A FRESH OF BREATH AIR
BY
ANDREA FRAZER
A Fresh of Breath Air
by
Andrea Frazer
Copyright 2011 by Andrea Frazer
Smashwords Edition
These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Andrea Frazer.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1 In Search of Paradise
Chapter 3 House-Warming for New Friends
Chapter 4 Dancing and Drunken Hens
Chapter 5 The ‘MU’ and Children Too
Chapter 6 Carol Parties and Evergreen Sorties
Chapter 7 Hand-Bells and Christmas Ghosts
Chapter 8 A Touch of the Grim Reapers
Chapter 9 Cross Goats and Palm Fronds
Chapter 10 Barn Dancing, Village Style
Chapter 11 Old Friends and Bun Fights
Chapter 12 The Year Turns Full Circle
The carousel of the ever-revolving circle of life has turned once more, and the alluring colours of the ‘grow your own’ horse has re-appeared, mesmerising with its promises of a more satisfying life: people feverishly planting and growing their own food, and turning away from the bland supermarket fare, in their droves.
Whether this is a result of hard times, or an attempt to shrink the carbon footprint of their food consumption, I have no real idea. However, nearly a generation later than the events in this book took place, people are becoming aware of the benefits of the home-grown.
The plants can be produced completely organically, and are vastly superior in flavour, with none of the wastage of rejecting anything that does not conform to a uniform shape and size. An added benefit, is that the energy expended in their growing negates the need of a gym membership, thus giving a greater overall financial saving than the obvious one: home-grown food is, after all, paid for in sweat and tears (if not necessarily blood), especially if grown from seed.
The inevitable knock-on effect of this is more home-cooking, more ‘doing it from scratch’, and this can only be of benefit to all members of the family, from youngest to oldest.
The television currently supplies us with a plethora of programmes showing how to grow things, and others, showing them how to deal with the fruits (and vegetables) of their labours. Documentaries and ‘fly on the wall’ programmes exhort us to change our habits, lest we end up like So-and-So, who can’t get out of their own front door because of their size, or Who’s-It, who had to have a their stomach stapled because of the grave effects of their weight on their health.
Obesity is fast becoming one of the biggest killers and the most common and public-money draining problems facing our society today. Those who hear the message are confronting it in their own back gardens, allotments, and any land they can get permission to use. Good health is not a given: it is something to be cultivated in one’s lifestyle and, at the moment, the omens are good.
But, getting down from my soap-box now, I confess that much of this book is about my family (names changed to protect this guilty - you know who you are!), and about the differences encountered in moving from town to country. I hope it entertains you.
PS The title for this book is from a wonderful transposition of words uttered by my elder daughter, at about the time that this book was written.
PPS The tea and raisin wine really is deadly. Don’t ever attempt to make it, if you can avoid doing so. You have been warned!
I
We didn’t exactly turn into country bumpkins overnight, but a dream that had been stealthily stalking us for fifteen years finally caught up with us.
Ever since the early days of our marriage, in a tiny one-bedroomed flat, we had talked about getting back to the earth, of living a rural life, growing our own healthy food. The talk had continued as we moved to a modern two-bedroomed house and planned a family, and cosy winter evening would be spent in front of a hissing gas fire, while we sipped chilled white wine, surveyed the current issue of Daltons Weekly, and dreamed of flames licking fragrant apple logs in an inglenook fireplace. Oh, the ideals of youth!
In our suburban nineteen-thirties’ three-bedroomed house with two, and then three children, we planned what we would grow, and how the children would grow strong and brown in the embrace of clean, fresh country air. As you can see, we really were in thrall to a pipe-dream, and taking an unconscionable time to get around to the real thing.
Later, in our four-bedroomed Edwardian villa, with four children asleep upstairs, we discussed animals, type, number and usefulness, and I, knowing I could never be a partner to eating the flesh of any animal I had been personally introduced to, sipped my wine (now home-made (four children take a lot of feeding and clothing!), and smiled my blessing on everything, confident that dreams never come true.
Of course, it’s glaringly obvious that this was one of those gigantic bluffs that one plays out, to take the conscious mind from such prosaic realities as nappy buckets (you see how long ago this was?), washing up, and piles of laundry to sort, wash, spin, dry, iron, air, fold, and put away, and finally lay out to be worn again, so that it needs to be washed etc etc. Our garden at that time, though not vast, was over a hundred feet in length, and was not even passably tidy, only the hardier plants surviving our sketchy care.
We had taken over an allotment when we moved to that house, and bravely axed its tangled jungle down. I had never realised that bolted rhubarb could reach seven feet in height, until then. We diligently turned the ground with a rotary cultivator (borrowed) in the autumn, and returned to our cosy gas fire, to sit out the winter with seed catalogues and many re-pencilled plans, to dream and dream.
Two seasons later, when the undergrowth had reached man-height again, and we had received many furious and threatening letters from the local authority, we admitted defeat, relinquished the agreement on our tiny plot of paradise, and allotted the allotment money for some decent white wine. This, we could sip while we planned the small-holding we would surely run with the utmost success and efficiency, some day. See how genuinely deluded we were?
It came, therefore, as a complete and utter surprise when, after sending languidly for details from a particularly fruitful copy of our favourite property paper, we found ourselves making appointments to view, and arranging for the children to stay with various relatives, while we went off on a rural property-hunting sortie.
