What She Wants

‘It’s all right, darling,’ Hope said now, hoisting Toby onto her hip and carrying him to the gate. ‘They’re friendly.’

As if to disprove this point, one of the cows lurched towards the gate in investigative mode.

Millie squealed with delight and Toby hid his face in Hope’s shoulder, shuddering with fear.

‘Mummy, will we have cows?’ demanded Millie excitedly.

Hope had absolutely no idea. If cows were included in the property, Matt hadn’t mentioned them. His memory of Uncle Gearóid’s had included a quaint cottage covered with old fashioned roses and an expanse of wild looking garden out the front. He’d been a bit woolly on the other details although the lawyer’s letter had mentioned four bedrooms, a kitchen with a genuine iron range and a bathroom with an antique claw foot bath. It all sounded lovely, but then, so did novels about the Middle Ages where nobody mentioned the pain of not having dentists and how women routinely died in agonizing childbirth. Hope thought about her lovely, only-just-paid-for modern freezer and the shower in their house in Bath where you’d swear you were being stabbed with millions of exquisite tiny needles when you turned it on at full blast. She didn’t hold out much hope for a quaint cottage having such a marvellous plumbing innovation. But then, who knew? Uncle Gearóid could have been a modern sort of man with a passion for Bang and Olufsen stereos, giant kitchen equipment with icemakers, and a jacuzzi. The unknown was exciting, Matt had said before he left.

However, on the phone since then, he’d sounded a bit dreamy and short on facts about things like plumbing and installing two phone lines for the e-mail so he could correspond with the office. Men liked the unknown, women didn’t, Hope decided.

‘It’s so unspoiled,’ he’d said the night before over a crackly phone line. ‘You’re going to love it.’

Mind you, he’d thought she was going to love the black lace thong underwear he’d purchased for her birthday on a trip to Bristol. Sam had insisted that if you wore thongs for two weeks, you never went back to normal knickers again. Hope had given up after two days.

Still, they had the house in Bath. If the rural writing retreat proved too rural, she could always up sticks and bring the children home. So, they had rented it out for a year but Hope was sure she’d find a way round that. That’s what lawyers were for.

‘Come on,’ she said now in bright Mummy-speak. ‘Back to the car, we’ve got a bit longer to go and then you can explore our new home!’

The children clambered back into the car and Hope strapped them in, thankful they’d fallen for her faux enthusiasm. Back on the road, she admired the scenery and tried to pretend that it didn’t look very bleak. Beautiful, certainly, with those majestic purple mountains looming in the horizon and a faint mist covering them like icing sugar rained down by some heavenly cook. Everywhere was astonishingly green in the rain but a tad desolate. Not really like the idyllic, sun-drenched place she’d seen in the Discover Ireland travel book.

So far, Hope couldn’t imagine the sun ever shining in this remote part of the world. She liked visiting romantically desolate spots for cosy weekends, enjoying going for a walk in the woods as long as there was a glorious hotel complete with log fire in the bar when they got back so they could roast their wet socks, giggle over a couple of hot ports and plan what to wear for dinner.

Real life desolation all the time was a different proposition. The scenery around her looked so…well, untamed. The countryside around Bath was green too, but it seemed more laid out and more normal. Here, the fields were all sizes with stone walls and briar hedges going off in all directions. The drivers were all mad too: she’d nearly been forced off the road by some little old man in a van who could barely see over the dashboard and at least six flashy new cars had overtaken her in exasperation on dangerous bits of road, obviously furious to be behind a hire car going at a respectable forty miles an hour.

At a tiny crossroads with no signpost at all, she consulted her map again. If it was to be believed, she had to take the right turn, follow the road for a few miles and then she’d come to a town. She drove carefully until she came to the first signs of habitation.

‘Quaint, untouched,’ had been Matt’s verdict on Redlion, the small town where their house was situated.

‘Really quaint,’ Hope thought grimly as she drove into it a few minutes later.

She had to turn off before she got to the main street, therefore not seeing all of the place, but on first viewing with the rain pelting down in a sheet, Matt’s quaint town was anything but. What she could see consisted of a winding line of terraced houses, one battered pub, a tiny post office, a convenience shop with security bars that looked capable of stopping a tank, and a caravan park with its signpost hanging drunkenly from one corner. Thinking she must be in the wrong place, because this could hardly be the pretty place Matt had described, she came to a hump backed bridge. An elderly green water pump over the bridge signalled that she was, indeed, in Redlion. Matt had mentioned both the bridge and the pump and according to him, she had to take the next left which was a winding road that led away from the town to her new home. It was official, she decided: she was now in The Back Of Beyond.

With an increasing sense of doom, Hope drove down a narrow lane with a grass spine in the middle and big puddles of mud either side. She felt the same way she’d felt when she and Sam had gone to big school for the first time: a little bit excited at the thought of being a big girl, a bit more excited about her school uniform with the dark blue jumper, and absolutely terrified at the thought of all those other girls with their normal families who’d think that she and Sam were weird having no parents and only a mad old aunt to pick them up from school.

She rounded a corner, past a giant monkey puzzle tree that bent out over the lane, and then she saw it. Her new home.

If the outskirts of Redlion had been given a grievous battering with the ugly stick, Curlew Cottage had escaped. Gloriously pretty, it sat snugly in a wilderness of hedges and beech trees and looked as if it been drawn by an illustrator who was trying to imagine a home for the Seven Dwarves. From the small windows with their latticed shutters to the fat wooden door with black iron fittings, it was adorable. The pretty climbing rose that Matt had waxed lyrical about had been cut back and, as it was November, there would have been no flowers clustering round the door anyway, but that was the only negative thing she could see. It was a bit run down but what would you expect from an elderly man living here on his own for years?

