by Janey Lewis
‘OK, OK,’ said Liberty, laughing, ‘that sounds more like you.’
‘I’m sorry, I really am. I am desperately trying not to say everything I am thinking, as you may yet get back with him, and then you would hate me for what I said, and we wouldn’t be friends any longer.’
They embraced, and after a delicious meal felt as though they understood one another very well.
They enjoyed a light as air apple tart with thick Jersey cream, then sat back in the sitting room sipping coffee, while the dogs snored in front of the fire. Finally, exhausted, Deirdre apologised, saying she had recorded the final episode of The Apprentice and was going to watch it in bed.
‘Tomorrow we will start the search for your café. Breakfast at eight o’clock prompt.’
16
The following morning Liberty woke at six thirty to the intense smell of orange, cloves and cinnamon. Mmm, happiness was being at home. She dressed quickly and went downstairs. The dogs were lying treacherously in front of the Aga while Deirdre coated orange and lemon peels with hot sugar syrup and hung them on pegs on a string along the heavy stone mantel above the stove.
‘Morning, darling, help yourself to coffee. Why are you up so early?’
‘I couldn’t sleep any longer. Shall I take the dogs for a walk? I need some fresh air.’
She grabbed the leads, although neither dog was ever held by one, and started off down the garden and out through a back gate on to a permissive foot path that led through the Denhelm Estate.
As the dogs rootled along the hedgerows in the first light, setting up pheasants and rabbits, Liberty gazed at the beauty around her. She didn’t notice the cold, only the rooks calling to one another, the mist rising and the trees shedding their leaves and showing off their figures in the early morning sunlight. In the distance she could make out three riders on horseback, galloping along the centre of a field. Must be hard going, she thought, and then realised a sort of gallop had been pressed like a wide footpath along the middle of the ploughed field. She watched as the able riders made it to a high hedge and sailed over easily, one by one. They were soon out of sight. I must begin riding again if I am going to live back in the country, she thought, and then realised she would probably have no time to do anything like that if she ran her own business. Am I doing the right thing? she asked herself, and she carried on asking the same thing over and over as she walked for another hour.
‘God, the dogs look pissed off,’ said Deirdre as she arrived back at the house. ‘Dijon hates the cold; it affects his arthritis, poor thing.’ And she towelled the dogs off, then laid a blanket on the floor by the warm Aga. ‘You couldn’t have lost either of them. Custard you can hear miles away, and Dijon never leaves your side these days, as I am sure you noticed. Where on earth did you get to?’
‘Sorry, Mother,’ said Liberty, feeling chastised. The one thing that upset her mother was people not taking care of the dogs. ‘I was just thinking, and enjoying the fresh air. I forgot the time.’
‘Poor darlings,’ Deirdre said, putting down a bowl of hot milk for Dijon and feeding him Liberty’s bacon. ‘Far too crisp for her to eat now, anyway,’ she told her dog. She lifted her head. ‘He’s eighteen, you know, and he has been the best companion anyone could ask for.’
Liberty had been so caught up in her own thoughts, she only now realised her mother was actually crying.
‘Mummy, I didn’t mean to upset you; he seemed to be enjoying the walk.’
Deirdre sniffed noisily and wiped her runny nose on a tea towel. ‘Oh, God, I am being so silly, but the vet said his arthritis was so bad and he is so old I should think about having him put to sleep! But he seems happy enough, and I don’t think I could bear it, not yet.’
‘He IS happy, so change the bloody vet,’ replied Liberty, hugging her mother. She knew it was the anniversary of the day her parents’ divorce had finally come through, so she understood the over-the-top reaction. ‘Sit down while I make some toast.’
Over a pot of extremely strong coffee, some excellent marmalade (home-made, of course) and toasted brioche, Deirdre gradually felt better, and said she would phone Jonathan.
‘Have you any particular properties lined up through agents?’ she asked.
‘Only two, both in Tunbridge Wells, and I know that’s the wrong location. There are very good cafés there already, and as I said, the agents have been pretty dreadful. I had planned to see them today and gee them up a bit. I want a country location, really.’
