by Helen Slavin
“Oh yes. I am.” Mrs Fyfe smiled again. It made Winn feel a bit bilious, although that could have been the fact that she had mistakenly put the tin of tuna flavoured cat food onto her toast this morning and then eaten it for breakfast.
“You know, I suppose, that ‘en suite’ isn’t even French? Not proper French… they don’t know what you mean when you say ‘en suite’, or if you say ‘c’est la vie’ either.” Winn thought back to a long-ago holiday in Cholet where she had used both phrases and met with Gallic confusion.
“Ha.” Mrs Fyfe gave a rather short, barking laugh. “The French. What are they like?”
They toured the bedrooms. Mrs Fyfe was very impressed with their period details and later, in the kitchen, Winn was very impressed with the large bag of cash she handed over as a deposit and the first month’s rental.
“Personally, I don’t trust banks. A shoebox and a tea caddy are far more trustworthy.” Mrs Fyfe confessed, her eyes looking slightly crossed and googly as she peered at Winn through her spectacles. Winn reconsidered her former opinion of her new tenant.
Winn’s real home was a rather sad looking amalgamation of sixties era boxes that called itself a bungalow, squatting in a clearing at the edge of Leap Wood. She swung by on her way back to Prickles to stash some of her rental cash. Some she put in an old coffee tin, still more under the mattress and, safest of all, in a ceramic cooking pot in the oven. No one in their right mind ever looked in Winn’s oven, most especially if something was cooking in it.
Almost at once she reached back into the oven, took a few notes from the cooking pot and stuffed them into her jacket pocket. She glanced at the clock and found there was still time to head over to Mole’s Farm Goods to pick up the pony pellets she needed.
She had started up the tractor and was half way down the lane before she remembered that it was a bit of a pinch to park the tractor at Mole’s and so she rolled down to the crossroads path as that was the only place to do a U-turn and headed back to pick up the Land Rover.
She felt lifted and light. Hartfield Hall was sometimes like a nightmare from which she couldn’t awake. Each time she visited her ancestral home there was something dropping off or falling down. The hotel idea had been the worst, of course, and the debts from that haunted her but the few weddings she’d managed to book in at the stables had helped. A little. Diversifying. That was how to explain it to herself, she was simply diversifying.
It would be a different nightmare to be pushed to sell the place, but then, Winn tended not to sleep too much at night so that this nightmare never manifested itself.
Except it did, it tugged at her coat each time a new bill came in or some other workman had to offer up an unearthly quote for rewiring or replastering or generally shoring up. It seemed to Winn, as she pushed the thoughts aside, that it didn’t matter how old you were, how much your knees creaked and your hair streaked grey, inside you were still eleven and, still and forever, a disappointment to your father.
* * *
Winn bustled in behind the counter at reception and, as Emz sat at the computer and finished the backlog of pro formas for the latest batch of school visits, Winn handed her a wad of notes, possibly about a hundred pounds, Emz wasn’t sure.
“Is that the deposit from Rooks Hill Primary?” Emz looked at the crumpled cash.
“It’s wages,” Winn barked. The thought fluttered for a second in Emz’s head and she quickly handed it back.
“No… Winn, no.”
“Yes. It’s wages,” Winn insisted, pushing the money back into Emz’s hand. Emz held it out.
“No. I’m a volunteer.” Emz reached forward and stuffed it into Winn’s pocket.
“You’re not actually if you remember? Roughly an aeon ago I took you on as a Saturday girl and I’ve never bloody paid you… well, there was that Easter egg… but still and all, here.” There was a silly and embarrassing hand wrestling between them before the notes burst out and crumpled onto the floor where Emz stooped to pick them up and held them out to Winn.
“Don’t. Please, Winn. Spend it on the animals.” There was a moment between them and Winn recalled exactly why she’d put up with this girl for all this time and all this time was starting to add up to about three years, possibly even four. Good grief! This couldn’t go on. She probably owed Emz Way a tremendous wad of cash. The whole incident, which had started out with Winn feeling generous, was now turning sour and embarrassing for both parties.
