Starting Over at Acorn Cottage

by Kate Forster

  ‘Pansy is the gardener and artist but I hold my own.’ He smiled.

  *

  Gosh, he was lovely, she thought later when she was sitting in her bed, wearing a parka and her boots, even though it was summer. No insulation in a place will do that, Henry had told her. Clara opened the folder and read the list he had written of everything he would do in the cottage.

  Not only had he written an exhaustive list, he had also drawn little sketches of the cottage and watercolours of what it would look like after the garden was planted and in bloom.

  It was the most exquisite thing she had ever seen and she pored over the drawings of the rooms and the new roof, and the furniture suggestions. It was as though she was eleven again and she and Mum had briefly escaped and she was drawing pictures of her perfect house in her diary for one day. Someday. Maybe that day was now.

  Choosing not to look at the prices yet, she had been lying in the cold imagining his vision for her cottage when Rachel had rung.

  She immediately dressed and ran out the door. As she turned on the car, she saw Henry’s door open and he came to the side of the car.

  ‘Everything okay?’ His beautiful face was concerned.

  ‘The girl at the tea shop – I gave her my number. Well, she called me; her mother is hurt. I’m going to wait with her.’

  ‘The one with the bruise?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes!’ said Clara. ‘You saw her also?’

  ‘I thought she must have a dodgy boyfriend.’

  Clara turned on the lights of the car. ‘No, I don’t think it’s a boyfriend. I’m going down to see if she’s okay and wait for an ambulance with her. Something about her worries me.’

  Henry nodded and then waved as she drove down the lane and onto the road.

  The roads were dark and she thought the lights of her Mini weren’t strong enough. She turned on high beams and saw a fox run across the road.

  ‘Christ, fox, get off the road,’ she murmured as she headed towards the village and then pulled up at the front of the bakery.

  She used the flashlight on her phone and banged on the glass with her hand.

  ‘Rachel? It’s Clara. Turn the lights on so the ambulance medics can see the shop.’

  The lights turned on and then the door opened, the bell sounding incongruous in the night and the surroundings.

  Clara stepped inside and saw Rachel’s mother lying on the floor with blood everywhere and her leg looking very much broken.

  ‘Oh God, is she dead?’ asked Clara without thinking.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so – she was moaning,’ Rachel said in a monotonous voice.

  Clara rushed behind the counter and pulled a stack of tea towels and handed them to Rachel. ‘Put theses against her head, try and slow down the bleeding.’

  Rachel stood helplessly so Clara moved quickly and took them off her. She gently lifted the woman’s head and put the tea towels underneath the wound, hoping it would stem the bleeding.

  ‘Go and get a blanket for your mum. We need to keep her warm so she doesn’t go into shock.’

  Thankfully Rachel responded and went upstairs and came back with a wool blanket and Clara instructed her to use it to cover her mother.

  The sound of the ambulance broke the still of the night and Clara watched Rachel, who was standing on the bottom stair, biting a nail.

  ‘She will be okay,’ she said gently to Rachel. She wondered if for a moment Rachel looked disappointed at this news and briefly entertained the thought that Rachel had pushed her mother down the stairs. If it was Clara, she would have pushed a woman like that, and for a moment, the memory of the last night with her father came back to her – the sounds of his screaming in the kitchen, and Clara’s blind rage at what he’d done. It took all her might to push these memories back down where she kept them, guarded by the dragons of her childhood that had kept her safe.

  Clara stood back as the paramedics rushed inside, did their work on Moira Brown and then loaded her into the back of the ambulance.

  ‘We can follow in the car,’ said Clara. Soon, she and Rachel were driving to Salisbury, the ambulance lights far ahead in the distance.

  Rachel was silent as they drove in the car, speeding along the dark roads, and Clara respected that but wondered what was going on in the girl’s mind. She knew this silence. She knew the fear this girl felt, and she knew the relief that the person who’d hurt you had been stopped – but at what cost had that come to Rachel? She hoped it wouldn’t be the price that she had paid so many years before.

