My next-door neighbor dropped his voice when he answered my question about the For Sale sign at the other end of the row where we both have houses. Who was selling, I wondered, and what exactly was for sale?
In addition to our houses, my neighbor and I each own another building in the row—his a workshop next to his house, and mine, just beyond that, a garage no wider than the garage door. Both were once stables. Beyond my garage are two more garages, and past those, another house, with an attached shed sporting the For Sale sign in its window. That makes seven buildings in a row with shared walls and adjoining roofs. Compared to nearby apartment buildings, these dwellings are old and quaint, stunted and quirky, like seven dwarves in a fairy tale. Across the lane are the outbuildings of a farmstead still in my neighbor’s family. Just beyond, you see the mysterious gaping doorways and windows of an abandoned building project in the middle of a meadow with the far mountain ridge visible. I loved my lane. I loved my fairy-tale surroundings. I wanted no alteration. The For Sale sign might auger unwanted changes.
My neighbor told me of the bad blood between the two co-owners of the house and its associated garage, which they had inherited. They had supposedly arrived at an agreement for a remodel and a division of property, but that understanding had broken down. A complete separation was the solution to their problems, and both the house and the garage were for sale. “Ask José María,” my neighbor said.
To tell this tale of intrigue, I might present a cast of characters in the manner of Agatha Christie, to help orient the reader. My list would include my neighbor Álvaro, to whom I posed my question; my neighbor Alicia, in the big house beyond the row; José María, one of the two owners Álvaro had mentioned; José María’s son Pablo, living in the house at the far end of the row; and the mysterious tall, bearded man in the green overcoat who was the other owner and whose name I never learned. And the buildings themselves.
In the narrow, dead-end lane, no sidewalk or median sets off the brightly painted buildings. The tiled roofs and roof timbers showing under the eaves, the Dutch doors and the wooden benches beside the doors, the flowers in pots and wooden clogs on a doormat—all this gives the lane the look of a mews, those small, narrow, hidden streets of London where you find the old but refurbished stables and carriage houses that once served the big mansions. Such a neighborhood was the setting for an Agatha Christie story, “Murder in the Mews.” In my charming lane, however, despite the bad blood, no real blood was spilled, and the players acted out small roles in a very minor story. I did not talk to José María, or find out who had it in for whom, or call the number on the sign. The sign disappeared. I forgot about it. A year passed.
Then one day I heard more from Alicia, whose house is just past mine, the last one in the lane, and not part of the staunch row. The property in question had been sold and the new owners were planning a renovation on a grand scale. The roof would be raised. Maybe, she suggested, I’d want to raise my garage roof too, at the same time.
That very afternoon, while strolling down my lane, I gazed at my garage roof as if for the first time. In the lane, only my garage and the two buildings next to it that had been sold still had what appeared to be the original roofs. The roof tile on all three structures was the old, irregular, handmade kind that is not yet so uncommon that it fetches a good price, the way old railroad ties, old brick, and old barn siding often do. The eaves over these three fronts were deep and pitched, braced by rough old timbers emerging from the building fronts. No gutters, so a heavy rain ran over the edge of the roof into the lane like a waterfall. A new roof on a heightened building could never suit this lane. I would never agree to be a part of such a change.
But what can you do? The new owners might be doing themselves in, and though I was against it, it was their choice. “Murder!” exclaims a character in “Murder in the Mews,” when what had appeared to be a suicide begins to look like something else. “Yes,” says Hercule Poirot gently. “But if it were murder, there would have been a motive.” In my lane, among my neighbors and our old buildings, no motive and no murder, just progress, a slow suicide. What can you do? Suicide isn’t murder. Progress isn’t a crime. Buildings are not grumbly, goodhearted dwarves. Fairy tales aren’t for real.
