Shirley carries the empty plates to the sink, washes the pans and carefully wipes the worktop. She watches her husband hoe the neat rows of vegetables, finding weeds where none grow, knee-deep in the foliage like he is wading in a green sea. And she knows he is as miserable as she.
3
Her watch says ten o’ clock when she wakes next morning, dry-mouthed. ‘Here Comes the Sun’ is playing at full volume and The Beatles are right. Dim light filters through rents in the red satin curtains making the room glow rosy-pink; how can David sleep?
Amy is washed with cheerfulness. Their high bed stands in the middle of the room. Against the wall is a wooden chair that reminds her of school; there’s a chest of drawers half-painted in gold. She slips down, not from under sheets and blankets as she is used to but a puffy eiderdown. Her bare feet hit bare floorboards. Taking a dressing gown from the back of the door, she tip-toes along the thread-bare carpet looking for the toilet. Stella appears in a floor-length nightdress and disappears into a room. The sound of splashing.
Amy sits on the toilet. The room swirls with dotted light from the stained-glass mobile that hangs like a mushroom above her head. On the door, a framed poster for an exhibition shows a half-naked man on a green bed. No carpet, no neatly stored bottle of toilet cleaner, no toilet paper. Luckily there’s a used tissue in the pocket of the dressing gown. She washes her hands and face in the cracked sink. Back in bed, her cold feet wake David. Feigning fury, he rolls over to cover her with his body. Pinning her down, he blows kisses on her neck. She is jubilant.
Half an hour later, Julian kicks open the door and comes in carrying mugs of tea. He is dressed in what looked like a woman’s nightie; his hairy legs stick out from the bottom. ‘No time for all that now,’ he says, ‘we’ve got to get going. Seymour is arriving soon with Simon. Let’s go see the cottage. Find yourselves some boots, it’ll be damp.’
Cutting through a gap in the hedge into a field of chest-high nettles and hummocky grass they find it, a dilapidated two-up two-down stone building with a brick lean-to on one side. Slates are missing from the roof and parts of the building’s exterior reveal what looks like straw and mud walls.
‘Someone lived here until about just before Seymour bought the place,’ said Julian, water pooling around his boots. ‘Pipe cracked last winter, that’s why it’s soggy here below the window.’
He shoves his shoulder against the front door. The wood resists briefly, then gives way. They dip their heads to step inside. A steep wooden staircase leads up from the hall. There is a sitting room with a fireplace and beyond it, another smaller room with a set of backstairs. The ceilings in both rooms are bowed, the walls streaked with dirt. There’s a lean-to kitchen and bathroom. Mould grows on the walls. It smells damp.
Julian nods as Amy starts up the stairs. ‘Yes, have a look. Stairs and floors are safe, that’s been checked.’
‘Needs just a little bit of attention,’ she hears David and Julian jeering.
None of three rooms upstairs are large. The middle one has windows on both sides. How pretty it once might have looked. She wonders who might have slept here. Was a baby been born, had someone died, perhaps? Would the ghosts fade once it was painted? Brushing away cobwebs, she works at a window latch. She can see the farmhouse where she slept last night. Built from stone, the square building has windows on either side of the grand front door, a grey-slate roof and big chimneys. Hard to believe that she, Amy Taylor, is staying in such a place. She brushes away the thought that she lied to her parents to be here.
In the cottage garden, Stella is sitting on a branch of a tree. Her long dress spreads around her like a sail. The girl could be model from the magazines that Amy sometimes flicks through in the newsagents. She exudes an untouchable air of exotica even in the way she breathes. Amy feels a flash of envy: why can’t Stella wear trousers and an anorak like she does? Amy chastises herself for being small-minded. Stella simply suits the surroundings better than she does.
In the single room at the far end of the cottage, there’s a set of wooden stairs to the room below. Picking up a brown curl of newspaper from the floor, she sees a story about ‘a Country Show in 1959’. She waves it at David.
He is craning his neck to look up the chimney trying to look as though he knows what he’s doing or what he’s looking for. She touches his shoulder. He turns and taking her in his arms, rests his chin on her head. ‘Amazing place, eh?’
