Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues (29 page)
‘Not really, though something about them seems to be troubling him. They’re obviously painful reading and I’m starting to wonder if he’s finding out that he loved her more than she loved him. But I think he surprised himself by telling me about them at all!’
‘He must be coming out of himself a bit. I mean, he hadn’t even crossed the threshold before, had he?’
‘Not apart from the shop, and he does seem to be less tense, so maybe you’re right. His face doesn’t look quite so gaunt, either, so I’m sure he’s put on a bit of weight since I began giving him food parcels!’
‘He probably just forgot to eat, but if you keep shoving things under his nose I expect he’ll get back into the habit. But don’t overdo it, or by the time he goes back he’ll be fit to play only Falstaff.’
‘I don’t think there’s much danger of that,’ I said. ‘Raffy seems to be his only visitor – or the only one he ever lets in. I expect he’s been able to open up to him and it will help him come to terms with his wife’s death.’
‘Well, he’s certainly rebuffed all Hebe Winter’s attempts to rope him into the Friends of Winter’s End, hasn’t he?’ Bella giggled, because I’d told her about the scene up at Winter’s End.
‘I have spotted a few people trying his doorbell recently and some of them looked like the actors in that
Cotton Common
series, so Marcia must have let slip about him being here.’
‘Pity she didn’t also tell them he was here for some peace and quiet, then. But I suppose eventually he’ll go back to Stratford and his career,’ she said. ‘Didn’t he tell you he was on a six-month sabbatical?’
I nodded. ‘And time is ticking past. I’ve quite got used to having him living next door now, though I can’t say I like the classical music he plays in the evenings. But hearing it and knowing there’s someone just the other side of the wall is sort of … companionable. And if he’s not just grief-stricken at losing his wife, but also upset about whatever she’d written in her diaries, then it’s easier to forgive his short fuse.’
‘Tansy, you’re not falling for him all over again, are you?’ Bella asked, anxiously scrutinising my face. ‘I mean, he is rather gorgeous, in his way!’
I laughed. ‘Of course not! He’s barely been civil to me since he moved in and I know he belongs in a different world entirely – and soon he’ll be part of it again.’
‘He’s done a lot to the cottage and garden for someone who doesn’t intend staying.’
‘That occurred to me, but if he keeps it as a holiday cottage that would figure. But he might have decided Sticklepond is just too noisy for him and is making it look better because he intends to sell it.’
‘Neil’s got one of those nice old red-brick terraced cottages in Middlemoss, with a Victorian cast-iron fireplace and polished wooden floors. It’s lovely,’ Bella said absently. I didn’t ask her how she knew!
When I popped down to the Spar later for some butter, everyone was talking about the proposed retail park and it appeared that Hebe had been very busy indeed.
She’d already discovered that planning permission hadn’t yet been granted. The phone lines must have been
smoking
.
One of the gardeners from the hall had cycled round the village sticking photocopied posters up everywhere, summoning the villagers to an emergency meeting that was to take place in the village hall early the following evening. When I got back to Cinderella’s Slippers, I found he’d also called in and delivered a personal invitation, too.
‘He’s going round all the business people in the area, to make sure every single interested party turns up – and I expect they will,’ Bella said. ‘I’ll go, too, if Mum and Dad will keep an eye on Tia.’
‘Well, I’ll certainly be there!’ I declared.
I’d had a very long phone call from the fraught mother-of-a-bride-to-be who wanted to book a private evening visit to the shop, so I got to the village hall for the meeting much later than I had intended.
The place was crammed. I’d hoped to slip in at the back, but Hebe had stationed several Friends of Winter’s End at the door and I was firmly escorted to some reserved seats near the front, where I found myself sitting next to Florrie Snowball, right in the thick of the Sticklepond business proprietors. There was Gregory Lyon, with Chloe and Zillah; Felix and his very pregnant wife, Poppy; Poppy’s mother Janey (they run Stirrups riding stables together); Seth and Sophy, with her daughter from her first marriage, Lucy; and Val Priestly from the Green Man. I didn’t know some of the newer shop and café owners, except by sight, but they all appeared to have turned out.
Florrie silently passed me an Everton Mint from a small paper bag.
