Sandlands Read Free Page A

you’ll need your wellies on, whichever road you’re taking, if it’s come down heavy overnight.
    It’s why I like to be out and walking, even though I’m on my feet all day with the hoover, at my various houses. Not the puddles, I mean; I could do without them. No, it’s the ups and downs I like. Always a new view round every corner. Not what you’d call a view, of course, if you went on those coach tours like Mrs Fitzpatrick does with the Air Vice-Marshal, and shows her slides at the Mothers’ Union: Switzerland or the Italian lakes. But still, there’s always something to look at that’s not just flat to the sky; when I stay with my sister Barbara up near Lynn it fairly drives me crazy, all those miles and nothing to see. It might not be the Matterhorn but to my thinking you could go a long way and not see anything as pretty as the bit of a sweep below the road to Snape: the river winding through the flood-meadows between its stands of reeds, and often as not half a dozen wild geese, grazing alongside the cattle.
    The village itself is a cheerful sight, too, on its little hill that’s more of a hummock, with High House sticking out at the top. I say ‘the village’ but ours is a village with no proper middle; if seedypuffs stop in their cars and want to know, ‘Where’s Blaxhall?’ I never know quite what to tell them. There’s Stone Common and Mill Common and Workhouse Common, and the row of flint cottages on the road down to Parmenters. Then there’s St Peter’s with the rectory, the Yews and Church Cottage, and another cluster by the village hall, not to mention all the outlying farms. But when I picture ‘the village’ it’s the houses between the pub and the old school that I have in mind: the nearest we have to a street. They’re on both sides of the road there for a short way, before you come to the allotments, and added to that there’s the stretch along the lower road from the pub to where the post office used to be. There must be twenty or thirty homes in all in that small patch. Whichever way I’m coming at it, that’s the view I think of as Blaxhall, with the L-shaped red roof of the Ship Inn at the bottom and at the top that double oblong of High House with its barn at the side.
    â€˜You can’t miss it.’ That’s what Mr Napish always says to people, with that sudden awkward laugh of his that he smothers in his beard so fast, you can’t quite be sure if it wasn’t just a cough. It’s what he said to me, that first time on the telephone when I rang about his advert. ‘I’m at High House,’ he said. ‘You can’t miss it.’ Though in my case, of course, I knew the place already, as I pointed out: I’ve lived in Blaxhall more than sixty years, I told him. ‘Well, if you ever forget,’ he said, ‘you’ll be all right. Just look upwards and there it is.’
    He’s not one of the snooty ones, isn’t Mr Napish. He might be hesitant until he gets to know you, but he’s never been standoffish. It must be two years now since I’ve been doing for him, and he’ll tell me anything. He talks about all sorts. And he always makes me coffee, every time. Not like some I could mention: there’s one or two who’ll put the kettle on and make a cuppa for themselves and it’s like I’m not there, even though I’m right beside them polishing the taps. I’d rather get on by myself in an empty house than work round some of them – and it might as well be empty for all they speak to me. But Mr Napish makes a pot of coffee every morning sharp at eleven o’clock. It’s one of those smart Italian chrome contraptions that heats on the gas, and he’s liberal with the coffee measure, too. I’ve never liked to tell him that I like my Mellow Bird’s. The first time, I took a sip and started on the kitchen