The house hunters
My scurrilous mole of a fiancé had prepared a short list of two rental houses to view. As shortlists go, they don’t get much shorter. The first house was an acreage property called Fig Tree House, because it had a fig tree in the front yard. A very English touch I thought. I wondered how such a propensity to name houses after things in backyards might go if it caught on in Australia: Inground Pool House. Blue Tongue Lizard House. Six Burner Barby House. Or for those in the western suburbs – Rusted Holden Chassis House.
Fig Tree House was tacked onto the edge of a pleasant enough little village stuck away at the back of beyond in a fairly nondescript bit of North Yorkshire countryside. Apparently we were only an hour from York. Apparently we were two hours from Leeds. We arrived at Fig Tree House via endless meanderings down uninviting hedge-rowed byways I could have sworn were farmers’ driveways. If A Roads were main arterials and B-roads were these Byzantine nightmares, I had a perfect four letter descriptor for C roads.
‘There aren’t any C Roads,’ Gabriel enlightened me from the passenger seat. ‘Just As and Bs and Ms.’
‘Even your alphabet’s different,’ I said. ‘No wonder I can’t understand any of you.’
Fig Tree House might as well have been Black Stump House for its isolation and Windowless Box House for its complete disregard for the outside world. The blurb on this great slab of bricks laid claim to expansive views. Fat lot of use they were if you had to stick your face to a hole in the wall like a pervert at a peepshow to see them.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said to our eager realtor, ‘but unless you’re prepared to install floor to ceiling windows, a pool, a deck and put a pub and supermarket next door, we’re not interested.’
Gabriel sulked all the way back to Chicken Colditz and went directly to her room, only emerging when I knocked on her door to remind her we had an appointment at her second house of choice in an hour.
***
‘Why did you have to be so rude to that woman?’ she demanded, feet up on the dashboard of the Skoda en route to House Two down more B-Grade roads.
‘Because that woman should be ashamed of herself for trying to fob houses like that off to unsuspecting punters for two thousand pounds a week!’
‘It was fifteen hundred!’
‘Whatever. Somali refugees wouldn’t live in it. It was a prison, Gabriel, a windowless, dark and dingy prison. I’d go mad in there, I honestly would.’
Gabriel gaped at me incredulously. ‘That’s English houses, monkey! They don’t have big windows like houses in Australia. They have to keep the heat in!’
‘Well, I’m not having it. I’d rather be cold.’
‘You wouldn’t,' she said staring out her window.
‘I fucking would,’ I said staing out mine.
‘I’m telling you,' she said shooting me another glare, 'in the middle of an English winter you’ll be glad of small windows.’
‘No,' I said refusing to look at her. 'Never. I can’t do small windows. Big windows. Big curtains. Brisbane gets cold. When it gets cold, you close the curtains. Did you get cold in that house?’
‘Brisbane never got below five degrees.’
‘That’s cold enough.’
‘Yes, Bailey. But that was in the middle of the night in the heart of winter. It was twenty five during the day.’
‘Twenty one.’
‘You can’t compare the two. It’s going to be freezing all the time here. For five months.’
‘I don’t care. I want to sit back with a good book in a nice armchair with great sweeping country views, not vignettes of countryside you can only see from a ladder. It’s false advertising for these places to advertise panoramic views. Panoramic views are panoramic views. They are viewed in one hit, not running from peep hole to peep hole.’
‘It’s not going to happen,’ she said with an air of resignation. ‘We’re wasting our time.’
‘Why?’
‘This place is no better! In fact it’s probably worse!’
‘Window-wise?’
‘Yes! Window-wise!’
‘Bugger.’ I patted her knee. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s England’s fault.’
‘Yeah well, blame England for this next place as well then.’
‘It’s that bad?’
‘On your terms, yes. It’s worse than bad.’
