by GJ Minett
‘An’ that’s Tony Jacklin’s place. Or used to be any rate. Don’t know if he still lives there – I still call it Tony Jacklin’s place though.’ In the absence of any response from her, he turned to face her. ‘Tony Jacklin?’
‘Who?’
‘Famous golfer. You must have heard of him.’ He smiled and raised his eyebrows. Clearly her ignorance came as no great surprise. They roared down the hill and into Winchcombe, where he was forced to slow to what felt like a crawl by a queue of drivers, apparently hell-bent on observing the speed limit. She looked on with genuine interest as they threaded their way through the winding main street, past the sign for Sudeley Castle and the church, squeezing between houses which were so close to the road she felt she could step from the car straight into their front rooms. The archetypal Cotswold village, such as she’d seen a thousand times on holiday programmes, scenic calendars and magazine covers. Perhaps that explained why the village looked so familiar to her, even though she knew she’d never been here in her life.
As soon as the opportunity presented itself, Sharp pulled out and overtook the queue of traffic. He smiled as he blew Winchcombe out of his exhaust and threw Ellen back into her seat. A signpost flashed past – still no mention of Oakham. She seemed to remember Wilmot describing it as a half-hour journey. It couldn’t be much longer, could it?
‘Must have come as a bit of a shock,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’
‘When you heard about the cottage. Bet you couldn’t believe it.’
She said nothing.
‘You didn’t know her, then?’
‘No.’
‘And you’ve no idea why she’s left it to you?’
She shook her head.
‘Sort of thing never happens to me. Lucky lady, I’d say.’
‘What about you?’ Ellen asked, her curiosity getting the better of her instincts. ‘You ever meet her?’
‘Miss Nash? Couple of times. Came in by taxi. And then we came to her place just the once – not long before she died. About three weeks ago.’
‘You came here?’
‘Drove Mr Wilmot out here ’cos he doesn’t drive. No skin off my nose – gets me out of the office, like.’
‘So what was that about?’
‘What – the meeting?’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows? Probably wanted to tie things up, you know? She must have known she hadn’t got long left.’
‘What did they talk about?’
‘Dunno. Sent me off for lunch, didn’t he? Moment we got there. There’s this pub at the top of the hill, just as you’re leaving the village. The Wayfarer’s. Said I could chalk it up to expenses and pick him up on the way back, after he’d – Shit!’
He braked suddenly, throwing the car into a right turn that was controlled but a lot sharper than it might have been. They now found themselves in a long lane, darkened by overgrown hedgerows which loomed up on either side. The occasional gate or junction offered a glimpse of fields and farmland but otherwise they were enclosed in a winding green tunnel which stretched away into the distance. It felt as deep into the countryside as she could ever remember being.
‘Sorry about that,’ said Sharp. ‘Missed that turn last time. Sort of sneaks up on you.’ Even he felt obliged to drive a little more circumspectly now, the high hedges and the frequent bends in the road making it impossible to see any oncoming vehicle until the last moment. They drove over a small bridge, then past a sign announcing that they’d arrived in Oakham.
The outskirts of the village offered up a number of properties of fairly recent vintage, many of them oozing prosperity. Then the road broadened out and swung left into the village itself and instantly they leapt back in time: a cluster of small labourers’ cottages around the village shop, dirt tracks leading off to farms which were signposted but not always visible from the road, trails of horse manure and mud, pressed into the surface by tractor wheels. They drove past the evocatively named Old Manor House, then swung right and up a slight incline, past a Norman church and a war memorial, which still displayed a couple of bedraggled wreaths from a few months ago. Silas Marner had been one of Ellen’s A-level English texts, more years ago than she cared to remember. This was exactly how she would have imagined the setting.
Halfway up the hill he slowed to allow a woman to be dragged across the road by two springer spaniels. Then he drew to a halt outside a property which was bordered by tall, well-maintained hedges. He pulled on the handbrake and switched off the ignition.
