PART FOUR. 4 The Proposition

Contrary to what I said in my previous post (sorry!), here is the next instalment. It was waiting in the wings and I couldn't resist doing something with it. I may continue posting instalments, but perhaps not quite as often as before.

If you are a new reader, this is an instalment of  an as-yet unnamed autobiographical series that started in Australia in 1975.

Click here for the first instalment.

A link to the full list of instalments is in the sidebar to the right.

My father had a proposition for me. He would give me the money for the house if I registered it in my name only.
    I knew my father disapproved of mortgages, even if they were becoming more common. He considered them, like hire purchase, as something for the poor, and dangerous to enter into. But I didn’t think of that. All I saw was the insult to John. My father didn't trust him. He didn't trust me and my choices.

    I suspected that the announcement in the paper had been my mother’s work, but this proposition was definitely my father’s. Money was his currency, his purpose in life.
    My parents may have respected our marriage by putting us in the same room when we went to stay (which was strange, to say the least), but underneath they’d obviously not changed at all. Both, in their different ways, were persisting in thinking of John as belonging to a sub-species.
    I started to cry and everyone in the open-plan office looked up.
    I started to plead with my father, and I could hear myself sounding childish and unconvincing.
    ‘Think about it,’ said my father putting the phone down.

‘Family troubles,’ I said to the room at large, not wanting – like John T – to enter into long and shameful explanations. Which was perhaps another mistake. Perhaps I should have talked to people and asked their advice.
    I’m sure I told John about the proposition but I don’t remember him saying anything about it. Perhaps he didn’t want to influence me. Perhaps he was too hurt to say anything. Perhaps – and most likely – he didn’t know what he felt about it. He was used to being strong – for his mother. He wasn’t used to examining his emotions.
    In any case, I’d become the one who looked after our money and all things administrative as that was something I was reasonably good at. John’s forté was all things practical.
    So I was on my own and in the end I gave in. It was just a piece of paper, I said to myself, and in my heart I shared everything with John so did it really matter? Accepting the offer would keep my father happy since rejecting it would be a rejection of him, and I couldn’t face any more ructions. And finally, of course, the money would be more than useful as the mortgage would have stretched us to our limit.
    Wrong, wrong, wrong.
    But it took me many decades to realise that.

So we said goodbye to our lovely flat, with its views of countryside, its wooden steps where we sat out, and Esme the bottle-fed lamb who occasionally made her way up the steps and into our accommodation . . .

 

John with Esme

. . . and travelled backwards and forwards many times with a crammed Mini to our new semi-detached bungalow.
    We were transporting not only all our stuff from the flat but also all the stuff John had left at Rod’s and – finally – dear Kitten, who looked a little ragged by now. Poor thing.

Kitten in the new house

The garden was the best part of the property. It backed on to an ancient Devon hedge and a large oak tree and we spent much of the summer out there, either on a rug or using a packing crate as a garden table. John bashed a hole in our bedroom wall and put in a French window so that we had direct access.

Lunch in the garden

We didn’t fit in on the estate. Our immediate neighbours, a young couple like us, told us that the others called us ‘the hippies’ because we’d used the Mini to move in (and it was always rather muddy, but how could it be any other way when John insisted on using the ‘back roads’ – ie the Devon lanes – at every opportunity. Who has the time to wash a car anyway?). People complained about the weeds in our front garden.

    The village and surrounding footpaths had an unpleasant atmosphere and I didn’t like walking on my own. The pub was not a patch on the Tuns, and we found ourselves taking the half-hour drive back to Silverton several times each week to visit our friends there.

    Then we started to get strange calls. It was always when I was alone in the house. I would pick up the phone and no one would answer even though I was pretty sure someone was there.
    ‘Ignore it’ said the woman opposite whose husband was a policeman.
    She’d given us a fold-up bed they no longer had any use for which was kind of her, but she always looked disapproving and never smiled. She boiled dishcloths, which was something my mother used to do, but not something I would ever dream of doing. They smelt horrible.
    ‘Get a whistle’, said the local police station, ‘and blow it hard down the mouthpiece.’
    That was good advice. I followed it and the calls stopped.
    But, even so, we began to wonder if it was time to move.

To be continued . . .