Homes and Hearths in Little Woodford

by Catherine Jones

  ‘Contingencies? I thought you said it was only cosmetic.’

  ‘It is. But…’

  ‘But?’

  Abi explained about the builders’ reluctance to offer a fixed quote. ‘Anyway,’ she added brightly, ‘there’s a builder called Steven we both think is good, his price was reasonable, he seems young – well, late-thirties – energetic and his references all checked out. And, the best thing is, he can start pretty much as soon as we exchange contracts which we hope will be next week.’

  But, thought Maxine, why, if none of the builders would commit to a fixed quote, did she think that they probably knew more than Abi and Marcus about the problems an old house was likely to have and why did she think it didn’t bode well?

  The phone in her back pocket buzzed bringing her back to the here and now. She hauled it out – Judith.

  ‘Hi, Jude, how’s it going?’

  ‘I think I might have found somewhere.’

  ‘That’s excellent news. Where?’

  ‘Near the town centre. It’s down a lane that runs between the bookshop and the florist.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were houses down there.’

  ‘I thought you’d lived in the town for decades.’

  ‘Yes, but living in a place doesn’t give you licence to go exploring down back alleys and other people’s private spaces.’

  ‘Even so.’

  Maxine couldn’t be bothered to argue. ‘So what is it? A flat, a house…?’

  ‘A little mews house. Very sweet. And quiet. And…’ Judith paused for dramatic effect, ‘off-street parking.’

  Maxine conceded that essential where town centre living was concerned. ‘Well, done.’

  ‘Thank you. I need to come and have a look at it for myself. Can I come and stay?’

  Maxine’s shoulders sagged. ‘Jude… it’s just…’

  ‘I know, I know, you’ve got Marcus and Abi as well, but I only want to come for a night. Besides I haven’t seen my niece for an age and it’ll be lovely to catch up.’

  ‘It’s not just that, Anthea’s had a fall, a bad one and Gordon’s had to rush to be by her bedside.’

  ‘It’s not…?’ The implication was left unsaid.

  ‘No, she’s going to be OK, eventually but it’s going to take time and the poor old thing is terribly shaken up. She was on the floor all night.’

  ‘Poor Anthea. But Gordon isn’t expecting you to zip up to there to be the ministering angel.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She really shouldn’t have been living on her own, not at her age. What was Gordon thinking about, letting her carry on like that?’

  ‘Come off it, Jude. You’ve met Anthea. Anthea does what Anthea likes and a more stubborn old biddy I have yet to meet. However, I think even she will see reason now. When she finally gets out of hospital, we’ll have to find her some sort of assisted-living flat near us. Quite apart from anything else, it isn’t fair on Gordon to leave things as they are. He’s either worried sick or charging up and down the motorway to allay his fears.’

  ‘Anyway, back to me coming over… I’ve got a viewing on Tuesday so I’ll come on over to yours after. If you want you can come and see the house with me. In fact, I’d rather like you to, you know more about old houses than I do, seeing the work you and Gordon did on yours.’

  Maxine suppressed a sigh. Judith wasn’t going to be dissuaded. She wondered if telling her they’d had to go veggie would dissuade her. Probably not; she might embrace it. Or if she didn’t, she might insist her sister cooked two meals – meat-free and carnivorous.

  ‘Honestly,’ said Judith. ‘If Gordon was there, you’d be cooking for four anyway and you wouldn’t resent feeding him.’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Look, if you don’t want me to come and stay, just say so.’

  ‘Don’t be like that, Judith, of course I want you to stay but, what with one thing and another, I feel more than a bit frazzled at the mo.’

  ‘You need a distraction to take your mind off things.’

  Like having yet another houseguest was going to achieve that. ‘You said Tuesday.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not great. That’s my day in the charity shop and I really couldn’t make the time to see your house too, not as well as everything else.’

  ‘You could bunk off just this once, surely? Let’s face it, you’re a volunteer, they can’t bitch if you want a bit of time off. What are they going to do, dock your pay?’

