‘We can’t bear to leave our home, Marie,’ I said. ‘Please tell me the estate will see sense and give a proper lease on the house.’
‘Well, I’m sorry to tell you the news I know you don’t want to hear, Dervla, but you will be leaving. You’re going – going from the farm, to live by a river. It won’t be the place you’re veiwing now, but it will be all right, love.’
Like a grief that we knew would seek to envelop us – even though we were trying everything to delay its arrival, we understood that it would eventually find us out. My sadness was not because of the loss of a person, but for a memory of a home and all the people and animals that filled it. And for the links that had tied the house to Will’s family for over sixty years. This continuation was important to me; in this house, my roots had been allowed to grow deep.
‘We can plant our roots somewhere else, Dizzy,’ said Will.
But this was the place where we brought home our baby and raised her, the place where the dogs lived, five in total over the years. Two of them, Merlin and Blue were buried in the garden in unmarked graves, their place of rest, under the honeysuckle, the first thing we ever planted here. If we moved we would have to leave them behind.
Proper sleep hadn’t been forthcoming for months. I wandered about, looking at every door frame, floorboard, remembering how I’d stripped the layers of paint from their old knotted surfaces. I could see the dogs racing around the garden, Sasha in the paddling pool on a scorching June day as she washed her bedraggled blue bear. I could hear her laughing as the tiny droplets of water sparkled in front of her face. I could smell the jasmine, honeysuckle and the herbs that told me it was summer. Thyme, mint, rosemary and sage flourished outside our kitchen window, sending their soothing perfumes in to us on a warm night. The bees made steady progress collecting nectar, humming their appreciation, dipping in and out of the centres of the dark purple clematis that had wrapped itself around the deep red rose. Together they had climbed faithfully up the house for thirty and more years. Warmth and comfort, laughter and love.
That New Year’s evening, a winter’s moon framed the view in the kitchen window, shining over frost-covered woods and hills, making them sparkle. I stood with the lights off, trying to take a snap shot of this view in my mind, so that I would remember it in years to come, when the memory was no longer fresh. The Rayburn sat cold.
I recalled a time when I had been fearful of this place, when, as a girl of twenty-one, with all of my life in front of me, I had found it daunting, living in a house that contained the memories of other people. Since then, I’d grown comfortable in the skin of the house, as if we’d absorbed each other. We had reached that comfortable place, like friends who no longer mind the silences. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. I knew every inch of the place, from inside the house that we had cared for, to the fields and woods beyond.
Those final few days should have been the hardest times and yet, ironically, I found myself enjoying them, appreciating the security and comfort that a home could bring. When the weather raged outside, sending gusts of wind down the chimneys, when the rain hammered on fragile panes of glass, we were snugly tucked into the safety of the wood that nestled the house. Now that we had to settle ourselves into another forest home, who knew what ghosts awaited us? We all wondered whether it would be possible to settle somewhere else. Sasha said she didn’t mind moving – she couldn’t understand what all the tears were for.
It wasn’t just leaving the house – we had to leave the village too, and that was hard. Our friends, and friends of Will’s late mother and father, were still living there – they and our neighbours couldn’t believe that we were really going. Will said people weren’t bothered, but that wasn’t my truth.
That winter’s night, when sleep couldn’t find me, the memories kept me company. They took me back to a different time, to when it was just the two of us, dancing round the woods without a care. Then a baby came to join us, and our cats, dogs, and a pony to accompany us on our walks.
A picture came to mind. It was a snowdrop-filled spring day. Will was laughing. Merlin, young still, rushed around us, just out of reach. ‘I had the best country childhood,’ Will had said, smiling. ‘We’re giving that to Sash now.’ Another picture, this time of Sasha, sitting in the bluebells, Mum at her side. Then a new photo of her for every year with the various animals that made up our family’s time line. The latest photo showed her as she was now – a beautiful, fifteen-year-old girl with better things to do. Such fun, and such family. I knew now that we had been the lucky ones – that was why I couldn’t bear it to end.
