Open House

by Jane Christmas

  My idea was to remove all the doors except those to the bedrooms and bathrooms. The Husband will have none of it. He likes his doors.

  To brighten the long, dark front hall and create a sense of space, I suggest we remove most of the wall between the hall and the second reception room. He does not like this idea, either. I also suggest we convert the window in that room to French doors opening to the side area of our garden. He is okay with that—it adds another door, after all.

  I DASH OUT THE FRONT DOOR to buy a dustpan at the corner shop. As I go through our gate, I almost collide with a woman in a niqab.

  “Oh, sorry! Good morning,” a bright voice sings out from behind the black. “Gorgeous day, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, i-it is,” I stammer. I am not used to conversing with fully veiled people, though I have learned to pretend that it does not bother me. I like observing the range of people’s facial expressions when I speak with them. It is how I recognize people and relate to them. I gain as much by seeing their eyes, the set of their mouth, the condition of their hair, the tilt of their chin, as I do from hearing their words. I gain no such clues about this woman except from her voice, which has a no-nonsense Brit clip and, to my ears, indicates a practical yet chatty type of person.

  Here is another stark difference between British residential areas and their North American counterparts: cultural diversity. Residential areas in North America are for the most part homogenous in terms of cultural, social, and racial makeup, where differences are more muted. Not so in Britain. Our street, as with most residential streets, is made up equally of blacks, whites, and all shades in between; of well-to-dos and not-so-well-to-dos; of professionals and students; of retirees and young families; of immigrants and natives; of Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Sikhs; of people with brown hair, grey hair, and green hair. There is no sense, really, of anyone’s social situation on this street. The hip dudes are on bikes; their Muslim brothers are in BMWs with tinted windows. It is a truly and visibly diverse neighbourhood, not an assimilated one.

  Once we move in, I look forward to exploring it and getting to know our neighbours, like the gal behind the niqab.

  Ah, moving in. Will that be in August? It is only May right now, and August seems a long way off, from a May point of view.

  13

  The Neighbourhood

  “There’s a Christmas tree in our front garden,” mumbles The Husband, not looking up from his work. He is in the master bedroom, on hands and knees, pulling staples and small nails from the floorboards in preparation for sanding the floors.

  “Yeah, I saw them. Cute, eh? Wonder how high they will grow.”

  I am looking distractedly out the window at the street. A group of Muslim men and boys in their white thobes and taqiyahs are parading silently on their way to Friday prayers at the mosque around the corner. It is the middle of Ramadan.

  Right this second, a cultural—or is it a linguistic?—difference is playing out in our soon-to-be bedroom, because when I turn to The Husband, he is looking at me with incomprehension. We have reached one of those “We both speak English, but I do not understand you” impasses.

  Whoever assumes that English and Canadian are the same language has never been in an English/Canadian marriage. It is not just the accent, but the cadence, the place of emphasis on a word, the shorthand speak that his culture understands but that mine does not. Couples in same-culture relationships develop a linguistic shorthand that both understand. If I said to The Husband “Goin’ for a Tim’s,” he would not know what the hell I was talking about. (And because Tim Horton’s outlets do not—praise the Lord—exist in the UK, he need not worry that I will ever say that to him.) I once asked if we were “taking a subway,” and he could not understand why I wanted a fast-food sandwich on the Tube. We almost came to blows one time when I referred to his “housecoat” and he insisted he did not have one.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I do not.”

  “It is hanging on the back of the bedroom door.”

  And still he could not understand what I meant, until he finally said, “That is not a housecoat. It is a dressing gown. Housecoat. What an absurd term.”

  “Who but people born in the 1920s uses the term dressing gown anymore?”

  When we realize that we are speaking about two different things, we revert to those oft-used responses “What?” or “Sorry?” or “Pardon?”

  “What?” he asks now.

  “Christmas tree?” I query.

  “Grow?” he asks. “Looks pretty dead to me.”

  “The three miniature evergreens? In our front garden? Is that what you mean?” They are hidden among a dense tangle of foliage. I am surprised he even noticed them. I make a mental note to transplant them before building debris gets dumped on them.

  “Not those. I mean a real tree.”

  “But they are real.”

  “Not those. The Christmas tree.”

  “What?”

  Again I look down from the window into our front courtyard. There, leaning against our low wall, is a desiccated, rust-coloured fir tree with strands of silver tinsel struggling to liberate themselves from the ignominy. Arranged around the base of the tree, like presents, are several bags of garbage. At least, I hope it is only garbage.

  “The bloody nerve!” I explode.

  The Husband keeps his head down and returns to the forensic work of plucking staples from the floorboards.

  “Where did that come from?”

  The next day a few more bags and boxes have accumulated around the new dead tree.

  “Really?” I look at The Husband accusingly, swiftly holding him accountable for the behaviour of every Englishman. “Is this a thing in your country? Dumping crap in other people’s front yards? Is there no respect for private property, no sense of trespassing? We all just heave our trash wherever we want?”

  His lips form a tight line. He tends to go silent whenever my rants veer close to the failings of his country. I often wonder if he is thinking: If you don’t like it, go back to Canada.