Hebe was up on the stage chairing the meeting, with her steward and henchman Laurence Yatton sitting just behind her. The vicar was there too and Mike, the village policeman, though his wife, Anya, who runs the Winter’s End gift shop and café, was down with the rest of us. I could see her pink dreadlocks two rows in front of me.
Hebe declared the meeting open and started by introducing the planning department officer the council had sent as a sacrificial lamb. Indeed, his name
was
Lamb, so you might as well have painted a target on the poor man. There was a sharp-eyed legal representative for the consortium who owned the Hemlock Mill site, too.
‘So, why weren’t we notified of this development plan?’ demanded Hebe, getting right down to it with an opening shot across the bows.
‘It wasn’t in Middlemoss borough,’ the legal representative said quickly.
‘That’s right, all the notices were correctly posted in the Ormskirk paper and, of course, affixed to the perimeter of the mill,’ Mr Lamb agreed.
Hebe pointed out that since the site was only a few miles from Sticklepond, the proposed development would have a profound effect on the village and the surrounding area, not least to the thriving businesses already established there, and so we
should
have been consulted.
‘Hear, hear!’ Janey, Florrie and several others called loudly.
Hebe got them to outline the proposals in more depth than they evidently wanted to divulge and then threw the meeting open to questions from the room and the resulting discussion – or interrogation – got pretty lively!
One or two people
did
suggest that the retail park might create new jobs, but since the site was nearer to Ormskirk than Sticklepond, local people would probably lose out anyway.
‘And think of all those students in Ormskirk,’ Janey said. ‘I bet lots of them would take part-time jobs at minimum wage!’
‘Good point,’ agreed Hebe.
‘But jobs will definitely be
lost
in the village if everything closes up, and since Grocergo stocks clothes, gifts, books and practically anything else you can think of, that will hit us all,’ Felix pointed out. ‘The new delicatessen and bakery, my bookshop, the Spar – not to mention the projected reopening of the old butcher’s shop in the High Street – might all go to the wall.’
‘And don’t forget the retail park will have a huge branch of One Stop Bridal Shop,’ called Bella loudly from the back of the hall. ‘That’s going to hit Cinderella’s Slippers, too.’
‘
And
the fast food outlets will take some of
our
business,’ shouted someone else angrily, presumably one of the new café owners. ‘I bet it will have huge car parks that can take coaches, so they’ll drop off the tourists there for lunch and tea!’
The discussion became loud and lively but eventually, in a small lull, Raffy spotted the timidly waving arm of Mr Glover, Hebe’s Shakespeare, and asked him what his question was.
‘Has the site been checked for rare species of plants and animals?’ he asked, timidly.
‘It’s a brownfield site, a former factory,’ the planning officer told him defensively. He was sweating quite a lot and looked as if he would really prefer to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
‘Not all of it’s brownfield, is it? Only where the factory stood. There’s a large stretch of river bank and some woodland, and it’s a haven for wildlife. I often go there for poetic inspiration and I expect I’d have seen the notices you put up, had I not recently been having car problems,’ he explained.
‘Is there anything unusual there?’ asked Seth.
‘I’m not sure, not being a wildlife expert,’ Mr Glover confessed. ‘But I have seen a kingfisher on the river by the mill, and dragonflies. It’s full of birds too, in the woodland.’
‘I’m sure there’s nothing out of the ordinary up there, and isn’t there a guard to stop the public getting onto the site?’ asked the consortium representative.
‘To stop vandals, of course,’ Mr Glover agreed. ‘But there’s a public footpath through part of it, so you often find people walking there.’
‘We’d better do our own survey to find out exactly what flora and fauna are there, and if there are protected plants and creatures. Then you’ll have to think again, won’t you?’ Hebe told the official representatives, and they looked even more worried.
A small hubbub had broken out, but Hebe clapped her hands for silence and announced, ‘I propose that as many of us that are free to do so should meet at the site of the Hemlock Mill tomorrow to look the place over.
You
,’ she added to the planning officer, fixing him with a piercing cerulean-blue gaze, ‘can meet us there!’
‘Oh, but I can’t –’
‘You can be there or not, as you please,’ Hebe interrupted him, and then also rode roughshod over the protestations of the consortium’s representative, who was appealing to Mike, the village policeman, to prevent this incursion.
