by Amanda Owen
I slowed a little as I passed Bridge End, where my friend Rachel lives. Meg, her old sheepdog, was snoozing on the doorstep. Sometimes, after I’d rounded the corner before the Keld Youth Hostel, I’d stop, wind down the window and take a few photographs of the valley known as Crackpot, but not today. Not only was I rushing, but there was something different in my line of vision. There in the field opposite the Wesleyan Chapel was a ‘for sale’ sign. Another had been nailed to a wooden batten across one of the building’s rotting window frames. I mentally noted the name of the estate agency and kept going – I would look up the details of the property later as for now I had other things to think about. The children, who were wise to the fact that there was soon to be a new addition to the family, had been arguing as to whether they’d be getting a brother or a sister. As it stood, there were three of each: three girls, Raven, Edith and Violet; and three boys, Reuben, Miles and Sidney. Even Clive had been wondering.
‘A tup or a gimmer?’ he’d asked one morning as I refused my usual morning cup of tea. I’m an avid tea drinker, so the moment I found the mere thought of a brew distasteful we knew that a baby was on the way; it was as accurate an indication as any pregnancy test.
I didn’t want to know the sex of the baby before it was born, it didn’t matter one bit to me, but either way I couldn’t please everyone.
‘I’d like a sister,’ said Raven.
‘I’d like a brother,’ said Reuben.
‘I’d like a puppy,’ said Edith.
I could drive on autopilot, I knew that road so well. Drystone walls ran either side, uneven and roughly built in the higher reaches, gradually becoming more uniform and aesthetically pleasing as the road meandered its way gently down the dale. After thirty miles the road opened out and the fields were replaced by the sprawl of suburbia. I passed Richmond with its castle and bustling market square surrounded with resplendent Georgian townhouses. From here onwards the hills and dales gave way to flatter, fertile countryside and finally to red-bricked housing developments and industrial estates as we neared Northallerton.
At the hospital I lay on the bed, wellies dangling over the end, while the sonographer ran the scanner over my tummy.
‘Baby’s dad not with you today?’ she said, not looking up, her eyes on the screen that was turned slightly away from me.
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘He’s at home looking after t’lal’ uns. They’ll be on wi’t sheep right now.’
‘Ahh,’ she replied, now typing on the computer keyboard. ‘You won’t be helping out at all now, I suppose.’
I didn’t reply. I didn’t want to fib, and yet I didn’t want the truth – the fact that I was still very much hands-on and fully intending to be for the duration of my pregnancy – to be mistaken for carefree complacency. I decided to change the subject.
‘Everything all right?’ I asked.
‘Absolutely fine,’ she replied, tilting the screen towards me so that I could try and interpret the grainy image on the monitor.
‘I can’t make that out at all,’ I said. I was just as hopeless at deciphering what was on the screen when our sheep had their ultrasound scans. She pushed the probe harder into my stomach.
‘There,’ she said. ‘Now you can see the baby’s—’
‘Nooooo, don’t tell me,’ I said, averting my eyes. ‘I don’t want to know if it’s a he or a she.’
Subconsciously, though, I had decided now that it was a baby boy.
She printed off a little picture, nothing too telling, just something to show Clive and the children.
I made my way back to the car park and rang home. Nobody answered, but that wasn’t a surprise. Clive would be outside. I sat for a while in the Land Rover, looking at the little picture, then decided that I may as well take a walk down the High Street and check the estate agent’s window to see if the chapel’s details were up yet. They weren’t, so I went in.
‘You’re quick off the mark,’ said the bespectacled lady perched cross-legged on a stool in front of a computer. ‘The sign only went up this morning.’
She rifled through the reams of paper strewn across the desk, finally finding the information for me. I thanked her and walked back up the street. I was nearly back to the car park when my phone rang.
‘You all right?’ Clive said.
‘Yep and I’ve got summat to tell yer.’
‘NOT TWINS!’ he said.
I reassured him that there was only one baby, that all was well, and that I’d show him the scan picture when I got back home.
‘It’s about the chapel at Keld,’ I said excitedly.
