The Last Letter from Juliet

by Melanie Hudson

  ‘Oh, go on then.’

  She jumped up and opened the larder.

  ‘But to get another dog now …’ she said, finding the biscuit barrel, closing the door, placing it on the table and sitting down. ‘I don’t think I’ve enough time left. I’m eighty next and I’m not as steady on my feet as I used to be.’ She let out a laugh. ‘It’ll be my own box up there soon, and I wouldn’t want to go before the dog … wouldn’t be fair. No, it’s time to put my walking boots away. I’ll give them to charity.’

  Charity? They were falling apart.

  ‘Actually,’ she crossed the room to pick up the boots. ‘– what size are you? You could have them. There’s loads of miles left in these little beauties.’

  ‘I’m a six.’

  ‘Perfect! Take them with you when you go.’ She put the boots back on the floor under the lead. ‘But listen to me, moaning on …’ She poured the tea. ‘Happy bloody Christmas, eh? Oh, by the way. Did Gerald say anything to you about the gin?’

  Now we were talking!

  The teapot was returned to the table.

  ‘Gin?’

  ‘Gin.’

  I remembered Gerald’s letter.

  ‘I think he said there would be gin. Why?’

  Fenella pressed her hands on the table to push herself up. I swear the woman never sat still for two minutes straight. She nodded her head towards the door.

  ‘Follow me.’

  I put down my biscuit and followed on. Fenella’s small back garden was blessed with a twee stone barn. She took a flowerpot off the top of a milk pail and delved inside the pail. Having found what she was looking for – a key – she turned the key in the lock and opened the dilapidated barn door (which was so rotten the key was almost an irrelevance) and stepped inside. With a pride on her face usually associated with a new mother at a Christening, she pulled an old bed sheet away and revealed, of all things, a copper gin still and behind it, a small-scale bottling plant.

  ‘Meet Maggie …’ she said, patting the shining copper still with affection. ‘She’s the crankiest old boiler in Cornwall, but I do love her.’

  I shook my head. Amazed.

  ‘You make gin?’

  ‘Every year – Christmas Spirit, I call it.’ She tapped her nose. ‘Made from a secret family recipe. Not allowed to sell it, a course. Special friends only.’

  ‘How much do you make? How many bottles, I mean?’

  She hunched her shoulders and stuck out her bottom lip, thinking.

  ‘I suppose I usually clear about … five-hundred bottles?’

  My eyebrows shot through the barn roof. Good. God. Just how many friends did she have?

  Fenella threw the sheet back over Maggie, walked out of the barn and closed the door behind us.

  ‘Can’t be too careful,’ she said, glancing around furtively before snapping the lock shut and leaning into me with a whisper. ‘There’s folk in this village would literally kill for this gin! Been desperate to get their hands on the recipe for years!’

  Fully in cahoots with the village bootlegger, now, I nodded. ‘Oh, I bet they would!’

  We ambled back into the kitchen just as the fridge whirred up and the kitchen light came on.

  ‘Ah, finally. It’s back on. Thing is,’ she said, not pausing to take a breath, ‘There won’t be any gin this year if I can’t get a fresh supply of …’ She sniffed and her nose twitched.

  ‘Of?’

  She tapped her nose again. ‘My secret ingredient.’

  ‘Which is?’

  She looked over her shoulder out of the kitchen window (you clearly couldn’t be too careful in this rogue part of Cornwall) and then glanced back at me.

  ‘Promise you’ll keep it a secret?’

  I crossed my heart. ‘I promise.’

  She grabbed the kettle again. The tea just never stopped.

  ‘It’s Seaweed. Now then. What do you think of that?’

  I was pretty sure seaweed was put into other several, quite trendy, gins but chose to keep that little morsel to myself.

  ‘Seaweed?’ I confirmed, my eyes wide, playing along.

  ‘Not just any old seaweed, mind you. I use a special kelp that’s only found around here, on the other side of the Angles.’

  ‘Ah, I know all about them,’ I said, feeling like a local. ‘They’re the little islands in the bay.’