‘Seymour talks about doing the place up. Though who’d want to live in this dump, I can’t imagine,’ Julian jokes.
‘It could be made lovely, surely?’ She looks around.
‘For spiders perhaps. Want some?’ Julian offers her a joint.
She shakes her head and wanders outside. Someone had once tended the garden here for there are the remains of a broken path and rose bushes and a plant she recalls her father called ‘a butterfly bush’. How pleased he would be to know that she remembers something he taught her. She tugs a plant she thinks is a weed.
Stella brushes past. Barely glancing at Amy, she murmurs; ‘I can hear a car coming up the drive. It’s probably Seymour. Tell Julian I’ve gone to meet him.’
Amy goes back into the cottage. The boys are larking about in the kitchen. ‘I think your father’s arrived, Julian. Stella says she’s gone over to meet him.’
‘Right-o. Okay you two, prepare to meet Seymour Stratton.’
On the drive is a white Jaguar car. A man is reaching into the boot and pulls two bottles of wine. It’s Simon Webster, a university friend of Julian and David’s whom Amy once met on an anti-war march in London. He has those angelic boyish looks that won’t change much with age, fair hair and a shy smile. But it’s the leather-jacketed man in his late forties whose she’s more interested in. This must be Seymour, Julian’s father. Wild curls and a pointed nose, his heeled boots make him only an inch or two taller than Stella. The woman stands next to him shaking her hair like a starlet preparing for the camera. A delicious wave of schadenfreude. Stella reveals overly-large teeth when she smiles.
Amy and David follow Julian.
‘Julian, my boy, how are you doing?’ Father and son grasp arms. ‘So these are the friends you’ve been telling me about.’
‘Hallo Seymour, meet David Bond. He and I were on the same degree course.’
It is an accurate statement. Whether they will both graduate is not certain. David would be content with a second class degree but Julian, who spent much of the summer term away due to poor health, isn’t confident he will pass. No one is quite sure why he was away so much. They sense it is a subject he prefers not to discuss. Seymour and David shake hands. ‘And this is David’s girlfriend, Amy Taylor.’
‘Hallo Mr Stratton, pleased to meet you. Thank you for inviting us to stay here with Julian. You have a beautiful place.’
‘Hallo. Like it, do you, Amy?’ Seymour’s gaze seems to pin her to the spot. ‘It’s a bit tatty round the edges but yes, a certain charm. Julian, can you take the camera from the car? And the bag of food on the back seat of the car. Would you mind bringing it in, David? Simon, those bottles must go straight into the freezer. Mrs Morle looking after the place alright, Julian? And how is our feisty Lynn these days?’
He leads them into the house, calling for Pilot; asks someone to lay the table, to fetch glasses, to put music on. A Little Feat album plays while foods she has never seen or tasted before are spread across the table. Smoked salmon, the thinnest slivers of meat, olives fat with anchovies, roasted peppers sprinkled with herbs, a smoky green dip pungent with garlic. They rip pieces of breads from baguettes, the drink makes her tongue sing.
As they eat, Seymour tells them what he’s been up. People he has photographed that week, names she has seen mentioned in newspapers, exotic and eccentric people of note. He tells a story against himself, a gaff he made with someone famous and it’s very funny. It all sounds unreal, too strange for her to envisage, the opposite of the life she has shared with her parents where routine prev
ails; jobs and homework and meals and washing up. The wisps of her hangover disappear.
‘Let’s have a toast,’ Seymour says. ‘To the summer. To you all.’ He pushes back his chair and stretches out his arms in a magnanimous gesture. ‘Have you had a look around the place yet? What do you think of my escape to the country? I’m thinking of an artist’s retreat, somewhere laid back and cool where people can rejuvenate the creative juices and have fun. Just needs a few improvements, here and there, and I’m thinking that Julian could run the place, perhaps. That’s all in the future. We’re just glad you’re here now to help us get our little dream going.’
Amy is a bit drunk. A song floats round her head, Dusty Springfield’s ‘I Only Want to Be with You’. She is sure it will be somewhere in the snake of vinyl in the sitting room. What if the boys scoff at her choice?
