Satan's Retirement Cottage In The Cotswolds

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

The former Mr. Brian Lucifer had retired from his job as Prince of Darkness after serving eleven thousand nine hundred and fifty one years, and the Grand Satanic Council had revoked his infernal powers and granted him and his family mortal form. Brian, who was now plain old Brian Smith, moved to the Cotswolds with his wife Mandy and their three children, Alex (formerly known as Scabrous), Kevin (who had always been known as Kevin) and Peter (formerly known as Flatulence)

Brian had hoped to move to the South of France and spend his autumn years basking in the sun with his family, but to his dismay his pension wouldn't even nearly stretch that far. The Smiths' bought a scruffy, semi-derelict cottage a mile and a half from the run-down, not particularly picturesque village of Bilgewater for a song because the property needed an awful lot of work to render it habitable. Hopefully, Brian reflected, they would have enough money left to do the place up – if the worst came to the worst he guessed he would have to find himself a job.

“What do you think of Swallow Cottage then, peeps?” the former Mr. Lucifer said to his nearest and dearest when the estate agent took them to view the property. “It's a bit rough, but as you know I'm a keen DIY buff, so I'll soon get it shipshape and Bristol fashion.”

“It's tiny and poky and not very pleasant at all,” Alex grumbled, looking up at the gaping hole in the roof. “And it's pissing it down with rain - Hell was hell, but this place is even worse. You told us we'd be moving into a nice châteaux in the South of France where it's nearly always nice and sunny, you lying get.”

“I wasn't lying, son,” Brian tried to explain. “I was just expressing my expectations. I wanted to go to the South of France too, but we couldn't bloody well afford it. Look, eventually we can put another bedroom in the loft and extend the living room into the old pigsty and storage room that's joined onto the side of the house - we already have planning permission, and that'll give us stacks more room. Once I get the garden sorted, stick a nice Koi pond in and some winding paths and start growing bonsai trees, prize chrysanths and rambling roses it'll look absolutely beautiful. We can even have a vegetable garden, there's plenty of space.”

“You should have got yourself a better job so that we could afford to buy a house somewhere warmer, dad,” Peter said. “You were His Satanic Majesty for eleven thousand nine hundred and fifty one years, surely the tight bastards on the Demonic Council could have given you a better pension. This place has only got two bedrooms, so us kids'll all have to kip together. And it's damp and mouldy!”

“To be 'onest, dad, oi fink it's shit,” Kevin said in his broad Brummie accent.

“Oh, you think it's shit, do you, Kevin?” Brian replied. “Why aren't I even remotely surprised? What about you, Mandy, what have you got to say about this delightful place – don't you think its got possibilities?”

“Basically I think it's shit too, Brian – you're willing to pay seventy grand for what as far as I can see is little more than a pile of rubble, but it looks like you've made up your mind, doesn't it?”

“Lovely. Bloody lovely!”

*************************

Five months later, once the paperwork had been signed and the deeds had been handed over, the Smiths moved into their new house; or rather they moved into a tiny, leaky caravan parked on the back garden that Brian had paid forty quid for – it was a bit worse for wear, but it would have to do while he made the house habitable. “The farmer I bought this caravan from was Welsh,” he told his family as he unhooked the tatty abomination from the back of his Skoda. “And so was the lady at the shop in the village, and the secretary I spoke to at the local school when I was signing the kids up. Can you believe it - isn't that an amazing coincidence?”

First of all Brian replaced the rotten beams in the roof and re-tiled it with reclaimed slates that he bought from a salvage yard, then he tackled the rewiring, plastered the interior walls and re-pointed the limestone outer walls. He fitted new doors and double glazing and put in fancy kitchen units that he bought at an auction. Finally, after over a year's work, he painted the interior magnolia and white and put up a bit of burgundy flock wallpaper on the chimney breast in the living room.

