Winter Wishes (13 page)

“That stuff is so lame!” scoffed Issie. “Honestly, Jules, you should read this. Everyone else in the village is.”

“Are they?” Jules hadn’t noticed but she guessed she’d been lost in her own worries. People also had a habit of hiding anything they thought might offend the vicar, as though she was an elderly Victorian spinster.

“It’s got to have been written by a local because it’s definitely set here. The hero even has a birthmark the shape of a starfish below his left buttock, just like Teddy St Milton’s,” Issie told her.

“I’m not going to ask how you know about that!”

Issie winked. “My lips are sealed! What I can divulge is that apparently it’s a family birthmark and his grandfather has it too. But I agree, whoever wrote this book must have seen Teddy very close up.”

Teddy St Milton, heir to the Polwenna Bay Hotel, was the local playboy. With his fat wallet, expensive car and floppy hair, he was irresistible to the local girls and holidaymakers alike.

“I know, I know, that doesn’t really narrow the field much,” grinned Issie. “Tell you what, I’ll read you a bit and you can tell me what you think.”

Jules took a big gulp of her cider. “Please don’t. I’ve just eaten.”

“Don’t be such a wuss,” her friend said airily, putting down her own already half-empty glass and flipping the pages. “Anyway, don’t you think you ought to know what your flock’s reading? Ah! This is a good bit. Lord Blackwarren has just come back from the Battle of Waterloo and seduces his arch-enemy’s fiancée—”

Hands over her ears, Jules cried, “I’m not listening! La, la, la!”

“Where would that kind of wussy attitude have got E L James?” Issie asked, despairingly.

“Go on, Issie,” piped up Little Rog Pollard from the far end of the bar, where he was supposed to be fixing a light fitting. “We’re all listening. Is it the bit where he picks her up, throws her over the desk and—”

“Don’t give it away!” Issie said. She began to read: “‘Lord Blackwarren’s eyes narrowed dangerously as he saw the twin globes of Amelia’s snow-white bosom.’”

This really had to stop!

“E L James isn’t a vicar!” Jules reached out and plucked the book from Issie’s ring-crammed fingers and stuffed it into her bag. “And I am confiscating this!”

“Spoilsport,” said Little Rog. “That’s one of the best bits.”

“Confiscating it, or saving it for later?” grinned Issie, then held her hands up in mock surrender at the look on Jules’s face. “OK! Just kidding! You hang onto it if you like. I’ve got to run anyway.” She downed the rest of her cider and gathered her things. “I promised Gran I’d give her a hand this afternoon cleaning the holiday let. Happy reading!”

As Issie breezed out of the pub Jules closed her eyes wearily. Spending time with her friend was like hanging out with a minor hurricane – exhilarating, exhausting and never, ever dull.

“Excuse me, but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. Do you mind if I join you?” asked a male voice.

Jolted out of her thoughts, Jules looked up and saw the man who’d been seated by the fireplace standing beside her table now and smiling at her hopefully. Used to meeting strangers and having to try to figure them out fairly swiftly, Jules instantly liked what she saw. It was a face as weathered as the granite rocks outside, one lined with smiles and life and strong emotions, and his eyes were twinkly and warm. He was somebody who’d lived, Jules decided – and he probably enjoyed every second of his existence, if the near-empty whisky glass held loosely in his nicotine-tipped fingers was anything to judge by.

“I’m a writer,” the man added. “I heard you talking about literature with your friend just now and I was intrigued.”

“I’d hardly call that literature,” Jules laughed, but her new companion didn’t join in. Instead he nodded vehemently.

“I totally agree, but that kind of thing seems to be all anyone wants to read these days. Those of us who write books of merit are sadly out of fashion.” Placing the whisky on the table he held out his hand. “Caspar Owen.”

“Jules Mathieson,” said Jules as they shook hands. “Please, sit down.”

Caspar lowered his long frame into the window seat and exhaled theatrically.

“It seems a crime to turn my back on such scenery, especially since I’ve come all the way from London to be inspired by it.”

“It is stunning,” Jules agreed. Although it was a cold day and the sun was currently sulking behind a bank of thick cloud, the picturesque old harbour and whitewashed cottages clustered around it still drew the eye. “I often find myself staring out of the vicarage window when I really ought to be working.”

