Winter Wishes (17 page)

Tara laughed. “Yep. She’s pretty scary.”

They smiled at one another.

“Let’s go home,” Danny said.

“Seaspray home?” Morgan’s voice was full of hope. “Are you coming back too, Dad?”

Danny paused momentarily before resting a hand on his son’s head. Tara found she was holding her breath. There was nothing she wanted more than for Danny to be coming home with them. Then he looked at her, and her heart rose with a sudden helium gust of hope.

“Yes, Morgan,” he said quietly. “I’m coming home. We all are.”

Chapter 11

“There you are, Vicar! I’ve hardly seen you since I arrived. Can I drag you away from this fascinating pile of jumble to join me for a coffee?”

Caspar Owen waved at Jules over the huge pile of clothing she was sorting through, or at least attempting to sort – in between having to fend off villagers eager for a bargain. Lions taking down gazelles on the African plains were positively restrained in contrast to WI members on the hunt for a good deal. Although she’d only been manning the stall for an hour, Jules was already frazzled and Betty Jago’s earlier dive for a fringed scarf had nearly dislocated her wrist.

Anyone who thought that being the vicar of a rural parish was a doddle ought to spend some time running St Wenn’s monthly bring-and-buy sale, Jules reflected as she smiled back at Caspar. Coffee sounded great, especially if she could stick a brandy in it.

“This isn’t jumble: it’s consignment goods,” Sheila Keverne was scolding Caspar before Jules could reply. Hands on hips and lips set in a slash of outrage, she glowered at the writer. “Jumble! The cheek!”

In his patched black coat, threadbare scarlet waistcoat and faded silk cravat, Caspar looked as though he was more than familiar with the nature of jumble, but wisely he chose not to argue with Sheila.

“Apologies, madam,” he said, lifting off his fedora and giving the outraged verger a theatrical bow before reaching for her hand and kissing it. “Of course these are
consignment
goods. And very fine ones too, sold by two even finer young ladies.”

Jules rolled her eyes. Any cheesier and Caspar could be whacked onto a Jacobs cracker and served up after dinner. Still, however bad she found his charm offensive, it clearly worked with older generations: rather than walloping Caspar with her pile of crocheted doilies, Sheila was blushing and giggling like a teenager.

“Oh, get on with you,” she said, more breathlessly than Marilyn Monroe singing happy birthday to the president. “Although, we do have the best bring-and-buy sales in the area, you know. The ladies from St Issey’s WI don’t make half as much as we do.”

“I can believe it,” nodded Caspar. Then, catching Jules’s eye, he added, “Although, I must admit I had no idea that jum— I mean
bring-and-buy
sales were a competitive sport.”

“You’d better believe it.” Jules rubbed her tender wrist. “If this was an Olympic event, Sheila and her team would bring home the gold.”

“It’s certainly busy.” Caspar was glancing around the village hall where, on a drizzly November Saturday, most of the villagers were sheltering in between dashing to the newsagent and the grocery shop. Trestle tables were heaped with clothes, books and bric-a-brac, and the villagers had descended on them like jumble-loving locusts. The customers were just as eclectic as the goods they were rummaging through. Silver Starr from the hippy shop was unearthing all sorts of treasure; Jonny St Milton the wealthy hotelier, dapper in his pinstripes, was chatting to Alice Tremaine at the tea stand while his grandson Teddy chatted up Issie Tremaine; and a group of burly fishermen were wiping out the cake stall. Even Ashley Carstairs had put in an appearance. He’d spent a fortune on raffle tickets to win a meal at The Plump Seagull,
while outside his wife was giving pony rides to excited but soggy children. Jules felt a little glow of pride at how everyone always came together to support the church. Surely if the bishop could see this he’d realise just how much St Wenn’s meant to Polwenna Bay? He couldn’t possibly want to close the church then.

“So, have you time for a coffee?” Caspar prompted when Jules, who was lost in thought, didn’t reply to his initial question. “Surely you get some time off for good behaviour? And being a vicar I’m assuming you’re always good?”

Afraid so
, thought Jules sadly. It was proving to be very hard though. Morgan’s accident on Bonfire Night had highlighted just how much Danny’s family needed him, and Jules had made a conscious effort to keep away. It hurt terribly but she knew it was the right thing to do.

There was no way she could share any of this with Caspar, though.

