The Tenant of Ivy Cottage

The general consensus on the new arrival in the Lincolnshire village of Milethorpe, in that part of the county described in the tourist brochures as being “betwixt (which sounded so much better than between) “the wolds and the sea”, was that she was a bit odd but harmless. Of course nobody could ever be absolutely sure about the latter, and as those patrons of the mobile library that visited the village every second Thursday who had a passion for true crime books knew, you should never be deceived by someone being “mild-mannered”. Still, not even those with the most vivid imagination, not even Mrs Rawlinson, who could have entered Mastermind with serial killers as her specialist subject, thought that the new tenant of Ivy Cottage had a body buried in the garden or secreted in the attic – or of course, in those of her previous home!

     She was called Ellen Martins, or at least that was the name she gave people, and was apparently some kind of writer. Or researcher. Or both. Or possibly neither. There were those who swore then had seen her parading at dawn (and dawn came very early near the Eastern edge of a time zone in June) in a cloak like the one in the Scottish Widows Insurance advert, but she was generally seen in nothing more exotic or intriguing than a pair of jeans and loose-fitting tops in various pastel colours and florals. Her dark hair was long and thick, but always seemed well-combed, not tangled or matted, and though, as the time-honoured cliché went, she kept herself to herself, she was always pleasant and polite if you met her.

     It was probably Conrad the milkman – Milethorpe was fortunate enough to still have a doorstep milk delivery, though some didn’t use it, and Conrad could see their point, especially in very hot or very cold weather – who first said, “She talks to her cats. I heard her.” He wasn’t generally given to gossiping about his customers, and he didn’t mean it in any nasty or spiteful way, but he was plainly rather bemused by the fact.

     “Well, there’s nothing that odd about that,” Georgina at the post office said.

     And Conrad realised he was risking both further over-stepping the red line about gossiping or making himself look like the odd one if he went into further detail, and was probably already reflecting that what one of his teachers had said about engaging your brain before opening our mouth was wise counsel. But he had heard what he had heard. And of course it was entirely normal for someone to say things like, “Oh, Tiddles, Mummy has been neglecting you when you want your dinner, sorry” or even, “I’ve had a horrid day, Fluffy, you cats don’t know how lucky you are.” But as he put two bottles of semi-skimmed down on the stone front step of Ivy Cottage, he could hear Ellen talking to Descartes and Newton (which were odd names for cats, but there were those who might say Conrad was an odd name for a milkman) about politics and the environment, and as if she was absolutely sure then understood what she was saying and that she valued their opinion. Even Conrad, who wasn’t much of a cat person, had to admit they were handsome animals. He had seen them sunning themselves on the lawn, generally leaving the birds in peace. That was one thing he didn’t like about cats, the way they harried birds, though he supposed it was in their nature, and he’d had enough to say about birds himself when they pecked off milk bottle tops. He wasn’t quite sure which was which but one (it was Descartes) had grey fur and big amber eyes, and the other was a smooth, sleek tabby with green eyes.

     The business about the cats did do the rounds in the village. Perhaps her writing or her research or whatever was something to do with cats. But as Mrs Beddowes said in the mobile library (and she was very partial to books about cats) she had never encountered any by an author called Ellen Martins. Not that that necessarily signified. 

     To this day there can be some atavistic instinct in a village that arouses especial interest about a woman who wore a cloak and talked to her cats. Not that anyone thought she was a witch, any more than they thought she was a serial killer, and if they had, then it had become positively fashionable and was one of the staples of children’s literature, with that metamorphosis that the witches, unlike the ones in the Chronicles of Narnia or The Wizard of Oz” were now generally the goodies.

     The local vicar, Keith Aymes, was certainly laid-back about it and had allowed Halloween parties in the church hall, though he had mixed feelings about Trick or Treating.

     Anyway, Halloween was a long way off. This was the time of early dawns and late twilights and bright blossoms and buoyant birdsong. The time when even if you missed out that bit about God ordaining people as high or lowly it was still impossible not to sing All Things Bright and Beautiful. 

     There were also rumours about odd smells drifting through Ellen’s window. Nothing at all unpleasant, and Ben Barnes, who commuted into town where he worked as a solicitor and was now the most solid pillar of the community you could imagine but had had an interesting past, could have confirmed that it didn’t smell like anything of an illegal nature, though the village bobby (well, the bobby who covered four villages) Vic Tyler would almost certainly have turned a blind eye to someone indulging in a bit of wacky baccy in the privacy of their own home, anyway.