She puts on the record. It was playing the first time she saw David in the Student Union bar. Her brother had invited her and Mary, her school friend to the ‘Spring Bop’. The students, mostly men as far as she could see, were much older than she and Mary. They were ranged like skittles around the football table shouting as they whacked or watched a tiny ball race up and down a table between the legs of plastic figurines. They clasped pints of beer. In the corner was a student with a different style. A cigarette clamped between his teeth, one booted foot resting on a stool, the man with long nut-brown hair, a stubble-coated chin and a Led Zepplin t-shirt lazily strummed a guitar. She was mesmerized. A girl with long hair parted in the middle joined him to share a joke. Amy felt jealous. Two months later, when she had kissed the guitar player, she was introduced to the girl. It was Maggie Bond, David’s younger sister.
A ringing telephone brings her back to the present. No one, it seems, plans to answer it. So Amy decides she will. Down the hall she finds a room with a desk and on it, a heavy black telephone.
‘Hallo? This is the, ah… the Stratton family.’ She stifles a snort.
It is not her family but she answering as though it is. ‘Amy, is that you?’
Her mother sounds relieved.
‘Oh, hallo, Mum! How are you?’ Amy realises that her speech is slurred.
Her mother says: ‘I’ve been calling on and off all morning, Amy, but there’s been no answer. I’ve been so worried. You didn’t ring last night to say you had arrived. Are you alright? Amy, are you there?’
‘Mum, hi, sorry, I couldn’t call last night. We got here really late.’
‘You could have called this morning though.’ No one else listening would know her mother is hurt but Amy does.
‘Sorry, Mum, I was waiting until one o’ clock when it gets cheaper to make calls.’
‘Amy. It’s Saturday and calls are cheap all day!’
‘Oh yeah, course. Sorry Mum. Yes, I’m fine. How are you?’
‘I can hear music. Is there a party going on?’
‘No, well, yes, just a few friends of the family have come for lunch with Mr Stratton. Dad alright, Mum? Look, I’ll call again in a few days and tell you how we’re getting on.’
Her mother does not reply.
In other moods, Amy might have persisted. But she wants to get back to Dusty and the smelly cheese. ‘Mum, I said I’ll call in a few days. Speak soon.’
4
No one called her Lily, she told Mr Stratton the first time they met, well, that must be over ten years ago now. She had gone up to the big house after he wrote to her. The gentleman asked if she’d continue to work for him as the housekeeper, same as she had for the previous owner. She didn’t like the man’s look, not at all, and when he used her first name rather than her married name, she had to put him right, there and then. London ways he had, informal, not the way she wanted things done. She had drawn herself up to her full height, five feet three inches, only a little shorter than he and addressed him sharply: ‘I’ll thank you to use my full name, Mr Stratton, and that’s Mrs Morle.’
She sits by her Rayburn in her cottage just across the lane from Wyld Farm. The range is not fired up today but its presence is a comfort and anyway, this is where she always sits. She puts her legs up on a stool; the cat settles in her lap.
She has been his housekeeper ever since he had bought the place from the last owners, poor Mrs Clarke, God rest her soul. Went to stay with her daughter one spring, caught a chest cold and died in Southampton. Now Mrs Clarke had been a lovely lady; proper formal, always turned out nicely. Skirts and jackets during the day, always a dress for dinner. Mrs Clarke and Mrs Morle saw eye to eye on many subjects, none of which they put into words but was implicit in the way they were in the world.
Not like Seymour Stratton with his leather coat and flowery shirts. What did the man think he looked like? The only visitors to Mrs Clarke would be the family, her daughter or her son and his wife and his children who might stay at a weekend or at Christmas. Local friends might come for lunch or for tea in the garden in the summer. All regular and organised.
Not like Mr Stratton. He didn’t come down much, weekends every so often, but when he did, he would bring friends and food and host parties. Guests arriving in their fancy cars; it could be hard to tell the girls from the men, they all had long hair and high-heeled boots. He would usually have telephoned to ask her if she was free to do extra work on those party weekends. And she would always agree. Extra money was welcome when you were raising a child on your own, wasn’t it? Necessary even. The cost of shoes and the girl always wanting something and saving for the future.
