I missed the smell of rain, its softness and life-giving coolness. My eyeballs itched in the moistureless air.
Continuing on through the house, for every feature I found in Shirley’s favour Philip found two against.
‘This family area’s a good size. The oak table could go here,’ I said, realising almost immediately that I’d made a mistake venturing into oak-table territory. A relic from my first marriage, the oak table still had grooves on the edges where Sam and Rob had attacked it with a hand saw when they were preschoolers. Though Philip hadn’t said anything, I was pretty sure he didn’t share my affection for the thing.
‘What if we get another cat?’ he said. ‘There are heaps of main roads around here . . .’
‘Come off it!’ I snapped, wishing people would stop banging on at me about getting another cat.
How could I possibly open my heart to another feline only to have it torn apart again? If any new cat lived as long as Cleo had, I’d be seventy-eight by the time it died. Besides, Philip was right: Shirley’s street looked like the Wild West, with every second lamppost featuring a REWARD poster with a photo of a lost cat.
He shrugged, went back down Shirley’s hallway and disappeared into another room. Sometimes I wished he was more malleable. Then again, if I’d wanted pliable I should have married a pot of Play-Doh.
I wandered back into the baby’s room and looked through the apple tree’s branches on to the street. A man was strolling along the footpath on the other side of the road. I squinted to make sure my eyes were working. He was wearing a blue checked dressing gown – and it was two in the afternoon. This was definitely my kind of place.
‘Look at this!’ Philip called from across the hall. ‘The living room walls are stucco!’
My heart plummeted as I followed his voice. With lumpy white concrete walls rising from fraying green carpet the room had the ambience of a polar bear enclosure. Approximately half the size of a basketball court, it was empty and freezing. Running a hand over the glacial concrete, I wondered what it would take to hang a few paintings in there – mining equipment?
‘Just look at those built-in mirrors over the fireplace and that carving above the windows,’ I said, quietly wondering how the living room could be made liveable. ‘You don’t get that sort of attention to detail these days.’
A stair rail of yellow wooden spindles led us up to a vast space opening on to two bedrooms and a bathroom. Some time in her recent history, Shirley had endured low-grade plastic surgery. A ‘teenagers’ retreat’ had been implanted in her roof on the cheap. It was an ideal set-up for two young women on the brink of independence, so Kath and Lydia would probably love it. We’d finally have room for sleepovers, and a few wedding guests for Rob and Chantelle’s Big Day in six months’ time. And who knows? Maybe even a grandchild or two.
Gazing out over the city through an upstairs window, I felt Shirley settling around me like an old friend. It reminded me of the old house I’d been raised in – a home full of laughter and secrets, with space for people to grow up in. It was the sort of house I’d always dreamed of buying. To top it off, my favourite cafe, Spoonful, was just across the road on High Street. It would be the equivalent of a cocaine addict living next door to his dealer.
I turned to Philip, who was absentmindedly kicking a lump in the carpet. He looked exasperated. I hated it when we had battles of will like this. He’d go silent and stick his jaw out while I’d get argumentative and repetitive. I had no energy for a fight.
‘Don’t you love it?’ I asked. ‘It’s got all the rooms we need, we’ll give it character and you’ll get to work much quicker and . . .’
‘But the name . . .’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘There are some great Shirleys . . .’ I said. ‘Shirley Bassey, Shirley Valentine, Shirley Temple. And you’ve always been in love with Shirley MacLaine.’
Silence.
‘We don’t have to call the house anything if it bothers you.’
‘That plaque’s immovable.’
‘Nothing a pneumatic drill wouldn’t fix.’
‘You love it that much?’ he asked, defeated.
Love was hardly the word for it. As auction day drew closer, I became obsessed. Shirley was my soul home. Every day I invented excuses to drive past her. One evening I saw neighbourhood kids playing cricket on the street. The scene was straight out of my childhood. In my dreams at night I roamed through Shirley’s rooms, transforming them into House & Garden centrefolds. To my shame, I attended every open home inspection. The gleam in the agent’s eye shone brighter each time I stumbled over the doorstep.
We ordered a building inspector’s report which concluded that Shirley had a few issues but was basically sound. On the understanding it might be possible to paint over the name plaque, Philip and I agreed on a price that would be our absolute limit for the auction in a few weeks’ time.
I stay away from auctions due to twitchy arm syndrome. Whenever people start bidding, my hand leaps uncontrollably into the air. So on the day of Shirley’s auction I hid around the corner clutching a takeaway coffee while Philip joined the throng of buyers and nosy neighbours gathering on the street outside Shirley.
After fifteen minutes or so, I assumed it would all be over and that it was safe to show up. But the crowd was still there, clustered in a knot. The atmosphere was grim, the way it must be toward the end of a bullfight. Philip was sitting on his hands on a concrete wall across the road from Shirley. To my disappointment, he was in observer mode.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘It’s . . . it’s . . .’
He was too engrossed in the drama to reply.
‘Did you put in a bid?’
‘Right at the beginning, but these two guys have gone way above our limit,’ he said, nodding in the direction of two men locked in a gladiatorial bidding war. The sum had reached a ridiculous price but the auctioneer kept goading them up and up. Onlookers were mesmerised by the brutal spectacle.
Finally one of the men pulled a face, swatted an imaginary fly and walked away. Electricity crackled across the crowd. Flushed with triumph, his opponent straightened, readying himself to declare victory. I secretly said goodbye to Shirley and steeled myself for a winter of renting.
Next to me, Philip shifted his weight, almost imperceptibly at first, then I watched open-mouthed as he slid his right hand out from under his thigh and slowly lifted it. Rising to his feet, he shouted a bid that was simultaneously terrifying and thrilling.
An outrageous amount. Where on earth would we find the money?
We both knew this could be our only offer, and one we couldn’t afford in the first place. Insanity. But it was also one of the reasons I’d fallen in love with this man God knows how many years ago. On several occasions during our marriage when I’d gone beyond despair and given up on a dream, he’d done something breathtaking that had changed our lives. But never anything as wonderful and potentially disastrous as paying too much money for a house he didn’t really like simply because he understood how much I wanted it.
Silence fell as the crowd – a many-headed monster – turned as one and focused its attention on Philip. Anyone who didn’t know him would think he was standing there in a state of perfect calm. He hadn’t changed colour. His breathing was regular. He wasn’t trembling or twitching.
I was the only one who knew what signs to look for. There they were – fiery blue flames in his eyes. The auctioneer tried to prod the red-faced man into upping his bid by $500. Another 50 cents and we’d be in the gutter.