Chapter 25
The following Thursday I woke with a strange feeling in my tummy.
I swung myself out of bed and flicked open the curtains. It looked like any other late summer day: sunnier than some, colder than others. Stewart’s shop looked the same as usual, apart from the string of yellow and blue bunting across the front. But it wasn’t the same, it was far, far scarier, because today the Tour people were coming.
I felt oddly calm. We’d planned everything to within an inch of our lives, with a detailed itinerary for everyone. This was the abridged version:
2pm: committee met at bottom of village by Lana, Tom, Gerry, Sue
2.15pm: tour of village
3.15pm: coffee and cakes at café
4pm: rest of tour
5pm: Pagans’ Rock
6pm: buffet at Here Be Flagons. Everyone gets pissed
That bit was highlighted. We were all really, really looking forward to that bit.
It was a working day for most of the others, but Yolanda had arranged for cakes at the caf where she worked, Cam had promised to do a bike-themed display in the chippy window and Stew said he’d have something special ready, too.
‘So you definitely know what you’re doing?’ I asked Tom over lunch.
He rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, Lana, we’ve been over it, like, 50 times. Take them round the village, give them the history, generally show them a good time. Remind me again: do I have to sleep with any of them?’
‘Only if things get desperate. Have you learnt your patter?’
‘Well I practically memorised that book of Roger Collingwood’s: Egglethwaite: One Thousand Years of Bugger All.’
‘Come on, that’s not what it’s called.’
‘No, but it might as well be. Community spirit it may have, but this place isn’t half bloody boring.’
‘So what will you say then?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll sex it up a bit,’ he said, grinning. ‘Leave it to Tommy.’
‘You just behave yourself, that’s all. I don’t want any surprises today.’ I got to my feet. ‘Right. I’m going to see how Deano’s getting on with the food.’
***
In the kitchen, a pleasant smell of frying shallots and fresh herbs assaulted my nostrils.
‘Deano, how’re you—’ I stopped short when he turned to grin at me. ‘Jesus, what the hell are you wearing?’
‘Ace, isn’t it? I got it online.’
He was in a white t-shirt, emblazoned with the legend I’m a Yorkshireman, born and bred: strong in t’arm and good in bed.
‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘It’s “weak in t’head”, isn’t it?’
‘I liked this version better.’
‘Why’s it so tight?’
‘Bought an extra small.’ He patted his little cotton-hugged belly. ‘No harm giving them the goods, right?’
I shook my head. ‘No, Deano. You are not putting the moves on my committee. You’ll have to change.’
‘Oh, what? You’re not my real mum.’
‘I am today. I’ll get Tom to lend you a shirt.’
‘That lanky git?’ He glanced down at his round tummy. ‘I’ll pop all the buttons.’
‘You’ll be fine. Suck in.’ I scanned the bowls and plates covering every surface. ‘So what’ve you got for us then?’
‘All sorts. Those lucky bastards. If we don’t get the route after this I’m hanging up my whites.’
I picked up a bowl of something black and held it to my nose. ‘What’s this, anchovy paste?’
‘Don’t do that!’ Deano grabbed the bowl off me and set it down reverently. ‘That’s caviar, you daft cow!’
‘Caviar?’ My eyes went wide. ‘Shit, Deano! We haven’t got the budget for caviar!’
‘It’s fine, I sourced it off a mate from college. Owed me a favour.’
I cast a worried glance over the rest of the hors d’oeuvres. They all looked a bit… dainty.
‘Haven’t you got anything proper?’
‘What you on about? This is proper.’ He pointed to a plate of something that looked vaguely potatoey. ‘Look. Garlic rissoles.’
‘I mean, anything local?’
‘It’s all local. I got the ingredients from the farm shop, same as always.’
‘Local as in local dishes. You know, mini Yorkshire puds, rhubarb tarts, that sort of thing.’
I could see his brow lowering.
‘Not that all this French stuff doesn’t look great,’ I said quickly. ‘But you can whip up a few more things to go with it, can’t you?’
‘Absolutely not. I’ve spent hours on this lot.’
‘I’ll let you wear the t-shirt.’
He folded his arms. ‘Nope. Not good enough.’
‘Come on, Deano,’ I said in my best pleading tone. ‘It’ll be a challenge. This could be your crowning achievement.’
‘Hmm.’
‘You can snog me.’
‘Right.’ He grabbed his apron and pulled it over his head. ‘Let’s get cooking.’
