by Debbie Young
“Gosh. And that was the last she saw of him.”
“Yes.”
We both sat in silence for a moment, sipping our drinks for comfort. I was first to speak.
“So if you ask someone to be your Valentine, you’re effectively asking them if they’d like to be clubbed to death and have their heads cut off?”
The vicar nodded playfully. “According to that version of the legend, yes. You’d have to be really in love to say yes to that. But you see, my dear, I’ve just demonstrated the power of storytelling to convey a spiritual message. You’ll never forget that tale now, will you? That’s all I’m asking you to do with the children at Sunday School. I’ll feed you the stories in advance.”
To my surprise, I found myself relishing the prospect. “I think we’d better skip that version of the Valentine’s story at Sunday School. We don’t want the children re-enacting it in the playground next day.”
The vicar laughed. “Indeed. The more important message is that people are meant to live together in partnership and harmony. We are greater than the sum of our parts, so to speak. But that doesn’t mean I shan’t be celebrating Valentine’s Day with my dear wife in private. Beneath this dog collar, I am flesh and blood, you know.”
He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, making me giggle.
“‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?’” I hoped this quote was an appropriate retort. Hector would have been proud of me. I think.
I moved us back on to less risqué territory.
“So will you be booking a table for two at The Bluebird’s special Valentine’s dinner?”
He beamed. “Most certainly. There are many more ways of worshipping God than going to church, and supporting local community events is one of them.” I wondered whether he’d been into The Bluebird lately. “Like the saints, God is ever-present, every day of the year, whatever we do, wherever we go, and not only in church on Sundays.” He delved in his pocket again. “Now, can I offer you another mint before I go?”
10 Cocoa Rush
After my last pupil of Wednesday afternoon had gone, and the shop had finally emptied of customers, I was glad to have the opportunity to sit down on the stool behind the trade counter for a rest while Hector was ferreting about in the stockroom, looking for a book he’d put in a safe place before Christmas and now couldn’t find. I’d just settled down to read the latest edition of The Bookseller when a loud crash at the door startled me.
I half-expected to see a thug coming in to raid the till, but it was only Tommy, pushing the door so hard it rebounded from the rubber stop in the floor and came back to hit him on the shoulder. He appeared undaunted, though I suspected he’d find a bruise there by the morning.
“Got any odd jobs you want doing?” he asked hopefully.
For a moment I considered asking him to set the tea tables ready for the next morning, but that would have been like asking a bull to organise a china shop. I glanced around.
“You could tidy up the display table if you like.”
Even Tommy couldn’t break a book.
It took him a while to match the displaced books to the right piles, like a toddler puzzling over a shape sorter. Halfway through, he paused to sneeze loudly and dramatically, jogging the table and sending several piles of Minty books tumbling to the floor like Jenga bricks.
I got up to help him pick them up again.
“Wretched Minty!” I murmured.
Tommy paused to look at me quizzically. “You don’t like that Minty person? I thought all ladies liked Hermione Minty.”
I frowned. “Well, this lady doesn’t. There are times when I could cheerfully strangle her.”
Tommy straightened up, leaving me to gather the fallen books, pulled his diary out of his school blazer pocket and started to scribble in it. “Has cheerfully got one l or two?” he asked after a moment.
“What? Why?”
Tommy tapped the side of his nose with his pen, leaving behind a blob of black ink like a malignant freckle. “Just a precaution.” I bet he didn’t know the meaning of the word before he started reading his new detective skills book. “So where do you think Hermione Minty lives?”
I lined up the corners of the piles of books, grateful that Tommy’s sneeze hadn’t damaged them beyond saleability.
“I’ve no idea, Tommy. How would I know?”
Tommy shrugged. “I thought you famous writers might hang out together somewhere.”
“Famous? Me? How do you work that out?”
“You write things and you’re in that writing group. You all published a book together, so you must be famous.”
