Sands of Time

The Cottage Kitchen

When Roz first saw Fen Cottage it seemed like home. The kitchen was the only thing which stopped her from making an instant offer. The rest of the cottage was idyllic. It had low beams, thatch, three small charming bedrooms with tiny windows, a pretty sitting room which looked out onto a flower-smothered terrace and a dining room with a large inglenook fireplace. The kitchen was a lean-to. It was long, narrow, dark and basic. She thought, made a few sketches, did some calculations, crossed her fingers – the numbers didn’t quite add up – and made an offer. It was accepted at once.

It was eight weeks after that first enchanted viewing that she closed the door for the last time on her London flat, took a deep breath and headed for the country. It was only six months before that, that she’d first realised she wanted to leave London at all. Thanks to modern technology – she worked from home as a PR consultant – she could live where she liked. Nothing was keeping her in town except habit. Certainly not men. Her last relationship had gone the way of the others before it – fun while it lasted, but somehow not completely satisfying. She had not, she supposed, met her true soul mate yet, and perhaps now she wasn’t going to. The thought, to her surprise, did not worry her. In fact, she felt a sudden sense of freedom.

She turned one of the bedrooms – the nicest – into an office. It had a view across the wild, tangled garden (a future project, that) and over the hedge towards the fields. She established contact with the rest of the world via phone, fax and modem, and in the evenings began work on the dining room. It was going to be the new kitchen.

It obviously had once been the kitchen of the house, or so she thought. She could see the vestiges there. In the inglenook, behind the electric fire, was the bread oven, a salt box, even the iron upright of the sway which had once held a pot over the fire, all invisible beneath an encrustation of centuries-old soot.

She began on the floral wallpaper, the top layer of about six, pulling it off in great flapping wedges. Then, to tackle the Edwardian brown-painted cupboards, the Fifties light fittings and the damp floor, she decided to call in the help of a local builder. She had already had two quotes when Edwin Fosset appeared.

‘I hear you want some work done.’ He looked down at her gravely from gentle grey eyes. He was tall and thin with a kind, lived-in face, attractive in its way, the kind of face she trusted instinctively. In fact, within seconds she felt she had known him all her life. She found herself showing him inside and went to fetch her sketches.

He looked at them critically. ‘It could be a nice room. No problems as far as I can see. I can get started straight away.’ He shivered. ‘It’s chilly in here. Perhaps I should start by opening up these windows and letting in some sunshine!’

That was one of the problems. The room was extraordinarily cold. And depressing. When she stood in it she could feel all her buoyancy and energy draining out of her, as though someone had pulled a plug in the soles of her feet.

She mentioned it to her first guests, her new neighbours, Bob and Julie, who lived up the lane. They admired the living room and the bedroom, came with her into the kitchen while she made coffee and agreed with her that it was too small, then carried their cups with her into the old dining room. ‘This is such a nice room. Potentially,’ she added.

‘Ah,’ Bob said. ‘Potentially.’

‘And what does that mean?’ Julie said, as she stood looking round. ‘Potentially!’ She echoed his voice. ‘It’s a lovely room! Look at the view across the orchards.’

Roz had her eyes fixed on Bob’s face. ‘Don’t tell me. Someone died in here.’ She tried to make it a joke, but it was a thought that kept on occurring to her with depressing regularity, one that had been suggested by several London friends who, on agreeing to visit at some time in the future and promising to bring food parcels as though there were no Sainsbury’s outside the M25 ring, invariably asked with mock caution if there was a ghost and, if so, was it friendly?

Bob shrugged. ‘I’ve never heard of anyone dying in here. But the Grahams, who you bought it from, never used this room. Betty said it was always cold, even in the summer. One of Jim Fosset’s boys is going to work for you, isn’t he? He would know.’

‘Boy?’ Roz giggled. ‘He must be heading towards forty!’

Bob smiled. ‘But this is a village, Roz. People are defined by generations. And the Fossets have been here hundreds of years. The boys’ grandmother ran the village school, and their great-grandmother was cook up at the hall in the old days. And their great-great grandmother was -?’ He hesitated, glancing at his wife.

‘Don’t tell me. She was a witch?’ Roz looked from one to the other expectantly.

Julie shrugged. ‘Not that I’ve heard. I haven’t any idea what she was. I wonder where your builder fits in. He sounds older than the sons, so he might be the cousin who went off and made good. The one who went to university and is reported, by village gossip, to have made a lot of dosh. If that’s true, why is he back here doing work as a jobbing builder?’

‘I got the impression he is a craftsman,’ Roz put in defensively. ‘Perhaps he likes being a builder.’ She had a sudden depressing vision of her newly-acquired friend leaving her amid piles of hammers and dust-sheets to go and attend to his investments. She was intrigued nevertheless.

