The Shakespeare find at Winter’s End a couple of years ago had really revitalised the village, so Grumps was lucky to have got the Old Smithy, especially at what seemed to be a very advantageous price. I wondered how he’d managed that.
There was no sign of Felix and Poppy until I crossed the road to the Falling Star and saw them waving at me from the bow window of the snug. Mind you, if I didn’t know them so well, I wouldn’t have recognised them behind the thick bull’s-eye glass panes, because they looked like dubious sea creatures seen dimly lurking in green waters.
As usual I tried to avoid stepping on the clean square of pavement as I went in, because it seemed an unlucky thing to do. Mrs Snowball was now sitting behind a tiny reception desk under the stairway (the inn lets rooms, mostly to business reps), knitting something voluminously pink and fluffy while watching a portable TV. She looked up at me, described a suspiciously pentagram-like shape in the air with one needle, and grinned gappily.
Oh God, not another of them? She’d never done that before!
Slightly shaken, I turned right into the snug, where Felix was now at the bar buying me a ladylike half of bitter shandy (I was driving, after all). He turned and gave me a hug – a tall, loose-limbed man with soft, light brown eyes, floppy hair and the sort of nose that has a knobbly bit in the middle. It’s a nice face, in its way, but you can’t call it handsome.
‘Hi, Chloe – you look lovely,’ he said warmly, though I was just wearing jeans garnished with cobwebs and the odd streak of garden slime, but he’d probably just said exactly the same to Poppy, because he’s nothing if not kind. I sometimes think I’m imagining that he’s trying to move our relationship onto a new, more romantic footing and actually I do truly hope so, because I like things just the way they are.
‘Is that my drink? I’ll carry it, then you can manage the other two,’ I said, kissing his cheek. He smelled, not un-attractively, of old leather book bindings.
‘Look what Felix found for me!’ called Poppy, gaily waving a paperback copy of I Had Two Ponies by Josephine Pullein-Thompson. ‘The last one of hers I hadn’t got!’
‘Great,’ I said, sitting down next to her. She smelled of sweet hay and horses, and I expect I was permanently chocolate-fragranced, with just a hint of scented geranium, so anyone with a good nose could guess blindfold what the three of us did for a living.
‘I thought I had a Heyer for you, Chloe, but the cover was torn,’ Felix said.
While Poppy loves old children’s pony adventure books, I collect vintage Georgette Heyer hardbacks in those lovely, misty, dream-like paper jackets. Felix also looks out for the rarer volumes Grumps would like to add to his already huge, esoteric and eclectic library, which is probably where most of his income goes.
Poppy was almost as excited about my moving to the Old Smithy as I was. ‘But I still think it was mean, not letting us view it with you.’
‘I just wanted to see it on my own the first time,’ I explained. ‘I’ll have to come back and measure for curtains and furniture, so perhaps if you can both get away, you can see it then?’
‘I’ve been in the museum and the doll’s hospital, but not for years,’ Poppy said. ‘So, what’s the rest like?’
I described it all in detail, but I may have dwelled rather longer on the garden than the rest of it put together. Anyway, they both generously volunteered to help me clean and paint the cottage.
‘Or anything, really, that you need another pair of hands to do,’ Poppy added. ‘Now, do you want to hear our news?’
‘Our?’ I looked from one to the other of them, with a raised eyebrow. ‘You’re getting married and you want me to be bridesmaid?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Poppy giggled.
‘It would be nice to settle down with someone, though, wouldn’t it?’ Felix suggested rather pointedly. ‘Just not Poppy!’
‘Yes, because the three of us are so like family that it would be like marrying a sibling,’ she agreed. ‘Completely out of the question.’
‘It certainly would be,’ I agreed heartily, and Felix looked gloomy.
Poppy said, ‘What I meant was the news from last night’s emergency Parish Council meeting.’
‘Did you tell them that Grumps had bought the museum?’
‘No, though I expect we both looked totally guilty. Luckily, something else was distracting Miss Winter, because she usually has eagle eyes. You remember I told you that the bishop was trying to find a non-stipendiary vicar to take over All Angels?’