It felt like everything in the safe, protected life Will and I had built for ourselves, for Sasha, was being taken away. But Marie’s reading was correct, it wasn’t the bleak industrial railway place, or any of the houses we had viewed so far that we settled on. We found ourselves another forest home – up a dirt track, deep into the woods. Just next to the river, as Marie had envisaged.
*
We loaded up the last stick of furniture on a cold winter night and, on the 16th January 2013, just seven months after we buried Merlin, we finally left our home of twenty-five years. I paused before climbing into the removal van and called, ‘Come on, Merlin. Time to go.’
Chapter 30
Another forest home
Our new home was nestled in a clearing in the middle of a wood. You reached it by winding steadily up a little dirt track, and passing over a bridge that looked to all the world as if it might fall down. We prayed that our car would make it as it scrambled up the slope, thudding over the potholes made by countless wet winters.
We had fallen for this property from the very first viewing. But, whilst our new home had taken our breath away, it wasn’t for the faint hearted. Made up of two cottages, now blended into one, it stood as high as the trees that surrounded it.
‘It’s not unlike an Irish tower house,’ said Mum as she scurried about the garden, excited for us. She busied herself clearing the snow from a terracotta pot, dabbing at it with her hands, trying to uncover the snowdrops that were hidden beneath a carpet of icy white.
‘Your plants will love it here, but don’t transplant them yet, it’s far too bitter. Leave them in the pots until spring.’
But, as the house stood on bedrock, Will and I wondered what we could ever get to grow.
Would even our roots be able to penetrate? And a new whippet pup raged about the place. Stripy like a tiger, the heart she possessed was no less brave. She was fearless and, like Merlin, she had the best sense of humour. The black whippet, now no longer a puppy, but a sleek-coated grown–up dog was bullied by her. I can’t say it was a gradual beating down. She had shown him who was boss as soon as she could, in fact way before she was big enough. It had taken her precisely three seconds, hanging onto his ear, to drag him into submission. She had piddled her way into our lives, and had managed to ruin the one and only carpet in our new home, and on our very first night.
Sasha was quite happy; she had immediately made the master bedroom her own. Her vast assortment of clothes and teenage muddles soon threatened to spill out into the hallway – a good sign that she was settling in. It was Will that had gone back to the farm – alone – to say his final goodbyes.
Marie, Carla and Helena sent cards containing tender wishes, but Tommy was more pro-active. He messaged to say he would ‘Come and check out the new place’ in the spring. The cottages had been renovated to within an inch of their lives, meaning this house had no draughty windows, which was for the good. Our old curtains had been made to fit tiny panes of glass, but with no other houses nearby, that was the least of our worries. Our tall house stood stark against the backdrop of winter trees. Only the top attic bedroom and the kitchen seemed to hold onto memories of times past. The whole place had a stillness, offered solitude – and that was what we fell in love with. In many ways, it was similar to our beloved farm. But, of course, i
t couldn’t be that wonderful place. We realised that you just can’t move and replicate it. It takes years to build a home.
Our house move wasn’t helped by the snow, or by the remote location. With only the rooks for company, we tried hard to settle. Our possessions all seemed at home; the furniture had wholeheartedly embraced the new location, with beds, wardrobes and sofas slotting in effortlessly. No, it was we humans who didn’t fit so tidily into another family’s house. We wished ourselves to be elsewhere, we wanted to go home.
The first few days found the place full, with everyone busy unpacking, but by Monday morning I was left alone within the walls of this silent house.
‘I’ll take Sasha to school, love,’ Will shouted up the two flights of stairs. ‘Your car won’t make the track in this snow. You stay home, but please, see if BT will connect the business line.’
I lay in bed, as still as the forest outside, thinking about all the boxes yet to be unpacked, strewn about the place. We had done the removal ourselves with the help of a trusty green transit van; Nathan, our stoic apprentice; and an urgent need to make everything homely again as quickly as possible.