“You paid me a couple of weeks ago, remember?” Emz remembered the brief exchange of ten-pound notes after a particularly good day at the visitor centre. Winn had insisted then and Emz had taken it. Now she felt endangered. “That’s all I need.” There was a continued moment of standoff before Winn shoved the notes into her pocket. She made some grumping noises that were quite usual, but the seed was planted in her head: she needed to consider Emz Way and find a proper way forward. She could not do without her. She put the money into the pocket of Emz’s fleece which was hanging off the back of the chair.
“Winn.”
But Winn was shaking her head, zipping up the pocket.
“I’m minted, Emz. I rented out the Hall.”
7
Something Borrowed, Something Blue
Mrs Fyfe was settling in very well as Mistress of All She Surveyed. Well, Hartfield at least. She slept, as she should always sleep, in a four-poster bed, one that, judging by the threadbare drapes, held some history. There was dust here, there were cobwebs there. She had not felt so at home in a long time.
The chequerboard tiling of the hall floor made her think of long ago balls, of sweeping debutante gowns. There was rust, there was mould, there were rats pattering their nervous energy around the wainscoting so that she felt revived. It was like a spa! She loved it here.
Matters needed to be arranged of course, she did not have enough of a supply of the paper stuff to stay here indefinitely, but her mind was humming busily to itself and today, it was humming the Wedding March.
Ah. A wedding. Mrs Fyfe absolutely adored a good wedding.
The fuss had begun yesterday when all the strangers arrived and for just a moment Mrs Fyfe thought that they were going to be staying in the main house. A telephone conversation with the baggage who rented the place out had settled the matter. They were preparing for a wedding in the grounds, in the other half, in the stables and the orangery away from her private garden, her private quarters.
She could watch it all from the corner library windows, being as they were on the first floor and dual aspect. She could look out up the drive and out onto the stables and courtyard. It was a hive of activity, of nervous energy, of anxiety and stress. Men hefted chairs and tables and the young woman with the gadget was mistress of it all. Hmm. Mrs Fyfe brought herself up some tea and observed. It was only a moment or so before the energy tweaked at her from across the town. It was intriguing, the little threads of web from Havoc that twanged and sang by the river. Hmm. Water. Yeast. Hops. Well, she would not be thwarted by a little brewster. Mrs Fyfe finished her tea; it was a simple task to hinder the Havoc witch brew’s arrival. She smiled at the thought of drawing first blood on the Witch Ways.
* * *
“Vagabonds? What the hell is a Vagabond?” The woman was young and harassed and Mrs Fyfe could not resist stealing a look or two at the silvery tablet she held. Lists. Pictures. All pages turned with a swipe of her finger. A marvel and electrical, Mrs Fyfe assumed, although she was not a great one for gadgets herself.
“Yes. Coming through those big main gates in one of their wagons.” Mrs Fyfe pointed into the distance. The young woman looked at the open gates and the tall grass that was growing between them.
“Vagabonds? Wagons?” she said the word over and looked at Mrs Fyfe with some irritation. “Who are you? You’re not Miss Hartley-Hartfield? You’re not a wedding guest.” She was swiping her finger impatiently at the tablet as if the answer might lie within it. Mrs Fyfe swiped her finger on it too. Put a stop to that.
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“What are you doing?” The young woman snatched the slim machine away from her. “Can you not?”
Mrs Fyfe held up her hands in surrender, a conciliatory smile upon her face.
“Apologies.” She took a step back; the young woman’s stress level was rising, and Mrs Fyfe breathed in. At the other side of the courtyard the caterers were unloading tables.
“No… not there… not there.” The young woman turned away from Mrs Fyfe.
“Vagabonds,” Mrs Fyfe said under her breath. “Lock those gates against them, the tinkers.” She smiled again and turned back into the house.