He meant the little homespun Christmas anthology, gallantly turned into a printed book for the Wendlebury Writers by Hector. I suppose when you’re fourteen and have only ever lived in one little village, fame is relative.
With a flourish, he finished writing his note and pocketed his diary and pen, not bothering to replace its cap. Ink immediately started wicking its way down towards the side seam.
“Although if you want to strangle her, it’s probably just as well you don’t know where she lives,” he said.
I decided he needed a diversion.
“Go and ask Hector to let you flatten the empty cardboard book boxes and put them out for recycling. That’ll be enough to earn you a mug of cocoa. I was about to make one for me and Hector anyway.”
The sound of the kettle boiling and the clatter of mugs was not enough to drown out the noise of Tommy jumping on box after box in the stockroom. Hector emerged, probably for his own safety, as I was squirting clouds of whipped cream from an aerosol can on to three mugs of hot chocolate.
“I think Tommy’s missed his vocation as a stunt man.” Hector watched me crumble a small chocolate flake across the three little clouds, the bits sinking down like gravel in snow. “You know, the kind that use piles of cardboard boxes to break their fall.”
He wrapped his hands round his mug for warmth. The stockroom radiator was always at a lower temperature than the ones in the shop to save on electricity. He pulled out a chair at the tearoom table and I sat beside him. Tommy joined us, slamming the stockroom door in his wake, before stirring four lumps of brown sugar into his cocoa. He guzzled it down quickly, then ran his index finger round the rim of the mug to capture the last few flakes of grated chocolate.
“Have you got anything else for me to do? I wouldn’t mind earning a cake.”
He glanced longingly at the cupcake stand. Wary of how much sugar he had already ingested, I was firm for once.
“This isn’t a food bank, you know. You’ve done enough to earn your luxury hot chocolate, but that’s all we’ve got for you today.”
Tommy scraped his chair back. “OK, I’ll try the village shop. They’ve usually got plenty of cakes left at the end of the day. Maybe Carol will have some odd jobs for me.”
I knew Carol would be too kind-hearted to turn him away, so I tried to redirect his energies elsewhere.
“I tell you who does want some help, Tommy, and that’s Donald. He’s got loads of junk stashed in his courtyard to get rid of. Ask him if you can help shift it for him. I presume he’ll be bagging it up so he can take it down to the recycling centre in Slate Green.”
“Why doesn’t he sling it all down that old well of his?”
Hector nodded. “Good point, Tommy. If Donald’s going to get it filled in, why not use it as his own personal landfill site first? It’ll save petrol and backache if he doesn’t have to take all the stuff to the tip. Then when he pours in the concrete to seal the well, it’ll trickle down between the cracks, saving him money on materials.”
“Like the ice-cream melting in a sundae,” I said thoughtfully, wondering whether I should add ice-cream sundaes to the tearoom menu in the summer. If Donald’s new beer garden might compete with our tearoom, we’d need to up our game.
Tommy put his hands on his hips, oozing confidence. “I could do that for him. I’m good at flinging stuff down the well. I do it all the
time. Thanks for the hot chocolate, miss.”
With that, he made a boisterous exit, adding another dent to the wall. Hector got up to close the door Tommy had left open behind him, stopping the icy air gusting in from the High Street.
11 Beside the Seaside
I squinted against the razor-sharp sunshine. “Hector.”
“That’s me.”
As we headed down the M5 motorway to visit Hector’s parents the following Sunday, I took the opportunity to put a question to Hector that had been bothering me since Carol’s birthday.
“I want to ask you something.”
“I’m listening.”
We’d left the gently rolling hills of the Cotswolds far behind, passing the big Cribbs Causeway retail park on the outskirts of Bristol, and were now descending steadily past the murky industrial sprawl of Avonmouth Docks. The Somerset Levels, the flat fields of that county, sparkled ahead of us in the distance beneath a brilliant cloudless sky. They looked like they’d been damped down ready for ironing. The long, straight drainage ditches dividing the fields struck me as slightly sinister, taunting farmers with a veiled threat of flooding. The fields looked eerily lifeless. I didn’t know why. Then I put my finger on it. There wasn’t a Cotswold sheep in sight. It felt as if we were plummeting into a whole different country.