  I stomp downstairs, where Francis, who has started work on our house, is tearing out the kitchen. He started three days ago and is making good progress. The kitchen has been gutted, and the interior walls are almost down. Tomorrow, he will cut out the back wall for the patio doors. His guy will be measuring today.

  I tell him about the garbage collecting in our front yard; about how this flagrant, cowardly behaviour annoys me.

  He laughs. “I’ve ordered a skip. It’s coming in a day or so. You can just toss the stuff in there.”

  But he has either missed my point, chosen to sidestep it, or is not fussed about it. I storm out the front door and, hands on hips, look down at the desiccated little tree like a dog that has done its business there, and then glare across the road and up the street, hoping my mean-lady looks will put the fear of God into the culprit.

  Predictably, it does not. Each day a little something more is added to the offering. Like the chumps we are, we load the pile into our car and take it to the local dump. At this rate, we will need a skip just for the extraneous crap from our neighbours.

  The skip arrives. It is precariously lowered onto the street in front of our house. The following day it is evident that our skip has become the community dumpster. It contains items that have in no way come from our house.

  “When did you order a cross-trainer?” The Husband asks, inspecting a box in the skip.

  “This would never happen in Canada,” I snarl.

  He mutters something and goes off in search of floor staples to pluck.

  On a street of Victorian terraces there is little to differentiate the individual houses, little insight into the nature of the inhabitants save for the colour of their front doors and the state of their front courtyards. The courtyard, with its lower perimeter stone or brick wall and wrought-iron gate, is sacrosanct to its owner. It is a buffer from the outside world, a declaration invoking a strict private-property polic
y but in that distinctly British way of “Look, admire, but do not dare touch, trespass, or disturb” as firmly as if razor wire were erected around it.

  There is an inbred suspicion in the British psyche that is absolutely personified in the Victorian terrace. The British are as fanatical about walls, fences, barriers as they are about interior doors. This is a people who are rule setters and policy-and-procedure makers first, and your mate at the pub second. Perhaps this is due to the population density. Space is so squeezed in this country that people are forced to live, work, and travel cheek by jowl; personal space has to be established and respected. It takes a newcomer some time to get accustomed to it.

  The lack of roominess in terrace homes, the lack of basements, and the land-locked, externally inaccessible nature of terrace homes means that the front courtyards often become holding pens for cast-off furniture, building materials, old toys, and assorted garbage. When you are having work done on your home, the front courtyard comes in handy as a place for all manner of supplies, waste, and cast-offs. Unfortunately, some households let this disarray linger long after the renovation is complete.

  This is where the Victorians and we of the modern era part company. The Victorians were all about pretense and house pride. They never displayed their garbage. They kept a tidy patch. Nowadays, there is no shame to having a messy front garden. Some wear it like a badge of honour, an elevated virtue, as if to say, “I am so busy that I have no time or energy to think about it. And come to think of it, neither should you. Mind your own bloody business!”

  If an inventory were taken of British homes based solely on the state of the front courtyard and facade, it would reveal that the majority are on the scruffy side. The British do not tend assiduously to the external appearance of their homes the way North Americans do. Perhaps because there is not much property frontage to tart up, or that proximity to the sidewalk (low courtyard walls and gate notwithstanding) makes any embellishment that is not planted or tied down fair game for light-fingered passersby. I have met people who have had plants stolen from their courtyard, including some that were dug up. Visible displays of decoration or landscaping are frowned upon. No one wants to appear showy. No one wants to tempt thieves and other pariahs. On a street of Victorian or Georgian terraces the unspoken maxim is “Plainer is safer.”

  Inside, it is often a completely different story. Many are the times that have I approached a tatty-looking front door, bins teeming with bottles and jars, small front gardens appearing weedy and forlorn, pebble dash stained and in need of a paint job, masonry gouged, and yet the interior of the house in question is decorated to a bright, shiny standard, with clean and polished floors, and intriguing art on the walls. This startling change of character extends right into the back garden, where little oases of lushness and enchantment, of charm and delight, can be found. It is completely at odds with the signals the front facade gives off, proving that you cannot judge a British house by its curb appeal.

  There are a few offenders on every street, and ours is no exception. Several front gardens show neglect—overrun with weeds, cluttered with old doors, fragments of windows, bottles, bits of wood, plastic flower pots whose contents have shrivelled into unidentifiable remains. One or two have mounds of garbage bags and assorted crap piled up against front bay windows. My heart pities the poor house that must endure this mortification. You would not see rubbish like this in North America unless the home was that of a reclusive psychotic murderer. Then again, most North Americans have garages, so perhaps they are better able to hide their mess.

  At the opposite end of this lack of house pride are the homes whose courtyards bloom with shrubs and flowering trees, whose window boxes brim with colour. What a balm they are. A few enterprising souls have built from old wood pallets little shelters for bikes and bins and topped them with green roofs that sprout moss and sedum to attract the birds and bees. They are lovely.

  In the middle—and with no amount of pride do I acknowledge current fraternity with this group—are those courtyards that are tidy but bereft of personality, a place for recycling boxes and large, ugly, black garbage bins. Once the renovation is done, I hope to make our courtyard more attractive.

