Regular readers of this blog (all six of you!) will know that I recently moved into an old house. How old remains a mystery, but the builder who checked the place out for me, before I brought it, reckons that it’s probably at least an hundred years old, possibly more. He was excited to discover mortise and tennon joints in the ceiling joists, “been in the trade fourty years and never seen that before!”, and I too admit that my heart fluttered at the thought.
Shortly after moving in, possibly as the result of carrying heavy furniture on a 42 degree day, I thought I saw a ghost. Yes, one shouldn’t fess up to this sort of thing, it puts one squarely in the crazy basket, but it was the strangest visual illusion. I was lying in bed, gazing blankly past my grey bedroom door, through to the front door, and wondering why on earth the previous occupants had felt the need for four dead-locks, when something shifted. It seemed as if a black cloud hovered into the room, making the grey bedroom door look suddenly darker. Most odd.
Anyway, for a few days I toyed with the thought that the place might be haunted, then spent a few more musing why anyone would put four deadlocks on a chipboard door frame. I tried to imagine some of the events that might have happened in my house over the years. Finally I decided that if the place was haunted, then I may as well learn to live with this as, after all, the ghost got here first.
But why just resign yourself to something? Why not celebrate it? I’d been reading about the history of my new town and discovered that British survivors of the Napoleonic Wars were granted riverside land in an area known as Veterans Flats (nice land but it floods). So I decided that if my house was about fifty years older than previously thought, it could have once belonged to one of these sailors.
A few more days passed, where I pretended to myself that I was communing with the ghost, and I eventually came up with the person who I think once lived here. I mean, this is completely fictitious, so please bear with me. His name is Captain Frederick Johanssen, he was a French seaman with a Swedish mother, and he settled here after the war, with his adopted daughter and Chinese housekeeper.
I have been busily inventing stories about the Captain’s daughter (pulled out of the Pacific Ocean, with no signs of shipwreck nearby, or any other survivors, just this little girl swimming alone in the sea, miles from land); his housekeeper (actually his lover and a trusted friend, but propriety and his nature forbade any public acknowledgement); and his Swedish mother (so beautiful that it scarred him for life).
Captain Johanssen has become something of an obsession, but being a practical person, I’ve decided that this is a useful partnership. I’m currently working out a renovation plan for the house, and having excruciating taste in home furnishings, and an even worse sense of interior design, have solved this by asking one simple question: ‘would the Captain like it?’ If the answer is ‘non’, then the idea is discarded.
The Captain, it appears, is prone to military straight rows of clipped box hedges; neat white paintwork; black window boxes with red geraniums; chestnut brown Chesterfield chairs with many buttons; polished brass and flooring that, it has to be said, looks a hell of a lot like a ship’s deck. I’m currently pondering how much rope, canvas and nautical paraphenalia one can pack into a house before it starts looking like a Maritime Museum gift shop.
I’m also thinking that eventually I would like to write the history of the Captain’s life.
Helen Hopcroft: an artist's life 