Derry Cottage

Part 3

This bath is someone else’s bath, she thought, feeling exhilarated after walking to the top of the hill and she had needed to walk almost all the way to the main road before she had enough signal to make the call to the office.

She could see the sea from the top of the hill. Mike was right, it was beautiful and she felt guilty at having seen it before he had shown it to her. So later, she decided, she would pretend she hadn’t seen it yet.

‘Oh my word,’ she would gush, ‘wow that really is... that really is incredible.’

She felt wicked at the thought and laughed, although too out of breath to make a sound and when her thoughts turned to the call she had to make, the call to the office, she became more serious. She rehearsed what she would say in her head, repeating phrases, thinking what she should say first and at the same time looking at the signal bars on her phone, waiting for them to fill to the top of the screen.

‘Hi, this is Mary.’ She had said briskly into the phone mouthpiece, standing on top of the hill and sheltering the mouthpiece with a cupped hand so that Alison wouldn’t hear that she was outside. She crouched next to a thick hedge, she was glad it had been Alison who had answered. The hedge must have been five metres tall.

 ‘Listen, is that Alison? Hi Alison, yeah fine, fine, I’m fine. Listen, I’m in Devon but something’s come up. I need to sort some personal stuff out, and the stupid thing is there’s absolutely no bloody signal here. I know, I know, bloody typical. I’m going to have to catch up next week when I’m back. Tell Tim, would you? No, honestly, he won’t mind. Don’t worry I’ll speak to him next week. Anything urgent then email. I’ll be back on Saturday and I’ll catch up then.’

She had rushed a little in the middle, but it had ended well and she was glad it had been Alison that had answered the phone. She would tell Tim, she would get her message right, and Tim would understand, especially if it was personal stuff, she had heard him use the phrase before, it was the sort of thing he said, the sort of thing he understood, personal stuff.

This bath needs to be cleaned, she thought. Although it looks clean, how can you tell if it’s been cleaned with a clean cloth and not the same cloth that they used for the toilet or the spilt water on the floor?

I don’t think I even need a shower, she decided, the exhilaration of coming down the hill, powered by the pull of gravity, arms working like pistons, feet slapping the road like flat tyres, it had completely woken her, and this little village, it was surreal, men in tweed suits, old but dashing, and they’ve dressed that way all their lives. It could almost be the 1940s, wartime. There was even a tiny baker’s with white wooden windows, but she could see nothing behind the tiny wooden frames, no bread, no buns, no famous Devonshire scones.

On a corner she saw a red phone box. People still used public phones here, so charming, so 1945 and suddenly a burst of sunshine led her down the hill and she was warm, this place was warm, hot sun burning through damp cloud.

She splashed water from the tap in the basin onto her face and neck, hoping that would do instead of a shower, but it wasn’t enough, she needed to wash properly.  But the bathtub was filthy, cleaned with a rotten cloth and there was nowhere to hang her towel. The shower curtain was stained and the bath mat matted and old and damp still. But she had no choice so she put her towel on top of Mike’s, which was slung over the edge of the basin, and got in.

‘Everything alright?’ Mike asked, either reading her mind or the expression on her face. He had a teapot in one hand and a teacloth across his shoulder and his free hand was in his shorts pocket, which sat too high on his waist. The way he stood made him look like a teapot and in his socks too, he looked like a scout leader with his long socks and I bet her wears sandals, I bet he wears shoes later when we go out, she thought.

‘Fine, everything’s fine.’ She smiled, felt clean beneath her clean t-shirt and she towelled her hair. ‘I spoke to work and I told them I couldn’t do anything until next week, so...’ she thought how to end her sentence, but couldn’t think what she had said to Alison.

‘...so you’re free.’ Mike smilingly finished her sentence. Well done, he might have said, you’ve done the right thing and immediately she regretted calling work, regretted being here and she dreaded what was planned for today.