Living On Three Continents: When The Inspector Called
... “I’ll start in here,” the inspector said, stepping into the kitchen, pencil in one hand, official pad in the other. He looked up and down, glaring at the chip pan on the stove-top, yanking the cord of the regulation extractor fan and running his hand along the stainless steel draining board...
Susan Siddeley recalls the day the inspector came to call at her childhood home.
To read more of Susan's delicious words. please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/living_on_three_continents/
“Bloody bureaucracy!” Dad muttered, shaking his head as he let the man in a brown suit and green hard-hat into the narrow space behind our door.
Our home was a back-to-back row house, which, though solidly built, had lacked the facilities that were becoming the norm in the 1950’s. Our new bathroom, ingeniously carved from two bedroom alcoves above the (central) stair-steps, had been possible because of a Council Grant.
“I’ll start in here,” the inspector said, stepping into the kitchen, pencil in one hand, official pad in the other. He looked up and down, glaring at the chip pan on the stove-top, yanking the cord of the regulation extractor fan and running his hand along the stainless steel draining board. Mum hovered behind him with a duster.
“Looks okay,” he said, “So where’s the bathroom?”
“Upstairs, where do you think?” said Dad under his breath.
The inspector squeezed up to the second floor, panting slightly. We followed as he turned down the tiny landing and pushed open the new room’s splendid glass-paneled door. I half expected him to clap then, for every fitting in there sparkled like a January icicle, including the toothbrush holder, which Mum polished every half hour.
The four of us – Mum, Dad, my sister and me – thought we were in Kingdom Come when we closed that door behind us. Mum had even made a flowered curtain to hang behind it. It was bliss after running down the garden to the lavatory and unhooking a tin bath from the cellar wall every Friday. But the inspector, apparently unmoved by gleaming tiles and pine-scented air, just sighed and started tapping. He tested the bath taps, pressed the toilet flush, stamped on the floor and looked into the mirror above the hand basin. There, he paused to remove his hat and smooth his hair, as we waited in line outside, so quiet, you could hear the hot water rumbling away in the immersion heater in the big bedroom.
“Seems alright.”
The inspector straightened his tie, squeezed past us and started back downstairs, feeling his way on the wall. We followed. Mum first, bending forward to ask if he’d like a cup of tea, then me, all ears, then Dad, hissing,
“He’s looking for summat. Anything. If he doesn’t find summat wrong to write about, he’ll be out of a job. That’s how the system works. Remember that.”
Dad mightn’t be hands on with homework, but, as Mum said, he knew his politics. At the stair-bottom, the inspector seemed to stumble. He coughed and turned to look back up.
“Er, I see there’s no banister here! You need a banister!” And with a flourish he flipped open his pad and pulled out his pencil. “We can’t have no banister,” He looked straight at Dad. “They’re steep, these stairs, you need something to hold on to.”