“Ah! The village vicar.” Caspar raised his glass and Jules chinked hers against it. “So tell me, Reverend Mathieson, are there lots of interesting events going on in Polwenna Bay that a humble wordsmith might find inspiring?”

“How many plots do you need?” Jules asked. She’d never heard of Caspar Owen but she was pretty sure that if he approached his editors with storylines inspired by events in Polwenna Bay, they’d tell him it was all too far-fetched.

He sighed and raked a hand through the ends of his silver mane. “One would be enough for me right now. I’ve got writer’s block, Reverend, and I haven’t been able to write a word for months. It’s an absolute curse.”

“I bet. Poor you.” Jules did her best to look sympathetic, although she didn’t really know if she believed in writer’s block. Having to pen two sermons a week, or otherwise look like a real numpty at Sunday services, this seemed a bit of a luxury to her. Self-indulgent even.

But Caspar was nodding, his eyes wide and mournful. “It’s awful. I’ve got a book to deliver at the end of December and I haven’t written a word. I’ve rented a cottage here to see if a change of scene will help.”

Jules hadn’t lived in the village long but she’d already learned that artists and writers flocked to the place for inspiration.

“And has it?”

“Not yet.” His mouth drooped. “The muse has well and truly deserted me, I’m afraid.”

And would continue to do so if he kept looking for her in the pub, Jules thought privately. Aloud she said, “Well, then we need to find her for you. What genre do you write? Would I have read any of yours?”

“I’m pretty, err… niche, so probably not. They wouldn’t be your kind of thing,” Caspar said quickly, and Jules had the distinct impression that she was being fobbed off. “I’m far more literary than that book you and your friend were reading earlier.”

“Literary fiction’s fine by me,” Jules said. She would have been offended by his swift assumptions about her reading habits, except that she could tell from the way he was chewing his lip and from the rapidly vanishing whisky that Caspar was truly worried – and worry, Jules knew, often made people tactless.

At least, that was what she told herself when members of her flock were rude and thoughtless…

“Actually, you might be able to help me,” Caspar was saying. “Your friend? The one you were having lunch with? She might be able to get me writing again.”

“Issie?” Jules frowned. “I don’t see how.”

“
Isabella and the Pot of Basil
. Issie. Issie.” Caspar rolled the name around on his tongue just as moments before he’d been savouring the ten-year-old Macallan. “Yes, she could be my muse. The Fair Isabella. Would you ask her?”

Personally Jules though Caspar had as much chance of Issie being his muse as she did of becoming a supermodel.

“You’ll have to ask her that,” she said diplomatically. Then, as an idea occurred to her, she added, “But why don’t you take the book she was talking about earlier? I know I have no real literary appreciation and can’t possibly understand your niche, but it might give you some ideas, you never know.”

Her sarcasm washed over Caspar like the tide was starting to wash over the beach.

“That’s not at all a bad idea,” he agreed, looking far more cheerful.

Jules plucked the book out of her bag. Was it her imagination or did that scarlet cover burn her fingertips? Either way, she felt very relieved when Caspar slipped the paperback into the pocket of his long black cloak. It would be just her luck if it had fallen out of her bag the next time she saw the bishop.

“So Issie will be my muse,” Caspar was saying to himself, dreamily. “The beautiful maiden with eyes of sapphire blue and laughter like a peal of bells. A goddess whose sweet feet float above the ground.”

Was this the same Issie? The one who swore like a trooper, drank pints and wore DMs? Jules bit back a smile. If this was an example of Caspar Owen’s writing then maybe it was just as well he had writer’s block!

Having emptied his glass, Caspar was on his feet again and heading for the bar.

“Can I buy you another cider?” he asked Jules. “Go on, the sun’s over the yardarm somewhere!”

She shook her head and pulled her purse out. “No thanks. I’m going to do some work on the church accounts, and as much as that makes me long for another drink I’d better stay sober. It’s time I went home.”

“At least let me pay for your lunch,” Caspar insisted, waving a twenty under Kelly the barmaid’s nose. “A salad in return for inspiration and a book seems a fair exchange.”

“The Rev’s lunch is already paid for,” Kelly told him with a toss of her newly dyed red head and a swish of her false lashes. “But I’ll not say no to a drink if you’re buying.”

Jules was confused. “Did Issie pay?”

