A Bitter Feast(60)
“He comes down here sometimes,” said Joe, surprising her. “For a drink. Likes the quiet. I keep a bottle of single malt set aside just for him.”
Stepping into the single room, Melody inhaled the scent of fresh-ground coffee. There were no more cobwebs. A kettle simmered on a gas cookstove set atop a long waist-high wooden bench on one wall. Beside the cookstove sat a cafetière and a metal contraption that looked like an oversize pepper mill. “Oh,” she exclaimed, when Joe twisted it open and dumped coffee into the cafetière, “it’s a grinder.”
“I’m not uncivilized,” Joe said tartly.
“No, of course not.” This was certainly obvious from her quick glance round the room. It was as orderly as any army quarters, but considerably more colorful. Crockery, utensils, and pots and pans were neatly stacked on the workbench, alongside straw baskets filled with just-harvested fruits and veg. There were apples and pears, a bowl of blackberries, cabbage and carrots and Brussels sprouts and broccoli, and a large butternut squash. She wondered how he could possibly cook all of it with such meager equipment.
A single bed on the opposite side of the room was covered with another bright tartan rug. There was also a copper tub with some sort of shower rig suspended over it, a sturdy oak table with two chairs, and in a niche created by two half-height bookcases, a toilet. A beautifully designed camping lantern hung from a long hook in the ceiling. “I’d say you have everything you need here. How does the toilet work?” she added, curious.
“Composting. That was my biggest expense, but it beats a chamber pot.” Joe sounded as though her interest had thawed him a bit.
While he made the coffee, Melody perused his eclectic selection of books. There were at least half a dozen on Edwardian garden design, including one faceup on the top of the bookcase about the restoration of the Jekyll garden at Upton Grey in Hampshire. There were books on philosophy and history, and a good selection of classic novels. Most of the volumes looked secondhand. A small table at the head of the bed held a battery-powered lantern.
Joe, who she assumed was about her own age, had never said anything about his education. “Did you do a university course?” Melody asked, tracing the title on a quite nice volume of T. S. Eliot’s collected poems.
Pushing down the plunger in the cafetière, Joe shook his head. “No time, no money. But my father taught history and philosophy in Czechoslovakia—as it was then. So books were always treasured in our house. And without electricity there’s not much else to do here in the evenings,” he added with another faint smile.
“It sounds quite idyllic. Waldenesque.”
Joe poured the coffee into two stoneware mugs. “Not so much in the winter, when it’s dark early and you have to sleep in your long johns. Milk?” he asked, holding up her mug.
“You have milk? Oh, sorry.” Melody colored as Joe frowned. She’d offended him again.
“Of course I have milk.” He reached under his work top and lifted the lid on an insulated cool box, pulling out a glass bottle of milk, organic, with cream on top, which, at her nod, he poured into her coffee.
“I keep the ice blocks in the freezer at the house,” he said with a shrug. “So I’m not really all that self-sufficient. I charge my mobile there, and do most of my washing.”
Melody took the offered mug. “Self-sufficient enough, I’d say.” Melody cringed at the thought of her life, filled with ready meals and takeaway. She really must make more of an effort. But it was hard on her own—although apparently not all that hard for Joe—and the “on her own” brought her round again to Andy.
“Thanks,” she said quickly, cradling the mug in her hands and inhaling the steam rising from it. Searching for a change of subject, she said, “I didn’t see you when I was here the last time, in August. Mum said you were on holiday. Where was it—Prague?”
This only earned her another frown. “Yeah. Near there. My mum insisted we visit some long-lost relatives, when I should have been here. Too much to do in the gardens that time of year.”
Leaving his drink on the workbench, Joe picked up one of the chairs and nodded towards the porch. “Let’s sit outside. It’s too fine to be in, and these days won’t last.” There was an elegiac note in his tone. Melody picked up his cup and followed him, intrigued.
She supposed she could understand, she thought as she sat beside him and gazed at the sun sparkling on the river, how the loss of these golden autumn days could seem like a personal deprivation.
When Melody had tasted her coffee, which was delicious, Joe said, “So what can I do for you?”
“Well, you’ve given me a respite, for starters,” she said with a smile. “And I really don’t want to intrude on your time, but my friend was wanting a tour of the garden, and I thought you were certainly better qualified than me.”
“Harry Potter?”
Melody grinned. “Doug. Yes. I’m the one got him started on the gardening thing, so I feel responsible.”
“I thought you didn’t garden?”
“I don’t. I live in a mansion block. But Doug, he’d bought a little house in Putney with a derelict back garden. And things were sort of rough for him last spring, so I thought . . . you know, it would be therapy. But it’s turned into a bit of a monster.”