Turtles in Our Wake Read online

  Then there is the mountain of tapes, set books and course notes which after seven angst-ridden, blissful, book-throwing, life-enhancing years of part-time study had resulted in an Open University degree. There are the dog leads, brushes and combs that were once the daily accompaniments of a life made joyous by two rough collies – or Lassie dogs as people called them, from those old films and television series. On our walks they got so used to the cry of ‘Lassie!’ from approaching strangers that they would automatically stop, wag their tails and stand to be patted.

  There is also the pottery collection. No holiday had ever been complete without a ceramic pot. I remember a newspaper article some years ago about a family whose mother had become one of the many people who disappear inexplicably from home every year. A married son said that she had always looked after the family very well and had seemed happy enough. She had a dresser, he said, with a row of blue china ornaments across the top and every six months she took them down, washed them, put them away and replaced them with yellow china ornaments. I look at the dusty row of brown pots along the top of my kitchen dresser and wonder where she is now and if she is happy.

  I abandon the cupboards and make a start on the bookcases. Feng shui warns against a full bookcase. If it is full, goes the philosophy, there is no room for anything new in your life. My bookcases are groaning. You couldn’t force in even the slimmest new volume let alone a new life.

  There are books from early childhood, prizes from school and night classes and ten volumes of the second-hand encyclopaedia I bought with one of my first pay packets but which were hopelessly out of date even then. There are also the books that had belonged to David’s grandfather. Although he had died before David and I met, I always felt I knew him from his books. He was an active reader and the margins are full of his thoughts.

  Like the wardrobes and cupboards, my books chart my life history: interests, fads and pleasures plus a lifetime’s craving to find answers to all those questions beginning with ‘Why…’ Many have not been read in years because I have been too tired at the end of a working day, and after cooking dinner have put my feet up in front of the television instead. And if truth be told I have moved on from most of my books while finding it impossible to let them go. The ones that still have something to say to me, and which I really want to read again, are already on board Voyager.

  At least I have plenty of time for this mooch down Memory Lane, thanks to our purchasers.

  4

  Lovely Mahon

  If, by the time we had got Voyager safely berthed, our purchasers had made arrangements for a survey to be done we should undoubtedly have taken the first available flight home and set about emptying our house. But they hadn’t. Unlike the property markets in some other parts of the world, English conveyancing is untrammelled by the concept of due diligence, where the purchaser’s deposit is lost if an agreed deadline is not met. In England a man’s word is his bond, so the laying out of hard cash on a surveyor’s report is the first concrete evidence of serious intent. In its absence, doubt had begun to emerge, and we had decided to remain where we were until a survey had been done and there was some hint of a contract about to be signed.

  We had chosen Mahon after consulting a list of places recommended by yachtsmen who had wintered in the Mediterranean before us. We could not have made a happier choice. At 26 miles long by 11 wide, Menorca is the second-largest of the Balearic Islands and lies some 50 miles off Spain’s southern coast. Mahon harbour is sheltered, our berth secure and our surroundings truly beautiful. An additional bonus would prove, over time, to be the marina manager, Joss.

  Mahon was not simply a delightful place to wait while the initial formalities of our house sale were completed. The Mediterranean climate was also having a beneficial effect on both of us and especially on David’s respiratory system. Back home in England the cold and damp of winter had already settled in, while Menorca’s November temperatures – comparable to an English summer – allowed us to continue sailing or to roam on foot or bicycle. The island is a place of pretty villages and lovely beaches; its capital a harmonious blend of white-walled cottages, grand mansions and small market gardens bordered by dry-stone walls with gates made from twisted olive branches. And on our rambles we could rest under trees still heavy with ripe oranges or sit in a sunlit square with coffee and an English newspaper.

  Two weeks passed and our purchasers had still not arranged for a survey. For people claiming they wanted to be in before Christmas, this was troubling. Then a telephone call from the estate agent in England confirmed our suspicions. Someone had been economical with the truth. Contracts had not been in the process of being exchanged on the woman’s house, as claimed when the ‘cash offer’ had been made on ours, for the simple reason that her ex-husband was refusing to sign the contract of sale. There would be no problem, we were assured; the house was part of the divorce settlement and if he refused the latest request to sign then a judge in the Family Court would sign on his behalf. It would take a couple of weeks, but everything would still go through in good time. This did at least explain the lack of urgency in getting a surveyor’s report. In the meantime, we were enjoying Mahon.

  After setting sail from England we had anchored out wherever possible. And keen to reach the Mediterranean before those infamous autumn gales began lashing the Atlantic coast, we had had little time to loiter along the way. Accordingly, this was the first occasion on which we had spent any time in one place and close enough inshore to be part of a neighbourhood. Now, however, we were part of the fabric of a small stretch of Mahon harbour.