“Of course I am,” Jules said lightly, “but there’s no such thing as time off for me, I’m afraid.”

He pulled a face. “Not even after sorting all those
consignment
garments? Come on, Rev. Even God took Sunday off – I’m sure He’d be happy for you to have ten minutes on a Saturday?”

Jules glanced at the village hall clock. It was coming up to eleven, and she’d been up since six that morning setting out all the stalls before lugging the ancient tea urn back from someone’s cottage near the quay, where it had been abandoned after fireworks night. A break was way overdue.

“Throw in a slice of walnut cake as well and you’ve got a deal,” she said.

Leaving Sheila in command, Jules bagged a table at the back of the hall and checked her phone while Caspar joined the queue. There was the usual stack of emails, plus a Facebook message from her mum and two texts from Danny. For a second her finger hovered over the keypad, but then she took a deep breath and deleted both of Danny’s text messages without even opening them. She was like a drug addict, and the only way to handle her withdrawal was by going cold turkey, Jules decided bleakly. Quite how long this process would take was anyone’s guess, though.

“Coffee and a slice of walnut cake!” Depositing the spoils of his trip to the refreshments stall, Caspar lowered his lanky body onto the folding chair next to Jules and shrugged off his flowing coat. “There’s plenty more where that came from. Apparently some mystery person donated two great big cakes,” he said, pushing a plate towards her. It held the most enormous slice Jules had ever seen. “From the looks of this lot you’re going to need your strength, so eat up,” Caspar commanded.

The bring-and-buy sale was in full swing around them and the village hall was certainly rammed. To Jules’s surprise, Poison Ivy was here too. She was busy trawling through precarious piles of paperbacks on the book stall, her nose wrinkling in distaste whenever she came across a stray Jackie Collins or E L James.
No doubt I’ll be in for a telling-off for having unsuitable books in a church fundraising sale
, Jules thought wearily. Ivy generally found something to moan about.

Caspar tipped several heaped spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee and stirred vigorously. “Thanks for taking some time out, Jules. I appreciate it. I’ve been stuck inside my cottage on my own for so long that I’m in danger of starting to talk to the wall like Shirley Valentine.”

“You’d probably get more sense out of the wall than me. I’m shattered,” Jules sighed.

“Drink that coffee. It should wake you up a bit,” he suggested. “Besides, I don’t know anyone else apart from you, and Issie is far too busy to talk to me.”

“Ah, yes. Isn’t she supposed to be your muse?” Jules asked, recalling their last conversation. Personally she thought Caspar’s chances with Issie were slim to nil. Issie, although supposedly helping Alice with the teas, was far too busy flirting with Teddy St Milton to pay Caspar any attention, and Jules hoped he wasn’t too hurt. Writers were supposed to be sensitive souls, weren’t they? It had been a while since her A-levels but she could still recall learning about Petrarch mooning over Laura, and Dante pining for the long-lost Beatrice. Unrequited love seemed to be a common literary theme. Besides, who knew better than she how painful it was to love someone hopelessly and from afar?

Fortunately, Caspar Owen seemed to be made of sterner stuff and merely looked at her blankly.

“You said in the pub that Issie was going to be your muse?” she reminded him.

He took a swig of his drink and smiled sheepishly over his mug. “I did, didn’t I? Ah, the muse is a capricious mistress, Vicar. Issie is very sweet but she wasn’t the one I’m looking for.”

Just as well, thought Jules as she watched Issie merrily flirting now with one of the young fishermen. Amusing as he was, Caspar was more likely to fly to the moon than catch Issie’s interest, which wouldn’t help his writer’s block.

“No,” Caspar continued, swirling his coffee dreamily, “I need a real woman, not a young girl, to inspire my craft – and I found my true muse last night.”

“Great,” Jules replied, hoping she sounded more convinced than she felt. She didn’t know Caspar very well but she already suspected that constancy wasn’t one of his strongest character traits. While he enthused about the virtues of the latest object of his affections, a mysterious woman who sounded like an unrealistic cross between Mother Theresa and a Victoria’s Secret Angel, she gently tuned him out and cast an eye over the happenings in the village hall. All seemed to be going well until she looked over at the book stall, where, true to form, Ivy Lawrence was giving an unfortunate WI member a hard time. She was brandishing a paperback and making such a fuss that Sheila Keverne had abandoned her post to try to defuse the situation – a bad idea if ever there was one. Getting Sheila involved as a mediator was on a par with amputating a leg to cure an ingrown toenail. Jules sank down in her seat, hoping that Caspar was shielding her from view. Surely having five minutes of peace wasn’t too much to ask?