So she’d tidy up on Saturday and Sunday mornings while he and his guests slept and the house was quiet; leave a cold lunch, then come back to wash up before supper. Once he asked her to serve drinks at an evening party but she didn’t like what went on; told him as much so he never asked her again and thank goodness for that.
She pushes the cat off her lap and heats some soup. Lynn will soon be back from work. Her daughter who makes the local boys stand up straight when she passes. Hair as dark as blackbird’s feathers and green eyes like her father. But while Harry was steady, his daughter is capricious. Whatever you told her, she would always check behind a closed door in case there was something she might want.
Mrs Morle puts sandwich spread on a piece of bread. She felt sorry for Seymour’s son. Little Julian had come down on those post-party mornings, his father nowhere to be seen, sleeping with one of the women he’d driven down with, no doubt. He’d have wet the bed but wouldn’t say; would leave the wet sheets stuffed behind a door as though they might disappear. The poor little scrap would sit near her as she worked, telling her about his favourite car or cartoon character. So many glasses to wash and polish dry, so many potatoes to peel, there was plenty of time for Julian to chatter on. He was a sweet boy and lonely, too, having to spend the weekend with his father’s friends who, from the empty wine and whisky bottles left all over the house, drank a lot of alcohol at their parties. And from the strange smell of hand-rolled cigarette stubs left scattered, did other things unsuitable for a boy to witness. She did not like to think about it.
So much cleaning to do when they left. Every bedroom in the house used, and some sofas too from the bed linen that was strewn everywhere. Washing, drying, folding and tidying. Sometimes guests left a tip in the bedroom. The extra money was nice but taking it made her feel like a servant. A difficult house to keep clean what with the crumbling plaster, draughty windows making the dust swirl, and letting dogs come in the house. But Mr Stratton never complained about her work or begrudged her the money she cost him.
She could never work out why but, despite his habits and the way he lived and the fact that she definitely disapproves of him, Mrs Morle likes Seymour. She sets the table. There is something about the man that is hard to resist. She can’t put it any other way. He appreciates her as a woman. Every Christmas he gives her a bottle of scent beautifully wrapped in shiny paper and tied with ribbon. She savours every perfumed dab.
Now Mr Stratton tells her that Julian is going to live at Wyld Farm with so
me friends. She isn’t sure how she feels about cleaning for a group of young people and anyway, shouldn’t they be back at home with their parents and looking for jobs? How do these young people afford to live? Like that strange girl, Stella; as skittish as a race horse. She must have parents? Aren’t they bothered about what she gets to, hanging around at Mr Stratton’s house?
‘How was today, love?’
The door of the cottage slams open as Lynn slouches past. ‘Boring as usual,’ is the reply, then the girl wearily climbs the steps to her room. A creak overhead suggests she has climbed into bed. There is silence.
The train pulls into the station. Maggie Bond catches the bus waiting outside. Almost immediately she falls asleep, rocked as it swerves along empty Sunday lanes. Mother has worn her out. She wakes up as it stops.
‘Market square.’ The driver sounds bored.
On the steps of a fountain, two girls in heavy boots sit smoking cigarettes. Maggie gathers up her belongings, hoping her brother will turn up before she has to leave the safety of the bus. She is wearing the clothes she treasures most; a floor-length purple skirt and a cheese cloth top with lacy sleeves. Both items were from Kensington Market when her mother took her on a birthday shopping trip. She hopes people will think she is a hippy; they might even feel a little leery of her. The style detracts from her rounded tummy and large breasts, too; parts of her body that no amount of hatred can reduce. David assured her that boys liked girls with curves. But she loathes the band of flesh that rests on her thighs like a warm creature when she sits.
Maggie eyes the girls again, then with relief sees her brother in the driver’s seat of a Land Rover that pulls into the car park. Beside David she sees his latest girlfriend, Amy. Maggie has met her a few times before and wonders how long she’ll be around. Maggie refreshes the red lipstick her mother hates her to wear, saying it makes her ‘look like a tramp’. She puts on the divine floppy hat she had stuffed in her bag and inches between passengers towards the bus door.
Wyld Dreamers Page 2
