When I was six years old, Auntie Annu got seven numbers right in the lottery. A genuine Double Mega Jackpot was up for grabs: so much money it’s hard to put into words. It’s more than the African Star in the board game: the diamond that’s worth more than the rubies and all the notes put together. When you win, you have to rethink things a bit. For example, do you enjoy working? Do you want to carry on playing African Star? Do you want to live in a different place, or sign up for riding lessons, or buy diamonds? Then you have to consider what’s important in life. Family, of course, but that’s got nothing to do with money. Anyway, Auntie Annu doesn’t have family because she’s got no kids. Also, you’ve got to beware of burglars. Even if you have won the lottery, you might not get to go into space, and money can’t buy happiness, and you won’t get to have servants in your house.
We went to Auntie Annu’s for a Double Mega Jackpot Coffee, and on the way there in the car, Mum and Dad explained that the lottery win was a secret not to be shared in nursery or at my friends’ houses or in the shop or on the bus. We were the only ones who knew – that’s why Auntie had made a gateau. This was a secret celebration. I like celebrations and secrets and cakes.
MUM DRESSED UP. Mum has a silk dress with black and silver on it. Mum is tall, because she’s wearing high heels. Her hair forms a swirling peak, as if an ice-cream machine had sucked it into the clouds. Dad looks at Mum, smiling. His chest swells as he tries to stand as tall as Mum. Mum’s wrist clinks. It seems her hands don’t know what to do with themselves, with no hair to push out of her face.
That’s what Mum’s like dressed up.
I wondered what Auntie would look like now, but she looked just like her old self, only with red hair again. Auntie Annu only went to the hairdresser’s when she got a grant or sold a big enough wall hanging. In between visits, her hair went back to normal. She was a big, strong woman, but sometimes she’d be too shy to look you in the eye. She spoke softly, though she had man’s hands. Soap, water and textile dust had made Auntie’s hands rough and red, and sometimes they were so dry, wounds opened up on the knuckles. They were bear’s paws. You could even see the muscles between her fingers.
We crowded into Auntie Annu’s flat. It only had one room, plus a kitchen hidden inside a cupboard. The hall was so narrow and so full of coats and shoes that you had to form a queue to get inside, and Auntie Annu had to flatten herself against the door of the toilet in order to let her visitors pass. We threw our coats on top of a dresser. The whole hall was chock-a-block.
Mum, Dad and Auntie Annu hugged and sighed: well I never, I mean really, who’d have thought, what can you do.
‘Where’s the Jackpot Cake?’ I asked.
Auntie Annu winked and drew me into the room.
Auntie’s desk had been moved to the middle and a large platter had been placed on top of it. The platter was covered with a tablecloth, coffee cups and saucers, along with the world’s finest gateau, a raspberry and white chocolate cream cake. The whole surface was decorated with rolls of liquorice, raspberry pillows, grapes, chocolates, gummy bears, popcorn and marshmallow hearts. A paper umbrella, a shiny swizzle stick, a marzipan rose and a candle were stuck in the middle. Looking at that cake, I saw that the Double Jackpot really was something to write home about. And Mum laughed till she cried. But Auntie must have laughed enough already, because she started setting up folding chairs for Mum and Dad, sniffing a little.
There was no sign of the lottery win.
‘You don’t take it home,’ Auntie Annu explained. ‘It went straight to the bank.’
‘Would it fit in this room?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Didn’t you get to see it?’
Auntie shook her head and clasped her hands together. Then she shrugged.
‘Would it fit in a bathtub?’
‘It might have been a good idea to go and see it, actually,’ Auntie Annu said.
Dad opened a bottle of sparkling wine, and I got to pour myself a mixture of Jaffa and Coca-Cola without prompting a word of criticism from any of the grown-ups.
‘Well, then, congratulations, millionaire!’ Dad said, and we clinked glasses.
‘Well, yes. What can I say?’ Auntie said. ‘I’ll get appoint-ments with the dentist and the gynaecologist right away!’
And the grown-ups laughed again and wiped their eyes.
Then Auntie picked up the cake slice and said, ‘You choose, Saara. Where d’you want me to cut?’
And I went for gummy bears, popcorn and the marzipan rose.
Auntie Annu gave some thought to the decision to buy the manor house near our home. It was pink and old, and Auntie Annu had always seen it across the fields when driving our way. It was called Great Manor, but Dad began calling it Extra Great Manor, because it was so big, whereas Auntie was so small, and no one really needs fifteen bedrooms. Soon everyone else called it that too.
Extra Great Manor had been vacant for twenty years. Before that, it had housed an office; before that, some sort of depot; before that, a children’s summer camp. Before that, there had been a war, and the hospital maternity ward had come to Extra Great Manor to escape the bombs. Before that, the manor-house furniture had been sold off at auction, and before that, Extra Great Manor was occupied by a Mrs Gyllenhök, whose grandfather had the place built for his family in 1877.
