‘My daughter always takes an unnatural interest in vegetables whenever she’s trying to avoid answering questions,’ Eleanor said.
‘I do not!’ Polly protested.
Jago cleared his throat. ‘I – erm – I’d like to say that I think Polly is a really special person. Well, I think you all are.’
‘Don’t try and date me next,’ Josh said.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Josh!’ Polly groaned.
‘What?’ he said innocently. ‘He does seem to be working up to something.’
‘I just wanted to say thank you for inviting me here today,’ Jago said. ‘I understand if it’s awkward.’
‘It isn’t awkward,’ Eleanor said. ‘I’m sorry if any of us have been teasing you.’ She looked around at her family. ‘But that’s going to stop now, right?’ Eleanor’s stern gaze travelled around the table. ‘Josh?’
‘Yes, Mum,’ he said with a reluctant sigh.
‘Bryony?’
‘What? I didn’t tease him?’
‘Not at the table, perhaps,’ Eleanor said, ‘but I’m sure you’ve had a little dig at some point.’ She paused and it was as if everybody was waiting for her to pass judgement. ‘So, we’ve all agreed that we’re very happy to have Jago here today with our Polly.’
Nods of approval greeted her from around the table.
‘Of course,’ Sam said.
‘Very happy indeed,’ Frank agreed.
‘Jago’s great,’ Archie added.
‘I’m sure he is,’ Eleanor said as she passed the dish of glazed parsnips to her right. ‘How’s the writing going, Callie?’
‘Yes, when will you have another bestseller out for me to sell?’ Bryony asked.
Polly noticed Callie blushing at the sudden onslaught of attention she was receiving. She still wasn’t used to being part of a huge family, Polly thought.
‘It will be a little while yet, I’m afraid,’ Callie said.
‘She’s writing a brilliant book,’ Sam said.
‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ Callie said, her face positively aflame now.
‘But her pig of an ex is being awkward,’ Sam said.
‘No, he isn’t,’ Callie told Sam. ‘Not anymore. I’m working with my new editor now and she’s great although she expects me to work at a pace I’m not used to.’
‘Tell her to wait,’ Sam said. ‘Art can’t be rushed.’
‘But they’ve got deadlines,’ Callie said.
‘Deadlines should be arranged around the artist,’ he said. ‘They should be working around you not the other way around. Honestly, the whole publishing industry sounds crazy to me. I don’t know how you put up with it.’
‘Because I can’t do anything else,’ Callie said with a tiny smile.
‘You could do anything you put your mind to,’ Sam said, leaning forward and kissing her cheek.
‘Good grief,’ Josh said from the other side of the table. ‘Do we have to have this sort of thing at the dining table?’
Everyone laughed.
‘You’re just jealous,’ Grandpa Joe said from the end of the table, ‘but it won’t be long before you’re bringing a young lady here and mooning all over her.’
‘I will never moon,’ Josh said, making Sam and Bryony snigger. ‘You know what I mean!’ He shook his head in despair at his relatives.
‘Jago, you write, don’t you?’ Frank asked.
‘Just songs,’ Jago said, ‘nothing as complex as a novel, I’m afraid.’
‘They’re beautiful songs,’ Bryony said. ‘After all, he once sang one to me.’
‘Bryony!’ her mother said in a warning tone.
‘Sorry. Couldn’t resist,’ Bryony said. ‘Sorry, Jago. Sorry, Polly.’
Polly felt her cheeks heating up, embarrassed by the whole situation. Why, oh why had she ever encouraged Jago to go out with her sister?
‘So, Jago,’ Josh began, ‘any more conga lines around Polly’s living room?’
‘Mum, I thought we said no more teasing Jago?’ Polly said.
‘I’m not teasing,’ Josh said. ‘I’m genuinely interested.’
‘No,’ Jago said, ‘no more conga lines.’
Josh nodded. ‘I think we should have one here, don’t you?’
‘A conga line?’ Bryony asked.
‘Yes!’ Josh said. ‘Right here – right now!’ He pushed his chair out from behind him.