“We can make a short touring holiday of it,” my husband, Ian, assured me. “Sort of mix business with pleasure: try out some of those country pubs we’ve always wanted to go to,” he added with a serpent smile, and a chill moved across my heart. Things were pushing harder, this time. If we weren’t careful, we’d wreck all that glorious dreaming and go and take the blasted plunge, and then where would we be? Up to our necks in filthy mud, and caked in cow pats, that’s where we’d be! But there was still hope. We’d probably hate every place we visited, and then we would return gratefully to our fireside, where the phantom scent of wood smoke lingered, and I browsed through books on preserving and real country cooking.
Growing things en-masse had been like having four children instead of two, like writing a best-selling novel (no chance! When did I ever have more than a few minutes to spare?), like taking a somewhat belated law degree and becoming a celebrated barrister. Even if I started now, I’d be ninety-three before I’d even remotely carved a legal name for myself. I’d had the guts to have the four children, but that had left me spent. The others seemed too exhausting to even contemplate.
It was with a slightly shaken confidence, but a reasonably iron resolve (on my part, not to change the status quo) that we set off on a hot July morning for Wales, I, confident that nothing would be suitable, but resolved to enjoy the trip as an unexpected holiday without the children, something that very rarely came our way. As there were six of us and two cats to consider, relatives had, in the past, opted not to look after our sprawling family for longer than an evening.
II
Ah, sunny Wales - not! While England basked in temperatures in the mid-eighties with clear blue skies and blinding, sparkling, thoroughly un-English sunshine, the Welsh had obviously taken the option on normal English summer weather that year.
As we approached the Severn Bridge, we could see the curtain of mist on the other side, and a similar cloud of gloom coloured our spirits and conversation. The atmosphere in the car plummeted through chilly, as I surveyed the meteorological medium in which we intended to spend the first day of this little jaunt, to icy, when I contemplated the run-up to the old age pension in this land of churchyard chill. I was only thirty-four, and far too young to die!
I wasn’t famous. I hadn’t discovered anything, except a real live fly in my soup at one memorably hilarious anniversary dinner. I hadn’t made a film, a record, or even a newspaper article, if you don’t count the local rag, when we got married. The thought of slowly dissolving in Welsh mist for the rest of my three score and ten was too miserable to contemplate, and my mind flew back twelve years to our first and, until now, last visit to Wales.
We were footloose and fancy free (ie non-parents), and had rashly decided, on finishing work for the August Bank Holiday weekend, to hop over to the land of sheep and male voice choirs. We could sleep in the car (we were broke, even back then), and we could take our own food.
There was a drought? We’d take our own water as well, for didn’t we have dozens of those plastic five-litre squash containers that I’d been telling myself for years would come in handy one of these days? Well, now I had the chance to be one hundred per cent right. I seized it! Of course we’d go, and gaily began running enough water to float a small boat, and making enough cheese, paste and Marmite sandwiches to feed a boy-scout troop for a week.
Sleeping in a car with non-reclining seats is always a bad idea, and to be avoided at all costs. I offer this advice, too late for me, but possibly not for you. If you must sleep in a car, however, do make sure you plan your route with a map showing only the really important landmarks - like public lavatories.
I will make one for the British Isles one day, showing every convenience ever built, with a one to five star rating, and to be distributed free to all foolish young people who have not yet suffered the indignities which I did, on our first overnight stop. Even through the mists of over two decades, some incidents have the power to raise a dark flush across my features.
To be crouched in a lay-by, genteelly placed between two car doors, thinking one’s self hidden and private, only to hear one’s loved one burst into peals of un-gentlemanly laughter, and to be informed that one is crouched too low, and that, furthermore, one’s bottom is being illuminated by every car that passes (‘Surprised there hasn’t been an accident!), is enough to make anyone pledge to donate their bladder to medical science before death, and give up fluid forever.
To rectify this problem, with a higher crouch and a smugger expression, only to hear the same hysterical laughter again, is intolerable, if somewhat puzzling. The discovery that the slope of the lay-by is away from the passenger side of the car, and that my most private (and presumably hidden) actions have made a vast pool which has trickled to the other side of the lay-by, left me reaching for a spade to dig my own grave, dying of humiliation, as I obviously was.
The lavatories in Wales (bricks and mortar, not improvised) seemed just as bad, and left me with a germ complex that took some time to shift. (I hadn’t been to either Greece or Syria, at that time.) They all seemed to be built next to bomb/demolition sites and to be decidedly Victorian (not cleaned since Victoria had been on the throne! And she’d have died of disgust if she’d seen some of the thrones that confronted me on that ill-omened trip!).
In every shop we entered, to buy postcards, guide-books or food, the assistants and customers immediately lapsed into Welsh (can they smell the English?). We only went into one pub on this short trip into Wales. It looked nice, and we were sick of warm orange-squash-tainted water and rubber sandwiches (oh, that cheese was such a mistake!).
There was a pleasant buzz of conversation and the odd chuckle of laughter in the saloon bar, until we opened our mouths. Our order was passed across the bar to us, and we consumed lager and pies in utter silence - a most unnerving experience. Our next pub stop was the following day, on the English side of the Severn, and in civilised, unprejudiced society once more.
We had ‘done’ Wales in forty-eight hours, and that was too long for me. To say that I had no wish to return was an understatement on a par with ‘Nuclear explosions leave one a trifle sunburnt, at their epicentre’.
But that old phantom wood smoke and the clouds of euphoric dreams produced by three glasses of thunderously lethal tea and raisin wine had done their work, and I had been well and truly conned.
