kate thompson

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Linette O’Leary loved her house so much that she kissed the hall door any time she left home. The back of the hall door, of course, not the glossy front with its gleaming brass door furniture. She didn’t want her neighbours thinking she was a looper. After she’d kissed the door and stroked its flawless surface, she’d whisper ‘Bye bye, house’.

When she’d been first married her husband Gary used to find this little gesture endearingly idiosyncratic. Now she knew it irritated the hell out of him, so she refrained from indulging in the farewell ritual any time he was around. Which wasn’t actually that often, these days. Since he’d been promoted in his job he was off travelling a lot in the UK and abroad. Linette didn’t mind all the travelling. It meant that she had more time to be alone with her house.

She sometimes wondered if she didn’t love the house more than she loved Gary. She certainly loved it more than the pet they’d once had. She’d fallen for a picture of an apricot-coloured cat being cradled by an actress in Hello! magazine, and she had boned up on this cat because it was exactly the same colour as the walls in her sitting room. She had learned that it was of a breed known as ‘Red Burmese’, and because she thought that it would be pretty cool to have a pedigree cat that matched her décor, she had mentioned to Gary that a pet might be nice to keep her company while he was off on his travels. He’d agreed, but as it had turned out, the cat - which she’d christened Tarquin - had been a real pain. Instead of living up to its aristocratic name and looking elegant and refined like the one in Hello!, Tarquin would come in from the garden with filthy paws and climb all the way up to the top of her lovely toile de jouy curtains, where he’d cling on, glaring balefully down at her. He also had a habit of flinging himself upside down on the floor under her brocade chaise longue, and dragging himself along by his claws until the trim began to detach itself. She had been secretly quite relieved when Tarquin had come a cropper under the wheels of a Dynarod van, and had stoically refused to entertain any idea of a replacement. Even a fluffy Chinchilla that blinked at her bluely from the arms of another bimbo in Hello! – an accessory that she knew would look totally fabulous in her bedroom - failed to win her over. No, Linette, she told herself sternly. Think of the fluff that would be shed all over your alpaca throw!

Linette favoured throws and blankets in the bedroom. Duvets were so twentieth century! Even though it meant that bed-making was rather more of a chore for her, it was worth it for that classy look. A beautiful white robe in hand-embroidered lawn draped casually at the foot of the bed completed the effect. She never wore the robe, but it looked just fantastic on the bed. She’d toyed with the idea of hanging a mosquito net over the bed head, but had rejected it when she suddenly started seeing loads of them in soap opera actresses’ bedrooms in Hello! Mosquito nets were obviously becoming a bit common.

More than anything when Gary was away on his travels, Linette loved to wander around her house, relishing it. She would pour herself coffee and sit at her beautiful granite kitchen island, sipping from her hand-painted Bridgewater china and admiring the way the light streamed in through the skylight in the extension they’d had built two years earlier. She loved the way light bounced off her beautiful glass brick walls and the way her streamlined worktops and steel blue units gleamed. In the evening, when the sun hit the front of the house, she would pour a little Chablis (it used to be Chardonnay until Chardonnay became so ubiquitous) into one of her elegant designer wine glasses, and go and sit on the antique prayer chair in her sitting room, letting her gaze roam indulgently over the book shelves stacked with glossy coffee table books and classic novels. She couldn’t bear the look of commercial fiction with its tacky jackets, and she shuddered any time she noticed one of Gary’s John Grishams or Stephen Kings lurking amongst the Iris Murdochs and the Stephen Hawkings that she must get round to reading some day. The John Grishams and Stephen Kings flew off the shelves the moment Gary went travelling again, ending up in the second-hand book shop where Linette bought the paperback romances for which she had a secret, shameful passion. Once she had inadvertently left a Silhouette title indecently exposed on her coffee table, and she had blushed pinker than a Silhouette heroine when a visiting Green Party candidate had accepted her invitation to step inside for a cup of tea and had spotted the dog-eared book splayed face downward, looking as if it had been ravished.

