With Philip, was anything real any more? She had had a vague misty dream of Salzburg, brought on by watching Amadeus again. Before she could draw breath, Philip and his secretary had broken it down into flight schedules, business-class airline tickets, bookings into five-star hotels and the best seat-reservations for The Magic Flute.
She and Philip saw everything there was to see, in the right order, and were back home again before she could draw breath or smell an apple-strudel. And then Philip saying, ‘But what else did you want?’ How could she ever explain she just wanted to get lost?
Anyway, she thought wryly to herself, I’m lost enough now. As the mist closed over the windmill behind, through the mist far ahead she heard the sound of gently breaking waves. They must have walked a long way in the mist, moving from crab-claw to lion’s-tail seaweed to shattered fishbox marked ‘Smith, Lowestoft.’ As they walked back, they left the sea, and returned to the edge of the salt-marshes, to make sure of finding the path back to the mill.
But there were several paths, and they all looked horribly alike in the mist. And in the end they must have chosen one too far east, because the windmill was slow making its appearance, and when it did it wasn’t a windmill but a low old house that hadn’t been there before.
The house was very Norfolk; flint and dull red brick, except where storms had nibbled the corners, leaving patches of raw bright orange. Gable on the right, two dormer-windows in the roof on the left; all covered with massive red pantiles that made the roof sag comfortably. The hedge had grown into a fat bulging jungle that had knocked planks out of the fence in front of it.
‘We can ask the way back to the mill,’ said Rose.
‘Mu-um!’ said Timothy in a voice of despair, pointing at a small damp black notice that said
to let or for sale apply beach house
The lettering was new, untidy but decisive. No indication of which direction Beach House lay. Obviously aimed at locals; not yuppies in need of a country retreat, like all that stuff within an hour’s drive of Norwich Station. Its total unsuitability for yuppies enchanted Rose; as Jane said, ‘What a funny place to live. You’d never get a car up here.’
Rose looked around. Maybe you could force a Land-Rover through, given half a day . . . No TV-aerial on the chimney. Not an upright pole in sight, that might have carried a telephone wire or a power cable . . .
‘Let’s have a nosy,’ said Timothy.
The mother in Rose found the idea appalling. She was the least pushy of creatures. But her children looked at her, called to the child in her, as they knew they could. And the mist made it into a secret adventure.
She pushed the gate tentatively. It was dug into the ground, hanging on half a hinge. She carefully lifted it and they walked up the old brick path that meandered between clumps of invading vegetation. Long dead plants grew up between the bricks that were visible.
‘Just like Sleeping Beauty’s castle,’ said Jane, mocking Rose’s old-fashioned stories.
‘Sleeping Beauty’s got big feet,’ said Timothy, pointing to a huge pair of black rubbers sheltering under the porch.
Rose eyed the rubbers nervously. They were smeared with clay; someone had got muddy fingers taking them off, and wiped those fingers clean across the black rubber near the top. The heels were well-worn on the outsides, which should make the owner an optimist; but an optimist without the money to buy a new pair. Big feet indeed; and big feet made a big man. A big old man suddenly appearing and telling her off for trespassing, as if she were a child . . .
‘I think we’d better go . . .’
‘No, no,’ said Timothy, cunningly vanishing round the corner of the house and out of her power. She had to follow him, to get a grip on things. But he’d found something else. Vast thin plants towering above the general weeds, with bunches of yellow flowers at the top.
‘Cabbages run wild,’ he said.
‘Mind they don’t bite you,’ said Jane.
But now Rose could see, under the burgeoning weeds, gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes, the outline of a whole wrecked kitchen garden. And another brick building at the bottom of that garden.