The kitchen, formerly a cool expanse of stone flags, whitewash, and timber, now contained enough pewter tankards to supply an Elizabethan tavern. An antique knife-grinder stood on a table between an utterly purposeless can punctured with holes in a heart shape and a miniature dried tree in a pot. Barely a square inch of wall went un-festooned with chopping boards, clocks, and absurdly small pictures of absurdly large pigs, while in the center of the room, a carved and stenciled butcher's block stood stuffed with wicker baskets, its surface a riot of gingham and empty wine bottles.
Clay pots and bowls lay scattered about everywhere, resembling an astonishingly well-preserved archaeological haul. Hanging from the ceiling were copper pans, dangling so low that Guy, who was well over six feet, smashed his head four times making the return journey from the fridge to the kettle.
His head aching with the intensity of the decorations, Guy wandered, mug of tea in hand, into the sitting room. The traditional restraint of the decoration—plaster cornices and a carved fireplace— had now given way to what looked like an explosion in a toile de Jouy factory. No chair, no surface seemed to have escaped being smothered in what Guy, who had come to hate it, thought of as that bloody awful printed stuff. Even the fender sported the same, hideously familiar groups of lounging swains and shepherdesses.
The room was otherwise dominated by a scattering of chaises longues, small footstools, and occasional tables, so named, Guy supposed, because he occasionally fell over them. Each supported an array of silver baskets, blue and white china vases, and countless painted bowls, filled with nuts, chocolates, or small marble balls of puzzling uselessness.
Amid the Drambuie, Amaretto, and Cointreau on the mockGeorgian drinks cart, two decanters sported silver labels engraved with "His Lordship's Tipple" and "Her Ladyship's Tipple" respectively. While Guy hated the labels with a passion, Samantha loved them. A frequent topic of dinner conversation was whether (Samantha) or not (Guy) they should buy a title. Since the visit of the Lady Avon, however, the subject had thankfully been dropped.
Surrounded by this riot of decoration, Guy found himself longing for somewhere old, dark, and deeply traditional. Somewhere that served beer as well preferably. He could take advantage of Samantha's absence to nip round the corner to the Barley Mow. Recently, on the pretext of taking healthy walks around the village, Guy had spent an increasing amount of time admiring Alan's beautifully kept Hairy Helmet. Samantha, however, had begun to suspect something.
"You're not drinking anymore?" she had demanded.
"No. I'm not drinking anymore," Guy had replied, crossing his fingers behind his back. Just the same amount as before, he thought.
But far more worrying than her policing his alcohol consumption was Samantha's plan to fit out The Bottoms' vaulted cellar with gym equipment. "I'm putting an exercise bike in," she informed him briskly. "And some machines for your weight training."
Guy was appalled. His weight, he decided, did not need training. It was perfectly well behaved as it was. In any case, had Samantha but known it—and he sincerely hoped she didn't—"going to the gym" was the euphemism he had used when going to see Lalla. And although his mistress's St. John's Wood apartment had borne little resemblance to an exercise studio, visits there certainly had been a workout of sorts.
Sighing wistfully at the memory, Guy shrugged on his overcoat, picked up his mobile, and closed the door behind him. He walked slowly down the drive thinking longingly of Lalla. Another reason why moving miles away to the bloody countryside was a pain in the bloody arse. It wasn't as if Samantha was bad in bed—on the contrary, she was more imaginative than most—even if she had recently taken to wearing frumpy embroidered nightdresses to "blend in more" with the "period atmosphere" of The Bottoms. Although what period it now was, Guy couldn't imagine. The sort that gave Samantha headaches and made her less interested in sex than usual, he supposed. That had never been a problem with Lalla. Nothing was a problem with Lalla—she could even fire ping-pong balls out of her front bottom, something she had apparently picked up while backpacking in the Far East when a student. A student of what, Guy had never asked.
