Читать книгу Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues - Trisha Ashley - Страница 12

As well as the bara brith and Welshcakes, Mother taught me how to make Meddyginiaeth Llysieuol, which is Welsh for herbal medicine, though really it’s a sort of honey mead with herbs and very good for you. I still make it and I’ve shared the recipe with Tansy, though I’m not giving it to anyone else. I’ve been asked for it time and again, and that Hebe Winter up at the manor would love to get her hands on it. She fancies herself as a herbalist but even she can’t guess what the special ingredient is that Mother put in! Meddyg, as we call it in the family, cures most things except old age, though I expect a glass or two will help to ease me out of this world and into the next.

Middlemoss Living Archive

Recordings: Nancy Bright.

As I drove back towards Sticklepond I thought I should never, ever have left there in the first place. After all, I could have done my graphic design course somewhere close, like Liverpool.

Justin had so not been worth the years in London, which I could have spent with Aunt Nan instead … though she’d been the first to urge me to spread my wings and see a bit of the world.

And if I’d never gone to London I’d probably be happily married to someone local by now, and not even known my wicked stepsisters existed. I meanly wished I could say they were as ugly as the ones in Cinderella, but they weren’t, though Rae had certainly done a mean and ugly thing.

I hoped I’d never have to see either of them again, even if Marcia, the older one, was living up here since she’d got that regular part in the cast of Cotton Common. But Lars had said her flat was in Middlemoss, a few miles away, so with a bit of luck, our paths were unlikely to cross.

Lars himself was on my mind because he was bound to find out I’d left Justin at some point and ask me why. I was fond of him, so I couldn’t tell him what Rae had done, or that Charlie, whom he adored, was Justin’s, could I?

I felt a pang in my heart at the thought of the sweet little boy, who seemed by nature to be taking after Lars rather than his mother, which was a blessing. In features and colouring he looked just like the Andersons, very fair and with bright blue eyes, rather than with Justin’s Viking tawny hair and ruddy complexion.

Ruddy Justin!

No, I couldn’t face phoning Lars up and lying about my reasons for leaving Justin – not right now. Perhaps I’d feel braver later and think up a good story, or edit Rae out, or something.

I was overcome with hunger – emotion gets me like that usually; it was surprising it hadn’t happened earlier – so I stopped for a carbohydrate-packed lunch, then called Timmy from the car afterwards and told him what had happened.

‘Well, I can’t say I’m really surprised, because we never liked him,’ he said. ‘He simply wasn’t good enough for you, darling, but I’m terribly sorry you found that out in such a horrible way. Those stepsisters of yours were a pair of bitches to you, right from the moment you moved into their father’s house. Bit like Cinderella, really, but without a prince to whisk you away.’

‘I was thinking that, though at least I didn’t have to clean and cook, or sleep in the ashes. In fact, my stepfather was quite hurt that I wouldn’t take an allowance from him! And you were my prince, letting me share the flat with you.’

‘No, I was your fairy godmother!’ he said, and laughed.

‘I’m going to ask you a favour now,’ I said. ‘I’ve managed to cram most of my stuff in the Mini, but I had to leave my small drawing desk and a couple of portfolios stacked in the boxroom of Justin’s flat. Could you possibly collect them in your van sometime, and then bring them with you next time you’re up here? The desk legs unscrew, so it’s not too bulky.’

Timmy’s parents had moved out of the village to Ormskirk a few years ago, but it was only a few miles away, and he and Joe often visited.

‘Of course I will, but it might be a couple of weeks because the van’s in for repairs and it’s going to be very expensive. But as soon as I get it back, I’ll ring Justin and see when will be convenient to get them, shall I?’

‘That would be great, thanks, Timmy. I’ll tell him you’re going to fetch them at some point. He keeps trying to call me and he sent me three texts while I was eating lunch, but I haven’t read them. I just … can’t face it at the moment, it’s all like some dreadful nightmare. I’m all cried out and my eyes are so puffy I look grotesque.’

‘I don’t suppose you feel at all forgiving. This is not something you can just get over and carry on after, is it?’

‘No, it’s the end of that part of my life – but a new beginning back with Aunt Nan. She’s got really keen on the idea of turning Bright’s into a wedding shoe shop and I think it will give both of us a whole fresh interest in life.’

‘It certainly will. It’s a wonderful idea! And I can be your scout at all the vintage fashion fairs, looking for wedding shoes,’ he offered, because we often went to them together. ‘You can give me a budget and I’ll buy anything I think you’ll like or can sell.’