III
As all these memories floated through my mind, we were winding our way down sickeningly familiar mist-veiled roads, sided by foggy fields, leading to near-invisible, rain-misted hills, stark and threatening, as they towered over the valleys. The address we were seeking was in the Brecon Beacons, a God-forsaken spot if ever I saw one and, as we wound out way steadily onwards and upwards, the mist thickened into low cloud. The road seemed to be about six feet wide, as we inched our way along it, hugging the mountainside, and visibility was about the same distance.
Occasionally, an unexpected break in the floor of cloud below us (below?!) allowed us stomach-churning glimpses of abandoned slate mines, like the time-blackened play bricks of a young giant, left lying when he departed for more mature pastimes.
The thought of approaching traffic suddenly entered my head, an uninvited wraith of fear and, round every bent I squinted, terror-stricken through the gloom, for the sign that was at that very moment writing itself in my brain in letters of fire - ‘Warning! Combine harvesters’. What a combine harvester could possibly be doing up here near a slate mine, was too inconsequential to even think about. If we were going to look at a place with a bit of land, then maybe someone else was doing his own rural thing up here, only on a grander scale.
It took us three hours to travel only seven-and-a-half miles and, when we arrived, dripping with globules of moisture (the air was so damp, I thought I might even be able to drink it), a warmer welcome than we received, would have been much appreciated.
Instead of the expected gratitude that someone had bothered to traipse through such hellish landscape to this out of the way place, a taciturn, very Welsh voice mumbled, “Oh, it’s you, is it? Well, its two hours late you are, and I do ‘ave my milkin’ to do, don’t I?” And that was all we got, as we followed a wizened old man with blackened teeth, through a dark, narrow passageway smelling of damp and animals.
In the slightly lighter but filthy parlour, he looked like something from another age, as he and my husband, Ian, discussed milk yields, grass area per head of cattle, cultivation acreage, etc. etc.
The old man’s trousers were tied with string, his shirt unrecognisably tattered. His boots, of the hob-nailed variety, were thickly encrusted with what looked like years of muddy (shitty) cattle yards, as were the tiles on the parlour floor, and the reek from a stack of mouldering, dirty dishes wafting in from the kitchen, which we had passed through en route to this room, did nothing to lighten the atmosphere.
He smoked a deplorable old clay pipe, which he balanced in the space where once he must have cherished a tooth, and, as he talked, his wispy grey hair, long-uncut, nodded half a second behind his head. His hands, much the same colour, trembled slightly, and his eyes watered continuously. Every now and then, the black broken nail of a forefinger explored his right ear, and a drop trembled at the end of his shrew-like nose.
As the manly rural discussion stuttered to a halt, a dark brown-painted door opened in the far wall, and a woman dressed all in black entered with a tea tray. So like the old man did she look, that they could have been twins. “My wife, Mfanwy,” her spouse murmured, by way of introduction, slightly raising his head before recommencing his conversation with Ian.
The old woman bore down on me, her face split into a hideous toothless grin (how Stephen King this sounds to me, even now) - and then I fainted! It must have been the smell - it couldn’t possibly have been the non-existent heat.
I remember nothing of the rest of the visit, except for odd, disjointed phrases. “ … don’t seem very strong …”, “ … must be the long journey …”, “ … sincerest apologies …”, “ … think I’d better get her to the car …”, “ … will telephone with our decision,” and the old man’s final verdict on my weakness. “That woman needs some good Welsh air in her lungs. Do ‘er the power of good, livin’ up ‘ere, so it would.” We never did find out his name.
My consciousness returned with a snap, as I smelled cigarette smoke (different times, different ways), and I grasped desperately at its source, to remove the smell of neglect and hopelessness from my nostrils. “What, in the name of God, do you think you were doing back there, Andrea?” barked Ian, glaring thunderously at my pale face. “You made me look a right idiot. The old chap probably thinks we’re a couple of escaped lunatics, with you fainting at the sight of a cup of tea, without even introducing yourself.”
“But, don’t you see?” I blurted out. “That was us! In thirty or forty years’ time, we’d be as completely broken down and without hope as they are. Our lives would tick away, while the children grew up in an atmosphere of despair and decay. They’d suffocate there as surely as we would. We can’t just write off their childhood, and let them stagnate in rank grass and low cloud. We want sunshine, fresh air and laughter for them, not the sort of living death those two are experiencing.
“They’re just biding their time until they die, then they’ll be lowered into that sodden earth, and be swallowed up in the whole depressing landscape, feeding it and becoming part of it, as we would too, if we lived there.” My voice trembled, and I stuttered into silence, greedily inhaling smoke, in an attempt to remove the smell of the place, which I seemed to have carried back into the car.
“Don’t be so blasted fanciful,” spat out my hard-hearted spouse, but I noticed that he too was pale-faced, as he drew a firm line through the first address on our list. He would never admit it in a million years, but he had seen our future there too, and it had been terrible.
As we rumbled back on to English soil again, and turned our way towards tonight’s stop-over, I asked, “Speaking of introductions, what was that old couple’s name? I never did find out.”
“Jones, I think. I don’t actually know,” and our eyes met. We had to stop the car by the side of the road for a full ten minutes until we could stop laughing, and control ourselves enough to continue the journey. That little incident shifted the last of the depression from us, and with the tears of mirth still wet on our cheeks, we headed purposefully for The Dog and Duck (H&C, Col TV, B&B, Eve meals).
IV
The next day’s call was in Somerset, and sounded quite enchanting - plenty of growing land, some grazing, planning permission for a produce shop, and a four-bedroomed detached house. We discussed the possibilities over an excellent steak dinner and, later, over our second cognac, the old contentment rolled back. This was more like it. This was going to be a lovely little holiday for us, like almost moving to Lincolnshire had been a couple of years ago: a few days away, then slipping thankfully back into the old routine. The dream resumed its magic for me, and I relaxed.
