Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues (27 page)
What with the doorbell constantly belting out ‘Here Comes the Bride’, and the bells of All Angels literally going like the clappers, not to mention all the noise in the courtyard, Ivo couldn’t have been having a terribly quiet day again, and I felt a little guilty about that …
The Green Man must have been catering for one of the wedding receptions, too, because there was a marquee in the car park next to the courtyard and you could hear sounds of revelry and, later on, a disco.
The music was still going strong when Ivo came to collect Flash that evening, which presumably accounted for why he was back to looking so grim-lipped and as if he hadn’t slept for a week.
I commented brightly that business had been surprisingly busy today, but I hoped he hadn’t been too much disturbed (or not more than he clearly already was), to which he replied coldly, ‘You must be joking! Apart from your damned door chimes playing ‘Here Comes the Bride’ every five seconds, the church bells hardly seemed to stop long enough for the vicar to run through the wedding service in between. Then there seemed to be a mass riot in the courtyard, and we’ve had this thumping music for hours!’ He gestured angrily in the direction of the marquee.
‘The Green Man doesn’t very often have large receptions, but they need the marquee if they do,’ I explained. ‘Their function room holds only about fifty people.’
Flash also seemed to be put off by the unaccustomed sound of music from the garden and hung back when I tried to hand his lead over to Ivo, clamping it to his chest with an expression of canine determination.
‘Look, even your poor dog has had enough!’ Ivo pointed out.
‘He just doesn’t like anything to be different. But the music will stop at ten: they don’t carry on late at the Green Man.’
‘Ten
is
late,’ Ivo snapped and turned to stride off, though his exit was ruined when he had to stop to reassure Flash, who had firmly clamped his lead to his chest again.
I bet Ivo’s now secretly hoping the retail park will put me out of business!
When Ivo returned he only seemed to have walked off a little of his temper, for he said, resuming the conversation where we had left off, ‘Do you have to have a cockerel? He’s so loud he wakes me up in the morning.’
‘Cedric isn’t as noisy as most of them,’ I said coldly. ‘If you move into a village, you should expect chickens and church bells and noises like that!’
‘And Bach fugues played full volume on the church organ at any time of the day or night?’
‘A local foible. The organist is blind and says day and night are all one to him.’
‘Well, “I am never merry when I hear sweet music …” particularly at two in the morning.’
‘You need to chill out and adapt to village life, not expect it to adapt to you.’
‘Thanks for the lecture,’ he snapped and strode off. He’d automatically taken the parcel of sticky ginger parkin I’d shoved into his hands, but I’m sure he hadn’t consciously realised he’d done it.
Wherever he’d hidden that sweet-natured boy I’d fallen in love with so long ago, I wished he’d let him out again.
I decided to keep the shop shut on Easter Monday, though both Winter’s End and the Witchcraft Museum would be open, so I supposed I would lose some tourist trade.
But since the wedding shoes were my primary concern, it seemed reasonable, and it gave Bella and me a bit of a break.
We took Tia to the Easter Egg Hunt, which Raffy and Chloe had organised after the morning service at All Angels, though if I’d known Neil would turn up, I’d have given it a miss.
‘Neil! Neil!’ shrieked Tia excitedly, jumping up and down and waving when she spotted him, and he grinned and started to weave his way towards us through a lot of over-excited little Easter egg hunters.
‘Did you tell him you were coming today?’ I asked Bella suspiciously.
‘I might have mentioned it,’ she admitted, ‘but I didn’t expect him to come.’
I thought she looked secretly pleased that he had, though, and Tia seems to like him already. What’s more, it was immediately clear from Neil’s slightly sheep-like and adoring expression that he’d fallen head over heels for Bella.
Anyway, I felt a bit of a spare part, so after a while I said I was going to go home and get on with some work.
‘I need to tidy up the cover illustration for the new book, and then I can finally pack it ready to post on Tuesday.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want to stay?’ Bella asked doubtfully. ‘I thought we could have lunch at one of the cafés afterwards, as a treat.’