An hour or so later she was enjoying a pot of tea in the corner library, feeling refreshed and relaxed as she watched two of the young men begin the longish trek to the main gates carrying a metal hoop strung with heavy metal keys. She watched as they creaked the gates shut and for good measure, once they had turned their backs, Mrs Fyfe took some of her energy and laid her own locks into the ironwork.
Mrs Fyfe needed to keep a tight ship. She would have to work quickly but that was always fun, skin of the teeth stuff. Hmm. She must prepare herself for the mischief of the wedding. Now, what else did she need? She would need a hat. And where had she left her basket?
8
Blackberry Ferment
The wedding beer was due a tasting, especially since the wedding itself now loomed large on the Drawbridge Brewery calendar.
“When is the Hillman wedding?” Charlie asked. “Is it the 10th or the 12th?” She was skimming over the diary pages, the diary being an actual paper version that sat on the desk, the cover gathering coffee mug circles until it resembled an over enthusiastic Olympic flag.
“I thought it was the 15th?” Michael looked up from the computer. His face was crumpled into several expressions at once, revealing all his thought processes. Charlie flicked back and forth in the diary. It was a waste of space really as neither of them ever wrote anything in it; most of Charlie’s diary dates were on her phone and most of Michael’s were written on the back of his hand or on Post-it notes on his fridge at home.
“I’ve got the 12th in my head. We need to check. D’you want to give them a ring, or shall I?” Charlie asked. Michael’s attention was back at the computer. Charlie watched the back of his head for a moment, interested in the way the hair curled around the small bald spot that was encroaching across the crown of his head; she was also interested, no, disturbed might be a better word, in the fact that she was thinking how it might feel to just reach for that hair, to twist her fingers into it and maybe lean her head forward, let its soft curls brush her lips. As she was drifting with this thought her phone pipped out. She glanced down.
“What are you doing?” Aron’s message leapt out. Charlie looked at it for a second. He was not inside her head, she knew that, but at odd times in their life together she felt that he was. She deleted the message.
Michael shifted in his seat, reaching for the landline.
“I’ll ring them. But I’m pretty sure it’s the 15th,” he reassured her.
Charlie let his words trail behind her as she headed out into the yard and across to the storeroom.
The wedding brew had been put into casks and racked in readiness. Charlie was going to draw some off today and offer it around the staff to get some feedback. On her way to the cold store she passed by the experimentation shed and checked on the various phials and vats of Blackberry Ferment that she was trying out.
The shed smelt good this morning, a deep, fruity tang, and Charlie moved around the various benches and stills adjusting and tweaking as she went. She liked the colours of the liquids she was brewing; the blackberries had had quite a colour range from a rich almost black liquid that she might take further towards a spirit and the frothier more purply concoctions that she’d brewed and boiled into beer. In the far corner, beside a book she had borrowed from the library about home brewing your own wine, there was, no surprise, a vat containing the first stages of a blackberry wine. She’d harvested more of the Cob Cottage blackberries in the last couple of days and Anna had a couple of baskets that she had made into jam for the afternoon teas and was baking into crumbles for the Castle Inn. As she worked her mind began to drift towards Ailith and her tale.
The trouble was, Charlie knew when someone was lying.
“It’s one of your Strengths,” Grandma Hettie had told her. Charlie had not thought it was a very good strength because it made life a bit difficult. There was the sense that someone lied, but there was not always a clarification of which bit they were lying about. In Ailith’s case it seemed even more complex. Charlie’s instinct, Strength, her witch radar, or whatever it was, flagged up the lie, but she also had a sense that the lie had a different angle to it. There were lies that could be told to protect something or someone. The story that Ailith had told last night, with all its blood and guts, was true. That was the difference, Charlie reasoned, the lie was not a lie as such, it was not an untruth, it was more a case of not telling the whole truth. Bits were missing, like the corners of a jigsaw.
It occurred to Charlie, and this was probably because she was inhaling too many ultra-alcoholic Blackberry Ferment fumes, that most of her Strengths, the things that contributed to the whole Pike Lake Havoc Wood Gamekeeper scenario, were twisted and bent. The map reading ability had the possibility to lead you into real trouble. They had, Charlie thought, blundered in with Tighe Rourke and Seren and simply struck lucky in the outcome; nothing had gone to plan. Charlie stepped back from her work for a moment. She was feeling shaky and little alarms of panic were starting to sound in her body.