Ian, however, did not. As I pretended to toast my toes in front of an empty fireplace, he diligently made notes, wrote lists, worded questions, and made mysterious calculations in a black leather-bound notebook he had brought with him. It didn’t worry me unduly. Thus, had things always been between us, since we first met. If I felt a thing worth doing, I did it now, flinging myself into it one hundred per cent, with great enthusiasm and energy, and got it done. If I thought otherwise, and didn’t, then it didn’t - get done, that is.
Ian, on the other hand, is a man of enthusiasms. Anything can set him off, and he is like a dog that has caught the scent of a rabbit. He tears off, harum-scarum, in all directions, until the rabbit, in the form of his current enthusiasm, dives into its burrow, and he is left panting and exhausted, his energies drained, his quarry gone.
It is at this point that I have been left, variously, with a computer that he can almost program, four boxes of bolted seedlings and no dug-over bed in which to plant them, a half-painted hall, a wall knocked down in my kitchen, but the bare holes never plastered over (he demolished it, by the way, on top of the special kitchen carpet we had paid shed-loads of money for, with the excuse that, “It’ll vacuum up.” It didn’t!), and so on, ad nauseam.
At the moment, the bunny’s tail was within reach of his snapping white teeth, and the burrow, another four viewings away. The hound was not giving in that easily, but then, I knew that dog, and, never before, had it had quite sufficient puff to complete the course.
That night, when we retired to our room, a small fire burned in the grate (we had brought a little of the Welsh weather with us), the bed was neatly turned down on crisp, snowy-white sheets, and a vase of pinks and roses filled the room with their heady perfume. A tap on the door, as we took all this in, revealed the landlord’s wife with a tray, covered with a blindingly white, starched cloth.
“Thought you might fancy a bite of supper,” she explained, “and today’s bread ain’t never the same when it becomes yesterday’s,” with which cryptic comment, she left us.
Deftly twitching the cloth aside, Ian produced the answer to the riddle. There, on two plates, lay thick slabs of yeasty bread flanked by hunks of rich cheese, home-made pickle, and dark yellow butter. Beside this feast steamed two mugs of dark, frothy cocoa.
“Hmph! Bet this bumps up the bill,” declared my cynical husband, but he ate as heartily as I, and with his ‘rural contentment’ look plastered all over his smug mug, as his eyes feasted on the simple comforts of the room. “Look, real horse brasses,” he spluttered, through a mouthful of crumbs, with the same rapturous attention with which cannibals must have viewed the first Christian missionaries.
“Woolworth’s, more like,” I replied, in a killjoy fashion. “Probably sell ‘em by the ton down here,” but his eyes continued to twinkle, nevertheless.
The next morning, we were more down to earth, as I telephoned my mother about Stephanie (aged ten - No backchat? Pulling her weight?), and Francis (aged nine - Anything broken, shredded, killed?), and Ian’s mother about Harry (aged seven - Eating anything at all? Not scratching his eczema?), and Posy (aged five - Not pining too much? What, not pining at all?). Finally, I phoned our neighbour about our Siamese cat, Joe, and our Burmese, Shenna (Not run over? Not lost? Eating well?).
After half an hour of frantic dialling and coin-feeding (for this was in the days before mobile phones), it seemed that our brood was managing just as well, if not better, without us, and into my mind slid the unworthy thought of not returning for a month. We could not, of course, afford to do that, but one could dream, couldn’t one?
Ian, meanwhile, had packed our belongings and settled the bill, and we were ready for the off: ready to face our next port of call and, possibly, the start of a new way of life. I sent up a quick prayer, as we drove off, that this would prove more promising than yesterday’s viewing which had also, on paper, seemed perfect (except for its geographical situation), and that tomorrow night’s country pub would be as accommodating.
Ian whistled as he put the car into gear. They had not charged us for the supper after all, and I could envisage the whole day, bedevilled by a stream of drivel on the attributes of country people - honest, toiling, down-to-earth, welcoming … As far as I was concerned, people are the same wherever they live. Some are honest and some are not. Some work, some skive. Some are nice, and some are downright unpleasant. It is not location that forms characters, and there are rogues in every gallery, wherever it is situated.
V
Holbrook Farm was a small-holding that definitely had charm: we loved it. The people who lived there were friendly, and did not in the least resemble the un-dead of our last viewing. The house was modernised and immaculate, the children rosy-cheeked, and the few goats and chickens, sleek and well-fed. The books were in exemplary order and, there seemed, to my eyes anyway, to be acres of greenhouses and well-tended plots extending almost to the horizon.
The kiosk on the road carried on a brisk trade, as we walked around. The only drawback we had envisaged, was that it was six miles from the nearest town and schools, and that would have necessitated another car, as Ian would have to continue to work for a while - which brings us to what was, then, almost a drawback, but was to become our downfall.
Although the profits were good, there were also full-time employees, as well as the couple who owned it. The whole place was reasonably priced, but only if Ian brought in a supplementary wage for the first year or two, to throw a sop to the huge bank loan we would need for this venture. I would have to do the work of two, and cope with four children during this time. That was why we were worried about the ferrying to and from the school: because of the time and fuel it would eat up.
We had just persuaded ourselves that we could cope, and were mentally congratulating ourselves on our excellent choice, from the many advertised in good old ‘Daltons’, when the blow fell.
