'Oh, the ancient arts
’
said Angela. 'Wise women
'Well, I don't know about that
’
said Mrs Perry, then she nodded. 'But women
were
the brewers once, so I'm told
’
Angela was just about to ask her the origins of the name Church Ale House when Mrs Perry said, 'Talking of age
...'
and crossed to the window ledge. She picked up a handful of little white objects which, just for a very bad moment, Angela thought might be teeth.
Teeth? Fine. She gritted her own as Mrs Perry took her hand and tipped the objects into the palm. They were roughly square, very smooth, a pearled yellowy white, about a quarter of an inch thick. Angela ran her fingertips over them and rattled them together.
'Know what they are?' said Mrs Perry.
Angela was about to suggest upper front molars, but after her orgasmic spasm over the Aga she kept quiet. She shook her head, stared into her palm and hoped that whatever she held there had been very well washed.
Mrs Perry took one and held it up. 'Roman mosaic chips.'
Angela blinked. 'No
...'
she said.
Mrs Perry nodded. 'Daphne Blunt told me. I dug them up in the garden. Or the rabbits did.' She put them back on the window ledge and shrugged once more. 'So who knows how old this place might be?'
'Tesserae
’
Angela said in amazement.
'That's the name. They turn up occasionally. So there must have been something once. This house has seen a lot of changes
- bits built on, bits pulled off, money made and money lost. I don't suppose the plot has ever been idle.' 'Bit like life,' said Angela.
The woman nodded. She patted the teapot. 'And now,' she said, 'you'd best be looking around, I suppose, since you're here.'
5
April
Well!
some people talk of morality, and some of religion, but give me a little snug property.
maria edgeworth
The tour began with what Mrs Perry called the parlour, to Angela's delight. 'The parlour,' she repeated to herself softly as they travelled towards the front of the house, their footsteps clumping and creaking on the fine, bare boards. Not the lounge, not the sitting room, but the
parlour.
..
On the way Mrs Perry paused and opened a door with half-lights. 'The utility,' she said. 'Washing machine, freezer, sink -you know.'
Angela said that she did.
'And where the dogs sleep.'
'Ah yes
’
said Angela, thinking with pleasure of three baskets labelled Victor, Leaky and Otto.
'The estate agent called it the utility. I call it the old wash-house. And before the war it was the still room. The
first
war,' ‘
she added.
Angela nodded knowingly, wondering what the hell
a. still
room actually was, as opposed to a moving one, but she did not ask. She was never very good at showing her ignorance and she didn't intend to do so now. After all, she had a history degree; she knew how to look things up.
She peered over Mrs Perry's shoulder. The room was big and cold with stone walls, a grubby little high-up window, a well-trodden flagged floor and a small half-glazed door leading to the garden, a door so small in proportion to the space that it looked like an Alice in Wonderland opening. A hen peered in, head on one side, comically querying its outer exile. It pecked at the glass and Mrs Perry rapped her knuckles to frighten it away.
'They can crack this old glass, silly varmints,' she said.
Angela was thinking that it would make good office space. Ian would need office space. 'Hens are funny,' she said, to cover her smile.
'The parlour,' said Mrs Perry eventually, pushing open a panelled wooden door that creaked. 'This and the one opposite are the best rooms, and the two above.'
'Georgian
’
said Angela.
'Must get that hinge oiled,' said Mrs Perry. She had obviously been saying it for years.
Double aspect, thought Angela, maybe sixteen foot square, original fireplace or as like as damn it, two good windows overlooking the front shrubs and holly hedge, probably good boards under the carpet, two doors - maybe original - certainly nicely foursquare and fitting. Not a central heating pipe in sight. And good light. Pinch me someone, she thought, pinch me.
She went over to a window. Mrs Perry's curtains, pulled carelessly aside, were velvet, once a rich olive green but now faded to the colour of gooseberries. Where do you get velvet like that? wondered Angela. As if she had read her mind again, just at that moment Mrs Pe
rry tugged at them and said, ‘I’ll
leave the curtains. There's a bit of life left in them yet. They came from the Hall when it was sold. One of Archie's aunts made them. I remember seeing her sewing them when I was a girl.'
'How lovely,' said Angela.
'Ruined her eyes,' said Mrs Perry.
'Ah,' said Angela, realizing she must distinguish sentimentality from happiness.
'No electric then, mean buggers,' said Mrs Perry. 'And all the girls sewed. Servants' rooms didn't get electricity till the Abdication.' She pulled back the curtains at the other window.
'They forgot.' She smiled grimly. 'Apparently. And no one complained. Knew their place then.'
Angela imagined giving her daughter a needle and thread and a candle to sew by. 'They certainly don't now
’
she said.
'Good job
’
said Mrs Perry.
Celia Johnson, thought Angela suddenly,
Celia Johnson
...
That is the kind of person I shall become. I'll have a black bicycle and a wicker basket full of library books and a wide-eyed innocence for an innocent world in which I'll be surrounded only by good, honest folk who do right in the end.
'Doesn't seem to be doing much good
’
said Mrs Perry, looking out of the window.
Celia Johnson gave a little ring on her bicycle bell and rode off. Angela returned to the present. 'What?' she said.
Mrs Perry pointed and Angela followed the line of her fingers. Strung between two trees and hanging from a thin wire were several dead carcasses - possibly birds, possibly rodents, possibly not.