     Unlike the business about talking to her cats, quite a few people could testify to the odd smells. But they could quite possibly have been nothing more than scented candles, or upmarket air fresheners, perhaps just herbs and nothing more, or she liked to burn incense. “You don’t hear of people burning incense much, nowadays,” Ben said, with a wistful air, recalling his own misspent but rather happy youth. 

     “Reed diffusers do the job just as well and without the mess and smoke,” his wife Diana pointed out. She was a sensible and highly intelligent woman and he worshipped the ground she walked on, but at times he couldn’t entirely suppress the memory of a girl called (or probably not called) Rainbow, with straw-coloured hair, dancing sinuously around as a room filled with sweet smells. 

     It was probably as well that he didn’t know she had now reverted to her real name of Jane and was a highly efficient manager in Environmental Health in a neighbouring county.

     People were interested in Ellen, and most of them liked her, and those who didn’t left her alone (which didn’t bother her in the slightest) but sometimes Keith couldn’t help being a bit worried. Not for her immortal soul. He’d leave that to Someone infinitely wiser than he’d ever be. But he knew from previous experience that even in the twentieth century things still can “tilt” abruptly and out of the blue, and a popular, or at any rate tolerated, eccentric, turn into someone regarded with suspicion and looked at askance. 

     He would never have dreamt of exerting the slightest pressure, even of the most amiable and tolerant kind, on her to come to church. Keith didn’t hold with proselytising. He also had an aversion to getting a flea in his ear. He supposed, knowing he was indulging in stereotypes, and could be wide of the mark, that she would be the kind of person who would describe herself as spiritual but not religious.  

     She seemed to have mastered the art of being aloof from the village and yet part of it at the same time. Without anyone ever remembering asking her to, she donated the most beautiful lemon and ginger cake to the village fete, and everyone who ate a slice of it with their tea or coffee agreed that it was one of the most delicious cakes they had ever tasted, and had no hallucinogenic after-effects. To the last minute there had been some debate as to whether if should be sliced up for the cake stall or be one of the raffle prizes. But Ellen herself did not appear at the fete. When Mrs Rawlinson, who knew almost as much about baking as she did about serial killers, stopped her on the village street to congratulate her in all sincerity on her baking, she replied very nicely and politely but, Mrs Rawlinson said, “As if she’d forgotten all about it!”

     Things got a bit more serious when the rumours began to circulate about Ellen “conducting experiments” at Ivy Cottage. There was something not quite right about that. But then again, there was a time when even children played with chemistry sets, and quite a few of the villagers made their own cosmetic and household products and there was no law of the land nor stipulation in the lease forbidding test tubes and Bunsen burners (though the latter could possibly have been open to debate).  However, it was still more troubling than talking to cats. On balance, a witch was probably preferable to a mad scientist. Hadn’t there been that young lad who made a nuclear bomb in the garden shed? The good folk of Milethorpe had no wish to be transformed into Three Mile Island. Of course, that was only a silly joke – wasn’t it?

     The thing was, though Ellen didn’t flaunt it – flaunting wasn’t her way – nor did she make much of an effort to hide it. Her kitchen window was generally open and though she did have nets at it, they were the fairly thin and diaphanous ones that were already there and far more for conventional and cosmetic than for any obscure or obscuring purpose. Various bubbling noises could be heard that you just knew didn’t come from a pan or a kettle, and – well, the silhouettes and shadow-play just weren’t those you’d see in a regular kitchen. And then those smells. 

     They wondered whether they ought to say something to the owner of Ivy Cottage, Miles Packham. He was a property developer whose offices were on the same street as the law practice where Ben worked, and though the two men weren’t exactly friends, they had professional dealings with each other, and sometimes met up for a drink at lunchtime, and sat on some of the same charity and trade bodies. They got on pleasantly enough, and Ben was seconded to have a “delicate word” as Diana put it with Miles. Miles was the kind of man who always heard someone out before expressing an opinion and then weighed his words. “I’ll admit she struck me as a bit eccentric,” he said, “Though I’d be hard-pushed to say why. But she had excellent references, and provided a bond and paid the deposit no questions asked, and if anything she’s been ahead on her rent. If there was any anti-social behaviour …..”

     “Well, there isn’t, to be frank,” Ben said. “She’s very polite and quiet and baked a wonderful cake for the fete,” his mouth still watered a little as he remembered it. Diana had any number of talents but baking, as she would have admitted herself, wasn’t one of them.