He drizzled Katie the pan with olive oil, his brow furrowing in concentration. ‘I’ll need more eggs,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Oh, and some double cream, red onions and a bottle of Henderson’s Relish.’
‘On it.’
‘And get red wine!’ he called as I pushed open the door.
‘Right.’ I frowned. ‘What for, gravy?’
‘No, me. This is going to be thirsty work.’
***
When I’d finished at the farm shop Gerry was outside, leaning against his Land Rover smoking a roll-up.
‘Hiya,’ I said. ‘Picking up or dropping off?’
‘Dropping off. They ordered some eggs.’ He nodded at the bags in my hand. ‘What’ve you got there?’
‘Supplies for Deano.’
‘You’re all set then?’
‘Think so. Hard to know what they’ll expect when they get here really.’
‘These are Londoners, petal. They’ll probably expect to find us worshipping Satan and boffing our sisters.’
‘Then we’ll just have to keep your morrismen in for the day,’ I said. ‘You’re still able to give us a lift up to Pagans’ Rock, aren’t you?’
‘Yup.’ The shadow of a grin flitted across his face. ‘Got something special for them up at the farm.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a surprise. You’ll see.’
‘Don’t you be springing surprises on me at this stage, Gerry,’ I said, wagging a warning finger. ‘Does Sue know about it?’
‘It was her idea. One of her better ones, although I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell her.’
‘Hm.’
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he said, giving my shoulder a slap. ‘They’ll love it, I promise. See you outside the Methodist in an hour, eh?’
***
‘They’re late,’ I hissed to Tom as we waited outside the Methodist church with Gerry and Sue. ‘They’re going to ruin my lovely itinerary.’
‘Awww. And after you coloured it in and everything.’
‘I know. Inconsiderate bastards.’
‘Calm down, petal,’ Gerry said. ‘They aren’t late yet. They just aren’t early.’
‘Oh God, what if they’re not coming? What if they read that Sienna Edge thing in the paper and blackballed us? I knew it’d all go wrong.’
‘Yeah?’ Tom pointed to a couple of large taxis creeping towards us. ‘Who’s that then?’
‘Merda, they’re here! Are they here? They are, aren’t they?’
‘Oi.’ Sue flicked my ear. ‘You might’ve got away with swearing in Italian when you were teenagers. Don’t think I’m not wise to it by now.’
I smiled. ‘Sorry, Mum.’
Tom gave my elbow a reassuring squeeze. ‘Try not to panic, ok, sis? I’m ready for them.’
‘You’re uncharacteristically confident.’
‘Yeah, Cam’s been coaching me in bed. I play me and he plays the Tour de France people.’
I shook my head. ‘Epic sexy roleplay fail, Tommy.’
‘Helped though. I could do this village tour with my eyes closed.’
‘Hmm. Rehearsal didn’t help much at the Class 4 nativity.’
‘Well, I’m all grown up now. Just as long as they don’t ask if there’s room at the B&B.’
We plastered on a matching set of toothy smiles as the taxi pulled up and the Tour people piled out.
There were ten of them, more than we’d expected. The woman whose body language said she was every inch in charge was a thin, St Trinians-looking lady of sixtysomething, with one of those faces whose default expression was disapproval. There was only one other woman: the rest were men.
‘Hi,’ I said, shaking the headmistressy lady’s hand enthusiastically. ‘I’m assuming you’re our people. I mean, er, the VisitBritain people. Um, so… welcome to Egglethwaite, I guess.’
One of the nondescript men in suits had a little smile hovering about his lips. I wondered if he was laughing at my accent or my embarrassment.
‘Good afternoon,’ the woman said. ‘Ms Donati, is it? Vanessa Christmas. Mrs.’
‘Vanessa… Christmas.’ I tried not to look surprised. ‘That’s an unusual surname.’
‘I assure you, in my late husband’s family it was very common. They’ve been passing it down for generations.’
Was that a joke? I wondered whether it was ok to laugh. Vanessa Christmas was either the queen of deadpan or she had no sense of humour at all.
‘You’d think with a name like that she’d be a bit jollier,’ I heard Sue whisper to Gerry. I shot her a look.
‘Will Mr McLean be joining us?’ Vanessa asked, peering over my shoulder to see if there was anyone behind.
‘Not right now. We’ll see him later.’ I gestured to the others. ‘This is my brother Tom, and Sue and Gerry Lightowler. They own a farm just outside the village.’
