The Olive Branch

by Jo Thomas

  ‘Maah,’ it says loudly, dripping all over the floor. A great wave of despair washes over me. What on earth have I let myself in for?

  I grapple up and down the sides of the door frame in the dim light of the farmhouse, looking for the light switch. I find it. I flick it down with a clunk and glance round the room, but nothing happens. I pull the door open wider to let in more light and in the hope that the goat will find its way out. There’s a damp, musty smell. I’m not sure if it’s the house or the goat. I give the animal a wide berth and go to the first window I can see. I open it, then pull back the stiff bolt on the wooden shutters and push them open.

  There’s another huge clap of thunder. The goat doesn’t move, possibly hoping I haven’t noticed it standing by the front door.

  I go round the room and open every shutter I can see. Some are stiffer than others, and I make a mental note to give the bolts a spray with WD40 as soon as I can get to the shops. I’m sure I passed an ironmonger in town.

  The windows are small and the room is still dark, but when I get to the glass doors at the end of the room and push open their shutters, it really makes a difference. My eyes begin to take in everything, and as they do, they’re drawn upwards. The light cream stones make pointed dome shapes that cross in the high ceiling, creating a star shape. It’s amazing. I turn round, taking it all in – breathtaking – then promptly trip over a plastic table piled high with boxes of junk in the middle of the room.

  Whilst the ceiling may be breathtaking, the rest of the room is in need of some real TLC, I think, looking at the patchy paintwork. My mind starts racing with all sorts of ideas for how to show off its best features. It was the same when Ed and I first saw our flat. I could see all the possibilities and the ideas just kept coming: how we could turn the kitchen into a kitchen diner, make the fireplace the feature in the room again, bring in light. Ed saw the investment potential, I saw the design possibilities. It’s the same here. My mind won’t stop whirring with ideas.

  The stone wall above the fireplace is blackened and could definitely do with repainting. I’d keep the walls white, of course. There are bare bulbs in the sockets on the walls; some terracotta roof tiles would work well as uplighters.

  It’s all fixable. I mean, I knew the place would need work, and the scope is fantastic. But I’m going to have to find the local tip to start with, I can see that.

  I’m freezing and hug myself. Maybe I should try and light the big woodburner. But I want to explore some more first. There’s no point trying to bring my stuff in from the car while it’s still raining out there. I go to the stone archway where three stone steps lead to another room. I take the steps and look round for wooden shutters to open.

  Wow! A domed roof. Lower than the other room but actually curved. This was probably the lamia, used for animals at one time. There’s a semicircular stone arch on one wall. Set into it is a collapsing sink unit, crooked cupboard doors and a crusty cooker. But I’m sure I’ll be able to put those cupboard doors back on, and paint them up, too. Maybe do some tiling behind the sink.

  I once went on an evening course back home to learn how to do tiling. I was self-taught with the carpentry on the skirting and the window seat I made in the flat. I suppose that’s the thing about working from home: I always had those DIY programmes on in the background and I guess I just got hooked. I was hoping to do a plumbing course too, but took Italian instead in a moment of madness, seduced by a glass of cheap Prosecco and a square of pizza at the open evening. Luckily Ed and I never needed the plumbing sorting. We bought the flat knowing it needed work but that it would make us a tidy profit if it was done up. And Ed was delighted that I’d be able to do most of it. His skills were in numbers, investments, book-balancing, and he certainly invested well when we bought the flat. Still, the work needed on it was nothing compared to this place.

  There are more boxes spewing junk in this room: cables and cord, bottles, plastic funnels and redundant overalls. I definitely need to find the tip as soon as possible! In fact, first things first, best find out what they call it. I pull out my phone to look it up on my translation app. Typical! No internet access here. Looks like the stone wall at the front of the house is the best place for a signal so far.

  I rummage in my bag for a pen and the black Moleskine notebook I bought at the ferry port. It’s my ‘change my life’ notebook. I take a deep breath. I’ll show everyone I’m not just going to roll over and disappear into a pit of misery or put up with another night on a sofa. My back’s still aching.

