35. Home hunting (2/4)

We got there quickly. Nowhere to park. Good start I thought, already wishing we'd gone straight home.

'Let's do the French thing and park on the pavement.' My husband always says that (still today!) before parking outside of parking spaces as if this was a kind of magic permission slip. Say the words out loud and you will be allowed. 

We met our estate agent at the door of what looked like a small, abandoned house. I was not impressed but kept quiet. Sometimes I talk too much and I was very aware of that at that precise point in my life. 

We were now in a long, dark, narrow corridor. There were still coats hanging on the pegs. It was not sure about soul but there were definitely ghosts. At the end of the long narrow tunnel there was a glimmer of light. 

I felt like walking home with the little bundles. I would feed them and tuck them into bed, would read a story and then go downstairs, settle by a roaring fire with a glass of wine and a good book and wait for my husband. Then I would ask: 'How was the house? Any second visit planned?' But it did not work like that. I would learn that through experience.

So I just sighed.

The first room was small and furnished with a piano and straight backed chairs, the single rug in the middle and the flowery curtains gave it an old-fashioned look. Through the double glass doors and into a similarly old-fashioned dining room. I put the wee bundles on the floor and asked the man about the house.

'It has been uninhabited for a while. An old lady used to live here on her own.' 

'Did she die here?'

He looked freaked out again. 

'I don't know, he said.'

'It doesn't matter anyway.' My husband came to rescue the poor guy.

But it did matter! Soul plus ghost equals charm. Men did not have a clue. They did not have the same sixth sense as us women. We make the world go round. They just hunt for the beasts. I thought it better not to share this point of view at that stage. So I kept quiet. 

I sighed and looked down at the floor.

And that is when I noticed the beautiful blue and green tiles.

'Look at these tiles! They're gorgeous!' My husband touched them to see if it was not some kind of linoleum.

'They're nice. Really nice.' 

I ignored the man, men actually and walked all other the tiles all the way to the kitchen which looked more like a workshop and pushed the door that led into a garden.

I could hear our estate agent going on and on about the tiles and the old woman.

An overgrown garden, completely walled in (I've got a thing about walled gardens, don't know why) with what looked like a nicely rundown cottage at the back, half concealed behind enormous hydrangeas.

My husband looked impressed (as far as an English man can) and asked a question I would never have thought to ask:

'Is this a shared garden?' 

The estate agent was very pleased about this question. He explained that it was all part of 'the property' and that the garden was completely safe.

'Walls all round!' he said, beaming, looking in the direction of the wee bundles who were playing hide-and-seek behind the hydrangeas.

English people, it is well known, love a garden and my husband, poor English man in France got very enthusiastic (English mode) about it and about what we would learn was called 'la dépendance'.

We were ready to go home. There was a garden, maybe one or two ghosts. Further investigation was essential to confirm those points but charm was a definite possibility with that one.