She found herself thinking often about Edwin’s strong brown hands as he handled his hammer and shovel. His quiet, reserved charm appealed to her more than that of the more extrovert men who had come and gone in her life up to now. She had to admit she found him very attractive. But she was not in the market for a man. What she wanted was a kitchen.

Only two days later Edwin climbed up the stairs to Roz’s study and tapped on the door as she finished a phone call to New York. ‘Can you come down?’

‘What is it?’ She felt a twinge of anxiety.

‘There’s something I want you to see.’ More than that he would not say, and she had to follow the enigmatically silent figure down the twisting staircase into the dining room where he had been digging up the floor to lay a damp-proof course.

‘You haven’t found a body, have you, Edwin?’ She tried to make it a joke. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to unearth something in here.’

He grinned and his face lightened visibly. ‘No, it’s not a body. Look.’

She peered into the earth and dust. ‘What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?’

He sighed. ‘Look. Here.’ He squatted on his haunches and scraped at the loose soil.

She crouched beside him and stared. ‘It looks like old brick.’

‘It is.’ He smiled up at her. ‘Well, tiles, actually. This house is supposed to have medieval foundations, and this is the old floor.’

She knelt to touch the red tiles. ‘I had no idea the house was that old. They are beautiful. Can we expose them and use them, do you think?’ She glanced up. ‘Do you mind my asking? Is it true that you have a degree?’

‘I have.’

‘Am I allowed to ask what in?’

‘History of Architecture.’ He frowned. She had touched on forbidden territory.

She retreated to more neutral ground. ‘So, you would know if we have to report it or anything?’

He relaxed. ‘Yes, I would know.’

Encouraged, she dared to ask the question she had been brooding on. ‘I am going to be nosy. Can I ask why, if you have an architecture degree, you are working on my kitchen?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s a job.’

‘Not a very academic one.’

‘I’m not an academic.’ He picked up the trowel with which he had been digging. ‘Did you mention a cup of tea?’

‘You know I did not.’ She smiled again. ‘But I can take a hint.’

It was half past two in the morning when she was awakened by the sound of shouting. Struggling up from an exhausted sleep, she stared round the room, disorientated. It was silent now, but she was sure the noise hadn’t been part of her dream. Climbing out of bed, she tiptoed to the door and listened. The cottage was completely silent. Outside the open window she heard the call of an owl hunting along the hedge behind the hollyhocks, then all was silent again as the smell of roses drifted up to her.

Pulling open the door as silently as she could, she stepped out onto the landing and crept on bare feet to the top of the stairs. The tiny hairs on her arms, she realised suddenly, were standing on end and she shivered in spite of the warmth of the night.

She could see the moonlight shining from the window of the dining room across the black chasm of the floor and out across the hall towards the staircase. The silence was suddenly oppressive. She took a deep breath and, plucking up courage, forced herself to go down. At the bottom she stopped again, staring into the room as she realised that there was an indistinct figure standing by the fireplace. She stared at it in astonishment.

‘Edwin?’ Her voice came out as a breathless croak.

The figure turned to face her and she was conscious of the pale, drawn face, gentle grey eyes and the worn brown jerkin. Then, as she watched, the figure seemed to fade and disappear. Not Edwin, but someone so like him.

For a moment, total silence still surrounded her, then she became aware of the usual cottage noises. The clock in the hall was ticking, she could hear a tap dripping from the kitchen and suddenly, from the window, came the pure delicate notes of a nightingale.

Abruptly, she sat down on the stairs and buried her face in her arms. She was shaking but it was, she realised, with shock rather than fear. There had been nothing at all frightening about him.

‘I’m dreaming.’ She spoke the words out loud. Taking a deep breath, she stood up and went to the door of the dining room. It was completely empty, the moonlight lying like a silver carpet over the dust and bricks and soil and scatter of tools. She took a few steps into the room, looking round. The figure had been standing in front of the fireplace, staring down into the earth in front of him. She looked down as well. There was nothing there.

When Edwin arrived next morning she was in her office on the telephone. She stood looking down at him as he walked up the path from his van, her concentration only half on what she was saying. Without realising it, she shivered.

When she finally went downstairs, half the floor had been uncovered.

‘Good morning.’ He smiled at her without stopping work.

‘Edwin.’ She hesitated. The face in her dream – if it was a dream – was still haunting her, but how could she admit to dreaming about someone who looked so like him?

‘How long do you think it will take?’ she finished lamely.

‘Not long.’

And with that she had to be content.

