different beautiful girlfriend at least every other weekend. He owns a large house hidden behind a high wall, bang in the middle of Fiddleford, and on summer evenings, when the windows are open, the whole street can be filled with the smell of his cigars and aftershave, and the sound of him – laughing usually, or yelling very large figures into a telephone. Solomon Creasey, though not yet forty, is a man with an inscrutable past. Nobody really knows where he came from, but the main thing is that he once discovered a Rubens at auction and has since held the British record for achieving the greatest profit on any single painting ever sold. One way or another he is very rich. Kitty Mozely (the non-productive children’s author) makes a courageous play for him every time they meet.
Anyway, after Clive and Geraldine’s weekend visit to Fiddleford, non-productive Kitty, whose writing career has long since ground to a standstill, and who is often bored and lonely, became increasingly determined that they should follow her to the area. She would ring up Geraldine in her City office and regale her with stories of all the glamorous people who dropped in for drinks (nor was she above a little lavish embellishment), and she would swear that she and her daughter Scarlett had never been happier. She claimed that since moving to Fiddleford Scarlett didn’t watch television any more. (Actually, enigmatic little Scarlett had never been that interested in television.) And she claimed that Scarlett’s new favourite dish was baked fennel, which was an outright lie. ‘I can honestly say to you, Geraldine, my only regret is that we didn’t make the move sooner!’
Geraldine was not – is not – a woman who likes to be outdone. Certainly not in the social whirl. And not evenover vegetables. So she and Clive finally blocked out an evening together to discuss their future. And by the end of dinner, in spite of all of Kitty Mozely’s efforts, in spite of the wonderful – and fashionable – savings they would make by sending Ollie to the local village school, they had pretty much decided to stay put, which was a great relief to both of them. They slept better that night than they had in months.
Two days later Kitty rang to tell them that the Old Rectory in Fiddleford was up for sale.
They only had to see it once. It was perfect for them; built 250 years earlier, as if exclusively with the requirements of third-millennium Hampstead downsizers in mind. It was a small, symmetrical, irreproachably pretty Georgian manor, with six little sash windows on the first floor and two on either side of a wide, stone-pillared front porch. It was set back from the village street, with a drive that curled through a small copse of trees and down into a little valley. It was private, elegant, and not at all cheap. Clive and Geraldine fell in love with it. Their Hampstead house sold very quickly, and for the asking price of £1.85 million, making them an encouraging £790,000 profit, much of which they blew on their extravagant ‘improvements’. They built the tennis court and the swimming pool, employed an interior decorator who specialised in a rustic-contemporary look, opened a small, exclusive practice in a converted town house in Lamsbury, and have been happily munching through Messy McShane’s Fresh Organic Vegetables ever since.
Or quite happily.
Or actually (unofficially speaking) not very happily at all. Downsizing, they have discovered, is not quite as easy as it looks. And though the piece in the Saturday Telegraph was fun, it couldn’t sustain them for ever, and there are times when Clive and Geraldine secretly feel quite breathless withhorror at the smallness of their new lives. They might glance up from some exclusively priced little conveyancing job and hear the hideous, monotonous cawing of the ravens outside, or the pitter-patter-plop of the soft grey English rain. They might glance out from their rustic-contemporary, newly shuttered
Anyway, after Clive and Geraldine’s weekend visit to Fiddleford, non-productive Kitty, whose writing career has long since ground to a standstill, and who is often bored and lonely, became increasingly determined that they should follow her to the area. She would ring up Geraldine in her City office and regale her with stories of all the glamorous people who dropped in for drinks (nor was she above a little lavish embellishment), and she would swear that she and her daughter Scarlett had never been happier. She claimed that since moving to Fiddleford Scarlett didn’t watch television any more. (Actually, enigmatic little Scarlett had never been that interested in television.) And she claimed that Scarlett’s new favourite dish was baked fennel, which was an outright lie. ‘I can honestly say to you, Geraldine, my only regret is that we didn’t make the move sooner!’
Geraldine was not – is not – a woman who likes to be outdone. Certainly not in the social whirl. And not evenover vegetables. So she and Clive finally blocked out an evening together to discuss their future. And by the end of dinner, in spite of all of Kitty Mozely’s efforts, in spite of the wonderful – and fashionable – savings they would make by sending Ollie to the local village school, they had pretty much decided to stay put, which was a great relief to both of them. They slept better that night than they had in months.
Two days later Kitty rang to tell them that the Old Rectory in Fiddleford was up for sale.
They only had to see it once. It was perfect for them; built 250 years earlier, as if exclusively with the requirements of third-millennium Hampstead downsizers in mind. It was a small, symmetrical, irreproachably pretty Georgian manor, with six little sash windows on the first floor and two on either side of a wide, stone-pillared front porch. It was set back from the village street, with a drive that curled through a small copse of trees and down into a little valley. It was private, elegant, and not at all cheap. Clive and Geraldine fell in love with it. Their Hampstead house sold very quickly, and for the asking price of £1.85 million, making them an encouraging £790,000 profit, much of which they blew on their extravagant ‘improvements’. They built the tennis court and the swimming pool, employed an interior decorator who specialised in a rustic-contemporary look, opened a small, exclusive practice in a converted town house in Lamsbury, and have been happily munching through Messy McShane’s Fresh Organic Vegetables ever since.
Or quite happily.
Or actually (unofficially speaking) not very happily at all. Downsizing, they have discovered, is not quite as easy as it looks. And though the piece in the Saturday Telegraph was fun, it couldn’t sustain them for ever, and there are times when Clive and Geraldine secretly feel quite breathless withhorror at the smallness of their new lives. They might glance up from some exclusively priced little conveyancing job and hear the hideous, monotonous cawing of the ravens outside, or the pitter-patter-plop of the soft grey English rain. They might glance out from their rustic-contemporary, newly shuttered
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