I nodded. ‘Have they found one?’
‘Yes, and the brilliant thing is that he’s buying the vicarage too!’
‘And he’s the kind of vicar you were telling me about, who doesn’t need to be paid?’ I asked. ‘A freebie?’
‘Well, in effect,’ Felix agreed. ‘Basically, it’s someone who’s been ordained but is either still following another career, or so rich he doesn’t need a salary. Hebe Winter is terribly pleased about it, but the bishop didn’t say a lot about the new vicar except that he used to be some kind of pop star. And she seemed to think that when he came to look at the vicarage he should have called in to see her too, so she was a bit narked about that.’
‘I expect he came when the estate agents had that open day and perhaps he hadn’t even made his mind up to move to Sticklepond then. But isn’t that exciting news, Chloe?’ Poppy’s cheeks glowed and her eyes, the soft blue of washed-out denim, sparkled. ‘An ex-pop star! I thought it might be Cliff Richard, but Hebe says that’s daft.’
‘It is daft. Everyone would know if he’d taken holy orders,’ Felix pointed out.
‘Yes, but then who on earth could it be?’
‘I think one of the Communards got ordained,’ I offered.
‘I didn’t know that,’ Felix said.
‘You’ll have to come to church and see him when he arrives, whoever he is,’ Poppy suggested.
‘Come on, Poppy, you know I haven’t been inside a church in my life! Grumps would have forty fits, the earth would tremble and the spire crumble to dust.’
‘No, I’m sure it wouldn’t. Remember the angel in the churchyard?’ she reminded me. ‘I think she was trying to tell you something, so perhaps you should try it and see.’
‘What? Which angel?’ Felix demanded. ‘Have you two been keeping secrets from me?’
I hesitated. We’d never discussed the angel with anyone except Granny, and at this length of time it was hard to know how much of what we remembered was real and what imagined.
‘Oh,’ I said as lightly as I could, ‘it was something that happened when we were little girls. Poppy had come to stay for a couple of nights because Janey was in hospital and since Mum was away too, we were in a bedroom in the main part of the house, near Granny. The window looks down over the wall into the old churchyard and the first night we both saw…well, we saw a white figure. With wings.’
‘An angel,’ Poppy agreed positively.
‘But surely the churchyard is full of white marble angels?’ suggested Felix. ‘Two over-excited and tired little girls, late at night…the imagination does play tricks.’
‘The angel was moving and we could see her clearly even though it was a misty night – swirly mist, like in horror films, only this wasn’t frightening.’
‘Her face was a bit scary though,’ Poppy put in.
‘Scary?’
‘I didn’t really mean scary – just sort of beautiful, but remote,’ she explained. ‘And then Chloe’s granny heard us whispering and came in, and when we told her and looked for the angel, she had gone.’
‘There had to be a rational explanation,’ Felix said.
‘No, it was a holy sign,’ Poppy insisted. ‘We were going to stay up and watch for it again the next night, I remember, but your mum came home, Chloe, so we moved back into your room in the flat.’
‘You know, I’d forgotten that! And Granny said she didn’t think we would see it twice anyway.’
‘Oh well,’ Felix said good-nat
uredly, ‘I can see you both believe in it, so I’ll have to believe it too. But I see now why you have a thing about angels, Chloe.’
‘We all have guardian angels, Felix. I told you that when I read the oracle cards for you.’
He looked over his shoulder nervously, as if his might be standing right behind him. ‘Let’s have another drink,’ he suggested.
‘Not for me. I have to get back and type up some letters for Grumps, and then make a big batch of Wishes because my stock of hearts plummeted what with Valentine’s Day coming up – I had loads of orders this morning.’
‘And the blacksmith’s coming out any minute now,’ Poppy said. ‘Honeybun’s cast one of his shoes and it’s hardly worn, so I want to walk the paddock and try and find it before he gets there.’
‘I suppose I might as well go back and open the shop up then,’ Felix said. ‘I’m thinking of putting a sofa into the front room and a coffee machine to attract people in – what do you think?’
