Witch Dust

by Marilyn Messik

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Ophelia swung on her heel to face him. He held out his arms. After a moment’s hesitation, she moved into them. He hugged her hard, picking her up easily and whirling her round in a gesture that would have screamed staginess from anyone else. He set her down gently, holding her out at arm’s length, examining her face closely, fingers along her jaw, thumb tilting up her chin.

  “Not bad,” he said, in that beautifully modulated light voice, leisurely and smooth as milk chocolate, “Odd laughter line here and there, but on the whole, my darling girl, looking pretty good for your age.” She gave a small snort of disgust and moved her head away from his hand. “You do look tired though,” he continued, “And,” he touched her hair briefly, “This colour, far too harsh for you now I think, several shades lighter really couldn’t hurt. Aren’t you going to introduce me to my lovely niece?” He dropped his arms from her and moved towards me. I was in no mood for either a hug or a hair colour analysis and stuck out a hand, he took in the thought behind the gesture, grinned again and shook the hand gently.

  “Roland.” He said, inclining his head.

  “Sandra.”

  “A very great pleasure indeed to meet you Sandra,” It was strange seeing my Mother’s face in his, the resemblance was uncanny. “You’re absolutely right, you know.”

  “Right?” I repeated.

  “It’d take a great deal more than one young woman could do – however determined, clever or organised – to put this place right. Not only does it need more money than any sane investor would dream of pouring in, but it needs to be run as a business, not a rest-home for relations who can’t be bothered to find anywhere else to live.” He winked at the seated Devorah, who raised two unabashed fingers at him. “And,” he picked up my glass of wine by the stem, turning it reflectively so it sparkled attractively in front of the flickering bank of candles, before tossing back what was left and grimacing wryly at the taste, “As you’ve already so accurately assessed, money and disrepair are only a part of the problem. Even if by some miracle, all that’s wrong could be put right, it’s never been marketed in any way whatsoever – could be the most wonderful place in the world, but if nobody knows about it…” he shrugged philosophically, “Which brings us full circle, doesn’t it. Marketing equals money we don’t have. I’m absolutely sure Ophelia’s faith in your abilities is justified my dear, but,” and he looked me up and down and patted my shoulder in kindly fashion, “I’m afraid getting this place back on its feet would take rather more than you’d be able to bring to the party.”

  “You’re wrong you know.” I said. He’d taken off his coat and draped it over his arm, I didn’t blame him, I wouldn’t have put something that good on one of the kitchen chairs either. He raised an interrogative eyebrow,

  “Don’t think so, sweetheart.”

  “You probably wouldn’t get investment,” I conceded, “Someone’d have to be mad to do that, but if you’re stuck with a disadvantage, you simply have to turn it round, convert it and make it work for you, not against you.” He smiled politely again.

  “Sweet idea, but, if you’ll forgive me, a little naïve and a tad too Pollyanna.” He chuckled, “Methinks you’ve been to one too many marketing seminars.” He bent to pick up his case.

  “Don’t patronise me.” I snapped. If I’d had any doubts he was my Mother’s brother, they’d high-tailed it out of there without argument, he had exactly her knack of winding me up. He straightened and turned back towards me, holding out a beautifully manicured placatory hand.

  “Sandra, my complete and abject apologies. The last thing I would ever do is patronise. I’ve also done my share of motivational workshops, even led a good few in my time, and whilst the reasoning’s sound and the delivery inspirational, in truth what you pick up, can very rarely be put to practical use.” I shook my head briskly,

  “You’re wrong and that’s such a blinkered view. You just have to make a virtue out of necessity, take what you’ve got here, all the shabbiness, the shortcomings and the eccentricities and turn them into selling points.” He chuckled,

  “Indeed? And why on earth would people… ?”

  “Because everyone loves a gimmick, an angle.”

  “An angle?”

  “Well of course,” I was impatient with his slowness, “Can’t you see? You simply have to capitalise on what you’ve got and what you’ve got is a pretty weird set up. You take that, enlarge on it and make it – I don’t know… wait, yes I do. A haunted hotel. All you’d need would be enough special effects to scare the pants off a few people. And God knows,” I said wryly, glaring at Ophelia and Devorah, “You’ve certainly got the means to do that. You wouldn’t need to add anything, you’d simply be working with what you’ve already got.” He nodded slowly, frowning slightly.

  “What about getting publicity?” He asked.

  “Trust me, you lay on enough weird and you’ll have journalists biting your hand off – people love nothing better than being scared to death, and this sort of thing writes its own headlines.”

  “Hang on a minute though,” he said, “We wouldn’t have the faintest idea of the first thing to do.”

  “Well, I have. It’s what I used to do for a living.” I said.

  “But a project like this, it’s way, way too ambitious.” He said, shaking his head dubiously.

  “I’ve handled bigger.”

  “But, forgive me, didn’t I hear you say you were leaving right away? Mind you,” he paused, struck with a sudden thought, “I suppose if Ophelia could see things getting sorted out here, she’d be able to move on and focus with an easier mind on what I understand is going on at home. Sandra, my dear, I’m totally overwhelmed you feel you could take this on for us – how could we ever repay you? I am most unusually, lost for words.” He moved swiftly forward and enveloped me, unresisting, in an expensively after-shaved hug. He wasn’t the only one totally overwhelmed. I was aware I’d just been very professionally had – again. Crossly I jerked away and met his amused blue gaze.

