by Debbie Young
The sight of the new packet of teabags, that Auntie May had bought not knowing she’d never live to open it, was too much for me. I leaned back against the cool limestone wall and quietly wept.
After a little while, I wiped my face, feeling better. I acknowledged that this was the first of many times over the next few weeks that I would feel overwhelmed not just by bereavement, but by remorse for my neglect of Auntie May while she was still alive. I could never make up for lost time now.
I resolved to compensate in a different way: by making a real go of the opportunity she had given me to start afresh here and follow in her footsteps as a writer. Her writing genes would live on. I would be her phoenix.
Returning to the kitchen, I rinsed out the kettle, filled it with fresh water, brewed a china pot of Earl Grey, and took a tray loaded with pot, cup and saucer, spoon and sugar bowl into the back garden. I was thankful that someone had thoughtfully emptied the fridge and turned it off, so at least I hadn’t inherited her last pint of milk. For once, I’d be happy to take my tea black.
As I stretched out gratefully on her rustic wooden bench, gnarled as an old man’s knuckles, the sun went behind a cloud. I popped back inside for an extra layer and grabbed the silk shawl from the hallstand. Auntie May was the only person I have ever known who had an old-fashioned hallstand, which had been her mother’s before her. Wrapping the shawl around my shoulders, I lay back on the bench to plan how I was going to make this work.
I had an awful lot of thinking to do.
Next thing I knew, I felt a bony hand touch my shoulder, and a scent as sharp as a freshly-opened bottle of bleach attacked my sinuses. When I opened my eyes, I half expected to find one of Damian’s rural murderers looming over me with an axe. Instead, settling down in one of the garden armchairs opposite me was a tall, thin man with white hair and a handlebar moustache. I guessed him to be about eighty. The essence of mothballs emanated from his oatmeal tweed trousers and ginger corduroy waistcoat, worn over a checked flannel shirt. He was a real country boy if ever I saw one, and a bit old to be a murderer, or even a burglar. But I couldn’t place why he looked familiar. Where had he come from? And what was he doing in my garden?
3 The Old Boy Next Door
The elderly gentleman watched me as I tried to get my bearings.
“Hello, my dear,” he said slowly, a twinkle in his pale blue eyes. “Remember me? I’m May’s boy next door. Joshua Hampton. Good day to you.”
I laughed, then hoped that hadn’t sounded rude.
“Hello, I’m Sophie Sayers, May’s great-niece,” I replied.
He raised his eyebrows.
“You didn’t need to tell me that, my dear. You are the image of her. And in her favourite shawl, too.”
I drew the shawl tighter about me.
“I recognised you too,” I lied, though it was coming back to me now . I gathered there was some ancient feud, but I’d never got to the bottom of it. “I’m sorry if my sudden appearance startled you. Did you know Auntie May had left her house to me in her will?”
Joshua sat back, sighing, and placed his hands, one on top of the other, on the handle of his walking stick.
“Yes, I did. In fact I knew about her will long before she passed away. I must say I approve. I’d far rather have her niece here than a bevy of strangers, piling in and changing things.”
He trailed off, gazing into the distance at the magnolia tree at the bottom of the garden. Now I looked at the garden properly, I recognised it was in sore need of some tidying up to restore it to Auntie May’s high standard. She had kept it low-maintenance in her travelling days, but once she’d retired, developing it had been a substitute for foreign adventure. She brought the rest of the world to her tiny garden, importing interesting plants that had their origins far from home, challenging them to survive the Cotswold microclimate: Chinese acers, Greek fig trees, Japanese flowering cherries, Dutch bulbs in the spring. She even had a miniature version of Monet’s pond, and often mentioned her garden’s progress in the beautiful letters that she wrote to me every Friday while I was abroad, in the wonderfully evocative prose that had made her such a popular travel writer. Stupidly, I didn’t keep her letters – too bent on travelling light. Nor did I have time to reply to them in kind, scribbling only a quick postcard whenever I ventured somewhere new. I thought she’d enjoy the feeling of travelling by proxy.
