Wish Upon a Star

by Trisha Ashley

  Stella was more than half asleep and we were on the way home when we met Raffy with his little white dog, which could have been Toto’s sibling, they were so similar, except for Toto’s legs being about a foot longer.

  They skirmished round each other while I found myself telling Raffy about the Miss Honey fiasco and what Ma had said.

  ‘I knew there was some old mystery about Esau Almond; I’ve heard enough hints since I moved here,’ he said. ‘But none of my parishioners would tell me what it was. I’m pretty sure he didn’t come back here after the war, so perhaps he didn’t survive, though he’s not on the war memorial.’

  ‘Unless his name was the one chipped out in the As?’ I suggested. ‘A name’s been hacked out of the Almond memorial plaque in the church, too.’

  ‘Yes, and no grave for him in the churchyard, so he may have been killed and buried abroad,’ he agreed.

  ‘I expect they were very strait-laced, but Esau jilting Miss Honey’s sister doesn’t seem crime enough for them to erase all memory of him, does it? It seems a bit harsh … unless perhaps Miss Honey’s father did it?’

  ‘I suppose that’s a possibility.’

  I sighed. ‘If I find out any more, I’ll tell you. I’ve just written to Miss Honey explaining my situation with Stella and stressing that Jago and I are only friends – and recent friends at that, though I must say it feels as if I’ve known him for ever.’

  ‘I expect you’ve a lot in common and he seems a genuinely nice man.’

  ‘Yes, he is,’ I agreed, and I don’t know why that should have made tears rise to my eyes, but it did. I blinked them back. ‘Well, we’ll see what revelations are to come, but for now we’d better get back and put the dinner on.’

  When Stella was asleep that evening I went into the garden room where Ma was sitting sketching and eating Jaffa Cakes straight from the packet with a fuzzy Miss Marple video on in the background. Hal must have given the biscuits to her, because they hadn’t been on any of my shopping lists.

  As I expected, she’d entirely forgotten she’d promised to explain the Honey Mystery, but when pressed said she didn’t know all the ins and outs of it anyway, only the little her own mother had told her, before warning her never to mention her uncle Esau again.

  ‘Not that he was really an uncle,’ she added.

  ‘Then just tell me what you do know,’ I persisted, and she sighed and laid the Jaffa Cakes aside.

  ‘My father was a cousin to the three boys at the farm,’ she said. ‘The oldest, Saul, stayed there during the war, because farming was a reserved occupation so one of them had to. They got land girls on to help later. That’s how my mother came here and met my father, when he was home on leave, and Saul married one of them, too. Anyway, the two younger brothers, Esau and Amos and my father were all called up and went off to war.’

  ‘I know that,’ I interrupted, ‘it’s what happened to Esau I want to know.’

  ‘I’m getting to it, I just need to set the scene a bit first,’ she said. ‘The three brothers were all tall, handsome men with fair, curly hair and blue eyes, so despite them being typical taciturn Almonds, the local girls were mad for them. The boys did sometimes go to dances in the village and church socials, that kind of thing.’

  ‘So, the middle one met the younger Miss Honey?’

  Ma wrinkled her brow. ‘You know, I have a feeling Mum said she was called Gladys. And they must have met somewhere, because they were engaged when he went off to war. He got back after Dunkirk, but that was the last time he came home. After D-Day he was reported missing, presumed killed in action.’

  ‘Right … and they never found him?’

  ‘Not then, they didn’t. After a bit, his name was put on the war memorial with everyone else’s and the family memorial plaque in the church. The vicar held a service, too. But then Esau turned up a few years later.’

  ‘You mean … his body did?’

  ‘No, he was alive and kicking. His father and older brother had gone over to France on a kind of pilgrimage to the battlefields, with a few others from Middlemoss who’d lost relatives over there, and by a sheer fluke they spotted him sitting outside a village café, dressed like a local and obviously very much at home.’

  ‘Good heavens! That must have given them a bit of a shock.’