  Fenella nodded.

  ‘Thing is, I can only harvest my …’ she winked ‘… special ingredient, on the night of a spring tide, because it grows deep. Doesn’t lay around on the beach like your common or garden kelp. Gerald normally takes out his canoe and gets it for me – I need to use it fresh, see, that’s the secret.’

  ‘And when is the next low tide – the spring one?’

  ‘Tonight. And with Gerald away …’

  ‘With Gerald away?’ I asked.

  ‘He said you would go.’

  ‘I would go?’

  ‘When he dashed off, he said, not to worry, Katherine’s done lots of canoeing, she’ll do it.’

  Lots? I’d done a five-day course in the Lake District ten years ago with James and his students and hated it.

  ‘Well, it’s got to be done by someone,’ she said (quite forcefully I thought, considering I was a guest). ‘I make a batch for the old folks’ Christmas party every year, and I wouldn’t want to let them down. It’s for the forgotten ones.’

  ‘The forgotten ones?’

  ‘Those with no family, or family that don’t bother with them. I sometimes think it’s only my gin that keeps them going. It takes three days to make, so …’ She tailed off – literally – by disappearing into the hallway and returned holding a wetsuit. ‘This should fit you.’

  Holy crap.

  I looked into Fenella’s watery eyes. They didn’t meet mine but travelled towards the little box on the table. If she hadn’t nailed it with the story about the abandoned elderly, then she definitely had me with the dead dog. I glanced at the harbour through the window. There was still a bit of a swell going on, even in the shelter of the harbour.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that …’ she said, following my gaze. ‘You’d be amazed at how quickly the sea calms down – with a southing breeze and a calm moon, she’ll be as flat as a fart by teatime!’

  I sighed. Defeated.

  ‘OK, I’ll give it a go.’

  Fenella was about to make more tea but I stood up to leave. She followed me into the hallway and handed me my coat and the walking boots.

  ‘Thanks so much for the food,’ I said with a smile. ‘You’re an absolute life saver.’ I put on my hat. ‘What time shall I come back, later?’

  ‘Seven o clock all right for you? The rest of the village will be tucked up in front of the telly or at the pub by then! Stray tourists don’t matter, not that there are many around this year, what with not bothering with the light festival and everything.’

  ‘Seven is fine.’

  I stepped towards the door and put on my gloves.

  ‘Oh, before you go,’ she said, suddenly less bright. ‘You wouldn’t do me another little favour would you?’

  I looked at her, standing there in her tabard and Christmas jumper. She really was such a sweet woman. I felt like I’d known her for a year, not an hour. I smiled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Put Monty on Mother’s knee, will you? I haven’t had the heart to do it, but I think it’s time.’

  I crossed the room, picked up Monty and placed him in his final resting place, on the kitchen shelf.

  ‘There you go, Monty,’ I said, ‘Time for a little rest.’

  I turned to look at the dog bed by the Aga.

  ‘What about everything else … the bed, and the lead and everything. Do you want me to tidy them away?’

  Fenella looked around and fought very hard to hold back the tears.

  ‘Not just yet, love,’ she said, glancing towards Monty’s photograph. ‘One thing at a time, eh?’

  I thought of James and the th
ings I had left littered around the house. I put my arms around her.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘There’s no hurry. No hurry at all.’

  Feeling my arms around her, Fenella began to cry – big heaving sobs of grief. Because that’s the thing with grief, it’s like the sand that gets stuck between your toes after the beach, you can never brush it all off in one go. And just when you think you got rid of it all, a little grain will still be there, catching on your sandal. One minute you’re dunking a Wagon Wheel talking about gin, and the next thing someone unexpectedly puts their arms around you and you feel a bit of sand rub your toe and it’s back to square one.

  She set me off.

  ‘I’m so very lonely,’ I suddenly confessed, still leaning forwards, not sure whether I was holding Fenella or if she was holding me.

  Fenella nodded into my chest and stepped back. She grabbed the warm tea towel off of the Aga rail and dabbed my eyes and then hers. It was quite a congested tea towel by this point.