‘Josh – we’re still eating!’ Eleanor complained, but Archie was already on his feet as was Grandpa Joe.
‘Come on!’ Josh cried. ‘It’ll be fun.
‘No, don’t!’ Polly all but screamed. ‘Archie – sit down and finish your lunch.’
But Archie had scampered round to the other side of the table where Bryony was also on her feet.
‘We haven’t got any music,’ Bryony pointed out.
‘Oh, yes we have,’ Josh said, pulling a tablet out of his jacket pocket. Soon, the dining room was filled with the bold, brash notes of the latest chart topping song.
‘What’s happening?’ Grandma Nell asked, looking confused.
‘We’re going to do the conga,’ Grandpa Joe told her.
‘Well, it’s about time,’ she said.
Grandpa Joe laughed and gently guided his wife out in front of him, placing his hands on her hips.
‘Come on, son,’ he said to Frank. ‘On yer feet – give your mother something to hold on to.’
Frank shook his head in bewilderment, but got up nevertheless.
‘I can’t believe this is happening!’ Polly cried, half-thrilled, half-mortified as Jago dragged her up from her chair. Sam and Callie got up too and Eleanor, who was the last one sitting, threw her napkin onto the table so she could join in.
A strange, wonderful couple of minutes ensued with the Nightingale family and their guests making a rather haphazard conga line around the dining room table.
‘Josh – you’ve got no rhythm at all!’ Bryony shouted over the music as she tripped over her brother again.
‘You just can’t keep up!’ he shouted back.
Archie was laughing so much that he kept breaking the line and Grandma Nell seemed to forget what they were doing and tried to sit down to finish her lunch but was thwarted by Grandpa Joe who insisted that she joined in.
One, two, three, kick! One, two, three, kick!
‘You should never have mentioned the conga, Archie!’ Polly cried, but she couldn’t help smiling at the sight of her family snaking around the table. The look on her grandmother’s face was priceless and her father’s red cheeks were a picture.
Finally, the song came to an end.
‘Again!’ Archie cried.
‘No way!’ Bryony said. ‘I’m done in. I didn’t realise how unfit I was.’
Grandpa Joe helped Grandma Nell back to her chair and everyone else collapsed into theirs too.
‘We should make this a new family tradition,’ Josh said, ‘in between courses.’
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ Eleanor said. ‘That’s a sure route to indigestion!’
Sitting back in her chair next to Jago, Polly felt his hand reach out and squeeze hers under the tablecloth.
‘Your family’s brilliant,’ he whispered to her.
She smiled at him. ‘One of a kind,’ she told him.
When they got back to Church Green, Polly made her and Jago a cup of tea while he lit the wood burner in the living room. Archie took Dickens out into the garden and the two of them came back with six muddy feet.
‘Towel!’ Polly shouted, watching as her son grabbed one of the towels that resided by the back door. He was pretty adept at cleaning Dickens’s feet now and, when the task was done, they all went through to the living room together.
Jago was bent in front of the wood burner, watching the progress of the fire.
‘Here’s your tea,’ she said, placing it on a little table behind him. It was then that something across the room caught her eye. She frowned. ‘Jago?’
‘Hmmm?�
�
‘Did you move this photo?’
‘What photo?’
‘The one of me and Archie that lives on this shelf,’ she said, picking it up from the next shelf down.
‘I didn’t touch it,’ he said, standing up.
‘Archie?’
‘What?’ he asked, looking up from a comic he was reading.
‘Did you move this photo?’
He shook his head.
Polly returned it to its rightful place. She was still frowning.
‘What’s the matter?’ Jago asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said, smiling brightly at him. She didn’t want to voice her fears. ‘I’m just popping upstairs, okay?’
