The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (best summer reads .TXT) 📕

“Well, yes,” Ms. Sheriff, for it turned out the solicitor was a woman, said, “It has been vacant several years. But always constantly and well taken care of,” she quickly amended. “As to why it’s only now put up to let? Well, that’s because the house is part of a messy, and much contested, will probation, and at least four of the contesters finally agreed that as the place is habitable, it might as well be of use in covering the incessant legal fees they are paying out.”

Ms. Sheriff then showed us photographs of the exterior and interior of the house that appeared to have been taken, if not when the place was first built, then shortly thereafter when residential photography first came into vogue: “Some decades after the Napoleonic Wars and before the Civil War in your own country,” was as precisely as she could date it.

“Two of the daguerreotypes show women in hoop skirts,” Martin pointed out. “Surely that must date it.” The woman he had pointed to seemed to be not quite brunette, and of a very fine figure with a strong-featured face.

“That might actually be the second wife of the owner/builder,” the realtor opined. “The first was a sickly thing, but when she passed, he met this one and she it was who became mistress of Cranberry Grange for decades, outliving her husband and I believe, all three of their children. The house then passed to a relatively distant cousin of his, a fellow who traveled the world for the National Geographical Society. After that, the house was lived in only sporadically, and sometimes only on holidays, when hordes of guests would arrive.”

I could see Martin’s eyes light up when she spoke of the explorer owner heir, and I have to admit, my own grew large and even a bit moist at the mention of the house’s name. Who wouldn’t want to live in a Cranberry Grange? But, of course, the name would turn out to be slightly incorrect, as was much else we were first told about the house. On that we both agreed. We couldn’t have both heard incorrectly. Not that it was purposefully misleading, I don’t think. At least not until much later on.

As I said before, we were leaving that mid-afternoon, and so we were quickly settled into her elderly Volvo station wagon and smartly driven to the house. The double front doors were thrust open and a few windows thrown ajar—“Remember how the widow disparaged the second house in The Spoils of Poynton?” Martin asked me, and I answered, “Not a double-door in the place!”

“Well, here, there’s several,” Ms. Sheriff proudly replied.

Some interior doors were racked open noisily and we got a very rushed tour of the place. This, however, was enough to confirm that it had indeed been the dining room that looked out upon the sunset, that a breakfast room opposite looked due east, that a little library on the first floor was matched by a sewing room upstairs and by a clothes-drying room with multiple skylights on the third half-floor. One parlor on the ground floor had become a bedroom, perhaps for the original owner’s wife in her dotage. Upstairs were six other ones, with a large and modern-ish (ca. 1910?) bathing salon with a number of water closets scattered about, also later additions. Like the bathing facilities, the kitchen which had originally been a separate room off the rear of the house (Ms. Sheriff: “Kitchen fires were so common then!”) was also modernized, possibly forty years later, but looked quite passably useful. Mud rooms, club rooms, gun rooms, and who know what other smaller rooms opened out from odd angled corners at all three floors. But the fireplaces were now more or less ornamental as there was a central heating system.

“We couldn’t possibly take it for the next six months, since I’d require that long to wrap up my work in the ‘States,” Martin said. Then Ms. Sheriff told us the annual rent and suggested he might want to pay down now to hold the place for when it was we wanted it. So, at her office, he arranged to do just that, writing out a check for half a year, even if we came later. I just nodded. When Martin wants something…

As it turned out, we were back in the village and moved into the house less than four months later. The minute Martin mentioned retirement, his partners eagerly thanked him for his service and offered to buy him out. I’m not certain whether he was pleased or not by their abruptness, but I pointed out that we wanted to go and so we would. Our own place in the ‘States we left with a caretaker and with our married children coming and going. Suddenly, there we were, inside the grand old Regency manse, high above the stream and with fields spread out below, unpacking our silver and clothing and knick-knacks.

Ms. Sheriff had mentioned the two people who’d cared for the place while it was vacant and we soon met them: a bit more than middle-aged but still quite presentable woman named Mrs. Ethel Grack, and her son, oddly named Dmitry, a strapping lad of about thirty, movie star handsome in that blond Slavic manner but a bit slow on the uptake. Both loved the old house and its grounds and they tended to them kindly and generously with their time and attentions. They slept in the Dower Cottage at the eastern end of the grounds. Martin once remarked, “If only they were equally devoted to those who leased the place.” Two girls from the village of indeterminate relationship to the Gracks also came weekly to keep the place spotless.

We’d been ensconced very comfortably indeed when two events occurred almost simultaneously to alter our stability. First, at breakfast, Martin asked if he might change bedrooms with me. I rather liked the view from