I call up the stairs. It’s Sunday night. Mum and Roger are painting the baseboards in Mum’s bedroom. They have stripped off the dingy cabbage rose wall paper, and now the bedroom walls are bare to the plaster. Our landlady says we can decorate as much as we like, and I’m not surprised. Her paint and wall paper are not only hideous but also old and covered in marks. When we got here, Mum wanted to paint all the rooms white. “It’s a new start for all of us, Sapphy!” I’ve painted my room blue and green, so that it looks like the inside of a wave. Our landlady, Mrs. Eagle, has been up to see it, and she says it is ’andsome. Mrs. Eagle is old. Her name doesn’t sound at all Cornish, but that’s because she married a man who came to St. Pirans from upcountry during the war, she says. He died long ago. She must be about eighty, and she owns six houses in St. Pirans, all of them full of cabbagy wall paper, I expect. But the rent is low, Mum says, and that’s all that matters.
