Authors: Fiona Field
They drove on towards the village that Susie’s prospective house was in. It was, they discovered when they reached it, very chocolate-boxy; lots of thatched cottages, a proper village green and even a pub.
‘Ooh,’ said Maddy. ‘I could live here. Very pretty.’
The satnav directed them away from the green and up the hill behind the village and suddenly the chocolate-box veneer began to come off. Up this side road the houses were 1960s semis with clapboard cladding, with some of the cladding falling off and almost all of it in need of urgent repainting. The gardens were unkempt and one even had an old caravan that was green with mould and moss parked on the drive. ‘Squalid’ was a word that sprang into Maddy’s mind.
‘Want to live here now?’ said Susie quietly.
The satnav took them round another corner and back downhill.
Springhill Road
said the dirty black and white sign on the corner. Next to the sign was a dark green BT junction box on top of which sat a couple of youths, probably about thirteen years old, both swigging from cans and smoking rollies.
‘They should be in school,’ said Susie, in an appalled whisper.
‘What number?’ asked Maddy to distract her.
‘Fifteen.’
The pair peered at the numbers on the shabby front doors as Maddy drove slowly along the road.
‘There,’ said Maddy as she pulled up behind a shiny BMW.
‘At least the estate agent is here,’ said Susie.
Maddy stared at the dispiriting exterior. No wonder the estate agent’s particulars hadn’t featured a picture of the outside. ‘Looks just like a quarter,’ she joked. She saw the bleak look on Susie’s face. ‘It’ll be transformed with a coat of paint and a bit of a tidy-up in the garden.’
Susie didn’t say anything.
They got out of the car and extricated the kids from the back seat; Susie grasping Nathan firmly by the hand while Maddy settled Rose on her hip. They could hear a dog barking its head off in a nearby house. It sounded big and ferocious although Nathan insisted he wanted to ‘go see the nice doggy’. Maddy didn’t think German shepherds or Rottweilers generally came under the heading of ‘nice doggy’.
The front path had to cross over a narrow concrete bridge that spanned what looked like a drainage ditch, only it would be pushed to drain anything as it was completely overgrown with weeds and brambles. Maddy vaguely thought that if the undergrowth was cut back and the banks laid with turf it might look quite nice if planted with spring bulbs – but right now it was just one more eyesore amongst many others.
The front door opened and out bounced the estate agent, all dapper suit and beaming smile. He glanced from one woman to the other. ‘Mrs Collins?’
Susie extended her free hand. ‘Susie. And this is my friend who has kindly given me a lift – Maddy Fanshaw.’
‘And I’m Damien. OK, so the house is ready for you to view.’ He turned and led the way up the cracked concrete path. ‘The village is lovely isn’t it?’
Susie and Maddy exchanged a look before Susie said, ‘The centre is, certainly.’
‘Very sought after,’ continued Damien. ‘In the catchment area for a good comp, on a bus route and only five miles from Warminster. What more could you want?’
A house a bloody sight nicer than this one, thought Maddy, but she didn’t voice her opinion.
Damien threw open the front door and led them inside. The house was cold, despite the fact that outside it was a warm summer’s day. And it smelt weird... not disgusting weird but of cheap scented candles or air freshener or stale pot-pourri – something unidentifiable and sickly sweet and quite overpowering.
‘Poo,’ said Nathan, loudly. Maddy giggled.
They were in a big sitting-dining room with open-plan stairs heading up to the first floor. In the corner of the L-shaped room was a door to the kitchen.
‘Nice room,’ said Maddy. ‘Double aspect.’
Susie gave her a look before she walked across the tatty, stained carpet and checked out the kitchen. Damien hurried after her.
‘It does, of course, need updating,’ he said.
It
needs
,’ said Susie, firmly, ‘ripping out and burning.’
Even by the standards of the crap army kitchens that Susie and Maddy had been used to, this one was eye-wateringly awful. One of the cupboard doors had fallen off and had been replaced by a tatty piece of now-grubby fabric stretched across the opening on a length of washing line. The flooring was cracked and worn lino and the counter tops were covered with scorch marks and stains. The oven was revolting. Had it
ever
been cleaned?
In silence they traipsed upstairs to find the bathroom suite, beneath the years of accumulated limescale, was avocado green and the surrounding tiles dark brown, and the four bedrooms were done out in a variety of shades of pink, ranging from salmon to magenta, which clashed with the turquoise carpet that covered the entire first floor.
