Chapter five
The cottage layout was childishly simple and reminded Darcy of a house she’d once made in a shoebox for her dolls. The proportions were certainly similar.
The front door opened inwards onto a tiny entryway from which led three doors. To their left the first accessed two box-shaped bedrooms, immediately claimed by Rosie and Connor. It didn’t seem to bother either of them that they’d have to walk through one room to get to the other or that they were miniscule cube-like spaces and much smaller than the bedrooms they’d left behind in London. Pacing out the floors, Darcy calculated that the rooms were practically symmetrical; the floors less than three and a half yards squared, with the ceilings at about the same distance from the floor.
Connor, continuing through to the second room at the rear of the cottage, swiftly claimed it as his and pronounced it on the spot to be a ‘totally cool’ bat cave. It had only one smaller window let into the wall of the building that faced the church and was decidedly gloomy even with its solo shutter wide open. Pleased that he was satisfied, Darcy though relieved there had been no arguments, thought there was no accounting for children’s tastes.
Fortunately Rosie’s front-facing room was light and airy once the shutters to its two large casement windows were opened and pushed back out of the way to lie flat against the outer walls.
Darcy was thankful too that neither child seemed bothered by the peeling plaster or aged dirty-yellow paintwork but made a mental note that she’d need to brighten up these rooms as soon as possible. What didn’t thrill her were the near-elephantine size and ample numbers of hairy-legged spiders that had taken up residence in the crevices around the shutters. Apart from a small number that had seemed shell-shocked to be exposed to the light and chosen to remain in plain sight, they’d mostly skittered out of range as the shutters had been opened, to lurk among the deeper cracks in the plasterwork around the windows.
Bertrand had taken one look at the creatures and declared them harmless with a cheerful, “ils ne sont pas dangereux” and a nonchalant wave of his hand but Darcy felt less than reassured. In her mind, they were categorised ‘Something to be dealt with ... asap.’ It wasn’t that she was an arachnophobic, she reasoned but she was not at all keen on sharing her living spaces with crawly creatures that had four times as many eyes and legs as she did. If they couldn’t be kept outside or relocated, she could see cans of bug spray in the immediate future. In the meantime, she’d do her best to adopt a live-and-let-live attitude.
She poked her head into the next room. Hers.
The third bedroom, sharing the wall next to the children’s and somewhat larger also opened off the entryway. Like Connor’s recently acquired room, it had but one window facing the church. Granted, the window was larger, with double shutters but even with both wide open it was dimly lit, until Bertrand removed the timber cover from the glazed top half of the outside door, allowing more light into the room through the doorway.
Thank goodness thought Darcy, because unlike Connor, she didn’t fancy living in a bat cave and disliked dark rooms, preferring sunlight. The room felt damp, had carpet lifting in one corner and skirting timbers that looked as if small animals had been gnawing along them. But the boards could be replaced and she hoped the damp was just a result of the cottage being closed up and unheated for so long.
Maybe, she thought, studying the teeth marks in the chewed boards, it would be a good idea to get a cat, or at least some mouse traps. Soon.
There was a second door in the far corner of her bedroom, leading to another tiddler of a hallway. Everything was so small, Darcy mused, as if someone had taken a shrink-ray to a real house.
The bathroom, which boasted the bare necessities of a toilet, hand basin and a shower, sans curtain, over a midget-sized porcelain hip bath, opened off this hall directly opposite the bedroom door with another door at the far end leading back through to the kitchen.
This faced the lane with a shuttered window similar in size to those in Rosie’s room and a very basic L-shaped sink bench with open shelves underneath. The nicest thing that could be said about this kitchen Darcy thought grimly was that its fittings looked original. Original circa 1950 or earlier, that was. On second glance, the room did have two redeeming features: one was a heavy provincial-style double-fronted cabinet with scrolled feet that might have been a real antique and the other the decorative tile floor.
They’d need a fridge, perhaps an under-bench model, as anything larger wouldn’t fit in the space, she thought as she walked on; with three doors, two to the tiny halls and the third connecting to the living room, the kitchen would be as much circulation space as it would be for cooking. It wasn’t until Bertrand wrested open the windows and shutters to reveal a rather lovely view of the tree-dotted fields and rolling countryside beyond that Darcy started to like the room.