I heard the slam of the front door. Then came the faint laughter of Sasha and Will and the sound of the van starting as it grumbled its protest about having to start on yet another icy morning. As it pulled away, then disappeared down the track, the noise of the diesel engine faded. Silence. The whippets snuggled further under the duvet for warmth, surrounding me like two little canine hot water bottles. We had no heating, just a few logs. Last night, temperatures had plummeted to minus ten. I was too frightened to go downstairs. I was alone in a wood, next to the river that Marie had foretold, but she had said it would be all right.
The whippets and I weren’t used to such solitude, such calmness. With the forge still based at our old farm, there was no familiar hammering. The buzz of life that we were used to was buzzing somewhere else.
Communications were a problem too. For some time now, BT and I had had an unhappy relationship. Nevertheless, I hunted out my mobile on that first bitter morning and rang them to find out why, for three days now, we hadn’t been connected as agreed.
Whilst on hold, I managed to light the two fires in the house, do an entire wash at forty degrees, prepare an evening meal and locate the cat that the previous owners had left at the cottage. According to them, the cat lived outside.
‘She’ll be absolutely no trouble to you, we’re grateful that she can stay. She’s lived here for eleven years. She’s a brave girl, but she wouldn’t cope with the stress of moving,’ they had said.
Absolutely no trouble? Well, we would see about that… but brave girl she was, the description was true – she could outmanoeuvre two whippets, as I found out later that morning.
So, in my search for a mobile signal, I found myself standing outside in a purple dressing gown and pink wellies, rattling a cat food tin with a fork, mobile tucked under my chin, when BT finally answered. Jostling with the cat food and keeping two whippets at bay, as they tended to bray like banshees at the sight of the cat, we all took off round the garden, including BT. I spotted the cat in the distance, slopping off onto the shed roof. So after forty-five minutes of holding, a person came on line.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello, madam, this is Sangit from Birmingham. How may I help you today?’
‘Oh, at last!’ I said. ‘Well, I really hope you can help. You see we were meant to have an engineer visit three days ago to connect our phone line. It’s been arranged for weeks. Then someone in your department said he would be here today. There is no sign of him, he was meant to be here at 8.30 am.’
‘Oh dear, I’m terribly sorry about that, we are unusually busy because of the snow.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘Phone again tomorrow, please.’
‘Well, now, look here, that’s not good enough. We’re trying to run a business and we pay more to have a business phone line.’
‘Thank you, madam. I will give you my direct line number. You are phoning me again tomorrow then.’
I phoned Sangit every day. I phoned his boss, his supervisor, his wife. Possibly, sometimes I even spoke sternly to several of his aunts. Eventually, after three weeks without a phone line, I called the helpline again. This time, I demanded to speak to yet another manager.
‘We sent an engineer,’ he said.
‘Yes, marvellous I’m sure, where is he?’
During the conversation, it became apparent that they had sent him to our old address.
‘I’ve had this arranged for weeks, what’s wrong with you BT people?’
Finally, however, the engineer did materialise. He looked extremely miserable and still didn’t manage to connect us to the outside world.
I phoned another BT manager, to complain.
‘And your engineer said to me that only daft people live in locations like this,’ I told him. ‘Then he said there was a problem at the exchange and he couldn’t connect us – but he didn’t try very hard, even after I’d given him three cups of tea. I’ve made forty phone calls to you now. I’m sorry, but you’re not taking this seriously.’
‘Thank you for your patience, madam. We should have you connected within two weeks now.’
The reply unleashed a state of utilities rage, a condition previously unknown to me. I surprised myself and the manager. I ranted on behalf of many householders in the UK who had been subjected to a BT connection situation. My final attack was desperate.
‘You’re all ‘effin morons,’ I said. Immediately, I was passed to the distressed customer team, a department that was even busier than the others.
