Twenty Years of Minding a House That Was Never Mine

A reader writes:

My granddaughter typed this for me because my hands shake now, so forgive any mistakes that are hers and not mine.

In 2004 a man I went to school with, call him Lloyd, came to my gate the week before he flew back to Birmingham. He had finished his mother’s house after she passed, a nice four-bedroom on the hill with a big cistern and a verandah all round. He said, “Bertie, you are the only one I trust. Mind it for me until we come back. Two, three years at most.” He gave me a set of keys on a piece of red string and a little money every month through the remittance place in town. That red string is still on the keys. It is grey now.

Two or three years turned into twenty.

I want to tell you what minding a house really is, because people think you just sit on the verandah and drink their juice. Every morning I opened every window so the place could breathe, and every evening I shut them. Once a month I ran every tap and flushed every toilet so the pipes would not seize. I cut the grass, and when my knees went I paid a youth to cut it and I stood over him. I chased away a man who tried to put a goat on the land. I climbed the roof after Ivan with my son to see what the wind had done, and I wrote Lloyd a letter with drawings because in those days I didn’t have a phone that could send pictures. I found the termites in the back door frame before they found the rest of the house.

I will be honest. Some years the money didn’t come on time, and some years it didn’t come at all for two or three months, and I paid the light bill out of my own pocket so the security light would stay on. My wife used to quarrel with me. “Them live in England and you a pay fi dem light?” She was not wrong. But I made a promise at my gate, and I could not see how a man breaks a promise just because the other side is slow.

There were other temptations too. People in the district said, after so many years, I should move in, or rent it out and keep the money, or even try to lay claim to it. One man from church told me the house was “as good as mine”. It was never as good as mine. It was Lloyd’s mother’s house, and I used to eat dinner in her kitchen when we were boys. I said no every time. I am not telling you this so you think I am a saint. I thought about it. Some nights, sitting in my own small house with the zinc making noise in the rain, I thought about that big dry house on the hill with nobody in it, and I felt something I am not proud of.

Last year Lloyd and his wife came home to retire. I was ready. I had the place painted, the tank cleaned, flowers by the steps. I stood at the gate in a pressed shirt. He hugged me, and then his wife walked through the house and began to point at things. The kitchen cupboards had dropped. The grille on one window was rusty. The mattress smelled of damp. She said, not unkind but not kind either, “Well, we thought it would be in better condition.”

I went home and didn’t talk for the evening. Twenty years, and the first thing was the cupboards.

A week later Lloyd came to my gate by himself. He sat down on my little bench and said he was sorry. He said he didn’t understand until he saw the receipts I kept in a folder, every light bill, every payment to the youth for the grass, the letter about the roof. He said, “Bertie, I sent you money for a caretaker. You were a brother.” He wanted to give me a big lump of money. I took some, because my wife would have left me if I refused it all, and because I had earned it. The rest I told him to put towards the cupboards.

I am writing because I know many houses on many hills are being minded by men and women like me, and many people abroad are sending the money and wondering what they are getting. To the people abroad: come and see us sometimes. Call on a Sunday not only when something breaks. Send the money on time, and if you can’t, tell us, don’t just go quiet. And understand that a house nobody sleeps in grows old faster than one full of children. Some things we cannot stop.

To the caretakers: keep your receipts. Write things down. And settle in your heart early that it is not your house, so that when the owners come home you can hand over the keys with a clean conscience, even if your pride hurts. Mine hurt. It still hurts a little.

I don’t know if I did it for Lloyd, or for his mother, or for God, or just because I am stubborn. Maybe all four. I kept the red string, though. Lloyd said I could.

— Bertie, Manchester

Editor’s note

Bertie’s letter holds two lessons worth underlining. The first is practical: an arrangement to mind a house, especially one expected to last “two or three years”, deserves to be written down, with what the caretaker will do, what they will be paid, who covers bills and repairs, and how both sides will keep in touch. Clear expectations protect friendships as much as property. The second is harder to put into a checklist. Faithfulness in someone else’s absence is rarely noticed, and it is often greeted first with complaints about the cupboards. Jesus spoke of servants who kept watch while the master was away (Luke 12:35–38), and of the joy that awaits those found faithful. If someone has been minding a house for you, thank them properly, and soon.

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.

Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.

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