‘Well, that’s probably true – combined with the chance to make a quick buck or two.’
‘Raffy said there were always people attracted to the occult, though magic’s only real power lay in suggestion and superstition,’ Poppy said, ‘and Mann-Drake’s “supernatural powers” were nothing more than a mixture of personal magnetism, drugs, alcohol and fear.’
‘That probably went down well with Grumps and Hebe Winter!’
‘Miss Winter always says she’s a herbalist,’ Poppy said doubtfully. ‘Mr Lyon said that at least we could all now see that he was no threat to the community in comparison to Mann-Drake.’
‘No, I’m sure he’s not.’
She frowned in an effort of recollection. ‘He said something else, about how later religious practices were like lichen growing on an old tree, feeding off the vital sap and obscuring the essential truth, though not completely hiding its shape…or something.’
‘That sounds like Grumps,’ I agreed. ‘I think it’s just his twisty way of saying live and let live.’
‘Yes, he did say that in some cases the two could become interdependent, so he meant well. Raffy told him he couldn’t agree with that viewpoint, but he looked forward to discussing it at more length some time.’
‘What did Grumps say to that?’
‘Only that he looked forward to that too.’
‘Oh? He must have been in a surprisingly mellow and amenable frame of mind!’
‘He advised us all to buy witch charms from Mrs Snowball and put them over our doors, just like yours,’ she told me. ‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’
‘It certainly can’t hurt. Was that the end of the meeting?’
Poppy gave one of her infectious giggles. ‘Yes, except that Mr Lyon suddenly said that he had been considering something the vicar had said to him about joining in with village life and had decided to join the Elizabethan Re-enactment Society! He’s going to become John Dee to Miss Winter’s Virgin Queen.’
‘Good heavens – did he? How did they take that?’
‘They were initially stunned.’
‘So am I!’
‘Yes, but once that wore off, I think Miss Winter was quite pleased, really.’
Our usual threesome met at the Falling Star a couple of days later, all sulks forgotten, and Mrs Snowball, who was minding the bar in the snug until Molly arrived, told us that she’d done such a roaring trade in her witch bottles since the last Parish Council meeting, that she’d had to order a fresh consignment of empty ones.
‘Though they’re not the same as the old. It takes some of the mystery out of it when the glass is thin enough to guess what’s in there, though they’ll work just as well. But the old Bellarmine pottery ones were the best.’
‘Yes, Grumps has got one of those in the museum. I remember it in the catalogue.’
We’d tried to get in our drinks order quickly, before she had a chance to switch the coffee machine on, but she insisted on giving us cappuccinos on the house, ‘seeing as I’m raking in the money for me charms!’ And she cackled like an old hen.
‘You can rake in some more, because I need two extra bottles,’ Poppy told her.
‘Ah, but I’ve put me prices up!’ she said cunningly.
‘Couldn’t I have a discount for bulk?’ wheedled Poppy. ‘These will make five I’ve had.’
‘I suppose I could let you have them at the old price, seeing as you’re a good customer at the Star.’
‘Thanks, Mrs S! I need to protect the stable yard next, you see: I can’t have the horses exposed to anything nasty going around, can I?’
‘You make Mann-Drake sound like a contagion,’ Felix said.
When Molly came in Mrs Snowball disappeared, only to return a little while later bearing two of the original thick, greenish bottles, which she handed to Poppy after wiping the dust off with a corner of her flowered pinny.
‘Here you are, from the last of the old stock I laid in years ago. I found a box right at the back of the cellar that got overlooked behind a pile of broken crates.’
Poppy paid for them, then immediately gave one of the bottles to Felix. ‘This is a gift, but you have to promise me to put it over your shop door. In fact, I’ll come back with you and make sure you do!’
‘Poppy, you shouldn’t waste your money like that,’ he protested. ‘Mann-Drake’s already been in my shop and of course nothing dire happened, so I really think it’s—’
‘Oh, stop being so macho,’ she said. ‘Better to be safe than sorry, don’t you think, Chloe?’
‘If Grumps says it’s a good idea, then it probably is,’ I agreed. ‘You don’t lose anything by having one, do you, Felix?’
‘Except for a possible new customer,’ he grumbled. ‘But, OK, since you both seem determined on it, I’ll move some of the books from the shelf over the door and put it there.’
‘You’d better attach the bottle to the shelf too,’ I suggested, ‘or some over-curious customer might try and lift it down, or knock it off.’
‘Good idea,’ Poppy agreed.
In Mrs Snowball’s absence Molly had let us have beer and then later, when Felix went back to the bar to fetch crisps and Poppy was in the loo, I seized the moment and quickly whipped out the little bottle of love potion. I managed to get a drop or two in each glass before they came back, though the creamy tops acquired a faintly oily iridescence. It seemed a harsh way to treat best bitter, but it must have tasted all right because they drank it down without a murmur (or any noticeable effects whatsoever).
Then we all went back to Marked Pages and Felix cleared a space on the shelf over the door. Despite his protests, I firmly removed the toolbox from his grip and, standing on a chair, screwed an eyelet into the back of the shelf, wired round the bottle and attached it.
