Once Upon A Time in the West . . . Country Read Online Free Page B

announced proudly.
    ‘Yes, and we’ll be able to drive three and a half hours to do some weeding.’
    ‘It would be a long way back if we forgot the shovel and fork, certainly.’
    ***
    Following our quick refreshment in the friendly local pub, where every head had turned to look at us as we’d walked in through the door, we found ourselves back outside the house. It felt like we were eager students who had enrolled on an extra-curricular course – in house buying. The lady answered the door, introduced herself as Brenda, and conducted a thorough tour. The house turned out to be idiosyncratic in layout, the victim no doubt of a string of makeshift ‘improvements’ that had happened over the years. The bedrooms upstairs were in a line – meaning that you had to walk through one to get to another. Like many a rugby player, the house was wide and shallow. Headroom was an issue, and I had to be alert to avoid beams on the ground floor.
    But we loved it. We loved it because of what you could see out of the window. That seemed to be enough. Everything else we assumed could be sorted out in the future. Even when we shared a cup of tea with Brenda and attempted to ask all the questions that needed asking, all the time we kept turning and looking at the view. That view.
    By the time we’d completed the drive back to London, we’d decided on every alteration we could make to the house, and we went to sleep dreaming of waking up there. In the morning I rang the estate agent, leaving it till 10.30 a.m. so I didn’t look too keen, and made an offer that was duly accepted.
    Good. We now had something to go with the allotment.

2
    Accepting Your Fête

     
     
     
     
    I won’t pretend that selling the London house hadn’t left me with some wobbly moments. Occasionally it felt like we were casting ourselves adrift and sailing off into the unknown. Fran had been born and raised in London and had never lived anywhere else, and it had been the city that had sustained me in my career and social life for the last thirty years. Now we were both turning our backs on it. Sure, it was only a train journey away, but we were putting a firework up the posterior of our lives and it was no use pretending otherwise.
    Unlike Fran, I’d moved houses several times before. I knew that when you pull your car up outside the empty shell that will be your new residence, keys in your hands for the first time, there’s a nervous feeling that you’ll open the door, walk in, and not like it anymore.
    ‘You OK?’ I said to Fran, as I put the key in the lock.
    She nodded. Perhaps the silence concealed the nerves.
    We’d seen the house a couple of times more when we’d been near Devon on other business, and we’d popped in to share a cup of tea with Brenda and ask all the questions that we should have asked before we bought it. Like what kind of heating system does it have, or does it have mains drainage or a septic tank? We learned that Brenda was separated from her husband and she now needed a smaller house, but Fran and I took it as a very good sign that she wanted to stay in the same village and had bought a house further down the road. We would be neighbours, and for the next few months we could torment Brenda with questions about how things worked, and where various switches were located.
    I took a deep breath as I turned the key in the front door lock. I threw open the door and we walked in. We looked around us and both smiled. Even without furniture, pictures, mirrors, books, magazines, and kitchen paraphernalia – it felt like home.
    I let out a huge sigh of relief.
    ***
    The months leading up to the move had been tough, but I wouldn’t have described them as stressful, even though they do say that moving house is one of the most stressful things in life. My question is this. Who are the they that say this? Is it the same they that say that our bodies are 70 per cent water? Because if it’s that lot, then I’m not sure that I trust them.