‘Or I could drive us all to Southport, if you were up for another Easter egg hunt?’ Neil suggested. ‘There’s one at the Botanic Gardens this afternoon and we could have lunch there first.’
‘Ooh, yes. Mummy, can we?’ Tia begged.
‘I don’t think you should eat any more chocolate today, you’ll be sick,’ Bella said, but I could see she secretly wanted to go.
‘She could save them for another day,’ I said.
‘I suppose I could confiscate them as she finds them,’ she agreed.
As I walked home alone, I couldn’t help feeling a bit sad that Bella and I would no longer be singletons together, because even though she was resisting I knew she was very smitten by Neil. But I also felt for happy for her, because I liked Neil and if it worked out, then my best friend would have another chance at happiness – and I could at least walk up the aisle as a bridesmaid!
I’d actually already finished
Slipper Monkeys’ Safari
; it just needed carefully parcelling up. But there was something that needed doing that I’d been putting off for ages: excavating Aunt Nan’s big chest freezer, which took up so much of the walk-in larder that you had to sidle sideways past it to get in.
I suspected the lower levels hadn’t been disturbed since early last century, so I should probably have asked the county archaeologist to be present …
I switched it off, then put the good stuff from the top in cold bags, or wrapped in newspaper on the stone larder shelves. As I worked down towards the bottom I discovered a whole, long-forgotten stratum almost welded together, formed from frozen garden fruit, burst packets of peas, endless trays of liver or tripe and onions (neither particular favourites of mine, even if they hadn’t looked ancient and desiccated), and bread rolls so long-frozen that they crumbled to icy crumbs practically at a touch.
I had to chip the last layer out of the permafrost before I could bag it and bin it, and hanging over the freezer for that long made me feel quite dizzy. But at least this deep-frozen Tutankhamen’s tomb came with treasure: Aunt Nan’s mother’s wedding ring of Welsh gold, nestled inside a cottonwool-padded plastic box!
I had been flagging a bit, but this find spurred me on to finish the job. Then Flash asked to go out, though he deliberated in the doorway when he spotted Cedric leading his wives up the garden before suddenly bouncing out, barking. That sent them running back through the holly arch towards the safety of the hen run!
I followed them down and, watched by a pot-valiant Flash, blocked up the place under the wire where they’d got out again. Then I went in and had a well-deserved rest with a cup of coffee and a slice or two of buttered bara brith.
Fortified once more, I set to again and scraped the ice off the inside of the freezer (I’d loosened it with a special defrosting spray), then cleaned it all out, before switching it back on again.
When I put what was worth keeping back into it later, it practically rattled around, but soon there would be a glut of fruit from the garden and I could start batch-cooking and freezing portions of things like pizzas, shepherd’s pies, rhubarb crumble and curries, not to mention loaves, bara brith and buns, so I expected it would quickly fill up again.
I’d heard Ivo hacking and digging in his garden earlier, but he’d vanished indoors by the time I’d finished with the freezer and gone out for a late potter round the garden, remembering how it used to look when Aunt Nan was younger. There had been neat rows of cabbages and carrots, tall wigwams of runner beans and sweet peas, clusters of snapdragons and red-hot pokers between the onions, and a tangle of salmon-pink geraniums behind the old stone bench.
She’d always mixed the decorative and the edible up together (though some, like nasturtiums, were both, of course), and it had looked magical. I’d like to recreate some of that effect, but on a smaller scale.
I had a peek through the trellis to see what Ivo had been up to and saw that his garden was looking quite bare now and all the old crazy paving paths had reappeared. I wondered where he was going to put his knot garden.
When I’d fed the hens and shut them up in their house for the night, I’d told Cedric not to dare voice one single crow until he was let out in the morning, but he’d just given me his blank, beady stare.
I certainly wasn’t getting rid of him and, since you can’t have cockerels fitted with silencers, Ivo would just have to get used to the dawn chorus.
Ivo was uncommunicative when he came to the back door for Flash that evening, nor was he any less taciturn when he returned him an hour later, wet, muddy and happy.
