not the most enthralling dialogues on which to base a marriage, so no one was at all surprised when Eric announced his engagement to a seamstress from Enfield who went by the name of Dolly Carter and danced like Ginger Rogers. Poor old Lucille looked likely to be left on the shelf, no doubt up high where no one ever dusted.

Even Bill’s new Bride, Irene Clark tried her best.
"Why don't you come round one weekend, I've got some lovely new patterns just in from Paris, I could run you up something really chic, you'd be the bell of the ball?"

But Lucille just shook her head.

"I don't much go in for balls, never have."

Years earlier, when a young, highly impressionable Lucille sat at her grand mothers feet, cradling yarn in her shaky hands, her arms aching as she held them out straight while her grandmother wound the wool into a tight ball. She listened intently, all ears to her wise old Nan.

"There are two types of people in this world my girl, the doers and the watchers. You Lucille, are a watcher, you'll spend your life on the sidelines watching the world go by, mark my words."

"That doesn't sound much fun.” remarked little Lucille.

"No it's not, but it’s safer there, and quiet."


Her Nan’s prediction was soon etched into Lucille's brain and after a time had become her mantra. The doers and the watchers, I know which one I am.

There was that evening when Lucille and her friends Gertie and Hilda were returning from a talk at the church, the subject was Virtuous Young Ladies and why physical love was much more special when experienced with your husband and blessed by the Lord.

Gertie and Hilda turned off at Gable Rd and Lucille carried on alone; even now, over fifty years later, she still recalls the overpowering fumes of his beery breath in her face. The fear and shock as he slammed her up against the wall by the bus stop, her stained petticoat and ripped blouse and the blood, all that blood trickling down her legs. Luckily for Lucille, the heinous act didn't result in the usual outcome of such an event. She remained childless and told no one what had happened; some days she wondered if she’d even imagined the whole event.

But when she passed Tommy Richards, postman and father of five, she looked downward and blushed.

"Hello dear how's your father? Do pass on my regards."

She never did.

What was that? A noise, a scuttle across the ceiling, surely not a rat, or maybe a cat on the floor above.
Damn that ruddy boiler man.

Lucille never left her back window open at this time of the year. Well almost never, the man had come to fix the boiler, simple enough but Aunt Lucille wasn't used to strange people in her home, she didn't like it one bit. The obligation for small talk, the coarseness of these individuals, and worst of all the smell they left behind. A rough, rude mans smell. All stale overall and the stench of his greasy spoon breakfast still clinging to his clothes. He perspired rather a lot, BO circled his every move and she feared he might have had a cigarette. She couldn't think when, after all, the entire time he was there, working away at the boiler Lucille watched him like a hawk. Her beady eyes following his every move, there was the time she went to the bathroom, one must mustn't one, but only for a few moments, surely not long enough to sneak an illicit puff. But she could smell it, lingering there like the ghost of a murder victim, desperate for one more chance at life. Lucille couldn't bear it, not one minute longer, so she opened the window, to let in the fresh, chilly air, that's how it happened, how this dreadful ordeal had come about.

It wouldn't have happened with the old key. But her father grew security conscious shortly before his death and had the lock replaced by a sturdy Yale jobby.
"That'll keep the buggers out."

There it was again, the scratching coming from above. The wretched ginger Tom from next door, no doubt, jumped through the open window, now defecating on Lucille's pristine kitchen floor. Or worse.

Lucille's hand flew to her mouth, what if? All alone, no one's safe. Any one could climb through the open window, plunder her neat little home and help themselves to all her prized belongings, Her beloved carriage clock, a gift from her parents on her thirtieth birthday.
"Just to thank you love, for al the time you've given us."

The little china biscuit jar, full of loose change, her jewellery box containing her mother’s wedding ring, her mother’s mother's wedding ring and her fathers mothers wedding ring. Good job she didn't have one of her own for them to steal.

But what a quandary, if there was indeed an intruder in her home, wouldn't she be wise to alert them to her predicament, they're only thieves not completely heartless, they wouldn't leave her there, to waste away to nothing, Why she'd even forgive them, send them on their way with as much loot as they could carry.

"Help! Help me!" she cried out in her frail old lady voice.
But no one came, no one at all.