Linette couldn’t understand why some people moaned about political canvassers and Jehovah’s witnesses and the like ringing your doorbell. She was always interested in what other people had to say, especially when they admired her sitting room and asked her questions about her hand-embroidered cushions or her collection of sepia-tinted portraits in their antique frames. Of course the aristocratic-looking individuals in the photographs weren’t really her ancestors, but there was no harm in allowing her visitors to think they were.

Linette was deeply ashamed of the fact that her father had worked in the elephant enclosure in Dublin zoo, and that her mother had worked as a seamstress, doing alterations for one of the more old-fashioned department stores. She was deeply ashamed of the name she’d been landed with (Linda Looney), and had vowed that she would change it as soon as it was in her power to do so. So she had studied hard at school and landed a good job with a top class estate agency, where she had learned how important it was to present the correct image. She had blown her first wage packet on a stylish suit, and her second on two pairs of very good shoes. She kept her shoes polished, her suit immaculate, and she worked hard at perfecting her fingernails and her smile (she was exceptionally pretty) and pronouncing her ‘th’s as ‘th’, not ‘d’. By the time she met gorgeous Gary, Linette was quite a catch - and when he told her three years after they’d married that he was now earning enough money for her to give up her job, they had cracked a bottle of champagne to celebrate. It was the first time the John Rocha flutes had ever been used.

Linette didn’t miss her job at all. She’d been finding it more and more stressful, and at last she had all the time in the world to do the things to their Victorian semi-d that she’d always wanted. She had the floors and banisters and skirting boards sanded, she painted dado rails and executed stencils on the walls of the bedroom that was to be the nursery, she harried builders and plumbers when her pride and joy, the brand-new kitchen extension, wasn’t as perfect as it needed to be. And finally, when it was all finished, she and Gary drank champagne from the flutes for the second time.

That had been two years ago, and still the nursery wasn’t in use, but Linette didn’t really mind because she knew that if they had a baby she’d have to have another (because no one ever chose to have just one baby, did they?). And she knew that if she had more than one baby she would have to leave the perfect home she had created, and move somewhere bigger, and it would break her heart to have to start all over again elsewhere. The other thing that put her off the idea of moving was that she had a sneaking feeling that she could never love another house the way she loved this one – she could never love another house so much that she’d want to kiss its front door.

The perfection of her house didn’t, however, deter Linette from watching home improvement programmes on the television, or from buying home improvement magazines. She bought them all – Homes and Gardens, Elle Decoration, Image Interiors, Country House Living. She had bought wallpaper* magazine once, but she didn’t think much of it. It was too radical for her tastes – she preferred her surroundings to be homey and the look propagated by that particular style bible was anything but. The only real concession to modernity in her house was her fabulous kitchen with its steel blue units and its glass brick wall.

Leafing through the pages of these glossies often filled Linette with a kind of anguish because she knew that her house could quite easily hold its own when compared with the ones in the magazines. What did you have to do, who did you have to know to get your house in there? She couldn’t help but seethe when she read about the bloody lady novelists and fashion designers and freelance so-and-sos who had ‘transformed’ rooms and ‘tamed’ gardens and ‘created’ spaces. She wanted to scribble on their complacent faces when she saw photographs of these domestic goddesses ‘working’ in their studios or ‘cooking’ in their kitchens or ‘relaxing’ in their macramé hammocks.

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These photographs Linette examined with the kind of scrutiny an art valuer might devote to a great painting, noting details that, magpie-like, she could appropriate and use in her own home - such as the miniature ferns displayed under glass cloches; or the wire trugs laden with gleaming aubergines; or the petals fallen from a display of peonies that had ‘scattered themselves’ artlessly over a pristine linen table cloth. And every time she opened one of these magazines and read about the miracles wrought by the denizens of the domiciles featured therein, she thought how unfair it was that her home wasn’t included.

Because Gary was away so much, and because she had a lot of time on her hands now that the labour of love that was her home was finished, Linette took to viewing houses that were on the market. She scoured the pages of the property sections, seeking details of period houses that had been ‘sensitively restored’ or that ‘oozed character’, and she spent many happy afternoons wandering around other people’s houses feeling smug when she saw that actually the restoration wasn’t half as sensitive as hers, nor the character anywhere near as oozy. She eavesdropped on people admiring cornices and coving and oohing and ahhing over throne-like lavatories and pitch pine double-doors, and she spied on them gawping at state-of-the art kitchens and to-die-for bathrooms, and she wished that she could show them her house. And one day, when someone she knew from her estate agent days was overseeing the viewing and she was asked if she was putting her own house on the market, she heard herself saying ‘yes’.

