The Little Shop of Found Things--A Novel

by Paula Brackston

  She was just folding the sheets to put in her pocket when she felt rather than heard Margaret Merton enter the room. The ghost stood in the doorway as if to say she was in charge of where Xanthe went and when.

  Xanthe felt her mouth dry at the sight of the specter. She tried to tell herself the woman was acting as a mother, protecting her child at any cost. But this line of thinking only led to the realization that it could be Flora who paid that price. Xanthe dug her nails into her palms, determined not to be cowed, not to let Mistress Merton shake what courage she had summoned for what lay ahead—both singing again and traveling back to Great Chalfield.

  “Step aside,” Xanthe said, keeping her voice low so that her mother would not hear. “There is something I need to do. Somewhere I need to go.”

  “There is only one place you should be going,” Margaret Merton insisted.

  “I can’t just leave. If I’m going to have a hope of helping Alice I have to plan carefully.”

  “There is not time.”

  “I am leaving tomorrow, OK? Soon enough for you?” She stepped forward, steeling herself to push past the ghost if necessary.

  But Mistress Merton was not ready to let her go. With startling speed she slammed the door shut. Xanthe gasped as it swung completely through the phantom, shuddered in its frame, and then clicked as the key turned.

  “How do I know you are not trying to run away?” hissed the older woman, leaning forward so that her disfigured features were only inches from Xanthe’s face.

  Xanthe held her ground, willing herself not to look away.

  “I have told you, I’m going back to Great Chalfield tomorrow.” She felt her stomach turn over as a ghostly exhalation, lighter than breath, heavier than nothing, seeped around her, twisting up her own nostrils, carrying with it the scent of burned flesh and singed hair.

  “Remember this,” Mistress Merton whispered. “I will see my daughter freed, and I will do what I must to bring that day about. I do not make hollow threats.” So saying she turned her gaze to the gold chain Xanthe was wearing. Slowly, with cold deliberation, she caused it to twist, over and over, shortening it, so that it tightened against Xanthe’s throat. It took every ounce of Xanthe’s self-control not to snatch at the thing, not to claw at it. She refused to give way to panic. Even as she felt herself beginning to choke she did not struggle.

  “Kill me,” she whispered, “and you kill Alice’s last hope.”

  Margaret Merton hesitated, letting the chain tighten just a fraction more, then stopped, so that it span undone, loose and harmless once more, her point made. With a blur of movement, she was gone.

  “Xanthe!” Flora called up the stairs. “What are you doing thumping about up there? Supper’s ready.”

  Xanthe waited until her breath had returned to normal, checked in the mirror that the redness around her neck was not too noticeable, hiding it with a dab of makeup, and then went downstairs.

  They were having something her mother had named Wiltshire Whimsy, which she insisted was a local recipe.

  “Looks suspiciously like an omelette to me,” Xanthe said. It seemed so trivial to be discussing food after what had just taken place upstairs, but she badly needed to put the encounter behind her. She had to sing. She had to stay strong.

  “Ah yes, but this one has a secret ingredient that makes it special.”

  “There is something … unusual,” she agreed, picking at a pink lump with her fork. “Rhubarb, Mum? Seriously?”

  She gave a shrug and passed the bottle of brown sauce, which she believed improved the flavor of everything. “Organic and locally grown, got it at the market.”

  Xanthe chewed on. It was surprisingly tasty, but her appetite was disappearing fast. In truth, she would have had trouble getting anything down, her stomach was so afflicted with nerves. Knowing her daughter well, Flora had put small bottles of beer on the table and Xanthe drank deeply from one, hoping to take the edge of the complicated tension of worrying about both the performance and what she was planning to do the next day. At that moment she was uncertain which was the more terrifying.

  * * *

  It was a beautiful summer’s evening. The hanging baskets and window boxes outside the pub were overflowing with warm, fragrant blooms. The sharp yellows and rich purples of the pansies added vibrant color to the softer hues of the building itself. It was nearly eight when Xanthe and her mother arrived. She hoped Harley would not be in a panic, as she was due to start her set in barely ten minutes, but she could not face getting there early and having to wait while her anxiety levels rose higher and higher. Better to just turn up and jump right in.

  It was unnerving to find the pub already almost full. There was a good-natured feel to the crowd of early evening drinkers, with some people enjoying meals. She made her way to the bar as confidently as she could. She had learned long ago that there was nothing that put an audience off a singer more quickly than picking up on her nervousness. They had come out to relax, to have a good time, to be entertained. Her job was to give them better than they were expecting, not show them the raw state of her nerves.

  “Here she is!” Harley’s enthusiastic greeting gave away his relief that he had not been let down. “The lass herself, and looking very decorative, if I might say so. Annie, shall we give the girl a drink before she sings?”

  Annie smiled from behind the far end of the bar.

  “Would you like something, Xanthe?”

  “No. Thanks. I’m fine. I’ll just take a look at the microphone, then I’ll be ready to start.”