Vanessa looked a little disappointed Stewart wasn’t there to meet her, but she shook hands all round. When we’d been introduced to the rest of the committee, we started making our way up the cobbles.
I fell into step beside Vanessa.
‘So are you seeing a lot of other places while you’re up?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, at least 50.’
My eyes widened. ‘Fifty? Shi – I mean, gosh. That’s a lot.’
‘Well, with the eyes of the world upon us we need to show our best side, don’t we? This is a splendid opportunity, not just for Yorkshire but for the country. The value to tourism is inestimable.’ She flashed me a withering smile. ‘If you’ll excuse the pun, there’s a lot riding on us getting this right.’
So many other places in the running! I wondered if Stewart knew.
‘And when will the route be announced?’ I asked.
‘The organisers will be announcing the stages in October, but it’s likely to be January before they make the full itinerary available.’
‘So we won’t know whether we’ve been selected until next year?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘What made you consider us?’ Sue asked.
‘Your Mr McLean was full of the area’s suitability – the challenging nature of the terrain, how photogenic the scenery was. And of course, he’s a man who would know.’ She cast an underwhelmed look around the terrace-lined main street. ‘We came prepared to be impressed.’
‘Bollocks!’ I muttered to Tom. ‘Bloody Stew, he’s oversold us. Do they think we’ve got a life-size Taj Mahal in Lego waiting at the top or something?’
‘Got them here, didn’t he?’ Tom muttered back.
‘They’ve got another 50 places to see as well though. Go on, try your patter.’
‘Right.’ Tom stepped forward with a determined, slightly kamikaze look on his face. ‘Um, allow me to tell you a little about the village, Mrs Christmas.’ I saw him grimace when he said the name, trying not to laugh. If he could just stay off the James Bond one-liners…
‘Certainly,’ Vanessa said with a gracious nod.
‘Well, Egglethwaite has always been a hive of industry,’ Tom began, in a tone that sounded like he was channeling Jeremy Paxman. ‘In Victorian times most people were employed in the worsted mill or on farms, but nowadays villagers do all sorts. We have a number of shops, as you can see. Florist’s, newsagent’s, chemist, butcher’s…’ He gestured round the street.
‘Mmm,’ Vanessa said with a polite-but-vague nod. If we weren’t the first village on their list, they’d probably heard a dozen stories like that already.
‘You’re losing them,’ I whispered to Tom in Italian. ‘Something more unusual.’
‘Er…’ I saw Tom hesitate while he fumbled for anything vaguely interesting from that god-awful book of Roger Collingwood’s. ‘Oh!’ He pointed to the caf where Yolanda worked. ‘And that’s The Peach Tree, one of the oldest surviving buildings in the village. A few hundred years ago, it was an unlicensed alehouse whose landlady was notorious for giving shelter to wanted poachers. It’s believed peach is a corruption of poach, and tree refers to the gallows – a reminder of where the lawbreakers could end up if they didn’t mend their ways.’
Vanessa and the committee examined the café with interest.
‘Could we see inside?’ one of them asked.
‘We’ll be popping in later for tea and cakes,’ Sue said. ‘Our friend is a waitress there.’
‘That’s more like it,’ I muttered to Tom. ‘Got anything else like that?’
‘No. That was the only interesting bit of history in the book. Don’t worry though, got a plan.’
‘Oh God. Please, Tommy, no plans.’
‘Just trust me, ok?’
He cleared his throat as we stopped outside the temp. ‘So here we have the village stocks,’ he said, gesturing to the rotting wood-and-rust construction. ‘Some of the oldest in the country, it’s believed.’
My eyebrows shot up. Tom knew as well as every Egglethwaiter that the stocks were a replica. Even if they’d been the originals, they’d be far from the oldest in a ten-mile radius, let alone the country.
Tom ignored my dirty look and carried on. He nodded to the temp, its sandstone façade jet black now from centuries of mill smoke.
‘This is the old temperance hall, which serves as our community hub,’ he said. ‘It was once dedicated to fighting the demon drink, that curse of the working classes. Fully licensed for weddings, christenings and bar mitzvahs. Funded by, er, Branwell Brontë back in 18…’ He coughed loudly. ‘Sorry, something in my throat. So yeah, back in the 1800s. He was a frequent visitor to the village.’
One of the men stared at him. ‘Are you trying to tell us Branwell Brontë paid for a temperance hall to be built here?’
