Читать книгу Magpie - Sophie Draper - Страница 12

I’ve met the agent, Hardcastle, at a gate marked Private. He’s standing by his car, waiting for me. A man in his later years, short and round, he wears a loud pin-striped suit and he looks like he doesn’t quite belong, here, in rural Derbyshire.

I press the button to lower the window. He leans down to speak to me.

‘Mrs Henderson. Delighted to meet you.’ His voice has the strangled tones of an independent education. ‘Oh, you don’t need to worry about that,’ he adds.

He dismisses the weatherworn sign with one hand. Rust obscures the top half of each letter and it swings in the wind, back and forth, with the inevitable regularity of a metronome.

I follow Hardcastle’s Mercedes in my functional estate. We could have afforded better, but I like my car; I don’t have to worry about every scratch, unlike Duncan, obsessing about his smart Lexus SUV. He has the more reliable vehicle, since he has to go in and out in all weathers to get to work. Hardcastle and I drive one behind the other, bumping along the road parallel to the edge of the reservoir until we turn up into the old village.

I know the village well. I know the whole valley. I’ve lived in the area for so many years. On my right is the dilapidated farmhouse skirted by a straggle of barns. On my left, a sequence of run-down cottages. Some of them face each other like partners in a dance, each house wearing its abandonment with an air of genteel humility – lichen-dusted walls, plants peeping from the gutters, window frames faded and stripped by the sun. The windows all have the same delicate white leaded inserts and the doors, the same peeling blue paint. Even the brickwork is all a matching shade of Georgian herringbone red, warm and welcoming but for its neglect. Gorgeous in the crisp morning sunlight.

It should have lifted my spirits, all this. The evident decay of the village simply adds to its charm. And yet there is no sign of life. Never has been. No washing on the line, no pot plants in the windows. Not even a bowl of water for a cat or a dog. Most houses in the country at least have a cat to keep down the rodents.

I see a ramshackle pair of iron gates with a drive leading into the shadows. There are no cars, not one by a single house, except for us, of course. I’m not sure I like it. The whole village is resolutely derelict. I’ve avoided it before. I hadn’t realised the property would be so close to here. It’s on the far side of the reservoir away from the Barn.

We pass the last house and turn off again, climbing the hill. Hardcastle takes a left, off the lane onto a dead-end track where the tarmac has melted in the heat of last year’s summer. I follow and the grass verge is so overgrown you can’t see past each bend. The trees and hedges grow so tall and dense that the fields above are hidden. Daylight has morphed into dark shadows, bathing the track with the shifting patterns of moving branches, and I jam on the brakes as a squirrel bounds across the lane right in front of me. I have one of those unsettling moments of déjà vu, like I’ve done this before. But I don’t think I’ve been up this way, why would I? That’s good then, I think.

Then we’re there, at last. The cottage.

I feel my heart skip a beat. It’s a wreck. I expected it to be, but I still love it.

To be fair, they did warn me of the state of it: In need of some development. Landlord happy for tenant to make the place their own. Translate that as damp and cold from years of neglect and in need of total renovation. If not tearing down and starting all over again. Not that that’s an option.

It must have been standing empty for several years.

The building sits sideways from the track, with red bricks and white painted windows like all the other houses in the valley. It wears its slouch like a tired old man. I cast my eyes down the slope. You can see the reservoir in the distance, exactly like they’d said. My heart gives another leap. Not too close, but close enough.

I’d promised myself it had to be something located near the Barn, ish, painful though that is. I don’t want Joe to have any excuse to refuse to come with me. He won’t give up his metal detecting and I won’t take him too far from his father, despite all the conflict. I want to reassure him about that. They still need to see each other and I won’t have the money for expensive train and bus fares. Besides, there are so many secluded corners in this valley, old farm buildings and shepherd huts slowly degrading beneath the weight of their own walls, I think it might just work hiding from Duncan in plain sight. I have faith in Joe, he won’t let on if I ask him not to. If I need to. I suck my bottom lip between my teeth.

I park my car beside the estate agent’s and get out. As I follow him up the short, overgrown path, he reminds me of the rent. I lift my head and he smiles at me with the wide-eyed confidence of a salesman who knows he’s already got the deal. We come to a stop and he looks away, restless, like now we’re here, he’s already thinking of the next appointment.

‘Why are they renting and not selling?’ I ask.

Not that I can afford to buy until the divorce comes through. This is only temporary, I tell myself.

‘It’s part of an old estate. The family aren’t prepared to sell. They don’t want to break up the estate.’

