Everything to Gain. Barbara Taylor Bradford
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he laughed. I’d rolled my eyes to the ceiling, but couldn’t resist flashing a smile at him as I appeased the twins, promising them some cooking wine to do their own ‘house christening’ the following day.
As for the name, I culled it from local lore, which had it that centuries ago Indians had lived in the meadows below the hill upon which our house was built. And frequently, when I am standing on the ridge looking down at the meadows, I half close my eyes and, squinting against the light, I can picture Pequot squaws, their braves and their children sitting outside their wigwams, with horses tethered nearby and pots cooking over open fires. I can almost smell the pungent wood smoke, hear their voices and laughter, the neighing of the horses, the beat of their drums.
Highly imaginative of me, perhaps, but it is a potent image and one which continues to persist. Also, it pleases me greatly to think that I and my family live on land once favoured by native Americans centuries ago, who no doubt appreciated its astonishing beauty then as we do today.
We found the house quite by accident. No, that’s not exactly true, when I look back. The house found us. That is what I believe, anyway, and I don’t suppose I will ever change my mind. It reached out to us like a living thing, and when, for the first time, we stepped over the threshold into that lovely, low-ceilinged entrance hall I knew at once that it would be ours. It was as though it had been waiting for us to make it whole, waiting for us to make it happy again. And this we have done. Everyone who visits us is struck by the feeling of tranquillity and happiness, the warm and welcoming atmosphere that pervades it, and which envelops everyone the moment they come through the front door.
But in June of 1986 I had no idea that we would finally find the house of our dreams, or any house for that matter. We had looked for such a long time for a weekend retreat in the country, without success. And so we had almost given up hope of ever finding a suitable place to escape to from New York. The houses we had viewed in various parts of Connecticut had been too small and poky, or too large, too grand, and far too expensive. Or so threadbare they would have cost a fortune to make habitable.
That particular weekend, Andrew and I were staying with friends in Sharon, an area we did not know very well. We had taken Jamie and Lissa to Mudge Pond, the town beach, for a picnic lunch on the grassy bank that ran in front of the narrow strip of sand and vast body of calm, silver-streaked water beyond.
Later, as we set out to return to Sharon, we inadvertently took a wrong turning and, completely lost, drove endlessly around the hills above the pond. As we circled the countryside, trying to get back to the main highway, we unexpectedly found ourselves at a dead end in front of a house.
By mistake, we had gone up a wide, winding driveway, believing it to be a side road which would lead us back, hopefully, to Route 41.
Startled, Andrew had brought the car to a standstill. Intrigued by the house, we had stared at it and then at each other. And in unison we had exclaimed about its charm, something which was evident despite the sorry signs of neglect and disuse which surrounded it.
Made of white clapboard, it had graceful, fluid lines and was rather picturesque, rambling along the way it did on top of the hill, set in front of a copse of dark green pines and very old, gnarled maples with great spreading branches. It was one of those classic colonial houses for which Connecticut is renowned, and it had a feeling of such mellowness about it that it truly captured our attention.
‘What a shame nobody cares enough about this lovely old place to look after it properly, to give it a fresh coat of paint,’ Andrew had murmured, and, opening the door, he got out of the car. Instructing Jenny, our English au pair, to stay inside with the children, I had quickly followed my husband.
In a way I cannot explain, certainly not in any rational sense, the house seemed to beckon us, pull us towards it, and we had found ourselves hurrying over to the front door, noticing the peeling paint and tarnished brass knocker as we did. Andrew had banged the latter, whilst I peeked in through one of the grimy windows.
Murky though the light was inside, I managed to make out pieces of furniture draped in dustcloths and walls covered with faded, rose-patterned wallpaper. There were no signs of life and naturally no one answered Andrew’s insistent knocking. ‘It looks totally deserted, Mal, as if it hasn’t been lived in for years,’ he said, and after a moment, wondered out loud: ‘Could it be for sale, do you think?’
As he put his arm around my shoulders and walked me back to the car, I found myself saying, ‘I hope it is,’ and I still remember the way my heart had missed a beat at the thought that it might very well be on the market.
A few seconds later, driving away down the winding road, I suddenly spotted the broken wooden sign, old and weatherworn and fallen over in the long grass. When I pointed it out to Andrew, he brought the car to a standstill instantly. I opened the door, leaped out and sprinted across to the grass verge to look at it.
Even before I reached the dilapidated sign, I knew, deep within myself, that it would say that the house was for sale. And I was right.
During the next few hours we had managed to find our way back to Sharon, hunted out the real-estate broker’s office, talked to her at length, then returned to the old white house on the hill. She had led the way out of town, we had followed her, and we had been almost too excited to speak to each other, hardly daring to hope that the house would be right for us.
‘It doesn’t have a name,’ Kathy Sands, the real-estate broker had remarked, as she had fitted the key in the lock and opened the front door. ‘It’s always been known as the Vane place. Well, for about seventy years anyway.’
All of us trooped inside.
Jamie and Lissa were carefully shepherded by Jenny; I carried Trixy, our little Bichon Frise, listening to Kathy’s commentary as we followed her along the gallery-like entrance, which, Andrew pointed out, was somewhat Elizabethan in style. ‘Reminds me of Tudor interior architecture,’ he had explained, glancing around admiringly as he spoke. ‘In fact, it’s rather like the gallery at Parham,’ he added. ‘You remember Parham, don’t you, Mal? That lovely old Tudor house in Sussex.’
I had nodded in response, smiling at him, sharing the remembrance of the wonderful two weeks’ holiday we had had in England the year before. It had been like a second honeymoon for us. After a week with Diana in Yorkshire we had left the twins with her and gone off alone together for a few days.
Kathy Sands was a local woman born and bred, a fund of information about everything, including the previous owners – and over the last couple of centuries at that. According to her, only three families had owned the house from the time it had been built in 1790 to the present. These were the Dodds, the Hobsons and the Vanes. Old Mrs Vane, who was formerly a Hobson, had been born in the house and had continued to live there after her marriage to Samuel Vane. Eighty-eight, widowed, and growing rather frail, she had finally had to give up her independence, had gone to live with her daughter in Sharon. And so she had put the house, which had been her home for an entire lifetime, on the market two years earlier.
‘Why hasn’t it been sold? Is there something wrong with it?’ I had asked worriedly, giving the broker one of those penetrating looks which I had learned so perfectly from my mother years before.
‘No, there’s nothing wrong with it,’ Kathy Sands had replied. ‘Nothing at all. It’s just a bit off the beaten track, too far from Manhattan for most people who are looking for a weekend place. And it is rather big.’
It did not take Andrew and me long to understand why the real-estate broker had said the house was big: it was huge. And yet despite its size, it had a compactness about it, and it was not as sprawling and spread out as it appeared to be from the outside. Although it did have more rooms than we really needed, it was a neat and tidy house, to my way of thinking, and there was a natural flow to the layout. Downstairs the rooms opened off the long gallery, upstairs from a central landing. Because its core was very old, it had a genuine quaintness to it, with floors that dipped, ceilings that sloped, beams that were lopsided. Some of the windows had panes made of antique blown glass dating back to the previous century, and there were ten fireplaces, eight of which were in working order, Kathy had