  ‘I think it gave Esau a shock too. He’d been wounded and taken in by a local farmer, and when he came round, he seized the chance to begin a new life under another name. He married the farmer’s daughter, started a family and had been living there ever since.’

  ‘Wow! Sounds like some kind of novel, or a film,’ I said. ‘But didn’t they all wear dog tags with their names and details on?’

  ‘I think he’d lost his when he was wounded.’

  ‘Right … and perhaps he’d had a blow to the head, or something, and really didn’t know who he was?’

  ‘Oh, apparently he knew all right, because he tried to run off when he saw his father and brother. They had a huge row, and then when they came home the first thing they did was chisel his name out of the memorials and ban any mention of him.’

  ‘So how did the Honeys know what had happened?’ I asked.

  ‘The other local people in the party had witnessed it all and rumours got out, but the family felt in honour bound to tell the Honeys anyway.’

  ‘I expect it made a bit of a stink,’ I said thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes, and being Strange Baptists seemed to make the Almonds feel the shame and humiliation very keenly, which is why they all emigrated to Australia. But my parents couldn’t take it – my father was a cattle man and he hated sheep, so they came back. I don’t really remember Australia.’

  ‘I know it must have been pretty scandalous at the time, but surely mass emigration was taking things a bit too far,’ I commented.

  ‘I don’t think they could face the Honeys. Gladys was away working for relatives up north when Esau was reported missing, but Mum said she came back for the memorial service and was heartbroken. It must have been even more devastating to learn he’d been alive the whole time.’

  ‘Poor thing,’ I said sympathetically. ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘You know, I’ve no idea, except that she moved away and presumably eventually married someone else. Of course, when we returned from Australia we never went near the Honeys’ shop – in fact, my parents barely went into the village. I was taught never to talk about it and to keep to myself.’

  ‘That accounts for a lot,’ I said.

  ‘Of course, it wasn’t anything to do with my parents in the first place, really,’ Ma said, ‘they just happened to be related, so most local people would have been OK with them. But that’s the Almonds for you. They did their shopping in Ormskirk or Middlemoss, and I had to trail all the way to the grammar school in Merchester, so I never got much chance to make local friends, apart from Ottie. Still, I always liked my own company best anyway.’

  ‘You still do.’

  ‘You’ve turned out differently, Cally. Apart from the curly hair and the colour of your eyes, there’s nothing Almond about you.’

  ‘Where did you get the arty stuff from?’ I asked curiously.

  ‘My mother liked to draw flowers and animals; she was quite good. But of course she was never trained; it was just a hobby and one she was generally too busy for.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, sitting back. ‘You knew quite a bit about the great family scandal, after all!’

  ‘I’ve surprised myself, actually. Some of it I only pieced together from Mum’s ramblings right at the end, when she was confused and going back over the past. It all seemed much ado about nothing.’

  ‘I can see now why seeing a distinctive Almond face was such a shock to Miss Honey, though,’ I said. ‘It must have brought everything back. I can only hope that now she’s had a bit more time, she’ll accept that Jago and I are just friends and not moving in to her old home together.’

  ‘Depends how acute her faculties are,’ Ma said, absent
ly reaching for her discarded sketchbook and a stick of charcoal. Her fingers were already black with it and there was a smudge across her nose. I expect she’d ingested some with the Jaffa Cakes too, but it would probably do her digestion good.

  ‘Yes, you may manage to pull the wool over her eyes, who knows?’ she murmured ambiguously, but her mind was on her drawing and I’m sure she didn’t realise what she’d just said.

  Chapter 20: The Proof of the Pudding

  I hadn’t heard a thing from Jago after we’d got back from Pinker’s End, which made me suddenly realise quite how often we were usually in contact. Next morning, I tried first his mobile and then the shop number, which rang through to the message machine, so I supposed he and David were baking.

