Such devoted sisters… but could we ever live together?
When a family crisis forced Linda Kelsey to move in with her fussy sibling, she had serious misgivings
Even though we didn’t feel we were doing anything wrong, we made our getaway under cover of darkness, checking for twitching curtains as we unloaded our bags outside my sister’s place. When there was a bang on the door as we were still taking off our coats, I feared it might be the police. Relief all round, it was only the Amazon courier.
Taking up residence with my sister, Susan, during this second lockdown hadn’t been my intention. But when she announced, just as the new restrictions began, that her son, his wife and two grandchildren were about to move in with her, because there’d been a sudden extended hold-up on their house purchase, alarm bells rang. For the next few weeks, my seventysomething sister and brother-in-law would be exposed, on a daily basis, to the comings-and-goings of two still-working adults and two children, one in secondary school, who could easily bring home Covid. But where was the choice?
As I was drifting off to sleep, I had a fairy godmother epiphany. Instead of my nephew and co moving in with his parents, they could all shack up in my house. And my partner Ronny and I would pack our bags and move in with my big sister and her husband – two sets of oldies in the kind of youthful house-share none of us had experienced for a good 40 years.
As another upside, their house is a lot posher than ours, a grand villa rather than the Victorian semi we inhabit. Sheets are laundered to five-star hotel standard rather than casually hand-smoothed before being put back on the bed. Molton Brown toiletries in the guest bathroom as standard. It would feel a bit like checking into Babington House.
The four of us get on brilliantly under our separate roofs. But try living with a couple of OCD oldies when you have a partner who can’t see the point of tidying things away that you might need to get out again later (or next week). Our new hosts are so anxious to get the washing up out of the way that they ask if you’re done with your plate before you’ve finished eating. This is a couple
whose kitchen is so spotless that when I once popped round with a friend, she whispered: “It’s very airy and spacious, but it does rather remind me of a mortuary!”
As for me, given that Susan and David will be celebrating their 50th anniversary this December, I understand them both pretty well. Their house, their rules – even if Susan insists on labelling me a complete domestic slut.
Then there’s the business of what we eat. Or rather what we don’t. David is a wee bit fussy. Aubergines, Ronny’s favourite food, cannot be spoken of. Coriander causes conniptions. Cream is forbidden. Soups are OK if they have bits in them, but not liquidised. Spices, no thank you. Salmon, not on David’s watch. Asparagus, not on Susan’s. And so the list grows, until we agree that we all like chicken. In the past week we have had chicken four times.
Fortunately, I love cooking and have at least a dozen chicken recipes in my repertoire. And, best of all, we all love chocolate. And gin. The gin, I find, helps. Susan sends me a Whatsapp to tell me what time I’m expected for kitchen cocktails. Highlight of the day.
Though it’s lovely eating (chicken) together every evening, Ronny and David are polar opposites when it comes to politics and the conversations often need to come to an abrupt halt in order to avoid gin-fuelled fisticuffs. Even when we’re not arguing we do quite a bit of shouting. Ronny and David don’t always remember to put in their hearing aids. Susan and I can hear quite well without.
To be frank, I had been feeling nervous about a second lockdown with just me and Ronny. The first, in the glorious spring and summer, meant we could go for long walks together in our local woods, listen to the birdsong and watch the trees come back into life, before retreating home to enjoy our back garden. But the prospect of winter cooped up with my beloved, getting on each other’s nerves, seemed a gloomier prospect. Now, Susan and I get on Ronny and David’s nerves, because we do a lot of childish giggling together, like we’ve stepped back in time.
We’re all hopeful of vaccines and an end to this yo-yo lockdown life, but in the meantime I can see the sense of oldies who get on well locking down together, while the younger generation gets on with the business of more normal living.
Ten days of being chez sister, I’m rather hoping her son’s new house purchase is delayed even longer.
Susan and I do a lot of childish giggling together, like we’ve stepped back in time