‘Please tell me that you haven’t found God,’ he muttered.
I explained that I’d seen the ‘for sale’ sign.
‘How much?’ he asked.
‘Erm,’ I said, cocking my head to one side, the phone wedged between my shoulder and my ear. I removed the paper from my pocket and unfurled it. ‘Eighty – eighty thousand it says.’
‘Hmmm, we’ll talk about it later,’ he said.
Later that afternoon we sat together at the kitchen table.
‘Is ta sure that we want a chapel, Mand?’ Clive said as he studied the particulars on the sheet.
‘No, ’course I’m not sure, but I think it’s worth a look,’ I said. ‘Properties in this neck o’ t’woods come on t’market so infrequently it’d be daft not to think about it.’
‘There’s no ’arm in ’avin’ a look I suppose,’ he conceded as he supped his tea.
‘I’ll ring ’em, arrange a viewing,’ I said. ‘Right now.’
The appointment, a ten-minute slot, was scheduled for the next day. We arrived to find a line of cars parked outside; it seemed that every man and his dog was coming for a look. Never had chapel been so busy; a congregation had gathered, not to worship but with a view to buying it. Violet and Sidney came along, Clive too – in body, anyway, as he didn’t seem to be there in spirit. In fact, I got the distinct feeling that he was just humouring me.
We went to the door but didn’t go in. The estate agent, wielding a clipboard and a flashlight, was clearly busy showing another potential buyer around. The children were happily splashing in a small puddle whilst Clive hopped from foot to foot with impatience. I stepped back and looked hard at the stone edifice. It certainly could not be described as eye-catching. If anything, it was plain, the simplistic matter-of-fact architecture a reflection of the values that the Wesleyans held dear. I could see why Clive was underwhelmed, and when, finally, we were taken for a tour of the building’s interior, it did nothing to enhance his mood. It was dark inside because the windows had been boarded up, but where part of the ceiling had collapsed, tiny chinks of light were visible – the gaps between the slates in the exposed roof. The crumbled ceiling plaster and damp lats now lay mouldering on the parquet floor. A bare bulb hung suspended by fraying fabric flex, a length of baler twine having been used to anchor it to a crossmember. The agent noted my interest in the electrics.
‘No problem with utilities – mains-connected water and electric – although it will need rewiring.’
‘No kidding,’ Clive muttered quietly under his breath. I flashed him a dirty look. The inside was in a state of severe disrepair, a far cry from my last visit there in 2002 when I had been invited by Jimmy Alderson to take baby Raven to be blessed at a Sunday service. I remembered sitting there with Jimmy and Elenor and a squirming Raven dressed in an embroidered white christening gown and lace bonnet. The altar remained, along with a lectern and line after line of pitch pine pews, all covered with a fine layer of dust. Some of the pews were damp, the wood beginning to rot where rainwater had dripped onto them. The agent, perhaps sensing that Clive wasn’t buying into the idea of making the place into a home, began his spiel.
‘There’s no planning permission on it, is there?’ I asked, interrupting him.
‘I wouldn’t see there being any issues in it being granted,’ he replied. ‘The chapel’s not listed.’
I nodded. My idea
– and everybody else’s too, I assumed – was to convert the chapel into a house. It would be no simple feat: it was a sizeable building, and it didn’t particularly lend itself to being made into a cosy home.
‘Huge potential,’ said the estate agent. ‘Structurally, it’s quite sound.’
‘With a bit of imagination and a decent architect, we could do something with it,’ I said, looking around as the agent shone the flashlight here and there, never holding the light for too long on anywhere too unpleasant.
‘We’d need bottomless pockets, more like,’ said Clive. ‘The walls are knackered.’
‘It’d make a fantastic atrium, with a vaulted ceiling and a spiral staircase perhaps,’ said the estate agent.
‘Floors are knackered too, or as good as, and the windows are shot,’ Clive retorted. We were on a downward spiral!
‘The arched window would make a fantastic statement piece,’ said the agent, casting his arms wide. ‘You’ve got space, lots of space. What about a minstrels’ gallery?’
