17
Beetle Drive
Next day I was to meet Rory at noon in the main car park near the Brontë Parsonage Museum, which would be easier than his attempting to find the way to the back of the café alone. A friend who was studying at Leeds University would then pick him up and they’d spend a couple of days together before he returned to Scotland.
Bel had told me that Nile usually stayed at Oldstone until after Sunday lunch, before returning to his flat, and she volunteered to drive me into Haworth instead.
‘We could set off early and get the paint for the flat on the way, if you like?’ she offered. ‘Unless you want to try the test pots first?’
‘I think I know what I want for the flat now, so that would be great,’ I told her. ‘I’ll need to get some brushes and rollers, too, I suppose.’
‘Unless you’re going to paint the walls with your fingers,’ Nile commented, having wandered in in search of breakfast.
He hadn’t yet shaved and his hair was unusually rumpled, which oddly I found rather more attractive than his normal vision of manly perfection … in fact, my heart seemed to stop for a moment and then resume with a heavy thud. I looked away quickly, though I could feel myself blushing.
‘Would anyone like to cook my breakfast for me?’ he asked, with a winning smile.
‘No, but you’ve got plenty of time to cook your own, because I’m driving Alice in,’ Bel told him.
‘Is your car on the way?’ he asked me.
I busied myself with clearing away my plate and mug, so I didn’t have to look at him. ‘Yes, Rory sent me a text very early when he set out, so you won’t have to worry about having to give me lifts any more.’
‘I wasn’t actually worried,’ he said enigmatically, then began getting out the ingredients for what looked like a breakfast banquet for six, so we left him to it.
‘If I can paint the flat before the bed comes on Friday, I could actually move in at the end of the week,’ I suggested to Bel later, as we headed back to Haworth with the paint.
‘I think I’d make the official move next Sunday or Mum will be upset and think you don’t like staying with us,’ Bel said with a grin. ‘You could go back after lunch, like Nile does.’
‘Well … if you think so,’ I agreed.
She dropped me off at the back of the café and I carried my purchases up to the back door in relays: paint is surprisingly heavy.
Then Rory sent me another text, this one saying he was running a little later than he’d expected, so it would be some time after one when he arrived. I decided to fill in the time by having a leisurely walk around the village, ending up at the Parsonage. The sky was gloomily overcast, and I thought how bleak it must have been for the Brontës looking out on the graveyard, especially once the siblings began to die, one by one. How short their lives had been, yet so full in many ways.
I remembered how I’d embellished with increasingly ridiculous flourishes Dad’s story about my being left on the Parsonage steps, like the Wicked Witch arriving in a pumpkin carriage to curse me with the harelip and how one of the horses accidentally turned back into a rat and bit her …
The breeze was too chilly for me to stand around for long, so I had a bun and a cup of coffee in a nearby soon-to-be rival establishment, so that I was on hand when Rory finally arrived.
He said the car had driven beautifully, he’d just been held up in a queue because of an accident. Then, once I’d greased his palm with petrol money and a bit extra, his friend came to collect him.
Rory did kindly offer to go back with me to the café to help unload first, but I could see the boys had things planned for the rest of the day, so I assured him it would be no problem.
Really, I could have done with some help, because after carrying all those cans of paint earlier, I was convinced my arms had grown two inches longer. Still, I’d manage.
I found my way round the back streets and up the alley to my parking space without any problem and then I had a cup of coffee before starting the slow process of ferrying everything from the car to the house.
Next time I went shopping I vowed to get one of those little carts for trundling heavy objects about … or at the very least, a sturdy wheelbarrow.
Edie and Rory had carefully packed into the Beetle all the boxes, bundles and bags I’d left ready in the chalet, together with my folding easel, some bubble-wrapped pictures and a selection of battered suitcases. Edie was a great one for delegating, so I expect she just stood and directed where each item would fit, like doing a giant jigsaw by remote control.