  ‘Except I’ll be letting the team down.’

  ‘Up to you.’ Judith sounded put out. She didn’t like being thwarted.

  ‘Or you could arrange the viewing for when I get off. I finish at three.’

  ‘I’ll see.’

  ‘Up to you,’ shot back Maxine. It was hardly going to be difficult to do that, was it?

  ‘I said, I’ll see. I’ll let you know how I get on. Just think, Maxie, soon you’ll have almost all your family in Little Woodford. Won’t that be lovely?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maxine. ‘I can’t wait.’ But her feelings didn’t mirror her words.

  12

  It was Monday evening before Abi and Marcus came back to Little Woodford having finished sorting out their flat. Abi had a paint smear on her forehead and a stippling of emulsion up both forearms caused by the splash back from the paint roller. They both looked tired.

  ‘Honestly, Mum, I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard in my life. We didn’t get to bed till gone eleven last night and we were up at seven this morning to finish off.’

  ‘I thought you said there wasn’t that much to do.’

  ‘There wouldn’t have been with another pair of hands.’ She paused. ‘If you’d been there, we might have got it all done yesterday.’

  Maxine wasn’t going to take the flak for this. ‘Or maybe we wouldn’t. It’s your flat and if we hadn’t got it finished in one day where was I supposed to sleep?’

  ‘But we would have done.’

  Maxine wasn’t going to argue. ‘Go and get cleaned up. Supper’ll be on the table in about half an hour. And please try and keep things tidy, especially in the bathroom, as Aunty Judith will be coming to stay tomorrow.’

  ‘Aunty Judith?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure I told you that since Uncle Mike left her, she’s decided to move nearer to me. She’s viewing a house just off the high street tomorrow and wants to stay over.’

  ‘That’ll be nice.’

  ‘Yes, dear.’ And while Maxine liked a family get-together as much as anyone she knew full well that the next evening, while she rushed around cooking supper, serving drinks and then clearing up again afterwards, Abi and Judith would be far too busy catching up with each other to contemplate that it might be quite nice if they lent a hand. But it would only be for one night and then Judith would be away, she could have a word with Abi about ground rules and order would be established for the remainder of her daughter’s stay. Well, that was the theory at any rate.

  Abi and Marcus went upstairs, dragging a couple of big suitcases with them, to wash and brush up before dinner. They had barely shut the door to their new bedroom when the phone rang.

  ‘Oh, hello, darling,’ she said when she heard Gordon’s voice. ‘How’s it all going?’

  ‘So-so. Mum’s on the road to recovery but she’s so miserable. And the nurses will call her sweetie or dearie or Anth and she hates it.’

  Maxine could well believe it. ‘Have you had a word with them, suggested something a bit more formal might be in order?’

  ‘I do, but they don’t pay any attention and then their shift goes off duty and another one comes on and then the nurses aren’t the same from one shift to another because half of them are agency nurses. It’s hopeless, Max.’

  ‘I can see.’

  ‘Max… what if Mum came to ours when she’s well enough to leave?’

  ‘Wha…’ Maxine bit her tongue and took a breath. ‘Do you think that’s wise, love. Now I’m having t
o cook veggie stuff she won’t like my food and, on top of that, what do I know about nursing? You’ve said she’s completely incapacitated and do you think your mum would want me bed-bathing her and wiping her bum? Won’t she be mortified that it’s her daughter-in-law doing it? Wouldn’t that be worse, in her eyes, than having a stranger doing it, someone she’ll never have to see again?’

  ‘The staff here reckon we can get a carer to come in twice a day to do the personal stuff, get her up and washed and dressed and give her meds and then again in the evening to get her ready for bed.’

  ‘Would that be better?’

  ‘Probably, yes. It’d probably be the same person. Here it’s the constant stream of different nurses that makes it so awful. It’s a succession of young girls, all of whom seem to think it’s OK to be like she’s their best friend and an equal, not a proud old lady with completely different standards. One called Mum, Honeybun. I thought she was actually going to have a fit. It’s doing Mum’s head in. Max, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so down. Not even after Dad died.’

