Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House. Julie Myerson

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       Chapter Two THE BOY IN THE TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR ROOM

       The Pidgeons 1981–1987

      We bought this house from a man called John Pidgeon.

      Just walk through the hall and into the kitchen and immediately you’ll spot a couple of crucial things about John Pidgeon. The first is that he likes to do his own carpentry – all the kitchen cupboards are hand-made by him, with fat, optimistic little bluebirds carved in each corner. And the second is that he had a habit of not quite finishing the task in hand – none of the cupboards have handles.

      Right from the start, we viewed this trait of his with a kind of frustrated affection. ‘Pidgeonesque’ became the word we used for anything where the idea was good but the execution lacking. Or maybe it was just that we identified with it so closely ourselves. After a year we decided to paint the white cupboards bright blue. It took us about six months to get around to the second coat. Maybe this syndrome was infectious.

      When I first saw the house, in May 1988, Jonathan and I had just found out we were having a baby. We weren’t married but the baby was planned – though it wasn’t expected so quickly. Where was all the ‘trying’ you were supposed to do? At twenty-seven, we were young and romantic enough to feel we might have quite enjoyed the suspense.

      Still, now that it had happened, we decided we had to move. It wasn’t just a question of space but also of a new start, a home that belonged to both of us. I didn’t mind about the lack of a wedding – or at least back then I didn’t think I did – but I wanted pots and pans, paint swatches, the paraphernalia of a life chosen together.

      We looked at houses around Clapham but none of them were quite right. The only one I’d been drawn to wasn’t all that suitable – it was just, as Jonathan astutely pointed out, that the exhausted woman who showed us round had a dribbling newborn baby on her shoulder. Tiny towelling babygros dripped on a rail over the bath, the whole place smelled of Wet Wipes. I wanted it. Meanwhile details of a house in Lillieshall Road arrived in the post one Saturday morning. It was firmly out of our price range.

      ‘It looks absolutely gorgeous,’ I told Jonathan, ‘and look at that garden.’ The photo showed a smooth green lawn going on forever, punctuated with the pink, red, and yellow blobs of roses.

      He agreed. ‘It’s a lovely road too. Beautiful houses. But look at the price. There’s no point even thinking about it.’

      I agreed with him. He threw the details in the bin.

      An hour later, I retrieved them.

      We rang the estate agent. He said the house had been on the market for a year. The owner had moved to the country. It had been standing empty all that time.

      ‘If no one wants it,’ I pointed out to Jonathan, ‘maybe we can get the price down?’

      He laughed.

      ‘I’m just going to look,’ I told him, ‘just on my own. Just in case.’

      ‘In case of what?’

      ‘Just to put my mind at rest, OK?’

      Number 34 Lillieshall Road. Even the street name sounded like flowers. Lilies and shawls. Armfuls of scented lilies and, yes, baby shawls. We’d been to Mothercare and bought several satisfying cellophaned packs of white cellular baby blankets. Just to have in the cupboard. They looked impossibly small. They looked like they were made for a doll’s cot. I couldn’t believe we’d ever use them.

      Lilies and shawls. Flowers and babies.

      It was a hot afternoon in May. The young man from the estate agents – sweating in his shirt and suit – unlocked the door and said he’d leave me to wander round on my own. A fatal thing to let me do. Like leaving a pair of Victorian lovers unchaperoned. Maybe he knew it. Maybe he knew how hard my heart was pumping. Don’t ever go house-hunting when you’re pregnant. As bad as doing the weekly food shop just before lunch. Too hungry, you’ll buy too much.

      I was hungry.

      I fell in love immediately, as expectant, first-time mothers do with houses that are beautiful, empty (unloved!) and streaming with sudden late afternoon sunshine after rain. I paced those rooms, the dusty air lit with magic, and knew that it was mine already. It was waiting for me to fill it with children. I could have had my babies right there and then, on the wide, dusty floor of the bedroom.

      In fact, I could already hear the furious laughter of toddlers echoing round the terracotta-tiled kitchen. I could see the small Wellington boots lined up in the hall, the school blazers hanging – torn and stained – from the pegs by the stairs. I could even, if I strained hard enough, hear the dull thud of teenage music from an upper room, the slam of an adolescent bedroom door. The house wasn’t empty at all. It was full of my life, my future.

      ‘Like it?’ asked the young man who stubbed out a cigarette as I reemerged into the sitting room.

      ‘It’s just perfect!’ I said. Then I worried. Was I supposed to sound cooler?

      But how could I? It was quite simply the most perfect house I’d ever walked into.

      The rooms were large, light, СКАЧАТЬ