  Our big sleigh bed went weeks ago. It felt like it was barely cold. After Ed and I split up, it took just six weeks for the flat and its entire contents to be sold. I was sleeping in the empty flat on one of our big squashy sofas until the new owner could come to pick it up. That was the thing that did it, I think. I didn’t even have my own bed any more. That, and the thought of going to my mum’s and having to see her partner Colin in his vest every morning, belching and scratching himself whilst watching Lorraine at full volume. Mum and Colin got together when I went to college. Not long after I moved out, he moved in. It was like my place at home had been filled. There was no going back, no vacancies. I was on my own.

  I open the new notebook. My last one had been full of electricity readings, Post Office redirection reference numbers and skip hire details. The pages of this one are stiff and have that wonderful ‘new book’ smell. This is an important page. The first page of the rest of my life.

  1. I put a firm full stop after it. Tip.

  Then I cross it out and write: 1. Internet. 2. Tip. 3. Goat owner!

  I must find out who owns that goat.

  I go to pull back the greying net curtains over the sink and they fall down in my hand, dusty and smelly. I sigh. They probably needed replacing anyway.

  4. Kitchen nets. And the list starts to grow.

  I go back down the stone steps, running my hands along the cold stone walls. There’s another doorway opposite, to one side of the fireplace, and a stone staircase disappearing into the thick wall on the other.

  Through the doorway, which is more like a corridor, I’m in the living room. There’s an empty fireplace and another couple of small windows. I open up the shutters. More rubbish. But that’s okay. Rubbish can be got rid of. It’s not like it’s anything major. After another look around, I can see myself sitting here, armchairs in front of the fire. Maybe even use it for B&B guests if I can get the bedrooms painted up. I’ll keep it all white in here too. I touch the lime-washed wall. It’s cool, and my teeth are beginning to chatter. There’s a door leading out to an overgrown courtyard.

  I look out of the window to the front and can just about make out my car parked beyond the stone forecourt. The rain must be easing. I’ll get my clothes in once I’ve had a quick look round the rest of the house. It should’ve stopped by then, or at least be lighter, and hopefully the goat will have gone too.

  I suddenly remember something, and add it to my list: 48. Electricity box. I don’t want to be stuck here in the dark tonight. That could be a step too far.

  As I head through to the next room, towards the back of the house, I stand stock still in the doorway. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. There are only tiny high-up windows, so I hold up my phone’s torch. It’s a high-ceilinged room again, though not as high as the first, and all white. There’s an arch in the wall at the far end, and set into it, a stone statue of Jesus on the cross with a red curtain below. There’s a table in front of it covered with a deep red cloth, and eight chairs set out in front of the table. It’s an altar! A church!

  I wasn’t expecting this at all. It’s amazing, and so cool and peaceful. It’s a great space, but I have no idea what I’ll use it for yet. I turn around, wondering about the family gatherings that must have taken place in here. A place for christenings, marriages and funerals. All that history, now just abandoned and gone. I take it all
in as I turn around, and then, like a child who’s just got everything on their Christmas wish list, I run through the other rooms, making more and more additions to my list.

  There are stone stairs down to the cellar that I take two at a time. It’s another dome-shaped ceiling, and there are even one or two dusty bottles left behind in a corner, and a couple of large steel barrels that actually look quite new. I run back past the goat, who’s now at least looking out through the open door. I’m tempted to give it a shove, but think it’s more likely to go if I ignore it. This time I take the stone stairs going up, running my hand along the wall, getting more excited about everything I could do. I can’t believe I’m here, or that this place is actually mine. I’m desperate now to see what’s upstairs.