  ‘You’re too young to be a widow. Far too young. But listen … we might be a bunch of cantankerous, argumentative old so-and-so’s hereabouts, but you’ve come to the right place. No one is ever on their own at Angels Cove, Katherine. Never. You’ll see that I’m right. Now why don’t you go for a good walk and clear your head a bit. You’ve got your new boots now.’

  I found a stray hanky in my coat pocket and blew my nose.

  ‘Walk? I wouldn’t know where to go?’

  ‘Any path out of the village will take you somewhere lovely, and anyway, it doesn’t matter where you go, any dog will tell you that. Just sniff the air and enjoy it.’

  As I turned the door handle and prepared to step outside, I realised that the moment I rested dear Monty’s ashes on the shelf, something inside both of us had clicked, the energy had changed. There was a sudden feeling of … of moving forwards. The door opened and as I took two steps out of the house the sun took two steps in and flooded Fenella with light. She looked just like an angel, and, in a way, she was. Stepping away from the cottage, in this strange village miles away from home and a little unsure of where to go, I thought suddenly of Edward and realised Fenella was right. It didn’t matter in which direction I walked, all that mattered was to walk with purpose, even if the destination was a vague one. And as I walked away from the house not really sure of where I was headed, I felt the eyes of Juliet looking down on me and wondered if she was with me, somehow, and if – just perhaps – in the passing of that moment in Fenella’s kitchen, I, too, had taken a step towards becoming a coddiwompler.

  Chapter 13

  Katherine

  Noel and Percy

  I walked up hill, past the school, the village hall and the pub, half-expecting one of the apostrophe vigilantes to dash out of an alleyway and offer me a bribe, but I didn’t see a single soul. I couldn’t help but glance – OK, stare – though the cottage windows as I walked (stick a tree in your window and you’re asking to be ogled, is my opinion) but most of the cottages seemed to be holiday lets with Cornish Secrets or Cornish Hideaways written on a plaque by the door and were empty. There were a few twinkling trees but absolutely no Santa Stop Here! signs in the gardens and no fake snow daubed round the edges of the windows. The website for Angels Cove I had googled the week before portrayed a different village entirely, one of sparkling lights, mulled wine and lots of people wondering around, smiling inanely. For a village that was famous for its Christmas Eve lights festival and all-round festive spirit, the whole effect was a bit of a damn squib. They really had thrown the towel in this Christmas.

  I was just about to turn tail and head back to the cottage when Juliet flashed into my mind. I looked down the street and imagined her, walking to the village hall with Edward at Christmas. The view of the village from the top of the hill would have been more or less the same then as it was now. She would have walked with the same image painted in her mind. I liked that, it peeled away the years. The field where she landed the Tiger Moth would be just up the road, too, and I suddenly wanted to stand there, in the place where she stood, to find the exact place she met Edward, the place she fell in love, to absorb myself in someone else’s love story for a while.

  I marched up the road (Fenella’s boots really were very comfy) which was tree-lined, meandering and steep. After ten minutes the woodland gave way to a wide expanse of fields. I stopped for a moment to catch my breath and take in the panoramic (if breezy) view of several miles of grazing land that gave way to the sea cliffs and, ultimately, the sea. The fields were ordered to perfection by a patchwork of Cornish stone hedges. A five-bar gate with a stile next to it appeared to my left. A signpost for the coastal path pointed over the stile into the field. I climbed over the stile and followed a well-worn groove in the grass. After backtracking towards the coast for a few minutes, the footpath began to follow the cliff edge. Veering away from the path I crossed the field to a dilapidated barn in the far opposite corner. Could this have been Juliet’s barn? Enormous doors banged in the breeze. Large round bails covered in black plastic had been stacked at the back of the barn. I leant against one of the bails and thought again of Juliet and Edward, how they had pushed her Tiger Moth in here that day in December when an unstoppable process began. The process of falling in love, an involuntary, nonsensical occurrence unmatched for its utter loveliness in the whole spectrum of human emotion.

