Chapter 5
FIVE
Kate drove back to London feeling very different, her nervy apprehension replaced by a sated, drowsy bliss.
All her senses felt fulfilled, the way they sometimes did after sex or a really good massage.
She wondered if that feeling, too, would wear off once she actually lived at Trade Cottage.
But perhaps – again, like sex – familiarity would bring its own sense of contentment.
She was aware that she was anthropomorphising the house – romanticising it, even.
But it had so much presence, somehow, so much charisma, that it was impossible to think of it as simply an arrangement of building materials.
And Rosemary, she’d noticed, had talked about it in a similar way.
As they’d walked down the garden, the older woman had paused and looked back wistfully.
From there – the wych elm on one side, that big wall of leylandii on the other – it looked particularly beautiful, a picture-perfect cottage framed by its surroundings.
‘Is it awful, to love a block of stone as much as one loves a person?’ She gave a slight laugh. ‘Paul always used to say he needn’t worry about me having affairs – I was far too besotted with our house.’
Kate wasn’t quite sure how to respond to such frankness, though she felt honoured by the intimacy it implied. ‘Well, I promise we’ll look after it for you.’
Rosemary nodded. ‘I know you will.’ Turning to look up at the house again, she said thoughtfully, ‘Paul calls it “she” – like a ship, I suppose. But I’ve always felt Tray’s male.
’ She glanced at Kate, a little shamefacedly.
‘The children caught me kissing it once. A proper smacker, on one of the outside walls. They made such fun of me. I told them they were too young to understand what it’s like to love a place – really love it, I mean.
I think it’s something you need to grow into. ’
‘Well,
I do understand,’ Kate said. ‘And I swear I’ll snog Trade Cottage whenever it – he – feels the need.’
Rosemary laughed, and they continued on towards the trees at the bottom of the garden.
‘Do you actually own this wood?’ Kate asked. ‘The solicitor sent the Land Registry plans over with the other papers, and it looked as if you don’t. Has he got that wrong?’
‘Oh – no, it belongs to Pelham Park. It runs with Gordon’s tenancy – that’s the farmer.
But he’s not bothered, not unless there’s pheasants in there, which is only around Christmas.
Besides, he’s a sweetheart. Give him a bottle of Bells every year and you can basically do what you like. Will’s not too old for dens, is he?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Kate said doubtfully. ‘I hope not. A den sounds much healthier than a Nintendo Switch.’
‘Jamie was still making dens at fourteen. Except by then they were called forts and they had trenches and fortifications – he and his pals used to arm themselves with BB guns and stage mock battles for them. The trenches might still be there, if Will looks. What about Tilly? Is she into ponies?’
‘Well, again – it would have been difficult in London . . .’
‘Put her up on Auriel.’ Seeing Kate’s look of incomprehension, Rosemary added, ‘The rocking horse. She can learn to hold the reins before she sits on the real thing. Or if you don’t want the hassle of a pony of your own, get Gordon to shove a couple of ewes in the paddock, to keep the grass down.
Oh, and see if he’ll let the children help with lambing.
He’ll probably say yes, if you ask nicely and they’re sensible.
It means a few late nights, but it’s something they never forget. ’
Dens, ponies, lambing . . . It was such a blur of lovely things that it was only as she reached the M25 that Kate realised Rosemary must be giving them the rocking horse, too.
Such generosity – but, of course, Auriel would be out of place in a bungalow, and from the sound of it, it wasn’t the kind of thing Jamie or Tessa would have any use for, given how old Jamie’s children were now.
She felt a sudden stab of anxiety. What if they couldn’t live up to all this? Will might shun the woods in favour of video games and mooching around; Tilly might decide horses were boring and lambing gross; Kate herself might never master parmesan straws or wild garlic pesto.
But at least they’d have the opportunity, she thought.
There’d been another curious moment as she and Rosemary walked back up to the house.
The famous wild garlic spot had turned out to be just a rather ordinary patch of earth beneath some beech trees – ‘You can’t miss it, in any case,’ Rosemary said dismissively.
‘Just come into the woods when the first bluebells appear and follow your nose. I don’t know why Paul was making such a fuss.