‘Thank you, Timmy, that would be great – and you know what to look for,’ I said gratefully, because some of the vintage shoes I bought hadn’t been specifically designed as wedding shoes, but were pretty enough to be used for the purpose. ‘You’re a wonderful friend – and Joe and Bella, too – What would I do without you?’

It was mid-afternoon by the time I turned off the motorway into the tangle of narrow country lanes that eventually brought me to Sticklepond High Street.

I drove past Gregory Lyon’s Museum of Witchcraft (I remembered the days when it was still a dolls’ hospital and museum, owned by two elderly sisters, the Misses Frinton). Attached to it was the artisan chocolate shop, Chocolate Wishes, owned by Gregory’s daughter, Chloe, who had married the vicar …

Then, just before the Green Man, I turned right and then immediately left up the unmade lane to the space at the back of the cottage, behind the henhouse, where I usually parked the car.

It was quiet back there, just the ticking of the engine as it cooled and the crooning of hens. This end of the garden beyond the holly hedge arch was not so neat, and I noticed that the trellis along the top of the low wall dividing it from that of the neighbouring cottage was broken away from its post in the middle and sagged down.

I paused for a minute before collecting the first armful of my belongings and going up to the kitchen door where Bella, who had kindly popped round to see that Aunt Nan was all right, spotted me through the window while she was filling the kettle and opened the door to let me in.

I told Bella and Nan everything over a cup of hot tea and the last of the cherry scones Florrie had brought round with her when she came to spend the night. It seemed easier to tell both at once and get it over with.

‘… So I just put all my stuff in the car and came back. And that’s it, Aunt Nan,’ I said, when I’d poured out the whole sorry tale. ‘I’m finished with him. In fact, I’m finished with love. There’s going to be no Cinderella ending to my story.’

‘That stepsister of yours is evil!’ Bella declared.

‘Yes, that’s what Timmy said, when I rang him to ask him to collect the rest of my stuff.’

‘She’s behaved very badly, but Tansy’s fiancé could have said no,’ pointed out Aunt Nan. ‘It takes two to tango.’

‘I desperately wanted children and all the time he was saying we couldn’t afford it, he already had Charlie!’

‘He’s shown himself to be a man of no character whatsoever – and as for that stepsister of yours, she’s a slut, there’s no two ways about it,’ Aunt Nan said forthrightly. ‘I don’t know what the world is coming to. It’s more like Sodom and Gomorrah every day!’

‘I’d pay good money to see Rae turn into a pillar of salt,’ I said with a watery smile.

‘So, you’re home for good?’ Aunt Nan asked. ‘What about the foot modelling? And your books?’

‘I don’t need to be near the publishers, I can write the books anywhere, and I can always go down if they want to see me. Timmy’s going to bring my desk and the rest of my art materials up eventually, but I can manage without it for a while. As to the foot modelling, I’d been turning down more and more assignments and I told the agency I was retiring when I got back after Christmas. I did tell you I was going to, because I’d had enough. It’ll be lovely not having to put Vaseline on my feet and wear cotton socks in bed, or worry about bashed toenails and stuff like that.’

‘Oh, yes, you did tell me,’ she agreed. ‘I’d forgotten.’

‘After all these years of having to wear sensible shoes, well, I may go a little wild occasionally with the frivolous footwear, but I think I’m addicted to my Birkenstocks, really.’

‘And you’ll take over the shop now, so Bright’s will still be here long after I’m gone, even if it has been transformed into a wedding shoe shop?’

‘Of course. And I think it should be called Cinderella’s Slippers!’ I assured her, giving her a kiss. Even in so short an absence I could see that she’d faded – or perhaps she’d been steadily fading before and I had only just seen then, with fresh eyes? ‘I just want to settle down quietly here with you now, Aunt Nan.’

‘That reminds me: we’ve had a bit of excitement up here while you were away, so it’s not been that quiet,’ Aunt Nan said. ‘You know I told you about the cottage next door being sold about a year ago as a holiday home to an actress and her husband, though they’d not finished doing it up before she was killed in an accident?’

I nodded. ‘She’d just got a part in Cotton Common.’

‘So the papers said. Well, now her husband’s moving in.’

‘How do you know?’

‘There was a huge removal van blocking the lane most of yesterday and we could hear them – you know the dividing wall’s not that thick,’ Aunt Nan said.

‘I took the removal men some tea and biscuits round so I could try and find out what was happening,’ Bella confessed.

‘I sent her,’ Aunt Nancy explained. ‘I may be on the way out, but I’m still curious.’

‘They said he’s an actor too and he sold the house he shared with his wife down south after the accident, rented a flat and put most of their furniture into storage,’ Bella went on. ‘But now he’s moving up here.’