The owner, after enchanting us with his little kingdom, was explaining that the sale could not go through for at least six months (that was all right - we were in no hurry - and I was completely won over on the viability of a real-life rural existence now).
There would, however, also have to be some alteration in the sum of capital needed for the business in question. He hoped that we would understand, but because roadside trade had increased so much in popularity in the last couple of years, that he had decided to act on the planning permission he had received, to build a shop to replace the wooden kiosk, thus having more stock on the spot, and, consequently, was raising the asking price (“It’s a little gold mine, you see.”) When we asked, “By how much?” getting him to repeat himself, in the hope that we had misheard, we walked away disconsolately.
Afterwards, in the car, we consoled ourselves with the thought that the work would have proved too much for both of us, especially for me, with the house as well. That we could not have afforded to keep on the staff, and might have run into all sorts of difficulties with tribunals and the like: was a step too far, not to mention the fact that the children would have had to be neglected to a certain degree, if we were to make a go of it. And what was money, anyway, if your family was exhausted and unhappy all the time? We’d have to let this one go.
VI
Our stay that night was as sour as our mood, after the conclusion of the day’s events, and in total contrast to our accommodation the previous night, but I did, at least, have the immeasurable pleasure of seeing Ian literally blow his top, and exert his authority, the way I knew he had done in the past, at important business meeting, but had never actually witnessed, myself.
We had telephoned a booking to a pub called the King’s Head, chosen from Yellow pages and, as yet, unseen, that would take us halfway to our next viewing, and save any rush in the morning. When we finally reached our destination, we realised that it had once been charming, but something, somewhere along the line, had gone tragically wrong.
A summer storm, the result of the dulling of the weather, had broken, as we asked for directions in the village and, when we pulled up outside our lodgings for the night, thunder was rumbling in the distance to the eerie accompaniment of flickering lightning, and rain was rebounding dizzily from the road. The earth, parched by weeks of dry weather, could not cope, and the gutters were overflowing, afloat with crisp packets and cigarette ends from the garden of the pub.
The old thatch, long in need of renewal, sagged under its weight of water. The garden was barely kept down - no flowers in sight (a bit like home) - and ghastly white plastic chairs collected puddles in their grubby bucket seats.
Nearing the door, we could see how peeled the paintwork was, and my heart went out to a pathetically-neglected hanging basket above the door, its flowers now dead, receiving the refreshing drink they had once craved, weeks too late. Two of the upstairs windows were cracked, and the verdigris-encrusted brass knocker on the un-hospitably closed door hung askew, one screw missing.
With the storm raging and blowing round us (I love a good storm!), it only needed Boris Karloff to complete the picture, and we very nearly got him. The door opened with an inevitable creak that made me jump, and produced a nervous giggle from Ian, and we were confronted with a white-haired man, over six feet in height, with a livid scar down one cheek.
I could not help myself and, before he could utter a word, I had blurted out my thoughts. “How on earth did you do that - to your face, I mean?” My mouth shut like a clam again, and I could feel a warm flush creeping up from my neck to the roots of my hair.
“Sonny Boy. Parrot in the bar. Damned bird! Come in. You expected?” he shot out like machine-gun fire, revealing a broken front tooth, and its tobacco-stained companions. A squawk from inside confirmed his explanation and we followed him, dripping, into the dark bar.
He flicked on lights as he went through, and it suddenly crossed my mind that it was well past opening time. The same thought must have occurred to Ian, for he voiced it. “I don’t open my doors till the first customer gits ‘ere, and that’s you, so now we’re open,” he answered, totally unabashed, and went off in search of someone or something, leaving us to our own devices.
In his absence, we looked round us to see what the lighting had revealed, and immediately wished we had not. Trodden-in crisps, cigarette ash and parrot droppings covered the chilly, uncarpeted floor, and beer-stains ringed the bar and table-tops. Ash trays overflowed, flanked by more empty crisp packets (good heavens, was that all they ate around here?) and dirty glasses. A pool, from an overturned glass was still being filled, drip by slow drip, from a puddle on the bar and, over the whole place, hung an odour of stale beer and smoke, and something savoury, but undeniably nasty.
Boris, as we later named him, returned with a slatternly middle-aged woman with a cigarette dangling from her top lip, and ash cascading down her inadequately supported but ample bosom. She carried a plastic dustbin and a broom, which she handed silently to him, and he began to sweep the debris from the tables, with a total lack of embarrassment.
The woman, presumably his wife, cocked her head at us to follow her, and preceded us up a dimly-lit staircase, to our room. It had obviously not been aired, and smelled shut-in and unused. A layer of dust covered everything, and the linen was grey with over-use and under-washing.
It was, unfortunately, all we had and, weather conditions being what they had been before the storm, all we were likely to get in the way of accommodation, as the old slag probably knew. We could either like it or lump it, as far as she was concerned.
Well, we certainly didn’t like it, and prepared to unpack, with heavy hearts. “If yer wants yer grub, yer’ll ‘ave to ‘ave it now,” our grubby landlady graciously informed us, speaking for the first time, and disappeared downstairs again without waiting for an answer. We left our suitcases, and followed her. I almost preferred the Welsh farmhouse, to this.
The unpleasant savoury aroma which had assailed our nostrils when we entered, turned out to be our dinner. A few other patrons had arrived by then, and there was a conversational hum from the bar, and about half a dozen others in the small unkempt dining room
Ian asked for a wine-list while I picked food particles from my cutlery with a feeling of disgust. Antique stains covered the tablecloth and, here and there, cigarette burns enlivened its washed-out red gingham pattern. It was beyond a joke: this was no coincidence of appearances - this was it!