“She’s an angel with hair like spun silk and a voice like music,” Caspar was saying, with an expression Jules was more used to seeing in the eyes of some of her more evangelical colleagues. “I just know that she’ll cure my writer’s block. I’ve already written her a sonnet.”

“Wow,” said Jules dutifully. As Caspar rambled on, she wondered what it would be like to be the sort of woman who inspired men to write poetry and wax lyrical. The guys she’d dated in the past tended to be the kind who might write a limerick – but only after several drinks, when rhyming
vicars
with
knickers
struck them as hilarious. It might be a sin of pride, but Jules thought she’d like to know what it was like to be skinny and blonde, even for just a few minutes. Surely it had to be easier than life as a rather too plump brunette?

“The problem is that I don’t know who she is,” Caspar concluded sadly. “Any ideas?”

“Err,” floundered Jules, who’d been deep in a very pleasant daydream. “Not really. Where did you see her?”

“Up at the hotel. I went there for supper last night. I think she must work there. My heart is totally set on her, Jules! She’s the perfect heroine.”

The penny dropped and Jules only just managed to stop herself laughing out loud. Caspar’s latest muse had to be Ella St Milton, one of the snootiest and most unpleasant women in Cornwall, if not in the entire world. With her golden hair and willowy figure she might well look like an angel, but that was where the similarity ended. If Caspar was counting on Ella to help cure his writer’s block then Jules feared his novel would be a long time coming.

She was trying to work out how to say this tactfully when Ivy Lawrence charged over, slamming a book onto the table with such force that coffee sloshed everywhere.

“You should be ashamed of yourself, peddling filth at a church event!”

“For heaven’s sake, Ivy! Now look what you’ve done!” Sheila Keverne, hot on Ivy’s heels and armed with a wad of serviettes, started mopping the table and dabbing ineffectively at the huge coffee stain that was spreading across Jules’s jeans.

“What
I’ve
done?” Hands on her bony hips, Ivy glared at Jules. “I’m not the one selling porn!”

For one awful minute Jules feared that the St Wenn’s naked calendar was back to bite her on the backside. Then she caught sight of the book that had outraged Ivy.

“
Blackwarren
,” Ivy hissed. “You should be ashamed, having that filth in here!”

Jules held back an impatient sigh. It was typical of Ivy to make such a fuss about something so minor. The book was definitely spicy, but it was hardly pornographic. Fascinated in spite of herself, Jules had downloaded it to her Kindle and devoured it in a few hours – all in the name of finding out what her flock were reading, obviously! The tale of the handsome and brooding Lord Blackwarren rattled along at a furious pace and the hero certainly got his share of sword action, both literal and metaphorical. Even more intriguing was the fact that the book was set in a Cornish fishing village spookily similar to Polwenna Bay, and several of the lead characters were rather too familiar to be coincidental. Somebody local had to be the author and most of the villagers were busy speculating. Last night while in the pub Jules had been alarmed to hear even her own name in the frame. She’d had to scotch that rumour pretty fast. The bishop had forgiven her for the naked calendar, just, but if he thought for one minute that she was the author of
Blackwarren…
Jules shuddered to think what might happen.

She had to nip this particular misunderstanding in the bud. Fast.

“I take it you’ve read the book?” Caspar asked Ivy. His face was innocent but there was an amused gleam in his eye as he posed the question.

Ivy’s mouth hung open. “I beg your pardon?”

“You clearly know the book is racy, so I’m assuming you’ve read it?” Caspar said.

“How dare you!” Ivy’s face was almost the same colour as the book jacket. “I most certainly have not!”

“So how do you know it’s filth?”

“Because I’ve heard everyone else talking about it!” Ivy shrieked.

Jules was just about to step in and calm the situation when Sheila snatched up the book and stuffed it into her bag.

“I’ll take it,” she announced, thrusting a five-pound note at Jules, who was staring at her in amazement. “Oh, don’t give me that look, Vicar. Somebody around here needs to know what the fuss is all about.”