‘If he’s an actor, then perhaps he’s got a part in Cotton Common too?’ I suggested. ‘They do seem to have a large cast.’

‘The men said he’d told them he needed peace and quiet and that he’s an edgy, abrupt sort of man, so maybe he’s been ill and is just moving here temporarily till he’s better,’ Bella said.

‘What’s he like?’ I asked her.

‘I dunno, he hasn’t arrived yet. The removal men are still in there unpacking, but they’ve moved the van to the pub car park now. I suppose they got permission, because the people in the houses at the back were complaining that it was blocking the lane and they couldn’t get their cars in and out.’

‘I did see him briefly when he came to look at the cottage with his wife just before they bought it,’ Aunt Nan said, ‘but I can’t remember his name. I do recall he asked me how long I’d lived here and seemed surprised when I said there’d been Brights living on this plot since records began, but really she was the lively, talkative one, and very pretty. Tragic she died so young.’

‘If he’s only seen it out of season, then Sticklepond may not be the quiet backwater he expects,’ I said.

‘He did remark how quiet it was, now I come to think of it, and that you wouldn’t know there was a shop here if you missed the sign on the wall at the High Street end of Salubrious Passage, so I couldn’t have many customers.’

‘Of course you have lots of customers! Everyone knows you’re here,’ Bella said.

‘Yes, that’s what I told him.’

‘What does he look like?’ I asked.

‘I can’t really remember, lovey, except that he was a bit older than his wife and pleasant-spoken.’

I pictured some silver-haired, elderly and irascible thespian, retiring to live out his days in the quiet backwater that was Sticklepond … except, of course, that lately it was less and less of a quiet backwater. A couple of years earlier, when that alleged Shakespeare manuscript had been discovered up at Winter’s End, visitors had started flocking there in droves, and there were other attractions in the village as well, like the Museum of Witchcraft, the chocolate shop, a bookshop called Marked Pages, two pubs, and a whole raft of gift shops, craft galleries and cafés that had opened to cater to the tourist boom.

Sticklepond had once been a much larger and more important place, before the Black Death decided to cull so many of its inhabitants, but it was now firmly back on the map.

‘It’ll be odd having a neighbour after so long,’ Aunt Nan said. ‘The cottage has been empty since last year and just holiday lets for ages before that. But I’ll be happier for knowing there’s someone the width of a wall away when I’m gone and you’re here on your own at nights, Tansy.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying things like that, Aunt Nan! I’m not going to be here on my own for a long, long time,’ I told her firmly.

‘Well, when you are, I’ll still be watching over you – your guardian angel! That Chloe from the chocolate shop was telling me all about those yesterday afternoon. The vicar came to visit first, and then his wife came afterwards with the baby and brought me a chocolate angel. But we ate it.’

‘Didn’t you save me a bit? Her chocolate is supposed to be wonderful!’

‘I’m afraid we ate every last morsel – and it was wonderful,’ Bella said guiltily.

‘There was a message inside it,’ Aunt Nan told me.

‘A Wish, I suppose,’ I said, because Chloe specialised in making hollow chocolate shells in various shapes, with messages or ‘Wishes’ inside, like a sort of yummy fortune cookie. ‘What did it say?’

‘That imminent meetings with loved ones would give me much joy.’

‘It probably meant Tansy coming back,’ Bella said.

‘No, I think it meant heavenly meetings with Mother, Father and little Rosina, not to mention Jacob,’ Nan said thoughtfully, ‘though perhaps it meant Tansy as well.’

‘It meant just me,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m back and I’m here to stay – and if we’re to transform Bright’s Shoes, I’m going to need your help!’

‘Well, I can’t say I’m not glad to have you home, but I’m sorry it’s turned out like this, lovey, because I’d have liked to have seen you married and with little ones. But at least you found out he was the wrong man for you before it was too late, that’s the main thing.’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ Bella agreed. ‘It would have been much worse to have found out about Charlie after you were married!’

‘You two should get to work on the plans for the new shop right away,’ Aunt Nan said. ‘Because if you’re going to do it, then there’s no time like the present, and it’ll keep you both out of mischief.’

Working out the plans for the shop kept Aunt Nan amused too.

Florrie’s daughter, Jenny, the retired nurse, continued to help Nan to wash and dress in the mornings, before she went downstairs to sit in her big shabby, comfortable chair in the kitchen, by the stove in its inglenook fireplace.

Here she received a steady stream of visitors, including the vicar, Florrie, her friends from the Women’s Institute and even Felix Hemming from Marked Pages, who brought her a gift of one of the sweet, old-fashioned romances of the type she had often bought from him in the past.