I came out of my reverie to hear Ian muttering something about there being no wine list. “What’s up, love?” I asked innocently, and it all came tumbling out. As I had sat in my brown study, it transpired that he had been informed by our genial host, that he could have red or white. That was the only list he would get here.
On further enquiry, he discovered that the white, as it was a new bottle, was not chilled, but behind the bar, but the red, opened a day or two (or it could be more) before, now stood, hygienically stoppered, in the refrigerator. I could almost see the smoke coming out of my beloved’s ears.
At that moment, Fag-Ash Lil entered, bearing two plates, and still wearing her carcinogenic lip decoration (I can afford to be scathing, as I only smoke in times of stress). She plonked her offerings unceremoniously in front of us and turned to leave.
Then, everything seemed to happen at once. The nauseous small that had seemed to be getting stronger and stronger, now centred itself on our plates, and my stomach heaved as it identified the smell as rancid pork. Ian took one horror-stricken look at his, as he noticed a long snake of cigarette ash in his gravy, and Fag-Ash Lil passed long, loud and odiferous wind in Ian’s right ear.
In one movement, he grabbed his plate, leapt from his chair, grabbed out erstwhile waitress, and rammed the food under her nose. “You foul, farting, smelly old crone,” he screamed in her face. “You call this an inn? More like a bloody sin! Serving stinking, decomposing food covered in fag ash, to an innocent customer, and then having the unspeakable brass neck to pass wind in my ear. Well, screw you! And screw your bloody pub! I’d rather sleep in a cow-pat, than in this festering, pustulating sewer.”
The woman fled, still clutching Ian’s plate, and wearing an interesting decoration of pork fat and gravy down the ash-stained front of her filthy apron. My husband took a long shuddering breath, and stalked from the room, to scattered and hesitant applause from the other would-be diners, who were now making preparations to leave.
Within three minutes (the longest of my life - thank God we had not had time to unpack) he returned with our luggage and we left, unmolested, and in a deathly silence, to face the wrath of the weather. Later, two miles down the road at the Toad and Bucket (not listed in Yellow Pages), and after an excellent meal, the giggles got us, and we had to retire to our room, to laugh unrestrainedly. This little holiday was certainly having its moments.
VII
The next three viewings were, without a doubt, a complete waste of time. The first had drawn us by its low price and enormous accommodation. Due to a misprint, we learned that ‘eight-bedroomed’ should have read ‘three-bedroomed’. It was much too small a home for us, and much too dilapidated: modernisation and extension would have cost the earth, and we hated it on sight.
The second ‘rural gem’ edged a busy motorway, and we did not see lead-laced petrol fumes improving our family’s health, or that of the crops. The cats would have lasted about five minutes - two pussies into one juggernaut won’t go - and the fate of the children near this death-trap speedway did not bear thinking about.
The third was off the beaten track, to the tune of being twelve miles from civilisation. (The motorway - no! Passing trade - a big fat yes!) It also had what the owner called a stream, but what looked, to me. more like the Mississippi, at its northernmost boundary. It could be guaranteed to give Ian endless fishing, and me, daily heart-failure, as I waited for our double-nuclear-sized family to be whittled down to a more socially acceptable level. On top of that, all its greenhouses needed rebuilding. It just wasn’t a ‘goer’, and we drove away from yet another property in disheartened mood.
After dinner that night we surveyed our list, which had just one more viewing on it. It was not the same sort of thing at all, but we had included it, as it was within twenty-five miles of where we now lived. It would round off the trip nicely, we thought, and as it was so close to home, would not waste either much time or petrol: so, why not?
It was an executor’s sale, listed as in need of modernisation and redecoration (we knew what that could mean, by now - either a hovel, or a ruin - four walls, and a roof, if you were lucky). It had seven bedrooms on two floors, and four reception rooms, and a goodly bit of land, neglected but, apparently, with potential (as what? we wondered, cynically). We could just afford it, for, as it was not an established business as the others had been, and provided no income, the loan potential was , consequently, smaller. It was also not in the back of beyond.
“Probably be quite nice,” commented Ian, “when the electric and main drainage get to it.” I told him he was being too pessimistic, but I think he was miffed by the lack of fertiliser and glass-houses. There would be no books for him to look at, no figures for him to play with here, and he was, understandably, sulking. “Let’s sleep on it,” he suggested finally, “and see if we still want to look at it in the morning.”
“Let’s just go anyway, otherwise we’ll have to pick up the kids earlier than planned,” I parried, and won.
So we went to sleep pondering the possibilities of the, as yet unseen Honeybus House, and a semi-detached sort of rural existence. The house was detached, but the life-style was not. It would mean forsaking the one-hundred-per-cent Farmer Giles rurality, for a more gentle easing into country ways.
VIII
The sunshine was back with us the next day, as we turned our car homewards, clutching our last sheet of paper and the last shred of hope for this trip.
We found it more by luck than judgement, as the paint had flaked off the house name from the sign on the gate, and the house itself was fronted by an enormously high honeysuckle hedge. Oh, the smell of that hedge: overpowering, intoxicating, and totally bewitching. I would have bought the place for that hedge alone.
Inside the gate, a long front garden of about seventy-five feet ran up to the front door, which was set foursquare in the structure. Roses climbed all over the porch and over trellis work and, although the garden was overgrown, the outlines of old beds and borders could be clearly discerned. The windows stared at us, as if imploring us to take pity on it, and rescue it before it decayed too far to be recovered.