As each set of shutters was opened, some requiring more force than others and one or two with damaged hinges that would need repairing, the cottage came to life. The bright autumn sunshine made everything look better. It really was quite charming, or it would be, Darcy thought, after a jolly good scrub, some replastering and a fresh coat of paint.
Darcy moved through to the last room. Their living room. Thankfully, this was by far the largest, and, with the opposite wall being against the stables was effectively a dead end and not useful as a thoroughfare to another space. The living room occupied the entire depth of the building and would have been, Darcy estimated, around four yards wide. Still not enormous but large enough for her and the children to inhabit without feeling too claustrophobic, she decided.
There were double-shuttered windows to the front and rear. As Bertrand opened these the room was lit with adequate, if not overly ample daylight, showing up the dusty timber flooring. Pity there couldn’t have been a third window, she thought, but since the first of the stables were on the other side of the longest wall no windows could be let into that.
Unlike the rest of the cottage, this room was partially furnished. Darcy was pleased and relieved to see someone had left a creamy-coloured three-seated couch, still encased in protective plastic wrapping, pushed against one wall. There was also a small dining table, not new and without any chairs, placed in front of the windows that opened to the laneway. The best find of all was a brand new fridge, still in its packing carton. It was a little larger than she might have bought but after removing the packing, she could see that although tall, it wouldn’t take up too much space and had the added bonus of a separate freezer compartment, something most under-bench models lacked. Connor and Rosie, both keen ice-cream eaters would be pleased.
Sitting among the packing materials, Darcy gazed around the room. The plasterwork looked to be in reasonable condition but whoever had been occupying the cottage must have had a massive cigarette addiction as there was no fireplace to account for the state of the walls. All of the painted surfaces were an ugly shade of dirty nicotine-yellow. Darcy ran the tip of one finger over the wall closest. It came away smudged with grime and grease.
“Yuk.” She’d hate to see inside the heart and lungs of whoever had lived here before … disappointedly thinking, so much for hoping that she’d only need to clean the floors and maybe the bathroom or kitchen before moving in. This cottage was going to need a total top-to-bottom scrub just to make it liveable. Good thing she’d bought some heavy duty bleach and an assortment of cleaning equipment.
She walked back into the kitchen. Well, she mused, looking at the positives, this place was so small that she’d never get tired out from running round it and once it was clean it would be a breeze to keep nice. She leant with her hands on the kitchen window sill and stared out the open window to the view beyond, gazing at the wide expanse of cerulean-blue sky, verdant green fields, hedges, beautiful big leafy trees just starting their autumn turn and the horizon beyond woods in the far-distance … and those killer cows she’d seen the other day in the near-distance, behind what she hoped was a sturdy fence.
&n
bsp; Amazing view, apart from the scary livestock, she thought, and it sure beats looking down the mews any day. Still, she was relieved to note that the fence between the cows and the cottage was of the solid post-and-rails variety. She hoped they knew to stay on their side because she certainly wasn’t planning on venturing into their domain anytime soon.
She stood for a moment, just enjoying the serenity of the view.
Not for long; her daydream was broken by Bertrand touching her arm to get her attention. He pointed at Rosie dancing around her tiny bedroom down the end of the hall.
“Votre petite fille. Quelle age a-t-elle?” he questioned in a polite but nevertheless demanding tone.
She was on a roll with this French, thought Darcy. She could answer that. Even if she did have a small nagging suspicion that Bertrand was simplifying his sentences so that she’d understand. Ah, who cares? Better baby sentences than no sentences.
“Elle a sept ans,” she replied, holding up seven fingers just in case she wasn’t understood.
Darcy’s face took on a wistful look as she considered her daughter. Yes, her beautiful little girl was seven already, growing up so fast and losing her babyish features. Aside from inheriting Darcy’s curly red hair, she’d also got her mother’s eyes and her maternal grandfather’s ears but her chin and the stubborn set it sometimes took was quite decidedly compliments of her father’s genes.
“Et votre fils?” Betrand held up both his large ham-fists, palms out and fingers extended, as if to ask how many fingers Connor was.
Looking down at the waggling digits, Darcy was less than impressed with his estimation of her ability to parley voo French, even if he was right.
“Onze,” she spoke a tad shortly, adding a year, since his birthday was in a week’s time and she couldn’t be bothered trying to explain this to Bertrand.