Hebe Winter took to dropping in on her way to her Elizabethan re-enactment meetings, too, an alarming sight in full Virgin Queen rig-out, right down to the wig and huge ruff. Aunt Nan said she kept coming only because she liked playing the Lady Bountiful, and was also trying to wheedle the recipe for the Meddyg out of her, but I think they both enjoyed the visits really.

I left most of the shopkeeping to Bella, so I could be with Aunt Nan, because even though I tried to convince myself differently, I could see that my time with her was limited. I baked lots of cakes and biscuits for the stream of visitors, and ate a fair amount of them myself …

One afternoon, while Florrie was with her, Bella and I began a complete stocktake in the storeroom that had been partitioned off from the shop. It was cramped and cluttered, lit by one dim bulb, which I quickly replaced with something a bit brighter.

‘I’ll pull things out and you write them down,’ suggested Bella. ‘Looking at the dust, I don’t think some of the stuff at the back has been moved for about half a century!’

Bella had to answer the shop bell once or twice, leaving me to rummage alone, and I turned up ancient treasures like plastic overshoes and old-fashioned court shoes made for fairy-sized feet.

Aunt Nan herself had tiny feet which, like people, seemed to have got bigger over the years. I might take after the small, dark Bright side of the family, but I was still several inches taller than Aunt Nan and my feet were size five.

‘She really let the stocktaking slide for a few years,’ I told Bella when she came back.

‘She’s seemed interested in the wedding shoes lately, but I think the shop was getting a bit much for her before I started working here and she just kept it open out of a sense of duty. She’s so much happier about it now that she can see that it has a future.’

‘I hoped involving her in the plans would give her a new lease of life, but … well, even I can see she’s fading day by day,’ I said sadly.

‘I know it’s upsetting, but she’s in her own home, which is what she wants,’ Bella said. ‘She’s happy enough.’

‘I just can’t bear the thought of being without her,’ I sighed. ‘I’m so glad you’re living in Sticklepond too, Bella.’

‘My course starts again tomorrow night. There’s only another couple of weeks to go and then I’ll get my certificate, though much good it will do me in the current job market! Just as well I’ve already found work.’

The course aimed to update office skills, though, as Bella pointed out, she didn’t really have any to start with, except she liked playing with computers. ‘I’ve just put a card up in the Spar window, offering to do anything at home like typing or spreadsheets or inputting data, so maybe I’ll be able to earn a little extra money.’

‘I’m sorry we can’t give you more – or not yet, anyway,’ I said guiltily, because she wasn’t getting much above than the minimum wage.

‘It’s all right. The shop’s barely been ticking over and the short opening hours suit me, so I can spend lots of time with Tia. I’m not going to have any more children so I’d like to enjoy her childhood with her.’

‘At least you got to have one child, which is more than I managed,’ I said sadly.

‘You’re not that old yet – you could still find someone else.’

‘What, and then have one of the wicked sisters come and snatch him away before I could get him to the altar? I don’t think so!’

‘I don’t suppose Rae would ever dare to show her nose up here, would she?’

‘Probably not, but Marcia’s in Middlemoss, don’t forget. Still, I don’t expect our paths will cross, and if Lars tries to persuade me into one of his happy family gatherings next time he’s over here, I’ll be sure and have a good excuse ready!’

‘What’s happening with Justin? Is he still trying to ring you?’

Justin had spent the first few days trying my mobile and Aunt Nan’s phone, but I’d either ignored him or put the phone down on him each time.

‘No, he’s given that up, but he’s still texting and emailing me, and I wish he’d stop. It only just seems to have dawned on him that I’ve left him for good and he’s finding it hard to accept that I won’t eventually forgive him and go back. I don’t think Mummy Dearest is having that problem, though, because when Timmy collected my desk and portfolios, he said she was in residence and the whole flat looked so sterile you could eat your dinner off the floor. She watched him the whole time, too, as if he might load the Conran sofa into the van, when she wasn’t looking.’

‘Justin must still miss you, if he’s constantly trying to persuade you to take him back,’ Bella said. ‘But you couldn’t forgive him for something like that, could you?’

‘No, of course not! I don’t know why he thinks he can talk his way out of it, but all his attempts to contact me just upset me even more. That’s it – I’ve given up on love.’

‘Me too,’ Bella agreed. ‘Robert might have betrayed me in a different way by running up huge gambling debts, but I’ve had enough. He seemed so solid and dependable that I trusted him totally, but I’ve learned my lesson. No, I’ll concentrate on being a mum and you can be Tia’s favourite auntie – which you already are – and we’ll turn Cinderella’s Slippers into an astounding success!’

‘I only hope you’re right,’ I said fervently.