Ten Minute Tales : THE OLD COTTAGE by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

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THE OLD COTTAGE

 by 

Barbara Gaskell Denvil

I had lit the fire this morning and had done a good job for a change. Sometimes when I lit a fire, I only managed to produce smoke. Now the wood in the old shed was dry, and I’d rummaged in the back for the driest, even though old Ted complained.

“You mucks up all me nice tidy piles o’ faggots and such,” he moaned as usual.  “And tis hard enough fer me to put it nice and tidy again.”

“I’ll do it myself when the weather warms up a bit,” I apologised to him. “But you never feel the cold. I do. I need a fire. It’s like ice this morning.” I pointed at the shimmer of frost on the grass.

“Some folks,” he replied with a shake of uncut white hair, “is too delicate. If you works as hard as I done when I were your age, then you toughens up,” he assured me.

“The world has changed since you were young,” I answered back, almost dropping the pile of cut wood in my arms.

Treading warily across the thread of lawn between the shed and my cottage and trying not to slip on the crusty white frost, I had staggered indoors and lit my lovely big raging fire in the living room, and settled back on the armchair to close my eyes and dream.

The cottage was the love of my life, built nearly eight hundred years ago with ceiling beams of dark wood as crooked as the logs on my fire, and walls of stone several feet thick. A wonderful insulation of course, Light a fire in one room, and the whole house sizzled. The inglenook was impressive, and I was proud of living in such an old building with all those special reminders of how people lived in the distant past. Some things had been rebuilt and modernised of course, principally the kitchen and the bathrooms.  Well, I wasn’t going to cook on a trivet over the fire, nor take a bath in an old wooden tub filled with water I had heated in a bucket over the flames. So I had an en-suite fit for a king, or better still, a queen. I had a kitchen even more luxurious, but apart from an odd corner and the lock on the front door, virtually everything else was original. The creaking floorboards, for instance, the rickety little staircase to the second floor, and the thatched roof which I’m sorry to admit was looking like it needed a few plugs.

My smug contentment was interrupted as my mother walked in. But for a change, she wasn’t scolding me. “Come on, lazy bones,” she said, but she wasn’t cross and wore a beaming smile. “I was up in the attic and thought what a good study it would make. You’d love a new bright study, wouldn’t you dear? Of course, it would take a lot of work and cleaning up – but just think – a study, all yours, and you’d never be interrupted again.”

“There’s no place in this house where I won’t be interrupted,” I smiled back. “But it’s a lovely idea. Thanks, Mummsy darling.   But honestly, I don’t mind being interrupted. There’s so many of us living here, but that’s the way I like it. My present study suits me fine, even if everyone does wander in and out. Better than all those stairs up to the attic. But I wonder if I ought to repaint the study I use already?”

She nodded and trotted back upstairs. I was left in peace to close my eyes again and imagine the glorious past of this cottage where I lived, thinking of the centuries of folk who had inhabited this beautiful country home. I had been born here of course, and my mother still often talked to me as though I was her adored little baby. But I didn’t mind, naturally, I was just delighted to have her still at my side.

When I went out to the local village, it almost seemed empty in comparison to my cosy home. Even when I was in bed, it was not unknown for someone to pop in and ask if I was warm enough or whether I wanted a cup of hot milk.

When I finally decided to repaint my existing study after all, I certainly had to face a barrage of complaints and differing opinions. The old plaster had worn thin and become a little grubby over the long years. I thought it needed an inspiring spruce-up.

I asked my mother. “I like the idea of a musty sort of saffron colour,” I told her. “Maybe mustard.”

She stared back at me, mouth open, eyes wide. “What a horrible thought,” she said in astonishment. “That just sounds dirty. If you want yellow then have a proper yellow, dear. Buttercup. Daffodil. Or softer, like the baby dress I knitted for you when you were just one month old.”

“And I’m supposed to remember that?” I laughed. “I’m sure it was gorgeous, Mum, but now  I want something more sophisticated. Not just sickly sweet and pretty.”

“People who don’t like pretty,” sniffed my mother, “are simply odd. Go and ask Julia.”

Julia had always claimed good taste, although her ideas were a bit out of fashion these days. I brought up the subject with tact. “Julia dear, you are the genius of the family. I just wanted your superior advice on what colour to paint this room. It needs redecorating.”

She looked down her nose at me, tossed back her hair, and stared around. “Green,” she said at last. “A pale green, but not too leafy. No washed-out oak trees or weeping willows. A pale musty colour a little like my old shawl.”

“I’ve never seen your old shawl,” I reminded her. “What about mustard?”

“Mustard,” she told me, “is a vile colour suitable only for decaying fruit. No, certainly not. Green is the right choice, but more parsley than rosemary.”

I gave up and stomped upstairs. There I found Graham and called to him as he headed for the attic steps. “Graham dear,” I interrupted, and he whizzed around with a big smile.

“Ah, my little Sara,” he said, looking across at me. “How can I help? I’m afraid I’m not much use to anyone since the war. I dare say you’ll remember I was injured. Quite badly, too.”

How could I forget?

“No, no, nothing heavy,” I assured him. “But I’m wondering what colour I should repaint the study walls. Now, don’t worry, I don’t want any help with the actual painting. I’m quite capable of that. I just wanted to choose the best colour.”

Regarding me with faint disbelief, he shook his head. “Reckon I don’t even know the fancy words for colour they use these days. Now me, I just like pink. Like roses. Makes me feel happy.”