  11

  Henry was concerned he had done too much with the sketches and the watercolours for Clara but he was a visual person and sometimes a one-line quote description did not do justice to the work he could envision for a home.

  It felt ironic to Henry that he was so brilliant at conjuring up what a house needed and wanted, as though it whispered it to him as he repaired for the owners, and yet he travelled in a van on wheels.

  If anyone else looked at Acorn Cottage, they saw a shrivelled old maid but Henry saw a great beauty waiting to be unveiled. With the right amount of care he could make her so pretty and elegant again, bringing the garden to life and the charm back to the home. Rethatching the roof was laborious and necessary but he would source the best water reed he could for Acorn Cottage, then he would paint the cottage inside and out. Perhaps a pink wash for the outside to pick up the light in the mornings and evenings. He wanted the cottage to look like a cloud at any time of the day.

  The inside would be the colour of clotted cream and he would build furniture and fix things that were already inside, and find pretty items for the rooms in local second-hand shops and paint them with flowers and polka dots and everything Naomi had wished for and that Clara loved.

  He imagined roses and larkspur and delphiniums as tall as Pansy, and the wisteria would be trained to run along the fence, like the frill of a skirt. The rose along the fence would keep trespassers out, and there would be a vegetable garden with a picket fence around it and a funny scarecrow wearing an old straw hat.

  Henry had renovated many houses and thatched twice as many again, and he had worked in some of the most beautiful homes in England but Acorn Cottage had him bewitched like nothing before. He swore he could hear the cottage tell him what she needed and most of all what she needed was company.

  Henry understood this need, as he knew what loneliness felt like. Some nights he wondered if he was going insane from lack of conversation, so it was no wonder Pansy spoke like a small adult.

  After Clara had gone to help the girl in the village, he had walked to the front of the house and looked at the gate that was lying on the ground in the dark.

  It was a simple fix – a few new hinges and tighten the latch and it would be right again.

  Before he knew it, he had his lamp out and his electric drill and had lined up the hinges and rehung the gate. Pansy was asleep inside the van, used to the sound of the drill. Henry opened and closed the gate, listening to the satisfying click of the latch as it closed.

  He took the sign off the front of the gate, which had the words Acorn Cottage carved into it, and ran his fingers over the words.

  He found two small indentations.

  The acorns.

  He took the sign into the van, found an old cloth and wiped back the sign and held it up to the light. Yes, definitely acorns, he thought. The sign would once have been painted.

  He went to the back of the van and found the old box of Naomi’s paints and opened them. He hadn’t seen the paints since she had died but the smell, the nutty scent of the oils, some smelling like a pine tree, some like flaxseed oil, the poppy oils and oil of cloves that she mixed into the paint to make it last longer, filled his senses. He picked up an old rag she used to dry her brushes on, disturbing the lavender and rosemary oils she had used as solvents and held it to his face.

  When would the pain ease?

  He missed her more than he could have thought possible. Pe
ople said he should start dating again, meet women, get married, have another baby, but how could he start again when Naomi was supposed to be his ending?

  Naomi had painted the furniture Henry made in bright colourful folk-art styles and they sold them to clients. Her deft hand and wonderful understanding of colour worked on the pieces and while not many people would think saffron yellow and turquoise would work as a pairing, in her hands and with her mixing of the hues, it did.

  Her searched for the right colour for the sign. A pale pink sign with green writing and the little acorns painted in brown and green would look lovely, and if Clara painted the house pink, it would work perfectly.

  He painted the first coat and let it dry and then got ready for bed.

  He wondered if he should text her and see if she was okay with the girl from the bakery. Naomi would have helped that girl, he thought, and she would have had the situation sorted and that girl safe in a moment.

  He wondered how Clara was doing with the house. She’d seemed a bit vague on the details and not really aware of the enormity of the renovation required.

  Her texted her using the number she had given him.

  You okay? How is the girl?

  A text came back faster than expected.

