It is pouring rain and the telephone isn’t working, so I can neither do business nor drag all the drawers outside and air out the house – I guess the universe is saying that it’s okay to just eat and sleep for a few days – I am bone tired…
Saltoun is sold, I think (subject to contract, and the surveyor’s report)… it was on the market for less than two weeks before we got an offer that seemed almost perfect – actually two, but we accepted the one from the folks that I really liked, and whom I thought would be both good for the house and good new blood for the village… plus their own house was practically sold, and as everyone kept saying “a bird in the hand…” I accepted the offer on april 30th, and by may 15th, yesterday, when I left, the house was empty. That has to be the hardest thing I have ever done in my life… Some of the contents went into the studio, which we are keeping (plus the potting shed underneath, which is a wonderful storage room), some is coming on a truck to menorca, and a large quantity was taken away by Bradleys to be auctioned off at Tennants, that most salubrious and reputable auction house in Leyburn. Rodney Tennant has become quite a friend, as has Greg Bradley, their carrier, who is personally driving out the stuff that’s coming here – I have indeed been well looked after… also, two different old friends (ex boyfriends both) came to help me through the process and both turned up trumps in their own way. I am a lucky girl – mustn’t forget, as my heart breaks over the passing of an era…
It was the books that did me in… Tennants took all the hardbacks, many, many of them, including all the Churchilliana – his memoirs inscribed by him to my father, etc. – but there were still several hundred paperbacks, and I thought I would leave them for the buyers, who said they were happy to inherit whatever… but that final morning the charity shop van driver, who has become a fixture over the past few weeks, came for his last load and said he’d love to take the books, and the next thing I know he and Wallace were stripping the shelves in Pa’s study, loading all the books into plastic carrier bags, and I just lost it… books are the soul of a house, it seems to me, and it felt like rape and pillage… I shut myself in the (empty) sitting room and bawled my eyes out for fifteen minutes – first really good cry I’ve had since this all started, I guess it was a good thing in the end… someone else came from the village jumble and took a whole load of books and trinkets – and so the cycle continues… es la vida… but I felt like such a betrayer there for a moment, letting the looters in… however, the luristan bronzes and islamic pottery will hopefully go to a museum with mum’s name on the collection, and I have boxes of both of their letters and journals and photos up in the attic of the studio… I have done my best, my very best… and now I need some rest… I need some gina time for a while… Sayonara, Saltoun…