Gorsefield

by David Simpson

The house looked terrible. I’d been warned but it still came as a shock. Loose tiles, moss on the roof, paint peeling off windows, curtains half drawn. It looked derelict. Maybe this visit was a mistake. I’d had my heart broken by this house before. Was it about to happen again?

Gorsefield was the house my grandpa had lovingly built for his retirement. Amongst my earliest memories were watching him sharpen his razor on the strap in the bathroom while he shaved. The smell of newly picked apples nestling in their crates. My mouth watering in anticipation of porridge on the range, ready for breakfast. Standing on the hills above the house as the wind whipped my face gazing out over three counties. We’d spent so many Easter and summer holidays there.

I’d told my grandpa, if he ever had to sell, I'd buy it. I had my pocket money. I’d look after it. And I really wanted to. It was my sanctuary. When we were there my mother couldn’t act out her latest drama. My father had to tone down the continual criticism. Grandma and grandpa were my guardians, making sure nothing bad happened. Safety. Peace.

Collecting apples with grandpa in his orchard, placing them gently in wooden crates making sure they were just the right distance apart so they wouldn’t be bruised. Helping lay the breakfast table in the kitchen with grandma, everyone had their own special egg cosies, one in knitted yellow wool, another a cockerel’s head made out of white and red felt with glass eyes. Individual cream jugs by each plate. Weeks of summery enchantment walking up through the bracken, past the pigsties, to the hill tops. Mesmerised by sky larks ever ascending songs, embroidering the wind.

“Grandpa has sold Gorsefield,” my mother said one day as I came in from school.

“What?” I shuddered at the thought.

“Gorsefield, it’s sold.”

“But I said I'd buy it.”

“He sold it to that man from Birmingham.”

Choking on my sobs, my heart broke. Gorsefield? Gone?

My grandparents moved to Clevedon and, as far as I know, they never saw Gorsefield again. But I couldn’t stay away. Several years later we drove to see my beloved house. It was empty. It had been empty for seven years. The man, who’d badgered grandpa to sell, wasn't living in it. Curtainless windows, the gate hanging loose, the grass overgrown. I got back in the car. My stomach churned. More heartache.

When grandpa died grandma came to live with us. I had a bit of Gorsefield living in the bedroom across the landing. And I loved her even more.

Decades later, when I had just turned 70, I got a call from my older brother.

“I have been inside Gorsefield,” he shouted down the phone. “It’s in a terrible state, really neglected. The owners have said we can see it next year.” He sent pictures, they were awful. It looked like a hoarder lived there.

The following year we met up to see the house.

“I’m not going inside,” my twin brother said, “I don't want to ruin my memories.”

The next morning we pulled up outside Gorsefield. I was torn. Deep pleasure at being back and horror at the state of the building. It looked abandoned. Trees had been cut down, hedges demolished. A tatty new garage where the pampas grasses had grown. We walked down onto the veranda above the garden to meet the owners.

“Hello I'm Sarah and this is my brother Simon.” We shook hands and got to know each other.

“Can I see the workshop under the house?” I asked. We stood inside as I took my bearings. It felt bigger than I’d expected.

“I remember helping grandpa store apples in crates.”

“There are crates in that storeroom. They’re probably the same crates,” said Simon.

Standing at the corner of the garden we fell into comfortable reminiscing, competing over pop concerts we had been to. I found myself only half listening. My eyes were drawn to the slope of my grandpa’s garden. Dashes of purple, bluebells nodding gently in the late spring breeze. The lime green shimmer of new leaves. Apple trees in full bloom, the first pink white petals starting to blow off.

I suddenly sensed my grandparents in the wind amongst the trees. Surrounding me in the call of the wood pigeons.

Something lifted off me, a weight I didn't know I had been carrying. Something was being resolved, a settling of things.

The neglect didn't matter. It was a house, somebody else’s house, Simon's house. And he was lovely. Gorsefield had been in good hands all this time and would be into the future.

As I walked away tears pricked my eyes, the old bruising in my heart easing. I was absolved.

My twin brother beside me raged about the house being in such a terrible state. I rested my hand on his arm.

“It’ll be all right.”