But I discovered she’d somehow managed to insert a house-warming gift into the rear footwell, too: a Dundee cake in a tin and a bottle of Scotch whisky.
There was a kind note attached to the bottle that suddenly made the tears come to my eyes and I was standing there, resolutely blinking them back, when Nile’s car appeared and parked next to mine.
‘So, flower power is still going strong in the highlands?’ he asked, getting out and surveying the freshly repainted and improbably coloured blooms up the side of the green Beetle.
‘Vintage Cornish old hippie style,’ I told him. ‘It’s a surf dude special.’
‘It’s going to stand out like a sore thumb round here.’
‘Shouldn’t you still be at Oldstone, with your feet in the trough?’ I asked coldly, and he looked at me in surprise.
‘No, lunch was ages ago, and actually I’d have been here even sooner if Sheila hadn’t insisted on making you a picnic lunch so you didn’t starve to death. Not that you seem likely to,’ he added, looking at the cake tin I was holding.
‘House-warming gift from my friend Edie,’ I explained. ‘But woman can’t live on cake and whisky alone.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said, handing over a large plastic sandwich box and a fat, short Thermos. ‘You might want this hot soup and the chicken and stuffing rolls, after all.’
‘I do,’ I said, feeling ravenous. ‘How thoughtful and kind Bel and Sheila are!’
‘I’m kind, too,’ he told me. ‘I’ll just drop my things off at the shop and then carry all this stuff up for you.’
‘Oh, I can manage, don’t bother,’ I said airily. I mean, I’m not exactly a fragile little flower and on the whole men seem to expect me to get on and do things myself. But I was feeling tired, so when Nile returned and insisted, I gave in gracefully and watched as he ferried everything up to the flat, where we stacked it in the smallest bedroom. I could unpack it at my leisure when I’d painted and perhaps got a bit of carpet down – something else I’d need to buy.
‘It’s certainly clean as a whistle in here,’ he said, after depositing the final box, which because it was full of cookbooks made a heavy thump as it hit the floor. ‘But apart from the built-in kitchen units and the sink, there doesn’t seem to be any furnishings at all.’
‘No, Mrs M cleared the place, but now I’ve got all my things I’ll soon have it looking like home. Once the bed arrives I can manage until I find some inexpensive furniture. It’ll have to be cheap, because I’ve got the whole of the café to refit and paint, and I can’t do all of the work myself.’
‘I expect Bel will give you a hand with some of the painting, and so will I, when I’m around,’ he offered, to my surprise. I didn’t have him down as the handyman type. ‘And tomorrow I’ll take you to see a friend who has a big old barn full of furniture, where you can probably find a few bargains.’
‘Well, that’s kind of you, but if you give me directions I could go on my own, now I have my car,’ I pointed out. ‘It’ll have to be in the afternoon anyway, because my telephone landline is supposed to be reconnected in the morning and I think I need to be here for that.’
‘But you don’t know your way around yet, so it would be easier to go with me the first time,’ he said. ‘Chill – take help when it’s offered, because you still have plans to make, suppliers to find … more of those endless lists to write. Every time I see you, you’re scribbling down something new.’
‘They’re not endless, it’s just that as soon as I cross one thing off, I think of several more.’
‘That’s what I meant.’
‘Well, at least I won’t have to try to persuade Mrs Muswell’s suppliers to deal with me, because everything except the bread will be prepared or baked on the premises, and the ingredients will be top quality, not bought in bulk on the cheap,’ I told him.
‘Very grand: I hope you know what you’re doing.’ One dark eyebrow went up quizzically, in a way I was starting to find familiar.
‘I’ve spent most of my adult life working in cafés and teashops so I know exactly how I want my own to be, and I’m not going to be skimping on the food, that’s for sure.’
‘The opposite of Mrs Muswell, then,’ he said, then added, ‘Just a thought: have you got a handset to plug into the phone landline when it’s reconnected? Only I haven’t noticed one about.’
I stared at him. ‘No – you’re right, there isn’t one. I’d forgotten about that.’