‘There! It won’t fall down, no one can pick it up, and the light-fingered will need a screwdriver or wire cutters if they want to nick it.’
‘They’d probably be cursed if they did,’ Poppy said with a giggle. ‘Well, I’d better get off home now, because Mum’s gone to Hot Rocks on the pull with Mags, and I don’t like leaving the horses unchecked for too long.’
‘Yes, I’d better go too, though Jake doesn’t exactly need my company these days, now he’s got Kat!’
‘They are sweet together,’ Poppy said soppily.
‘You incurable romantic!’ Felix smiled at her and their gazes seemed to meet and lock for a long moment…But then they both blinked dazedly and looked away and the moment – if there was one – was broken.
Maybe I imagined it?
The following Tuesday Grumps went to his first Re-enactment Society meeting and Jake and Kat offered to drop him at the village hall on their way to have dinner with her parents. Having initially been alarmed by the first sight of Jake (not to mention his relationship to Grumps, when they got to know about it) they had now done a complete about-face and seemed to be trying to adopt him. Any mother of a teenage son would understand exactly how I felt about having someone else shoulder part of my food bills – deeply grateful.
‘OK, and I’ll come and fetch you later, Grumps, if you ring me,’ I told him.
Luckily his eccentric taste in clothes meant he hadn’t had far to look among his collection of garments to find something suitable for the role of John Dee – an embroidered, tasselled cap and a long, velvet robe fitted the bill quite nicely. He was a natural for the role.
Before they left I checked him over, a bit like an anxious parent whose child is off on a first date, making sure he had my phone number and a little money. ‘You may have to use the public phone at the back of the village hall and also there’s probably a kitty for refreshments,’ I explained.
‘Dear me, yes,’ he said, ‘I seem to have got out of the habit of social engagements, but I am sure it will do me good to get out into the world occasionally.’
I’m not sure the Sticklepond Re-enactment Society counts as the world, but it’s a start.
It was
Laurence Yatton who called me later to tell me Grumps was ready to be picked up and, when I collected him, he seemed to have had a good time.
‘There were six kinds of biscuits, two of them home-made,’ he said approvingly, the cookie connoisseur. ‘Hebe Winter said that when she told her niece, Sophy, that I was to assume the role of John Dee, she suggested that I might occasionally go to Winter’s End dressed in character, when it is open to the public. They would rope off a special area where I could work and everyone would think I was drawing up a birth chart for the Queen, or some such thing. Just for an hour or two, as a special treat for visitors. They already have a Shakespeare, who makes an occasional appearance, as does Hebe in her role as Elizabeth the First.’
‘Would you do that?’ My reclusive old Grumps was constantly surprising me lately!
‘I don’t see why not. Many of the society are also Friends of Winter’s End and work there in full costume as volunteers throughout the open season, but I would not, of course, have time for that, for I will be fully occupied with my own work and with the museum.’
I could tell he was now quite fancying himself in the role!
I still felt furious that Raffy should have burst back into my life just as it had begun to settle down into a pleasant pattern, and that feeling didn’t seem to be wearing off at all. In fact, every time I caught sight of him my heart gave a sudden jolt and then started thumping away at twice its normal rate, which couldn’t be good for me.
It must have puzzled Poppy and Felix (and presumably Raffy too), that a boy-and-girl affair that ended so long ago should still make me act this way, but I couldn’t explain it to them. And while I could force myself to say I forgave Raffy, that wasn’t going to extinguish the bitter, lonely flame that was burning in my heart for what was lost, was it?
I was sure Raffy was trying to keep out of my way, just as I was trying to keep out of his, but of course that was impossible in a small place like Sticklepond. He buzzed around in his little un-rock-god Mercedes hatchback, presumably going to church-related meetings and making calls. He buried, christened and said prayers but so far, hadn’t married (no takers till spring had sprung), and he walked his little dog past my cottage very early every morning, without fail. I knew this, because I watched him from behind the shop window curtain. It still seemed strange to me to see the white gleam of the clerical collar at his throat, even if it was just printed onto a black T-shirt: it was a symbol of what he had now become, however improbable…
According to Poppy, Raffy was still determinedly carrying on with his scheme of visiting all the houses in the parish, which could prove to be his life’s work once he reached the scattered outskirts and set out into the countryside.
He and Felix really had struck up an unlikely friendship, too. I’d found Raffy in Marked Pages more than once myself, although he’d always hurried out as I went in.
He was paying contractors to clear the worst jungly bits of the vicarage gardens, I’d also seen him out there, hacking down overgrown shrubs side by side with them.
Anyway, he was suddenly ubiquitous…or do I mean omnipresent? No, I suppose that’s God. Anyway, Raffy was everywhere and a huge, huge success – with the female parishioners in particular. They may have been dubious initially, but they couldn’t resist that smile, it had been the downfall of many and I should know.
And evidently it was a well-known fact that a single vicar, in possession of a modest fortune, must be in need of a wife.
‘Raffy visited Grumps again the other day,’ I told Poppy, though I didn’t mention that he’d looked my way as he passed the shop window while I was working, and this time given me a tentative wave. ‘They seem to enjoy the verbal sparring, and even Zillah’s warmed to him, since the cards told her he’s got a vital role to play in what is to come.’
