The House on Cold Hill

26

Ten minutes later, Ollie helped Caro, still in her office clothes, to lug sheets, duvets, pillows and towels up the two flights of stairs to the tiny spare room in the attic. They were going to sleep here for the next couple of nights until their bedroom was habitable again.

‘Well, it’s going to be cosy, my love!’ Caro said as they went in.

‘That’s for sure!’

Right under the eaves, the room had a sloping roof and a small window looking out on to the rear garden. The ancient wrought-iron double bed took up almost all of the space. It fitted snugly against the right-hand wall, leaving just enough room to open the door and enter. There was a gap of about three feet between the left of the bed and the built-in cupboards that ran the full length of the left wall.

‘It reminds me of the bed in that little French hotel we stayed in once on our way down to the south — remember?’ she said, staring dubiously at the horribly stained old mattress, before dumping her armful of bedding on it.

‘Near Limoges, wasn’t it? Which creaked liked crazy when we made love in it!’

She laughed. ‘God, yes, and it rocked so much — we thought it was going to collapse!’

‘And that tight little French woman who ran it and charged us extra for having a bath!’ he said.

‘And I went out into the corridor in the night to have a pee and walked into someone’s bedroom!’ She shook her head, grinning at the memory. ‘God, this mattress needs airing. I’ll bring a fan heater up here and leave it on for a couple of hours.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Let’s turn it over and see if it’s any better on the other side.’

Ollie dumped the bedding on the floor. Then they lifted the mattress; the ceiling was so low they bashed the bare light bulb, hanging from an ancient cord, in the process.

There was a large brown stain in the centre on the reverse side. ‘Yech!’ Caro said.

They turned it back again. ‘It’ll be fine when we’ve got a clean undersheet and bedding on it, darling,’ Ollie said.

‘I hope no one died in this.’

Nope, the last owners died before they even got a chance to sleep here, he nearly answered. But instead he said, ‘It was probably some servant who was put up here.’

‘The mystery is, how on earth did they ever get a bed this size in this room?’ she said.

‘I would imagine in bits and they assembled it up here. Unless they built the house around it!’

Later, with the clean bedclothes on it, and the pillows freshly plumped, it was looking more inviting. Ollie slipped his arms round Caro’s waist. ‘Want to try it out?’

‘I need to get Jade her supper. What do you fancy tonight?’

He kissed her neck. ‘You.’

She turned to face him. ‘That was the right answer!’

As they went back downstairs, Caro said, ‘It’s such a beautiful evening, let’s take a walk down to the lake and see the ducks. I was talking to one of the partners who lives out in the country and has ducks on his lake. He said the way to encourage them to stay is to feed them — at least once every day. He keeps an old metal milk churn at the edge with duck food pellets that float. He’s given me the name of the stuff to get and a place you can order from online. He said if we throw them a few scoops of food every day we’ll soon have a large colony in residence.’

‘Milk churn?’

‘It stops rats getting the food. You can find them on the internet, apparently.’

‘Great, I’ll have a look tomorrow.’

‘I’ll go and put some jeans on.’

Whilst she did so, Ollie unplugged his clock radio alarm, took it up to the attic room, and reset it.

Ten minutes later, holding hands and wearing wellies, Ollie and Caro walked up to the edge of the lake. A solitary coot paddled coyly away from them, its head nodding like a clockwork toy, towards the little island in the middle. A pair of mallards eyed them warily and also moved away, to the far side of the lake.

They walked around, behind tall reeds, then stopped and stared over the wooden rail and post fence at the overgrown paddock, and at the hill rising steeply beyond.

‘This would be ideal for Jade’s pony,’ Caro said. ‘But if we got one, we’d need to put up a stable.’

‘She seems more into dogs at the moment — a labradoodle,’ Ollie said. ‘She’s not mentioned a pony since we came here.’

‘She asked me to book her a lesson for this Saturday. There’s a good riding school, apparently, at Clayton — I’m going to see if they can fit her in. I hope she takes to it again — she’s not ridden in a while.’ She shrugged. ‘I was madly into ponies — until I started dating, then I lost all interest. Do you think that’s what’s happened with her?’

‘I don’t think her seeing Ruari is exactly dating,’ Ollie said. ‘Going for milkshakes in the afternoon is more a kind of play dating.’

‘I hope so. I don’t want her to lose her innocence too soon. She’s a happy soul.’

‘And boyfriends make you unhappy?’ he said with a quizzical smile.

‘God, I remember teenage angst over boys.’

Ollie nodded. ‘Yep, same over girls.’

Above them a flock of migrating swallows were heading south, passing high over the roof of the house. Heading to the sun. How nice that would be right now, Ollie thought, envying them the simplicity of their lives.

Caro stared at the house. ‘Strange just how different the front and rear look.’

He nodded. Compared to the handsome front, with its finely proportioned windows, the back of the house really was a mishmash. It seemed even more so than when he had last looked at it: partly red brick and partly grey rendering, with windows of different sizes seemingly placed here and there at random, and with an ugly single-storey garage block and assortment of dilapidated outbuildings, some brick, some breeze block and some wooden.

Caro pointed with her finger. ‘I still haven’t got the hang of the geography. Over to the left, those two windows are the scullery and that’s the scullery door. Then the two kitchen windows and the door into the atrium, and the dining room windows to the right.’

‘Yes.’

‘Going left to right on the first floor is Jade’s bedroom. Then the two back spare bedrooms, then our room at the right?’

Ollie nodded.

Then she pointed up at the row of dormers. ‘That one — that’s where we’re sleeping tonight, right?’

Ollie did a calculation. ‘It is.’

‘Then the three to the left?’

‘They’re the other side of the loft space. You get to them via the staircase next to Jade’s room. I think they’re all part of the old servants’ quarters. I’ll check.’

‘Incredible to be living in a house where we can’t even remember all the rooms!’

He grinned. ‘Just think how beautiful this place is going to look in a few years’ time when we’ve finished all the restoration!’

She smiled, then said a hesitant, ‘Yes.’

‘You sound dubious?’

She shrugged. ‘No — it’s just — it — it’s all still so daunting. I hope we haven’t taken on too much.’

‘We haven’t! In a couple of years we’ll be laughing that we even worried about it.’

‘I hope you’re right, darling.’

‘I’m right, trust me.’

She gave him a strange look and grimaced.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Tell me?’

‘Nothing. You’re right. And we don’t have much option, do we?’

‘We could move.’

‘With our mortgage? The vendors had dropped the price three times because no one was mad enough to take it on. I don’t think we’d find a buyer very easily at all. Not until we have improved it one hell of a lot. So we don’t have an option. We’re here and we’ve just got to get on with it.’ Again she gave him a strange look and shrugged.

‘Don’t you love it, though, darling?’

‘Ask me in five years’ time,’ she replied.