“We’ve definitely gone too far.” Polly peered down at the tiny map on her phone screen on which the downloaded estate agent’s details for the house were displayed, before looking back up to scan the skyline. “But there’s no Internet connection so I can’t check where we should be. What does the sat nav say?”
The bleak, winter sky arched over them, perforated around the edge with bare, mature trees whose branches outstretched to reach the next to form a rudimentary hedge for the horizon. Brown, furrowed fields stretched out into the distance, criss-crossed occasionally by sturdy strips of beech boundaries. A lone line of electricity cables looping over pylons framed the view of a gothic church tower half hidden by a hill.
Simon grimaced and slowed even further on the icy stretch of pitted tarmac that had led them from the plain, perfunctory village a mile or so behind.
I didn’t see anything though I'm not sure how we could have missed it,” he stated stabbing the sat nav screen with his index finger. “The house should be here.”
The directional red arrow was now a blob with the line stretching off the bottom of the screen and in his mind he could hear the machine directing them in crisp Queen’s English to turn around when possible.
He swung the car around gingerly to avoid the deep ditches on either side of the road, and eased the car back into gear to allow it to purr slowly back up the lane. The voice guidance suddenly sprang into action. “You have reached your destination.” The couple looked around avidly.
“There! There!” shouted Polly pointing towards a thicket outside the car to Simon’s right.
There, through a tangle of gnarled twigs and overgrown Berberis encrusted with crimson berries, she had caught sight of the house for which they had been searching. Standing some 200 yards back from the road, the pale stone of the manor house and frost-glazed roof blended into its backdrop of grey.
The house itself was made up of four clear sections, each topped with its own gable, and each becoming grander as their eyes swept from left to right culminating in an end section which was graced by a bay window over which an ancient wisteria trunk curled. White frames set off dark, lifeless windows which were geometrically spaced across the grand facade, while a white porticoed door invited the couple to come closer.
Polly gasped. “It’s even nicer than in the picture,” she half whispered. Tugging on her husband’s sleeve, she demanded again confirmation that they could afford it.
The Golf crawled up to electric gates that whirred into action at the sense of its solid shape. Juddering, the wooden barricade slowly swung open to leave an uninterrupted view of the setting.
The two sat in silence.
“Yes.” Simon broke the spell. “We should be able to. Although it will of course depend on how much work needs doing. When the brochure only shows pictures of the outside—never a great indication of the inside—and the text throughout constantly refers to the considerable modernization needed...”
His voice trailed off as he swung the car onto the drive. The vehicle danced down the track over the splayed puddles of frozen snow. Gravel and ice crunched under the tyres as Simon eased the car around the sweep trying to concentrate. But all the while his eyes were drawn to the house’s many blank, sash windows and through into the empty rooms beyond.
“It’s like something out of a Jane Austen novel. Well...we are Bennetts. Although our spelling is different to that of Austen’s...but still we’re Bennetts...just with two 't’s. The Bennetts of Berristhorpe. It’s got a nice ring to it. Just as long as we don’t have five girls. How many bedrooms does it have again?”
Seven Simon supplied. Polly’s chatter ground to a halt just as the car skidded slightly and then stopped.
“Well then...no one will have to share.” she smiled brightly at him across the seat space before she stepped smartly out of the car, pulling on her thick woolen coat as she did so. She stretched her frame lazily as she straightened up, relishing the freedom after the near three hour drive from London and her family home where they had been staying for the last month since their arrival back on home turf.
Further across the yard, an immaculate four-by-four was parked across double garages located to the side of the house. The driver’s door swung open and a green wellington attached to a beige cord-clad leg extended out of the vehicle, followed by the rest of a tall man.
Tousled hair bouncing jauntily at each stride and with a clipboard clutched tightly in gloved hands across a tweeded front, a man in his late forties advanced on the couple that were stood stock still drinking in the size of the place. Their previous home had been a tile-clad, 26th floor, 15-hundred square foot apartment perched half-way up Hong Kong’s famous hillside, surrounded by a conglomeration of other concrete blocks. Nice for the territory but by no means comparable to what was now before them as an option for their next home.
