THE STORY CONTINUES. 5 The Cottage

This is part of an autobiographical series.

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John didn’t react to my answer – probably the most honest thing I’d said to him up until then, apart from my gabbling at the party. But I couldn’t remember any of that. So whether or not he’d understood what I meant, I didn’t know. And right at that moment, I didn’t care. I shelved the problem as I always had.    

    ‘I thought I might take you to my local pub,’ he said.

As on the morning after the party, he drove at speed, but this time it wasn't through familiar city streets, but through tiny twisty lanes with high hedges. I wondered how he found his way as it all looked the same. I had no idea where we were.

    Alison had borrowed her mother’s car once or twice and we’d explored a little of Devon – like Dartmoor and the coast – but I’d not been in this sort of terrain before. Ever.

    John didn't stop talking.

    I hung on to the door while facts flashed past.

    He was 25, a year older than me. He worked at the university as an electronics technician. He came from Bedfordshire – a ‘home’ county (close to London) like Kent where I was brought up - but had moved down here with his girlfriend.

   She’d been a student at the university and they’d lived together in a country cottage with a floating population of other males.

    At the end of her studies she’d left John and gone off with one of the other men in the house. That had been in September of the previous year, shortly before I first came across him - which explained a lot.

    He still lived in the cottage but he was on his own there now.

We arrived in a village - civilisation at last - and pulled up outside a thatched building. Up some stone steps and through a studded door and we were in a long room with a wood fire at one end that scented the air. Small tables dotted the room and behind a counter with shiny brass handles stood a man with a beard and blue eyes that bored into me.

    ‘Richard,’ said John, pushing me forward. ‘This is Belinda.’

    'And what do you do?' demanded Richard.

    What did I do? My life had turned upside down in the space of twenty-four hours and I struggled to remember anything.

    ‘I . . . I’m a student,’ I stuttered.

    ‘I know that,’ said Richard with irritation, as if students were ten a penny. ‘I meant, what subjects do you do?’

    I answered automatically. ‘French and Spanish.’

    Richard nodded and went to serve another customer.

    Somehow, I’d passed a test. I was proud. I liked the man.

I’m not sure we even stopped for a drink as soon we were back in the Mini.

    We left the village behind and traversed more lanes that became smaller and smaller before coming to a dead end. We climbed out and my feet squelched in mud. John led me over broken flagstones to a door.

     Inside, a single lightbulb illuminated a hallway, its floor patched with frayed lino. To the right I could see a large room crammed with stuff. It looked like a junk shop. To the left, was another large room with a bath in the centre of it. Ropes of grey washing hung from the ceiling above the bath. I wondered whose the washing was and how long it had been there. Ahead were the stairs, under which stood a fridge and a cooker but no other signs of kitchen.

   It was so cold I could see my breath.

Upstairs we made our way along a passage, kicking aside clothes as we went.

    ‘Sorry about the mess,’ said John. ‘It’s not mine. It’s what everybody left behind.’
    At the end of a passage he opened a door to a sea of more clothes, a single paraffin heater and a mattress against one wall, on which sat a tortoiseshell cat who was looking at me with deep suspicion.

    ‘That’s Kitten,’ said John. ‘She likes marzipan.’

    Kitten leapt off the bed and stalked out of the room, tail held high.

    I lowered myself on to the edge of the mattress.

I could hardly breathe. I seemed to have entered an alternative universe.

    My life as a child at both school and home had been regimented. Even the houses I’d shared once I left home had been reasonably clean and organised. But in my studies and in the novels I devoured I’d discovered the Bohemian lifestyle and I'd secretly longed for it and dreamed of one day being an artist of sorts myself.

    Was that was this was? But that was just a dream, wasn't it? Part of the life I lived in my head. My other life. The one I kept hidden. Was it really for me?

    How could I possibly manage it?

And inside me it was just as bad. A chaos of emotions I'd never come up against before. I couldn't even put a name to them.

 Against the wall on the opposite side of the mattress was a record-player and racks of long-playing records, the only organised things I’d seen so far.

    John flicked through the LPs before finding one and putting it on the turntable. A man’s voice rang out, strong and clear.

    To be any more
    Than all I am
    Would be a lie.

    I’m so full of love
    I could burst apart
    And start to cry.

The man was singing directly to us, for us, for me.

    Everything in my past - all the emotions I'd suppressed, all the problems I'd shelved  - was racing to the surface like vomit.

    I was a volcano, about to erupt.

 To be continued . . .