  A few lucky homes, perhaps eight on our street, retain the original iron railings that once encircled every courtyard on the street. Only about a dozen have their original stained-glass transoms, or the cheerful checkerboard encaustic-tile walkways leading to the front door.

  I have tried not to be unduly petulant about the loss of our home’s original architectural features such as the stained-glass transom and courtyard railings. Our Easton neighbourhood has a history of poverty—at one time it was the most deprived in all of England—and I daresay that if I had a choice between feeding my children or enjoying the colourful prism cast by a piece of stained glass, I, too, would have flogged mine for food.

  The matter of missing iron railings is particularly distressing. Up and down the streets of our neighbourhood is the rusty, amputated evidence that something beautiful and strong once graced those low courtyard walls. While pondering the architectural cost against the scant pounds and shillings their owners might have reaped from selling them off, I discovered a sadder story that explained it all: the elegant iron fences that embellished the courtyards of Victorian terraces were ripped out not through any personal desire or need on the part of the homeowners but by an act of Parliament.

  In 1941, during the Second World War, when iron was needed for munitions, Prime Minister Winston Churchill passed a law compulsorily requisitioning all iron fences and railings erected post-1850. Exceptions were made for those of historic merit or interest. Naturally, the poorer residential areas of Britain were hit first. Council workers poured into streets with sledgehammers and cutters and carted off everything that could be melted into firearms. It became one of the most successful unifying causes of the British war effort, so much so that more iron was collected than was needed. The tragedy is that the government, not wanting to hamper morale, continued with the pillage regardless, and quietly dumped thousands of excess fence railings into landfill sites, council sidings, rivers, and oceans.

  I TAKE A BREAK FROM wood-chip scraping, and wander through the rooms in our Victorian terrace, imagining the history it has witnessed. It is not an old house, only about 125 years old—a new build by British standards. But human history has shaped this place. War bombs and great poverty have shaken its walls. Grief and love have intermingled in its mortar.

  Parts of this Easton neighbourhood have a weary, beaten-down look. There are pockets of squalor, but there are also pockets of quiet elegance. When you venture into places like this to buy a home, it is tricky to determine which direction the wind will blow stronger—toward squalor or toward elegance. Easy to dismiss a place based on first impressions.

  Long before there were houses here, deer, rabbits, foxes made their home on this land—foxes still; I have seen them. Men—kings, even—on horseback thundered through these parts in centuries past, hunting deer, boar, wolf.

  Easton (from the Saxon Est Tun, or East Farm) was a hamlet about a mile from Bristol, in the Royal Forest of Kingswood, which served as the hunting grounds for the king and assorted nobility. The Empress Matilda, mother of Henry II, settled midway between Bristol (then Brycg Stowe—“Place by the Bridge”) and Easton after she lost her battle for the English throne to her cousin Stephen of Blois. She built an enormous castle and garrison—its keep was reputedly the size of the keep at the Tower of London—to the east of Bristol, effectively cutting off Easton’s trade with the city of Bristol. Easton was forced to reimagine itself and develop its own livelihood, so its inhabitants made implements and weapons as well as food for the castle and garrison. Noticing that the royal herd was mysteriously thinning, the nobility regarded those who lived in Easton with suspicion, and the phrase “without the gate” was used to refer to those who lived outside the garrison gate—the Eastonians—and gradually came to imply anyone of ill repute.


  Despite being “without the gate,” Easton attracted the aristocracy. At the beginning of the thirteenth century a who’s who of royalty had manor houses here: Edwards I, II, III, IV, V; Richards II, III; Henrys IV, V, VI, VII, VIII; Queen Anne; and the Duke of Clarence among them. It was an area of meadows and pastures, of arable farmland and two rivers: the Frome to the north and the Avon to the south. It also had riches underground: coal began to be mined around this time.

  Easton’s pastoral beauty lasted until 1858, when the Industrial Revolution came knocking. The urgent need for human hands brought thousands in from the countryside to Bristol. In 1800, Bristol’s population was seventy thousand; by 1850, it had doubled; and fifty years after that the figure had doubled again to three hundred thousand, so great was the need for labour in shipyards, banks, coal mines, cotton mills, distilleries, pulp and paper mills, potteries, and sugar refineries. Easton itself had three mines operating in 1883 as the Easton Coal Company: the main shaft was eleven feet in diameter, a thousand feet deep, and it was fitted with two cages. Thirty miles of tram roads were dug underground, where more than fifty horses toiled in the grimy depths.

  Above ground, houses went up in Easton at an astounding rate, especially between 1880 and 1890, when our house was built. The former royal hamlet was now a booming residential suburb. As Easton’s physical landscape changed, so, too, did its social makeup. In the eighteenth century, the city rolls listed Easton residents as farmers, lead merchants, gentlemen; barely a hundred years later, the occupational roll listed dairy men, fruit and vegetable merchants, malters, ironmongers, and miners. Bucolic fields of old were now criss-crossed with steel rails rumbling with trains carrying coal from the pits.