  Behind us on the quay were five stuccoed houses with dark green window shutters and terracotta roofs, with living quarters above and businesses or garages below. The local people, including those working on the boats along the waterfront, frequented the café at one end and bought lobster and langoustine from the seafood shop at the other. In the garages between, house owners sometimes threw impromptu children’s parties on Saturdays. Each weekday, on the street outside, a man with a bin welded to the front of a tricycle gathered up the brown fallen leaves from the sycamores lining the street and took them away. While northern seaside resorts become cold and grey during autumn, here the only difference between summer and winter seemed to be that the tourists had gone home and the residents had their island to themselves for a while.

  Across the harbour from us lay Mahon’s unexpectedly lovely naval base with its long low white buildings and manicured lawns. Every evening there, as the western sky turned red and the harbour shimmered gold, the Spanish equivalent of The Last Post echoed out across the water and the national flag was lowered.

  Other sounds were less mellifluous. Around midnight on our first Sunday we both shot upright in bed, eyes staring into the darkness as all the demons of hell filled the night with their abominations. We fell back against our pillows again on realising that it was just the large skip on the quay being emptied. I had woken again as it started to get light, thinking a child was crying, but then remembered that sunrise is the prime time for disputes among feral cats. The striking clock on the naval base struck two minutes before the one at the church of Santa Maria above us, and four minutes before another further up in the town. It was therefore best to be sound asleep before midnight if possible, except on Sundays when the skips were emptied and it made no difference anyway.

  The Christmas lights started to go up in the streets and the big supermarket across town began filling up with dolls in rich velvet dresses, festive tins of biscuits and some particularly delicious bars of chocolate which we began to sample quite heavily, especially the truffle. I suspected we were putting on weight but the bathroom scales seemed to have disappeared.

  I began making plans for Christmas dinner on board. The logistics of the usual roast turkey – with three different stuffings (sage and onion, chestnut and sausage), roast potatoes with three other types of vegetables and a thickened gravy, plus steamed Christmas pudding and brandy sauce – all joc
keying for space among two gas rings and an oven the size of a shoebox, would need a little planning. The first agreed compromise was going to be the turkey. It would have to be a small chicken. The rest had still to be negotiated.

  In the second week of December we heard from the estate agent again. A survey had finally been done on our house. The main fault was a bit of flashing around one chimney but on the strength of it the purchasers were demanding another huge reduction in the purchase price. They would also be interested in some of our rugs and furniture. David told the agent we would get back to him.

  ‘Well?’ he said, as he hung up the phone.

  ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘that amount should cover the chimney flashing, the surveyor’s report, their solicitor’s costs, removal expenses and even after paying us next to nothing for our rugs and furniture out of it there should still be a little something left towards a house warming party.’

  ‘I suppose,’ David said, ‘that knowing our situation they think they can take us for all they can get.’

  It was the ‘rugs and furniture’ that had angered me most. I knew the two of them had been in the house a number of times to ‘measure up’, even before getting the survey done. It had not occurred to me, however, that they might be treating our home as some sort of bargain basement in which to pick up our best bits and pieces on the cheap. On the strength of their cash offer and short deadline we had dropped the price well below what we thought was fair, stopped cruising and hurried into a berth, only to spend the last six weeks like sitting ducks waiting to be plucked.

  That afternoon we climbed the hill to the travel agent. Two days later we flew home. We arrived at midnight and breakfasted late. It was cold, overcast and drizzling. The northern English sky was battleship grey and the damp palpable. I was shocked at the change in David. Already his breathing was audible and he looked exhausted. He was about to dial the estate agent’s number when a key turned in the lock of the front door. It opened just as I got there. Framed in the doorway was the estate agent’s assistant. Behind her were our purchasers, come to do some more measuring up. One look at my face and the estate agent’s assistant asked them to wait in her car.

  It is good to have an opportunity to express one’s feelings at full flood when you are really livid. Why develop stress-related illness when you can pass it on to the very people you are paying to save you from it in the first place? Whilst assuring the woman pressed into the corner of our sofa that none of my anger was directed at her, she was left in no doubt as to my feelings towards our purchasers, or what they could expect if they set foot in our house again before contracts had been signed. She was most understanding and drove them away.

  David then rang the estate agent and asked him when we could expect contracts to be signed and exchanged. There would be some delay, it now appeared, as our purchasers’ purchaser had not yet completed the sale of his house due to delays caused by his purchaser.

  So. It never had been a cash offer in the first place, and we were now entangled in something we had drastically reduced our house price in the expectation of avoiding – a chain. The agent was asked for his assessment of the current state of the housing market. Dead about summed up his response. His view was echoed by all the other For Sale boards, creaking forlornly in the wind, which we had observed from the taxi on our way home from the airport. Despite our frustration, the sensible option in the circumstances seemed to be to continue with the purchasers we had, because purchasers at present were pretty thin on the ground.

  ‘However,’ David said, ‘they can whistle for any further reduction in the price and our goods aren’t up for grabs.’

  ‘I shall tell them,’ the agent had said diplomatically, ‘that you do not consider the requested reduction to be justified and that your belongings will be going into store.’