     “I mean – I grant you it seems a bit odd. But unless she’s using anything illegal or dangerous, then I don’t really see what I can do about it. I’ll see if I can find a convincing pretext for dropping into the cottage if you like, but I’ll tell you one thing now, Ben, I’m not going to sneak in while she’s out. I would only do that in – well, in considerably more extreme circumstances than this.”

     “That’s fair enough,” Ben nodded at once. 

     “Try to see it my way, Ben. I know I don’t live in the village, though I often think I’d like to, but folk there have been good to me, and I know that’s not always the case when it comes to second home owners. I’d hate the thought that someone in Ivy Cottage were making people feel uncomfortable and worried. But it’s not as if Ellen has been – dancing naked in the garden,” (this evoked thoughts of Rainbow that Ben hurriedly sidelined) “or playing acid rock at full volume in the small hours.”

     “I know, Miles. Don’t get me wrong, we like her, though I wouldn’t say any of us have got to know her that well. We certainly don’t want her evicted or anything like that.”

     As Miles and Ben were having their conversation, Ellen was having a conversation, too, in the kitchen with her cats Newton and Descartes, or Mewton and Descats as they preferred to be called. “It’s frustrating,” she said, with a sigh, “I feel as if I’m so close to the solution and you advised me that a change of scene might help, but I can’t quite make it work! Any advice?”

     “I purr, therefore I am,” said Descats, loftily.

     “Yes, well, that’s not terribly helpful,” Mewton, always the more practical of the two observed, “And you know you can rely on me to see the gravity of the situation.”

     “Very droll,” Descats said, though he had heard the joke before, and so had Ellen. 

     “People would have taken me more seriously centuries ago,” Ellen lamented. “But nowadays nobody wants to know about alchemy or think it’s just something to put in a children’s book or make some daytime TV documentary about.”

     “They might have taken you more seriously,” Descats pointed out, “Or you might have been burnt at the stake.”

     “And us with you,” Mewton said, scratching his ear the way he always did when he was uneasy but didn’t want anyone to think he was. 

     “Sometimes I wonder why I bother, but then I think, well, it’s not all about turning base metals into gold, is it? It’s about – finding cures, and elixirs.”

     As was their wont sometimes, Mewton and Descats retreated to the corner and held their own private conversation. Just to make sure they kept the upper paw, they had learnt to speak and understand human language perfectly, but devoted as they were to Ellen in their feline way, they hadn’t yet deigned to teach her their language, though sometimes she was tantalisingly on the edge of understanding. Or at any rate, of understanding what they wanted her to. 

     She was certainly wise enough to know that contrary to what some cats’ companions (Descats and Mewton had made their opinion of the term “cat owners” abundantly clear) thought, they most definitely weren’t just talking about their next meal. Or not all the time.

     This time, it seemed, that they were going to make her privy to their conversation. Even before they did so, she noticed the way they touched chins and twitched tails in unison, and then jumped onto the bench on either side of her. “We have a suggestion,” Mewton said.

     “And we think it’s a good one,” Descats added. They had no time for false modesty. “We know someone who may be able to help you. He is very intelligent and very wise, though he has an irritating habit of talking in riddles sometimes.”

    “And he unlocked many secrets and has always been ahead of his time,” Mewton said. “I still have my doubts about some of his notions, but think it’s at least worth giving it a try. Would you like another cat?”

     “Well, I don’t see why not, though I’ll have to check with Miles. But the lease does allow pets – and you can spare me that disapproving look, it’s what most people call them and you may as well accept it – and doesn’t specify how many.”

     Before she even called Miles he called her, having decided that “The annual check of the electricity meter to make sure you’re not being overcharged” was lame but plausible. He was relieved when she said at once that it would be fine, and was able to report to Ben that all seemed absolutely as it should be, and she had not attempted to put her equipment away, but said – and this was plausible without being lame – that she was a collector of herbs and was making some essences for essential oils and the like, making the most of her time in the country. “Diana likes that kind of thing,” he said.

     “Then of course I’ll make her a present of some, if you tell me what she especially likes.” That should be easy enough to do between more important work. “But Miles, I do want to ask you a favour. Would you mind if I had another cat here?”

     Technically the limit on pets was two, but the cats had caused nobody any trouble whatsoever, nor scratched, nor stained a single thing, so he agreed readily.

     That evening a plump black cat arrived at Ivy Cottage. His name was Copurrnicus.