‘He’s bound to play a part in everything, now he’s the vicar, isn’t he?’ she pointed out.
‘She just meant the Mann-Drake situation, I think, though she might have interpreted the meaning wrongly.’ I heaved a sigh. ‘Even simply knowing Raffy was in the area would have been difficult enough, without seeing him all over the place. I suppose I ought to have started to get used to it by now, but I haven’t.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, I’ve been thinking it over and I’m sure the way you feel now isn’t just to do with him, it’s about lots of unresolved issues,’ she said, suddenly surprising me with an insightful comment, as she sometimes does.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you lost your first love, you were jilted by your second and your mother abandoned you, to all intents and purposes.’
‘Yes, but she wasn’t much of a mother to start off with.’
‘Maybe not, but you’re bound to have resented the fact, because it meant you had to stay home and look after Jake – so then you weren’t there when Raffy went back to find you.’
‘Actually, I expect Jake would have survived with Zillah and Grumps if I had gone back to university.’
‘Survived, but not turned out so well, even if you could have brought yourself to leave him. And I’m sure he’d have gone off the rails at some point if you’d abandoned him like his mother did.’
‘Perhaps,’ I admitted. ‘He’s turned out quite well, hasn’t he?’
‘He’s a lovely boy,’ she said warmly. ‘By the way, have you heard anything from Chas about that DNA test?’
‘Only an email saying he’ll be calling in soon when he’s up in the north on business, so he can’t have got the result yet. It’ll be odd seeing him and not knowing…’ I sighed. ‘It’s just another damn issue to resolve, isn’t it? But I really do hope Chas is my father, because at least he cares a little for me and I’m fond of him.’
‘I think if you could find out the truth about who your father was and come to terms with that, manage to forgive your mother for being so useless and then, finally, forgive Raffy for letting you down all those years ago, then you’d probably feel like a whole, fresh new person!’
‘That’s a bit of a tall order! I think I’d have to be a different person,’ I said with a wry smile, not mentioning that the Angel cards were in at least partial agreement with her, since they kept coming up with the unambiguous message that I should forgive Raffy. I couldn’t read it any other way.
‘You could do it,’ she said encouragingly, ‘and then perhaps we could both look for nice men, before they’re all gone. There must be two left on the shelf still, don’t you think?’
‘Of course there are – like Felix,’ I suggested sneakily.
‘Well…yes, I suppose so, because he’s single and there’s nothing wrong with him, is there?’
‘Absolutely not. But I don’t want a man. I’ve had enough of them. Or children either, because Jake was enough. No, I love my little groove of pub, chocolate, friends and a lovely garden to play with.’
Seeing her face fall I added quickly, ‘But we could go further afield occasionally, or even join something, so we would meet new people?’
‘They do have afternoon and evening classes at the village hall,’ she suggested doubtfully, ‘but they seem to be things like napkin folding and paper flower making.’
‘I don’t think either of us has quite reached those levels of desperation yet, have we?’ I asked.
Zillah, having decided that we needed Raffy, took the matter of reconciliation into her own hands.
The following day she knocked on the inner door that led to the museum, stuck her head in and announced loudly, ‘Gentleman caller!’
Then she pushed Raffy into the room and shut the door firmly behind him.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he said, looking at once startled and entirely unsure of his welcome, as well he might. ‘I can see you’re busy and I didn’t mean to come in. I called in to leave something for you with Zillah, but she insisted—’
I’d got over the first heart-jarring shock of his unexpected appearance by now, so I said evenly, ‘It’s all right, there’s no point in res
isting Zillah if she decides you should do something. I don’t make chocolate every day and at the moment I’m only cutting out the Wishes to go inside.’
Seeing he wasn’t about to be immediately ejected, he came over to look.
‘I get them printed on sheets of this thin, shiny paper and cut them out myself,’ I explained. ‘There are lots of different ones, so no two boxes of Chocolate Wishes are identical. I make a random selection.’
‘So, how do you get them inside the chocolate shell?’
‘I mould the shapes in two halves, then I put the Wish in one and stick on the top with a little melted chocolate.’
‘Easy when you know how.’
‘Yes, though you have to use tempered chocolate, or a white line could develop around the join and spoil the look of it.’ I was talking slightly too fast, unnerved by his nearness. I’d forgotten quite how tall he was too, until he was inches away, looking down at me…‘I sell them in boxes of six or twelve.’
‘Felix says you shift them by the bushel-load so you have to go to the post office with parcels every day.’
‘Yes, the number of orders snowballed after my Chocolate Wishes got a mention in an article in Country at Heart magazine and I’ve been advertising in it ever since. You have to keep on top of them, even when they’re not urgent, and I usually call on Felix on the way back – it’s the lure of his new coffee machine.’
‘I know, I’m getting into the habit of doing the same, only earlier, after I’ve said morning prayers in the church.’
‘Do you have to say prayers every day, morning and evening?’
‘I don’t have to, I want to; it’s different,’ he said with a smile. ‘By the way, did Jake tell you he’d been round to the vicarage with that nice girlfriend of his?’
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