A Girl to Love. Betty Neels

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      The cottage already shone with polish and there wasn’t a speck of dust to be seen. All the same, Sadie went all over it once more, making sure that it looked welcoming and cosy, and in the morning, she picked some of the chrysanthemums and eked them out with a great deal of evergreen from the hedge, and arranged a bowl here and a bowl there. She ate a hasty lunch then, made up the fire, put a guard before it, begged Tom to be a good quiet cat and not stir from his seat in the largest of the armchairs, put on her coat and headscarf, and let herself out into the bleak afternoon. She turned away from the village, for she had no wish to see whoever was coming, and walked briskly up the lane, winding its muddy way up to the crest of the hill. There was a magnificent view from the top in clear weather, but today the sad November afternoon was closing in already; in another hour it would be getting dark and even colder. She hoped that they would be gone by then; she would give them until four o’clock and then go back; if there were no lights on she would know that they had gone.

      At the top of the hill she paused for breath, for it was a steep climb and difficult going along the uneven lane, and then went on again, climbing over a stile and crossing a field to a five-barred gate with a cart track beyond it. The track was worse than the lane, but she splashed along in the muddy ruts, hardly noticing, her thoughts busy with her future. Presently she turned down a bridle path and followed it for a mile or more round the hill to come out at the top of the lane once more. By now it was almost dark; she could see the village lights twinkling below her and ten minutes downhill would bring her to the cottage. There was no light showing as she reached it. She went up the garden path quietly and tried the door. It was locked and she stooped to take the key from under the mat, where she had arranged for it to be left, and went inside.

      It was warm indoors and she shed her coat and scarf and went into the sitting room to find the fire still burning nicely, and Tom still asleep. She went from room to room and found nothing had been disturbed, indeed she wondered if the man had come after all, and there was no way of finding out until the morning. She made tea and then got her supper; there was no point in planning her future until she knew what was to happen.

      She knew that two days later when Charlie came whistling up the path to hand her a letter from Mr Banks. Mr Oliver Trentham wished to buy the cottage immediately. He waived a surveyor’s report, raised no objection to the price and would take possession in the shortest possible time. Mr Banks added the information that after the mortgage had been paid and various fees, there would be just over three hundred pounds for her.

      Sadie read it through twice and put it back in its envelope. So that was that, she wasn’t sure how soon the shortest possible time would be, but she had better start packing up her own things. Mr Banks hadn’t mentioned the furniture, which was annoying; she would have to write and find out and in the meantime go down to the village and see if Mrs Samways, who did bed and breakfast in the summer for those rare tourists who found their way to Chelcombe, would let her have a room until she had found herself a job. Tomorrow she would take the local bus into Bridport and see about a job.

      She wrote her letter, posted it, answered Mrs Beamish’s questions discreetly, and went along to see Mrs Samways. Yes, of course she could have a room and welcome, and Tom too, as long as she would be gone by Christmas. ‘I’ve my brother Jim and his family coming over for two weeks,’ she explained in her soft Dorset voice, ‘and dear knows where I’m going to put ’em all.’

      ‘Oh, I’ll be gone by then,’ Sadie assured her. ‘Perhaps I won’t want a room at all; I’m going to Bridport tomorrow morning to see about a job. There’s bound to be something.’

      There wasn’t. True, there were two housekeeper’s jobs going, in large country houses, and not too far away, but they stipulated women over fifty and the agency lady, looking at Sadie’s small thin person, and her gentle mouth, added her forceful opinion that she simply wouldn’t do.

      There was a job for a lady gardener too, but there again, observed the lady with scorn, she was hardly suited, and she tut-tutted when Sadie confessed that she couldn’t type or do shorthand, and hadn’t got a Cordon Bleu certificate. ‘What can you do?’ she asked impatiently.

      ‘Housework, and ironing and mending and just ordinary cooking—all the things a housewife does, I suppose. And I like children.’

      ‘Well, there’s nothing, dear. Come back next week and try again.’ She added as Sadie stood up: ‘You can always sign on, you know.’

      Sadie thanked her. She would have to be desperate to do that. Granny had belonged to a generation that hadn’t signed on, and she had drummed it into Sadie from an early age that it was something one didn’t do unless one was on one’s beam ends, and she wasn’t that, not yet. She went back home and after her tea, composed an advertisement to put into the weekly local paper.

      As it happened there was no need to send it. The next morning Charlie came plodding through the never-ending rain with another letter from Mr Banks. Sadie sat him down at the kitchen table and gave him a cup of tea while the letter burned a hole in her pocket.

      ‘Bad luck about you having to leave,’ observed Charlie. ‘We’m all that put out. Pity it do be the wrong time of year for work, like.’

      Sadie poured herself another cup and sat down opposite him. ‘I hate to go, Charlie, I’m just hoping I’ll find something to do not too far away.’

      ‘Happen it’s good news in your letter?’

      ‘Well, no, Charlie, I don’t think so. The cottage is sold—he’d have known that, of course—I expect it’s something to do with that.’

      He got up and opened the door on to the wind and the rain. ‘Well, I’ll be off. Be seeing you.’

      She closed the door once he’d reached the gate and got on his bike to go back to the village, then she whipped the letter out and tore it open. It was brief and businesslike, but then Mr Banks was always that. The new owner of the cottage had enquired as to the possibility of finding a housekeeper for the cottage and he, Mr Banks, had lost no time in putting her name forward. She would live in and receive a salary to be agreed upon at a later date. He strongly advised her to accept the post, and would she let him know as soon as possible if she wished to take the job?

      Sadie read the letter through several times, picked up the placid Tom and danced round the kitchen until she was out of breath. ‘We’re saved!’ she told him. ‘We’re going to stay here, Tom…’ She paused so suddenly that Tom let out a protesting mew. ‘But only if we can both stay—I must be certain of that.’ She put him down again, bundled into her mac and wellies and hurried down to the village.

      Mrs Beamish wished her a good morning and in the same breath: ‘Charlie popped his head in,’ she observed, ‘said you’d a letter from London again.’ She eyed Sadie’s face with interested curiosity. ‘Good news, is it, love?’

      It was nice to have someone to tell. Sadie poured the whole lot out and to the accompaniment of, ‘He be a good man, surely,’ and ‘Well I never did, Miss Sadie, love,’ she asked if she might use the telephone. The village had a phone box, erected by some unimaginative person a good half a mile from the village itself and for that reason seldom used.

      Mrs Beamish not only lent the phone, she stayed close by so that she didn’t miss a word of what was said, nodding her head at Sadie’s ‘Yes, Mr Banks, no, Mr Banks,’ and then, ‘but Bob the thatcher won’t work in this weather: he’ll have to wait until the spring.’ She looked anxiously at Mrs Beamish, who nodded her head vigorously. ‘No, it doesn’t leak,’ said Sadie, ‘it looks as though it might, but I promise you it doesn’t. And what about the furniture?’

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