“It's amazing,” he said to his long-suffering wife. “The old codger who owns the reclaimed building materials yard is Welsh too, and so is the woman at the painting and decorating shop. I can't say I blame folk migrating to the Cotswolds from Wales, though, because it's a right shit-hole – the best thing to come out of Wales is the A458. Or so I've heard, I've never actually been there.....”

“That can come down for a fucking start,” Mandy said as soon as she saw the flock wallpaper. “What will the neighbours think?”

“We haven't got any neighbours, my dear, it's a mile and a half to Bilgewater.” Brian said, doing his best not to lose his rag. “Look, I've decorated the rest of this house following your frankly fascist instructions, you goose-stepping biddy, so surely I'm entitled to a nice bit of burgundy flock on the chimney breast.”

“It's shit, dad, tek it down,” Kevin mumbled.

“Oh, all right then! I'll take it down and replace it with whatever monstrosity your wicked hearts desire – it'll probably be something with huge, gaudy flowers knowing you lot.”

“And I want a dildo rail,” Mandy said.

“I, er, I think you mean a dado rail, my love.”

“No, I said I want a dildo rail and I mean I want a frigging dildo rail.”

“I see.....”

*************************

A few days later Brian finished the wallpapering (Mandy and the kids had chosen a horrendous pink, turquoise and black fuchsia print) and fitted the dildo rails. He was just about to hang the Hieronymus Bosch Garden of Earthly Delights triptych that he had meticulously hand-painted from pictures in books during the long evenings stuck in the caravan with only a portable TV for entertainment when the Eastenders theme tune assaulted his ears - it was the new door chime that Mandy had chosen. “Who the hell can that be?” he muttered as he opened the front door, and there was a crowd of perhaps twenty people standing outside in the pouring rain. “Yes?” he said. “If you're Jehovah's witnesses you can fuck right off, we're confirmed Satanists.”

“Hello, boyo,” the man at the front of the throng said, handing Brian a bottle of Chardonnay and a huge bouquet of flowers. “You must be Mr. Smith. We're from the village, look you, we've come to welcome you and your family to Gwaelodion dŵr – we didn't come earlier because we heard it on the grapevine that you were very, very, very busy doing up Swallow Cottage.”

“You've come to welcome us to where? I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that.”

“Gwaelodion dŵr, the village in the valley, boyo.”

“I, er, I think you must have lost your way ever so slightly, my Welsh friends,” Brian said. “The village in the valley is called Bilgewater.”

“No no, boyo! That's the nasty English name, it only appears on old maps, and we certainly don't use it in the valleys. Gwaelodion dŵr sounds much better, don';t you think? I'm Evans the milk, this is Evans the grocer, Evans the Carpenter, Evans the Postman, Evans the dirty old slapper, Evans the adulteror, Evans the crack whore, Evans the sheep-shagger, Evans the tramp, Evans the village idiot, Evans the -”

“I'm not sure I understand what's going on here,” Brian said, thoughtfully rubbing his chin. “What are all you Welsh people doing here? This is the Cotswolds, not the sodding valleys.”

“Oh no it's not, boyo, this is the edge of the Brecon Beacons near the village of Gwaelodion dŵr, some forty miles north of sunny Merthr Tydfil.”

“Oh yes it bloody well is – this is the Cotswolds, I bought a house in the fucking Cotswolds!”

“You must be mistaken, boyo,” Evans the dirty old slapper said. “This is definitely Wales. It looks like you've been had.....”

“It looks like I've been had? I'm the Master of Lies, no one on Earth could possible con me!”

“You mean the former Master of Lies,” Evans the sheep-shagger said. “You retired and assumed human form and human gullibility, and Jimmy Savile took your place, it was all over the bloody news, look you.”

“I see,” Brian said. “I've been had..... But I don't like sodding Wales!”

“I don't loik Wales either, dad,” Kevin said from behind him. “It's pissin' down all the toim, and it's decidedly shit.”