Kate's Progress (6 page)

‘That’s a lovely story,’ Kate said.

‘He’s a lovely man,’ said Kay. ‘He knew I never wanted to move away from here, so after we got married we got this place and he drives to Watchet to work every day. Mind you, it means he can pop in on his mum, so that’s all good.’

‘And do you still work at the Blue Ball?’

‘Me? I got two kids. They’re at school, but it doesn’t give you much time in the day for a job. But I do part-time in the shooting season, when they need extra help. Evenings, mostly, when Darren can watch the kids.’

‘You don’t look old enough to have two children at school,’ Kate said.

‘Oh, look at you! Aren’t you nice?’ Kay said, pleased. ‘I wish you was my sister. ’Nother cuppa tea? Have a biscuit with it.’

‘So tell me about the Blackmores,’ Kate said, having selected a chocolate Hobnob. ‘You say they owned my cottage?’

‘Why, didn’t you know who you bought it from?’

‘I suppose it must have been on the contract, but I didn’t particularly notice. The estate agent only talked about Mrs Brown.’

‘Well, the Browns only rented it, o’ course. I never thought the family’d sell, because after the war, they had to sell a lot of property to pay off the death duties, and Sir George, when he inherited, well, he swore he’d keep the rest of it together.
Not
selling was kind of like his big thing. Everybody knew that. I wonder if they’re in some kind of trouble?’ she mused, frowning.

Kate thought it was touching that she seemed to mind the idea. ‘A lot of people are, these days.’

‘Yes, but I thought they were all right now. I haven’t heard anything. But o’ course they wouldn’t put it about if they was,’ she concluded with a shrug. ‘Wouldn’t want people to know.’

‘So Sir George Blackmore is the present owner?’ Kate asked.

‘No, he’s dead now. There’s Lady Blackmore, she’s his second wife, and the two sons, Edward and Jack, they’re the first wife’s sons. Jack’s a real laugh. You see him about the place. He’s divorced, got a little boy. He’s the biggest flirt you ever met. No harm to it, though, he’s just a nice man who likes female company. You’d like him.’

Kate smiled. ‘I don’t suppose I shall ever meet him.’

‘Oh, everybody meets everybody eventually in this place.’

‘But I’m going to be busy doing my cottage – speaking of which, I should get back to work.’

‘Yeah, and I’ve got to pick up the kids in a bit. Well, it’s been real nice chatting to you.’

‘Likewise. And thanks for the lunch.’

‘No, my pleasure. Made a nice break in my day. And like I said, any time you get sick of the place and want to come over, you just come. You don’t need an invitation. It can’t be very nice having to live where you work, let alone the dust and everything.’

‘You’re very kind,’ Kate said again, and in a spirit of reciprocation added, ‘and any time you and Darren want to go out, I’ll come and babysit for you.’

Kay’s face lit up. ‘You mean it? You’re so nice! It’d be lovely to have a night out with Darren some time, even if it’s only going down the Royal for an hour or two. We don’t get out much.’

So with goodwill all round, Kate went back to her new home and started straight in, stripping wallpaper. By the end of the day the sitting room was down to the plaster and she had taken the hardboard off the doors – they were panelled underneath, and not in bad condition, which was a relief – but she had a big pile of the resulting rubbish in the middle of the floor, waiting for the skip.

It was supposed to come first thing the next morning, but it didn’t appear. It was a lovely sunny day outside, and so in between ringing the skip company and getting either an engaged tone or an answering machine, she took her work outside and began rubbing down and making good the window frames. She eventually got through to the skip firm, who said they hadn’t had one available but would bring it the first thing following morning.

But again it didn’t arrive, and she had a repeat of the previous day, rubbing down in the sunshine, waiting for the skip, and having abortive telephone calls.

Which was the point when the Angry Man – surely a local nutter? – turned up, and she decided to walk down to the village and try out one of the pubs for lunch.

Not
, she told herself,
that I shall be eating out as a regular thing
. She couldn’t afford it, so she shouldn’t get in the habit. And she shouldn’t skive off, either. The sooner she got the boring basic work done, the sooner she could get on to the fun bit, making the place pretty; and also the sooner she could live in a place just a tad less filthy, which was definitely a priority.