My mind was racing along now – I’d definitely be borrowing a copy of Homes and Interiors magazine the next time I went to the doctor’s. I’d already decided that I wanted to preserve the integrity of the building, keep some of its heritage alive. If anything, I wanted to make more of a statement; the Wesleyan simplicity was far too boring for me. I wanted more in the way of religious symbolism. I was soon awakened from my daydream.
‘Damp,’ said Clive. ‘The spot’s bloody damp.’
‘Will yer stop being so negative,’ I said. The agent looked uncomfortable, like he didn’t want to be caught in the middle of a domestic. Clive, sensing my frustration – and in an effort to prove that he wasn’t totally uninterested – set off to have a look at the back of the outside of the building to check out the drainage and the general lie of the land. I reckoned that the real reason for his departure was that he’d spied farmer Rukin’s tup hoggs grazing in the field behind. It was purely coincidental, he said.
The children were getting bored, Sidney had become a bit clingy, and what with my burgeoning tummy and him perched on my hip, I was beginning to tire.
‘C’mon, it’s time we were all gettin’ back,’ I said. ‘We’ve got stuff to do.’
We’d fed and bedded up all of the animals in the farmyard but there was still the moor sheep to feed. It was at this point that Clive came back and surprised me, for, quite out of the blue, he said to the agent, ‘How much is ta wantin’ for it?’
The agent, who had started to lose hope, quickly perked up.
‘Erm, eighty thousand pounds is the list price,’ he replied.
‘Well, we’ll ’ave it then,’ Clive said.
My jaw dropped; I hadn’t expected that and now I felt scared. We didn’t have that amount of money, I needed to find a way to raise it, and I’d never had a chance to enquire about a loan or a mortgage. Fortunately, the divine intervention that would buy me some time swiftly arrived.
‘Erm, I’m afraid I can’t actually sell you the chapel right now. There is considerable interest in the property and there’s a chance that someone might offer the vendor, the church that is, more money.’
‘Well, I don’t get that,’ said Clive. ‘If that’s ’ow yer gonna play it then yer should be auctioning it off.’
And with that, we left. It only took ten minutes to get back home and frankly that was a good thing as we ranted for much of the journey. We both were of the opinion that if something had a price then that was how much it was.
‘Don’t get yerself upset, Mand, ga’ an’ talk to the bank and then we’ll put in an offer an’ see what ’appens.’
‘I really didn’t think you wanted to buy the chapel, Clive,’ I said. ‘Yer couldn’t find owt good to say about it.’
‘First rule of buying anything: don’t look too keen or interested, play it cool,’ he said, wisely. ‘The ball is firmly in their court, they know that you want it, you’re just going to have to wait and see what happens.’
Patience is not something that I am blessed with but, with lambing time being upon us and making preparations for the new baby, there was plenty to keep me occupied. Lambing time is all encompassing; for weeks on end we’d live, breathe and talk about almost nothing other than sheep. But news travels fast and I was sure that if the ‘for sale’ sign was replaced with a ‘sold’ sign then I’d get to know and, as the saying goes, no news was good news.
One lunchtime we were sitting discussing the merits and drawbacks of feeding the animals on fodder beets, and whether chopping the root vegetables with a spade would make the cows either more or less likely to choke on them, when the postman appeared at the door with a bundle of envelopes and papers.
‘Hurray, some reading material,’ said Clive. ‘I ain’t seen a paper in weeks.’
Most of the envelopes were familiar – feed bill, vet bill and suchlike – only one was not identifiable. I opened it first.
‘What’s that?’ asked Clive, glasses perched on the end of his nose as he peered over the top of his Farmers Guardian. It was from the estate agency. Inside was a preprinted form and a covering letter. The letter stated that the chapel was still on the market and that we should, if interested, submit our best and final offer and proof that we had funds available to pay for it. It also stated that because the owner was the church, a charitable organization, they would take into consideration people’s reasons for wanting to buy.