“Yes, it’s still very much Auntie May’s house. All her things are here. As you probably know, she didn’t have any children who would have taken stuff away. My parents and I are her closest surviving relatives. My mum and dad live and work in Inverness, and I’ve been working abroad ever since I left university, so we’ve not really touched anything until now.”
“Yes, I know. I met your parents at May’s funeral. They told me all about you.”
I blushed, guilty that I’d been unable to get leave from work to attend. Come to think of it, I was surprised Joshua had attended himself, unless it was to gloat. I wished I’d thought to ask May why they’d fallen out while I had the chance.
“How’s your wife?” I asked, to make him aware that I knew something about him too.
“She passed away seven years ago, aged just seventy-six.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. How awful.”
“Thank you, my dear. But life goes on. I’m in my eighty-seventh year, you know. And there have been compensations.”
Perhaps he’d had his wife well insured. I could almost hear Damian’s voice: well enough to make him hasten her demise?
“May’s solicitor let me know that you’d be moving in this week,” he continued, “so I’ve brought you a little housewarming present.”
From his trouser pocket, he produced a small glass jar full of a clear, dark liquid. At first I thought it an unhealthy urine sample, but it was too thick and slow-moving for that. I read the white sticky label written in a hand too shaky to be legible.
“Honey from my bees,” he prompted me. “I hope you like honey. May used to stir a drop of my honey into her tea, to give her energy in the last months of her illness.”
That gave me a start. Had he been slowly poisoning Auntie May to seek a final victory in their feud? I held the jar up to the sunshine, which highlighted tiny flecks like miniscule insects in amber. Or were they grains of arsenic? Viewed through this prism, the sun took on an eerie, sickly glow. It didn’t look like the life-giving superfood that honey is said to be.
I tried to remember exactly how honey is produced.
“Thank you. I’m sure I shall enjoy it.” Then I thought of a clever way to test my theory. “Perhaps you’d like to come and have tea and scones with me one afternoon and we can eat it then?”
“I should like that very much.” Joshua leaned on his stick to raise himself to his feet. “But I must leave you in peace to unpack, and wish you good evening. Next I shall go and tell my bees that you’ve arrived.” I must have looked at him oddly, because he went on to explain, “You have to tell news to the bees, you know.”
I didn’t know, but I wasn’t about to admit it. He gave a little bow, and made his way down my back garden path. I wondered where he was going, until he turned right to depart via a gate through the wall to his own back garden. I didn’t remember the gate being there last time I’d visited. Had he installed it after May’s death to gain secret, easy access to her cottage? Now he could wander in and out of my property any time he liked, unseen by anyone but me. As indeed he just had.
Gazing thoughtfully at Joshua’s honey, I turned to more immediate matters. I had nothing to spread it on. Apart from whatever Auntie May had left in her larder at the time of her death, there was no food in the house. I decided I’d better remedy that before the shops shut, or else my evening meal would have to consist of tea, sugar crystals, and stuff out of tins.
I knew there was a small grocery shop in the village, so I hauled myself up from the chair, returned my tea tray to the kitchen and locked the back door. Then I collected Auntie May’s wicke
r shopping basket from its hook on the overhead airing rack, dropped my purse into it, and headed up the hill to the village shop. This dependable source of information might help me find out more about Joshua’s reputation, and establish whether I could sleep safely in my bed that night while he was living next door.
4 The Alphabetical Shop
The clouds of earlier in the afternoon had dispersed, and as I strolled up the High Street to the shop, I heard bees buzzing contentedly in the colourful front gardens. Auntie May had taught me the names of all the traditional cottagers’ flowers: foxgloves, dahlias, marigolds, borage, scabious, everlasting wallflower. Lavender bushes bordered front paths like sentries, while less disciplined honeysuckle tumbled over fences and up tree trunks. May told me that knowing plant names would come in handy when I was older. Damian said it did, but only for crossword puzzles.