‘Here you are then,’ he said, as if introducing the next act. ‘Primrose Cottage.’
‘Oh my –’
Ellen stood still, one hand raised to her mouth. She leant back on the gate for support, causing it to swing shut behind her. She stayed there for a moment, taking it all in.
Her mind drifted back to one Saturday evening, shortly before the divorce was all tied up and put to bed. Kate had come round, armed with a Chinese and a couple of bottles of red wine, for what she liked to call a wallow. They’d curled up on the settee together, wrapped in blankets, and settled in for an evening of black-and-white movies on TCM. One of them (the name escaped her for the moment) was a classic weepy, with Ronald Colman and Greer Garson living in a country cottage which Kate had laughed off as totally unrealistic. Typical Hollywood overkill. Too beautiful for words. ‘Couldn’t exist outside a film set’.
Well, Kate . . .
Ellen took a deep breath. Sharp, a few yards ahead of her, stopped and turned to face her. He followed her gaze to the cottage, as if trying to take it in for the first time through her eyes.
‘Not bad, eh?’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said with a shake of the head.
He unwrapped a stick of gum and folded it into his mouth. ‘Like I said, some people have all the luck.’ He looked as if he was about to drop the wrapper, then realised she was watching and thought better of it. Instead he slipped it into one of his jacket pockets and from the other he produced a set of keys, attached to a large wooden fob.
‘I’ll open up, if you want. Let you have a look around inside.’
‘In a minute. There’s plenty to see out here first.’
He shrugged his shoulders, tugged at his trousers and went back to the car to retrieve his mobile, which he’d left on the dashboard. Ellen moved to let him through the gate, happy to lose him for a while. She turned her attention back to the cottage.
Shameless, she decided. That was the word for it. Shameless. It sat there, basking in all its glory, demanding undivided attention. Look at me. Love me. The figures 1805, worked into the stone above the front door, were faded but still discernible, even from where she stood. It wore them like a badge of honour. The Cotswold stone might have darkened with the years but it had been allowed to age gracefully. No endlessly repeated coats of whitewash here, nothing so undignified as a facelift. Primrose Cottage seemed as comfortable with its moss and its damp patches and its faded colour as it was with the glass conservatory, running the entire length of the left-hand side of the building, designed to catch the best of the sun. Ellen took in the hanging baskets, suspended at regular intervals from brackets in the wall, trying to visualise how they might look a few months from now. They’d be an absolute riot of colour in the summer, along with the honeysuckle and passion flowers which threaded their way in and out of the trellises. It almost took her breath away to think that this was actually hers.
Why?
The path led up to the front door, then broke off left and right, forming a loop which wove its way around the cottage. The raised front lawn was protected by neatly tended borders and a low wall, made from the same Cotswold stone as the path, a golden butterscotch of a very different vintage from that used to build the cottage itself. It was two to three feet in height at the start of the path but melted away in the sunlight, as the lawn sloped down towards the house. She stooped to take a closer look at the unfamiliar plants in the borders and tried to imagine how they might l
ook when they came into their own on a bright summer’s day. She trailed a hand through them as she walked towards the cottage, wondering who was responsible for this hard work. Surely not Eudora herself. The grass had clearly been cut throughout the winter months and was immaculately maintained, almost manicured. An elderly woman might conceivably have been able to cope with the borders, but everything else?
She turned left and stepped off the path. The feeble sun had been trailing in her wake all morning but had not yet had time to work its magic on a thin layer of frost covering the grass. The ground crunched underfoot as she left a trail of footprints behind her. She headed off towards a pergola draped in vines, which shielded a sculpted rockery. At its centre a natural spring trickled across the rocks and dropped into a small pool. The surface of the water was flecked with miniature ice floes, which were still holding out against the gradual thaw.
