MOVING HOUSE IS HARD TO DO
Sarah Sands has discovered that it really
is like getting a divorce; you even have to bribe the children
MOVING house, along with divorce, is often cited as life's most stressful experi- ence. The first is sometimes a consequence of the second, but even when the two events are unrelated there are emotional similari- ties. Last week I stood in the hallway of the Fulham Victorian house that I am abandon- ing, and felt guilty panic. It wasn't you, it was me. The empty house had a brave bloom to it. It may have given me the best 15 years of its life, but I should not flatter myself that it could not exist without me.
No, my imprint disappears the moment the packing cases are out of the front door. Even the distinctive smell of washing-up liquid and children's trainers has gone. Now that the house is on its own again, the rooms seem suddenly bigger, lighter. Per- haps I have made a terrible mistake? As with divorce, friends keep a baffled dis- tance. 'Why are you moving? I thought you seemed so happy.' I try to justify what amounts to boredom and restlessness with something more rational. Actually, we just weren't suited. I need space, a new sense of direction (the M4).
As with divorce, the children are the first casualties. 'What do you plan to do for the rest of the summer holidays?' I asked, maternally, last week. 'Chain myself to the roof,' replied my eldest son. It does not make me feel good, to watch the chil- dren being buffeted between homes and builders because of my selfish impulse. So I have decided that I am moving for the sake of the children. If I am happy, they will be happy.
During my courtship I did everything to make the new house sound attractive. 'It's amazing,' I would suddenly chortle. 'Shep- herd's Bush is so full of micro- scooters/children the same age/copies of Harry Potter books.' The exchanges would always end with my younger son resorting to the protection of the law. 'But we haven't actually signed anything yet, right?'
The notion that a house is for life is absurdly romantic. There may be some, such as A.L. Rowse and Trenarren in Cornwall, who live together happily ever after, but outside the aristocracy and romantic literature people are more realis- tic about dumping the first house and trad- ing up. Indeed, a home with a history can give buyers the creeps. 'This house has been in the same family for generations' is an estate agent's euphemism for 'needs total refurbishment'. Similarly, nobody wants to see a photograph of an interior with people in it. They only alienate you from the property.
For the middle classes, the prospects of finding the perfect match first time are limited. As with marriage, you can have only what is available at the time that you are searching. As with marriage, too, you must be clear about whether or not you are on the market. If you find a house, you must immediately stop looking at others. I tormented myself by trawling the Daily Telegraph property website for new details after I had exchanged contracts. If you treated spouses in the same manner, there would be social mayhem. Perhaps this is why our socially interventionist govern- ment is so keen on controlling the proper- ty market through stamp duty and the abolition of mortgage interest relief. The Chancellor refuses morally to endorse marriage through financial incentives, but he is whole-heartedly committed to monogamous relationships with houses. This, of course, is a man of such celibacy in property matters that he renounced his own Downing Street residence.
While lifelong fidelity to a house is too great a commitment for most people to bear, it is impressive when you come across those who have achieved it. The two redeeming features of Sir Bob Ayling are first, his great tenderness towards his handi- capped child, and second that, despite his salary, bonuses and pay-offs, he has not moved from his home in Stockwell.
'If the Browns have a baby, it'll be after Leo Blair's position.' I would not have laboured the comparison between moving house and divorce were it not for the fact that an American academic has squeezed an entire book out of the sub- ject of our erotic relationship with our hous- es. Sex and Real Estate is a must-sell title, although the author, Marjorie Garber, almost spoils it with her comically earnest metaphors. 'The House as Body' is one chapter heading. However, she has a grasp of the emotional impulses of buying and sell- ing houses:
The same daydreaming; the same quickening of the pulse; the lingering around the phone, willing it to ring; the surreptitious visit to the place, just to catch another glimpse (`It won't hurt just to drive by — it's only a little bit out of the way'). And of course, all too often, the same broken heart.
The author is good on the contrasting moral characters of the seller and the buyer. The seller, along with the agent, has had a bad press. It is the seller who moves sofas to cover damp patches and speaks liltingly of the peaceful neighbourhood, although Concorde misses the roof by inch- es three times a day. But Marjorie Garber exposes the trusting buyer as the villain. A New York City broker is quoted: 'Buyers are liars.' They lie about their financial sit- uation, they lie about how much they are willing to spend, and buyers lie about being sellers. Perhaps it is because selling is a necessarily public act. Your family will notice that strangers are being escorted round your house and your neighbours will see the photograph in the estate agent's window. But buying can be a guilty secret.
A friend of mine discovered after many years of marriage that her husband had been repeatedly unfaithful. Sad, but unre- markable. What was eye-popping was her discovery that he had also bought a flat. For a member of the mortgaged classes to buy a secret flat seemed an act of Aitke- nesque daring and wickedness. It is inter- esting that Marjorie Garber calls her book Sex and Real Estate rather than Love. It suggests that the inflamed state in which we acquire is not rational or wholesome. Few of us behave well. The combination of competition and lust makes Life look like a monastery. I recently found one of my most high-minded friends crouching in the bushes at a party. He had just been intro- duced to a man whom he had gazumped horribly earlier in the year.
I know that the shine will wear off my new Trophy House, as Miss Garber would call it. It will have all the irritations of my old one with a new throat-constricting fmancial bur- den. I have also, somehow, lost an entire phase of my life. I refer to the contents of the cardboard boxes as memories, but in truth they are junk. Goodbye to all that. I am not of a class or character to treat a house anthropomorphically. As a belligerent acquaintance grunted at his second wife, 'I got rid of the first one and I can get rid of you.' In the language of politicians, it is time to move on.
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