Cut off for ten days in the snow with no heating and phone line, the house remained quiet – apart from the odd rant to a certain telephone company.
More alarmingly, the English breakfast tea bags, cheese and wine stocks were starting to look seriously depleted. I stared into the fridge at the mouse trap-sized lump of cheese and the pathetic quarter-bottle of a supermarket’s finest budget-variety vino. My body functioned at its best on half Cathedral City, half dry white. I knew what I needed to survive a country winter. This was a Pinot Grigio emergency!
Eventually, my brother, Ellis, and his wife, Mags, came over for supper, bringing with them one of Mags’s generous moussakas. Ellis stared out of the French windows, shaking his head in disbelief. He compounded the situation by asking, ‘Why are you living here? It’s even more isolated than the last place. At least that house had a lane and a neighbour. Don’t you like people?’
‘No, not much, at least not enough to live next door to them anyway,’ I replied, swigging a glass of wine from the bottle they’d brought.
But his comment got us thinking. Had we had done the right thing in moving to the middle of nowhere? Nobody came to visit very often, apart from Mum and Sugar, and the writing group I belonged to, who braved the remoteness and the snow. Determined as ever, they arrived – they knew what was required. They brought with them cards, milk, smiles and hope. As we were all writing books, it meant we were in this together for the long haul. They put up with the cold, the track and the over-enthusiastic whippets, with their excessive greeting disorders.
But the hordes still didn’t beat a way to our door.
‘It’s the track, it puts people off,’ said Will.
‘Or the cold – we so need heating,’ said Sasha, pulling on another jumper, hat and gloves so that she could leave the safety of her now permanently attached Arctic sleeping bag for long enough to eat a meal. Having a bath was something else entirely; it filled even Will, the toughest amongst us, with dread.
We spent our evenings sitting in the kitchen by the wood burner trying to waft a tiny amount of warmth to our extremities. It was while we were sitting there late one night that we heard screams emanating from the top floor of the house. For the briefest of seconds, we stared a
t each other, then Will scraped back his chair and bounded up the stairs, taking three at a time. I followed – but perhaps a little less enthusiastically.
We found Sasha in her bedroom, underneath the covers with just her eyes peeping out. As we got to her side of her bed, she produced her shaking hand from underneath the duvet and pointed to the ceiling. The whippets who had been keeping her warm emerged from the bedclothes and poised themselves for attack. They sat upright, either side of Sasha, snarling like dogs of war.
Swooping continuously in a loop, from one end of the room then back, was the cause of all the teenage fear and canine fury – a tiny black bat. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to catch a bat but just as Will would position himself on a chair, ready to fling a coat over it, it was off again, gaining speed. We stood watching in the middle of the room as the poor creature became more and more panicked.
‘Open the skylights and turn all the lights off, then let’s leave it alone. See if it goes out on its own,’ Will suggested.
We did as he asked and all traipsed back down two flights of stairs to wait it out. After half an hour, we tried again, padding silently back up the stairs, three humans and two whippets. Will creaked open the bedroom door as quietly as possible. We stepped over the threshold.
‘Pop the little lamp on, Dizzy,’ Will whispered.
We all stood still in the eerily silent room and gazed about us. The whippets gazed too, looking skyward. There was no sign of movement.
Then, suddenly, the bat made a reappearance, swooping just above the whippets’ heads, sending them into a frenzy. Sasha let out another of her screams, this time even more terrifying than the last, which sent us all tearing back down the stairs again. This time, though, the bat followed us.
‘Quick!’ Will yelled. ‘Open the front door, Sash. You stand by the stairs, Diz. Hold a coat, stop it going back up there.’
The bat was now in the kitchen. We worked hard to contain it, flapping our arms, holding up various items of clothing and dog blankets to stop it going back to its preferred winter location – the beams in Sasha’s bedroom. The whippets, now thoroughly traumatised, leapt onto the sofa as one. In unison, they dived under a blanket and lay there together, shaking.
Strays and Relations Page 17