  I’m fine but Rachel is in shock. Her mother is in an induced coma as she was very combative when she was in hospital, maybe a brain injury they think, and has a broken hip and femur. They are sending her for surgery. I will stay with Rachel at the bakery and then come home tomorrow.

  Henry put the phone down, got into his bed and lay in the darkness. The scent of the paints filled the air and he rolled onto his side where Naomi used to lie. He put his hand on her pillow. ‘Say yes,’ he remembered her saying.

  Three years on and he still didn’t know what he was supposed to be saying yes to in life. Surviving was enough for him but there was something in him that was shifting and he wasn’t sure he remembered the feeling. It felt something like anticipation, or waking up – he wasn’t sure but it wasn’t familiar.

  *

  In the morning, he had finished painting the sign, and Pansy, excited to see the paints out, had demanded her own sign stating Pansy’s Room. Not that she had her own bedroom but she still insisted he paint it and then draw pansies on the wood and paint them too.

  When it was done, he left it on the sill of the window of the van to dry and walked out to the cottage.

  Clara wasn’t back yet, and she hadn’t told him if she wanted to go ahead with the quote, so he wandered through the garden, seeing its potential.

  Naomi had once told him he could find the potential in a concrete bunker but she was prone to exaggerating, he’d said to her, though she had replied that she ‘never, ever, ever exaggerated’.

  Pansy came into the garden with her pram and dolls and pushed them under the oak tree where moss was growing and the long grass had not reached.

  ‘Lovely spot,’ said Henry as Pansy looked up at the tree branches.

  ‘Do you think there are owls in that tree?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. What makes you ask?’ asked Henry. Pansy had never really been interested in animals before, more caught up in the world of fairies and make-believe. ‘Do you like owls?’ he prompted.

  Pansy shrugged. ‘I don’t know any owls so I can’t say if I like them or not but last night I dreamed Mummy came and sat in the tree and she was an owl.’

  Henry felt a shiver run through his body. Pansy had never spoken of dreaming about her mother before. She was so little when Naomi died and even though Henry had tried to keep Naomi’s memory alive, she was almost an imaginary symbol in Pansy’s life, like Father Christmas or the Easter Bunny.

  ‘Mummy was an owl? How nice,’ he said, trying to keep his tone light. He hadn’t dreamed about Naomi in over a year and he missed her but then the pain when he woke and realised it was a dream was almost like going through the death all over again. He missed dreaming about her but was also grateful he didn’t dream so much anymore and for this, he felt guilty.

  ‘Yes, she was an owl and she was watching us.’ Pansy stated this as though it were a completely normal event in her life as she wrapped a baby doll in a blanket.

  ‘Were we also owls?’ He smiled.

  ‘No, silly Daddy, we were here as people, and the house was pink.’ Pansy laid a doll’s blanket out on the moss. ‘My babies and I are playing vets now, so you can go and do your work.’

  Henry watched his daughter line her dolls up and put a collection of plastic animals on the blanket with a toy doctor’s kit.

  She must have seen the sketches and watercolours he did for Clara, he thought, because how else would she know he thought the house would be perfect painted pink?

  Children were funny little things, he told himself with a shake of his head. Nevertheless, he found himself looking up at the oak tree to see if Naomi was an owl in the tree, watching over them.

  12

  Rachel woke with a start. The sound of the kettle whistling was unfamiliar. Usually she was the one awake first, making Mother’s tea and taking it into her bedroom and then going downstairs to start the day before dawn. Baking and kneading and preparing what Mother told her to sell for the day.

  The memories of the night before began to stir. She remembered Mother at the bottom of the stairs and watching Clara come back after the hospital – Clara, who knew how to get bloodstains out of the linoleum. She didn’t ask how she knew, as Clara seemed very focused on her task and was barking orders for baking soda and vinegar so Rachel did as she asked.

  When the floor was clean, they went to bed. Rachel was glad Clara had stayed. She didn’t want to face the stain or the memories alone.