She said it because she knew it would appear more than a little odd if she told the truth and admitted that she simply got a kick out of comparing her house with other people’s, but after she’d said it, while she was on her way to view the next property on her list, she thought: Why not? Why not put her house on the market? That would be a very clever way indeed of showing off her pride and joy to discerning members of the public. People did it all the time – put their houses on the market and then changed their minds again after a couple of weeks. It gave estate agents a lot of grief because there was no financial gain for them unless a sale actually went through, but there was nothing illegal about it. The only expense involved for her would be the production of the brochure and the placing of the classified ad – and really, wouldn’t that be worth it for the pleasure she’d derive from witnessing people swoon over her house the way they swooned over residences far less desirable than hers?

Linette planned her strategy with the precision of a military campaigner. She phoned an estate agency (not the one she’d worked for), and told them that she would like her house valued and put on the market as soon as possible. ‘We can send someone tomorrow,’ she was told. ‘We’ll have photographs taken for the brochure and the board will be up before the end of the day.’ Excellent! That meant that there would be two opportunities for viewing next week, when Gary would still be away. She would send the keys by courier, she informed the estate agent, because she was currently residing in her country residence in West Cork. This ploy ensured she remained incognita, which was important because she didn’t want the estate agent recognising her when she turned up to view her own house on Thursday afternoon, and then again on Saturday. She would take the property off the market the following Monday, conjuring some useful family problem as an excuse. Next Thursday was her birthday, she noted with pleasure. What more enjoyable a way to spend her birthday than observing other people paying homage to the creative statement that was her home?

The next day she took herself off for a day of pampering at Powerscourt Springs, and when she returned home that evening she was delighted to see the estate agent’s board on display outside her front door. She had no worries about word getting back to Gary about this – he was away so much that he didn’t know any of their neighbours, and Linette herself was only on nodding terms with them. She could always deny it, anyway – say that the dozy neighbour had made a mistake, and that the sign had actually been up outside the house next door.

Linette spent an entire week cleaning and polishing and effecting minor repairs. She even got the mini-maids in, although she didn’t exactly trust them to give her home the kind of TLC it deserved. And when the first viewing Thursday came around, she kissed the front door goodbye, and popped into town for a spot of indulgent shopping and a birthday cappuccino in Brown Thomas, returning at around half-past two to a house that was gratifyingly, spectacularly full of total strangers. 

‘Hello!’ she breezed to the man who was overseeing the viewing.

‘Good afternoon, madam’ he returned, handing her a brochure. ‘The auction details are all there. May I take your name and telephone number in the event of our having another property that you might be interested in viewing?’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ beamed Linette. ‘It’s this property or nothing for me! It’s not often such a desirable house comes on the market in such a prime location.’

The estate agent treated her to an urbane smile. ‘A lady who knows what she wants. Feel free to look around - and I’m here to answer any questions you may have.’ Then he scrutinised her more closely. ‘Have I met you somewhere before?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Strange. Maybe I just saw you somewhere recently? At another viewing, maybe?’

‘Impossible!’ sang Linette. ‘This is the only house I’ve been interested in viewing for years!’ And not a word of a lie!

‘Well. I hope you enjoy it.’ 

‘Thank-you! I will!’ She moved down the hallway towards her kitchen, pretending to consult the brochure that had already been sent to her in the post.

‘Oh! Isn’t it gorgeous!’ A woman’s awed voice made Linette’s ears flatten against her skull the way Tarquin the cat’s had when he’d heard sudden birdsong. ‘Oh! Look at those units, Toby! And the floor! Is it Amtico, I wonder? Or a laminate?’

‘Neither,’ said Linette, veering towards the couple like a heat-seeking missile. ‘It’s solid Scandinavian pine.’

