Chapter 14

James came in behind them and flicked a switch. To Tilly's amazement, an electric light came on. The room looked just the way she had imagined it ought to. All the old furniture and farm tools had been taken out. The floorboards and beams had been stained and varnished. The walls had been re-plastered and painted in off-white. There were red velvet curtains at the window and bright rugs on the floor. The lovely old fireplace had been cleaned out and the fire basket done with blacking. An old-fashioned three piece suite, square and chunky and overstuffed, stood in front of the fireplace. There were pictures of landscapes hung in heavy wooden frames decorating the walls.

Johnny set her back on her feet. "Do you like it?"

Tilly gazed around the room and thought of all the work that had gone into it.

She turned to James and Dorothy, who were beaming with delight.

"You did this just to please me? Because I thought the cottage was beautiful?"

"There's more," said Dorothy. "Come and see."

She took Tilly by the hand.

The door that used to lead to the stairs now led to a wide open hallway with another, wider and not so steep set of stairs leading up to a half-landing.

Tilly started for the stairs, but Dorothy put out a hand to stop her. "No, see what we've done to the barn first."

She led her past the stairs and through another doorway into a large airy room with a beautiful cast iron stove set into a fireplace in the back wall.

"This has got a back burner;" Dorothy said. "It heats a tankful of water. And there's an electric immersion heater for if the fire isn't lit. We haven't furnished it because we didn't know whether you'd want it as a dining room or a second living room."

Tilly was struck dumb with amazement. She had suddenly realised the significance of Johnny carrying her over the threshold

But Dorothy was already leading her into another room beyond that.

They divided the barn in half, Tilly thought. Then, looking up at the ceiling, And put in another floor.

But if the other rooms hadn't been impressive enough, the last room completely took her breath away. It was a kitchen, but no kitchen like she had ever seen before except in magazines. There was an electric oven, a refrigerator, an electric kettle and - wonder of wonders - a washing machine.

A huge butcher's block table stood in the middle of the room. There was another wood burning stove, with hot plates at the top set against the back wall and above it a rack for drying clothes. There were wooden cupboards and cabinets in the spaces between the appliances and bright copper pans and utensils hung from racks above them.

It was a dream kitchen.

"We couldn't get matching cupboards at such short notice," Dorothy was saying. "They're all second-hand, I'm afraid. But we can get new stuff later. The main thing was to make it liveable. But the appliances are all new, from James's factories."

"It's perfect as it is," Tilly said. "I wouldn't want to change anything, ever."

"How prophetic that was," she thought, smiling to herself. They had never changed it in over fifty years. It still looked the same now as it had on their wedding day.

Upstairs were two new bedrooms and a bathroom with a flushing WC. But the pièce de résistance was the original bedroom. The floorboards and beams were stained and varnished, the walls re-plastered and repainted. The ancient wrought iron bedstead had been replaced by a beautiful four-poster with green and gold hangings and, at the windows were pale yellow curtains.

"How did you know?" she asked. "It's exactly as I imagined it. It's ... it's just amazing,"

"You talked about it on the way home that first day," Johnny said. "A four-poster bed and yellow curtains,"

"Did I?" Tilly couldn't remember, but her heart was full.

How wonderful of him to remember and how wonderful of Dorothy and James to create it for her. They must have had armies of builders and craftsmen to do it.

"Some of Dorothy's little men," James said, just as if he had heard the thought. "Well, we'll push off now and let you get settled in."

Impulsively, Tilly ran to him and hugged him hard. "You wonderful, wonderful people," she cried, turning to Dorothy and hugging her too.

To her amazement, she saw tears standing in Dorothy's eyes.

And so it began - their happy life together. They had lived in Keeper's Cottage for the first ten years of their marriage, until Johnny's job took him to Manchester and they had to move away. But they kept the cottage. Kept it exactly the way it was. And they stayed there whenever they came to Morpeth. And even in later years, after James and Dorothy were long gone and Morpeth House had been sold to cover the death duties, they kept the cottage. It was their first real home and they always loved it. In fact, if the truth be told, Tilly still preferred it to their rather pretentious house in Sale, which had all the latest conveniences but was never cosy, as Keeper's Cottage was.

She looked forward to their trips to Morpeth. She relished each arrival, opening up the house, pulling back the curtains, lighting the stoves. Then she and John would walk around the garden, hand in hand, noting what weeding needed doing, what flowers needed dead-heading. Exclaiming over those that had blossomed in their absence.

It never felt like a holiday. It felt like a home-coming.

Keeper's Cottage had always been their real home.

****

She was a lucky woman. She had been married to the same man for over fifty years and never once regretted it. She turned over to hug him.

That was it! That was what was wrong! Filled with foreboding, Tilly opened her eyes at last.