“It’s a bit sensitive,” I said.
“So am I, so you’ve come to the right place. Go on, spit it out, whatever it is.”
I took a deep breath. “Do you think it’s ever justifiable to betray a confidence? If it is for the greater good of the person who has confided in you?”
He glanced over his shoulder, flipped the indicator, and moved out into the middle lane.
“You mean is it in the same league as a white lie? I suppose it depends on what that confidence is, and on the judgement of the person confided in.”
I sighed. “Maybe I’d better tell you and you can decide.”
I gave him a sideways glance to check his reaction, but his face was expressionless, his eyes on the road ahead. His silence made the sound of the road surface beneath the tyres preternaturally noisy. Then he sighed.
“If you don’t tell me what it is after that build-up, I might assume something much worse. That’s how rumours start.”
I felt a wave of relief wash over me at the permission to unburden myself.
“The thing is, Bertie Thompson is threatening to return to Wendlebury. Carol told me he phoned her, hinting that he wants to make amends and start again.”
A car to our right hooted as Hector inadvertently crossed the white line.
“Surely he can’t be serious! He’s about twenty-five years too late. Does he honestly think anyone will tolerate his presence in the village, even Carol? Or Billy? When he abandoned Carol, he severed all ties with his family. Never even came back for his parents’ funerals.”
“I hadn’t considered Billy’s position. What a trial siblings can be. It’s at times like this that I’m glad I’m an only child, aren’t you?”
Hector pursed his lips. “I wouldn’t want a brother like Bertie, that’s for sure. To be honest, I’d be very surprised if Bertie really did come back to Wendlebury Barrow after all this time. Even he can’t be that thick-skinned. But if he does, we’ll send him packing, one way or another.”
As the sign for the Clevedon turn-off rose up on the horizon and Hector moved into the slow lane, my thoughts turned to meeting his parents. This was a big step for Hector as well as for me. He’d never introduced any girlfriends to them since Celeste left him.
As we circled the roundabout, corporation-planted with purples pansies, I remembered they’d barely seen Celeste either, although she and Hector had been together throughout university and a couple of years beyond. That struck me as strange for someone so close to his parents.
Maybe his mother was the sort who was desperate to marry him off and worried about him being left on the shelf. If so, he’d be scared she’d frighten girls off or give casual dates unhelpful hopes of marriage. Or maybe she was the sort who never thought any woman was good enough for her son, so would drive them away. Perhaps witnessing the rift between Carol and her parents had made her ultra-cautious.
We descended into the town centre and beyond.
“Do you ever wish you lived by the seaside?” I asked Hector as we got our first glimpse of the sea. “What a beautiful pier.”
“That’s the only Grade I listed pier in the country,” he said proudly.
As we drove along the seafront, Hector cranked his window open a couple of inches to allow a waft of icy ozone to be sucked into the Land Rover.
“As approved by the Poet Laureate,” Hector continued. “John Betjeman said it was the most beautiful pier in England, and he didn’t praise architecture lightly. ‘Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough. It isn’t fit for humans now.’”
“That’s a bit harsh,” I said. “Poor Slough.”
With its neat array of frilly old villas and cottages, Clevedon got my approval too, although the beach lacked the fine, light sands I was used to in Scotland. I gazed across the opaque brown water to the distant coast of South Wales. It didn’t seem like real sea, either. On the wild coasts of north west Scotland, you could gaze westward, knowing that the next significant land mass was North America, bar the scattering of tiny Scottish islands whose history and culture my mother loved and had studied so much. Here the view stopped at Wales.
“I can see why my parents are happy here,” said Hector. “It feels open and fresh. Not that we haven’t got fresh air in the Cotswolds. Or does that sound silly?”