That sent Bertrand into a torrent of incomprehensible French, from which Darcy caught two words, “l’enfant” and “l’école”.
She put on her best ‘I haven’t the foggiest what you’re talking about’ face and said “Quoi?”
Bertrand gestured to his right and spoke again but it was still too fast for Darcy to follow. Seeing that she wasn’t getting it he pulled on her hand to lead her outside back to the closed road gate. He pointed across the road towards the school, repeating what he had just said.
This time Darcy caught the words “Ma femme,” “professeur” and the phrase “votre fille doit aller à l’école”. “My wife,” “teacher” and “your daughter ... something about school”…and then the penny dropped. He’d been telling her that Rosie must go to school and maybe something about his wife being a teacher.
“Oui,” she replied, desperately trying to think of the words. “Ma fille va à l’école.’ No, that was ‘goes to school’ what she wanted to say was ‘will go to school’ … ‘as soon as I get around to it.’ Um...pox, she hated being put on the spot and felt like an aphasia sufferer, searching for words she couldn’t find. Correct tense or not, beggars couldn’t be choosers and she hadn’t asked for this conversation. Now, what was ‘next week?’ She chewed on her lower lip in frustration …then it came to her…. “La prochaine semaine.” Yup, she’d organise schools for the children next week, or the week after. Or whenever she got up the nerve to approach the heads or superintendents or whoever ran the schools around here.
“Non. Nous pouvons aller maintenant.” Bertrand said with an assurance that Darcy certainly didn’t feel.
Well, thought Darcy, she knew what “maintenant” meant.
“Right now?” she squeaked in surprise, forgetting that she had reverted to speaking English. Here she was wearing her oldest clothes and her lovely new wellies. And although the wellies were prettily covered in bright red poppies they were not exactly what she considered the right attire for a meeting with a prospective school principal. In her fervour to have him understand, she pointed at her clothing and footwear, before she shrugged almightily and shook her head.
Bertrand smiled down at the pretty red-haired foreigner, saying “ne vous inquiétez pas,” nothing to worry about. He indicated the boots before reciting perfectly in English the opening stanza of John McCrae’s renowned poem,
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.”
He smiled briefly before adding, “En Normandie, ils sont très bien. Nous nous souvenons toujours des guerres ici. ” Given time, this blithely ignorant Américaine would undoubtedly find this out for herself. The wars were never forgotten here and never would be. Not while there were still so many Normandy graveyards full of white crosses marking the graves of the fallen, old rusty hulks from the allied landings remaining visible at low tide on the beaches, ordnance being dug up regularly and stories told and re-told of acts either courageous; like the tale of John Steele, the D-Day paratrooper who survived by playing dead when his chute caught on the church steeple of Sainte-Mère-Église or heinous atrocities such as the massacre of Canadian prisoners of war at the Ardenne Abbey near Caen and the deaths, further afield of the entire village of Oradour-sur-Glane in the closing days of the war.
What he was thinking was … ‘Il faut battre le fer pendant qu'il est chaud,’ Strike while the iron is hot. He did not think that Madame needed to know that his motivation wasn’t entirely altruistic or that their little village school was struggling to meet state requirements for student numbers, putting his wife’s job at risk. They needed as many pupils as they could get and he was not about to allow any new resident in their village the opportunity of enrolling her daughter in another village school or, heaven forbid, some private school in Rouen.
Curious, Rosie and Connor had followed outside to see what was happening. Bertrand beckoned Rosie over. After opening the gate far enough for the three of them to pass through he took her little hand gently in one of his and held onto Darcy’s somewhat more firmly in his other, tugging them both out the gate and across the road.
“Stay right here, Connor. We’ll be back soon … I think,” Darcy called back over her shoulder. “And, don’t go off exploring on your own,” she yelled as an afterthought. The place was old and she was already imagining unsafe wells and dilapidated buildings that her adventurous son could hurt himself in.
“S’okay, Mom. I’ll just play on my Nintendo ‘til you get back. Take your time and don’t’ stress.” Connor yelled in response. Darcy heard him only faintly, as they had already crossed the road and he was out of sight. Sometimes, she mused, it was amazing how level-headed and mature Connor could be ...when he wasn’t acting like an irresponsible five-year old. The trick was, as with Jekyll and Hyde, knowing which one of the two personas he would take on in any given situation. It was a skill she’d yet to master.