Open House

by Jane Christmas

  I can tell right away that I do not love this place, though I am desperately trying to reverse that impression. It is like finally encountering someone you had been dying to meet, only to find yourself struggling to come up with a conversation opener to erase the awkwardness.

  The anxious eyes of our estate agent are on me. She has half a dozen people chomping at the bit to see this place.

  I spout short, positive platitudes in an attempt to buy time: “Love the high ceilings . . . Those floorboards will look great once they are sanded . . . The natural light is amazing.” I need to keep her onboard and as engaged as much as she needs to keep me motivated and engaged.

  I risk a look at The Husband. Elevens at the bridge of his nose. Not a good sign. He had brightened up about seeing this house when he learned that it was on a street that bears the name of his favourite football team. But now it is a different story. He refuses eye contact.

  While he does not love the house, neither of us dares give any signals that might be construed as negative. We are exhausted from house hunting, and from the feeling that we are adrift; that our current address is Limbo, and that all our worldly goods are out of sight, as if they reside in the iCloud.

  The Husband is not a big-picture thinker. He has no vision when it comes to property. He sees wiring, meters, and guttering that need to be overhauled, whereas I see walls that need to come down and a finished product. I wonder if our furniture will fit.

  “Isn’t this just what you were looking for?” says the agent.

  I stand at the bottom of the staircase and jiggle the newel post to test the stability of the banister.

  “Oh yes!” I reply, stalling.

  This house will require a lot of work and money, and the space feels cramped. There is not one room that requires only a lick of paint. On the upside, light streams in on both levels, and it is four in the afternoon in late January—at this time in our Brixham home we would have been checking the clock to see whether it was time for bed.

  While we like this area of Bristol, this particular patch is not entirely known to us. The area several blocks north is slightly trendier and more upmarket; this part is on the sketchy side. And yet it is close to the Bristol and Bath Railway Path—we can walk into the city centre in twenty-five minutes; the train station is a five-minute walk; ditto for the shops and restaurants on St. Mark’s Road.

  As I turn to head upstairs, I notice The Husband has returned to the front door, muttering about “signs of forced entry.” He checks the visible things: signs of damp, the state of the brickwork, roof, eaves, ceiling, the boiler. He gravitates to the windows: there are strange locking mechanisms on these, almost homemade. He gives it all a growl.

  While he checks the visible, I want to check the invisible, which is difficult to do with an estate agent at my heels. She scrutinizes my face, my gestures, my movements, like a forensic detective while I look up the stairs and listen for ghosts.

  Does a house have memory? Most certainly. It is visible, and it is audible. It can be seen and read on its walls, in the ridges and gouges of its door frames and banister; it can be felt underfoot in its floorboards; it can be heard in the way the wind treats it—does it whistle through like a thief, or knock respectfully from the outside? A house’s memory can also be gauged by its odour: I turn my head away from the agent and sniff the air. It smells stale, like an unhappy marriage.

  I climb the bare wooden steps slowly, listening, smelling. At the top, I run a hand along the rough door frame of a bedroom. I inspect the doors: they are original but are thick with white paint, and some have been patched with wood filler, while others have panels that have been replaced, as if someone had kicked them in. I pause again and listen for something that is not there but is there.

  I move into the master bedroom. Good space, bay window, and there is a cast-iron fireplace. The mantel is not original; it is homemade. The fireplaces and chimney breasts in the two other bedrooms have been removed. There are no cupboards or closets in any of the rooms—typical of older English homes.

  I pace slowly through the rooms, allowing my imagination to take flight and to see past the miserable state to what the house could be. My mind tumbles back to previous homes I have bought where my initial impression had been instant and positive. Perhaps I am being more cautious now, and that is a good thing. I cannot afford to make another error in house buying. The asking price on this one is £305,000. We are fortunate to have the resources of most middle-class folks, but we did not anticipate blowing it all on a house. The reality is that this is the mid-range price for a house in Britain. It will be the most expensive house either of us has bought. And then there is the £70,000—the remainder of an inheritance I received—that will be used for the renovation. I tally that up in Canadian dollars, which is stupid because this is England, not Canada, but still, yikes, roughly $650,000. We would be better off buying a ruin in France, Spain, or Italy and fixing that up. But I have already had that conversation with The Husband, and he shut me down quickly. You cannot remove an Englishman from England. It is somewhere in the Geneva Convention.

