The housing market in the seventies was beginning to boom. All the agents were going mad with gazumping and other legal but disreputable practices, and the estate agents Benham and Reeves were mocked as Benham and Thieves. It was jolly good luck that Mr and Mrs Forbes, owners of number 10 Nassington Road and whose house I was coveting, were old fashioned and sentimental. She insisted on selling to a family with children. They would not budge from that. I made the kids dress nicely with white socks, and brought them along to impress, and it worked. Mrs Forbes said she would save the house for us and she kept her word and kept to the original price. That’s women doing business.
The house had three floors, a cellar, a small balcony, a decent-sized garden at the back and pretty flower beds in the front. The next year was all taken up with the move. A fair amount of work was needed, like taking out fireplaces, installing central heating, extending the kitchen and last, but by no means least, putting up bookshelves everywhere.
But it was certainly very much the house for us. It felt right. Of course, it was not ready on time – which house is? Dorothy Wedderburn stoically came over on our first night there and we managed champagne on ice and something or other to eat. Also known as ‘Doffy’ (her baby pronunciation of Dorothy), she was one of Eric’s close friends from Cambridge and their friendship lasted a lifetime (they died three weeks apart). She had joined the Communist Party while at Girton College in 1943 and stayed in the party until 1956. Although a member of the great and the good, she refused to accept an honour that was offered to her by the Queen. She always looked so grand and took good care of her appearance – in Eric’s obituary of her, he recalled her eightieth birthday and how she had ‘reserved a table for the staff of her Knightsbridge hairdressers’.
Moving to Nassington Road was a night to remember; Dorothy became a joint best friend that evening. There is so much hope in the air in a new house. Full of dreams and expectations.