  Rachel pulled on her dressing gown and opened the door to her bedroom and went to the little kitchen, where Clara was dunking tea bags with enthusiasm, spilling little drops of tea onto the counter.

  Mother wouldn’t like that, thought Rachel and then she remembered Mother was in hospital.

  ‘Hello,’ she said to Clara, feeling ashamed of her having to be here to help her when they hardly knew each other.

  Clara turned around and tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘Good morning. I let you sleep. I put a sign up on the door of the shop.’

  ‘What time is it?’ asked Rachel, noticing the sun coming through the kitchen window.

  ‘Eight,’ said Clara. ‘Milk, sugar?’

  Mother didn’t like her having either.

  ‘Both, thank you,’ said Rachel and watched as Clara spooned two sugars into the mug and a splash of milk, a quick stir, then handed it to Rachel.

  ‘Shall we sit?’ asked Clara, gesturing to the sofa.

  They sat in silence, the heater warming their toes. Rachel wasn’t usually allowed to have the heater on in the mornings and she felt her toes wiggle in appreciation.

  ‘I’ve rung the hospital; your mum is going into surgery this morning. They said they will ring you when you can go down.’

  Rachel nodded and let the mug warm her fingers as she sipped her tea.

  She didn’t want the hospital to ring. She just wanted to forget it ever happened but more than that, she didn’t want her mother to come home.

  Clara’s eyes on her felt like X-ray vision, as if she could see everything Rachel was thinking. She stood up quickly.

  ‘I need to open the bakery; I will just do some sandwiches for the day and some shortbread and scones.’

  ‘You will have the day off,’ said Clara firmly.

  ‘I never take a day off. Mother said holidays are for lazy people.’

  Rachel noticed Clara’s eyes narrow slightly.

  ‘Did your mother work in the bakery?’

  ‘She did all the accounts and paperwork upstairs.’

  Clara raised her eyebrows now and Rachel bit her lip. She knew what Clara was thinking but she couldn’t be disloyal to Mother, not after all she did for her.

  ‘Rachel, I want to help you,’ said Clara, draining her tea and puttin
g it on the table.

  ‘You already have – thank you so much for coming when I called last night.’

  And Rachel meant it. She was grateful. She wasn’t sure what she would have done if she didn’t have Clara’s number. Or maybe she was sure and she didn’t want to admit it yet.

  ‘No, I mean about your mother. She seems to be very domineering – perhaps it’s something you can speak to someone about.’

  ‘She loves me,’ said Rachel, knowing she sounded flat though she tried to mean it. ‘She really loves me.’

  ‘But she hurts you.’

  Rachel was silent in the face of the truth.

  ‘Love shouldn’t hurt, Rachel. I know this. My mum went through it with my dad. I was lucky – she protected me and got me away from him, but there is no one to help you here.’

  ‘I don’t need help,’ said Rachel defiantly.

  ‘Then why did you call me, of all the people in this village, why me?’ Her question was asked so gently yet it felt like Rachel had been knifed in the stomach. She bent over and sat down on the sofa again and started to cry.

  She felt Clara’s hand on her back, rubbing along her spine, as she cried.

  ‘I don’t have any friends,’ she said.

  ‘You do, you have me now,’ said Clara. ‘We’re new friends.’

  ‘Mother thinks I’m useless, and gets upset with me. She says everything I do isn’t up to scratch.’

  ‘You, Rachel Brown, are miles above scratch,’ said Clara. ‘You are beyond scratch. You are in the stratosphere of brilliant. Look at everything you do. The shop and the baking and caring for your mum – you are amazing.’

  Rachel had never heard these words before. They made her feel like she was wearing a coat that was too tight for her body, tight on the arms and shoulders. It felt foreign and she tried to shrug it off.

  ‘I’m not. Mother says I would be in a home for women who aren’t very smart if it wasn’t for her.’

  ‘I don’t know what century your mother lives in in her head but there is no such home for women like that, so she is wrong and you mustn’t listen to her.’ Clara sounded cross and Rachel was sorry she had been disloyal to her mother.