  “I didn’t say I’d do it, did I? I’m only putting forward some suggestions.” There was a silence as all three of them looked at me. I mentally weighed up the options. Getting Ophelia back home if she’d made up her mind not to be budged or committing myself to getting things moving in this crazy set-up. I really wasn’t sure I was up to the effort required for either, it felt like a rock and a hard place situation

  “Bloody hell!” I muttered ungraciously. “All right then, but two, three days tops, just long enough to get the ball rolling, after that the rest of you are on your own, like it or lump it.”

  “Understood.” He said warmly. “Look let me just pop upstairs for a wash, get out of these work things and then we can have a confab.” He’d just bent again to the briefcase, when the door of a full-length cupboard at the end of the room burst open and Mimi, a mop and several dusters fell out.

  “Oh,” she muttered, “Not the broom cupboard again. Hello Roland, you’re home early, good day at the office dear?” She patted disarranged fine silver hair and kicked a couple of dusters away from under her feet. I retrieved my glass from the table where Raymond had left it and poured myself some more wine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I can’t say I slept very well on that first night at the old homestead. This was because I was suffering from information overload, Gladys’s cooking and was sharing a room, not only with my Mother – something I don’t think we’d done even when I was a baby – but also with Ink.

  To the many and varied revelations of a trying day, I was able to add the fact that Ophelia snored surprisingly lustily and Ink was given to getting up every hour on the hour, stretching, purring and settling down again with the maximum of fuss. I also now knew that Gladys produced scrambled eggs of a consistency that promised to remain welded to my stomach lining, at least for the foreseeable fu
ture.

  I was relieved that the dinner guests last night, three women and two men, had arrived; been treated to my culinary offerings; hadn’t complained and departed, seemingly quite happy with what they’d had. All in all, I felt that there was a breach into which I had successfully stepped, at the same time proving to all and sundry that whilst Ophelia might be the weakest of reeds on the practical front, I was not.

  Preparing for bed last night, was the first time my Mother and I had spent alone together since we’d arrived, but if I was expecting explanation, justification or apology, I was in for a long wait. Lying stiffly in the bed across from hers, I was exhausted, exasperated and disturbed in equal measure – there she was, sleeping the sleep of the just, while today’s events were relentlessly playing themselves over and over like tape loops in my aching head. And if in an evening spent trying to clarify the situation, more questions than answers had reared their ugly heads, well, that seemed about par for the course.

  ***

  Roland, good as his word, last night had returned to the kitchen in under ten minutes, suit discarded in favour of a well-worn pair of soft green cords and matching polo shirt. He was obviously one of those annoying people who wear clothes well and would probably have brought a sense of chic to a bin bag. He helped himself to a fresh glass of wine and rested one elegant hip against a kitchen top. In his absence, Devorah had dusted down a disorientated Mimi, still chuckling and chiding herself. I’d noted absently, that Ophelia, who normally automatically assumed centre-stage of any room she was in, had remained quietly on the side lines. Maybe this sudden exposure to family life and all its funny little ways had subdued her as nothing else ever did – an odd change of status, but down here in la la land, nothing was quite as you’d expect. In fact, I had serious doubts about inside-out-jumpered, daffy Mimi. Amidst all that dizzy old biddy, what-a-fool-I-am stuff there was, every now and then, a fleeting sharpness of glance that led me to believe she wasn’t half as addled as it suited her to make out.

  “Right.” I’d said, taking charge of what seemed to be an ad hoc meeting and looking at my watch. “It’s coming up for 7.00, so we’ve got to be quick, why don’t we start with how you’ve managed to get even five people booking for dinner tonight – I mean,” I waved a disparaging, if honest hand, “Look at the state of this place.” Devorah reached past Mimi and pulled open a kitchen table drawer. Like all such drawers, it was crammed with those irritating bits and pieces that go in happily in the first place then shift about as soon as the drawer’s closed, so it can’t be re-opened. After a couple of tugs though, this one succumbed to brute force and a few seconds rummaging through the usual detritus of saved string and old receipts, produced a crumpled page of newsprint.

  “Good reviews,” she said triumphantly, “Look.” Smoothing the paper against the surface of the table, I saw the by-line was Jonathan Harper, ‘Restaurant Rover’ and sure enough, the food he’d sampled at Home Hill, had him rhapsodising in that self-conscious style food writers often feel obliged to adopt.

  “But this is great,” I looked up, “Who did the cooking when he came?”

  “Don’t know.” Said Devorah.

  “What d’you mean? How can you not know, was it Gladys?”

  “That’s the problem, you see.”

  “No, I don’t see.” I looked from Devorah to Roland who sighed gently,

  “You’ve met Gladys?” He said. I nodded,

  “Briefly, she was sitting on a tea tray I needed.”

  “Ah,” said Roland, “Then you’ll know she has her idiosyncrasies. Been with us for years and we’re all very fond, trouble is she’s not always… consistent.”