  “Right you are, hen.” Harley lifted up the bar flap and the drinkers parted to allow him to lead her to the area at the end of the room where there was a small platform. It was barely a stage, but enough to lift singers up out of the melee and house a couple of speakers. Xanthe glanced back at Flora who gave an encouraging wave. She saw Liam invite her to join him at a table. True to his word, he’d found seats at the back. Xanthe noticed Gerri there, too. The rest of the room was just a collection of strangers, and she was thankful for that. Harley fussed around offering her a stool, which she declined, and adjusting the height of the microphone. They checked to make sure the thing worked and that there was no feedback, and suddenly there she stood, clutching her sheet music in her trembling hands, hearing her own name announced with great gusto and drama as Harley introduced his latest discovery, listening to the welcoming applause, about to restart her stalled singing career.

  Her mouth was dry, her tongue like sandpaper. She could hear her own shaky breathing as she stepped forward wearing a wobbly smile. The chatter in the room quieted. She raised her chin and began. She had chosen “Scarborough Fair” as arranged by Simon and Garfunkel to start with because she thought many people would recognize it, and a familiar tune could help an audience to engage with a performance. The microphone was an expensive one, carrying her voice easily across the room, but though the quality of the sound was good enough, there was something not right about the artificial edge it gave the song. She was singing without any backing track or instruments, and the song was ideally suited to be carried by the voice alone, but the amplification was at odds with the style of the piece. She knew she was singing well enough. Her voice had once been described as “Florence Welch meets Kate Bush,” which made her blush, but was fairly accurate, on a very good day. She was rusty, and a little hesitant, so was not singing at her best, but still better than most. She could see people nodding in recognition of the song and smiling, but after the first minute or so she noticed many of them drifting back into quiet conversation, or returning their attention to their food. Their reaction was plain enough. It clearly said nice, but nothing special. Xanthe glanced over toward the bar. Annie was too busy serving to pay much attention to what was going on, but she could see thinly masked despair on Harley’s face. Although she was relieved to find her voice working well, she could tell she was losing the audience. Suddenly, she could see her mistake. She had played safe. By choosing something she
thought everyone would know, she had not, in fact, given herself an advantage, she had merely given the audience a pale imitation of something they already had in their heads. And without the sublime guitar backing they would subconsciously have been expecting. This was hopeless. Whoever said compromise was death to art knew the truth of it. She must do the thing properly, commit to it wholeheartedly, or not do it at all. When she finished the song—to a round of gentle and polite applause—she switched off her microphone and signaled to Harley to dim the lights in the room. Being an August evening it was still daylight outside, but the small windows and low ceiling kept the room softly dark. Harley left on a single light, the one shining directly on Xanthe. When the audience heard the microphone click off they turned to watch, probably thinking she had given up and was about to leave. She stayed silent for a moment, letting the tension build, using the curious hush to draw their attention a little more. Then she closed her eyes, offering a silent prayer that she would not forget the words, and began to sing.

  This time her voice was free from the distortion of the sound system. It sounded purer, cleaner, and far more suited to the medieval lament that she had selected. It felt right, so that this time she did not hold back. She had chosen “The Willow Song” which was a sixteenth-century ballad of betrayal and heartbreak, the mournful, swooping melody matching the poignant words. Xanthe kept her eyes closed, and instead of a pub full of people she saw the view through the casement window in the paneled room at Great Chalfield. As she pictured it, she recalled the smell of woodsmoke from the enormous fireplace and the slight dampness of the cold, stone flags when she had stood there, a few days and a few hundred years ago, watching Alice running for her life out across the rolling green of the Wiltshire landscape, her figure pinched and stretched by the imperfections of the ancient glass windowpanes. And as she sang she wondered who it was who had betrayed Alice, and whether or not she would be able to get her out of that terrible place and save her from a fate she did not deserve. And she pondered the possible consequences were she to fail. And she let all that emotion pour out through her voice. When she came to the end of the song there was a taut silence in the room before the cheering and applause started. And this time, it was well meant.

  “Wow,” said Liam after three more songs, when Xanthe finally got to join him and Flora at their table. “That was incredible. You are incredible.” He smiled broadly and gave her a spontaneous peck on the cheek. “Really, I mean it. You are amazing.”

  “I keep telling her that,” her mother put in, raising her glass of wine in a toast. “Here’s to Xanthe singing again. Oh, but you haven’t a drink, poor thing. I’ll fetch you one.”

  “Please, Flora, let me,” said Liam quickly.

  “Absolutely not,” Flora said firmly, getting to her feet and stabbing her crutches down with determination. “She’s my daughter, I get to buy her the first celebratory drink.”

  Liam gave Xanthe a look and mouthed the word oops. As Flora battled her way through the crowd, Xanthe tried to reassure him.

  “She likes to be as independent as she can. Anything that smacks of pity, or suggests she can’t do something, well…”

  “She’s one determined lady. And very proud of you, as she should be.”

  “Do you think it was OK? Really?”

  “Really. Harvey will be like a dog with two tails, about having found you. He’ll keep you to a regular spot now.”

  She smiled, relieved, happy to have been back onstage at last, glad to have finally done something to earn her keep, and more than a little bit delighted that people had liked what she had done. She glanced at the bar. Harley was sorting the wine for Flora, and soon she would be back. Xanthe needed to talk to Liam while she had the chance.

