‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’ she shouted. ‘I never thought that we’d find ourselves in such a situation. It was better not to buy this house. Maybe we should sell it.’
‘We cannot sell the house straight after we bought it. We’d lose Twenty Thousand Pounds or more,’ replied Keith. ‘Plus we like it here. The situation is temporary. Once we retire, we can live here, open a café or bookshop downstairs and take advantage of this fund because nobody goes bankrupt here no matter how bad their business is.’
‘I don’t want to open anything. I’d rather return to my country than live among such horrible and greedy people. If they lived in Poland, they would tax the storks, because they only stay there for half a year,’ replied Ilona.
‘Be reasonable. Contrary to what we said, we can afford the extra hundred pounds. And they are right that people like us, who buy second houses, are destroying local communities.’
‘Okay, do as you wish, but remember that I was against it.’
Keith poured himself a beer as the wine suddenly tasted sour, then he went to bed. Ilona followed him because there was nothing to do, plus she always followed Keith to bed but she couldn’t sleep, thinking of how insincere, patronizing and threatening the visitors had been. Poles are never like that – true, they are prepared to stab their enemies, but not with a smirk and according to Keith, Scots shouldn’t be like that either. It was Albion which was meant to be perfidious, not Caledonia, but these three were worse than any English people she’d ever encountered. After a couple of hours, Ilona got up, got dressed and went for a walk. It was shortly after midnight and in most houses, the lights were switched off but she realised that the lighted ones formed a pattern – there was light in every sixth house and she had a feeling she was being watched from behind the curtains. But when she looked at the windows the lights went out. She had an urge to throw a stone at one of the spying windows, but she did not. A cold chill ran down her spine as she returned home. She spent an hour or so sitting in the dining room and looking at the street from the window. It was the first time in her life that she’d had such a view before now she always had a view of her own back garden or a private road. It occurred to her that such a view encouraged spying, so she closed the curtains and went to bed.
The next day was Sunday. They returned to their home in a village north of Preston and the following day they were back at work. Ilona had been planning to tell her colleagues about their new house, but in the end, she didn’t say anything because she didn’t want to mention the visit and it was the only thing that came to mind when thinking about their house.
Keith also didn’t want to talk to Ilona about the house, but she knew he was thinking about it because when they sat down in the evening to watch their usual episode of a Netflix series, he wasn’t drinking beer, only sparkling water. She knew he did so to punish himself for being a weakling, for not standing up to the visitors. However, the lack of alcohol made him irritable and he couldn’t sleep at night. So after a week of not taking alcohol, Ilona bought him a crate of beer from his favourite micro-brewery, and he drank two bottles while they watched two episodes of ‘Bloodline’. Afterwards, they made love – the first time since they’d returned home from S.
In the morning Keith said: ‘We will pay the 120 GBP per month, but let’s carry on as before, we won’t allow the “permanent residents” to spoil our pleasure of not being permanent residents.’ Ilona smiled. She had a different view instead. As shown in ‘Bloodline’, once you give in to blackmail, you never stop giving in, unless you are prepared to kill or be killed by your enemies. However, she didn’t want to contradict Keith, not because she was submissive, but because it would make him miserable.
The weeks passed quickly and Christmas was fast approaching. They decided months before that they wouldn’t buy each other Christmas presents because the house in S. was the greatest present they could give each other. Three weeks before Christmas, Keith started talking about how nice it would be to go to S, and in the New Year see the fireworks in Edinburgh; which probably looked better from S. than from Edinburgh. He also wanted them to go to the pub or drink mulled wine at home and stay in bed long into the morning. But ten days before Christmas, as Ilona was walking to her office she tripped on an icy pavement and broke her leg. The fracture was complicated and it was expected that she would spend a lot of time in plaster.
Keith took two weeks of holiday to be with his wife, even though she didn’t need so much attention. In fact, she preferred if Keith went to work, as she was in a lot of pain and wanted to deal with it on her own, but she didn’t want to reject his offer. So they stayed at home, burned wood in the open, binge-watched Netflix series, and drank mulled wine, beer and champagne, sometimes, all of them in one day, because the more alcohol, the easier it was for Ilonato fall asleep. There was no more talk about saving in order to afford the extra expenses connected with their holiday house.
