My friend Scienziato’s roadside cottage of many rooms. The oldest part, a vicarage back in the day, is half hidden by a molar-shaped yew chafing the eaves.
Scienziato’s cottage once featured a cellar and a stone staircase with smooth sunken treads. Scienziato had to overlay the stairs with wood, on account of a young man with a motor disability, not to mention the cold. Then, there’s a galleried half-landing with a porthole window looking out onto a split-level garden, the lower paddock girdled by mature woodland. The rooms upstairs, in the centre and in the east wing of the cottage, have cruck-frames and the largest bedroom has a canted bay window on the gable end. The west wing is all extension: I’ve a dim memory of it being built when our children were small and at primary school together. Anyway, the extension isn’t as interesting as the rest of the cottage, its snugs, hideaways, dips and rises. Here is a cottage stuffed with a family’s gubbins. Fridge magnets and postcards, car parts, studio pottery, prescription medicine, scuffed shoes and more shoes. There’s fine art on the walls, vintage designer clothes on a dress rail (I remember Scienziato wearing a particular blazer, a glass of Campari in his hand.)
Outside, Scienziato potters about in oil-smeared jeans and a navy blue fleece. The woodland creaks like a ship, a Siskin sings. A tawny owl watches a red dog jump out of the pond, shake her fur.
As ever, I’m reading my writing out loud to Alfie.
A red dog, huh? he says, looking into my eyes as if he knows where I’m going with this. Remember when I dated two redheads?
Meg and Boudica, how could I forget?
So when do I get to meet—
Nicky.
Nicky. Think Nicky would like to sniff my butt?
How could she resist? But you two should go for a gentle walk first, me and Scienziato as your chaperones, obviously.
Gentle? Hmm.
Julie said go easy on the walks, remember?
I must tell you how Alfie has been getting on. It has taken time, of course it has, to process what’s happening to him now, what’s going on with his vital organs. And we’ve had to adjust to a new routine because, notwithstanding our adventures, Alfie is a dog who likes a daily routine. Each morning, there are three walks he can choose from, heading east, west, or up the hill, south. M and I almost always let Alfie decide which walk he’d like to do. If we head east, we pass Scienziato’s cottage.
It’s six weeks since Alfie saw veterinarian Rod and started taking medication to help keep his lungs free from congestion. Five weeks since I left him in the company of his great friend Julie for an hour. Just like the last time Alfie had a scan, I wandered over the bridge into town, had a coffee, flicked through the pages of a magazine. Before I left the clinic, Alfie stood on the scales. He’d lost a kilo.
Julie went through the results with us. Alfie’s heart has enlarged, as suspected. His heart must work harder now. But he was comfortable, wasn’t, isn’t, in pain. Six weeks on, he’s ever curious, has an appetite for food and friendships, and the diuretics are doing their job - he isn’t coughing. He has medication for his heart now, too.
“Let’s see you again in a couple of weeks, Alfie,” Julie had said. “See how you’re reacting to those meds?”
The end of March and a dreich one at that. Still much too early to see the colony of honey bees, one hundred bees a minute each summer, darting back and forth to the eaves above the canted window of Scienziato’s cottage. Every year I imagine their combs of honey and pollen and how big their house might be by now. Sometimes, the bees swarm. It’s a wonderful sight to see their cloud over our garden, the old queen and her faithfuls heading west.
Scienziato and his garden: free spirits. The paddock says look, look at this purple clover, leave it for the bees to sup my sugary nectar. Scienziato will throw up his hands in agreement. (He’s a Dr Doolittle in name and nature, I mean that in the nicest possible way.)
There’s a tradition of beekeeping in the village. Just along from Scienziato’s cottage, in one of the big houses, where Dex the Jack Russell lives now, Samuel took one-hundred and twenty-six pounds of honey from one hive in September two hundred and five years ago. Thirteen years later, Matthew’s hive swarmed four times in three weeks in May and the first week of June. In September 1864, Robert had four casts of bees. He took sixteen stone of honey but still had nine hives standing. Could Scienziato’s honey bees be descendants of the village bees all those years ago?
While bees embody industriousness, some holidaymakers staying in the village believe Scienziato’s cottage is derelict. I overheard someone saying it looks like a house from a horror film. In front of Scienziato’s cottage, rain, sand, silt and clay gather to form a verge in which red campion, speedwell and garden escapes grow. The verge encroaches on the roadside a little more each year. It’s the responsibility of the county council to maintain the roadside. But why, says this or that person, why doesn’t Scienziato clear it? A shovel, some weedkiller (ugh) perhaps. And why doesn’t Scienziato maintain those window frames? Do something about the rotten wood, flaking paint, overhanging trees?
I’m forever asking myself what a small community like ours can do to support one another? And does it matter if one might come across as an interfering busybody or do-gooder? Shouldn’t we be knocking on each other’s doors, asking if there’s anything we can do to help? Learning about each other’s unique situations? A few years ago, to answer these questions I have, I joined the parish council. It’s a small team and they are good people, but I’ve become disillusioned with parochialism.
Because of Scienziato’s situation, it’s rarely possible to get together these days, but we exchange text messages.
“Apart from the tawnies having two more chicks - I can hear them on the nest, there’s a short-eared owl that’s been visiting the garden for a while. Just been out as all the birds going loopy and it’s in the side wood …. D__ and S__ came over last evening, loved every minute, got some brilliant photos, especially when the bats came out too. I told them the garden and wildlife kept me on a level playing field, given all that’s going on.”
I raise a glass to you, Scienziato. “Chi beve vin, campa cent’anni.” He who drinks wine lives a hundred years.
These past weeks, Alfie lying by my side, I’ve been meeting the people who lived in Scienziato’s cottage a hundred years ago. I’ll tell you all about them soon.
Brilliant. As always. X