‘Well, let’s see Jonathan first, and then we can drive around the villages.’
Deirdre set up a meeting for ten o’clock that morning. ‘It’s the old butcher’s shop on the corner of the green,’ she told Liberty after she came off the phone. The butcher had shut up shop years ago, and had been replaced by a delicatessen run by an elderly Italian couple who had now decided to retire. ‘I could have sworn he was talking about the tea rooms. No point you setting up next door to them,’ said Deirdre. ‘Sorry, darling.’
‘Well, we could look anyway. Would it be big enough?’
‘Only one way to find out – and Jonathan would be a fabulous landlord, as he is only interested in what is good for the village. His rent will be very reasonable for the right tenant.’
Jonathan de Weatherby had set up a food hall on his estate. It was somewhere between an upmarket farm shop and a butcher’s. It was run by a charming girl. It sold local produce, meat from the animals reared on the estate, game shot there and cheese made on site, and since the Italians had departed it also contained a new deli counter. They also had baked bread, but fortuitously for Liberty they had been forced to sack the baker for stealing, so were looking either for a new supplier, or a new baker. In the meantime, Deirdre told Liberty, she had been supplying them. ‘So you will be doing me out of business!’
The food hall had raised the profile of many local producers, who made small amounts of good quality produce, including many farmers and their families who had been forced to diversify after the foot and mouth trauma.
It was why Mr de Weatherby was such a popular landlord and agent. He had helped many of his tenant farmers financially during the crisis, and had given a few of them loans to set up kitchens and had advised them on health and safety issues, and all the impossible paperwork.
The two women met Jonathan outside the old butcher’s shop at ten on the dot. It was a beautiful, if cold, day. Low sunlight bounced off the red-brick building and the cottages surrounding the green, most of them constructed from the same brick, or weather-boarded. The sky-blue window frames of the houses owned by the estate gleamed with fresh paint, and all the front gardens looked as though they were waiting to take part in a competition (which took place in June, judged of course by Jonathan, along with the vicar’s wife, who was in her late twenties and rather more interested in who was wearing what and flirting with Jonathan than boring gardens, but did her husband’s bidding and tried very hard to be a good church wife).
The green had a small duck pond, which held an eclectic mix of Indian runners crossed with wild mallards. A young family in the village had raised a group of runners in their back garden, but the children had tormented them so much the sweet creatures decided to find friends and safety elsewhere and fled to the pond, and since then had raised many clutches of eggs.
The village shop and post office were next to the old butcher’s, and on the other side was a dear little tea room, presently doing a roaring trade in morning tea and coffee, with people sitting in the window munching on delicious pastries baked by Deirdre.
Jonathan greeted them both warmly and for a while they chatted about their respective families and generally caught up with news. Deirdre told him about Sarah’s terrible husband, and Liberty merely said she had decided to leave the rat race in London and change her career path. (She was fully aware her mother would have told him the real situation, but both she and Jonathan were sensible and sufficiently English to refrain from mentioning it.)
Libe
rty was also desperate to know how her old friend and Jonathan’s daughter Savannah was, but they agreed it was far too cold to chat any longer outside; further news could wait.
As Jonathan unlocked the door and stepped through the large glass paned door, Liberty felt it was the perfect place for her. She already knew the location was good. The main road ran close enough to catch passing trade and the parking around the green was sufficient. The building was perfect. The main room, which would be the restaurant, was cluttered with a large deli counter, but was a great size for about ten small tables. Two bay windows looked out over the green, and as it faced south-west the room was flooded with natural light – maybe a problem in summer, but nothing shutters couldn’t help with.
Liberty could imagine the flagstone floor covered in old heavy rugs (firmly stuck down so people didn’t trip), a few leather armchairs and shelves full of teapots, jugs and cups and saucers, alongside displays of home-made jams, preserves and pickles. There was enough space for a bread basket display and a patisserie counter, and the little kitchen was a perfect site for fresh tarts, quiches and salads to be prepared. She was hoping that to start with she could bake most things in her mother’s school kitchen, and then, if she found a house close enough, in her own, as most of the baking would have to be done early in the mornings to be cooled and ready for sale by nine o’clock.