Thankfully there was an old metal bucket in the corner of the cellar, Lucille had no choice, she had to use it as a chamber pot. Fortunately her anxious plight coupled with a lack of fibre had mercifully rendered her constipated so at least some semblance of old lady dignity remained intact. But for how long?

After ingesting the first level of the shortbread box, Lucille began to wonder just how long she'd been down there. Certainly more than 48 hours, but exactly how many days. Without natural light and the sounds from her neighbours her routine had all but vanished. Things were quiet up above now, had been for quite a while. She was timeless, quite literally, after removing her marquisette watch in order to do the washing up, not much of a chore, one cup one saucer, one teaspoon, one knife, one small plate an egg cup and a saucepan. But, the gentle rumbling from the street outside gave some indication as to whether it was day or night, by Lucille's calculations, she had been locked in the cellar for approximately four days.

Then it happened!
The phone rang. An entire festive period had passed, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and the day after and only now the phone was ringing. Naturally there was no ansaphone, what would be the point, so it rang and rang and eventually stopped.

Christmas had always been very traditional at Lucille's house. Her mother purchased a small artificial tree from the old department store in the High Street that was now a block of Live/ Work apartments in 1936 and it was used right up till 1982.
That was the year they had all the trouble with the roof, water got in you see, things were damaged. As far as she knew the old tree was still up in the attic, it's synthetic branches folded down like straight arms against a body, a few scratched baubles clinging for dear life in a ghostlike former splendour. Pity I didn't get locked in the attic, thought Lucille.

Lucille smacked her lips together angrily as she listened to the trilling of the phone.
Probably Joan, calling to apologise, well let her wait, let her wonder, let her worry as to what's become of me.

But Lucille's anger soon subsided and was replaced by a terrible anxiety. What if Joan, her only niece and closest relative decided to give up on her this time. Finish off, not bother keeping up contact. Who would find her then? Not her neighbours with whom she’d hardly ever spoke to, not if she could help it and only then to ask them to turn down their music or trim their hedge. The answer was obvious, no one, no one would find her alive, no one.

Lucille lay back on her makeshift bed and tried to sleep. She watched a small spider dancing on its web, he's hopeful she thought, we'll starve together, or if I go first he can have first pickings.


"It's in the tin, the Coronation biscuit tin, you can't forget that."

Lucille sat up with a start, who spoke, who said that?

“Hello, hello, who’s here?”

She looked around her new home, her final resting place. No one, no one was there.

Had she be dreaming, or was that really her father's voice. Then she remembered, of course, Lucille stood up far quicker than she should have for a woman her age and indeed one experiencing such a calamity. She reached up high to the shelf above the door, her arthritic fingers felt their way, tins of paint, boxes of nails, jars of pennies and there in the furthest corner, a tin, a Coronation biscuit tin. Lucille pushed at it with the back of her hand and the ancient tin fell to the floor, crash!

She reached down and picked it up, rust and dust scarred her youthful Queen’s face and for a brief moment she saw herself as a young girl and the tin as bright red and shiny new as her father placed it proudly in the centre of the kitchen table.

“Here you are luv, you want to keep that tin safe, might be worth something one day.”

She twisted the top but it wouldn't budge, once more, once more.
It was loose, she managed to jimmy off the lid and there it was, inside, gleaming and gloating, the spare key to the cellar door, there all the time.

Once upstairs Lucille squinted as the bright winter sunlight streamed through the back window. Everything was so still, not a sound, no ginger Tom, no rat, just Lucille alone in her stone cold house. She hurriedly deposited her bucket of shame in the downstairs bathroom and shut the door on it; I'll sort that out later. She made her way down the hall and through to the front room, everything was as she'd left it, she opened the heavy old velvet curtains to let in the light and in doing so saw a car pulling up next door, her neighbours returning home from wherever they’d been.
As they rarely spoke to each other, so she had no idea where they may have gone, Tenerife no doubt.

Lucille stepped over her empty doormat, no letters, cards or even bills, like she didn't exist. She opened her door and watched her neighbours busily unloading their car, suitcases, duty free bags, and would you believe it, skis, whatever next.
Mrs Whoever from next door looked up to see Lucille, peering at her.
She waved and smiled.

"Hello Miss Edmonds, did you have a nice Christmas?"

Lucille nodded, careful not to meet her neighbour’s eye.

"Yes," she said, "Very quiet, very quiet."


The End