I thought that was the worst suggestion yet, so I thanked him and hurried back downstairs. Actually, I was a bit cross with myself since I didn’t need anyone else’s permission to paint whatever colour I wanted, but not only did it seem polite to ask the others who lived here, but I really liked to know what they thought. They just might have better ideas than me.

So I was looking for Milly when I actually bumped into her. “Ah, Milly,” I called,: I had to call loudly since she was a little deaf, but now she turned around and smiled when she saw it was just me. “You know I spend almost all day every day in my study,” I said, still half shouting. “Well, I think it's rather dingy and so I want to paint the walls a nice new colour. So what colour would you suggest?”

She smiled and chewed one finger nail. “Umm,” she said slowly “A nice bright white is always best, my dear.”

I hoped she couldn’t hear my sigh. “It’s already white, Milly dear. I want something more – vivid.”

Having thought another long five minutes, she managed a wide smile. “I know,” she decided. “Wallpaper.”

I wasn’t going to do that since the medieval walls were all crooked and bent and the corners were like stubby little bent tree trunks. So I just thanked her and went on to  find Bob. He didn’t like to be called Robert. Very fussy. Well, I was being fussy about the wall colour so I called up the stairs. “Bob, are you there.?” I asked.

A reluctant groan echoed back down. “I’m here as usual,” he said, and stomped downstairs.

Talking about stomping, I could hear Merriweather outside and goodness, his footsteps were heavy. I had asked him to be quiet a few times but he never took any notice. So anyway, I turned to Bob and explained the situation.

He regarded me as if I was mad. “Do you wish to draw on your walls?” he asked with distinct contempt. “No, I should hope not. So why do you wish to paint on them?”

This was getting more complicated than it was worth. “Never mind,” I sighed. “It’s not important.

But there was only one other person to ask, apart from Ted who lived outside and only knew the old names for the flowers, and of course old Merriweather, who would just hiss at me.

So I asked the last one in the family, and I found her sitting in the summerhouse, reclining like a goddess on the day bed, enjoying the faint sunshine oozing through the glass ceiling.

This was Lizzie, and I chuckled at her. “I might have known you’d be out here,” I grinned.  “I’ve lit the fire indoors today, it’s so cold. And here’s you enjoying the sunshine. Well, that little haze might truly come from the sun I suppose, but it’s freezing.”

“You’re just a baby, my dear,” Lizzie told me. “One tiny shiver of breeze and you complain that it’s ice.”

But I hadn’t come to talk about the weather, so I got to the point. “Lizzie, dear, If I paint the study walls a new colour, what do you think it should be?”

She thought a moment, looking vague, then asked, “What colour is it now, dear?”

I always knew she was scatty, so I just said, “Well, it used to be your study, Lizzie dear, so don’t you remember it is just white plaster. But it’s got grubby over the years, so I thought I’d brighten it up.”

“Ah yes,” she sat up, trying to gather her wits. “Yes indeed, I used to sit in there to do the family’s accounts. No more, thank goodness. It’s your study now, my dear, so you choose.”

“Well,” I admitted, “I thought perhaps mustard.”

She seemed a little confused. “It’s quite a large room, dear,” she mumbled. “I doubt if there’s enough mustard in the kitchen.”

Sighing again, I stayed to explain even though I knew I shouldn’t have bothered. “Not the real thing, Lizzie dear. Just paint of the same colour.”

But she shook her head. “It doesn’t smell good dear,” she decided. “Mustard is alright on baked ham, but not on walls. Why not use a nice calm blue paint? Blue skies, blue water, big blue eyes. Blue is such a beautiful colour.”

“Sky blue?” I queried, quite liking the idea.

“But of course you can’t copy the sky,” she objected. “On cloudy days the sky is all grey and gloomy. Then at sunset it goes yellow and red, quite strange, isn’t it? Then naturally at night it goes black. Well, perhaps not true black, depending on the moon and such like. More of a very dark blue. I quite like that, but it wouldn’t be right for a study. And besides, how could you paint the moon and all those stars?”

I gave up and thanked her before wandering back to the house across the frosty crackled of the white tipped grass. I was careful not to bump into Merriweather. There wouldn’t be a lot of point asking him about colours.

I could hear Lizzie calling after me. “How about yellow, dear? Not mustard itself, but the same sort of colour. Like sedge?  That might be quite smart.”

I looked back over my shoulder and waved at her. I decided that I couldn’t be bothered painting the study after all. I’d keep the dirty white.

Besides, none of these people’s opinions mattered. They’d all been dead for years. There was mother, and Aunty Lizzie. Lizzie had only died ten years ago, but my dear mother passed away twenty-five years gone. As for great, great, great Uncle Graham, he died during the Boer War and that was certainly more than a hundred years past. Milly died during the puritan age when Cromwell ruled, and she had been burned as a heretic, poor dear. As for Julia, well she was a grand lady who escaped to England as the French Revolution started. Ted the gardener was alive in Elizabethan times and had some wonderful stories to tell, and Bob was a priest in the late medieval, while sometimes my oldest ghost of all came to visit, not that he was ever particularly welcome.

Most of my ghosts were either in the family, or they were so familiar, they now seemed just as close as family and I loved them all. But all Merriweather did when he came to visit, was hiss at me and show all his teeth.  I’d given him that name myself as a slightly ironic choice. After all, he was just a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and it was quite difficult for me to think of him as part of the family, even if he had also lived on this same land a few hundred million years ago.

© Barbara Gaskell Denvil

website: https://barbaragaskelldenvil.com/

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