‘If we moved this partition we could set up the coffee machine with a small counter from which to serve espressos. It would take up too much room in the kitchen,’ mused Deirdre.
‘I love it,’ said Liberty. ‘But what about the tea room next door? I can’t imagine you would want me to take away their business, as they have been here for ages, and they look busy.’
‘Indeed,’ responded Jonathan, ‘but until your mother started helping them by making their cakes they only sold bad scones and old teacakes with watery tea. They had been losing money for years, but carried on, as they enjoyed the gossip and wanted to be part of the village. Neither Gwen nor Paul had any interest in cooking at all, and were going to have to close until, as I said, your mother helped out. I bet you don’t even charge them for your cakes, or for using your name to advertise, do you?’ He looked quizzically at Deirdre.
‘Well, no, but Gwen is so lovely, and she was a little desperate. She thought they were moving here to enjoy the quiet life, until her beast of a husband told her she was to start a tea room, when she could barely cook fish fingers for her kids. They have been here for a while, and he was blaming her for the slow trade. I couldn’t imagine them sitting looking at each other all day in their tiny cottage, until one of them decided to murder the other with an old iron railing, just for something to do after watching two hundred reruns of Midsomer Murders.’
‘You strange woman,’ was Jonathan’s only response to this. ‘Anyway, I decided Gwen might be the perfect waitress to help with your café. The locals all like her, and she would pull them in before they had time to moan about change and the way things have always been done. And she is really good with customers. She can be trusted, and she works very hard. She is only in her late fifties, and although I disagree with your mother that murder is the only alternative, I’m not sure she could sit at home with that husband of hers either! She definitely wants to carry on working.’
‘But what about their tea room?’ asked Liberty, her brow furrowing.
‘Well, I have thought for a while that the village needs more independent shops and a young chap who used to be in wine, supplying restaurants in town, has shown an interest in opening a fine wine shop. The property would lend itself better to being a shop, whereas this place is much more atmospheric. He will sell online as well – he has already set that part up and it is doing well – but he gets fed up on his own, sitting in an office with just a computer and warehouse. He is in the business park just outside Wadhurst, and would love to be among people again. We think the holiday rental cottage people would use him. They always seem to have oodles of spare cash, and we know some of the villagers have an interest in wine.’ And at that he glanced at Deirdre.
‘Moi? I never drink! Well, not on my own. Well, not more than a glass with supper – and maybe one after work, well . . .’ And she went quiet, blushing an attractive burgundy.
‘Anyway, let’s look around the rest of the place,’ said Liberty to save her mother’s embarrassment.
There was a good-sized cloakroom (‘Loos are always so important,’ said Liberty) and a good-sized storeroom at the back, ideal for baking ingredients, coffee beans and teas, and two rooms upstairs with a bathroom. There was also a lovely courtyard at the back. With a bit of jiggling, tables could be put outside during the summer. It was walled and had some good planting. It’s not ideal to live over the shop, but I could stay here until I find a cottage, she thought. It could be extremely pretty, lots of pots, that sort of thing, and some decent chairs and tables. An ancient apple tree drooped in one corner and a wisteria clambered over the back of the building. ‘It must be lovely in summer,’ she said out loud.
As they exited by the front door, Jonathan told Liberty to turn around. She stood in front of her restaurant-to-be and looked. Yes, she loved it. She now noticed that a wisteria also climbed up the front and over the bay windows. It covered an old sign with the original butcher’s name painted on it, and she thought of getting the local blacksmith to make a sign that could swing over the door.
‘Right, you love it, and you are about to love it even more,’ said Jonathan. ‘Take a look next door.’
‘The shop?’
‘No, the other way.’
Along the right-hand side of the building was a narrow alley, and on the other side of that a low wall enclosing the front garden of a stone cottage. In the centre of the wall that ran along the lane a pretty white gate opened on to a box-lined stone path that led up to the front door, painted a lovely gleaming green.