The woman acknowledged Linette’s observation with an ‘Oh, really?’ and a polite smile, before returning her attention to the kitchen. ‘Fabulous cooker, Toby! You’d have fun with that.’

‘Neff,’ remarked Linette.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said the woman, giving her an uncertain look.

‘State-of-the art Neff. That’s the make. It has an ergonomic rotating handle, a single control knob and a highly effective Hydro-Clean.’

‘Oh. I see.’ Looking even more uncertain, the woman took hold of Toby’s hand and led him away from this peculiar person in the direction of the sliding glass panels that opened on to the garden. Here the delights of Linette’s immaculate flower beds, her elegant Teakhouse patio furniture and her impressive Hartley Botanic glass house awaited them.

Looking round for more victims, Linette noticed someone opening the door of her store cupboard. Thank goodness she knew from experience how outrageously nosy people could be on views! She’d made sure that all her bottles and jars of homemade preserves and Balsamic vinegar and extra-virgin Tuscan olive oil had been carefully positioned to conceal the more commonplace items. She allowed herself a little smile when she contemplated how clever she’d been. Her house was a veritable dream home!

She spotted a woman admiring her granite kitchen island, and was just about to move across and engage her in conversation with some opening gambit such as ‘Beautiful, isn’t it? I wonder how much it cost?’ when a younger woman joined her targeted quarry.

‘Fantastic house, isn’t it, mum?’ she said, and Linette prinked. ‘Everything’s so perfect! Down to the last detail! Did you clock the porcelain door handles? And the embroidered cushions? And the fantastic collection of photograph frames in the drawing room?’

Linette knew that people would be tempted to inspect her photograph collection. They always were. Oh, God. They always were…

A flash of panic hit her, and she bolted in an ungainly fashion towards her drawing room, attracting curious looks from fellow viewers as she went. The room was crammed with people oohing and ahhing obligingly at the beautiful furniture and the dernier cri curtains and all the tastefully whimsical objets and artefacts, but, surprisingly, Linette didn’t pause to eavesdrop. Subtle as a serpent, she insinuated her way through the crowd to where her photograph collection was displayed on top of the highly french-polished piano that nobody ever played. There, in pride of place in its ornate ormulu frame was the striking portrait of Mrs Gary O’Leary that her husband had commissioned from a top Dublin photographer around a year ago, for her birthday.

Linette checked out the couple standing directly to her left. Their heads were together, absorbed in their brochure. The pair on her immediate right were gaping upward, admiring her ceiling rose. With the legerdemain of a conjurer, Linette slid the incriminating evidence of her identity off the piano and into her Brown Thomas carrier bag.

As she sidled from the room she overheard a woman saying ‘I wonder what kind of fabric those curtains are? They look incredibly expensive.’

‘Toile de jouy,’ said Linette automatically, adding ‘And yes, it is incredibly expensive,’ over her shoulder before heading for the stairs.

She spent a delightful half hour wandering from bedroom to bathroom to bedroom, listening to people saying all the right things and occasionally volunteering nuggets of information herself - such as the make of the power shower, or the provenance of the lit bateau, or the estimated date of an antique. She hugged herself inwardly when she heard someone say that her house was the most beautiful they’d viewed yet, and she wanted to jump for joy when she heard someone else say that it was worthy of Irish Homes and Gardens. She couldn’t have given herself a better birthday present!

The smile she wore as she glided back down the stairs was beatific. The estate agent was still at his greeting post in the hall, in consultation with a man whose face was obscured by a bouquet of red roses and a bunch of helium balloons. The man was gesticulating so animatedly that a couple of the balloons detached themselves from his grasp and started floating towards her up the stairs. One had the word ‘Surprise!’ printed on it in swirly yellow letters, and the other bore the legend ‘Happy Birthday!’ in swirly red ones. And the beatific smile froze on Linette’s face and she wanted to turn and flee back upstairs as the man turned, his eyes automatically following the direction of the balloons to where she stood mid-staircase.

‘I came home to give you a surprise. It seems the surprise is on me. I suspect you may have some explaining to do, Linette,’ said Gary.

© Kate Thompson, 2004