‘I’ve got a spare somewhere. I’ll dig it out and bring it over first thing in the morning,’ he offered.
Then his mobile rang and when he looked down at the number he turned partly away while he answered it, so I assumed it was a girlfriend.
‘No, I can’t come at the moment, Zelda,’ he said in reply to some query. ‘But I’m hoping to pick up a very special piece at a local auction for one of my London clients and, if so, I’ll be down next week to deliver it personally.’
Presumably, this was not what his caller wanted to hear.
‘I’m sorry,’ he added after a minute. ‘I know I haven’t seen you for a while, but I can’t get away before that. You can always email me whatever the problem is if you don’t want to discuss it on the phone. Look, I’ll ring you back later. I’m a bit tied up at the moment.’
He grimaced as he put the phone back in his pocket, but didn’t give me any explanation. ‘Well, I’d better get off,’ he said, back to being Mr Terse, which was just as annoying in its way as Mr Bossy. ‘I’m away to Keswick, in pursuit of a bit of Ming. Or alleged Ming, which would mean a wasted journey.’
‘Ming the Merciless,’ I said absently, still wondering about his caller. A man so handsome, even if he was a bit on the bad-tempered side, must have hordes of women after him and it sounded as if this Zelda was one of them.
‘I didn’t have you down as a Flash Gordon fan,’ he said, looking at me in amusement, and I amended that thought to ‘sometimes bad-tempered but can suddenly turn on a stun-ray of a smile’.
‘My late fiancé … it was his favourite film,’ I explained.
‘Oh, right,’ he said, the smile vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.
Left to myself, I went up to the flat and unpacked my kitchen equipment into the cupboards, then flattened the empty cartons. This time I’d get rid of them because I was determined that I was here to stay.
It was chilly in the flat – having the boiler overhauled so I could switch the radiators on was right at the top of my priority list – so after I’d discovered that most of my curtains were long and narrow, while the flat windows were shallow and wide, then painted test patches on the walls and skirting boards, I gave up and drove myself back to Oldstone.
Nile still hadn’t returned, so I hoped he’d found his Ming and it was all that he had hoped for.
Back in my comfortable room at the farm, I wrote another scene before dinner.
‘My prince is coming to free me and we’ll live happily ever after,’ Beauty said.
‘But it might not be the right happily-ever-after,’ said the mouse. ‘Something’s wrong with this enchantment, or you’d have stayed asleep till your prince had kissed you. This must be a prince from the Here-and-now, while you need one from the Once-upon-a-time. You’d better wait.’
And indeed he was quite right. Where once a forest had flourished, an estate of shabby, rundown houses, with gardens growing crops of rusty cars and old prams, had encircled the bower without the occupants realizing it was there.
Now, as the enchantment faded, it would beckon to them like a jewel in a sea of mud.
Dinner was just me, Bel and Sheila again, which was cosy. I was starting to feel very at home at Oldstone, considering I’d barely been there five minutes.
‘Nile is taking me somewhere tomorrow afternoon to look at second-hand furniture and antiques, but I thought I’d start painting the flat in the morning while I’m waiting for the phone engineer,’ I told them. ‘And maybe I can get hold of someone to come and service the boiler in the flat, because it’s freezing up there without the heating on.’
‘I’ll come and help you paint in the morning for an hour or two,’ Bel offered. ‘But then I’ll come back and work: I’m exhibiting with two other potters at a gallery in York before Christmas, so I’ll have to start stockpiling pieces.’
‘Only if you’ve got time and feel like it,’ I said.
‘I’m putting you in my debt, so you have to help us plan out and convert our little café before spring,’ she said. ‘It’s my cunning plan.’
‘I’d do that anyway,’ I told her.
After dinner, Sheila said she was going to the studio she’d created out of what was once a small Victorian orangery at the back of the house, a concept I would have thought as entirely alien to the surrounding moorland as the carving of a bunch of grapes over the front door.