‘I can’t see any reason to prevent it,’ Mike said placidly – he is possibly the most laid back policeman in the country. ‘If there’s a public footpath through part of the property, you can’t do a lot about people viewing the site from it.’
‘I don’t care who owns the site and I have no intention of asking for permission to visit it,’ Hebe stated regally. ‘We’ll meet there at ten tomorrow, everyone!’ she finished.
‘Should the local press be informed?’ someone suggested from the hall.
‘Good point,’ Hebe said, and I could see Laurence Yatton just behind her, jotting that down.
‘Now, one final point before we end the meeting and this is particularly addressed to those among you running shops and businesses in the area. I propose that we set up a Sticklepond Chamber of Commerce to protect our interests.’
‘Hear, hear!’ called Florrie, through a mouthful of Everton Mint.
‘Good: those of you in the front three rows stay behind and give your name to Laurence.’
Raffy got up and declared the meeting closed, and then everyone else filed out while Laurence enrolled us business folk as founder members of the Sticklepond Chamber of Commerce, with the first meeting to be convened later that week.
I hadn’t realised that Ivo had been at the meeting until I went out and spotted him chatting to Raffy. I suppose it was good that he was taking an interest in village affairs – or then again, maybe he hoped that the new bridal boutique would get the go-ahead and put me out of business!
He caught me up as I set off across the green and fell into step beside me.
‘I may as well come back with you and collect Flash. It’s getting late for his walk,’ he said, and when I looked up at him he gave me that wonderful, heart-breaking smile. I fell over my feet, and he put a hand on my arm to steady me.
‘Only if you still feel like it,’ I said, when I regained the power of speech.
‘Oh, I enjoy it. Are you going to visit this mill site tomorrow?’
‘Yes. I can leave Bella in charge of the shop and I’ll be really interested to see it.’
‘I think I’ll have a look, too,’ he said, to my surprise. ‘I seem to be being sucked into the life of the village whether I want to be or not. In fact, we might as well both go in my car. You can direct me,’ he added, and I was too surprised to protest.
When he returned Flash later he came in without any urging, much like a cautious vagrant cat. He didn’t say much, just sat drinking a glass of Meddyg and eating fruit cake accompanied by a slice of crumbly Lancashire cheese, while watching me hand-feed the insane dog, who’d had a sudden onset of Fear of Dinner Bowl syndrome again.
If I had a family crest, my motto would be ‘If it has a pulse, feed it.’
Violet’s husband finally got back, but he’d had the malaria badly and he was never that well afterwards – quite yellow he looked, a lot of the time, and would sweat and sweat, burning up. He was much older than Vi too, of course. Still, he was happy that Vi had settled down in her ways a bit and that she’d adopted the little girl, who she called Imogen. In fact, he doted on her and I’m afraid she got rather spoiled. And he was always kind to me – never even hinted that he knew what had happened. He was a good man. Too good for Vi.
Middlemoss Living Archive
Recordings: Nancy Bright.
Revelations were coming thick and fast and I was quite tempted to call Immy in California and ask her if she knew she was adopted. She’d certainly never even hinted at it to me, so I was pretty certain she didn’t know. Perhaps the facts had been so well hidden that Violet hadn’t felt the need to tell her.
Peter, the grandfather I had never met (and I had no recollection of my grandmother either, since she had died when I was two), sounded like a really nice man. He’d certainly made Aunt Nan welcome in their Devon home so that she’d been able to see the little girl from time to time, even if they had turned her into a ‘spoiled little madam’!
It was odd to think that she had grown up into my mother …
I left Bella minding the shop until it was time to close, this being our half-day, and drove out to the Hemlock Mill site with Ivo, feeling very conspicuous roaring out of the village in his old red Jaguar.
In case of rough ground I was wearing patchwork dungarees tucked into yellow Wellington boots, but since Ivo was neat in leather jacket and dark cord trousers, a fringed silk scarf wound round his neck, I didn’t exactly match the soignée image he was projecting. He should have looked old-fogey in that get-up, but somehow he didn’t, just very attractive in a slightly edgy way …