My father used to walk around my childhood home finding evidence of carelessness; scratched walls, for example, or broken handles. “Good grief,” he would exclaim: “The house is falling to bits and nobody cares.” We considered his rants incomprehensible. He was right – we didn’t care.
Now it is me ranting when I come across scuffed skirting boards and stains on the carpet. But, whereas I left my parents’ house when I was a teenager, three of my offspring are still living at home in their mid-20s. Surely they should be treating their surroundings with more consideration?
My partner, Ed, explains his theory: “It’s their home, but the kids don’t pay bills or do any maintenance. They just live here.” Ed is the one who changes the lightbulbs and fixes things, so he knows all about this. “Funny how they notice when things don’t work,” he says. “Not when they do. Like guests in a hotel.”
Jake brings his bike into the kitchen. This involves getting it down a short flight of steps, through two doorways and round a corner. He crashes the front wheel into the first door, scrapes a pedal along the wall and jams one of his handlebars into the next door. Ed gasps. “Be careful.”
Jake looks up, startled. “What?”
We both gesture at the large gash in the paintwork of a door. He stares at it. “What?” He repeats, mystified.
Jake and Zac do a kind of parkour slide to get down flights of stairs. They put their shoulders against the wall and surf the steps in socked feet. Tide marks of grime sweep along the wall at shoulder height. Sometimes there’s a hand mark when they have had to brake suddenly at the corner. The print of spread fingers remains like a fragment from an ancient cave painting.
My twin daughters stomp up the stairs bearing huge mugs of tea. Herbal concoctions slop over the side and leave trails of drips. This adds to the shrivelled cornflakes and toast crumbs already spilled by the boys. The carpet holds secrets of breakfasts past – a wealth of archaeological history about the eating habits in our house.
It occurs to me that living in a house without due care and attention should earn the same kind of punishment given to careless drivers, with me slapping penalty points on anyone who spills a drink or pulls a handle off a door. But the root of the problem is that, like Jake with his bike, they don’t see the damage. Whenever I point out a breakage and ask for someone to own up, all four of them look offended, rolling innocent eyes and proclaiming that it certainly wasn’t them.
The house is due for a re-paint; we contact some decorators and blanch at the quotes. But the walls are now a murky grey with dribbles and splashes of unrecognisable substances. “Blood?” I wonder aloud, examining a rust-coloured smear in the kitchen. Ed nods: “Remember when the dog had ‘happy tail’ and it looked as though an axe murderer visited every time he wagged it?”
Painters arrive at dawn and shroud everything in plastic. The sanding-down process begins; my tea tastes of sawdust. Never mind. In a week, the place will be transformed. I expect the kids to share my excitement.
“What do you mean they will be here tomorrow as well?” Lily says. “How can I get ready for work in the morning if I can’t get into the shower?”
Jake complains about dust in his synth keyboard. Zac knocks into a ladder as he is sliding down stairs, injuring his toe. “I can’t see why we had to have the house painted anyway,” Lily says.
“It was perfectly fine as it was,” Jake agrees. Megan wants to make a friend’s birthday cake, but the painters are in the kitchen. “Are they ever going to leave?” she hisses, as if talking about an alien invasion.
“Anyone would think we’re redecorating just to spite them!” I complain to Ed later. “How long do you think it’ll take for the kids to understand why we care about the house?”
“Oh, only another 20 years or so,” he says. “But at least we have the place to ourselves. They’ve gone out to get away from the smell of paint.”
Some names have been changed