When she’d gone, followed by her shadow, Honey, Bel told me she’d checked out some local newspapers online that afternoon and had printed out what she’d found.
‘I hope you don’t mind, but I couldn’t resist it.’
‘No, it will save time,’ I assured her. ‘Did you find anything interesting?’
‘Yes, and there was a lot more detail in the Upvale and District Gazette than any newspapers on the Haworth side.’
‘What kind of detail?’ I asked.
‘Well, for a start, there was a second person on the scene when you were found. I’ll show you.’ She spread the printouts on the table.
‘Here we are – read this one,’ she said, pointing.
It started with the now-familiar story of how the farmer found me, right up to the moment when Joe Godet picked me up and discovered I was a baby and not a lamb. But then he said sensationally, ‘I looked up and saw one of the Upvale witches standing right next to the Oldstone, staring down at me,’ and went on to add that at first he’d thought she’d put the child there, but it seemed she’d appeared at the same moment he did by pure coincidence.
‘Witches?’ I said, looking up. ‘There are witches in Upvale?’
‘He certainly seems to think so. But read this one – it’s an interview with the “witch” from the same paper.’
‘I don’t know why Mr Godet has a bee in his bonnet about witches,’ said Emily Rhymer, of Upvale. ‘I simply decided to walk up there to watch the sun rise over the hills, something I’d done several times before.’
When asked if she wasn’t nervous about walking the moors alone in the dark, Miss Rhymer replied, ‘No, there was a full moon so it was quite bright, once I was out of the lane. And not only can I take care of myself, but I had my dog with me. A friend had said she might drive up to the Oldstone at dawn, too, but there was no sign of her. Then I heard noises and my dog started barking and when I looked down over the edge, I saw a farmer holding what I took to be a lamb …’
‘The plot thickens,’ I said, looking up.
‘I know, it’s quite a drama, but it seems as if the police cleared this Emily Rhymer from suspicion: it says so in the next bit.’ She frowned. ‘The name Rhymer sounds very familiar, somehow …’
I read on, but there was only a little more.
‘He’d found a baby and accused me of having put it there. But my friend turned up just then and she told him I’d been at her house till late the previous evening and she’d have noticed if I was heavily pregnant or had given birth: the idea was ridiculous. Then, since the priority was to get the baby somewhere warm, we all got into her car and went back to Mr Godet’s farm, where we rang for the police and an ambulance, because the poor little thing was only just alive.’
The article concluded by saying that Miss Rhymer had been cleared of any involvement and it was still a complete mystery as to who the mother was and how she’d got the baby up to that remote spot.
‘That’s all very difficult to take in,’ I said, sitting back at last. ‘It’s really weird that two people should have just happened to be there at that particular moment. It’s hard to believe it was a coincidence.’
‘But the police evidently decided it was, so your fairy godmother must have been looking out for you and sent not one, but two rescuers,’ Bel said.
‘Yes, and even though Emily Rhymer can’t be my mother, I’d still like to talk to her,’ I said, then added, ‘Let’s keep what we’ve found out to ourselves for a bit, OK?’
‘Yes, fine,’ Bel said. ‘And you’ve got lots to think about before you try to find out any more.’
‘When I’m ready, I’ll want to visit the Oldstone and talk to the eyewitnesses, though I’m not really expecting them to add anything that might help me trace my birth mother. I think it will be a dead end, and that’s probably going to be as far as I get.’
‘Unless you go public at some point with a newspaper appeal, asking her to get in touch?’ Bel suggested.
‘I might consider that one as a last resort. Nile told me I should let sleeping dogs lie, because my birth mother might very well not want to be found.’
‘Then she needn’t come forward! And anyway, it’s your life, Alice, so you do what you want,’ she advised me. ‘Nile’s always come the bossy older brother with all my friends; just take no notice.’
I thought that might be easier said than done, given I was living two steps away from him in Doorknocker’s Row and he tended to turn up as unexpectedly as a pantomime Demon Prince through a trapdoor.