Bay windows on the ground floor flanked the door symmetrically, and upstairs were other windows with what looked like eyebrows, as the cottage had been recently thatched. A sweet array of birds and animals had been added to the thatch. Aran, the thatcher, had been so chuffed with himself – it was his first job after being an apprentice for years – that when he finished the work he decided to add them to all his roofs as his signature. ‘He adds them as his calling card, apart from on those where the owners don’t pay on time,’ Deirdre told Liberty.
‘Why are we looking at it?’ Liberty asked a beaming Jonathan, who was feeling rather smug.
‘This,’ he explained, ‘is Duck End, so named because it is located in what used to be the wet end of the village, where the ducks would naturally come before humans re-routed and made village greens with ponds for cattle and livestock to graze and drink on. It was where the sheep used to be washed too.’ He smiled at the two bemused women. ‘It is also for sale!’
The front garden was neatly laid out in four squares, surrounded by lavender, each divided into triangles of roses, which had to be exquisite in summer. Two huge pots sat by the front door. They seemed to contain hydrangeas, but were covered with fleece as frost protection. Over the porch rambled honeysuckle and winter jasmine.
‘I’ve always thought it the prettiest cottage,’ said Deirdre. ‘Everyone who comes to the school says it’s like the dream country house, but what about the delightful’– she made little air quotes at this point for Jonathan’s benefit –‘Sabrina and Neville? They spent a fortune doing it up as a second home, and I haven’t seen them for ages.’
Jonathan was by now looking smugger than ever. ‘They have now fallen in love with Marbella, and have decided they prefer the sun to quaint village life, which as you know they never embraced, so they have visited only twice, both times coinciding with our hunt ball, which, as villagers, they get an automatic invitation to, although goodness knows why they would want to attend. They always seemed so uncomfortable.’
Deirdre was giggling despite the cold, remembering the tiny gold-sequined dress that Sabrin
a had worn to one of Jonathan’s balls. ‘She was so cold, poor dear, we had to wrap her in a duvet.’
Jonathan was rather sensitive to the temperature of his ancient home and blustered on. ‘They rang last week to ask me to recommend an estate agent, and if it would be all right to put up a for sale sign. I told them we probably need not bother with the sign, and since your mother’s call, I think I was right, hmm?’
‘Oh, yes, oh my God, yes!’ Liberty was totally overwhelmed. ‘When can I see it?’
‘I happen to have the keys in my pocket.’
An hour later the three of them were sitting with steaming cups of coffee and sour cream cake at Deirdre’s kitchen table, with Dijon drooling by the Aga, hopeful for a piece, and Custard far more obvious, sitting beside Jonathan’s chair gazing wistfully up at his fingers. They chatted about how miraculous it was that so many events had made possible the perfect starting point for Liberty, and all in Littlehurst.
‘If I didn’t know better, I would think you had planned all this!’ Liberty was trembling with excitement. Duck End was a dream come true. Take out all the suits of armour in the hall, the vast flat-screen TVs above the fireplaces and the zebra rugs, and it was simply stunning. Sabrina and Neville Smythe (everyone in the village knew they had changed their surname from Smith to Smythe to make themselves sound smarter, as Miss Scally, the doctor’s receptionist and serious gossip, had gleefully told them so), despite having appalling taste and little time for locals, did have heaps of money, with which they wanted to make their home their castle and show it off to all their city friends. Encouraged by Jonathan, who intimidated them slightly as they saw him as Lord of the Manor, they had employed the best local joiner, stonemason and builder, to bring Duck End out of dereliction after being lived in by the same family for 150 years. The workmen had re-coved and pointed cornices, wired and plumbed. The original flagstone floors had been left untouched throughout the ground floor, and there was a huge family kitchen, a dining room, a small office and a sunny sitting room downstairs. Upstairs were five good sized bedrooms and three vast bathrooms. Modern comforts of underfloor heating upstairs and a new Aga helped the house to feel cosy, but the games and cinema room they had put in the cellar could be stripped out and the room turned into a bakery with some decent ventilation. Without the silver wallpaper and bright red lacquered walls which made the dining room look like a bordello, and the pink marble kitchen, it would be a heavenly home. Most of the horrors were in the furnishings, and they would leave with the unfortunate Smythes, who had never fitted into village life.