This seemed highly unlikely, since Issie was always broke. Still, stranger things had happened, especially in Polwenna Bay.

Kelly snorted. “As if! No, it’s really weird – and I meant to say earlier, but we were so busy – but when I opened up this morning there was an envelope pushed under the door. It had thirty pounds in it and a note saying to buy the vicar lunch and a drink. So you’re all square.”

Jules was taken aback. Things like this never happened to her. “Really? Who was it from?”

She held her breath because, stupidly, she was hoping it was Danny.

“No idea.” Kelly pushed Caspar’s glass underneath the optic, filling it with a good three fingers of whisky before he gave her the thumbs up. “It wasn’t signed.”

Jules was thrown. Who would want to buy her a secret lunch? And why? Danny would just say so, and the members of the Parochial Church Council would take her out so that they could all join in.

“Why would someone do that?”

Kelly giggled. “Maybe you’ve got a secret admirer? Maybe he’s a lonely millionaire like Christian Grey in
Fifty Shades
. It might be red roses to the vicarage by moonlight next.”

Jules hadn’t read the book in question, but from what she’d gathered about it, red roses didn’t feature as prominently as red rooms full of pain. The latter sounded a bit too much like a WI meeting in the village hall’s back room to be escapism. Anyway, roses and moonlit declarations of love only happened in Cassandra Duval novels, didn’t they? Her admirer was probably just embarrassed.

Caspar’s eyes were glittering like the pub’s fairy lights. Turning to Jules, he said excitedly, “You weren’t kidding when you said there were lots of plot lines for me in this village, were you? You have an angel watching over you!”

Jules raised her eyes to the beams.

“You’re a writer?” Kelly couldn’t have looked more thrilled if he’d said he was the new member of One Direction. “Will you put me in a book?”

“If you pop another tot of whisky in that glass, sweetheart, I’ll write a book all about you!” he promised.

This had to be one of the most cringeworthy lines Jules had ever heard. Kelly, however, seemed delighted with this answer; moments later, Caspar’s glass was practically full to the brim. Jules had a sneaking suspicion that Caspar Owen got a lot of drinks this way, which probably helped to account for his writer’s block.

With the glass safely in his hand and Kelly assured of her impending immortality in a work of great literature, Caspar strode across the bar and sat back down opposite Jules.

“A toast is called for!”

An escape was called for, Jules thought darkly, but to humour him she raised her empty glass and pasted on her best polite-vicar expression. Caspar was as nutty as the WI fruit cake, which meant that he was bound to fit into Polwenna Bay beautifully.

“What are we toasting?” she asked. “Writing books? Muses?”

“We’ll toast writing books,” he nodded, his glass glittering in the firelight, “and muses and vicars too. But most of all, let’s drink to a new and exciting mystery. Raise your glass, Jules! To my book, my new muse and an exciting new enigma. To the Polwenna Bay Angel, whoever he or she may be!”

Chapter 9

Jules didn’t have time to dwell on the identity of her mysterious lunch-buying angel or Caspar Owen and his writer’s block. She was too busy poring over the church’s tangled finances. She’d fallen into bed late the previous night, her eyes gritty and her head spinning from hours of trying to make sense of numbers that flatly refused to add up. She was still trying to work them out the next day.

“It’s not your maths, Jules,” Richard Penwarren said when, driven to despair, she swung by the surgery to ask him for help in his capacity as the PCC treasurer. Her desperation was clear – not many people would willingly brave the waiting room and its battalion of germs – and he’d instantly sacrificed one of his rare afternoon breaks to scrutinise St Wenn’s books. “Trust me. These figures really don’t add up.”

“Nice to know I’m not going mad,” Jules said. She certainly felt like it. The only positive was that at least her mathematical troubles took her mind off Danny.

Richard slid his glasses off and ground his knuckles into his eyes. Then he replaced them and peered blearily at the printed spreadsheets.

“You’re certainly not going mad, but somebody somewhere is behaving very strangely. See all these deposits I’ve highlighted?”

She nodded. “They’re the same ones I can’t make sense of. I’ve been through the paying-in book a thousand times and there’s no record of any member of the PCC paying them in.”

“Which means that somebody else is paying money into the church account,” Richard concluded.

Jules was puzzled. “Why would anyone do that? All they have to do is come and see me or put it into the collection.”