The cottage

A Chapter by Helen

Stephen, his wife and young child arrive in the village where they are to spend the summer. All is not as it seems.

Stephen looked out on a landscape so bleak and unwavering, that he wondered if perhaps it was a photograph, stretched across the windscreen like an old movie poster. Deserted boats, hollowed out and stripped of any worthwhile wood dotted the path down to the bay. Some were upturned, revealing barnacles and patchy remnants of names sprawled across their hulls. Stephen spotted a “Mary-Ros”, the ‘E’ long gone, orange with rust and half an oar dumped by her side. It had been a long time since she was pushed out to sea, picnic on deck and hopes for good weather. It didn’t seem as though this place had seen the sun for a while anyway. The sky was murky, blending in like a bled watercolour to the brown water below, indistinguishable. The road was potholed, with grey tarmac lain on higgledy-piggledy ridges that caused the car to jolt unnervingly. Stephen noticed his fingers turning white on the steering wheel. His face paled in the mirror.

“This is the place,” Perdy broke the silence, “God, it hasn’t changed a bit since I was a kid.”

The map was sprawled across her lap. The sat-nav had lost its signal over five miles before and after ten minutes of rooting around in the glove-box and tempers beginning to fray, Perdy had managed to spot the village on the map, a small speck jutting out to form a headland. An appendix, Stephen smirked at the thought, a completely useless addition on the coast.

“Where is the house exactly?” Stephen asked, disinterested. He was just the driver after all. This was Perdy’s place, her memories.

“It’s around here somewhere. It’s all coming back to me now!” She sat upright in the passenger seat, hands clasped together in an excitement that Stephen found hard to grasp, let alone share. “There’s Mr Jacobs’ old vegetable patch!” She pointed out a plot of land, with a rickety old picket fence wrapped around it. Even the basket of vegetables were dull, cabbages wilting and carrots covered in a grey sludge. The shack beside it was the same grey, a small one storey building seemingly held up by hope alone. The roof was missing tiles and almost half the windows were boarded up. A dog, brown this time, sat on the doorstep with a bowl of water. He looked thirsty and Stephen realised that he was too. His mouth was as dry as a bone. He smiled at the pun.

He was surprised at how quickly Perdy’s memories had come flooding back to her. This place couldn’t inspire even the most enthusiastic child, Stephen thought. He looked back at Polly in the wing mirror, but she was fast asleep, dummy in and dead to the world. Her blonde curls spread across her face as they always did when she slept. Her rosy cheeks bloomed. Stephen was always surprised that he had produced something so perfect. She was like a china doll and he often treated her like one. Never quite sure how to hold her as a new born, Perdy would take control and shoo him away like an annoyance. He’d sometimes be jealous as he left for work each morning, as when he returned, Polly never reached out her chubby hands for Daddy. She’d stay firmly in Mummy’s grip as she had been all day, acquainted with her singing voice and nursery rhyme recitals. Daddy was a half-stranger. He turned up in the evenings and ate his dinner on a tray in front of the television. He’d look sideward, in between programmes, and catch Polly’s unsure glances.

It was Stephen who had suggested that they needed a holiday. Working every hour that God sent in the accountancy firm had taken it out of him. Then with Perdy’s miscarriage, he had cracked. Breaking down crying over a piece of burnt toast had been the final straw. He hadn’t wanted a second child and it definitely hadn’t been planned. When Perdy had announced it over dinner in front of her parents and family friends, his smile was convincing. Then just four weeks later, when Perdy had phoned him at work from the doctors, his grief was less so. He was relieved and beyond guilty for it.

“Uncle Mike’s place should be just round the corner.”

Perdy had spent her childhood summers in the village, staying with her uncle in his dilapidated cottage. They’d lost contact somewhat, as families do, as Stephen liked when it came to his own. That was the circle of life, he always thought. Family members come in and out of your life, like a piece of driftwood floating to and from the shore. They return as and when you may need them and even then you must keep them at a safe distance. Unexpected calls, with kisses all round and roast dinners were always his idea of hell. Naturally then, it was Perdy’s idea to contact her uncle out of the blue to arrange a visit. To Stephen’s delight, dear old Uncle Mike had moved to New Zealand just two months before and the cottage lay empty. Of course, they were welcome to use it for as long as they liked. “It sounds like you both deserve the break, darling,” he’d said. And there they were, with no awkward roast dinner in sight.