He shifted self-consciously in his seat as he flicked down the indicator to turn into the side street that I recognised as his parents’ address.
“That’s not silly at all. But I tell you what, if you like this, I’d love to show you the Scottish coast.”
Hector smiled as he turned into the driveway of a neat bungalow just beyond the promenade. “Is that an offer, Sophie?”
My heartbeat quickened. I wasn’t sure I was ready for him to meet my parents yet.
I gathered up my handbag, scarf, hat and gloves from the footwell, while Hector jumped down from his seat and came round to open the door for me. Taking me by the hand, he almost dragged me up the straight concrete path, past weedless flowerbeds dotted with the shoots of snowdrops and croci. With his own key, he let us in through the front door of his parents’ bungalow.
I recognised Hector’s parents instantly from the old photos that I’d found in his spare room when I was looking at his second-hand book collection before Christmas. I also vaguely remembered meeting them when I was a teenager, visiting their old antique shop with Auntie May one summer, when Hector was away at university. They were still sprightly and attractive, which made me think Hector would age well.
They recognised me too.
“Ah, those cheekbones!” said Nancy. “Edward, look at her cheekbones. Aren’t they exactly like May’s?”
I was glad she’d focused on my cheekbones and nothing more embarrassing.
“And the eyes. Your aunt was a beauty in her prime, Sophie.” Edward gave a nod of approval to his son. I felt like a cow at the market, as if Hector had bought me for five magic beans.
Hector grabbed my hand again.
“Come on, Sophie, let me show you the garden. Sophie’s keen on plants, Mum, like May.”
He shoved me out into the kitchen and through the back door.
“I’m not that keen,” I said when only he could hear. “Not in January. It’s freezing out here.”
“I’m just giving them time to talk about you while we’re not in the same room. That and the fact I’ve brought a girl home.”
“I’m not a girl, I’m a woman.”
“You know what I mean. If it makes you feel any better, they still think of me as their little boy.”
I bit back a smile. I was so used to seeing Hector in control in the shop, authoritative and wise, that it seemed odd to t
hink of him being someone’s little boy.
“By the time we go back in, my dad will have got the pre-lunch sherry out, and that’ll make you relax.”
“But I’m on the wagon.”
“Please don’t reject it. You’ll only set him off on his standard lecture about the medical benefits of sherry.”
He looked as dubious about that theory as I felt.
Hector led me by the hand around the long, narrow garden, his palm unusually damp. Immaculately weeded for the winter, the well-tilled, crumbly soil was disturbed only by the tops of narcissi planted in precise geometrical formations. Neatly espaliered apple trees spanned the wall at the bottom of the garden, looking as if someone had pressed them like flowers, then stood them upright for execution by firing squad. A ruthlessly manicured herb garden divided the lawn from the kitchen garden, which was spread with warming layers of compost ready for spring planting. Two tramlines of onions were the advance party of the summer’s vegetable crop.
“It’s very neat,” I said at last.
Hector nodded. “I know. Dad likes a bit of order. The plants wouldn’t dare not to grow under his management.”
“I guess that’s why you’ve turned out so tidy.” I thought with shame of how neglected Auntie May’s garden looked just now. I resolved to spend the next weekend turning over the soil and dressing it, ready for the spring. “I suppose I should be glad that it didn’t send you in the opposite direction – wild and unruly.”
When Hector scowled, I wondered whether I’d said something wrong, but before I could enquire, his mother appeared at the open back door to beckon us in.
“Hector, darling! Sophie! Drinkies!”
I smiled and waved to her to signal that we’d heard, and we started back up the garden path, me leading Hector this time.
While his mum bustled about in the kitchen putting the finishing touches to the Sunday lunch, Hector and his father engaged in conversation about Max Hastings’ biography of Winston Churchill. As I’d not read the book in question, I couldn’t comment, so contented myself with wandering around the room looking at the many ornaments and pictures, sipping viscous teak-coloured sherry from a delicate crystal schooner.