All in the Mind

Chapter 5

"Upper Morpeth," Johnny said. "It used to belong to the manor in feudal times."

"It's lovely," said Tilly, "and what a gorgeous cottage. Who lives there?"

Johnny looked at the cottage as if he's never seen it before.

"Well, nobody," he said. "At least, not as long as I can remember."

He looked at his father.

"It used to be the gamekeeper's cottage, I think. At least, it used to be called Keeper's Cottage, so I assume that's what it was."

"But what a shame for it to be empty," said Tilly. "It's so beautiful."

James looked at it doubtfully. "I shouldn't think anyone would want to live in it these days," he said. "It's far too small."

"But it's huge," Tilly said. "Much bigger than our house in London." She was quiet, remembering what had happened to the house in London and to her parents, who had been in it at the time.

Johnny shook his head in disbelief, but his father laughed. "It's not all house," he said. "More than half of it's a barn. Look at the windows."

He was right, of course. The left side of the house had one small mullioned dormer window in the roof. The right side had three tiny unglazed windows under the eaves.

"Can we go in?"

"Oh, I shouldn't think it's locked."

James pushed at the door. It shuddered slightly, but didn't give. He put his shoulder to it and with a shriek of rusty hinges it swung inwards to reveal a dark interior stacked with old furniture and agricultural tools. He went further in and opened a window at the other side, letting in considerably more daylight.

Tilly wandered in behind him and looked around, gasping with surprise and delight at the little niches in the wall and the beams on the ceiling.

"Oh, but it's beautiful," she exclaimed. "And just look at this!"

She had gone around the stacks of furniture and discovered an enormous fireplace taking up the most part of the back wall. An iron basket stood in the middle of the hearth amid a pile of ashes and soot.

"There's still ashes from the last fire," she said in wonder.

"Probably just soot blown down from the chimney;" said Johnny. "Certainly nobody's lived here in my lifetime."

"You'd be wrong, there," said his father, sticking his pipe in his mouth and lighting a match. "Old Ted used to live here until his family got too big for it. "God knows how they managed. There's no piped water, no gas, no lavatory."

Tilly almost told him that they hadn't had a toilet in her family house in London, when she realised he meant just that - no toilet, not even an outside one.

"So where did they -" she broke off, not quite sure how to put it.

James laughed. "They would have had a midden in the back yard. We probably walked over it on the way in."

"Good Lord!" Tilly was horrified. "That's medieval."

"Yes, I know. But in those days we never thought about it. That's what the workers' cottages were like. Shameful, but there you are."

"Look! Look!" Tilly had discovered something else. There was a door in the dividing wall between the house and the barn, and behind it stood a steep staircase. She went through.

"Just a minute!" Johnny caught her arm just as she was about to climb the stairs. "I'll go first. Don't want you breaking your neck before we've even got properly engaged."

She laughed at him but refrained from remarking that it would hardly be less disastrous if he did so.

He went up carefully. The stairs were very steep and ill-lit and there was no hand-rail.

It's all right," he called down when he reached the top. "The steps are sound and so is the floor up here."

"I should jolly well think so," muttered James, behind her. "I keep all these farm buildings properly-maintained. "Interesting, though," he went on, reaching the top and looking around the room. "Do you know, I don't think I've ever been up here in my life."

John had already opened the little mullioned window that looked out onto the yard and now was in the process of pulling back the shutters on a much larger window at the front. Sunlight streamed into the room, revealing a huge room with a wooden floor and a great beamed roof. There was an ancient and rusty iron bedstead pushed against one wall with an old dresser standing next to it. On the other side stood a wooden stand with a basin and a cracked water jug. Otherwise the room was empty and the few bits of furniture were dwarfed in the vast space.

"It's beautiful," Tilly breathed, imagining the floorboards varnished and polished, yellow curtains at the windows, and maybe a four-poster bed. "How old is it? Surely it ought to be listed."

"God forbid!" James had managed to light his pipe and was giving little sharp puffs to keep it going. Tilly looked confused. He smiled at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners, the very picture of the perfect father.

"Once a building is listed," he explained, "You can no longer call it your own. If, for instance," he waved his arm in a sweeping gesture, taking in the whole of the room, "we wanted to make this habitable - put in running water and gas and a proper bathroom, maybe even an electricity supply - they wouldn't let us."

"Oh, I see," said Tilly in a small voice, thinking what a shame it would be to modernise such a quaint old building.

She walked across to Johnny, who was still standing next to the front window which looked out upon beautiful rolling farmland and the little village beyond.

"It's like a Constable painting, isn't it?" he said, putting his arm around her shoulder in a familiar, proprietorial gesture.

Tilly shivered with pleasure, thinking how nice it would be to spend all night with Johnny in a room like this, waking up to that wonderful view, framed by yellow curtains.

"Come on, Old Thing," he said, giving her a gentle tap on the bottom. "We'd better be getting back before Mother has the vapours."

Torn between being oddly comforted by the affectionate gesture and rather embarrassed because James must have seen it, Tilly allowed herself to be led back down the narrow staircase. She took one last look over her shoulder at the lovely, sunlit room, and caught James, his pipe in his mouth, firmly gripped in his right hand, looking around with a thoughtful expression.