It was, he knew, imperative not to get overexcited, difficult though that was while dwelling on the memory of a Nordic nymph in her early twenties with breasts like globes and a body as brown and smooth as a new chestnut. Guy sighed heavily as he crunched toward the bottom of the drive. Off the top of what seemed to remain of his head, he had no idea what her number was and it was unlikely Lalla would be in directory inquiries.
An idea suddenly struck him with the force of a thunderbolt.
Lalla's number was programmed into his mobile
. He could arrange a reunion. Now that he was getting better all the time, and Hufflestein had actually offered him that nonexecutive directorship of the bank he'd been talking about, there were bound to be a few meetings coming up. Slipping into London should be simple enough. Slipping into Lalla, even simpler.
Before he could start flicking through his mobile's address book, however, its green face lit up and it shrilled into life.
To his amazement, it was Marina, his first wife.
"Hello, darling." Though they were divorced, the relationship between Guy and his ex-wife had, despite Samantha's many attempts to sabotage it, stayed amicable. Only just though—Marina had not been impressed at Samantha's efforts to whisk the father of her child to the middle of nowhere without leaving a forwarding address.
At her friendliest, however, Marina rarely called for small talk. She hadn't now. Guy listened to his daughter's latest antics with increasing concern.
"Iseult's done what? She
hasn't!
" he exclaimed after a few tense minutes. "Expelled for
what
? What in God's name is
car surfing
? You stand on the roof and someone else drives it around? Whose? The high mistress's Mercedes?"
He listened again. "Let her come up here? Darling, of course she can't come up here. Why not?…You know why not," he said through gritted teeth. Marina could be so dense sometimes. Or just plain provocative. "Yes, I know it would be good for her to be somewhere quiet for a while, but, believe me, it wouldn't be quiet if Samantha found out about it…well, if you think that's spineless, I'm sorry. Of course I want to see her too. Perhaps next time I come to London…"
***
Trying to find a utensil in another person's kitchen is notoriously
difficult—do you know where your neighbor keeps their lemon squeezer?!
Trying to find it in your own, however, should not be beyond the wit of
man. Since moving to the cottage, Significant Other has been distribut
ing household essentials in the most illogical places! Teaspoons reside in a
jug on the shelf, the coffee in a jar marked "Chutney," and the garlic in
a striped yellow and white sugar bowl hidden behind some jars of lentils.
Mark sighed. Hopefully this was more the domestic local color the editor wanted. He no longer felt certain, the first attempt at this week's column having been rejected in the most uncompromising terms. Detailing the Significant Other's hilarious adventures as she overhauled the garden, had, Mark thought, read rather amusingly. Unfortunately, the editor had failed to make the connection between the piece's main subject, Mrs. Womersley's tip to Rosie to dab eucalyptus oil on used tea bags to keep cats off the flowerbeds, and its title, "Border Control."
"This isn't bloody Northern Ireland," the editorial email had blazed. "You're writing a funny column about the country, remember?"
Mark stared at his screen and sighed.
"Characters," the email had demanded. "Color, action, characters." But just where, Mark thought, am I supposed to get characters in Eight Mile Bottom? Let alone color and action? The only character he had seen all day was old Mr. Womersley fetching in the morning coal in his underpants, and Mark doubted they were the kind of color, let alone the kind of action, readers of an upmarket Sunday broadsheet would relish with their toasted ciabatta and freerange eggs.
Just then, a slight tremor shook the walls of the kitchen. Mark paused, ears cocked, temper rising. Rosie, back from the garden center already? Bang. There it was again. A sort of crash, like someone throwing a hand grenade at the front of the cottage.
Dammit
. How was he supposed to work in these conditions? The editor was right. It wasn't Northern Ireland. But it sure as hell sounded like it. Throwing his chair back with a strangled yelp, Mark rushed out of the kitchen to the sitting-room window.
He stared out in disbelief. There, a mere foot or so away on the other side of the pane, an enormous and unkempt black and white dog was relieving itself enthusiastically all over the pansies Rosie had only just bought, potted, and put outside to brighten up the front.