Tom shrugged. ‘Yeah, why not?’
‘But wasn’t he the most frightful alcoholic?’
Tom didn’t miss a beat. ‘Absolutely correct,’ he said. ‘This was in one of his sober periods. The repentant sinner, you know?’ He shook his head mournfully. ‘So sad it didn’t last.’
There was a hum among the committee members. I just gaped.
‘Actually, when he was off the wagon he often went drinking over there,’ Tom said, pointing to the Fox. ‘Er, yeah, with his sisters; they used to come pub crawling over the moors from Haworth. Charlotte, Emily and… the other one.’
‘Anne,’ I muttered from behind a fixed smile.
‘Anne,’ he added smoothly.
‘But surely in those days women from their social background wouldn’t be found in an alehouse?’ Judy, the other female committee member, said.
‘No. No, that’s right, I remember now: the girls used to wait in the beer garden to carry Branwell home when he staggered out trollied . All good research for The Tenant of Wuthering Heights and, um, their other books.’
Vanessa shook her head. ‘Unbelievable.’
‘Unfortunately they had to bar Branwell in the end,’ Tom said. ‘Outstanding debt.’
‘Didn’t pay his bonus ball,’ Gerry said brightly. I threw him a look.
‘And they say Turner stayed there too, when it was a coaching inn,’ Tom went on. I shook my head slightly, but he paid me no attention. ‘Yep, Turner. You know, the sculptor.’
‘You mean JMW Turner, the landscape painter?’ one of the men said.
‘The very same.’
He squinted one eye suspiciously. ‘But you said sculptor.’
‘Sometimes, sometimes, when the mood struck. I think there’re still some of his clay figurines in the church hall actually. “Woman with suggestively placed oranges” is a local favourite.’
Vanessa laughed, for the first time that day. At least she was finding it entertaining.
‘Actually, there’s an interesting story behind the pub name,’ I said, jumping in before Tom pointed out the toadstool where the Cottingley fairies used to hang out, or whatever semi-local celebrity it occurred to him to draft in next.
‘Oh yes?’ Judy said. She didn’t exactly sound intrigued, but I ploughed on.
‘Yes, a local legend. There was a Londoner who fell on hard times, so he went in search of a better life. By the time he made it here he was starving. He found himself lost on the moors, no civilisation in sight, but just as he took off his pack to lay down in the snow and wait for the end, he noticed a trail of dirty black pawprints. Followed them to the village, where a local farmer cared for him. When he was well he became an innkeeper and named the place in honour of the animal that’d saved his life. Sooty Fox, see?’
Vanessa looked impressed. ‘What a sweet tale. Is it true?’
‘Yes.’ I shot a look at Tom. ‘That actually is true.’
‘Well, thank you, Mr Donati,’ Vanessa said to Tom. ‘We’ve been on many village tours more factual, but few more entertaining, I promise you.’
Tom grinned. ‘Rumbled.’
She flashed him a rare smile. ‘I wrote my MA thesis on the Brontës. I’m afraid you picked the wrong subject to fake expertise on. But it was certainly amusing.’
‘Ok, what the hell was that bit of improv all about?’ I muttered to Tom as we walked on. ‘You didn’t think you’d get away with laying it on that thick, did you?’
‘Course not. Trying to make her laugh, wasn’t I?’
‘And give me a bloody coronary in the process?’
‘Look, Lana, we have to go for broke here. There are 50 other places in the running, it’s Vegas or bust.’
Vanessa was walking a little ahead, talking in a low voice to the other committee members. She turned to me, interrupting our whispered conversation.
‘So does the village have any real history?’ she asked.
‘Not that you’d call illustrious,’ I admitted. ‘But it’s an incredible community. Everyone’s very invested in next year’s event, as you can see.’ I pointed to Your Plaice or Mine, Cam’s chip shop. He’d created a cycle-themed diorama in the window using fish-tank toys and blue cellophane: little divers in old-fashioned metal helmets riding bikes while a puzzled octopus looked on.
‘A trifle premature, perhaps,’ Vanessa said. ‘Still, it’s good to see some enthusiasm locally. In the last place we viewed, we were taken to task by a rather rude farmer who was adamant the Tour would upset his animals.’
Gerry broke into a loud fit of coughing and Sue slapped him heavily on the back.
‘Well that’s certainly not the case here,’ she said, smiling sweetly. ‘We’ve been right behind the idea from the start. Haven’t we, dear?’