'Does it really frighten them off?'
Mrs Perry shrugged. 'I never thought so
’
she said. 'I'd have thought that animals just saw other dead animals as food. Only humans would understand it as a warning.' She shook her head and smiled that grim smile of hers. 'Not so long ago it was folk rather than vermin. There's been a few -of those strung up round here.' She nodded her head dir
ec
tionally. 'Up on the hill. And not so long ago either. My grandmother said her mother had seen a hanging.' She gave Angela a straight look. 'That's where your ancient arts could get you. My mother made lotions and potions and left me all her recipes. And her mother's. But if you'd called her a witch she'd have spat in your eye. I must look them out.'
The second room, with another window on to the garden, had the same proportions.
'My mother used to say the house was like an old duchess, with everything carried at the front. We don't use this as a dining room. Shame really
..
‘
She went over to the window and pulled a crumpled, faded chintz curtain further aside. 'It's got the best view of the house - this and the bedroom above it,' said Mrs Perry. 'Front and side view. The Mump and the church.'
Angela stroked the old chintz as gently as if it were a cat. She perched on the window seat and gazed out and thought of Goldsmith. All these yea
rs she thought she was a pragma
tist and now here she was, a romantic.
Near yonder copse, where once the garden smil'd, And still where many a garden flower grows wild. There where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, The village preacher's modest mansion rose.
'Royal land,' said Mrs Perry. 'Never to be built on.' She came and stood by Angela. 'And we own that field at the side. That's not part of the sale. We want to keep that. Lord knows why we want to keep that.
..
the peasant in us, very likely. You don't get rid of all your land.'
'Can it be built on?' Angela's mouth went dry.
'Not while we own it, it can't
’
said Mrs Perry firmly. 'Too much building in my opinion.' She looked about the room, as if for the first time. 'Panels need a coat of paint, fireplace needs unplugging . . .' She crossed to one of the cupboards beside the mantelpiece and opened it. 'There's a bit of damp in this one. Are you a do-it-yourselfer, Mrs Fytton? Archie and I are
not
...
as you will have noticed.'
Angela thought of all her years of paint pots and wood finishes. And shook her head. Not this time, she thought, not this time.
'What are the neighbours like?' she asked.
'You've got the new vicar.
Not
married. Plays the guitar...' Mrs Perry pulled a face. 'And a couple I don't know very well beyond him, weekenders - boys away at Frome Hall, they
board
’
She sniffed. 'Both solicitors in Bristol. Rudge, their name is. Never see them really. Then on this side -' she pointed westwards - 'you've got Dave the bread, who delivers.' She shrugged, as if arguing with herself. 'Well, saves making it.' Angela nodded.
'His wife, Wanda, does weaving and craft things. Beyond him the Elliotts. Some sort of writer he is, and his wife and children - three under six, I ask you.'
Angela tried to look as if she had never had two under two.
'And further up the lane you've got the history woman, Daphne Blunt. Swears by olive oil and doesn't like fat bacon.' Mrs Perry turned to Angela and said, as if in deepest sympathy, 'A thin woman. Very
thin.
Interesting, but likes to poke her nose...'
'Ah
’
said Angela. 'Aren't there any true locals, like you?'
'Not many
’
she said, apparently without sentiment. 'Most of them have moved into sensible accommodation. We've still got Sammy with the pigs up that hill.' She pointed beyond the window and her eyes softened. 'His place is right at the other end. The eelers still come in. You can see the eel beds from the church. And then there's old Dr Tichborne and his wife down there.' She pointed again. 'They were born and bred round here, but grandish. I remember my father taking off his hat to
his
father when the car went by, just after the war. And she came from the Hall. . . which got pulled down to make room for the road. They've a niece who's set on marrying an estate agent.' For some reason she looked a little flustered at this last. 'Well, anyway
...
Now, the bedrooms.'
They mounted the stairs. Creak, creak, creak.
'It doesn't mean anything. Just age. I creak myself some days.' She opened a door and smiled at Angela as she did so. 'You will too one day
...'
They walked into what Angela supposed was the main bedroom. Master bedroom, as the estate agent's details described it. Mistress bedroom from now on. And eventually - why? - master and mistress bedroom, she supposed. A branch or two of an outside tree came right up against the window, but the view was clear. 'You can see the church and the vicar's garden from up here,' said Mrs Perry. 'The church land comes right to our boundary hedge at the back.'
But Angela was looking around the room. She wanted everything in it: Mrs Perry's high brass bed and the ancient white pique bedcover, the brass rail that held up the old blue and white striped curtains, the dusty fireplace with its faded tissue paper stuffed into the flue and the gas taps that still poked out of the wall. Next to them were electric wall-lights: imitation shells made from Woolworths Lalique. Modern by this house's standards, probably fifty years old - ugly then, somehow quaint and delightful now. It was all too much, like eating too many sweets. A setting from
Country Life
entitled Rural Chic.
The next bedroom was darker because the tree stretched across the window. There was an enamel basin set into an enamel stand with an enamel bucket below. She smiled to see such an old-fashioned vanity unit. Once she would have wandered around making notes about improvements. A shower here, a second bathroom there. But now she felt she
knew
these walls, could relax into them. The floor sloped slightly, the bed looked high and lumpy - essence of bed, much as Van Gogh painted his. Looking around, she doubted if there was a true right angle in the place.