I had heard stories about the harassment of sitting tenants when landlords wanted to do something different with a building but had never thought I would experience it at first hand.
Around the end of my last year of teacher training at Strawberry Hill, our Landlady deteriorated to the point that she needed professional care. Her stepson arrived from his home in South Africa to handle the situation and thanked us for all the help and assistance that we had been giving her up to that time. They took her off to a care home and started removing her belongings.
A week later, we received an eviction notice, telling us we had to be out by the end of the month.
We were barely scraping by on my government grant and there was no way we could afford to move into another rented apartment since, in the five years we had lived there, commercial rents had risen to an alarmingly high level, especially in this and the surrounding areas.
Moving out of the centre was also not possible since travelling into college, which was fairly close by, would also incur more expenses than we had. We approached the local council to see if we could rent one of their council houses, but they dismissed our case in an abrupt and dismissive manner assuring us that these houses were reserved for far more urgent cases than ours. The only solution they could offer was to go into a hostel and put our children into care. We were deeply shocked and horrified at this suggestion and continued to pray about the matter.
Since I had not yet finished my final year at Strawberry Hill, I could not consider buying a house. The mortgage company told me that I would at least need a signed offer of employment before they would even consider lending me the money. Added to that, the mortgage amount would be fairly low as I would only have a starting salary to base it on.
Dianna, one of the local members of our group was married to a notary who lived nearby. He advised us to stay put and to send our regular monthly rent payment. We had signed an agreement, and they could not evict us so easily. We wrote a letter to her stepson explaining our situation and informing him that we would be paying rent as usual. He did not reply and did not bank our cheques which, in law, would have indicated that he had accepted our tenancy.
A week or two after the letter had been sent, the harassment started. He moved in two lads who were, or pretended to be, lovers who had frequent quarrels. We would hear them shouting at each other and the walls would shake as they seemed to be physically throwing each other around. On top of this, they continually removed the bulbs from lights in the shared hallway downstairs. Our stairs were now dangerously dark.
The house had never been fully split into two apartments. After entering the front door, one could go straight up to our apartment. Things got much worse when they would deliberately leave their windows wide open and then leave the house for extended periods of time. We could not enter their part of the house and close the windows. This meant that an intruder could come into their flat and then open the door from the inside and go right up the stairs to our apartment. We reported them to the police and a woman constable came to speak to them. Without saying a word, they allowed her to step over the threshold and into their flat. Instantly she had done so, we heard them ordering the constable to leave as she was trespassing on their property. They were not at all afraid of the law and seemed to know exactly what they were doing. The police constable was sympathetic to our case but told us that, unless they did us physical harm, there was nothing they could do.
During this time the support from our prayer partners was crucial. We returned to a sense of peace, still looking for an answer but resting securely in the Lord. My studies had now ended, and family life went on as before with our three young children.
God continued to protect us throughout summer and the next few months despite growing harassment from our downstair neighbours. We prayed for them and even tried to be as friendly as we could whenever we happened to meet them.
At the end of August, I finally received my official teaching certificate and could now apply for a job.
Karl, our fellow Franciscan, worked at Catholic ‘Secondary Modern School’ in one of the fairly tough areas of Hammersmith, London with many students coming from poor and dysfunctional backgrounds. I was happy to go and work there. He introduced me to the Head of School who, praise God, took me on immediately to start that September.
The minute I had that all important official job offer in my hand, I hurried off to the Mortgage company and I started looking for a place to buy.
By November, we were still in the same situation. Though we had found the perfect little house about a mile away, we needed to pay £10,000 of it in cash before the Mortgage company would consider lending us the rest.
Things downstairs had become considerably worse. Some nights the noise and disturbances would reach a truly frightening level. At those times we would put the children to bed in our room and go and sleep on the couch bed in the sitting room so that we could be ‘on guard’ should we hear them coming up the stairs.
It was on one of these nights that Ursula had a dilemma that she was struggling with. She had learned from the doctor that morning, that she was pregnant. As we settled into our bed in the sitting room, she held back the news from me. She knew me well and knew that if I heard the news at this point, it may have resulted in a negative response. This would not have been in my nature since she knew that I always quoted the Maltese saying, “with every child, a new blessing.” Had I responded, even for a second, with a negative thought, this would have caused me regret. She was right.
She resorted to the prayers of St. Joseph again saying, “St. Joseph, you were helped by God in your sleep to accept the birth of Jesus. Please talk to David in his sleep and prepare the way for this news.”
That night I dreamt that God was presenting us with a new child. It was a beautiful experience and I felt truly at peace with it. The next morning when we woke up, I told Ursula about the dream I had just had.
“Well,” she said, “I have news for you!”
There was not even a hint of worry in either of our minds at that point since we knew that, however bad it seemed, God had this situation in hand.
The news spurred us on to find an answer to the deposit and the courage to approach my brother-in-law who immediately offered it to us as an interest free loan. Amazing!
“You will have this back in a few years - with interest.” I told him. I felt this deeply at the time and it came out of me quite spontaneously.
Once the formalities went through, we gave formal notice to our landlord and told him that we were leaving at the end of the month.
Within a day or two, he cashed all our past cheques and the two downstair ‘guests’ packed up and left.
We were not surprised.