My parents often used to leave me alone in house due to working and shopping commitments; I was compliant, uncomplicated and quiet which were qualities they encouraged. I had many hours to fill, empty hours that dragged on and on until their key turned in the lock again. I had imagination so my games were mythical, magical, dark and poignant.
I had a collection of glass marbles and these became companion people, characters in my world. We had a normal new town staircase, carpeted in the middle with spaces of wood either side where the more economical narrow carpet to save money didn't go. The space on the right became a fantastic run in which to allow marbles to run from the top of the stairs to the bottom. Let them go with a small push at the top and they would bounce down each tread to the bottom making resonant music on each wooden tread, bouncy sounds that increased 'til the marble arrived on the hall floor at the bottom.
The floor was made of marley tiles, black, hard and shiny with slight cream marbelling. Most new town houses had these floors, cheap and easy to install in their thousands in the early 1960's. One of them at the bottom of our stairs had a dent in. It has always had this: as far back as I remember it had always been there and was a brilliant little dip in which a marble could sit. I had a beautiful marble with a different coloured glass middle of light aquamarine blue which I called the Princess and who was the daughter of the King. The King had lost his wife, the Queen, but he still had his daughter whom he loved very much. She was fragile, intelligent, sensitive and extremely beautiful.
She had been kidnapped by the bad nasty marbles who had boring ugly centers in their glass
spheres, the surfaces were more pitted and scratched because they had lived rougher, violent lives due to their evil nature. They had ganged together and imprisoned the Princess in the marley tile dip and forced her to stay there. They walked to the top of the stairs and waited in turn to each roll of the top step down the uncarpeted run to see if on landing if they could crash into the Princess and knock her out of the hole, to hurt her and scratch her.
The King had been captured too and he was forced to stand to one side to see the marbles trying to hurt his daughter; to see how many bruises and tears she suffered. He felt so much pain and anguish and felt helpless to free her. He was tied up and had no army; this disappeared along with his wife. After a while I got fed up with this, so the bad marbled stopped bouncing down the stairs and the Princess was locked up, separately from her father. They were never allowed to be together.
Except the day I forgot to clear up properly and left the Princess in the hole. My father came home with a shopping bag and discovered the marble by treading on it and slipping over, skidding down and smashing down, twisting his ankle and scattering the tins of baked beans and packets of signal toothpaste. After that I had to be more careful with tidying up.