  ‘I’ll think about it. I’m not ruling it out but it’s a big ask. And, to be honest, I think it’s a big ask for your Mum too. I mean, what happens if a carer doesn’t turn up? It’ll come down to me, won’t it? And how would that go down? She might flatly refuse to let me anywhere near her. Frankly, if I were in that boat, I don’t think I’d want Abi giving me the once-over with a soapy flannel – and she’s a blood relative not an in-law.’

  ‘Put like that…’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘If only I had a sister.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t.’

  ‘We’ll just have to hope the carers are completely reliable. If I could be the emergency back-up I’d volunteer in a heart-beat but me looking after Mum’s personal care is a total non-starter.’

  ‘No, I understand that. She’s of the generation who would rather die than have a bloke, let alone her son, do that sort of stuff for her. And I’m not being tricky because I don’t fancy the job but I’ve got Abi and Marcus here and I’ve got my other commitments, and my day at the charity shop each week, and my Art club is just getting going, and…’

  ‘And how are Abi and Marcus?’

  Maxine lowered her voice. ‘They’ve literally got back here a few minutes ago. I’m in the dog-house because Abi thinks that if I’d helped, they’d have been finished yesterday. It’s all my fault it took longer than they’d planned. But I think they may have found a builder and they’re due to exchange contracts this week so, all being well, they’ll be out of here before your mum moves in. If she moves in,’ she added quickly.

  ‘I think it’ll be a week, probably two, before the hospital will even think about letting her out. You don’t have to make your mind up yet. In the meantime, I’ll have a look at private nursing and carers in our area. You never know, it might not come down to Mum having to move in with us, she may have to stay in hospital till she’s better and they may say she’s fit enough to go back home—’

  ‘—and pigs might fly.’

  ‘But, if she can’t go back to her place, Mum coming to ours may be the only option till we can find a proper, permanent solution.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Maxine, ‘but I think it’d be better all round if it didn’t come to that.’

  She rang off and tried to turn her attention to cooking supper, but the thought that most occupied her mind was that while Judith had suggested it would be lovely to have almost all her family living in Little Woodford, it seemed to her that almost all her family were going to be living, not just in the town but in her house.

  *

  Maxine had to admit that Judith had been right to describe the house as really quite sweet – it even had roses growing round the front door which was made of oak planks with a diamond, bull’s-eye glass pane above a shiny, brass dolphin knocker. Above each of the five windows at the front of the house was a brick arch which gave the house a slightly surprised look. The house overlooked a mews Maxine had never known existed despite all her years living in Little Woodford. It was reached via a low archway that joined two shops on the high street, just big enough for a saloon car to pass under. Easy to miss, which Maxine apparently had, as she must have walked past it on a regular basis for the best part of forty years. Once under the arch, the mews was wide enough for a parking space outside each of the three houses that were located there and it had enough room for the cars to turn round so reversing back through the entrance was unnecessary.

  The estate agent, a young, fresh-faced man called Sam, who sported over-sized horn-rimmed glasses which made him look rather geeky, was waiting for them and let them in. The front door opened into a tiny hall with a cloakroom beside it and then into a spacious sitting room, empty but for a wood-burning stove and a flight of open-plan stairs with a glass and chrome banister. It was surprisingly light as attached to the back of the house was a large conservatory which, in turn, led into a completely enclosed garden.

  ‘And it’s south facing,’ said Judith as she clacked across the floorboards in her leopard-print kitten-heels. ‘Big, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s like a Tardis,’ conceded Max.

  ‘I think this might make a great dining room,’ she said from the far end of the conservatory.

  ‘The previous owner did,’ interjected Sam. ‘It’s K glass, so energy efficient.’

  ‘Really?’ said Judith. ‘That’s good, I suppose.’