Hope sighed with relief. At that exact moment, an unseen cockerel loudly proclaimed that this was his territory and that they better back off. Toby shrieked with fear and Millie shrieked with delight.

‘Let me out Mummy,’ she roared, desperate to explore.

The cockerel crowed again.

An attack hen, Hope decided, feeling her sense of humour return.

The rain had stopped, so she let the kids out, warning them to stay close. Toby didn’t need any telling and clung to her trouser legs. Millie, on the other hand, raced off after the cockerel.

‘Come back!’ yelled Hope nervously with her city-mother mentality. ‘Right now!’

Millie wavered long enough for her mother to grab her anorak hood. With Millie reined in and wriggling crossly and Toby sucking his thumb nervously, they made their way to the front door.

‘Where’s Daddy?’ Millie said with interest.

Good question, Hope thought. She’d hoped he’d be waiting for them, ready to run out, throw his arms around his family and say he’d missed them desperately for the past ten days. She’d been watching too much TV, she reckoned. Husbands only ran out in thrilled delight on made-for-TV movies or romantic dramas. They never did it in real life except when they were famished and you’d just been at the shops buying food.

She knocked at the front door. No reply. After a moment, she turned the handle and the door creaked open a fraction. Should they go in or not? She dithered until an ominous rumble in the sky signalled an end to the brief interlude of dry weather.

Rain started pelting down again like a tropical storm. ‘Gosh, isn’t this exciting,’ Hope said gaily to the children as she pushed the door fully open.

Inside, the adorable cottage scenario went awry. The first thing to hit Hope was the cold. Still warm from the steamed-up atmosphere of the car, the cool November air had barely registered with her at first. Now, standing inside the cottage she was struck by an arctic sensation. Stone floors, stone walls and no visible source of heat made for a combination of bone-chilling damp and cold. In fact, everything in the cottage looked damp and cold. Instead of the hand-crafted wooden furniture, lovingly made frilled curtains and air of sparkling cleanliness she’d prayed for, she was faced with a big bare room with no curtains at all. The only furniture was a coffee table and two elderly tweedy armchairs with disturbing dark, oily patches on the cushions.

Hope held the children’s hands more tightly as she gazed around her in horror. This wasn’t fit to live in: it hadn’t been painted for years and was completely filthy. The cobwebs that festooned the ceiling were the least of her worries. Matt had made the entire family emigrate and their new home wasn’t a cosy cottage but a dishevelled shed. She wanted to cry. Her thoughts were broken by the sound of a car engine and a slamming door.

‘Millie, Toby! Sorry I’m late, love. Just got caught up with the gang!’ Matt rushed into the room, hair plastered down on his forehead, wearing an unfamiliar sludge brown jacket, mud splattered corduroys, Wellington boots and a welcoming expression.

He gave Hope a brief warm kiss and then picked a child up in each arm, hugging them to him.

‘Did you miss Daddy?’ he demanded.

‘Yes,’ said Millie huskily, burying her little head lovingly in his shoulder. ‘Lots and lots and this big.’ She demonstrated how much she’d missed him by holding her arms wide.

Hope didn’t want to break up this cosy family thing. She felt like the bitch from Hell about to remind Snow White that it might not be a good idea to shack up with seven small men who were looking for a cheap housekeeper, but it had to be done. Besides which, Matt hadn’t thrown his arms around her.

‘Matt,’ she said in her everything-in-the-garden-is-rosy voice so as not to alarm the children, ‘we need to talk about the cottage.’

‘Isn’t it lovely,’ he said. ‘So naïf.’

‘What?’ she said, rosy garden voice disappearing to be replaced by sour-milk voice.

‘You know, unspoiled,’ he said artlessly.

‘How about unclean, unpainted and utterly unsuitable for two small children,’ she snapped back at him, tiredness and a general feeling of being unloved making her cross. ‘Not to mention freezing. We’ll all get hypothermia if we live here. This is a dump. I don’t suppose you were roughing it here?’

‘Well, no, I was at Finula’s and I know we have a lot to do here and I’m sorry I haven’t really got started but I thought we could manage for a few days with those portable stoves and then get some work done on Monday…’

‘Matt, you mean you haven’t told Hope the place wasn’t ready yet?’ said a low, throaty female voice. ‘How bold of you. Slap, slap.’

They both turned to face the newcomer. Tall, rotund and exuding rural friendliness, she was forty-something and wore a selection of flapping garments that all appeared to be patterned by the hand of Laura Ashley. Hope identified pyjama-style trousers, a voluminous shirt and a rakishly-angled hat, all flowery and pink. A big tartan shawl completed the outfit.

‘Hope, meet Finula Headley-Ryan, the leading light of the artistic community in Redlion and the lady who’s been so kind about getting me into the writers’ centre at short notice.’

‘Tsk, tsk,’ said Finula, clearly delighted with this description but pretending she wasn’t. ‘I’m only an old dauber, hardly an artist at all.’

She sailed over to Hope and held out a freckled hand, weighed down with elaborate old gold rings. The glamorous effect was slightly ruined by chipped scarlet nail varnish that revealed yellowing nails underneath.

‘I’m sure you’re not so pleased to meet anyone when this house is like the wreck of the Hesperus,’ she said in that low, thrilling voice. ‘Matt, you are a melt for not telling the poor girl that the place isn’t habitable. Think of the shock she got when she thought this was her new home in all its freezing glory. What are you like?’