’ Kate realised with a shiver of pleasure that Rosemary had agreed to show her mainly because she wanted some time with Kate on her own.
We really are almost becoming friends, she’d thought.
Or, at least, Rosemary has taken a shine to me.
The realisation had given her a little jolt of confidence.
They’d gone back up by a slightly different route.
Off to the side, where it didn’t impede the view, was a whole area of garden Kate had barely realised was there: a small orchard, the branches of the trees already festooned with fruit; an overflowing compost heap; a small greenhouse with several broken panes.
And, not far from the leylandii, a palisade of wood and chicken wire.
That must be the fruit cage Rosemary had mentioned.
Kate glimpsed raspberry canes, some bushes she couldn’t identify, some strange-looking upturned pots that she dimly thought might be rhubarb forcers.
‘How about your parents, Kate?’ Rosemary had said, pausing for a moment – perhaps for a rest; the incline wasn’t steep, but they’d been walking for a good fifteen minutes, and in all that time she hadn’t slowed up once, or showed any other signs of age. ‘Where are they in the picture?’
It was such a direct question, so guilelessly asked, that for a moment Kate was almost tempted to confide in her.
It would have been a relief to talk about it, and she was already certain Rosemary would be a good listener.
And it would, to some extent, have reciprocated the intimacy Rosemary had been bestowing on her.
But she’d only met Rosemary twice – would it be a faux pas to overshare so soon?
Kate’s woes about her mother would surely seem insignificant to someone whose husband had a degenerative illness and who was having to move out of her beloved house to care for him.
People of that generation believed in stiff upper lips and getting on with things.
The last thing Kate wanted was to come across as some bleating snowflake.
So she only said, ‘My parents divorced when I was twelve. I don’t see much of either of them now.
And Matt’s parents are lovely, but they’re up in Northumberland.
He’s the youngest, and his siblings all live nearer, so it’s their kids who see more of them.
But I’m sure they’ll come and visit. It’ll be lovely to have enough room. ’
Rosemary nodded, and for a moment Kate thought she was going to say something else. But then a shaggy old tennis ball landed at their feet and the fat Labrador came lolloping round the corner after it.
‘Oh – Biddy, come here.’ Rosemary bent down and retrieved the now rather soggy ball from the dog’s mouth.
‘I keep telling Paul not to use the thrower – it’s bad for their hips – but he says it’s better than no exercise at all.
And I don’t have the time, what with everything else that’s been going on.
Poor old Biddy hasn’t had a proper walk in ages.
’ She suddenly took a breath, as if hit by a twinge of pain, and looked up at the house, and with a flash of insight Kate realised that walking the dog had been Paul’s thing, and that Biddy hadn’t always been fat and under-exercised, and that what she’d just witnessed was a well-concealed moment of grief – grief for Paul, for Biddy, for the house, for this whole idyll of life at Trade Cottage that Rosemary was so selflessly parcelling up and handing on to Kate – and she was even more glad she hadn’t said anything about her own, relatively minor, family issues.
They reached the terrace, where Paul was still sitting in his chair, waving the ball thrower like a conductor’s baton.
He made Kate describe all the things she’d seen, commenting enthusiastically on each one, then pressed her to have another glass of champagne.
Reluctantly, she’d said no and taken her leave, but not before she and Rosemary had exchanged contact details and she’d promised to come again before the move.
When she reached the end of Trade Cottage’s drive, she had to take a left and then another one to get back to the main road.
At the junction was a big modern gate, the sort you couldn’t see through, between two brick pillars.
One of the pillars had an intercom on it.
That must be Trade Cottage’s neighbour, she realised, the house whose garden backed on to that great wall of leylandii, although from here the building itself wasn’t visible.
Still basking in the warm glow of her afternoon with Rosemary and Paul, she thought it would be polite to go and introduce herself.
She pulled over and went up to the intercom – it was a Ring video doorbell, she noticed, the distinctive blue circle glowing bright; one of their neighbours in Dulwich had one, so he could buzz delivery drivers in with his phone.
She pushed the button and waited, but there was no reply.
She’d try again the next time she was here, she decided.