But that suited me, because I’d started to suspect what Aunt Nan’s skeleton in the closet was, I just wanted to carry on listening to her story … except that I now was having to listen to a long digression on the way to make a proper Lancashire hotpot pie, before she started to divulge anything more interesting – if she intended to at all.
‘
Of course, we were lucky to have scrag end of lamb to make hotpot pies. One of the boys at school, his family were that poor that he never had enough to eat. I remember him telling me that he would catch small birds like sparrows, and bake them inside a potato he would steal from the fields
,’ she told Cheryl. ‘
No dear, I don’t know if he took their insides out first, I never asked him
.’
And people today think they’re hard done by if they can’t afford a flatscreen TV or the latest computer game!
Still, fascinating as all these asides were, the urge to fast forward would have been almost irresistible had not Cheryl somehow managed to nudge Nan back in time, to the point when she had returned from the visit to her sister Violet. I strongly suspected that by this point she had been feeling as curious and frustrated as I was!
The curate I was walking out with, lovey? Oh, that came to nothing. He never even asked me for the truth. In fact, he just turned and went the other way when he saw me in the street, which was very hurtful. My best friend, Florrie Snowball, was the only person I completely confided in and she was – and always has been – a great comfort to me. I’m not saying she isn’t a little strange in her ways, mind, but her dabbling in magic never did anyone any harm that I ever noticed, and we all need a hobby, dear, don’t we?
Middlemoss Living Archive
Recordings: Nancy Bright.
I spent most of Easter Monday morning cleaning out the shop. It’s odd how the glass showcases and the door pane become covered in greasy fingerprints, when I rarely see anyone actually touching them.
Once everything was clean and sparkling I replaced the ‘glass’ slipper on the cushioned stand in the window with a gloriously forties-looking silvery satin shoe that had been embellished with a row of sparkling Swarovski crystals up the strappy front – my very first Bridal Shoe of the Week.
‘
Don’t trip up the aisle, skip up it
–
in a beautiful pair of Cinderella’s Slippers!’
I exclaimed, inspired, jotting this new and improved version of our slogan down to see what Bella thought.
Then I answered a few queries that had come through the website, which were mostly about opening times, even though they were clearly displayed on the home page! But someone also wanted to sell me a pair of vintage button-strapped cream leather shoes. They looked to be in good condition from the attached JPEGs, but possibly more bridesmaid than bride. Still, I said if the seller halved her (ridiculous!) asking price, we might have a deal.
After lunch I got a notebook and, accompanied by Flash, went out into the garden to make a plan of what needed doing before lusty spring stirred it up and it all got out of hand – only to spot Ivo through the trellis, seemingly doing the same. His big Moleskine notebook was somewhat more upmarket than my cheap spiral-bound one.
He looked up and caught sight of me but his mood seemed much improved, for instead of scowling and turning his back, which was about what I expected, he came over and said he could do with some advice and then invited me into his garden! I left Flash on my side, though, since I didn’t want to strain the truce he seemed to have established with Toby the cat by letting him invade his territory.
‘You’ve worked really hard,’ I said, having a good look round. ‘It’s come from an overgrown jungle to bare earth in only a couple of weeks!’
‘It was bindweed, nettle and bramble heaven, so though at first I was picking and choosing what to pull out, in the end it was easier to dig practically everything up and start again. But I’ve left some well-established looking things alone, like those espaliered trees over there on the side wall, until I find out what they are.’
‘Oh, those are quinces.’
‘I’ve no idea what quinces are,’ he admitted.
‘They have fruit that looks a bit like a small pear and they’re very good for jams, jellies, relish and wine, so they’re well worth keeping. I expect they’ll take on a new lease of life now you’ve given them more space. If you don’t want the fruit, I’ll have it and give you jam and wine back in exchange.’
‘And the trees at the bottom there?’
‘Apple – I think one’s a cooker and the other an eater.’ I surveyed them doubtfully: the years of neglect had made them look a bit past their best. ‘If I were you, I’d put a lot of compost or manure around the roots and see if they perk up. But that sapling next to them is a sycamore and you need to take that out straight away, before it gets any bigger.’