We walked round to the rear of the house before going inside, and discovered a back garden of a hundred and fifty feet. To the left of the property, and stretching the whole length of the plot, was a strip of land, some thirty-five feet wide.
“There‘re your veg plots,” I said, nodding in the direction of the side piece, and we checked the measurements with the sturdy architect’s tape which had accompanied us on all our viewing so far. “A total of two hundred and sixty feet by thirty-five should do us for spuds, I reckon,” I commented, considering the huge amount of this vegetable our brood consumed, and erring on the generous side, just to make sure: but Ian wasn’t convinced; not yet, anyway.
We walked round the various sheds and outbuildings, and my spirits lifted, as we saw clusters of fruit trees at the end of the rear garden. Even Ian was smiling as we approached the front door, key at the ready.
A large, square hall with a graceful staircase met our gaze. To the right was a large, light and airy drawing room with a bay window overlooking the side and, further back, on that side of the house, was what I could already see as a family room. The other side of the house provided a study, a long, gracious dining room, and a square kitchen with a stone-flagged floor. One door from here led to a tiny back staircase, and another, to a large, musty cellar, into which wild spiders would not have dragged me, before it had been thoroughly cleaned and aired.
We wandered back to the hall and began to mount the wide, shallow main stairs. A large, graceful arch dominated the first view we had of the landing, and an array of natural oak doors, grubby with age, but still retaining their beauty, met us at the top.
The first floor was as enchanting as the ground floor had been. Every room we entered convinced me further that this house had been waiting for us from the day it was built and, to my spell-bound eyes, even the antique plumbing had a certain air of elegance about it. The large, roll-top bath on its ornate little legs, stood in the centre of what had once been a good-sized bedroom, and recalled one to an age when towels were thicker, lino was colder, and clouds of steam of an intensity unknown in a centrally-heated house, engulfed every bath-time, lending it a charm all its own.
A smaller staircase led to the top floor, which offered two bedrooms and a box-room, the whole being quite a bit smaller than the lower two floors. The box-room raised a smile, as it was nine feet by about ten, and we knew modern estates where the master bedroom was not much bigger. Dormer windows were let into all three of these rooms, and provided lovely, deep window seats between the gently sloping ceilings.
This was my optimistic opinion of the house. As my husband was to point out, scores of times over the next few days, it smelled damp, and many humps, bumps and stains on the walls and ceilings confirmed the evidence of our noses.
The kitchen needed a lot of attention, the bathroom needed gutting, and some windows needed to be replaced. It also had no heating, old and mystifying wiring, and needed some (total) repointing. And that was before you added on the cost in time and materials for complete redecoration inside and out, getting the garden under control, woodworm treatment, and then, carpeting and curtaining: but then, we knew all that before we viewed it.
He gave me a final run-down on all these points, as he waited for the estate agent to come to the telephone, to let us know if our offer (considerably lower than the amount asked) had been accepted.
His face told the whole story and it only after an ecstatic kiss, and a war dance up and down the hall, whooping with glee, that he finally yelled, “The man from the house place - he say, ‘Yes!’”
IX
It wasn’t exactly what we had set out to buy, but when it came down to it, whoever does buy exactly what they were looking for when property-hunting? It was, however, exactly what we now wanted, which was much more important, and we could work on the ‘sacking smocks and muck on the boots’ look, a bit later on, after we were settled in.
I
After that, our lives went into a flat spin. The mortgage was arranged (how impossible that sounds in today’s market), contracts drawn up, and clothes and possessions packed into hundreds and hundreds of splinter-infested tea chests. I could not walk the length of the landing and recognise my tights at the end of it.
Our house sold remarkably quickly, to a couple of up-and-coming snobs who wanted to install a Jacuzzi in the fourth bedroom, and a solarium in the study. Personally, I thought it had more class with our boudoir grand piano and the modest collection of Moorcroft I had amassed over the years, but then, we were over thirty - virtually pensionable in their eyes, and their children were called Damian and Titania. That alone condemned them, in my eyes.
Our children had been to Honeybus House and declared themselves delighted, tearing through it like a bunch of hooligans, screaming for the sheer joys of the echoes in the emptiness, and busily allocating bedrooms.
The garden was an unexplored country to them, so much larger was it than their current one and, when the fruit trees at the rear of the plot proved to be almost a small orchard, ancient, but abundant with apples, pears, and plum and cherry trees, their enthusiasm knew no bounds.
On each trip of frantic cleaning, measuring and list-making, they would make straight for this haven, to see if the fruit on their own favourite tree had grown any larger. Any small, hard, green windfalls were treated with reverence, and hastily (but secretly) consumed, which accounted for the increase in stomach aches, and our consequent consumption of Milk of Magnesia, during that period.
Within two months, we had exchanged contracts and found ourselves sitting one morning, on a few of the packing cases, waiting for the removal van. Our beloved cats were in kennels for three nights while we moved in. The children had spent the previous night with my parents, where they would remain until our belongings were in some sort of order again, and we were alone with our memories.
There were so many of them, that they crowded in on me, like birds’ wings beating about my head, until I had to take a turn round the garden, tears pouring unchecked down my face, as I asked myself, “Why, why, oh why the hell are we moving from our lovely, lovely home?”
A call of, “Phone, darling,” roused me from my reverie, and I went back inside.
