My Room

Right. That above is actually a good likeness.

Up the stairs. Then my room. I would change and then Angelika would clean my new suit.

Across from my chamber lived another gardener. We will call him "Gaz".

Gaz was a trainspotter. No, not the kind in that horrid film (I think they were referring to heroin tracks, not the railroad). Instead, he was a young man who would spend his free days at the local train-station. Binoculars in hand and a notebook, he would record every train he saw. He had memorized schedules - this habit was actually quite handy for everyone in the Convent.

"Gaz, when is the next one to Flexmore-End?"

"12:43"

"Bristol?"

"7:18"

Always right. He had a massive toy train layout in his room that he would play with. Sometimes, I would walk past his door and I would hear "Choo-Choo," and then agonizingly later in broad Yorkshire, "Choo". More about him later, since he would become a champion for me, of sorts.

My room. I opened the door. Nothing like the Oriel Chamber in the Manor. No. This was a closet - a very tiny room. Instead of stained glass, I had a narrow arrow slit that barely held back the rain. Sometimes I was dripped on, despite the fact that thing (the leaded glass) was wedged behind three feet of stone. No light at all. The one saving grace was a fireplace (no central heating there, reader). I also had a desk and an armoire.

The bed. Mattress concave and uncomfortable (perhaps from many previous poundings, I supposed). A crucifix with a bleeding Jesus stamped firmly above.

Sometimes that crucifix needed to be covered with a towel. When I did this, I was always reminded of my grandmother. She turned around that portrait of the Kaiser in her kitchen during the entirety of the Great War. There are just some things you don't want the Guy to see, and sometimes you don't want to see the Guy.

So I changed. I would bathe. My clothes would soon be clean.

S.D.G.