The front window of the shop was almost hidden by purple-flowered buddleias, a social club for butterflies now teeming with cabbage whites. Peering beyond the curtain of flowers into the small shop window, I noticed some changes since my last visit. It had clearly been given a makeover. Over the door, in sloping black hand-painted letters, the official statement of the shop’s licence to sell alcohol informed me of a new proprietor: Carol Barker.
I slightly remembered Carol from my childhood visits. She was a friend of my auntie May’s, as were most of the villagers. Carol had cared for her bedridden mother in Pond Lane for many years, while her father ran the village shop. Muriel Barker had had a stroke but clung on for many years, unable to do much for herself other than prevent her daughter leading her own life. I guessed both mother and father must have died, leaving the family business to Carol, now aged about fifty.
I’d never seen much of Carol, other than when accompanying Auntie May to visit Muriel during my summer holidays. May always took as a gift a book, usually one of her own, “so they can feel as if they’re travelling without leaving their home”. It was generous of her, though I knew the books came from the small free stock the publisher gave her each time a new one was released.
Spending time with the Barkers must have made Auntie May appreciate her own freedom all the more. I’d felt stifled in their gloomy cottage, where the curtains were always closed and the windows tightly shut. I hoped running the shop had given Carol a new lease of life rather than an alternative prison.
As I pushed the door open, I recognised the distinctive jangling of the bell above my head. The shop’s smell hadn’t changed: a mixture of fresh bread, chilled cheese and newspapers, with the unmistakable whiff of furniture polish emanating from the old wooden shop counter.
“Why, if it isn’t young Sophie Sayers!” cried Carol, springing up from the stool behind the till and laying down the copy of the Daily Mail she’d been reading. “I heard you were moving to poor May’s cottage. Goodness, look at you, if you aren’t all grown up now!”
I shifted uncomfortably beneath her scrutiny. “I am twenty-five, Carol, and it’s my cottage now. May left it to me.”
She shrugged. “It’ll always be May Sayers’s cottage to me, dear. When did you arrive?”
“Today, actually. So now I need to stock up my larder. Or at least get enough to tide me over till I can get to a supermarket.”
“Supermarkets are all very well, but make sure you use the village shop when you can, or the supermarket will be all you have. I keep telling people, if everyone in this village spent a fiver a week here, we’d do just fine. But do they, heck! I hope you’ll do your best, anyway. I know it’s what your auntie would have wanted.”
I bristled under this mild emotional blackmail, regretting my gaffe at mentioning the supermarket. There was no point in upsetting local people if I was going to make Wendlebury Barrow my new home.
“I want to get a few bits to start me off: bread, butter, eggs, cake, biscuits, chocolate and wine. Just the essentials.”
I turned around to look for those items. The shop is too small for shopping trolleys, so the convention is that you fill your own basket with whatever you need and empty it again at the counter before you pay. I made my way round the shop, noting the bright new decor. Carol had replaced the bottle green paintwork with refreshing shades of cream and pale blue, making the shop feel brighter, more spacious, at once retro and contemporary. She must have enjoyed being able to bask in bright light after being cooped up for so long with her invalid mother.
An array of home-made bread lay on the second shelf from the door, and I selected a white cottage loaf. Above the bread I spotted a packet of Bourbon biscuits, but what I really fancied was Scottish shortbread. When I asked Carol whether she had any, she pointed to the other side of the shop, where a small stack of tartan packets lay between a box of Sellotape and a mound of pink bathroom sponges.
When I couldn’t find the eggs, she indicated a stack of grey cardboard cartons from the local free-range poultry farm. I remembered these as the best eggs I’d ever tasted, and probably the least travelled too. Next to the eggs lay a pile of Daily Express newspapers. Feeling a sudden need to connect with the British press after four years of living abroad, I asked whether she had any of the quality papers.
“You don’t take the tablets?”
I was glad the conversation had turned to medicine, as it made it easier to enquire about May’s last illness. Then I realised Carol meant the tabloids and shook my head.