He nodded and Polly left the room, climbing the stairs quickly. First, she went into Archie’s room, but it was impossible to tell if anything was out of place in there because everything was always out of place no matter how many times she nagged him to keep things tidy. She crossed the landing into her own room. Her and Sean’s room. She looked at the neatly made bed, the two little bedside tables either side of it, the wardrobe and the dressing table. Was it her imagination or had another photograph been moved? She walked towards the dressing table where a collection of photo frames lived. Polly was notoriously neat and everything was always in its rightful place and at the correct angle, but the gold-framed wedding photo of her and Sean which she kept in the bedroom looked slightly askew. She picked it up and examined it as if for clues, but it yielded nothing and so she replaced it, looking around the room again.
‘Polly?’ Jago’s voice called up the stairs. ‘All right if Archie and I play guitar for a bit?’
‘Yes!’ she shouted back. ‘Go ahead.’
As she heard the first guitar notes coming from the living room, Polly walked back out to the landing and looked around, her breath coming thick and fast. She couldn’t shake the idea that somebody – somebody who had once lived there – had been in her home.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The March meeting of the book club came round faster than Polly could have imagined, but she was ready with her folder of notes for discussion points and was happy to support her brother at their first real meeting.
Having dropped Archie off at his friend Tiger’s for tea and a film, Polly and Jago drove into Castle Clare, finding a parking space in Church Street, and walking together towards the shop.
‘I love Castle Clare at night time,’ Polly said. ‘The streets are so quiet and it always reminds me of a film set with all the medieval buildings.’
‘When I was in America, people would ask where I was from and I’d show them some photos of Castle Clare and Great Tallington and they couldn’t believe how old the buildings were. One woman actually asked me how they made the buildings look so old!’
‘She didn’t!’
‘She did. She really wouldn’t believe that they were that old.’
‘I don’t think I could live somewhere like America. I’d miss all these half-timbered houses and narrow streets too much,’ Polly said, and there was real affection in her voice. ‘When you grow up somewhere like this, it becomes a part of you and you might go away like I did when I taught abroad or you did to America, but you’ll always find your way back.’ She looked at him. ‘Do you think you’ll stay now?’
He stopped walking and reached out to cup her face in his hands. ‘Wherever you are, I want to be,’ he said. ‘“I love you far more than common.”’
Polly gasped. ‘That’s what Gabriel Oak said to Bathsheba!’
‘I know,’ Jago said. ‘I have read the book, you know.’
She smiled and then she realised just what he’d said to her. ‘Oh, Jago,’ she said.
He stroked her hair. ‘You don’t have to say anything.’
‘But I want to,’ she said, ‘I want to tell you that I love you too. “Far more than common.”’
‘Now, that’s my quote,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to come up with your own.’
She looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘I can’t think of one.’
‘What?’
‘I really can’t think of one!’
He shook his head in what she hoped was mock despair.
‘My mind’s gone blank,’ she confessed.
‘And you’re helping to run a book club?’ he said.
‘Shocking, isn’t it?’
He took her hand in his and they hurried towards Nightingale’s, opening the green door to the merry tinkle of the bell and crossing the wooden floorboards to the back of the shop.
‘Polly! Jago!’ Sam cried as they entered the back room. The chairs had been arranged in a circle, the cushions on the sofa had been plumped and Callie was in the tiny kitchen.
‘Hi Callie,’ Polly said.
Callie waved back.
Over the next few minutes, the book club members began to arrive. Antonia Jessop was the first, naturally. Winston Kneller arrived next with his Labrador, Delilah, waving a hand in greeting but not bothering to remove his old felt hat.
‘Winston – what’s happened to your boot?’ Sam asked and it was then that Polly noticed that it had string wrapped around it.
‘Sole’s flapping off,’ he said, landing heavily on the sofa. ‘Still lots of wear in it, but it does mean a wet right foot every day.’
‘Oh, dear,’ Polly said. ‘Can’t you get a new pair of boots?’
‘I’ve put a special order in at the charity shop,’ he said. ‘I’m top of their list if some come in.’
‘At least the weather’s improving now,’ Polly said, ‘but it’s been a filthy winter. I sometimes thought there was more mud in our house than outside. But that’s what having a spaniel and a little boy does to your home.’
Winston nodded, recognising the scenario as most country people did. Mud was a part of everyday life in the winter.
