BROKEN HOUSE

Short story for children by Carole Lander published by Storm Cloud Publishing.

Bella burst into her grandparents’ house, throwing her backpack on the hall floor and jumping into Poppa’s arms.

 ‘Whoa, girl. You’re getting too big for this!’ he groaned, falling into an armchair. Bella giggled and turned to hug her Nonna.

Every school holidays Bella made this visit while her parents worked and she looked forward to all the treats her grandparents organised for her.

‘What are we going to do this time?’ she asked. ‘Where will we go on the train?’

‘Be patient, child,’ Nonna soothed. ‘We’ve got lots of plans and you’ll have to wait and see.’

Bella hoped the first one would be a shopping trip and that she’d come back to her little bedroom with bags of treats – clothes, lollies, all the things her parents tut-tutted about when they came to take her home.

‘D’you think Adam will be here these holidays?’ she asked, doing the secret thing with her fingers that was her way of making a wish. Adam was a year older than Bella and he often came to stay with his grandmother across the road.

‘Oh, no, child,’ Poppa replied. ‘We have some bad news.’

‘Mrs Perkins was in hospital’ Nonna said, twisting a tea towel in her hands and then sitting down heavily. ‘You won’t be seeing her or Adam this time.’

Poppa whispered, ‘Mrs Perkins has died.’

Bella walked into the front room and stared out of the window at Mrs Perkins’ house. Weeds were growing in the front garden, making it look even older than it already was. Adam used to jump over the low wall and try not to prick himself on the roses. Bella would copy him and often ended up with blood running down an arm or leg. Then they would creep up on the magpies and try to copy their sounds.

Oodle aahdle oodle aahdle aaah! Those birds were still in the overgrown garden today.

‘So, Bella,’ Nonna said, coming up behind her. ‘What shall we have for dinner tonight?’

‘Oooh, how about pizza followed by lots of ice cream with chocolate topping?’ Bella begged. Nonna gave her another hug but wouldn’t promise anything.

The next morning, Bella woke up early to a loud noise in the street. She ran into the front room to look out of the window. Mrs Perkins’ house was shaking and the noise was coming from her back garden

Crunch. Bang. Screech. Splat. Thud. Bash.

‘Something terrible’s happening to Mrs Perkins’ house,’ Bella called out to her grandparents. The three of them watched from the window, mesmerised.

An enormous iron claw came into sight. It was ripping out the walls, roof, windows, floors and ceilings. After lunging in and knocking down a whole room, it gathered up piles of broken house, swinging high in the air and dumping its bundle in a huge iron skip.

Nonna screamed and ran out of her front door for a better view. Bella followed.

Clouds of dust swirled around. It made Nonna cough. Bella held her nose to stop herself from sneezing.

As more of the house collapsed they saw an orange machine with a man sitting in its cab. He was pulling and pushing levers to make the iron claw do its horrible work. Bella couldn’t make up her mind if she should go back inside or stay with her grandmother, who was clearly upset.

Suddenly the machine shuddered and went quiet. The cab driver called to his mate, ‘Time for a break.’

Two men in bright orange vests stomped around the side of what was left of the house and plonked themselves on the front wall above the rose bushes. They both opened lunch boxes and munched on sandwiches.

  ‘Few more hours in the job I reckon,’ said the cab driver.

  Nonna crossed the road to talk to them. Bella was close behind.

‘I can’t believe how quickly it’s coming down,’ Nonna said to the men.

 ‘Yeah, houses are just a bunch of sticks really,’ the cab driver laughed.

 ‘And it would have taken a long time to build,’ Nonna replied.

 ‘Pretty amazing how they built ’em back in the day when they had no power tools,’ the other man said.

 Nonna looked down at the roses and gave them a shake to get rid of the dust.

‘Wouldn’t worry about them,’ laughed one of the men.

 ‘Come on, Bella. I can’t stay here any longer,’ Nonna said, wiping her eyes. Bella was sure it wasn’t the dust making her grandmother cry.

Nonna disappeared into her kitchen to fuss over Poppa and make some lunch. Bella stood at the front window to watch what happened next.

 The men finished their food and the machine jerked into action again. The noise was deafening as the glass in the front windows shattered and the claw poked through the wall. Then the front door crumpled and the brass doorknocker flew off. It landed in the weeds around the roses.

The iron claw scraped across the flowers so that only stumps remained. The garden wall smashed into little pieces and was swept into the skip with the love-heart gate. The plot where Mrs Perkins’ house had stood for over a hundred years was now completely bare.

Nonna wasn’t the same after that. She grumbled a lot and kept telling stories from the past. Poppa pulled old photo albums out of a cupboard and showed Bella pictures of people she’d never met. Lots of them were taken in Italy where he and Nonna used to live. Bella wanted to visit there one day, not be made to look at the country through photos. This wasn’t turning out to be the holiday she’d hoped for and she wished Adam was across the road to make her laugh.

The days dragged by and there were fewer treats. On the one trip to the shopping plaza, Nonna complained that her feet ached and stopped for two cups of coffee. Poppa made her help in the garden digging and weeding. Usually this was fun but this time he kept complaining that the neighbourhood was changing. Bella wanted to cheer her grandparents up so she danced and sang and tried to make jokes. Then she had a great idea.

When Nonna and Poppa were busy bottling tomatoes, she sneaked across the road to the empty piece of land where the broken house had been. She was looking for something – anything – that might be a souvenir of Mrs Perkins. And she got lucky! There in the dirt near where the wall had been was the brass doorknocker. When she ran back to show her grandparents, she was relieved to see their reaction.

‘Oh, Bella, you are a clever girl,’ Poppa said.

‘Now I have a real memory of my neighbour and all the friendly chats we had,’ added Nonna. ‘Let’s celebrate with ice cream and double chocolate topping!’

In the next school holidays, when Bella came back for another visit to her grandparents, she saw a new house being built across the road. Its stiff concrete blocks towered over the wooden houses either side of it.

‘Not my kind of place,’ Nonna sneered. ‘Mrs Perkins would hate it.’

 ‘And guess what?’ Poppa added, ‘Her roses are growing again. They’re tough those flowers.’

Bella thought her grandparents were pretty tough too and she hugged them both.

One Sunday, the family who had bought the land came to see how their new home was coming along. Bella peered across the road at them. A girl about her age saw her and waved.

‘Let’s go and meet the new neighbours, Bella,’ Nonna suggested.

Bella looked over at the girl and made the secret thing with her fingers, wishing that they might be friends.

‘OK. And I’m going to tell her how to jump over the roses without getting pricked by the thorns.’