‘It makes you realise the army is wise in painting everything magnolia,’ said Susie, with a shudder.
‘But,’ said Maddy, ‘rip out the carpets, paint everything cream, redo the gloss and this place could be quite sweet.’ She looked out of the window. ‘The view is stunning.’
And it was. The back of the house looked over rolling hills and downs, dotted with sheep, an arc of clear blue sky providing the perfect backdrop to a scene of rural tranquillity. Springhill Road lay in a shallow valley that ran behind the main village and it was, despite being a pretty run-down area of ex-council and current social housing, remarkably peaceful. Or it was at this time of day.
Susie joined Maddy at the window and looked out too. ‘But you can’t live on a view,’ she said, tonelessly. ‘A view doesn’t pay the mortgage.’ She fingered the frame of the bed. ‘But,’ she sighed, ‘it could be worse. At least both the girls’ rooms are the same size so they won’t kill each other over who has which and we could probably just manage to squeeze a double bed into the fourth bedroom. It’ll do.’
It’ll do? thought Maddy. Surely, if you were escaping from army housing into your own, forever home, surely you didn’t want a house that
would do
? Or maybe it was just her. Maybe other people didn’t set such store by a house feeling right, hugging them from the get-go, making them want to put down roots...
Susie looked down at the floor. ‘And the village is pretty,’ she repeated. Swiftly she turned away and dragged a hanky out of her sleeve. Maddy looked out of the window again. Susie wouldn’t want her to see that she was crying.
Ten minutes later they were loading the children back into the car as Damien locked up behind them. Maddy breathed in the fresh air deeply as she slammed the car door shut. The lads from the corner wandered past on the pavement, as Maddy tried to get the awful smell of the house out of her nostrils. As she sucked in the clean country air she caught a whiff of another smell. Pot? She glanced at the lads and at the rollie they were sharing and then at Susie. Susie, thankfully, seemed oblivious to the situation. Maddy wondered if she ought to tell her about it. On the other hand, it was only pot. The lads weren’t mainlining heroin...
‘I’m worried I won’t get approved for a mortgage in time,’ said Susie as they drove back to the patch. ‘I know that house isn’t up to much but it’s a roof...’
‘There’ll be other houses,’ said Maddy, stoutly.
‘But we haven’t got time to wait for “other houses” – not by the time we’ve got everything in place and arranged to move and got the mortgage sorted. And anyway, we can’t afford anything better. That’s the bottom line. If you want “pretty” or “desirable” or anything like that then you have to pay for it. Mike and I can’t afford to be picky and that place has got four bedrooms. Maybe I should insist that the twins share or give up on the idea of having a spare room... but is it so wrong to want to keep just a fraction of the lifestyle we’ve got used to?’
Maddy was about to open her mouth when Susie held up her hand. ‘And don’t you
dare
say anything about cutting coats according to cloth.’
‘I wasn’t going to,’ protested Maddy.
‘Sorry. Sorry. Just a bit defensive here. You know... when you’re on the way down you assume everyone’s going to take a pop at you.’
‘Why? Why would they? No one would do that, surely?’
Susie shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m just being oversensitive.’
‘I think you are. But if they do, they’ll have me to answer to.’
Susie put her hand over Maddy’s. ‘Thank you, hon, but if you can persuade Seb to give me the job in the mess, you’ll have done more than enough.’
Maddy was unloading the children out of the car and was about to invite Susie in for a cuppa when she saw Camilla Rayner bearing down on her, a file tucked under her arm, an air of purpose about her and an inane smile on her face.
Susie leaned in and gave Maddy a quick peck on the cheek. ‘Thanks for the support. I think I’ll make myself scarce before I need to be nice to That Woman.’
Maddy grinned. ‘I don’t think that option is open to me.’
As Susie high-tailed it over the road to her own quarter, Maddy turned to Camilla. ‘Hello, Camilla,’ she called. ‘Coming to see me?’ Camilla, thought Maddy, might be a royal pain in the arse but at least she didn’t insist on everyone calling her Mrs Rayner. The previous incumbent would only unbend as far as allowing a few favourites to call her ‘Mrs N’ but the rest weren’t invited to address her as anything other than Mrs Notley. And while that had been faintly irritating and sometimes almost amusing, it came nowhere close to the amount of annoyance Camilla Rayner could generate in Maddy before she even opened her mouth.
