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The Front Hall
I am standing facing the staircase, everywhere is dim and strangely bare-maybe it is during the time we were getting ready to move. Coats should be hung up, boots nearby on the floor..the walls look brown as if they are made of smooth gingery wood, but I think this is really paint, paper or some strange kind of plaster. At either side of me doors lead into other, dark rooms-the one on the left, I feel I am seldom allowed to go in.
Beside that is a low wooden table-some flowers in a long thing-boat-shaped white with mid blue stripes-one of Mother's favourites that we aren't allowed to hardly breath on-with an assortment of flowers in it. The look as if they are dried. What captures my attention most, though, is the staircase: I am not very old, and am still not really meant to go up it alone without anyone nearby. I wonder what is that mysterious land at the top they only take me up when I'm tired-and by the time I get a chance to inspect it, I'm asleep. Even my brothers don't take me up during the day, yet they run up and down as they like. It's not fair.
I cast my gaze to the side. Between the open, railed side of the stairs and the wall (identical colour and texture to the other) is a passage ending in another door and darkness. I suspect that is something to do with food-that's where mother takes pies and things from before she takes them to the kitchen, warning me with tales about little boys who steal from pantries. It evidently doesn't effect big boys cos Andy pinched a new bun from it the other day, to share with me, and nothing awful has happened yet-not even father's stick or slipper.
Back to those stairsI can only see up one flight, they twist away from my site to go the rest of the way-that's partly why mother still worries about me going up there alone; "He might fall through the banisters, Dear, --He's so tiny!".All I can see for the moment, then, is a lightish coloured staircase, with a green carpet up the middle, missing about 2 or 3 inches each side on every step. At the top of the step, there is the landing-this has a window, and that is what I would like to get up to for now-to see the view out over the fields to the hills The window is small, no more than a foot and a half wide at most, and on the sill sits a bright yellow pot, containing carnations, mainly of red and white The sun shines through between them down the stairs and I'm marvelling at the sunbeams but somebody yells for me, wanting to know where I am.
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