The rest of the world, the life Ellen had made for herself, seemed light years away all of a sudden. She sat down on a wooden bench and tried to get some sense of Eudora Nash. Presumably she must have rested here on this very seat and taken in the same scenery countless times in the past. What was she thinking while she sat here? Was she remembering her husband? Ellen recalled Wilmot saying that she’d outlived him by thirty years or more. Was this somewhere they used to come to sit together all those years ago? Or had she moved here much later, after he’d gone? She wished she’d thought to ask how long this place had belonged to Eudora. Presumably someone in the village would know.
After a minute or so, she stood up and started to retrace her steps. From the pergola she could see Sharp at the side of the cottage, fiddling with his mobile. He reached into his pocket and dropped the chewing gum wrapper into a bin clearly marked ‘GREEN WASTE RECYCLING’ without even taking his eyes from his toy. She ignored him and followed a twisting path down to the back of the cottage. A patio with table and chairs looked out over a large expanse of lawn, its uniformity broken only by a canopied swing hammock, which faced away from the cottage.
This, she realised, was the only part of the property not protected by high hedges, but it wasn’t difficult to see why. From this back lawn she had an uninterrupted view of the frost-covered hills in the distance. A footpath ran parallel with the cottage for a while before climbing and disappearing into a small copse of conifers, which stood ramrod straight and motionless in the breathless calm of the day. A number of farms and cottages were dotted about here and there, few enough to be counted on the fingers of both hands. There was a lane, little more than a dirt track really, which threaded its way in and out of these properties and the surrounding farmland. Other than that, there was nothing. Nothing but fields and hills as far as the eye could see. No wonder Eudora had felt no need for high boundary fences at the back. This place did not so much offer privacy as define it. Weren’t you lonely here, Eudora? Or was it precisely this solitude you were after?
She walked over to a gate in the far corner, which closed off a small field. Wilmot had said something about the previous owner, the one before Eudora, keeping a horse in it. She wondered what the poor creature had done for shelter in the winter months. Then she thought about Megan, who had been having riding lessons for three years now. How much more convenient was this – a simple stroll across the garden any time Megan wanted to ride? And just the thought of having a horse of her own . . . she would just die.
She shook her head, dismissing the fantasy almost as soon as it had come to her. After all, it wasn’t going to happen. Even if the cottage turned out to be hers, she couldn’t keep it. Not with her work at Langmere. They couldn’t move here – it just wasn’t possible.
The sound of approaching footsteps on the frozen grass alerted her to Sharp’s presence, even before he appeared at her side. He put both arms on the top bar of the gate and rested his chin on them. Then he thought better of it, straightened up and wiped at the sleeves of his jacket, which had picked up a greenish tinge from the damp wood.
‘Go mental, living here,’ he said.
Ellen picked up a low humming sound and scanned the horizon for its source. A small tractor was toiling its way up one of the hills in the distance, its engine labouring as it sought the appropriate gear and leant into the slope. To her right, the sound of Sharp scraping mud from the sole of his shoe against the gatepost sounded abnormally loud. She had never known silence to equal it. Never. It was total. In the summer, of course, there would be birdsong in the hedgerows and the constant drone of insects, but for now there was little to break the spell as winter held its breath. Apart from the tractor, this would have been pretty much what she’d have seen from this vantage point at any stage during the past two hundred years.
‘Reckon they could drop a nu-cular bomb on this place and no one’d notice.’
‘Random Harvest,’ said Ellen.
‘Do what?’
‘Random Harvest. It’s a film I saw a while ago. I’ve been trying to think of the name.’
‘Cool.’ Sharp pushed himself away from the gate and asked if she was ready to have a look inside now. She nodded and followed him round the remaining side of the cottage. Here she found a two-tiered vegetable garden, fairly desolate at this time of year with just winter cabbage, sprouts and broccoli on show but with the soil already turned over in readiness for the spring crop.
‘So who looks after the garden?’ she asked.
‘Can’t remember his name. Mr Wilmot did tell me. Drives over from one of the villages around here. He’ll be here later. Comes Mondays and Thursdays.’
‘How come he still works here? Who’s paying him?’
