Bonchurch is the Isle of Wight setting of Patrick Hazlewood’s cottage, where Marion Taylor and Tom Burgess spend the first four nights of a half-term holiday before Patrick joins them. The village’s narrow lane and the cottage’s modest, uncomfortable rooms shape Marion’s recollection of a trip that offers the newly married couple time alone, while exposing the gap between the holiday she imagined and the place they find.

Setting and the cottage

The cottage stands down a gloomy, narrow lane in Bonchurch, close to the sea but not close enough for a view of the coast. Marion had assumed Patrick’s use of the word cottage was an understatement, perhaps disguising a mansion or a well-appointed seaside villa. Instead, the building is small and close-feeling: it has two bedrooms, including a double room with a sloping ceiling and sagging bed, an overgrown front garden, and a privy at the back. Its tiny kitchen has no electricity, though it has gas, and the windows are small and grubby.

The lane and its atmosphere

Wild garlic dominates Marion’s impression of the approach. Its smell rises from banks of green leaves and white flowers in the heat, and remains perceptible inside the cottage among the odours of damp rugs and gas. Marion recalls that the smell nearly made her gag, comparing it to overripe sweat; she notes that she later became fond of garlic, but at the time the lane made the village feel oppressive rather than picturesque. The cottage’s proximity to the sea therefore does not provide an open coastal view: the remembered setting is defined instead by its enclosed rooms and the powerful smell along the lane.

Place in the holiday

The cottage is offered as an alternative to four days in Weymouth. Marion agrees despite her misgivings because she and Tom are living at Tom’s parents’ house while awaiting a police house, where the lack of a double bed has placed her in Sylvie’s old room. The holiday promises four nights alone with Tom before Patrick arrives for the final three days to show them around the area.

During the sunny first part of the week, the couple take ordinary holiday outings, walking at Blackgang Chine, seeing a Punch and Judy show at Ventnor, and visiting the model village at Godshill. Back at the cottage, its sagging bed brings them into close physical contact at night. Marion remembers their first evening there as a repeat of their wedding night: the sex is less painful, though brief, and she hopes they can make their intimacy more satisfying. Bonchurch thus holds both the discomfort of the cottage and the private closeness Marion seeks during the early days of her marriage.