  It’s dark at the top of the stairs. I pull out my phone again and use the torch, just avoiding tripping over more rubbish piled high. I poke my head into each of the three rooms, wondering which is the most habitable. The floor is bare boards and the walls need something doing to them. I decide to go for the room at the back as my bedroom. It’s the smallest, but it looks like I can move straight in. I’ve got a blow-up mattress; Elinor, one of my Italian night-class gang, lent it to me. That’ll do for the time being. It’ll be like camping, I tell myself; fun! And at least it’s in southern Italy, not south London. I think back to the day my bed was carried out of the flat.

  Coming out of the bedroom, I go straight to the long window on the landing at the back of the house. It takes all my force to open the shutters, but my God! I catch my breath. There is a small wrought-iron barrier that I hold on to in order to steady myself, and I wonder if it’s safe. But what a view! Despite the mist and the steady rain, I can see for miles: olive trees, with the occasional house snuggled amongst them. And you only know they’re there because of the smoke rising from the chimneys.

  Fires? I think suddenly. At the end of August? Then I remember, it’s probably the fornos being lit, the outdoor ovens. It is Sunday after all. I remember that from my last trip here, when I fell in love with the area and everything about it, including a young art student called Francis. I smile at the memory. He wasn’t the love of my life; I was only seventeen. He was lovely and fun, but I didn’t feel any urge to come back and find him. What I did fall in love with was Italy. I always said I’d return.

  Ed didn’t get it. He liked all-inclusive holidays in Sharm el-Sheikh, or skiing holidays in January. He didn’t like the food or anything about Puglia when we visited last year, before ‘we’ became ‘I’.

  I wanted to move here there and then. I thought it would give us a joint interest, help to put us back together, but Ed just wanted to find Wi-Fi so he could check the household account and his pension fund. He would never have done something like this. When we met in the university bar in our final year of college, it was an ‘opposites attract’ thing, I think. He was there with his business studies mates and me with my art buddies. We’d all come to see a band play. It was one of the few things we did have in common, our taste in music. We went to lots of gigs. They were fun times.

  During our early days in rented flats, we’d scour markets and boot fairs for furniture and bric-a-brac. That’s when we started seriously collecting the eighties albums. It became our weekend hobby. We’d travel all over the place, eating fish and chips on the way home on a Sunday night. That was eight years ago now. But as Ed started to climb the corporate ladder, his tastes began to change and second-hand bric-a-brac became a thing of the past. Ed wanted new, apart from the retro record collection, which had risen in value. He thinks I’m mad now. Maybe I am.

  I turn and look at the big landing. I still can’t believe I own all of this. In Tooting we had a two-bedroom flat. Okay, it was a nice flat, and as Ed predicted, it was a great investment. We had loads of interest when it went on the market, selling it in days for twice what we paid for it, but it was nothing compared to this.

  I go to the other long window at the far end of the corridor and push open the shutters. I look down on my car, parked at an angle like it’s been abandoned. The rain definitely seems to be easing up to a light shower. I want to go and explore the courtyard to the side of the house now, where there’s a trullo, and an open-sided barn that I just know will be full of junk. I smile. My own trullo. An old single-storey, conical-roofed stone building. When I first came out here, I was fascinated by them. I’d read somewhere that they looked like the Smurfs’ houses, and they do!

  I run back downstairs to the front door. I’ll bring in my case now as well, and find some dry clothes. I step outside. It’s warmer than inside, and guess what? It’s stopped raining. The wet and battered bougainvillea is giving off the most wonderful scent after the storm. I look back at the house. My house. I would never have believed I could own something like this, not on my own, not without Ed. There’s a flicker of excitement in my tummy, like fairy lights being switched on and lighting me from the inside.

  ‘The only regrets you have in life are the things you didn’t do,’ my grandfather used to tell me. So I took him at his word. Now my mum thinks I’m certifiable. But it was just a window of opportunity. I didn’t do it to horrify Ed, although that helped me make my decision. A part of me had always wanted to break out and do something like this, buy a wreck and do it up. I didn’t mind where, but I had thought it more likely to be some run-down part of London or maybe Kent. I was never going to be able to afford something on my own in London, though, and now I own all this!