Auntie Annu moved out of her flat and became lady of the manor. The whole of Auntie Annu’s old home would have fitted into the blue parlour of Extra Great Manor, and when Auntie’s furniture was carried in, the pieces squatted in the corner of the hall, hopelessly low, tatty and fragile.
The old wooden dresser was the only item of furniture that suited Extra Great Manor. It had stood, dark and heavy, in Auntie’s studio, partially hidden behind a door. There wasn’t enough room to open its own doors fully. But even stuck in that corner, the cupboard had managed to look like the only real piece of furniture in the flat. Now, as it was carried into the drawing room, it puffed up its chest, straightened itself out and let its decorative patterns flourish.
I loved Auntie’s Czech coffee cups. Each one was different, and yet they went together. They had roses of different colours, landscapes, golden whorls, slender blades of grass, rust-coloured hearts and green triangles. The cups hung on the hooks in the cupboard, the matching saucers sitting underneath.
When it was time for coffee, Auntie Annu let me lay the table and choose the cups I wanted. Usually I picked a rose or a circle of girls in folk costume for myself, bear paws or violets for Mum, golden trees or pale-blue sailing boats for Dad, and an extra-large mug that showed a girl in a bonnet feeding Bambi for Auntie Annu.
Extra Great Manor had a thick stone foundation, large steps leading up through a glass veranda, two columns in front of the door and one tower. The manor stood on the ground as sturdy as an oak. You could crawl into the stone foundation through three hatches, but because it had no windows, it was pitch-black inside. There was a circular lawn in front of the manor, on the posh side, and a tree-lined avenue led to it. The tower at the south end had a small summer room at the top, which was reached via a spiral staircase. This granted a 360-degree view, and Auntie Annu arranged for a bed to be carried to the middle of it. The bed had to be lifted through the window in two pieces, using a rope, because the spiral staircase was too narrow. That’s where Auntie slept, at the top of the tower, until the nights grew cold.
Downstairs was a kitchen and five rooms all named after colours: Blue, Green, Lilac and Yellow Rooms, along with Red Hall. Upstairs was a library and fifteen small bedrooms. The bedrooms held metal hospital beds and small, wartime stoves, but otherwise they were empty. There were no books in the library, but a large, old bookcase was discovered in the attic, and Annu, Dad and Mum carried it back into the library together. Auntie later bought a sofa, a smoking table and armchairs at auction.
As soon as she’d moved into the manor house, Auntie Annu bought a flock of sheep. A fence was put up on the posh side to make a pasture for them, and because the fountain pump was broken, the basin became their trough. The sheep were Auntie’s lawnmower. Their enclosure was moved to different sides of the house as necessary.
Extra Great Manor breathed. There was room for everything, everything went together and you could open the doors wide. The rooms looked cosy even without furniture, but every now and then Auntie would buy something, like a chandelier.
When winter came, the timber walls gradually surren-dered to the chill. The windows frosted over, though there was lichen between the panes. It was cold in the manor house. Auntie closed off most of the rooms and retreated to live in one downstairs corner, to avoid heating the whole house. She made up a winter bed for herself in the Yellow Room and lived just there and in the kitchen. You went into the house via the kitchen door. The Red Hall, the other downstairs rooms and the upstairs became a cold store. Auntie Annu sealed the doors with wool and taped up any gaps. Finally, she hung woollen blankets and old quilts in front of the doors and carried all the wool rugs into the Yellow Room.
People said Auntie was crazy to live in a place like that in winter without proper heating. She should install a heating system, or at least hire a caretaker to clear the snow. But Auntie liked heating up the tiled stoves, and claimed it was handy to be able to store milk on the floor.
In spring, the manor house groaned and creaked. The warmth brought the timbers to life and got the house’s blood circulating. It sounded as if someone were walking about all the time. This didn’t scare Auntie Annu. ‘Extra Great Manor is just stretching its limbs,’ she’d say. The groaning and creaking went on till warmth spread throughout the structure. Then the house settled down and the sound of steps upstairs went away.
When a house is young, you have to look after it as if it were a child. It needs adjusting, patching up, care and main-tenance. But when a house is, say, two hundred years old, it can look after itself. Everything that’s inclined to rot has already rotted. Everything that’s inclined to sink and split has already sunk and split. You just have to live in it nicely, which means living as people have lived there before.
Extra Great Manor was slow and old. Its timbers lagged behind the seasons, a bit like the weather on the coast, which is levelled out by the sea. The summer heat was retained until November, and the July heatwaves were well on their way before a stagnant warmth fell into the rooms. Auntie Annu adapted to the rhythm of the house. She put on a woolly jumper and slowed down. She drove to the shop once a week, chatted to the sheep once a day, drank a cup of cocoa at eleven o’clock. After cocoa, she walked once through the downstairs rooms, standing for a moment in every one. Auntie Annu enjoyed the empty spaces; she didn’t miss furniture. She no longer had to flatten herself against the door of the toilet when someone came to call.