My grandparents’ home was a squat, little, grey-boarded house that sat up an inclined driveway over-looking Belmont Road which as an adult was a constant stream of vehicles roaring and sputtering as they zipped in and out of the city.

As a young child, traffic was a donkey cart ambling by carefully passed by cars, while delivery boys on their carrier bikes trilled their bells at strolling pedestrians. In the afternoon Mr. Yearwood arrived at the bottom of the driveway pushing his wooden Purity Bread cart of freshly baked loaves, jam puffs, coconut bread and rock cakes, and announcing himself with a blast on his whistle.

“Yearwood,” my Grandmother Ruby, Gran, once said, “Why is there so little jam in the jam puffs these days?”

“Why Mrs Farmer,” Mr. Yearwood solemnly replied, “I ain’t never hear you complain that there’re ain’t no rocks in the rock cakes!”

Six broad cement steps marched up to the front door and into an enclosed veranda. Jalousie windows lined the exterior walls. Their narrow wooden slats closed only to shut out a driving rain, mostly open to allow the air to circulate without having to open the nine large ‘demerara’ windows. These tall shutters were pushed out from the house and held in place by long wooden poles. It was one of a few houses on the street to have this feature and considered to be of historical significance.

Sturdy mahogany furniture with floral-fabric seating cushions filled the narrow room. These very firm cushions happily often doubled as a fort. The dark wooden floor, which extended into the living and dining rooms, was oiled once a month by my Grandfather Sam, called Papa, using a soft broom. Access to the front of the house was restricted for 24 hours and those who hurdled the barricade to tread barefooted had their feet thoroughly scrubbed before bed by Gran with a firm brush and lots of Lifebuoy soap!

The settee where Gran and my brother cracked heads during a lively telling of the “big bad wolf came creeping closer and closer…” stood against the lemon-coloured interior wall along with two small, crochet doily covered tables on each end. Family photos and pairs of small brass slipper ashtrays, all the way from India, atop the doilies. On the wall swam a school of brightly painted clay fish which included the famous Bajan Flying Fish.

Across the room in front of the windows overlooking the garden and beyond to the street, were two large mahogany rocking chairs and a round, glass topped table with a vase which always held freshly cut roses, orchids, or bougainvillea. Tall, slender plant stands proudly displaying two of the bushiest maidenhair ferns ever seen, anchored the corners of the room.

Every afternoon after tea, my grandmother and her sister, my Great-Aunt Ivy bathed, powdered, and dressed in crisply ironed “you just never know who might come calling” attire, each perched on the broad arm of a rocking chair to get the best view out of the windows. Papa with his small, well-worn wooden bench in tow, happily weeded the garden beds moving up and down the cobbled paths that straggled here and there between them, all the while listening to a commentary from the ladies above about the folks on their way home.

At that time of day, the sun had already slipped behind Ivy Cottage, the two-storied house next door, leaving the garden shaded. That house had been a wedding gift from their parents to Aunt Ivy, as Ruby Cottage had been to Gran. The soft evening breezes brought the fragrant scent of the white gardenias covering the wall at the bottom of the garden streaming in, cooling the rooms for the night.

Unhappily, my Papa left us at the too young age of 72. The first of the trio to go after struggling valiantly for 12 years with the after-effects of colon cancer. Gran and Aunt Ivy lived on at Ruby Cottage well into their eighties. Mr Yearwood moved up from his pushcart to a smart white van with a driver, as he had never learned to drive. Each afternoon it pulled up at the bottom of the driveway with a toot, toot of the horn and he opened the rear double doors for Gran’s selection.

“Tempus fugit” and sadly the little grey house that was such a place of love, peace and security to which at troubled times in my life I have longed to retreat, is no more.