  Back downstairs, I head toward the kitchen at the end of the hall. Someone has tried to cheer up this room by painting the walls in a French blue to contrast with the white wooden cabinets, one of which is hanging off its hinges. The kitchen table is covered in a blue-and-white polka dot vinyl cloth, with a pot of cheerful primrose—red, yellow, and white—placed atop. On the window ledge above the table is a tea set in a pretty pattern. I pick up the little milk jug and turn it over. Fait en Normandie. It is adorable. I return to what is not adorable. The stove: Does it work? It looks unsafe. The fridge is small and cheap but looks like it works. I open a half-glazed door to a back area and find a grotty utility room with a washer and dryer, both of which look fairly new. I open the door next to it: it is the bathroom. The white fixtures look new. I step back into the kitchen and visualize a new interior: knocking out the kitchen, utility room, and bathroom, and turning the space into a large kitchen diner. The back wall could be opened up and fitted with graphite aluminum bifold patio doors. Love those.

  A side door leads to the backyard. I venture outdoors. The yard is level, but like the house it is forlorn, a veritable dumping ground of waste. The area of garden closest to the house is a tangle of brambles and tall, pale grass. The back section is shingle heaped with a pile of old wood, bricks, concrete, and garbage. The entire plot is devoid of greenery; not so much as a shrub. The space is fenced but only loosely; a section on the right has collapsed completely. A pair of rusted iron fence panels and a gate lean against what is left of the wooden fence, and there is an old chimney pot with a crown-shaped top that reminds me of Tenniel’s drawings for Through the Looking Glass. I take a closer look through the rubbish pile to see what else might be salvaged.

  It is not a large garden, but it is manageable, and it is south facing, which would satisfy The Husband. I cast my eye over the neighbouring yards, all of which sprout mature bushes and small trees. Well, there is hope, at least.

  Back inside, I tally up the positives: The pine floorboards, though beyond dirty, are original, and two of the fireplaces and chimney breasts have already been removed in rooms where I would have wanted them removed. The three bedrooms are of a good size, though one will have to be sacrificed for an upstairs bathroom. There is good natural light throughout.

  The market is hot and getting hotter, and I am worried about sustaining The Husband’s attention in this process so we do not price ourselves out of another market. We have spent a year looking at houses. One of our options has been to chuck everything into storage and travel. Is that what we should do? I pace through the house a second time, then a third. The agent checks her phone. I so want to have a base, a home. I want to unpack, settle, then travel.

  We have both hit house-hunting fatigue. If I have to look at another house, cozy up to another estate agent, do another comparison list, feel another crush of disappointment that our budget has
limitations, I am going to lose interest in the entire business, and that is saying something.

  I am already feeling the sheer marital exhaustion of it all. This was so much easier when I did it on my own as a single parent. As a couple, we are getting bitchy and resentful toward one another. Even with The Husband taking a back seat to all this, I still feel under pressure. I resent his lack of interest in anything to do with renovating or his lack of ideas and decisions about one house versus the other. He resents my gadfly nature, my enthusiasm, my prodding of him for answers and decisions.

  “This is perfect,” I hear myself say to the agent. “We need to have a chat about it, but I am sure we’ll be putting in an offer.”

  The agent’s eyes shine with surprise and satisfaction. “The house is going on the market tomorrow, and there is an open day this weekend. Offers will be presented to the vendor early next week.”

  Our interest duly registered, we go off to find the hotel we are booked into for the night, and to get something to eat.

  Over supper, The Husband nurses a beer. He does not appear happy.

  “We’re buying a house on a street that looks just like Walthamstow,” he hisses. “We could have just stayed there.”

