all went back to Marked Pages and Felix cleared a space on the shelf over the door. Despite his protests, I firmly removed the toolbox from his grip and, standing on a chair, screwed an eyelet into the back of the shelf, wired round the bottle and attached it.
‘There! It won’t fall down, no one can pick it up, and the light-fingered will need a screwdriver or wire cutters if they want to nick it.’
‘They’d probably be cursed if they did,’ Poppy said with a giggle. ‘Well, I’d better get off home now, because Mum’s gone to Hot Rocks on the pull with Mags, and I don’t like leaving the horses unchecked for too long.’
‘Yes, I’d better go too, though Jake doesn’t exactly need my company these days, now he’s got Kat!’
‘They are sweet together,’ Poppy said soppily.
‘You incurable romantic!’ Felix smiled at her and their gazes seemed to meet and lock for a long moment…But then they both blinked dazedly and looked away and the moment – if there was one – was broken.
Maybe I imagined it?
The following Tuesday Grumps went to his first Re-enactment Society meeting and Jake and Kat offered to drop him at the village hall on their way to have dinner with her parents. Having initially been alarmed by the first sight of Jake (not to mention his relationship to Grumps, when they got to know about it) they had now done a complete about-face and seemed to be trying to adopt him. Any mother of a teenage son would understand exactly how I felt about having someone else shoulder part of my food bills – deeply grateful.
‘OK, and I’ll come and fetch you later, Grumps, if you ring me,’ I told him.
Luckily his eccentric taste in clothes meant he hadn’t had far to look among his collection of garments to find something suitable for the role of John Dee – an embroidered, tasselled cap and a long, velvet robe fitted the bill quite nicely. He was a natural for the role.
Before they left I checked him over, a bit like an anxious parent whose child is off on a first date, making sure he had my phone number and a little money. ‘You may have to use the public phone at the back of the village hall and also there’s probably a kitty for refreshments,’ I explained.
‘Dear me, yes,’ he said, ‘I seem to have got out of the habit of social engagements, but I am sure it will do me good to get out into the world occasionally.’
I’m not sure the Sticklepond Re-enactment Society counts as the world, but it’s a start.
It was Laurence Yatton who called me later to tell me Grumps was ready to be picked up and, when I collected him, he seemed to have had a good time.
‘There were six kinds of biscuits, two of them home-made,’ he said approvingly, the cookie connoisseur. ‘Hebe Winter said that when she told her niece, Sophy, that I was to assume the role of John Dee, she suggested that I might occasionally go to Winter’s End dressed in character, when it is open to the public. They would rope off a special area where I could work and everyone would think I was drawing up a birth chart for the Queen, or some such thing. Just for an hour or two, as a special treat for visitors. They already have a Shakespeare, who makes an occasional appearance, as does Hebe in her role as Elizabeth the First.’
‘Would you do that?’ My reclusive old Grumps was constantly surprising me lately!
‘I don’t see why not. Many of the society are also Friends of Winter’s End and work there in full costume as volunteers throughout the open season, but I would not, of course, have time for that, for I will be fully occupied with my own work and with the museum.’
I could tell he was now quite fancying himself in the role!
I still felt furious that Raffy should have burst back into my life just as it had begun to settle down into a pleasant pattern, and that feeling didn’t seem to be wearing off at all. In fact, every time I caught sight of him my heart gave a sudden jolt and then started thumping away at twice its normal rate, which couldn’t be good for me.
It must have puzzled Poppy and Felix (and presumably Raffy too), that a boy-and-girl affair that ended so long ago should still make me act this way, but I couldn’t explain it to them. And while I could force myself to say I forgave Raffy, that wasn’t going to extinguish the bitter, lonely flame that was burning in my heart for what was lost, was it?
I was sure Raffy was trying to keep out of my way, just as I was trying to keep out of his, but of course that was impossible in a small place like Sticklepond. He buzzed around in his little un-rock-god Mercedes hatchback, presumably going to church-related meetings and making calls. He buried, christened and said prayers but so far, hadn’t married (no takers till spring had sprung), and he walked his little dog past my cottage very early every morning, without fail. I knew this, because I watched him from behind the shop window curtain. It still seemed strange to me to see the white gleam of the clerical collar at his throat, even if it was just printed onto a black T-shirt: it was a symbol of what he had now become, however improbable…
According to Poppy, Raffy was still determinedly carrying on with his scheme of visiting all the houses in the parish, which could prove to be his life’s work once he reached the scattered outskirts and set out into the countryside.
He and Felix really had struck up an unlikely friendship, too. I’d found Raffy in Marked Pages more than once myself, although he’d always hurried out as I went in.
He was paying contractors to clear the worst jungly bits of the vicarage gardens, I’d also seen him out there, hacking down overgrown shrubs side by side with them.
Anyway, he was suddenly ubiquitous…or do I mean omnipresent? No, I suppose that’s God. Anyway, Raffy was everywhere and a huge, huge success – with the female parishioners in particular. They may have been dubious initially, but they couldn’t resist that smile, it had been the downfall of many and I should know.
And evidently it was a well-known fact that a single vicar, in possession of a modest fortune, must be in need of a wife.
‘Raffy visited Grumps again the other day,’ I told Poppy, though I didn’t mention that he’d looked my way as he passed the shop window while I was working, and this time given me a tentative wave. ‘They seem to enjoy the verbal sparring, and even Zillah’s warmed to him, since the cards told her he’s got a vital role to play in what is to come.’
‘He’s bound to play a part in everything, now he’s the vicar, isn’t he?’ she pointed out.
‘She just meant the Mann-Drake situation, I think, though she might have interpreted the meaning wrongly.’ I heaved a sigh. ‘Even simply knowing Raffy was in the area would have been difficult enough, without seeing him all over the place. I suppose I ought to have started to get used to it by now, but I haven’t.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, I’ve been thinking it over and I’m sure the way you feel now isn’t just to do with him, it’s about lots of unresolved issues,’ she said, suddenly surprising me with an insightful comment, as she sometimes does.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you lost your first love, you were jilted by your second and your mother abandoned you, to all intents and purposes.’
‘Yes, but she wasn’t much of a mother to start off with.’
‘Maybe
