Well how was I supposed to know that the nice smiley lady at our front door was the wife of my father’s cousin? My father had swarms of cousins most of whom didn’t live locally and whom we rarely saw – except occasionally at Christmas, or perhaps at a funeral gathering. However, I was too young to explain this and fight my corner while my mother scolded me in her clipped 1960s voice: “For goodness sake Catharine, just remember if anyone you know comes to front door, say “Hello, how to nice to see you, please do come in”…. and show them into the hall, and then come and fetch me. Don’t just leave them standing on the front door step….!”
A few days later, the phone rang (think solid black Bakelite with pull out note tray pad), and my mother was soon consumed in conversation upstairs. No sooner had this happened than the front door bell rang. Remembering my recent misdemeanour, I rushed enthusiastically to open the rather heavy front door and immediately spat out my rehearsed greeting, “Hello, how nice to see you, please do come in”….. and insisted on showing the visitor into the hall.
I was feeling rather pleased with myself having almost executed the full routine, other than having to inform my mother that we had a visitor in the hall. However, this final part of the task never came to fruition, as I heard the click of the telephone receiver being replaced and her footsteps descending the stairs.
I waited for the usual greeting pleasantries to commence and for a glance of approval. What I thought would shortly be a happy trio in the hall turned out to be anything but. On beholding the visitor, my mother looked aghast, turned a little pale, rapidly flung the front door open and shooed him out of the house saying in a very firm authoritative voice “NOT today thank you….”. Not only did she uncharacteristically slam the front door shut, but locked it, and rushed upstairs to look out of the landing window to ensure our ‘company’ was on his way.
In all fairness I couldn’t see a familial likeness but then when you are only four or five you don’t notice than sort of thing. OK, he had a long grey beard, didn’t shop in Fenwicks, had non-matching muddy boots and his shower at home had… obviously broken down, but sometimes friends and even relatives are a bit… eccentric. He seemed quite shy to me and not very keen to step into our flock wallpapered hall, in fact it was only my insistence that made him do so.
Oddly, I don’t recall the backlash from this experience but I do remember a new word entering my vocabulary – tramp!
When the tale was retold to local friends, they were shocked (by the incident or my ineptness – I’m not sure which) and by the fact that, as we were fortunate enough to live on the ‘right side of town’, we’d never seen any tramps in the neighbourhood and were baffled as to where this visitor had come from so ‘out of the blue’.
