A reader writes:
I want to tell you about Miss Gloria, because she died in March and I have been living in her house, which is now my house, for four months, and I still cannot quite believe how it happened.
When I first rented the two rooms at the back of her place I was twenty-six, newly separated, with a four-year-old and no furniture except a cot and a standing fan. The agent told me the landlady lived in the front part of the house and “liked things a certain way”. That was an understatement. The first week she knocked on my door to tell me I had hung my washing on the wrong side of the line. The second week it was the gate: I had left it on the latch instead of bolting it. The third week she informed me that my daughter had picked two of her hibiscus flowers and she would appreciate it if I “trained the child”.
I am ashamed to say what I called her on the phone to my sister. I decided she was a bitter, lonely old woman who had nothing better to do than watch me. I kept my head down, paid my rent on the first of every month exactly, and started looking for somewhere else.
What changed things was a pipe. About five months in, the pipe under my sink burst on a Sunday morning. Water everywhere, my daughter crying, me with a bucket and no idea where the stopcock was. I had to go and knock on Miss Gloria’s front door, which I had never done. She came round in her church clothes, looked at the mess, and went straight under the sink on her knees, hat and all, and turned the valve off. Then she said, “You can’t go to church looking like that. Come and have some tea.”
I sat in her front room for the first time. It was spotless, and full of photographs. A husband who had died young. A son in Florida who, I learned later, phoned twice a year. A girl in a school uniform who I thought was a granddaughter, but was actually a child she had fostered in the seventies. She told me she had bought the house with her husband when the road was still marl, and had kept it going on a teacher’s salary after he passed. “Everything here I had to fight for,” she said. “So I suppose I watch it too close.”
I would like to say we became best friends after that, but it was slower. She still told me about the washing line. But she also started leaving a bag of June plums on my step. When my daughter had chicken pox, she sat with her so I could go to work. I started taking her to the supermarket on Saturdays. She taught me how to clean louvres properly, which nobody had ever shown me, and how to tell when the roof needed looking at before the rains. I learned that the bolting of the gate had to do with a break-in years before that she had never really got over. Most of her rules had a story behind them.
Years passed. I got a better job. I could have moved to somewhere bigger, but by then my daughter called her “Granny G” and I did not want to leave her alone. When her knees got bad I did the things she could not do. We argued sometimes. She did not like my boyfriend (she was right about him). I did not like the way she spoke about my cousin. But we were family by then, of a sort.
About three years ago she asked me, quite out of nowhere, whether I had ever thought of owning a house. I laughed. She did not. She said her son had no interest in coming back and wanted her to sell, and she would rather sell to somebody who would “keep it right”. I told her I could never afford it. She told me to go to the bank and find out instead of guessing.
It was not simple. Her son was suspicious at first; he thought I was taking advantage of her, and I understood why. Miss Gloria insisted that we both use our own lawyers and that the house be valued properly, so that nobody could say anything was unfair. She would not accept less than a fair price, but she agreed to let me stay on as a tenant while I saved a bigger deposit, and she agreed to a life interest so she could live in the front of the house for as long as she wanted. I do not fully understand all the legal parts even now, but the attorneys did, and the son eventually came round after he flew in and sat with us both.
She lived in the front rooms for two more years after the sale went through. I paid my mortgage; she kept her garden. My daughter, who is fifteen now, sat with her in the hospital near the end.
I am writing because I keep thinking about those first weeks, and how sure I was about her. If that pipe had not burst I would have moved out believing she was just a miserable old woman. I would never have known about the husband or the fostered girl or the break-in. I would not be sitting on this verandah writing to you.
I still bolt the gate every night. I still hang the washing on the right side of the line. And every time somebody new moves onto the road and I feel myself deciding what kind of person they are, I try to remember Miss Gloria on her knees under my sink in her church hat.
— Andrea, St Andrew
Editor’s note
Andrea’s letter is a reminder of how quickly we judge, and how much we miss when we do. Jesus warned against looking for the speck in someone else’s eye while ignoring the plank in our own (Matthew 7:3-5), and landlord-tenant relationships are fertile ground for that kind of judgement on both sides. It is also worth noticing how carefully this sale was handled. Separate lawyers, a proper valuation and the son’s involvement protected everyone, including Andrea, from later accusations. Where affection and property mix, fairness on paper is a way of honouring the friendship.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
This article is general information only and is not financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Please speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.
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