Stephen pulled up on the moss carpeting the shabby front garden, the brakes creaking slightly. He looked up at the house. Well, at least it isn’t a shack, he thought, it could be worse.

“Isn’t it pretty?” Perdy looked genuinely happy. The crow’s feet were suddenly visible around her eyes. She’d never worried about wrinkles, she argued that they were an inevitable sign of ageing. Why is ageing inherently bad anyway? She’d asked, Look at George Clooney, some things improve with age! Stephen didn’t like George Clooney. He thought he was a jumped-up show-off, with more money and good looks than sense.

“Very quaint.” That response sufficed. Stephen decided to muster some enthusiasm for appearance’s sake, or at least for her sake.

The house was scruffily painted blue with two storeys and weather-beaten shutters at the windows. The door was directly in the middle, like the houses that small children draw in primary school, ever-so perfectly symmetrical. Overgrown shrubs grew up and around, a bit like a green moustache, Stephen thought. He stroked his own facial hair, something to do with his increasingly clammy hands. Uncle Mike had stuck ragged pieces of brown paper around the door, “No circulars please,” and “Absolutely no junk mail.” Does the postman actually deliver all the way down here? Stephen wondered, glancing back up the two mile beaten road to civilisation.

Stephen carried the cases in, far more stuff than they could possibly need for a two week break. Everything but the kitchen sink, he’d joked. Jesus, will there be a kitchen sink here? He worried suddenly, Will there even be a kitchen?

“It’s adorable, Stephen” Perdy sashayed in to the hall. Polly was perched on her hip, now bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. “We love it, don’t we?” She sprung in to baby-talk, carrying Polly from room-to-room, more animated at the sight of each.

“I’ll get the rest of the cases.”

They spent the evening by the fire in the living room. It was painted a deep red and on the lower half was an old-fashioned textured wallpaper. It was red and white striped like a piece of seaside rock. It curled in the corners and bubbled with age. Uncle Mike had spread photographs around the room, mostly of himself in the different places that he’d visited. Stephen spotted him at the Grand Canyon, both thumbs up and teetering over the edge in mock-horror. For a man that was so well-travelled, Stephen couldn’t comprehend why he chose to spend his summers in this place. Maybe he needed to rest his eyes for a while. The excitement and colour of his voyages needed to be dulled somehow and the village was the perfect remedy.

There was a kitchen. It led off the lounge and the green décor clashed horribly. The butler sink was scratched and worn, but Perdy convinced him that they were actually very “en vogue” at the moment. Uncle Mike didn’t seem to believe in organising his possessions. The cutlery was spread around the room and the kettle hidden away in an overhead cupboard. Perdy made use of the armies-worth of food that Stephen had lugged from the car and cooked spaghetti bolognaise on the old gas range. They ate on mismatched crockery. “It’s a novelty,” Perdy had assured him.

She told stories of her childhood summers spent in the house and Polly sat playing with a rattle on the hearth rug. Stephen thought that they looked like a still from a 1940s black-and-white reel. Perdy sat cross-legged on the floor and barefoot. She could easily have passed for a movie star. Stephen liked how she looked in that moment. She’d fallen in to the “mummy” image after Polly was born. He remembered her scruffy clothes and a flannel constantly thrown over one shoulder. He’d lean in for a kiss and she’d smell of sick, as if it had permeated her hair somehow. That was when Polly wasn’t in her arms. “Mind the baby!” She’d say and Stephen would be sent straight up to the bedroom to loosen his tie before dinner. Now, she had her hair tied up in a loose bun at the nape of her neck. The floral tea dress she wore, with an open lapel, caused her collarbones to glint under the firelight. She spoke heartedly, her head tossed back with laughter at anecdotes of Uncle Mike’s terrible cooking. Stephen watched the beautiful tableau as an outsider, but Perdy didn’t notice. He sat in an uncomfortable chair and his fingers again turned white on the armrests.