Wyld Dreamers

into a room. The sound of splashing.
Amy sits on the toilet. The room swirls with dotted light from the stained-glass mobile that hangs like a mushroom above her head. On the door, a framed poster for an exhibition shows a half-naked man on a green bed. No carpet, no neatly stored bottle of toilet cleaner, no toilet paper. Luckily there’s a used tissue in the pocket of the dressing gown. She washes her hands and face in the cracked sink. Back in bed, her cold feet wake David. Feigning fury, he rolls over to cover her with his body. Pinning her down, he blows kisses on her neck. She is jubilant.
Half an hour later, Julian kicks open the door and comes in carrying mugs of tea. He is dressed in what looked like a woman’s nightie; his hairy legs stick out from the bottom. ‘No time for all that now,’ he says, ‘we’ve got to get going. Seymour is arriving soon with Simon. Let’s go see the cottage. Find yourselves some boots, it’ll be damp.’
Cutting through a gap in the hedge into a field of chest-high nettles and hummocky grass they find it, a dilapidated two-up two-down stone building with a brick lean-to on one side. Slates are missing from the roof and parts of the building’s exterior reveal what looks like straw and mud walls.
‘Someone lived here until about just before Seymour bought the place,’ said Julian, water pooling around his boots. ‘Pipe cracked last winter, that’s why it’s soggy here below the window.’
He shoves his shoulder against the front door. The wood resists briefly, then gives way. They dip their heads to step inside. A steep wooden staircase leads up from the hall. There is a sitting room with a fireplace and beyond it, another smaller room with a set of backstairs. The ceilings in both rooms are bowed, the walls streaked with dirt. There’s a lean-to kitchen and bathroom. Mould grows on the walls. It smells damp.
Julian nods as Amy starts up the stairs. ‘Yes, have a look. Stairs and floors are safe, that’s been checked.’
‘Needs just a little bit of attention,’ she hears David and Julian jeering.
None of three rooms upstairs are large. The middle one has windows on both sides. How pretty it once might have looked. She wonders who might have slept here. Was a baby been born, had someone died, perhaps? Would the ghosts fade once it was painted? Brushing away cobwebs, she works at a window latch. She can see the farmhouse where she slept last night. Built from stone, the square building has windows on either side of the grand front door, a grey-slate roof and big chimneys. Hard to believe that she, Amy Taylor, is staying in such a place. She brushes away the thought that she lied to her parents to be here.
In the cottage garden, Stella is sitting on a branch of a tree. Her long dress spreads around her like a sail. The girl could be model from the magazines that Amy sometimes flicks through in the newsagents. She exudes an untouchable air of exotica even in the way she breathes. Amy feels a flash of envy: why can’t Stella wear trousers and an anorak like she does? Amy chastises herself for being small-minded. Stella simply suits the surroundings better than she does.
In the single room at the far end of the cottage, there’s a set of wooden stairs to the room below. Picking up a brown curl of newspaper from the floor, she sees a story about ‘a Country Show in 1959’. She waves it at David.
He is craning his neck to look up the chimney trying to look as though he knows what he’s doing or what he’s looking for. She touches his shoulder. He turns and taking her in his arms, rests his chin on her head. ‘Amazing place, eh?’
‘Seymour talks about doing the place up. Though who’d want to live in this dump, I can’t imagine,’ Julian jokes.
‘It could be made lovely, surely?’ She looks around.
‘For spiders perhaps. Want some?’ Julian offers her a joint.
She shakes her head and wanders outside. Someone had once tended the garden here for there are the remains of a broken path and rose bushes and a plant she recalls her father called ‘a butterfly bush’. How pleased he would be to know that she remembers something he taught her. She tugs a plant she thinks is a weed.
Stella brushes past. Barely glancing at Amy, she murmurs; ‘I can hear a car coming up the drive. It’s probably Seymour. Tell Julian I’ve gone to meet him.’
Amy goes back into the cottage. The boys are larking about in the kitchen. ‘I think your father’s arrived, Julian. Stella says she’s gone over to meet him.’
‘Right-o. Okay you two, prepare to meet Seymour Stratton.’
On the drive is a white Jaguar car. A man is reaching into the boot and pulls two bottles of wine. It’s Simon Webster, a university friend of Julian and David’s whom Amy once met on an anti-war march in London. He has those angelic boyish looks that won’t change much with age, fair hair and a shy smile. But it’s the leather-jacketed man in his late forties whose she’s more interested in. This must be Seymour, Julian’s father. Wild curls and a pointed nose, his heeled boots make him only an inch or two taller than Stella. The woman stands next to him shaking her hair like a starlet preparing for the camera. A delicious wave of schadenfreude. Stella reveals overly-large teeth when she smiles.
Amy and David follow Julian.
‘Julian, my boy, how are you doing?’ Father and son grasp arms. ‘So these are the friends you’ve been telling me about.’
‘Hallo Seymour, meet David Bond. He and I were on the same degree course.’
It is an accurate statement. Whether they will both graduate is not certain. David would be content with a second class degree but Julian, who spent much of the summer term away due to poor