For Katy, precious memories were worth far more than money . . .
BY GAIL WARRICK COX
The dream of buying her own home had so far eluded Katy. It’s tough getting on the property ladder, difficult to save if you’re renting and with large deposits needed, Katy had moved back in with her mum, Jane, in order to save up.
It had its benefits. Jane was a fabulous cook, and best of all was that Nanny Mabel would be moving in with them, too.
Katy was fond of Nanny Mabel. As a child, Nanny Mabel would pick her up from school and look after her until her mother came in from work. Her flat was in a small block a few doors down from Jane’s house and felt like home to Katy.
But recently Nanny Mabel was finding the stairs to her third-floor flat more difficult to manage, so she was moving in with Katy and Jane. Most of Nanny Mabel’s furniture would have to go but she didn’t seem to mind. She was excited and had asked Katy to make arrangements for her old furniture to be cleared from the flat and sold at auction.
“I’d like you to have the proceeds,” Nanny Mabel told Katy. “It won’t be much, but every little helps when you’re saving for a place of your own.”
Katy was reluctant to accept the offer, but Nanny Mabel insisted – and there was little chance of changing it.
Katy hired a man and van to transport the items to the auction, and Nanny Mabel was in her element, telling him which pieces of furniture to move and how to pack them to avoid damage.
But when it came to one particular item of furniture, Nanny Mabel’s pale blue eyes seemed to lose their usual twinkle and she dabbed them with a wilting tissue pulled from her pocket.
The walnut whatnot had been at Nanny Mabel’s flat for as long as Katy could remember. It was ornate, consisting of a number of compartments, resting on pretty turned spindles and decorated with fancy scrolled brackets. It had long stood in the corner of Nanny Mabel’s hall, and as a child, Katy loved it – the perfect home for what Nanny Mabel called her knick-knacks.
There was a colourful glass clown with a smiling face, a pink porcelain shell filled with delicate flowers, a large green goblet with a scrambling cat climbing the outer edge and, Katy’s favourite, a bone china lady in a beautiful yellow ballgown.
When she was a little girl, Katy would have liked a walnut whatnot of her own, but as the years drifted on, she had noticed it less and less, and it melted into the backdrop of life.