Their new position allowed them a side view of the house which revealed more gables jutting off at various points of the compass and a jumble of brinks and stonework as the various parts of the house came together.
“You’re late”, he said sounding slightly exasperated, pulling off his gloves in an impatient fashion. “You’ll only have 20 minutes before the next people arrive.”
Polly pursed her lips and waved an arm slowly around the space. “Well, I’m sure it’s not going to be a problem having all of us in the house at the same time even if you're expecting a coach load. And I'm quite confident that a property in demand is all the better for you.”
Simon half-smiled at the man who was clearly not used to being spoken to so sharply.
“Nicholas Manning.” The estate agent recovered his charm and thrust out his right hand engagingly. “You’re right. There is actually quite a lot of demand for this place. You’re the fifth couple to have seen it today and there are three more appointments booked in for before it gets dark.”
The three shook hands, before Nicholas swiveled around and began towards the house. Polly and Simon followed.
“There's history of a house on this site dating back to well before William the Conqueror and then its mention in the Doomsday Book. The present house was built in the 16th Century, but has been altered considerably over the centuries with the latest work seeing the whole front of the house being added at the end of the 18th Century, beginning of the 19th Century. But we don’t know much more about it than that.”
“Why not?” Polly asked as her five-foot frame struggled to keep up. Simon lopped alongside more easily given his foot head height over his wife, his hands thrust deep into his pockets as he tried to look more at ease than he felt. Should they really be looking at such as pile given it was just the two of them, even though they had plans to start a family soon?
“It’s quite usual with tenanted Crown properties. It was sold as part of a large estate by the seventh and, I gather rather dissolute, Lord Clifton in 1845 and only basic records have been maintained since. More of the history may well be accessible through the Clifton principal estate records in Devon though.” Nicholas threw a brief glance over his shoulder to check on their distracted progress as he reached a side door crackled with grimy paint with chunky, but filthy, brass fittings. “Come on in.”
The door gave way into a unprepossessing room with dark green walls with large, damp patches and an oversized lamp with an infra-red bulb swung over a hook towards the back of the room to hover a couple of feet above a stained square on the red-tiled floor.
“Boot room. And the previous tenant bred greyhounds which stayed in here during winter,” Nicholas explained. “He and the dogs left over two years ago and it's been standing empty ever since.”
He opened one of the room’s two doors onto a narrow hall with a rich mahogany floor on which sat a cheap, fraying, cream carpet runner on which he stamped his feet. He gesticulated briefly towards the other door, but only dismissed the space beyond as belonging to that of an indoor barn.
In front of him, rooms branched off the corridor immediately beyond to the left and right while next to the door on the right a gated staircase stretched up and around onto the presumed first floor landing. Dusty servants' bells were mounted over the door to the left.
Ten yards and a series of uneven cupboards beyond, the hall doubled in width into the formal entertaining part of the house. An elegant set of stairs framed the other end.
The couple trailed behind their host in silence. Various uses of rooms were supplied as the group made brief forays into each of the different unfurnished spaces, which were only alike in their lack of period features. At the other end of the full 50 feet of hall, they then came to a halt at a closed door.
“Burst pipe. So we won’t go in. It’s flooded. But you can look through the door,” Nicholas supplied. “The water will be drained off tomorrow.” He twisted the handle several times and pushed the door with a flat hand, but the door refused to budge. “I don't want to fall into the water,” he explained his minimal effort.
Eyes wide open, and with clothes wrapped increasingly tightly against the chill, Polly and Simon continued with the agent on their extensive tour, following him this time up the stairs to take in the archaic bathrooms and dated décor of the many bedrooms. The green of the first room seemed to be the most popular choice in paint, though here clashing with bold schemes of primary colours in other rooms.
Limp curtains and tattered roller blinds framed views of the garden outside, some revealing clusters of overgrown trees and the others giving way to blank sheets of snow.