I nod. I know about the family. Everybody does. There are a few stories about them, none of them particularly salutary, mostly around unreasonable rules and wilful neglect.

The agent gestures to the view beyond the cottage, over the fields and down the hill. He launches into his spiel.

‘Lovely, isn’t it? The whole valley is subject to a ninety-year-long restrictive covenant, so nothing’s been built, not even a shed, since the Second World War. People pay over a million for those few houses further up the hills …’

His voice trails away. He knows I must be aware of this. He’ll have seen my name and address on the contact form. Wife of, mother of, Mrs Henderson – is that all I am to other people? Even in this day and age, defined by my relationship to men. That’s what you get if you choose to be a full-time mother. Certainly, in this part of the county. Though choose isn’t quite how I’d put it.

Hardcastle steps ahead of me and unlocks the back door, shoving it hard to get it to open. It grinds in a painful way due to the loose stones caught under the bottom of the door.

‘You’ll be hard-pressed to find anything prettier in all of Derbyshire.’

I look up – he’s right, the cottage is very pretty, in a down-at-heel, scruffy kind of way. Shabby chic, that’s how I imagine it could be, picturing it with whimsical fairy lights and vintage candles. But the view down to the reservoir still pulls my eyes. A thin trail of mist slithers out low across the surface and a large bird breaks through. Another and another, a line of geese rising up. Beating wings, open beaks, their gulping cries breaking the peace of the countryside. Their wings pull with a steady rhythm as the mist parts and coils out of place, and the yellow light from a weak sun dances briefly across the water.

The agent smooths his hands down his tie – silk, so much classier than the young man who greeted me at the office. That super-confident smile of his is making my stomach curl.

‘It’s a project, like I said.’ He croons like a jazz singer. ‘It means you’ve got the freedom to decorate exactly as you please. The view is particularly striking from the master bedroom.’

Master bedroom. As if. Judging from the floor plan on the details there’s barely enough space for one double bed and a small cabinet. I contemplate the flaking wooden windows. There’s a second bedroom under the eaves. I might have to take that one, given how tall Joe is. A ‘doer-upper’, cloistered in a long-forgotten valley, the lush slopes the select preserve of one family, a couple of farmers and a handful of rich, obsolete businessmen.

I squeeze past the buddleia bush leaning out across the doorway and duck underneath a hanging basket that trails dead leaves over my head. I eye the drunken shape of the roof, its missing tiles and the grime-encrusted, cracked panes of glass in the door. As I step inside, I see peeling wallpaper and a mustard-yellow 1950s kitchen. This place, I realise, hasn’t been touched for decades. I feel my excitement bubble.

I move into the room and then I spot the ancient red enamelled range. It’s been pushed into an old inglenook fireplace with a blackened beam above, pitted and scorched with age. I run my fingers over the grooves in the wood, peering more closely. There are markings that seem familiar, circles within circles and letters too, a W and AM, carved with a crisp precision that have nothing to do with the natural cracks from the heat. I feel myself falling even deeper in love.

‘What are these?’ I say, fingering the marks.

I know the answer, but it’s something to say. The agent leans forwards.

‘Oh, those are witches’ marks, carvings from long ago, probably from when the house was first built. People did that stuff then to ward off evil spirits. It’s quite common in this part of the county. So you’ll be quite safe here.’

He grins in a rather wolfish way for an older man. Creep, I think. Then he turns towards the back door, pulling out his mobile phone.

‘I’ll let you look around on your own.’

He’s already lost interest, swiping at the screen.

I scan the ceiling. The brochure hadn’t mentioned that the roof leaked or that there was no central heating. I can see pipes running from the side of the range to the sink, then along the wall again and up into the corner through the ceiling. I’m guessing the fire heats the hot water. I daydream of waking early in the morning, heading down the stairs in the freezing cold to stoke the ashes from the night before, piling on the logs to relight the fire in the range and generate some heat. I could put an armchair right in front of it, with that old rag rug Duncan thought I’d thrown away. It would be perfect there under my feet. Flagstones, I see proper giant slabs of flagstone. I’ve always loved the idea of having those.

I wonder if I might even be able to buy the place if and when the family decide to let it go and my divorce comes through.

I feel my anticipation grow. A new routine to take over from the old routines of my life as it was before. I’ve been with Duncan for so long, ever since we were students together at the veterinary school in Nottingham. It’s hard to conceive of a life on my own.

Though, not quite on my own.

Joe has to come with me. I can’t go without Joe.

And Arthur, of course.

It’ll be Duncan left on his own.