  “Consistent?” I queried,

  “She can only perform under the influence.”

  “You mean drink?”

  “No, Delia Smith.”

  “Sorry.” I shook my head, which was a mistake as a headache which had been hovering in the background biding its time, inched forward gleefully. “You’ve lost me.”

  “Delia Smith, Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson. She says she tunes into them and they cook through her.”

  “Cook through her?” I was aware I sounded like little Miss Echo, but he wasn’t making much sense.

  “What can I tell you? Gladys cooks in a trance.” He shrugged, “I mean really, in a trance. Calls it automatic cooking, says they tell her exactly what to do. What to order in, how to prepare it, how to cook it. And, to be honest, she has produced some truly astonishing things.” I looked round for Ophelia, to share an eyes-raised-to-heaven look, but in the last couple of minutes she’d apparently drifted out of the kitchen. I sighed, true to form or what? I turned back to Raymond.

  “Don’t people have to be dead?” I enquired, keeping a determined straight face, “Before they can come through, I mean?” Roland shrugged again,

  “Apparently not.”

  “And Chief Whateverhisnameis?”

  “Sitting Bull. Yes. Well I believe he is in fact an ex-chief as it were, lived some 400 years ago, according to our Glad. It’s actually him and a few others that cause all the problems. They sort of get in the way – like static interference she says, when you’re trying to tune a radio.”

  “And that’s not good?” I asked. Roland shook his head firmly,

  “Disastrous apparently. To be honest, it was never really an issue when it was just us she was cooking for, we simply got used to the rough with the smooth, but since all this hotel, spa thing – well, it does lead to a certain unpredictability.”

  “OK,” I said neutrally. “Well, why not simply hire someone else to do the cooking?” Roland and Devorah exchanged a shocked look,

  “Etty wouldn’t do that to Gladys.” Said Devorah.

  “Couldn’t afford it anyway,” added Roland, “Certainly couldn’t afford anyone to match her on a good day.” I nodded, there was a certain skewed logic to that. I decided we’d probably covered as much on the subject of Gladys as I was ready for at the moment, and moved swiftly on.

  “Right,” I said. “If I’m to offer any constructive suggestions to try and get things moving, I need to get a few more things straight in my own mind.” Roland nodded earnestly and came to take a place at the table with Mimi and Devorah. I’d planted myself at the head and could hear how bossy I sounded, but didn’t care much one way or the other, I wasn’t here to build bonds.

  “Hang on a moment,” I said. “Just have to check… ” All three turned to look expectantly at the oven door, as if it was going to obligingly open to show them what was going on inside. With a qualm, I realized that might be exactly what one of them had in mind and I nipped over sharpish, to do things the normal way. Whilst we’d been talking, the ducks had finished themselves off nicely and looked ready for action, although it was still only 7.20. I turned everything right down and another thought occurred.

  “Who’s going to actually serve this little lot?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry, my sweet,” said Roland, “Not you, you’ve been brilliant getting it to this stage, I’m sure Elizabeth can take it from here.”

  “Elizabeth? Bit hard of hearing?” I said, Devorah nodded,

  “Deaf as a post, bless her heart, but won’t have it, insists we’re all just mumbling to take the mickey.” I wasn’t reassured. From my disconcerting conversation earlier with Elizabeth, she appeared convinced I’d been drafted in from somewhere to help on the waitressing front. Still, one problem at a time. I spotted a notebook and pencil in the still open kitchen table drawer and pulled them out, opening it officiously to a blank page. If I’m going to do a job, I like to do it properly.

  “So, I presume this was previously just the family home,” I asked. All three nodded, “And I’m assuming this hotel thing was started, to generate some income?” They nodded again,

  “You don’t work here though Roland
?”

  “No, I’m a barrister.” He said, “Chambers in London.” I raised my eyebrows,

  “Lucrative?”

  “I wish, tough at the moment. Really tough.”

  “You?” I looked at Devorah,

  “No, I can’t work,” she said happily, “I’ve like got the baby.” She seemed to be a bit of a lost cause and one without a conscience at that.

  “Well,” I said repressively, “I’m sure we can find you some constructive contribution to make.” She started to interrupt, but I was in full bossy mode.

  “Now, when did you start this hotel thing?”

  “Just after last Christmas?” Roland raised an inquiring eyebrow at Devorah, she nodded in confirmation.

  “So, it’s been going about ten months? How many bedrooms?”

  “Fifteen in total,” supplied Roland, “Seven for family. The rest for letting.”

  “Right. And staff? One chef – on and off. And Elizabeth, who is… .?”

  “Well officially she’s the housekeeper, although she turns her hand to most things – real trouper, been with the family for years, carries this place. Married to Alfred.”

  “Alfred?”

  “Alfred Heylow, gardener, plumber, decorator; we need it, he does it, wonderful chap, retired languages teacher.”

  “Really? Ah now, that’s a selling point for foreign visitors.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Well only if they’re ancient Greeks.”

  “Right.” Silly me, why would I have imagined anyone round here could offer much in the way of practical help. “Who else?”