‘Coo-ee, Maddy,’ she trilled. ‘Yes, so glad I’ve caught you. I need to have a word if you can possibly spare me a little tick or two.’
Maddy hitched Rose up on her hip and led the way to the front door, herding Nathan with her free hand.
‘Actually, if the kiddies—’
Kiddies?
thought Maddy, her teeth starting to itch. Jeez...
‘—can stand it, I’d like you to come with me to view the community centre.’
‘Now?’
Camilla smiled her saccharine smile. ‘Please.’
‘OK. I’m sure the
children
will be fine for a minute or two.’
‘Oh that’s so wonderful,’ chirruped Camilla. ‘Only I know how bored little people can get and we don’t want that happening, do we?’
Maddy had to grit her teeth to stop herself from responding inappropriately. As she trailed down the road with Nathan and Rose she began to wish she’d grabbed the pushchair but it wasn’t far and Nathan was, at the moment, behaving.
They reached the old brigadier’s residence – a throwback to the days when the army was much bigger and had far more senior officers who, in turn, needed housing that was concomitant with their status.
‘It’s a shame this lovely house isn’t still being used as a quarter,’ said Camilla.
Maddy reckoned that if it had been, Camilla would have done her level best to get it allocated to herself. Nothing if not pushy was that woman. Beneath that sweetness-and-light exterior beat a heart of absolute steel.
‘Of course,’ she continued, ‘we’ve all reaped the benefit of the cuts in one way or another.’
‘Really? I don’t think Susie would agree.’ Oops. That remark earned her a stony stare. Lucky not to be shoved on the naughty step too.
‘The cuts,’ continued Camilla with a note of frost in her voice, ‘are the reason we’re lucky to have such smashing quarters here.’
Maddy managed to keep her mouth shut this time. OK, her quarter wasn’t completely rank, but ‘smashing’ wasn’t the adjective that sprang to mind. ‘Adequate’ might cover it, at a push.
‘Yes, we all got bumped up a level here. The reality is your quarter is a major’s quarter and you shouldn’t be entitled to a fourth bedroom.’
‘Just as well Seb’s getting promoted then, isn’t it? We wouldn’t want to have perks we’re not entitled to, would we?’ Oh, God, and now she was even starting to sound a bit like Camilla. Shoot me now, thought Maddy.
‘Indeed.’
Camilla opened the box file and took out a key. The front door needed a lick of paint and dead leaves had blown into the porch.
‘Here we are,’ sang Camilla as she pushed open the door.
The quarter was almost bare though it still boasted, noted Maddy, a superior grade of carpets and curtains. One of the privileges of rank, obviously. There were still some pieces of issue furniture in the building including a telephone table in the hall. Camilla put her file down on it.
‘So,’ she said, ‘while the army has agreed in principle that we should have this house for use by the 1 Herts families, we have yet to work out exactly how we are going to keep everyone happy. And we don’t want anyone being left out, now, do we?’
Maddy shook her head. Oh no, that
would
be a disaster. She put Rose down so she could crawl about on the carpet while Nathan had stomped into the kitchen and was amusing himself by opening and closing cupboard doors. It was pretty irritating but not as irritating as Camilla Rayner.
‘Who wants to be accommodated?’ asked Maddy.
‘The thrift shop, Mothers and Toddlers, the book club, Bitch and Stitch – although I
wish
they’d call themselves something more appropriate. Really!’
‘Anyone else?’
‘The gardening club, but they’ll just need a greenhouse, if we can raise the funds, and the choir.’
‘The only group that needs a permanent space is the thrift shop. And anyway, why do they want to move from where they are now? I’d have thought that room behind the housing commandant’s office was perfect.’
‘He’s intimated he’d like it back. With the drawdown from Germany and more families moving into the garrison, he’s getting more staff. He needs the space.’
‘Fair enough. But even so, they’ll only need the one room, everyone else can take turns using the other rooms. We’d just book them in to the available space on a rota system, surely. None of those groups meets more than once a week, do they?’
‘The choir meets two nights a week to rehearse, but no, you’re right about the others.’ Maddy wandered into what had once been a dining room. ‘There’s acres of room here,’ she said, her voice echoing slightly in the empty room. ‘Plenty of room for the thrift shop. All we need is to get a lock put on the door.’