On Boxing Day, however, Keith decided to go to S., to check if their house was ‘still in one place’. Ilona didn’t go, because with her leg in plaster she wasn’t fit for travel. She prepared a box of food for Keith, as she expected that the shops in S. would be empty during the festive period and, anyway, they wouldn’t have the things they liked to eat, such as dumplings with sourkraut, wild mushrooms and their own Christmas pudding.
Keith left early in the morning to avoid traffic. Luckily the roads were deserted and it took him a little over four hours to reach their house. As he was about to open the front door, someone pulled on his sleeve. It was their neighbour, the baker.
‘Hi. At last. We expected you and your wife to come for Christmas. Merry Christmas.’
‘Thanks. Merry Christmas to you too,’ said Keith, eager to be on his own. ‘My wife couldn’t come as she broke her leg, so I came for just one night to check if the heating is still working and to bring some stuff.’
‘Oh! I’m sorry to hear that. It’s a pity as tomorrow we will be having a village festival and an open meeting for all residents. You have to stay. We don’t take “no” for an answer. I’m sure your wife will survive. She cannot be that horny,’ he said and finished with a laugh.
This made Keith uneasy, but he joined in with a weak, fake laugh and said: ‘Okay, I will stay an extra day.’
Just when Keith thought there was no more to be said the baker said, ‘Wait’ and gave Keith a box with cakes.
‘Thanks,’ said Keith. ‘How much do I owe you?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘This is a special Christmas present. It is custom here that neighbours give one another presents for Christmas.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’
‘Now you know,’ he said with a ratty smile, which according to Ilona, was a common characteristic amongst the inhabitants.
The house was very cold, but everything was as they’d left it. Keith put the heating on and made himself a cup of tea. Then he phoned Ilona and told her that he decided to stay an extra day, to attend the village meeting, which might be an opportunity to renegotiate with the ‘village elders’.
‘By all means, stay,’ Ilona said. ‘I will manage on my own and even try to do some pending office work.’
Keith went to bed with a book, but he couldn’t concentrate. He returned to the kitchen, opened a bottle of beer and reheated the dumplings he made with Ilona before Christmas while looking through the window. Despite the cold weather, there were a fair number of cyclists passing by. He had planned to bring their bikes, but he had no energy nor motivation to pack them, as he didn’t like to cycle on his own.
He had looked out at this spot on the street on their previous visit, but now he felt like they were all looking at him. Instinctively he checked if his face or his jumper was dirty, but they looked okay. The beer made him tired, so he went to sleep. When he woke up, it was seven p.m. He decided to go to the pub, just to kill time, even though he had a lot of work to do in the house, like unpacking boxes and measuring the walls to put up the bookshelves.
The pub was quite full. Keith bought himself a drink, sat in the corner and watched football on TV even though he didn’t like watching football or any sport, because he believed it kept people from doing sports. After a while, two guys joined him and they started to talk. It turned out one of them was from Edinburgh and the other was from a nearby village. When he told them he just bought a house in S., they started to giggle.
‘Didn’t you know this is the nastiest Scottish village this side of Edinburgh?’ One of the guys asked. His name was Pete.
‘I didn’t know. I just realized.’ Keith replied with an uneasy laugh.
‘The prettier the place is on the outside, the uglier it is on the inside,’ continued Pete. ‘If you want to enjoy your holiday house, avoid places which have won prettiest village awards or go straight to Majorca or Costa del Sol.’
‘My wife and I don’t like Spain, besides, I’m from around here, so I wanted to return to my roots when I retire.’
‘Forget the roots,’ the other guy said. His name was Mark. ‘People are not trees. They should be moving.’
‘Now I see what you mean. Pity I didn’t meet you some months earlier,’ Keith said.
Back at home, Keith couldn’t sleep, most likely because he slept during the day. He wanted to talk to Ilona, but he didn’t want to disturb her, knowing how difficult it was for her to fall asleep after having her leg plastered. So he ended up watching films on his mobile.