She had a quick wash and changed into a less revolting T-shirt and jeans, and walked down School Lane with a healthy worker’s appetite. If the skip came when she was down there, she told herself crossly, they could damn well come and find her. They had her telephone number. They needed to get it through their heads who was the customer around here. Of course, it was a hopeless attitude to take with skip firms, who were a law unto themselves, and only marginally less autocratic than scaffolding companies. But it felt good while she was thinking it, and it was all part of her new assertiveness, or so she told herself. The new Kate wasn’t going to take crap from anyone – especially not a member of the male half of humankind.

The two pubs, the Royal Oak and the Blue Ball, sat on opposite sides of the main village road, and could not have looked more different. The Blue Ball presented a long, elegant Georgian stone frontage to the road, three stories high, with the name in large gold letters along the facade. It had very posh hanging baskets, already in full flower, and a cobbled strip in front, divided from the road with white-painted staddle stones and some large wooden tubs containing smartly-clipped box bushes.

The Royal Oak was also three storeys, but there the resemblance ended. It was a tall, narrow, crooked building, evidently an ancient cottage on to which various additions had been tacked over the centuries, straggling up the slope behind it. It sat on the corner where the valley road crossed the main road. No hanging baskets; the pub sign, swinging in the breeze from a metal bracket between the first-floor windows, was a very amateurish-looking painting of a tree with a crown on top. The window frames, Kate noticed, were painted the same maroon as her own, signifying that it was, or had been, part of the same estate.

Given her general scruffiness, it was to the Royal Oak that she took her custom that first time. Inside, it was all low beams, wooden floors, high-backed settles and mismatched wooden tables. There was the usual selection of old sepia photographs and dim pictures on the walls, and odd bits of china, ornaments and copper objects on shelves and across the mantelpiece of the brick fireplace. There seemed to be three bars, all on different levels. To her left as she entered was a slightly smarter area where two couples, obviously tourists, were sitting at tables, quietly conversing, while they waited for food. Straight ahead was the public bar, and three men in working clothes were seated on stools along it, pints before them. One had a dog lying at his feet, and that decided her. She went up to the bar, and the dog, a collie, heaved itself to its feet and looked up at her, swinging its tail politely.

‘Lovely dog,’ she said, bending to caress its head. None of the three looked at her, but she deduced that this was shyness rather than unfriendliness. ‘What’s his name?’ she asked.

‘Gyp,’ said his owner, addressing the beer in front of him.

‘Working dog, is he?’

The reply was a sort of strangled grunt. But the man behind the bar, who had been at the other end washing glasses, had spotted the danger and came hurrying down to the rescue.

‘Help you?’ he said. He looked about sixty, and was short and burly with a wide, flat red face under a shock of white hair. He gave her the sort of smile you give strangers who are also customers, the one that doesn’t touch your eyes.

‘I’d like a pint, please,’ Kate said. ‘Which is the local beer?’

‘Well, there’s the Cotleigh Tawny,’ he said, tapping the pumps, ‘or you’ve got your Hewish IPA, that’s from Weston.’

‘I’ll try the Cotleigh, thanks. And can I get something to eat? I’ve been fancying a ploughman’s.’

‘Cheddar, Stilton or pâté?’

That was the tourist influence. Years ago the question wouldn’t have been asked. ‘Cheddar, please. Is it local?’

He seemed, just discernibly, to approve of the question. ‘Just up the road. This side of Exton. Broad Farm Cheddar.’

‘Sounds perfect.’ Kate watched him put the food order through a hatch behind him and draw the pint. Her three companions had their heads down, contemplating their glasses so as not to have to look at her.

‘Where’ll you be sitting?’ the landlord asked, placing her glass before her.

‘Oh, I’ll stay here,’ she said. ‘Got to make myself at home, now I’ve moved in to the place. This’ll be my local.’

Now he looked at her properly. ‘Moved in?’

‘I’ve just bought Little’s Cottage.’

The three heads came up and turned, like a line of cattle at a trough. The landlord, now examining her thoroughly, said, ‘I heard it was sold. Thought it must be a mistake. So that was you, was it? You actually bought the place – not rented it?’

‘Bought and paid for,’ she said firmly. She stuck out her hand. ‘My name’s Kate Jennings.’

He took it, though rather cringingly. ‘Dave. Doing it up, are you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then what? Selling it? Holiday cottage?’