Another flight of stairs led to a strange attic suite in one wing. As they mounted the somewhat rickety stairs the temperature plunged even further and didn't even seem to rise as they descended back onto the first floor.
Polly’s self-embrace tightened unconsciously as her mind’s eye began to strip back the paint and damaged plaster and imagine the rooms reconfigured to their lifestyle. She could picture her family and friends moving around the house, but this time it was filled with life and laughter. Tears welled in her eyes. She blinked them away quickly before Simon could see and told herself to get a grip. It would have been obvious to Louis Braille himself even after his accident how much work would be needed to be done to make the place habitable, let alone luxurious.
“So that’s the house. I’ll take you to go and look at the barn and other outbuildings shall I?” Nicholas turned to face them as they completed their tour on the landing above where they'd started. “Or should I leave you to wander around the house again on your own?”
Simon volunteered an opinion before Polly could find her voice. “We’ll look around the house again and then wend our way outside and take a look at what’s what there. Thank you. We’ll come and find you before we leave.”
The agent nodded in assent, turned and strode off. His shoe heels clacked loudly on the wooden floor of the stairs and hall before he disappeared through the door through which they’d all first come. The couple heard the clattering of the metal door catch and a soft thud as the side door closed behind him.
“So what do you think?” Polly tried to keep her voice calm and measured. Her heart thumping hard against her rib cage and pounding in her ears. She tried to slow her breathing and keep her surging hope in check. Her lip caught between her teeth and she unconsciously bit down until the metallic tang of blood stopped her.
“It’s better than I thought,” supplied Simon. “We’ll obviously need to get a full survey done, but the agent seems confident that the structural work has been done regularly and to good order.”
He turned quickly sensing his spouse’s heightening emotional state.
“But even if we like it and put in an offer, we might not get it.” He consciously kept his tone of voice light.
“Why not?”
“The sale process is being run as a sealed envelope auction. We can put in a bid but it might not be good enough. Someone could easily bid a lot more than us.”
Retracing their steps, they went around again assessing the house and commenting that while sizeable, the rooms were themselves not overly large and that the lower ceilings made the place feel homely despite the cold and slightly eerie tranquility.
The once unyielding door downstairs was now open to reveal a very low ceilinged space with a thick, blackened beam down the middle of the room and a lake of a floor across which gentle ripples dappled the light.
The quiet was suddenly punctured by the lone cackle of a bird that rose up out of the wood beyond the house to the right and then trailed away into the distance. Silence settled in solidly once more.
Reluctantly taking their leave of the house itself, the couple then strolled around the numerous outbuildings, before picking their way through a garden that was a good six inches deep in clean, powdery snow. Significant work beckoned here too given the lack of structure to the vast, open stretches of space where they couldn't see any outlines of flower beds or borders beneath the smothering of snow. In one small area alone, there were a jumble of hedges and yew balls jutting up and out but only in a manner that seemed to jar the eye. Clearly the tenants had not been keen gardeners.
Each kept their thoughts tightly to themselves, purposely maintaining black expressions, but the tension was palpable. They had both realized that they each wanted the house urgently but neither clearly understood their own or the other's reasons. It baffled each of them individually as to why the need to own the run-down property was so pressing particularly given the other houses they had viewed, which were all very different propositions from the property in question here.
Hailing goodbye to the agent who was engrossed in a conversation with his next appointment, they got back in the car and started off back up the drive.
Polly twisted around in her seat to take possibly her last ever look at the house, squinting at the romantic view through the misty rear window. If they didn’t put in the winning bid, she didn’t want to come back. It would hurt too much.
Simon stopped at the top of the drive and cranked on the handbrake “Well?” he asked hopefully.
“I love it,” Polly acquiesced. “We have to try and secure it.” Her eyes shining brightly, she seized his hand. “It could so easily be our forever home”.
Looking back longingly again as the car growled into action again, she noticed a patch of condensation appearing on the main bedroom window despite the lack of heating and a shadowy figure looming beyond. She hated the idea that other people were already going around and eyeing up the property for their own purposes.
