45. Carl
45. Carl
Time stands still on the moors. It always does. The steep, unchanging paths, the endless expanse of heathered moorland that sprawls ahead of you like the rolling deserts of Afghanistan.
Nothing ever changes. Nothing but the seasons, that is. Today the ground, when I get back from the wedding, is shrouded in snow. A pristine white blanket that sparkles beneath the winter sun, daring me to march across it.
The dogs greet me, happy and excited to have me home. I slip on the warm parka Maggie has decided is hers, pull Roz’s red hat over my ears and set off. Sarah gave it back to me this morning and it smells of her perfume. I breathe it in and smile.
‘Come on, you lot,’ I call to the dogs.
They streak straight past me the second I open the gate.
And off we trek, the freezing ground crunching beneath us. Mr Jones is very suspicious of this strange new powder, cautiously rolling from side to side before standing up with a wobble.
Mungo, serious as ever, stops only to keep an eye on the little dog’s antics, while Elsa runs in gleeful circles around the pair of them before dashing up to me and burrowing her snow-covered head into my thigh.
‘I know, lass,’ I laugh, picking up a clump of snow, rolling it into a ball, and throwing it in front of me for her to chase.
I think of the snowball fights Fridge and I used to have as kids. For once, a happy memory and I bask in it, smiling to myself at the thought of the snowman we once built and dressed in the very parka I’m wearing now. Michael laughed when he saw it, although he made us take the parka inside and hang it on the kitchen radiator.
I must ring him, I think.
Maybe even invite him and Kathleen over on Christmas Day to meet Sarah.
Half an hour later, with Mr Jones nestled happily in my arms, we head back to the cottage. I catch sight of it up ahead of us and it looks as if it’s been coated with a white frosting, like something out of a fairy tale. I picture us all cosily inside on Christmas Day.
I think about the sparsely decorated council flat of my childhood. My bedroom with three beds in it long after Adam and Scott had gone. It was always cold, even in the middle of summer.
No wonder I always longed to be at Fridge’s. It wasn’t just that his house was warm, I realize now. Or that he had a big telly and a climbing frame and a fridge permanently full of food – although all those things were great.
It was that his house had a beating heart. Happy things happened inside it. Things like birthday parties with entertainers dressed up as cowboys, and Easter egg hunts, and Bonfire Nights, and summer sleepouts in the garden in a tent that came free with tokens Fridge collected from boxes of Weetabix.
Could this cottage have a beating heart too, if Sarah was here with me? I rented this place six months ago, when the business took off. I needed somewhere that backed on to countryside, somewhere with space for the dogs to play in, and the moment I walked down the steep cobbled path and saw the yellow front door, the ivy that clothes the front of the cottage like a vest, I knew that I’d found it.
Upstairs, it’s nothing to write home about – just two bedrooms and one small box room. Only one – mine – has a bed in it. The others have become dumping grounds for laundry, giant sacks of dog food, and old boxes.
But I wasn’t interested when the estate agent showed me the bedrooms. Or the bathroom with its dated avocado-coloured bath. She kept apologizing for the ‘seriously dodgy patterned tiles’ in there, too, but I didn’t care. Because I’d already made up my mind.
I knew I wanted to rent the cottage the minute I set foot downstairs. Because downstairs is amazing.
There’s a grey flagstone floor throughout, worn shiny with ancient footsteps, and a big kitchen with a walk-in larder – or ‘food cupboard’, as Maggie says.
‘A larder?’ She laughed the first time I called it that. ‘Were you born in 1912?’
The kitchen also has an old cream, very temperamental Rayburn that is older than me and makes more noise than a ship’s engine room. Depending on its mood, I can watch my soup boil dry in a couple of minutes or resign myself to it not being warm until the next day.
Maggie goes on about how rubbish it is, and it drives Roz mad whenever she comes over and tries to cook something on it. But I like it, because at night it keeps me company.
Ever since my stay in the camp hospital, I don’t like the sound of quiet at night. I’m scared of what I may hear. Lying in bed and listening to the old beast whistling and putt-putting with the effort of keeping the cottage warm comforts me.
The living room is just off the kitchen. It has a real fire and one of those Victorian bay window affairs, like a box that juts out from the wall of the house.
One of the first things I did when I moved in was take down the old flowery patterned curtains so I could see the moors, uninterrupted. The views extend beyond the drystone walls to the roofless ruins of an old smelting mill that sits in the top right-hand corner of the valley’s U-shaped curve.
The mill is only visible on a clear day. On other days, the views close in with the weather. The rain lashes against the windowpanes and the wind bounces off the walls. Or, like today, snow pads silently down, covering the moors in a giant pearly eiderdown.
I love them all.
Sitting in here with whatever motley collection of dogs I’m looking after lounging around in front of the fire, for all the world as if it was their very own gentleman’s club, I stare out of the window. ‘Like Old Father Time,’ Roz says.
Then there is the real fire. Maybe it’s because our flat was always so cold when I was a lad – who knows? – but I love everything about it. Even going up to the farm on cold mornings to chop wood, then carrying it back down and filling the log basket ready for the evening.
And when darkness starts to fall, there is the whole ritual of scrunching up old bits of paper, pushing them between the logs with a handful of kindling, and then watching, satisfied, as they burst into flames.
Back in the army, the other lads would talk about feeling homesick and I would pretend I felt it, too, but I never did. I never understood what they were talking about. I signed up because, back then, I had no home to leave behind.
But I understand now, because in this cottage, in this living room, I feel safe. I don’t have to be on my guard. There’s no one jumping out in front of me, no sudden movements that might set me off in a panic.
No noise but the sound of wind soughing in the chimney or wood crackling in the fireplace.
As I open the front door and usher the dogs inside, I hope, with all my heart, that Sarah will love it here too.