  A little later I texted Jago’s mobile again and this time got a brief reply, saying he was out but would get back to me as soon as he could. When he didn’t, I thought perhaps now he’d had time to think about it, he might be cross with me for scuppering his chances of buying the shop, so finally I emailed him, saying that I’d written to Miss Honey explaining we weren’t in a relationship. Then I added that Ma had now told me all she knew about the family mystery, so I understood exactly why Miss Honey was upset. I thought that might pique his interest …

  Then, belatedly, it occurred to me that perhaps the Abominable Aimee was visiting again and that was why he’d gone quiet. Maybe by now he no longer cared whether Miss Honey forgave him and let him buy the shop or not!

  Stella went up to the studio with Ma for a bit and I tried out an idea I’d had while making brandy snaps, when it occurred to me that you could bend Parmesan crisps round a wooden spoon just as easily and they’d make rather sophisticated snacks or hors d’oeuvres.

  I was quite right, too, and I wrote the recipe up for ‘Tea & Cake’.

  Parmesan crisps make a sophisticated snack or first course with a dip, and are very simple to make. Line an oven tray with baking paper and then thinly sprinkle grated Parmesan cheese into roughly circular shapes, well spaced. Bake in a low oven for just a few minutes, until the gratings have joined together into a lattice, then remove and leave to cool and go crispy. While they are still warm, you can also curl them round the handle of a wooden spoon into a cigar shape, just like brandy snaps.

  Florrie Snowball had suggested at the fundraising meeting that her daughter, Jenny, should come to America with us, since she was not only a retired district nurse, but her son and his family lived near Boston. I’d had no idea what Jenny herself might have made of this offer, but right after lunch she popped in to introduce herself and seemed perfectly amenable to the idea.

  ‘Kevin lives out towards Salem, but it’s the same airport for Boston – Logan International. I visit them at least twice a year, so I can just as easily go when you need me, in late October,’ she said and didn’t even want me to pay for her ticket, though I insisted on it.

  ‘I’ll get Will, my friend’s husband, on to organising the extra ticket; he’s doing all the bookings on the internet,’ I said. ‘He says we need to fly in better seats than tourist class, too, so Stella will be more comfortable.’

  ‘Oh, luxury!’ she said enthusiastically. ‘If you give me the date we fly out, I’ll arrange my other little jobs around it. I do some home nursing, baby-sitting, granny and granddad minding, that kind of thing, but I’ve a friend who covers for me when I’m away.’

  She was a comfortable, competent-looking woman and I knew I’d feel happier for having her with us. More to the point, Stella got on really well with her and I immediately asked Jenny if I could call on her for baby-sitting occasionally too.

  ‘I don’t like to ask my mother all the time, because she has her work to do,’ I explained.

  ‘Of course! And it will give Stella and me a good chance to get to know each other properly, won’t it, poppet?’

  Stella, who’d been fetching relays of little fuzzy creatures from her bedroom and filling Jenny’s ample lap with them, nodded seriously.

  ‘Jenny’s going to come in the big plane to America with us,’ I told her.

  Stella turned her huge blue eyes onto Jenny and said, ‘Mummy says I can only take two of my families with me. Which ones do you think it should be?’

  I left them discussing this crucial decision while I made coffee and sliced some Battenburg cake I’d made so early this morning (because I hadn’t been able to sleep properly, worrying that Jago was blaming me for losing the shop), that the sky had still been darkest indigo set with a flashy great silver nugget of moon.

  Over the coffee I told Jenny where we’d booked to stay in Boston, in the Longwood Medical Area, right near the hospital where Stella would be treated.

  ‘It’s one of those big chain budget hotels so you know what you’re getting – comfort but not luxury,’ she agreed. ‘It sounds like your best option and then I expect Stella will have to convalesce before she can fly home, so you might want to move to a more central hotel later. I’ll ask our Kevin where would be best.’

  ‘Yes, I wondered about that, but it’ll have to be economical, because there are more and more costs cropping up all the time.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry, we’re all going to raise a lot more than the ten thousand pounds anyway,’ she said comfortably, helping herself to another slice of cake.

  ‘Boston’s a great city, with lots to do, and once Stella’s well enough you’ll want to see the sights. When Mum came out with me a few years ago she loved the Salem witch trail near our Kevin’s; she couldn’t get enough of it.’