  He will not let go of his beloved Walthamstow, his former stomping grounds for twenty-five years. A depressing coincidence cuffs me: whereas Walthamstow was once the poorest, most deprived borough in London, now we are considering buying a house in Easton, possibly the poorest, most deprived borough in Bristol, and one of the most deprived areas in the entire southwest of England.

  “We could never have afforded an entire house in Walthamstow,” I remind him for the thousandth time.

  It does not appease him. I need to get him to focus on the now. And I need to rein in my expectations. I draw out a sheet of paper from my bag and sketch the floor plan of the house we have just seen to show him how it could be the right house for us. True, neither of us loves the house, but maybe loving a house is overrated.

  Of the nine items on my list of must-haves, this house scores a seven. It loses out on off-street parking (no room) and three bedrooms (pending the smallest one’s conversion to a bathroom), but we win on natural light, high ceilings, two bathrooms (post-reno), a level backyard accessible from the kitchen (it will also be “visible from the kitchen” post-reno), the house is not on a main road, there are no screeching hordes of seagulls, and the house is in a walkable area close to amenities.

  “And the bonus?” I say with forced enthusiasm. “It’s just a ten-minute walk to Ikea.”

  A look of forced surrender fills his eyes: “Oh goody.”

  I am feeling guilty and reckless. This is not how I wanted our lives to turn out. I need him to be decisive, to challenge me, because if it were up to me alone, I would not buy this house. This house is a compromise, and I cannot remember if or when I have ever had to compromise. Compromise is not necessary when you are both in sync.

  I have already disappointed The Husband by uprooting him twice in three years; now I fear I am about to disappoint myself.

  6

  The Unacknowledged Catalyst

  “There is something to be said about Little Britain,” I say dreamily to The Husband.

  Little Britain was a television comedy series in the UK that made its debut in 2003, but the term has since become shorthand for a type of parochial mindset associated (often incorrectly) with those who live on suburban housing estates. And here we are, smack dab in one.

  We are in the backyard of our rented temporary accommodation on the outskirts of Bristol. A hot spring sun has surprised everyone this Saturday, and the drone of lawn mowers and weed whackers pervades the neighbourhood as everyone jumps into action to take advantage of it. The Husband has already mowed ours. We sit in patio chairs facing a small enclosed vista of green trimmed lawn; sturdy, unbroken fences; and a bed of early flowers that stand erect and poised to unfurl petals of perfection. Serenity and contentment bloom in this neat-as-a-pin patch of England.

  The Husband, eyes closed, face raised to the sun, acknowledges my comment with a grunt that translates into “I have heard you, but I do not wish to engage in a conversation about the subject because it is about houses and your comment carries a suspicious whiff that seems destined for a larger discussion that is intended to confuse me. Kindly keep your thoughts to yourself.”

  It is two months since we moved into this nondescript circa 1980s housing estate. All our belongings are in cardboard boxes and plastic tubs, numbered and catalogued on a homemade, handwritten manifest. They are crammed into the garage and into one of the three bedrooms. To emphasize our transient state, I have refused to unpack anything beyond the bare essentials.

  For a place that sits between two of England’s most historic and architecturally rich cities—Bath and Bristol—you would be hard-pressed to find a more unimaginative housing development. The house we are renting is bland to the extreme: Externally, it is a dull canvas of tawny brick and white PVC windows; not so much as a finial of embellishment. Internally, it has a living room and a kitchen/diner opening to a fenced and shrub-filled yard; upstairs, there are three bedrooms, and a bathroom with a toilet that has to be repeatedly flushed and a shower that has all the pressure of a royal handshake.