It was my mother. She was so pleased that we were not moving far, and wasn’t it convenient that Ian could stay on in the same job, his firm being halfway between the two addresses? Perhaps they could come for a weekend as soon as we were settled in? The children had been little angels, chattering like starlings, in their excitement at the joys of going to their new home tomorrow: and oh, how adventurous that we were taking on such a big place, and contemplating vegetables and chickens and things. Her enthusiasm dried my tears and lifted my heart, and I felt more able to cope with the wrench, after our chat.
It was, of course, a very sad day, as heights marked on the walls were revealed on moving wardrobes, and we realised how young and tiny our brood had been when we first moved in here. But the work kept our minds from dwelling too much on such things and, by lunchtime, we made our final goodbyes, handed over the keys to the estate agent, and bowled merrily on our way to Honeybus House, Upper Fairmile, and our new lives. The address jiggled round and round in my brain, in time with the bumps in the road, as we headed northwards, a small but determined convoy.
After surveying our welter of possessions, the removal men had rung their depot for an extra, smaller van (Ian had not shown them the contents of the loft, when they were estimating the cubic capacity of all our worldly goods, en masse). At the head of us was a large pantechnicon, followed by what looked, to me, like a vegetable delivery van, with our car, laden with suitcases and carrier bags, joggling along behind.
Even with our large loads and ultra-careful driving, we made the trip in forty-five minutes, and I suggested a cup of tea before we began unloading, and maybe some of the sandwiches I had cut and put in our ‘arrival box’.
This box is an invention of mine, born of our first chaotic move, and contained electric kettle (thankfully the estate agent had arranged for both electricity and water supplies to be connected before we arrived), mugs, tea, coffee, sugar, powdered milk, sandwiches and biscuits. It seems to make chaos more civilised, to make a cup of tea with such efficiency, and without the need to empty every chest in sight, to find the necessary tools and ingredients.
The removal men - inevitably named by us, on first sight, as Ginger, Scruffy and Gaffer - took one look at our simple fare, said they would take their lunch break at the local hostelry, and withdrew. The cheek of it!
Our house is at the northern end of the village: in fact, it is the last house to the north, on the western side of the main road through. We had, thus, come through the village to get here and, just visible, down a side-street in the village centre, was the Plough and Sail - free-house, pub grub, garden at rear. It was, presumably, with this vision in mind, that our removal men had departed, thoughtlessly taking the ‘vegetable van’, as their destination was a hundred yards away. Townies - they won’t walk anywhere, if they don’t have to!
We had hoped to unpack the, now missing, vehicle in their absence, but nothing ever goes according to plan in a house move and we, therefore, sad down resignedly on the back doorstep to eat our unsophisticated lunch.
I was glad that they had not left the van to be emptied, for the peace of that first hour, listening to birdsong, with hardly a vehicle passing the house, was heaven. It left us both feeling refreshed and, with the dawning realisation that the busy road which we had, only that morning been living beside, was like a Grand Prix circuit. Friends, we would undoubtedly miss, but we were not far away, and could rectify that with visits. The traffic, we certainly felt no affection for, and would miss it not one little jot.
As we finished the last of the sandwiches, we threw a few crusts across the shaggy, daisy-starred lawn and, to our delight, three tiny sparrows flew down to enjoy the feast. We threw some more and, for twenty minutes or so, sat silent and still, as birds came and went, chattered and squabbled, unruly children enjoying an unexpected picnic, until they finally flew off with the last of their treasure.
“Ah,” sighed Ian, stretching himself, and scaring the wits out of a blackbird, which must have mistaken us for a pair of over-sized garden gnomes, “This is the life.” But he was not allowed to continue. A bang and a squeal of brakes had us both up, and running to the front of the house, the spell broken, our feathered friends, scattered.
From the other side of our (OUR!) fragrant hedge, was issuing a most un-countrified cursing and swearing, in three different voices, and accompanied by a fourth, braying with laughter.
“Bloody fool! I told you to look out for that dratted pothole. What do you thing you were doing, going at that speed?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose. And you’ve got no right to swear at me, you old bugger.”
“Don’t you cheek Fred like that, you young upstart. If you’ve broken anything, you’ll blasted well pay for it.” And back and forth it went, as we emerged through the gate, to find the milkman doubled up with laughter, and clutching what looked very like Harry’s giant teddy bear.
As the argument and recriminations continued, the milkman explained that he had been driving behind the little van, which had been going rather fast for the uncertain surface of the village road, when the van had hit a locally-famous pot hole. The back doors of it, insecurely closed, had burst open, and six large stuffed toys had cascaded from the inside of the vehicle. The van had then jammed on its brakes, and Ginger, Scruffy and Gaffer, ignoring the Santa’s Grotto exhibits on the road, had gone at it hammer and tongs, to apportion blame.
The milkman, leaving his float, had just gathered together the assorted soft toys, and was about to add Joe Soap (Harry’s teddy) to the pile, when suddenly he saw the humour of the situation, and then we arrived. I, grasping an opportunity flung my way, immediately purchased two loaves of bread and three pints of milk, and placed a regular order with the dairy, starting the following morning.
Nothing, fortunately, was damaged, with the exception of the bonhomie of the removal men and, for the rest of the day, as they hauled furniture and heaved tea-chests, a sotto voce rumbling and muttering indicated that the argument was not yet over.
Poor Ginger, responsible for the first incident, had further blotted his copy-book in the eyes of the older men by being unlucky enough to open the roll-top rear door of the large van. Our dining table, a four foot circular job, detached from its legs for removal, and inadequately secured for its journey, bowled over his left shoulder as he pushed the door upwards, made a short but damaging trip down the road and, finally, spinning like a penny, landed flat.