Three nights later she was woken up again by the sound of laughter and shouting from downstairs. She stared round in the darkness. There was no moon tonight and she could hear the gentle patter of rain on the roses below her window, filling her room with the sweet scent of wet earth. She lay still for a few seconds, her heart thumping with fear, then slowly and unwillingly she sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed.

At the door she paused and frowned. She could smell beer. The sound of talk and laughter grew louder and she could hear the clinking of glasses coming from the dining room.

Creeping downstairs, she tiptoed across the hall and, taking a deep breath, she pushed open the door.

The silence was immediate and total. The room was empty.

She stepped in and looked round. It was as Edwin had left it. The floor was finished and neatly swept, the walls stripped and the window frames repaired. All that remained to be done was to fix the chimney and paper the room before the arrival of the Aga and the sink and the old dresser she had found in the antique shop in the village.

Reaching for the light switch, she turned it on. The smell of beer had completely gone.

‘Do you think Fen Cottage was ever a pub?’ she asked Julie when she met her in the village shop that morning. Edwin had gone to fetch a load of bricks.

‘I’ve never heard it was. Why?’ Julie was stacking her purchases into a basket.

Roz shrugged. ‘Just something I heard.’

‘It was an inn, yes,’ Edwin said later. He sat back on his heels for a moment, a wedge of pale lime mortar on his trowel. ‘A couple of hundred years ago. Why?’ He looked at her hard.

She shrugged. ‘I just wondered.’

When she heard the sounds again that night she almost didn’t go down. She lay for five minutes, her head under the pillow, then reluctantly she climbed to her feet.

This time the noise did not stop as she pushed open the door. The room was full of people. She saw the smoke from the fire, and from the men’s clay pipes. She saw the bar and the plump red-faced woman pulling beer from a barrel set up behind it. She saw the pretty fair-haired barmaid sashaying between the drinkers, squealing as they flirted with her, slapping back their impertinent hands. And she saw the man she had seen before.

He was standing, his back to the wall near the roaring fire, his eyes fixed on the girl. As Roz watched, he slipped his hand into his pocket and brought something out. A small silver charm on a thin, filigree chain. She saw him catch the girl’s hand as she whisked past him and she saw him speak, his longing clear in every movement of his body as he shyly pressed the charm into her hand. As the girl glanced down at it she saw the love and hope in the young man’s eyes.

Then the girl laughed. She tossed her pretty curls and flounced her hips and tucked the charm back into his pocket.

He looked stunned. As Roz watched, he stepped away from the wall, his face scarlet with embarrassment as the jeers of the other drinkers told him they had missed nothing of the exchange. With one quick gesture he snatched the charm out of his pocket and threw it into the fire, then he turned and walked out of the door into the lane.

As the door banged shut, Roz found herself standing in the silent cottage staring into an empty room.

That evening, Bob dropped by to lend her a catalogue of light fittings and they went out onto the terrace to have a glass of wine. ‘I hear you were asking about the house’s history,’ he said. ‘You were right, it was a pub. And there is a story to go with it. One of the village men went away to London and made his fortune. He came back and fell in love with the barmaid here. She rejected him and the story goes he went out and hanged himself.’ He took a sip of wine and then caught sight of her face. ‘Sorry, Roz. Perhaps you would rather not have known.’

‘No.’ She turned away so he couldn’t see the tears in her eyes. ‘No, I’m glad you told me.’

The next morning she asked Edwin if he had heard the story. As he turned away from repointing the chimney, she watched his face intently. He stood still for a moment staring into the distance, then slowly he shrugged. ‘Yes, I think I might have heard it somewhere.’

And that was all.

But that evening he came out to the terrace where she was reading. There was something in his hand.

‘I found it under some mortar.’

The silver charm was tarnished, almost black. For several moments she looked at it, then slowly she held it out to him again. ‘I think it’s yours.’

Their eyes met.

‘That is what you came back for, isn’t it?’ she said.

He looked down at it and slowly he nodded. ‘You say he looked like me?’

‘Yes.’ She hesitated. ‘She didn’t deserve his love. She wasn’t worth it,’ she insisted, more vehemently than she’d intended.

‘I’ve dreamed about this house since I was small.’ Glancing up he gave her a sheepish smile. ‘I don’t believe in reincarnation or anything like that. It’s just that sometimes, if you let yourself listen, you can hear the echoes, feel the ripples of sorrow as they reach you over the years. I thought studying architecture would take away the pain, would make the past rational, cool, sensible. And that building would bring it under control, make it safe.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘When I heard you wanted a builder, it just seemed like fate. Like something I’d been waiting for.’

‘And now you’ve found it,’ she said gently, reaching out to touch the fragile silver where it lay on his palm and feeling the warmth of his hand as it slowly curled around hers.