  I thought there were probably more suitable diversions for a convalescing four-year-old, even one as bright as Stella, but I didn’t say so. Stella was flagging now and ready for her nap, so Jenny helped carry all the fuzzy creatures back into her bedroom, saw her settled and promised to see her again soon.

  I wrapped up the last chunk of Battenburg cake for Florrie, since Jenny’d said earlier that it was her mother’s favourite and this was the best she’d ever tasted, so she could drop it in at the Falling Star on her way home.

  While I was clearing up the cups and plates I finally had a phone call from Jago, who said he was sorry he hadn’t been in touch earlier, but he’d been really busy.

  Then he added mysteriously that if we could have a coffee together at the Blue Dog tomorrow he’d talk it through with me. For a moment I wondered if he might be about to tell me he was moving back to London with Abominable Aimee, until he added, ‘And thank you for writing to Miss Honey. I think that might just do the trick.’

  So perhaps he wasn’t going anywhere and I felt a little better, even though I wasn’t entirely sure he was right about Miss Honey.

  We had a hospital visit first next morning and they were quite pleased with Stella, though when I said that she seemed to get tired more and more easily, they said that was only to be expected …

  But I don’t expect it: in my heart what I’m expecting is a miraculous overnight recovery.

  Then they stressed that I should avoid exposing her to any infections before she left for America in the autumn, as if I wasn’t neurotic enough on the subject already! And come to think of it, most of the people with serious infections were probably the ones milling round inside the hospital with us on Thursdays.

  Afterwards I pushed her buggy through the open market in Ormskirk and we got one or two bits of shopping, before finally heading for the Happy Macaroon. A woman I assumed was David’s mother was serving behind the counter, while he was setting out freshly baked pink and green macaroons. Stella climbed out of the buggy and went to stare fixedly at Dorrie through the glass display cabinet, though I wasn’t sure what was so fascinating about her, unless it was the unusual aubergine shade of her short, permed hair.

  ‘Hi! Jago’s in the back, I’ll give him a shout,’ David said, looking up and spotting me. Then coming closer and lowering his voice conspiratorially, he added, ‘Aimee’s been ringing him all the time, but I’ve deleted most of her messages. I finally picked up this morning, t
hough, and told her exactly how little he won on the lottery, because she probably didn’t believe Jago and thinks he’s a millionaire.’

  ‘Oh? What did she say?’ I whispered back, fascinated.

  ‘I don’t think she really believed me either, because she knows I don’t like her. But now she’s looking about twice her age she’s probably feeling a bit desperate, so she’ll try and grab him anyway.’

  ‘You’re wicked, you are, and that’s not very flattering to Jago, love,’ his mother commented, having finished serving her customers and now unashamedly listening in. ‘He’s a lovely lad and deserves better.’

  ‘This is my mother, Dorrie,’ David introduced her. ‘Dorrie – Cally Weston.’

  ‘I’ve heard all about you and the kiddie,’ she said.

  ‘Did Jago tell you about Miss Honey taking against me and throwing us both out?’ I asked, and David nodded.

  ‘But he thought she’d come round and—’ He broke off as the door to the bakery opened. ‘Here he is. He’ll tell you all about it himself in the Blue Dog.’

  Stella abandoned her study of Dorrie the minute she saw Jago and ran across to him. Grinning, he swung her off her feet and then carried her up the stairs to the café next door, where she chatted away to him non-stop until she suddenly spotted her three elderly lady friends at a far table. They waved at her and she got down and went over to visit. I hoped they were braced for it.

  ‘I’m so sorry about spoiling things with Miss Honey,’ I apologised. ‘I wrote to her straight away, but I don’t know if that’ll make any difference.’

  ‘It already has, I think, because she had someone at Pinker’s End ring the estate agent first thing this morning, to pass on a message.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She said she’d thought things over and she’d like to see us again.’

  ‘Us?’ I repeated, startled. ‘Are you sure?’