"Oy!" yelled Mark, flinging open the front stable door and cursing as its top half swung back and crushed his knuckles. "Get off my fucking plants!" As the dog, which seemed rather aged, scampered away with difficulty, Mark realized that he was not alone in the street. Standing outside the cottage immediately above and regarding him with an unblinking stare were two small, skinny, tracksuit-bottomed boys with wing-nut ears and closely shaved hair. Surmising that the large black football rolling languidly from one to the other was the source of the noise he had heard, Mark looked at them with dislike. His suspicions that they had been kicking it hard against the front of the house were corroborated by the fact that those of Rosie's pansies to escape a canine golden shower were looking distinctly bent.
"Are you our new neighbor?" one of them demanded.
Mark looked at them steadily. "Well, if you live there," he said, denoting the cottage above with the jerk of a thumb, "I suppose I am."
A whippetlike man and a cross-looking woman appeared in the doorway of the cottage in question. The man wore leggings and a tie-dye jerkin. Lank, knotted ropes of thin hair dangled down his back. He looked medieval, Mark thought. Like King sodding Arthur. The woman, too, had something of the fourteenth-century gargoyle about her.
"This is my mum and dad," announced the first boy, confirming Mark's worst fears.
"Wesley Muzzle. How ya doing, man?" muttered King Arthur, extending a tattooed arm dangling with various filthy cotton bracelets. Reluctantly, Mark left the sanctuary of his door to shake his hand.
A woman in red dungarees, staggering under the weight of an enormous baby, was mooching down the lane to join them. As she approached, the wealth of ironmongery along her lip became apparent. Behind her came a further scattering of screaming children and a man with wild eyes, baggy cotton violet-striped trousers, a hairy black and red Dennis the Menace sweater and, to crown it all, a blue and yellow velvet jester's hat, sprouting with bell-strung pointed ends. Noting that the woman's untidy blond hair was shot through with neon pink and, underneath the hat, the man's sported a wealth of orange, green, and yellow string, Mark felt his hands go clammy. As local color went, this was even less desirable than Mr. Womersley's underpants.
"Welcome to the liveliest street in Eight Mile Bottom," said Dennis the Menace, grinning, rolling his eyes, and shaking his head so the bells rattled. Like Santa's bloody sleigh, thought Mark, staring with violent loathing at the hat. Just what was it about the mere sight of those hats that made one want to throttle the wearer?
"Liveliest street?" Mark repeated, forcing his lips across his teeth in as much of a smile as he could manage. "Well, I must say it's been as silent as a tomb the whole time we've been here."
"That's because we haven't been around." Dungarees laughed as the children continued to scream and chase one another up and down the lane. "We've been away. Just got back, in fact."
She gestured toward the bottom of the lane, where what looked like the contents of a scrapyard were heaped up along the church wall. Filthy, battered, and with headlights and windows missing, all that was new about these vehicles was the fact that they had just arrived. Despite the "Go Green" and "Save the Planet" stickers plastered liberally over the windshields, they looked as if, collectively, they could destroy the ozone layer in nanoseconds.
Mark's chest felt tight. A movement in his own upstairs window caught his eye. That the children had disappeared he had vaguely registered; what he had failed to notice was that they had disappeared through the door of his cottage.
"Would you mind," Mark asked Dungarees, "removing your children from my house, please?"
The blonde looked him up and down. "Blathnat, Satchel, Indigo, and Tallulah," she yelled. "Get out of there."
"Blathnat?" echoed Mark as the children dragged themselves insolently past him out the door.
"It means 'Irish queen,'" Dennis informed him, bells jangling triumphantly.
Mark smiled tightly as he went back inside. He slammed the cottage door violently shut.
***
Returning ten minutes later, loaded up with plants and compost, Rosie immediately knew that something was wrong. About twenty screaming children and what looked like a couple of clowns revving up the engine of a filthy Ford Transit parked next to the church wall were clues. As, when she entered the cottage, was the sight of Mark bent over his laptop with half a roll of cotton wool in his ears. "The neighbors are back, then?" Rosie asked with an insouciance she did not feel.