  Max suppressed a smile. Judith had never given the least thought to anything being energy efficient in her life. If she was cold, she whacked up the heating, if she was hot, she dialled up the air-con. Leaving Sam to explain the ins and outs of the special glass to a bemused Judith, she returned to the sitting room and went through into an ultra-modern kitchen – all white Formica and more chrome. She wasn’t sure she’d want all these shiny fittings which would need constant polishing but as Judith was certain to get a cleaner, such a detail wasn’t going to bother her sister. She pottered up the stairs to the upper floor. It seemed there were two bedrooms, one double aspect with an en-suite, and a further bathroom. Once again there was a lot of white paint, glass and chrome but there was nothing about the house that Maxine felt Judith could find fault with. In fact, if she hadn’t been so wedded to her own home, she could almost fancy down-sizing to a place like this herself – only somewhere that wasn’t going to need so much elbow grease to keep it looking tip-top. The good thing about her own house was that it embraced the shabby-chic look – it was all about homeliness and comfort so a few fingerprints and some dust were part of its charm.

  ‘I love it,’ announced Judith when Sam had locked up and they were in Judith’s little Mini. Maxine had baulked at driving there but Judith had complained that she wasn’t getting her new shoes ruined tramping across the reserve.

  ‘So, you’re going to put in an offer?’

  ‘Too right I am.’

  *

  Three days later Abi and Marcus stepped through the front door of Wisteria Cottage and looked at each other.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s actually ours,’ said Abi.

  ‘I don’t want to be a wet blanket but I think about three square metres are ours,’ said Marcus. ‘The rest belongs to the building society.’

  Abi grinned at him. ‘You know what I mean.’

  Marcus put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. ‘I do. And it’s going to be so glorious when it’s all done up.’

  ‘Let’s have another good look round and a think about things before Steven turns up. We’ll have so many decisions to make once work gets going.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like where we’ll want electric sockets, like how we’ll want the fixtures and fittings in the new bathroom – will we want a bath or just a shower or both? And then there’s the kitchen; Judith was brilliant with ideas like having a proper wine-cooler in the kitchen and an ironing board that slides under the counter and that really thin pull-out unit she talked ab
out for storing jars and spices.’

  ‘But Judith is loaded. We’re really going to have to think about the budget.’

  ‘If this is going to be our forever house, we want to get it right first time.’

  The pair climbed the stairs which creaked ominously.

  ‘Do you think they’re safe?’ said Abi, giving the banisters a tentative shake. They seemed firm enough.

  ‘The surveyor said so.’

  They reached the landing.

  ‘It seems even bigger than I remember it,’ said Abi as she gazed left and right.

  At the head of the stairs there were two doors, side by side, which led to two double bedrooms. Then the landing doubled back to the two bedrooms at the other end of the house, one a single and the other they planned to turn into the master bedroom with an en-suite.

  Abi walked down the landing and flung open the door to the biggest bedroom, the one that would be theirs and looked at the wall to her right. ‘You know, we could knock through into the box room and make ourselves a dressing room. Or a walk-in wardrobe,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘But if we have children it’ll be a squeeze if we have visitors.’

  ‘I suppose.’ She stared at the wall again. ‘But we could build in some lovely fitted units. You know, like the ones you see on the ads with special racks for shoes and those pull-down shelves so you can store stuff up high and still get to it easily.’

  ‘I think they’re quite pricy, too.’

  Abi turned to face him, her eyes hard. ‘If this is our forever house, as we keep saying it is, we are so not cutting corners.’

  ‘But it’s the kind of thing we could do later. We don’t want to overstretch ourselves, do we?’

  ‘We could always extend the mortgage.’

  ‘We’ve already got a bridging loan,’ said Marcus.

  A shout from downstairs stopped them from arguing further.

  ‘Hello,’ the voice repeated.

  Abi went onto the landing and called back down the stairs. ‘Steven?’

  ‘The front door was open.’

  ‘Come on up.’