  “While I’m away,” she said, not sure exactly what it was she wanted to say, “d’you think you could, well, pop in and see Mum? Just to check she’s OK. I mean, obviously, she couldn’t know that’s what you were doing.”

  “Obviously!” he laughed.

  “She doesn’t really know anyone round here yet. The problem is that she won’t ask for help, even when she really needs it, and I worry about her with all those stairs, and I know she’ll try to move stuff that’s too heavy for her, and—”

  “No problem, I’ll drop by, give her my number in case she needs it. I’m sure I can think of some reason for showing up. Probably need to buy my own mother a birthday present. Or something.”

  “Thanks. I owe you.”

  “Let me take you out to dinner when you get back.”

  “Shouldn’t I be taking you?”

  “Either way works for me,” he said with a shrug. And then Flora returned with her drink, and Gerri came over to say how much she’d enjoyed the music.

  “It was so moving, Xanthe,” she said. “I can’t believe I have such a talented neighbor.”

  “Steady on,” Flora said. “Too much praise’ll go to her head. I can’t afford to lose my business partner to superstardom.”

  “You can’t have it both ways, Mum. One minute you’re nagging me to sing, the next…”

  “I never nag, Xanthe, love, just encourage.”

  And Gerri and Liam laughed at that, and Xanthe would have really enjoyed the rest of the evening had it not been for the lingering apprehension about what she was about to embark upon. A fear that did not diminish the more she thought about it, nor become more manageable the nearer the moment came to depart.

  * * *

  Xanthe slept badly and woke wishing she could leave as quickly as possible, while at the same time wanting desperately to put it off. She had never felt so conflicted about what she was planning to do. Before her mother woke up, she packed a small rucksack, carefully putting the things she had chosen to wear underneath her pajamas in case Flora took it into her head to open the bag while she wasn’t looking. She turned over and over in her mind how she was going to make her plan work. As far as Flora knew, she was going to stay with Eva from Saturday morning until Monday morning. Forty-eight hours, which would give her several weeks back in the seventeenth century. If she returned sooner, she would just have to stay away somewhere until Monday. Or else come home early and say Eva had made it up with her boyfriend. More lies. There was a hard lump of guilt sitting in the pit of Xanthe’s stomach, and she doubted anything could remove it. She was fairly confident she could leave via the old jail without Flora seeing her do it, but she would have less control over getting home again. She would just have to hope her mother was busy in the house, sneak out, change her clothes, and listen at the back door for a good moment to reappear through the shop. Somehow that moment seemed too far off to worry about in any more detail. Far more daunting tasks lay ahead of her before then.

  She forced down a breakfast of toast while Flora chatted on about what she would be doing while she was away. She knew she should be chatting too, but every time she spoke she seemed only to utter another lie. She was happier discussing the online sales of the mirrors they had selected, and settled her mother in front of the computer.

  “You’ve put reserves on them, haven’t you?” Flora asked, bringing up the site.

  “Yes. Reasonable ones. We want them to sell, but we don’t want to give them away. Here, see?” Xanthe showed her the pages. “You might want to check in from time to time before the auction ends, see how they’re doing. Are you going to get that Facebook page for the shop going?”

  She grimaced. “You know how allergic I am to social media. I’ll spend a little time on the new website first, I think. Start with something I vaguely understand.”

  “OK. Well, I’m off now,” she said as casually as she could, picking up her bag. “I’ll get a cab from the taxi rank on the high street. You’ll be OK?”

  “Of course,” Flora said, barely looking up from the screen as her daughter leaned in to kiss her good-bye. She gave her hand a reassuring pat. “Have a nice time, Xanthe, love. And find a moment to try out some more of those lovely songs! You were such a hit last
night.”

  She left quickly. It would have looked odd, making too much of going away when she was, after all, only going to Milton Keynes for a short time. Even so, her heart was constricting at the thought of leaving her mother on her own so soon after the move. And at the thought of leaving her under the ever watchful eye of Margaret Merton. And somewhere deeply buried was the terrible fear that she might not be able to get back home. She forced herself to ignore this particular fear, for if she dwelled upon it she might lose the courage to step into the blind house ever again.

  Once downstairs she made a point of opening and shutting the front door of the shop, letting the bell clang as loudly and freely as possible. She stood for a moment, breath held, then tiptoed through the passageway to the back door, which she opened with maddeningly slow care so as not to make a sound. She could hear Flora up in the kitchen, chatting to herself and the computer in the way she always did when pitting her wits against technology. Xanthe crept out into the garden, thanking her luck that the kitchen window looked out on the other side of the house, and then she ducked behind the blind house to change into her medieval clothes. It was awkward, pulling off her boots and jeans while stooped under one of the butterfly bushes, and it seemed to take forever to get into her many layers. The weather was still warm, so that she was horribly hot by the time she had finished. She paused for a moment to take hold of the locket beneath her T-shirt. It was reassuring to touch it, to know that it was safe, to know that, as long as her theory about it was right, she could use it to come home when her task was done.