The House Next Door

As a young boy, my father would tell me the story of my family in nightly instalments, with many repetitions of my favourite bits. As our odd history is possibly unique, and may well be illuminating to others, I will précis it for you now, with your permission.

We live in a large sandstone house with a substantial garden behind. These days the garden is mainly given over to apple trees, but it once held plants of every kind imaginable. Although we did not build the house, my family has owned and lived in it for many years, right back to the days of my grandfather.

Next door to us is another house which is similar to ours, but has been extended to the rear and on the roof so that it is almost twice as large. It was broken up into flats, long before I was born, so there are many more people there than live in our house. The house next door does not really have a proper garden, however, just a yard which is mostly paved over.

When my grandfather was the head of our household, he was rumoured to have had a mistress, the daughter of the woman who owned the house next door. Mother and daughter lived on the first floor in the largest and best appointed of the flats. When the matriarch died, the rumour was confirmed, as my grandfather quickly moved next door to be with the daughter, leaving us to fend for ourselves.

We heard that he had become the head of the residents' committee, which collected all the rents and service charges from those who lived there, and which paid for the upkeep of the building. This must have kept him very busy, as we seldom saw him any more. It certainly seemed to provide him with a very nice income, judging by how well he lived.

The family missed my grandfather, but they coped rather well without him. Despite being on their own, they were spared destitution. They had no rent to pay, had apples in the season which were stored in the cellars, and my father's and my uncle's income kept them all from starving. They also had the run of the large, almost empty house and its extensive garden.

This easy life didn't last long. When my father was still just twenty-one, my grandfather gave him and my uncle an ultimatum. They were to hand over all of the family income to the residents' committee, and they would receive food, coal and some other benefits in return. If they refused, everyone would be forced to stay inside the house and, unable to work, they might all starve to death.

The brothers discussed the threat and disagreed on what to do. My father wanted to stand up to my grandfather, but my uncle did not. As the older brother, my uncle had his way, but not before their disagreement turned to an angry fight. A few weeks later, my father discovered that his brother had been won over by the promise of a flat in the house next door, into which he had installed his girlfriend.

Over the years the family became used to the arrangement. There were many times when they almost starved to death, but most survived and made the best of it. Several members of the family left the house and moved away, mostly losing touch with those of us who stayed.

Not long after I was born, my grandfather and uncle evicted some of my cousins from the house, because they wanted the top floor to grow their cannabis plants. The cousins had little choice but to leave and we had no idea what became of most of them. This was amongst the hardest of times for us.

When I was a school child, the price of apples rose so high that my uncle decided we would collect all of our apples for him, even those which had fallen to the ground, and we would be given back just a few baskets, and then only if we behaved. My father was afraid to rock the boat in case our meagre food supplies were withdrawn, as they had been before, so he agreed to the arrangement.

One morning, we discovered that the small fence between the two gardens had been repositioned overnight, so that many of the apple trees were now on next door's side. This seemed pointless to us as all the apples now belonged to the residents' committee, but I remember still feeling that something important had been taken from me.

Following the death of my father, which occurred shortly after I had completed my university education, I became the head of the household. When I thought about how we were living, I could not see why we had allowed such an inequitable situation to continue for all these years. I organised a family meeting and asked if anyone would like to join me in taking back our income and regaining control of our household. There was a good deal of fear and heated discussion but, in the end, most were persuaded to follow my lead.

Last year, we told the residents' committee that they had received their last payment from our family. The committee members made all sorts of threats, and tried to tell the family that they would surely starve on their own. Some were unsure but, once we discovered that the law was on our side, most of us remained resolute and carried through our plan.

We collected and stored our own apples, and even moved the fence back to where it had originally been, reclaiming the annexed apple trees. I arranged to have my salary paid into our joint bank account for the first time. None of us had any idea that a doctor earned so much money. We soon discovered that we were not only far better off than we had been before, but we were richer by far than we had even expected to be.

Now that we are back in charge of our own affairs, we are actually on better terms with the residents of next door. There was some initial annoyance among the older residents, but they got over that fairly quickly. Now they even buy most of our spare apples from us, at a price we negotiated.

The one thing I regret was that we didn't do this years ago.


Bob Duncan