Derry Cottage

Part 1

Derry Cottage was old. It had a thatched roof and its walls were painted a crumbling lumpy white, like Devonshire clotted cream. It had small windows and sat looking something like a loaf of white bread, round and crusty and floured and sitting flat on the estuary bank. It looked older than the sea, older even than the earth it had been built on.

Indeed, it was the oldest house in the village, at least as far as could be seen from where Mary stood on the path that ran along the side of the estuary, which was separated from the water by a thin iron fence and clusters of wild grasses.

No use if the tide rises, she thought, not feeling safe so close to water, no protection at all and she felt that the tide might rise up and sweep them off the path and out to sea at any moment. This cottage was too close to nature, too close to the wild, untamed, unsafe. Mike must have read the expression on her face because he squeezed her hand and smiled at her.

‘Come on,’ he said, squeezing her hand and she felt the thick wiry hairs on the backs of his fingers. They felt like spider’s legs. ‘It’ll be fine once we’re inside.’

He was right of course, everything would be alright. Right now the tide was out and only a thin stream of water ran through the middle of the muddy estuary bottom, seagulls circled in the air, squawked like pirate’s and swooped at the estuary floor, which smelt green like seaweed, wet like the air.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Mike said, touching her bare shoulder. He looked pleased like a new father, and Mary felt the warmth of his heart when he stood close to her, blood beating like a parade drum. She folded her arms around herself, protection against the cold.

‘Yes it is.’ She said, the wind whipping her yellowish hair into her eyes. ‘Yes I suppose it is beautiful.’

Mike clapped his hands together, rubbing his palms against each other. ‘Come on, mind your head.’ he said, having to duck his own head beneath the low wooden door frame and through the thick wall of the cottage, almost a metre deep and as cold as the inside walls of a fridge beneath the sensitive fingers of her office workers’ hands.

‘Mike, wait for me’ Mary said, having to bend her head too and looking upwards at the same time because cobwebs hung from the ceiling.

They looked like an old couple, Mary and Mike. Cold white light leaked in through the small windows and caused deep shadows in the flaws on their faces and they stooped and Mary had a face full of complaining, as if the cottage had cast its magic on them, making them as old as it was, nearly four hundred years old.

‘When did someone last stay here? It’s so cold in here, it’s so damp in here. What’s that smell?’ she screwed her nose so it looked like a pig’s snout, causing an ugly feature which Mike didn’t like.

‘Don’t pull faces like that. If the wind changes it’ll stay like that and you won’t be pretty any more.’ He joked, ignoring her question.

The walls smelt, that cold smell like the smell of a cellar, wet stone, wood, carpet that’s gone rotten at the edges, once beige but now dark brown to black.

‘It’ll be fine when we’ve lit the fire. Come on.’ He said excitedly and pulled her hand to follow him up the stairs where the sitting room was. An empty lonely room made to look a little more modern than it ever could really be. It didn’t look right with its big TV and cream sofa and arm chairs that could have been bought in IKEA they were so modern, but not new, they were too young for this house. The fireplace had a vase and a coloured light, which was nice.

‘It looked different in the pictures.’ Mary said, ‘it didn’t look like this at all’ and she took the brochure form her handbag, glad that she’d had the good sense to put it there because she’d been able to use the map on the back to direct Mike through the narrow streets that led down to the water’s edge, roads so steep and crooked she wondered if they could ever back the car out, that they’d have to reverse up the hill, that it was probably the wrong way because the map wasn’t accurate, wasn’t to scale at all.

‘It looks smaller, that’s all. It’s this ceiling, it’s so low. Do watch your head in here,’ Mike said, making Mary worry if he’d keep saying that, it made no sense at all because he was taller, more likely to bang his head.

’Give me that, would you,’ he took the brochure from her and began flicking through the pages.

Mary went up another set of stairs to a kitchen. It was better in here, the ceiling higher and the windows bigger, wider, the window ledges were like seats they were so deep. Mary could imagine herself sitting there and reading her book or sitting outside on the terrace, which was made of old damp wood, stained dark mossy brown. But it was too cold to sit outside and the sky brooded like a blood stain spreading beneath white bandage.

Mary shivered. It was so cold her bones ached. She felt so tired still. From downstairs in the sitting room came Mike’s voice, so full of energy it sounded warm, although not warming.

‘Says here it was build in 1698.’ He said, as if reading the punch line of a joke from a Christmas Cracker. ‘ Imagine that!’

‘Where’s the heating? We should get the heating on, do you think the boiler’s under the stairs?’

‘What boiler?’

‘The heating, the thermostat, I don’t know. Don’ tell me there’s no heating!’ and she felt annoyed with him, she’d slowly lost her patience as the day had worn on, service stations, motorways and traffic lights, overpriced coffee, bloody bitten fingernails. Listen to me, won’t you, Mike? Just listen when I speak.

‘Give me that.’ she went quickly down the steps to the sitting room and tried to take the brochure from him. He wouldn’t let her, pulling it away like a little boy who doesn’t want to lose his toy. Mine, his tightly closed grip said, it’s mine, not yours.

‘It’s here, in the utility room, which is by the door.’ He read, jabbing at the brochure with his finger, ‘it’s down here by the front door. I’ll go and switch it on.’ He said, ‘You go and get the kettle on. We need to warm up.’ and he went down the stairs to the door they had come in by.

Mary did as she was told, plodded back up the three steps to the kitchen, heavy footed like a teenager and suddenly the sun came out, a burst of yellow , like butter, warm on her skin and it made the mud in the estuary sparkle, the green leafy bank on the other side glow like a sucked fruit pastel. It warmed the wood in the window frames and it smelt like cedar, like pot puree, like a visit to The Body Shop and suddenly, despite the dark patches in the blanket of white cloud, she could see suddenly it was all so beautiful.