  But the longer we are here, the more I begin to wonder whether Little Britain offers the perfect solution to our house hunt. This specific house we are renting is not for sale, but it would be easy enough to find one around here. I turn my thoughts to how I might dress this one up to suit us. First to go would be the net curtains; they seem to be a thing here. The house would need cosmetic changes for sure. It does not have an iota of charm or character, but you can buy that now. What it does have is everything else: the light and the room we need, built-in closets, and that rarest of finds in British homes—off-street parking and a garage. The house sits on a quiet court and would be a perfect lock-up-and-leave. The neighbours are friendly and considerate. It is a walkable area, with winding pathways and manicured parkettes between each of the courts, which saves you from walking on the busier main roads. A retail park is a five-minute walk away, with a few shops, a handful of big-box stores, and (to The Husband’s joy) a Costa and a Caffè Nero. Ten minutes in the opposite direction is a friendly news agent, an extremely efficient NHS—National Health Service—centre, and a multiplex cinema. Easy, practical living. If we bought here, there might be money left over to travel, maybe enough to buy a holiday home in Spain.

  But Practical Living and I have only a passing acquaintance. I will ditch Practical Living the moment its polar opposite, Character, waltzes into my range of vision. And yet, ask me to change and you might as well rip out my heart. I cannot pull myself away from the desire to buy a wreck, to take something forlorn and perform a Lazarus on it. There must be some undiagnosed or unknown psychological disorder that draws me toward such places even as a part of me resists it, even when such a risk could rupture my marriage. You see, I court stability, I dream of stability, I can afford stability, and yet I cannot give myself entirely to it.

  What makes me gravitate to such properties, to the type of house that others see so clearly as a money pit, hard work, and aggravation? It surely is not financial prudence: my penchant for overimproving a house ends up costing me more in the long run. And yes, it is in my bones and blood: you do not spend two-thirds of a lifetime with maniacal renovators without any of that rubbing off. I acknowledge that. But there has to be another reason for the renovation itch. Am I doing this to impress someone? My husband? My late parents? Myself? Admittedly, an element of pride and confidence is at work here. And control? Possibly. I also want another kick at the renovation can. I want a big project; I want to be a martyr to the cause of rescuing an English home, regardless of how modest it is. I want to prove to myself and to everyone that I have the vision, the design chops, and the fortitude to pull it off. But even that reason does not strike me as entirely authentic.

  The sun caresses my face and relax
es my brain; my body melts comfortably into the lawn chair. I decide not to think about houses and renovations for now but to consider, instead, this addiction of mine, to see if I can deduce what it all means. Why do I do this? Why this fixation, this near mania, with homes and redoing things? During much of my working life I was an editor, where my job was to disassemble a story and reassemble it to a clearer, polished, more correct version. Sounds like a gateway to renovation to me. Maybe a few decades of that habit permeated other areas of my life.

  By buying and renovating a home, it is as if this disassembly personifies a constant, almost pathological, craving to strip back the veneer, to uncover—or is it recover—something that is missing, or a flaw that needs fixing, or . . . uh-oh. I roll my eyes. Of course. There is that, too. Like the surprise appearance of flower shoots that have heroically pushed through dark, viscous soil after a long winter, I see exactly what I am pushing through and what I am aiming to restore. It has nothing to do with a house.

  An all-too familiar memory overtakes me like a sudden rash, and predictably—because this memory has tormented me for thirty-five years—the image materializes of the fat pig forcing his way through the door of my hotel room, pushing me onto the bed, and raping me.

  I have written elsewhere about my rape and I am not going to revisit the details here, only to say that the awful events of April 1983 have never left me, that the blessed relief and epiphany I received decades later in a North Yorkshire convent abides within me still, but that the memory of what happened that terrifying night, like a scar, never fades. More than a violation of the body, rape is a violation of the soul, and damage that deep, that intimate, is near impossible to heal. The best you can do is erect a barrier and warning signs around the memory as if it were a toxic waste site, and let it be.

  I remember, while I was being raped, frantically separating my soul from my body, believing I could save the most treasured part of me from being sullied by this animal rutting on top of me. But when it was over, my soul re-entered a damaged body and mind, like a homeowner returning to a house that has suffered fire damage or a violent robbery. From then on my life was cleaved into two distinct periods: BR and AR—Before Rape and After Rape.