What they had inherited was danger. The Gamekeeper job or duty or whatever it might be called, carried peril with it. She was still having nightmares about being in the lake, about fruitless searches for Seren, and she woke up gasping for air with her heart racing. How long did that sort of feeling last? How much of a pounding could one heart take?
“It’s tomorrow!” Michael’s voice barrelled into her head, his physical presence following close behind, almost colliding with her, his hands reaching for her shoulders. His eyes were wild with a mixture of excitement and fear. “Charlie…”
“What?”
“The Hillman wedding! It isn’t the 12th, it’s the 2nd! It’s tomorrow.”
To an outsider, it might appear that as Michael Chance’s energy crackled and bolted from him it was absorbed neatly into Charlie Way’s frame. There was no panic.
“I’ll get Jack to load up and I’ll take the casks over there myself.” She spoke in a quiet voice that brushed delicately at Michael’s ears.
“What?” He couldn’t quite hear her over the klaxon of his own panic and his hands were still holding her shoulders. Charlie, for several seconds, wanted to hold onto this panic, wanted these two hands to stay on her shoulders and possibly pull her nearer into an embrace. Honeyed sugar. There you go, those thoughts sliding again.
“Can we take it down from DEFCON 1? Okay? The beer is brewed. We just need to load it up and deliver it. Now.”
Michael took a deep breath in and was acutely aware of his hands on her shoulders. He moved them, his hands falling to his trousers where he wiped them as if her shoulders might be dusty or otherwise grimy. There was an awkward moment and then Charlie stepped away from it towards the cold store.
“Give Jack a yell will you…” she instructed, trying to sound businesslike.
* * *
The Hillman wedding was going to take place in the grounds at Hartfield Hall. Winn had a licence for wedding ceremonies in the stable block which was cut off from the house by a high stone wall drifted with clematis and pear trees. It was a familiar run for Charlie but today she had let Jack do the driving and was now regretting it. They couldn’t seem to take the right road. It was very annoying.
“It was the lane back there on the right.” Charlie struggled not to sound terse as Jack reversed into the farm gate and turned them around.
“I know. I know. It’s there.�
�� He gunned the engine, ground up a gear. “Somebloodywhere.”
Charlie watched as they drove past the lane once more and after a second Jack smacked his hand on the wheel.
“Fuck it. I’ve done it again. What is wrong with me?” He drummed at the wheel and sped up a little. The main gates were just up ahead. “Here. We’ll go in the main gates.”
He swung the van around at the very last minute, the gates seeming to loom large beside them and then slide away before they had chance to turn. The tyres squealed a little as Jack braked, slammed into reverse and backed up into the gravel entrance.
It was a pointless exercise. The main entrance was blocked by the closed wrought iron gates. It was unusual; Winn very rarely locked the gates and pretty much anyone in Woodcastle could wander at will through the grounds and had, on more than one occasion, been found indulging in a cup of tea in the lovely old kitchen at the back of the house, the door to which stood open in all weathers. Winn did not mind as long as, should she arrive on the doorstep, you weren’t stingy with your biscuits. There had always been a tin of teabags on the worktop although most Woodcastle residents knew that these teabags had been there for several years and were tainted by the rustiness of the tin and the general overpowering dampness of Hartfield Hall.
“We can go up by the side of the house…” Jack said driving forward as if he had not noticed the obstacle.
“Except we can’t because the gates are closed.” Charlie looked at the gates; they were very beautiful, the iron curled into vines and tendrils although the little faces that looked out could pass for cherubs or devils. She felt unsettled by this metallic gang of grinning bullies and was cross with herself when she had to look away. She could see now why Winn kept them wide open and out of sight. Jack was already getting out of the van. Charlie watched through the windscreen as he tried the heavy-duty padlock.