‘You are,’ said Sharp, grinning as he fished the keys from his pocket once more. ‘Comes out of the estate. Least, it does for the time being – till you sell it, like. Then it’s someone else’s problem.’
He negotiated the two locks and lifted the black latch, giving the bottom of the door a nudge with his foot to help it on its way. He felt around for the light switch and they stepped into a small cloakroom area, impregnated with the smell of old boots and damp rainwear.
‘We’ve still got the utilities then?’
‘The what?’
‘Electricity. It’s still working.’
‘Yeah . . . right. Electricity. Gas. They’re both OK. Phone’s gone though.’
‘Really?’
‘Last week. Not much point in keeping it with no one here to use it. But you couldn’t do without gas – boiler needs it for the central heating. Leave that off for a couple of nights and you’d be looking at burst pipes and the place under six foot of water. Front room’s through here.’
Ellen stepped back to let him lead the way. ‘You seem to know your way around pretty well for someone who’s only been here once.’
‘Only once while she was alive. Came out last week though. Had to drive the old man to the funeral, didn’t I? Soon as it’s over, he asks me to bring him here, shows me round and tells me what you’ll need to know. Thinks of everything, does Mr Wilmot.’
He walked ahead of her, ducking his head instinctively as he entered the room. ‘OK,’ he said, both hands plunged deep into his trouser pockets. ‘The front room.’
Small, was Ellen’s first thought, immediately followed by cold – very cold. She wrapped herself more snugly in her cardigan, folding her arms to hold it in place. If Sharp was right about the heating, it clearly wasn’t having a lot of effect in here. Presumably it was on timer rather than constant.
Dark too. The room was poorly served by a small window which struggled to make use of the early morning sunlight. Even with the aid of the overhead light, which clearly needed a bulb of a much higher wattage, the room was unable to throw off the gloom. The armchair and sofa were covered in identical faded floral prints and the bare stone walls were forbiddingly cold to the touch. The fireplace, with its open hearth and logs neatly stacked in a small recess, offered the only prospect of comfort in here. Maybe by firelight the room might look more welcoming.
/> In the far corner of the room, the motionless hands of a grandfather clock stubbornly insisted it was ten past four. Next to it stood a Welsh dresser which looked almost as old as the cottage itself. Ellen stepped over to it and lifted two photographs from one of its shelves, the only ones on display in the room as far as she could make out. She carried them over to the window to get a better look at them. One was a three-quarter-length photo of a good-looking man in early middle age, dressed in a rough tweed suit, the shirt collar tight at the neck and his hair greased down into a centre parting. He was leaning casually against a gatepost, his arms folded across his chest. The photo had managed to capture the merriment in his eyes, a dancing light which seemed to draw her in as she looked at him. The old wooden frame and the fading sepia colouring were not enough to keep his personality in check. Even now, what must be sixty years or so later, it spilled over into the room.
In the other photo, which clearly predated it by a few years, the same man was joined by a young woman. They were framed by the arch of a lychgate, he dressed in a uniform Ellen didn’t recognise, she smiling self-consciously and caught in the act of thrusting up a hand to keep her troublesome veil away from her face. A young couple, on the cusp of a new life together. Ellen peered closely at her and smiled.
‘Hello, Eudora,’ she said quietly.
She put the photos back on the shelf and picked up a vase of chrysanthemums and carnations, which had clung on to life for a little longer than their mistress but not much. The stagnant water did nothing to relieve the dank and oppressive smell which permeated the room. Cold as she was, she had to suppress the urge to throw open the window and every door in the place and let in the fresh air. She wondered briefly about the flowers. Clearly they were not from the garden – not in February.
‘This way,’ said Sharp, squeezing past her and heading back into the hallway. She followed him into a kitchen which could best be described as functional. No frills or excesses but clean, a reasonable size and fairly well equipped with the essentials. No dishwasher, she noted. Presumably she had no need for one if she was always cooking for herself. Good work surface though. Plenty of cupboard space, microwave, tall fridge with a freezer compartment on top. Certainly adequate.