She had enough sense to know this was a leading question. ‘I haven’t decided yet. I’m thinking of settling in the area. I used to come here as a kid. My dad’s from Exford.’

‘Is that right? Local girl, are you? Well, I hope we see a lot of you. Can do with some more young people settling round here. These three characters are Ollie, Wayne and Kev. You’ll see a lot of
them
if you’re in much.’

They gave her shy smiles, and she beamed back at them. ‘So tell me,’ she said to Dave, ‘why were you surprised I’d bought Little’s Cottage?’

‘Never even heard it was for sale,’ Dave said. ‘No sign up or anything. Kept it quiet, didn’t they? Then Terry from over the Blue Ball comes in and says did I hear Little’s was sold. I said, “You must be mistaken, old son.” But he says, fact.’

‘Ed Blackmore, he swore they’d never sell any more of the estate,’ Kev piped up from the end of the bar. ‘Promised his dad he’d keep it together.’

‘See, it’s hard for local people to find somewhere to live,’ Dave amplified. ‘Cottages that used to be for rent, incomers buy ’em up for holiday places, and push the prices up so locals can’t afford ’em any more.’ He gave her a hard look as he said it, which she withstood as steadily as she could. ‘And then, the Blackmores have owned the land round here time out of mind. Be a terrible shame if the estate was broken up and sold off and the family went. Piece of history gone, you see.’

‘Yes, I see,’ said Kate. ‘Well, I can see why you were surprised. But it’s all true – I bought it fair and square.’

‘Course you did,’ Dave said, exonerating her. A plate appeared in the hatch and he turned and retrieved it and placed it in front of her. ‘Sure you’re all right here?’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘It looks lovely.’ It did – a big, crusty half of a French loaf, a slab of Cheddar, the smell of which was already making her mouth water, pickles, pickled onions, an individual dish of butter and a little mound of salad. Just what she had been fancying.

While she ate, she got her companions to talk, starting off with the dog, going on to local breweries, drawing them out on the village darts tournament, and ending up with whether Minehead would beat Bridgwater in the Somerset Premier League final.

And as they got over their shyness they asked her about her father’s family and her local connections, and were interested and impressed that she was doing the work in the cottage herself. Ollie said she could get herself a lot of jobs as a handyman if she needed the money. Wayne was able to give her the phone number of a chimney sweep, and Ken knew a good plumber who, he said, could also put her on to an electrician. They seemed genuinely friendly, and altogether it was a very useful half hour: lunch, so to speak, had paid for itself.

She was just getting to the bottom of her pint, and thinking regretfully that she really shouldn’t have another if she was going to do any work that afternoon, when the door opened and a man came in.

Kate, glancing over, thought it must be another tourist, because he was very smartly dressed in a good suit and tie. He was in his forties, she guessed, and with a firm, alert look about his face that suggested intelligence. His hair, prematurely silver, was very short, well cut and contrasted with his tan. The only point against him was an expensive camel coat over the suit, and leather gloves he was just taking off, but that was simply a personal prejudice: she didn’t like camel coats and leather gloves – at least, not on men.

But that he was not a tourist was immediately proved when Dave looked across at him and said, ‘Hello, Phil. Didn’t expect to see you in here this time o’ day.’

The man came forward, sparing Kate one hard, all-encompassing glance and then dismissing her, to stand between her and Ollie and say, ‘Give me a G and T, Dave. Make it a double.’ His mouth was set hard, as though he had something on his mind. He was heavyset and broad shouldered, and with his thick wool coat he took up a lot of room, forcing Kate to shrink back a little on her stool. As he changed balance to reach inside his coat for his wallet, he must have stepped on the dog, for there was a little yip and a scuffle of movement. The man looked down briefly, and Ollie said, ‘Come out of there, Gyp,’ reaching down to take the dog’s collar and pull him to the other side of his stool.

Putting the glass in front of him, Dave said, ‘What’s up, then, Phil? You don’t look your usual cheery self.’

‘Ach,’ he said, a formless expression of disgust. ‘I’ve been all the way to Taunton on a wild goose chase, that’s all. People mucking me about. I’ll get to the bottom of it, though, and when I do …’ He threw back half the gin and tonic in one gulp, put the glass down, and said, ‘You know you heard that rumour about Little’s Cottage being sold?’