Standing in an orchard of palms and other topheavy trees, talking to a breeder about a harlequin puppy, something like a spaniel, roan and blue but the patterns all particoloured diamond shapes like a jester. She was lovely, but I still missed Lucy.
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Maryborough House
High ceilings and wide spaces filled with watercolour light. The walls were painted in impressionist patterns, amber, green, blue. Designs of flowers which might have been blue thrift. When we walked through the spaces our faces felt as if they took on the flowing colours and simply represented forms of the space around us. We became part of the house.
The designs had been painted by Nana Mac. She was not here now. Grandad had collected the old lights. There were many different styles of lamps. They represented scientific forms of light. One of them looked like the Milky way, a floating spiral of dusty radiance.
It felt sad walking through. The staff were sad, this was the end of an era, these people had lived here a long time. They still wore Victorian uniforms and aprons. There were also boarders here, stern old gents who muttered loudly to each other if things were moved out of place and two girls studying at a big kitchen table, more focused on upcoming tests than the problems of the house.
Formal curved stairways and snugfit staff backways. A child swept down the main staircase, the timber pillars where the stair curved were smooth and rounded like stemmed wineglasses, she swung around and slid down the next flight of stairs, surfing the wide waves of worn carpet.
One of the corridors continued down to join a subway or walkway under a bridge.
Outside the garden was filled with amazing plants, but the lawn was thick monogrammed astroturf. Sheets of plastic desert did not seem like something Nana would choose.
I couldn't save it. How can you save the paintings on the wall, the feel of a place, the love and movement shaping its wear. I hoped that perhaps someone would want to keep it this way, but you could feel the welling of glass and chrome property values press up through the subway.