We filled in the form there and then – eighty-two and a half thousand pounds was as much money as we could give, and if that was not enough then it was too bad. I included a bank statement and letter from the bank manager agreeing to the loan of the remaining money required. I went to town on our reasons for wanting to buy it: being local, having an ever-increasing family, being tenant farmers, and the fact that I wanted to preserve much of the chapel’s heritage during the renovation. In a last-minute thought before I sealed the envelope, I included that my eldest daughter Raven had been blessed there. The deadline for putting in the offers was just a fortnight away, so once again I had to be patient and wait and see what transpired.
There were rumours abounding as to who had bought the chapel long before we got the official letter telling us we’d been unsuccessful in our bid. Maybe it really was destined to be a nightclub, petrol station or fast-food drive thru; frankly I didn’t care. I tore up the letter in a fit of pique and threw it onto the fire. Then I quietly seethed as I waited to find out who really had beaten me to it. It didn’t take long until word got out – they’d sold it to a couple from London who were going to convert it into two holiday rentals, and they’d got it for just five hundred pounds more than I’d offered.
To say I was annoyed was an understatement. I spent all of ten minutes composing an angry email to the estate agent outlining the effort we had put into securing loans and gathering up paperwork but how in the end it had all come down to the money, when supposedly locality and links to the chapel were meant to be influencing factors. I told them that I was formally withdrawing my original offer, and should they ever find themselves in need of a buyer then I would give them fifty-one thousand for it and not a penny more. After signing off I added a PS that the vendor, the church, should also remember the tenth commandment, forbidding greed and the amassing of worldly goods, then I clicked the send button and felt immediately better.
I don’t suppose that anyone read it, not properly anyway. Perhaps just a cursory glance told them that it was another disgruntled customer; I’m sure that I wasn’t the first or last. Months later we heard that the deal had fallen through; planning permission had not been granted as there was not enough off-road parking for two holiday cottages. I felt quite smug, like maybe they regretted not selling the chapel to us, but now with our new baby girl Annas – a surprise in that I was sure I was expecting a boy – I was focused on other things and had lost interest in the property dream. For over a year we’d hear of new buyers and the subsequent failed deals. I did wonder whether they’d e
ver concede defeat and accept my paltry offer but nothing materialized and, frankly, I was glad, for by now other unexpected opportunities had arisen.
Firstly came the sale of Smithy Holme, a derelict farmhouse set back off the road, perched in a commanding position above a wooded hillside overlooking the steep Keldside pastures. It was here that our old friend Tot Haykin had lived since a boy, farming the few acres that surrounded it. The house and surrounding buildings, though structurally sound, had fallen into disrepair. The house needed gutting and starting afresh. Back in the early sixties when electricity had finally come up to the very top of Swaledale, a payment of a thousand pounds had been asked of every household beyond Bridge End, of which there were not many. A few of the farmhouses like Ellers and Birkdale had been abandoned years before, and these dwellings – although now renovated and lived in – remain off-grid to this day. Smithy Holme was bypassed too, Tot and his parents finding the cost of this newfangled electricity to be just too much. And so, the pylons were erected, lines strung tantalizingly close to Tot’s house, and the lights in Upper Swaledale were switched on. Gaslamps, candles and hurricane lanterns were consigned to the past, except at Smithy Holme where time stood still. Tot was a lifelong bachelor and lived with his mother for many years until her death. When, finally, age got the better of him, he left the house and moved into sheltered housing at Gunnerside further down the dale. He’d return every day to tend his few sheep, his furthest field being adjacent to ours at the bottom of the Close Hills pastures. I’d often see him leaning against the wall beside the tumbledown sheepfolds just watching his flock. From a distance he cut a lonesome figure, his gaunt frame always swathed in countless layers of loose clothing and a deep-pocketed sheepskin coat reminiscent of a market trader. Beneath the dirty threadbare tweed flat cap that cast a shadow over his angular face, his eyes danced with mischievousness. I enjoyed talking to him, he’d recall times past, of his parents and friends who were now long gone, wild parties and bad winters when ‘all was happed up wi’ snaw’.
