Chapter Eleven
ELEVEN
There were still eight days left before the bank holiday, and they were filled with activity.
Skips arrived amid a great clanking of chains, and were soon lined up like three yellow panzers on the gravel in front of the house.
‘Good Lord,’ Rosemary said faintly, the first time she saw them.
‘Three? Whatever will you put in them?’ The builders started work, ripping out the first of the avocado-coloured bathrooms, the whole house reverberating with the thump of their sledgehammers.
Rosemary, peering over the skip’s edge, saw her old bath sitting atop a small mountain of smashed-up tiles, like a dinghy marooned on a sandbank, and said only, ‘Ah,’ a touch sadly, Kate thought.
An architect, Nikolas, was chosen, briefed, and went away to draw up plans for the outbuilding conversions.
The stair carpets, which were old and threadbare, joined the bathroom suite in the skip – ‘I hadn’t realised they’d got so tatty,’ Rosemary said with a sigh.
‘They’re Axminster, you know’ – as did Jamie’s boxes of junk from the cellar, carried up by Kate, trip after trip, until her arms were aching, leaving only the two-man jobs – the desk and sofa – for another time.
Matt, meanwhile, towed fallen trees up from the woods for a firepit, Rosemary showing him the exact spot where, years previously, the last one had been lit.
‘God, we used to throw some parties here,’ she said, looking around. ‘It’s wonderful you’re taking on the mantle.’
It was unfortunate that the moving of the Aga had to take place just before the bank holiday.
But the builders were on a schedule, and the last thing Kate and Matt wanted was to give them an excuse to go and start another job elsewhere.
So it was turned off, dismantled, and carried by grunting, sweating workmen into what had been the dining room.
The kitchen now looked rather bare for the first visit of their friends from London, but Kate was confident they’d be amazed all the same.
Four families came down in the end, which, including children, meant twelve people to feed and find beds for. They arrived around lunchtime, but luckily Rosemary had baked quiches and tarts to go with some salads Kate had made.
‘Oh my God, she’s amazing,’ her friend Lucy exclaimed, as Rosemary, refusing Kate’s offers of help – ‘You stay here and chat, you haven’t seen your friends for ages’ – went back to The Old Tennis Court for more. ‘It’s like having your very own Mary Berry next door, waiting on you hand and foot.’
‘Camilla Parker-Bowles,’ Jude said. ‘I bet she likes a G hopefully, the villagers would take the lack of top-ups as a hint to be on their way.
She went inside to get a glass of water. Rosemary was standing in the empty kitchen, staring disconsolately at the space where the Aga used to be.
‘We haven’t got rid of it,’ Kate said quickly. ‘It’s being re-enamelled and converted to electric. But we’re going to make the old dining room into the kitchen, so it’s in there for now.’
‘That sounds clever.’ Rosemary gave her a quick smile and hurried past her, but not before Kate saw she’d been crying.
She went outside again. Paul, his wheelchair crammed into the circle of people around the fire, was using his empty glass to conduct what he announced was ‘the house song’.
From the lusty way they all roared the lyrics – something about always having champers in the fridge – it felt like it might be the singing’s climax. She rather hoped so. She was tired now.
‘Right!’ Paul yelled as the song ended, propelling his wheelchair backwards. ‘Back to ours!’
He trundled off down the slope. The others streamed past him, making war-cry sounds. Kate spotted mild, quiet Liv who organised the book club, who’d been so sweetly excited earlier to get a new recruit, picking up her skirts so she could pelt even faster down the hill.
After they’d gone, it was very quiet.
‘Blimey,’ Matt said. ‘That went with a bang.’
‘What a bunch of characters,’ Ed agreed. ‘And what a place.’
From the other side of the leylandii, there was the sound of a window sliding open. The heavy throb of a reggae beat heralded Bob Marley singing ‘Get Up, Stand Up’.
‘It’s like when we lived in Brixton,’ Kashvi said, laughing. ‘Only with posher accents.’
‘And more weed,’ Ed said. ‘I think I even saw the vicar having a toke.’
But, behind the banter, Kate could hear the envy in their voices and, although she knew it was an ignoble response, she couldn’t help lapping it up.