  ‘Fine,’ said David.

  When he hung up he grinned. ‘Well, there’s one thing, we can have a turkey and the full works for Christmas dinner, plus central heating, unlimited use of the washing machine and the dishwasher!’

  5

  Waiting to Exchange

  The weeks since the offer was first made on our house have now stretched into months and all enquiries are met with obfuscation. Our house has already been kept off the market during Christmas and New Year, one of the most popular periods for home buying. And we are now well on the way to Easter and the arrival of spring, that eternal symbol of renewal and rebirth and a favourite time for people wanting to make a new start in their lives with a new home.

  It takes around three weeks and a degree of detective work to discover that our purchasers are still not in a position to sign a contract of sale because their purchaser’s ex-wife is refusing to hand over his half of the money from their house sale so that he can buy our purchasers’ house.

  At night I dream of doors through which Family Court judges, solicitors, estate agents, house vendors and buyers, all in the process of getting divorced from one another, go in and out like classic farce, or one of those medieval German town clocks.

  During the day I agonise about the state of our boat. In the past, before every winter, we have removed all the soft furnishings, clothes, books, electrical goods and anything, in fact, which is subject to damp, mildew or mould. This winter we had left Voyager fully laden in a mild mid-December expecting to be back in about three weeks. It is now the end of February and Menorca has been undergoing one of its wettest winters ever. So has England.

  Grateful at least to have been dry and warmly housed through these cold, wet months we review our situation. One of the benefits of procrastination in disposing of our goods has been a very comfortable winter. Another is that if we need to put the house back on the market – and with the passage of time this seems increasingly likely – not only does the lived-in home look more appealing, but the sight of vendors camping out in a virtually empty house sends a message of desperation to any potential buyer.

  There is, however, a wealth of surplus items which can be disposed of without detracting from the marketability of the house. For these we use auctions, newspaper advertisements, cards in the local newsagent’s window and on the local supermarket’s notice board, local charity shops and our first-ever car boot sale. And once the process has begun, I undergo a sea change in regard to all those personal items I have found it so difficult to discard. Suddenly the problem of the clothing and shoes becomes easy. I retain only those items I ever intend to wear again, which are very few, and accept that the rest have been kept for sentiment only. And since I have photographs of most of the occasions they represent, why hang onto them? With a sigh of relief I distribute them around the charity shops.

  The photograph angle also provides a solution to the more difficult category of goods I have to address next – my lifetime in things. The fundamental problem appears to be that these things are Memory and that once they have gone my past has gone too. But if a sight of them is all it takes to stimulate memory, a photograph will surely do just as well as the object itself and take up far less space. So I arrange them in groups, photograph them and get rid of them.

  I have loved what all these belongings represent. For the last few years, however, the things themselves have hung about me like the chains of Marley’s ghost. So have those items connected with the significant others in my life. Unlike my own possessions, however, any disposal of these has been imbued with guilt, for disposing of them is to somehow discard the people with whom they are associated.

  But when I think this through I realise how silly it is. People do not reside in things. Those who were important to you when they were alive remain part of you after they die. You take them with you wherever you go. And it is far better to carry their positive influence with you into your future than have their memory gather dust among the bric-a-brac of your past. I like to think they would have approved of the charities to which they posthumously contributed.

  With Easter imminent, and still no completion in sight, we discuss the poss
ibility of putting the house back on the market. We have had enough. Unfortunately we are painfully aware that none of the other For Sale boards in the district, many of which went up long before ours, have Sold stickers on them either. House buyers seem to have become an endangered species. Before doing anything hasty, therefore, we make discreet enquiries of another estate agent as to the current state of the market.

  ‘I think we’ve seen the last of the suicides,’ he says. ‘And when this latest crop of bankruptcies has been dealt with I think the industry will be fitter, leaner and ready to move into the 21st century.’

  We still have around nine months left of the 20th, however, and while we have no desire to spend them waiting for our ‘cash’ buyer to complete, we do have to be realistic. Even making allowances for the agent’s gallows humour it is noticeable that a number of the most recent For Sale boards going up locally are for estate agents’ own premises. The northern England property market is so dead that not only independent agencies are going out of business but even the major chains are closing branches and putting the buildings up for sale. Thanks to one of those cruel streaks of fate, the south of England is currently enjoying a much-trumpeted property boom.

  Another week or two of frustration later and we decide we will put the house back on the market for Easter. Co-incidentally this is the very moment that our purchasers advise our agent that they are ready to sign a contract. However, the days go by until it is so close to Good Friday that we accept that nothing will happen now until the solicitors representing both sides return to work after the holiday. So we settle down to wait. And wait. Because after Easter our purchasers become incommunicado.

  Despite the agent’s best attempts to contact them, their telephone is permanently on answer-phone and they do not respond to letters or people shouting through their letterbox. They cannot still be on holiday because between them they have four children in varying stages of full-time education.