“If it’s The Guardian you want, you’ll find it by the grapes, and The Times and Telegraph are over there next to the tomatoes and turnips. I can put by regular orders for you, if you like – daily papers or magazines. I get these two for Rex Hunter, for example.” She pulled out copies of The Stage and s from beneath the counter. “Always happy to encourage our village drama club, of course. He’s their director and I’m their wardrobe mistress, you know.” She made it sound as if they were an item. I was pleased for her.
Retracing my steps to the bread shelf to look for butter, I found none. When I asked Carol where it was, she smiled at me indulgently, shaking her head gently at my foolishness. “In the chiller cabinet, of course. Between the apricot yoghurt and the cream.”
Of course. I soon filled my basket and returned to the counter for Carol to tot up my bill.
“Anything else I can help you with, dear? Are you settling in all right?”
I nodded. “Yes, thank you. It is lovely to be here, though odd to think that it’s not a holiday this time, and of course, I am so sad about Auntie May.”
She nodded, and for a moment I thought she was going to cry in sympathy, so I changed the subject. “Joshua next door’s already been round to welcome me. I was surprised, because I didn’t think he and May got on. He never said a word to me when I used to come and stay with May in my school holidays.”
Almost dropping the eggs on the counter, Carol fixed me with a knowing look.
“Oh yes, they got on all right once his wife had died. He was good as gold to May after that, even collecting her prescriptions here when she got too frail to walk.”
I was shocked to hear that poor Auntie May had become too frail to take her daily march up to the shop. She’d always made me go with her, whether we needed something or not – she liked to support it, and insisted on a daily constitutional to blow away the cobwebs. I’d had to almost run to keep up with her.
I’d forgotten the shop also acted as an intermediary between the doctor’s surgery and the pharmacy. I could see on the shelf behind Carol a neat row of dispensed prescriptions, all bagged up and discreetly labelled, so no-one could see the contents. But if I’d a mind to, I could have reached out and taken one off the shelf. I could even have swapped the contents with someone else’s while Carol’s back was turned. As could Joshua.
On the counter lay a small clipboard of repeat prescription requests. On top was a note from one Linda Absolom – I might have guessed they would be in alphabetical order. Beside the clipboard was a well-thumbed thick paperback.
“That’s the formulary,” Carol s
aid, seeing me looking at it. She sounded proud. “It’s what doctors and pharmacists use to look up medicines, to check doses and side-effects. I use it to make sure people have spelled things right when they write a request for a repeat prescription. And if anyone asks what their medicine is for, I can look it up and tell them. All part of the service. It keeps people coming back to the shop. Minnie Jenkins was very impressed when I said her pink ointment was for haemorrhoids. She thought she just had piles.”
I assumed it was standard practice for people to pick each other’s items up. “I suppose Joshua had got in the habit of collecting prescriptions for his late wife too?”
“Ooh no, her end came right out of the blue. Edith just dropped dead all of a sudden one day. Heart failure, it was, with no real warning. Except of course I knew she’d been on heart tablets for a while. Beetle-blockers, she had.”
Damian’s comments leapt into my head again. Had Joshua bumped off Edith with a bit of his honey one tea-time, drugged with something to stop her heart? Then I thought of Joshua’s kind eyes, his old-fashioned manners and his charm. Psychopaths could fake charm, but something didn’t quite click.
I determined to exorcise myself of Damian’s influence.
“Anything else I can get you?” Carol brought me back into the moment. “Like to place any regular orders for bread, milk, papers, parish mag? Regular orders are the lifeblood of the village shop. Use it or lose it.”
To keep in with her, I signed up for all of those things, though wasn’t sure that the parish magazine would provide exciting reading. Then turning to go, I noticed the board by the shop door displaying advertisements on postcards. I glanced over them to see whether they offered anything I might need. Although I had no use for outgrown children’s bicycles or baby rabbits or surplus topsoil, this would be the perfect place to advertise my services as an ELT teacher, to generate a bit of income before I began to earn serious money as an author. I’d need some form of wage to afford to stay here in the meantime, even though I could live rent free.