  My mind starts to run off into a fantasy world as I go through the archway at the side of the house and look beyond the overgrown brambles. There’s the open barn on one side of the courtyard, and yes, it is brimming with rubbish. But it would make wonderful B&B accommodation. I couldn’t do it now, obviously, but one day, who knows? For now, I have plans for the little trullo.

  I try the door. It’s not locked. I pull out my list again and scribble: 74. Lock for trullo. Then I push open the door and bend down to go in, like Alice in Wonderland after she’s had the ‘Eat Me’ cake.

  I stop. I hear it before I can see it. Once inside, I stand up straight and listen again. There’s a dripping noise. I pull out my phone and use the torch. There’s some furniture here: a dark set of drawers that will do for one of the bedrooms in the house, and a small table and chairs. Then I look up, and up and up at the white plaster ceiling – like the inside of a gnome’s hat, I think to myself, and smile just as a plop of water hits me in the eye and my phone dies. Ah, so that’s where the dripping noise is coming from.

  With an old paint bucket in place, I take a final look round. This will make the perfect rental cottage, bringing in a little bit of money to top up what I earn with the online greeting card designs.

  101, I write in my notebook. Internet connection. I underline it a lot and then make a very firm full stop. I look back at the trullo. I’ll put a bed in, a table and chairs, and cushions along the alcove by the fire. I’ll post pictures on Facebook. I know Ed’ll see them. Then I look down at my list and some of the fairy lights in my tummy flicker out. There’s a lot to do, and suddenly I shiver as though someone’s walked over my grave. I distract myself quickly with thoughts of unpacking and lighting a fire. I’m presuming that without the fire there won’t be any hot water, unless there’s some super-duper brand-new water tank I’ve missed somewhere. But I don’t think so. Like I say, it’ll be like camping: fun!

  I dodge the large puddles of water in the courtyard and the clumps of grass growing up through the worn cobbles, and grab my case from the car along with a black bag of clothes. Then I head back to the front door. The goat has gone, thank God, and I shut the door firmly with my bottom. My front door! Not Ed’s, or the communal door to the flats; all mine. I smile, and some of the fairy lights come back on.

  Upstairs, I peel off my damp clothes, hang them over the window frame and change into some lightweight dungarees I picked up from one of the charity shops on
the high street. I pull on my vintage floral waist-length cardigan from a boot fair and flip-flops from Primark. I like to mix up my wardrobe. I wonder where my new shop of choice will be. Maybe the local market, which is on a Monday – tomorrow! Now all the fairy lights come back on and I give myself a little squeeze. I’ve done it. This is all mine! I think about my mum, my brother Lance, and Ed. I’ll show them all. I lean out of the window to take in the view and my phone pings into life, as if by telepathic communication.

  Make sure you drink bottled water, texts Mum.

  There’s also a message from Ed: Have you got the electricity bill receipts from last year?

  Electricity receipts? Really? I have so much more to think about than last year’s electricity bills. Even now we’ve gone our separate ways Ed is still considering things like how best to divide the final electricity bill seeing as he wasn’t there for the last six weeks. He has been practical about the break-up, moving out and moving straight in with Annabel, his colleague from work, who was there, ready and waiting with a shoulder to cry on and a spare room to sleep in. Whereas I spent nights wondering what the hell I’d done and crying into the boxes as I was packing up. That’s not to say Ed doesn’t keep texting me every few hours. He may have moved on physically but he hasn’t quite grasped the fact that I’m not at the end of a phone whenever he wants me.

  Annabel is a quick worker indeed. She’d had her eye on Ed for some time. She made no secret of it and told me at their office Christmas party that she was surprised that Ed was with ‘someone like you’. I was too surprised to ask her what she meant. But looking around at everyone in their suits while I was in my straight-from-evening-class dungarees, I think I got it. When I finally plucked up the courage to tell Ed that wet afternoon in June that it really wasn’t working any more, Annabel had already cleared her spare bedroom and had the Kleenex waiting.