It was then that Flo Lohman came in with a little basket in the crook of her arm. ‘What are we all talking about?’ she asked with a cheery smile.
‘Mud!’ Winston barked from the sofa.
‘Don’t talk to me about mud. My hens have wrecked the lawn this winter. It’s a sea of mud. Nearly has me on my back every time I venture out there.’
‘You must be careful, Flo,’ Sam said in alarm.
‘Oh, I’m careful, but what can you do when you’ve got animals? You can’t keep them all indoors, can you?’
‘I thought you did!’ Winston said. ‘The last time I came round there was a hen on the kitchen table and one on the draining board.’
‘That was just Winnie and Ella. They have special dispensation. And that reminds me,’ Flo said, lifting off the tea towel covering her basket. ‘I’ve made us some cherry buns. I raided the freezer and found about three pounds of cherries from the summer.’
‘And these were made in your kitchen?’ Antonia said. ‘With the hens?’
‘Well, the hens weren’t actually present when I made them,’ Flo said with a little smile.
‘I think I’ll pass,’ Antonia said.
Winston had no such qualms when it came to cherry buns and dived straight in.
Hortense Digger – or Honey as she liked to be known – was the next to arrive.
‘I love her clothes,’ Callie whispered to Polly. ‘I’m always fascinated to see what she’ll be wearing.’
‘Me too,’ Polly said and the two of them watched as Honey took off her coat to reveal a splendid royal blue jumper over a long cerise skirt. The two colours seemed to be at war with each other and were quite startling to behold and Antonia Jessop’s eyes were out on stalks when she saw them. But it didn’t end there. Never one to leave a single inch without colour or texture, Honey was also wearing a pair of chandelier earrings in gold and a big hammered gold cuff on her left wrist.
Lily Ann Taylor, who hadn’t been able to make the first meeting, was the last to arrive. In her mid-fifties, Lily Ann was the complete antithesis of Honey Digger with hair that had never seen a colouring bottle and clothes that were neat and tidy, bu
t were rather drab and uninspiring. It was as if she had given colour up one Lent and never bothered to find it again.
Antonia and Honey were now jostling each other in the tiny space of the kitchen.
‘That’s my plate,’ Antonia said, taking hold of a pretty pink and white china plate on which she then placed her flapjacks.
‘I always find flapjacks a little bit sickly,’ Honey said.
‘Do you?’ Antonia said. ‘Then you’re obviously not making them right.’
Polly, Jago and Callie watched in amusement.
‘It’s battle of the biscuits time,’ Polly whispered.
‘I love it,’ Callie said.
‘I bet all this will find its way into one of your novels one day, won’t it?’ Polly said.
‘It’s very likely!’ Callie said.
When Honey came out of the kitchen, she was armed with a plate of immaculate biscuits.
‘Sam – these are from the book I bought from you,’ Honey said proudly.
‘They look marvellous,’ Sam said as he bent forward over the table she’d put them on. ‘May I?’
‘Please do.’
Sam took one. It looked like a round piece of shortbread.
‘Delicious!’ he said.
‘Aren’t they? Just a hint of vanilla, but a very important hint.’
Soon, hands were flying forward to sample Honey’s wares and Delilah’s wet nose tried to get in on the action too.
‘Oh, no you don’t, old darling,’ Winston said, his hand digging into his pocket and bringing out a dog chew for her.
Antonia looked at the plate of biscuits, her nose wrinkling a little as if a nasty smell had invaded it. ‘They don’t look properly baked to me.’
‘I assure you they are,’ Honey said. ‘Now, I know you always like to over bake your biscuits, but these are meant to be pale.’
Antonia made a derisive noise.
‘Well, I’m having another if I may,’ Winston said, taking the biggest on the plate and munching appreciatively. ‘Jolly good.’
‘Why, thank you, Winston,’ Honey said although she said it more to Antonia than she did to Winston.
‘I’ll be having one of your flapjacks next,’ he said, sending a saucy wink to Antonia.
Rules for a Successful Book Club (The Book Lovers 2) Page 20