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I
would have thought seeing prospective buyers traipsing round our lovely house, marking the stair carpet with their near-indelible footprints, would have been more than I could bear – but it's so fascinating. It's a little like being a bit-part player in a not very good play where the characters are sketchy, but the dialogue is mighty revealing.
Like many important life events, it is a power struggle of sorts, and I'm not exactly sure where the balance lies. Sometimes I feel it is with me, for I've half a mind to sell only if the people are really wonderful. At other moments, as I hear my agonised decorating decisions scoffed at wholesale, I don't feel very powerful at all.
“Can't you bring some human beings round?” I appeal to the estate agent. “Where on earth do you find these people?” The seven-foot cross-eyed banker guy with the steely glare, for example, who wanted to rip everything out, burrow underground, smash all the walls and ceilings, and start again. He was a frightening prospect. For some people, architecture is the only permissible expression of violence in life, I suppose. Another couple shook their heads with disgust as they walked through the building, as if they were inspecting some kind of diseased shanty town. “It's not that bad!” I wanted to call out, but my dignity prevailed.
A friend's husband-checklist, when she was seven, included the legendary “must have blond hair and be a member of CND”. I don't go that far with my vetting of prospective buyers but there are deal-breakers. I wouldn't want to sell to anyone who let it be known to me, on a visit, that he or she believed in the death penalty – although these things rarely come up on house tours, admittedly.
Do try to be sensible, my husband gently requests. He has no real cause for concern. I'm not going to insist on holding out for a Judy Garland fan or anything in that way. But I do want our house going to a good home.
My mother's advice was very characteristic: “Whenever I've sold a house,” she remarked, “it's always been to the dodgiest-seeming people. They're the ones who don't tend to let you down.” Hmmm.
We had to pass an audition to buy the house we are moving to. We met the owners several times, sat down with them and ate their cake while they inspected us, up and down, for moral energy. No one even mentioned that the house might be for sale. We spoke of our hopes and dreams as we dandled the baby on our laps. We can see she is very loved, they said and we beamed. They didn't want their house going to just anyone either.
On our second visit their son, it transpired, remembered being in a taxi with me in 1990. This alarmed me in case anything untoward formed the foundations of his memory. But no, it had apparently been “a pleasure”.
During these meetings we warmed to the vendors to a laughable degree. This was more like being in a novel – the teas, the chats about death and birth, and the fruits of the locale – that we grew rather fanciful in our ideas. They seemed so happy and humorous in their setting, we were bound to be too. If they couldn't be our parents, might we one day grow into them? Would our children become doctors as theirs had? It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if there was any possibility they might stay on with us as house guests, but these sorts of knee-jerk invitations have got me into a great deal of hot water in the past.
We'll never find people as nice as that to buy our house, we agreed as we made our way home, slightly forlorn. And for a minute, it really seemed like the end of the world.
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