‘It’s a good idea. And you can leave out leaflets for Grumps’ museum when he opens, and we can have information about your bookshop on display,’ I said. ‘Mutual publicity.’
‘Oh, but just wait until Hebe finds out about the witchcraft museum!’ Poppy said, shuddering. ‘Sparks will fly!’
‘I sincerely hope you’re wrong,’ I replied. ‘I get enough of that with Jake and those firesticks he’s borrowed from a friend!’
Chapter Five
Pay Dirt
Grumps had exchanged contracts, so life suddenly became very hectic and I wished he or Zillah had given me a bit more warning about the move.
My Angel card readings kept helpfully suggesting I spend a day at the seaside, or visit a garden to soothe my soul ready for a major but fortuitous change of direction, but there wasn’t time. My batteries would simply have to recharge themselves with solar power.
By some alchemy (or so he said), Grumps had managed to get the purchasers of our home to let us stay there for two weeks while the Old Smithy was cleaned and repainted inside and out. They were a pleasant pair of middle-aged American antique dealers and I wondered why on earth they had fallen in love with a shabby chunk of Victorian Gothic, situated right next to a graveyard. I didn’t want to rock the boat by asking them, though.
Felix recommended the painters and decorators he’d used when he moved Marked Pages from Merchester to Sticklepond a few years before, and he also suggested a local cleaning firm called Dolly Mops. Grumps must have promised them each an enticing bonus if they finished in record time, because the work was well under way when I went back with Poppy only a couple of days after my initial visit, in order to measure for curtains.
Grumps did not revisit, but ordered everything from afar, choosing the interior paintwork colours from the gloomier end of the Farrow and Ball range and stipulating that all the original William Morris wallpaper was to remain. But Zillah had free range in the kitchen, her sitting room and her own bedroom suite, where a bold paper featuring an unlikely combination of giant red peonies against a blue trellis was destined to reign supreme.
It was lucky that Grumps’ new home was also Victorian Gothic, because it meant that most of the furniture and curtains he already had turned out to fit perfectly. Even his huge range of bookshelves could be accommodated in the room that was designated as his new study.
Our flat was a more recent addition, furnished with a mixture of the cheap modern stuff that my mother had favoured and bits and pieces I’d picked up in junk shops. Most of it just wouldn’t fit, and anyway, it was such a pretty little cottage that I yearned to go all chintzy and cabbage-rosy.
Of course, Jake wanted his new bedroom painted black, like his present one, and threw a teenage hissy fit when I said the whole house was going to be cream with touches of the old-rose purply-pink colour of the tiles in the sitting-room fireplace, or as near as I could get to it. But in the interests of fraternal harmony we compromised eventually: he was to have one wall painted purple, plus some new black and purple curtains and a matching bed throw – very retro. It sounded vile, but could easily be fixed when he grew out of this phase…if he ever did.
Grumps had opted to have the removal men pack everything up, and then unpack again at the other end, but Jake and I decided to do our own. Jake, because he was at just that secretive age when your most treasured possessions might be misinterpreted by alien (or even sisterly) eyes, and me because I didn’t have a huge amount of stuff…apart from the Chocolate Wishes equipment and stock, about a million ornamental angels and dozens of potted geraniums. And I had to make arrangements to move the geraniums, the mini greenhouse and all the pots and tubs of plants in the courtyard myself, since the removal firm refused to take them.
‘Poppy and I found some rose-patterned Laura Ashley curtains for the cottage in a charity shop in Ormskirk yesterday,’ I told Grumps, when I went in to collect the latest chapter of Satan’s Child and a letter that seemed to consist of several pages of barely veiled but mysterious threats. It was addressed to a book reviewer who had dared to say rude things about his last novel, The Desirous Devil. ‘And a lovely coffee table – it’s a big brass tray on knobbly black wooden tripod legs.’
Grumps had generously given me a cheque to buy anything I needed for my new home, but I was making it stretch as far as possible. Anyway, it’s much more fun (and a lot more ecologically sound) to search out stuff from charity and junk shops, though there wasn’t much time. It was just as well Stirrups was quiet at this time of year, so Poppy could get away occasionally and help me.
