A man’s black beard tickles my face. We’re lying on a dirty carpet, in a gigantic hallway. He squeezes my seven-year-old-hand. ‘Look up,’ he says. Above us a grand staircase turns, coiling in three wooden flights. Landings with balustrades lead to corridors, to 60 rooms, attics and basements. Since we arrived this morning, I’ve run through the dark mansion, opening shutters, letting in light.
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A girl pulled my hand, took me outside past a naked, white woman doing yoga, her nipples like red wine gums. An angry man shouted: ‘Bloody kids!’ We became horses in an ancient apple orchard, cantered past sequoias as tall as the sky. In a vegetable garden, a boy gave me a Chinese burn. A little lost girl wailed. It might have been me. Everything here feels like it will never stop. My shoes have disappeared, along with my mum, my brother and my sister.
‘Look up,’ says the man with the beard. Hordes of men and women carry old mattresses down the staircase, emptying out the house. They have come from around the world – London, the States, India and Africa – to make this place into ‘a community’. I catch their conversation: ‘Previously this dilapidated house, outbuildings and land was an old peoples’ hostel, an army base, and originally an English country house. It is 1979. It is tabula rasa!’ A black woman in a boiler suit walks past. She says: ‘Every single thing will change!’
If I climb up past their words and faces, beyond the staircase, there is a stained-glass ceiling: green, yellow, blue and crimson glass encased in lead. The ceiling is a turning kaleidoscope, an ever-changing view. It whirls.
‘You have a beautiful smile,’ the bearded man whispers in my ear. His hair touches my cheek, and I don’t like it. Everyone here has long hair. Suddenly, I long for our old house, our quiet Sussex street, for my father who has left us, and for my books. When I look down, away from the ceiling, the man has gone. I am alone on the carpet, in the crowd, in the house. I stay there for 15 years.