  Suddenly overcome with a wave of tiredness, with my eyes closed and enjoying the shelter of the barn, I decided to have a little lie down across the hay bales. I awoke some time later to the sound of the barn door banging in the wind and the feeling of a very wet nose resting on my face. I opened my eyes and found myself looking straight into a large and shiny brown eye.

  I shrieked, which startled the cow who jumped backwards, which isn’t easy when you’re on four legs not two and weigh roughly the same as a small car. Having brought a few of her friends into the barn with her, the cow snorted before glancing at her pals as if to say, ‘We’ve got a right one here, ladies!’ I stirred myself, patted my new friend on the head, pushed past the lot of them and stepped out into the field.

  An elderly man with a purposeful stride, wearing a red waterproof jacket with a white fur-lined hood and a woolly hat was crossing the field and heading towards me. I stood with the cows and waited as we watched him approach, our heads cocked collectively to the right. His beard was fluffy and sparklingly white. He stopped a few feet away to pat one of the more inquisitive cows before kissing another one on the head, which I thought was possibly edging towards over-friendly. He turned to me while continuing to fuss the cows as if they were a pack of Labradors. To be fair, they loved it.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. His smile was warm – genuine – the sort of smile you save for an old friend that’s been out of your life for a while. He was the spitting image of someone I recognised … someone famous …

  ‘You must be Katherine,’ he said, slightly out of breath and smiling. ‘Fenella phoned and said to look out for you on my walk. She knows I like a good stretch of the legs at this time of day. I’m Noel.’ He shook my hand with a firm yank. ‘Terrible news about George.’

  I nodded in agreement and we made pleasant chatter about the weather until a cow from the back of the pack moved forward and nudged his arm.

  ‘Hello, you,’ he said, rubbing her head with both hands. ‘Did I leave you out? I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Are you heading back to the village?’ I asked. ‘Because if you are, would you mind walking across the field with me? These cows are lovely, but a bit … over-friendly.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ he said, offering me his arm. ‘And how do you fancy a spot of late lunch at mine, it’s only cold meats and a bit of Christmas chutney, but there’s something quite particular I’d like to talk to you about … something Gerald said you might help me with …’

  I paused and thought of Gerald’s warning – beware Noel and Percy!

  ‘And would that particular something having anything to do w
ith a rogue apostrophe, by any chance?’

  Surprisingly, he shook his head.

  ‘No, no. Not that – although it is very important to me, obviously. No, this something else, completely different issue – quite, delicate, if you know what I mean …’ He stopped walking. The cows and I stopped too and waited for him to carry on, which he did, after about thirty seconds, which is a long time to stand waiting for a man to take his turn in conversation in an exposed Cornish field with the wind on your face. ‘It’s … well, I’ve got a favour to ask … something a little bit … sensitive.’ His eyes brightened. ‘And Gerald did say you’d be happy to help. Didn’t he mention it?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘No, I’m afraid he rushed off rather suddenly.’

  His countenance fell. ‘Of course, of course. Dear George.’

  I took his arm again.

  ‘But that doesn’t matter. How about we head back to the village and you can tell me all about this favour over a nice cup of tea.’

  He pulled a sleeve back to check the time on his watch.

  ‘Or … as it’s over the yard arm. How about a tot of something more festive?’ He winked and leant in. ‘Gerald said you like a tipple, and I saved some of Fenella’s gin from last year …’

  Gerald was in for a bit of a chiding on his return. Was nothing sacred in Angels Cove?

  ‘… and I’ve got some of that new-fangled, trendy tonic water to go with it, just for you!’

  Sold.

  ‘So, tell me Noel,’ I began, feeling like Dorothy when she’d picked up the scarecrow at the beginning of her own holiday in a strange land, before linking arms and heading down the yellow brick road (albeit with a few more cows in tow). ‘Has anyone ever told you, you look exactly like Father Christmas …?’

  ***

  ‘A Tinder profile? That’s what you want help with?’

  Noel nodded and handed me a tumbler of gin.

  ‘I’m struggling to upload a photo. Could you take one on your phone, perhaps of me laying on the sofa …’