I wasn’t really expecting Grumps to be terribly interested in what I was saying, so I was surprised when he stopped scribbling on a bit of paper, looked up and said, ‘I seem to recall that there are one or two pieces of furniture stored in the attic. Perhaps there might be something you would want among them? In any case, someone should decide what is worth taking with us, or can be left for the Meerlings.’
‘Marlings,’ I corrected. ‘OK, I’ll sort that out, Grumps. And you’ve reminded me – that’s where I put Mum’s stuff, so I’d better go through it, hadn’t I? She isn’t going to want any of her clothes when she does come back now – they’ll be out of fashion – though I suppose I’ll have to keep her personal possessions.’
The day I put them up there was not a happy one. For some reason, Jake had been totally convinced Mum would turn up on the first anniversary of her disappearing trick and was correspondingly so deeply upset when she didn’t, in an angry, thirteen-year-old sort of way, that he took it out by trashing his bicycle with a tyre wrench and then vanishing for hours. In his absence I had shoved all her possessions into old suitcases and boxes, clearing the flat of any lingering trace of her presence, and I hadn’t thought about them since.
‘Label anything Lou might still want and it can be transferred to the attic of the new house,’ Grumps suggested.
‘OK. There shouldn’t be much.’ I paused. ‘Do you think she will ever come back? It’s been a long time.’
‘You would need to ask Zillah that, but I would much prefer she didn’t. Life is more tranquil without her, and Zillah assures me that she is alive and well.’ He held out the slip of paper he had been covering in his black, crabbed writing and added, ‘The ancient Mayan chocolate charm I gave you was, if you remember my saying so, incomplete. I think I have managed to translate a little more with the help of my friend in Cordoba. He wrote to me this morning with some suggestions. You might want to add the additional lines when you are preparing your chocolate.’
‘Since the ancient Mayan people didn’t have a written language, I can’t imagine how they could pass down a charm for chocolate making anyway, Grumps!’
‘There is such a thing as oral history, you know, Chloe, and no reason why such a thing should not have been written down by one of the early Spanish conquistadores – as it was – and carried back to Spain.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Just have faith. The last version worked, to a certain ex
tent, did it not? Business boomed.’
‘My sales did rise,’ I admitted, though I was sure that had more to do with the excellence of the chocolate and the novelty of the concept, rather than the brief incantation of some probably spurious spell over the tempering pot.
Just out of curiosity, when he had managed to decipher the whole thing I thought I should try a sort of blind chocolate tasting session, with Felix and Poppy as the guinea pigs, to see if they thought it made any difference to the taste.
I found one or two dust-sheeted gems among the rolls of moth-eaten carpet and broken furniture up in the attic – a white Lloyd Loom chair and matching small ottoman that would be lovely in my bedroom. I put them to one side and labelled them for the removal men, along with a small mirror that some long-gone Victorian miss had adorned with a frame of shells. A few were broken or missing, but I had an old sweet jar full of seaside treasures that Jake and I had collected when he was a little boy, so I could easily replace them.
Other than that, there was just a sad huddle of Mum’s stuff. There weren’t any books (like Zillah, she didn’t read anything except magazines) and not much paperwork, since when it became clear that she wasn’t coming back any time soon, Grumps had taken her bank and credit card statements so he could settle her affairs, though I was sure he was under no legal obligation to do that. We thought escaping her spiralling debts was part of the reason she took off in the first place.
I’d packed up what was left, together with her costume jewellery, makeup and beauty aids. Most of her extensive wardrobe I’d crammed into a huge cabin trunk that was already up here.
Now I opened the lid, releasing a wave of Je Reviens and a lot of unwanted memories of when I had been a small child, convinced it was my fault that my mother didn’t seem to love me very much…
I’d brought a roll of strong plastic bin bags with me and began to fill them with clothes. There were a lot of expensive labels in there, and even though they were out of date I could probably have made some money selling them on eBay. But there was not much time and, besides, I just wanted to clear as much of her out of our lives as possible. Time for Jake and me to have a whole, fresh new start.
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