The Little Teashop of Lost and Found

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘And then?’ I prompted as he stopped and looked into space.

  ‘He pulled it out and it was a sheepskin all right, but one of those dressed ones they sell as a rug – and a baby were wrapped in it. He said he was so surprised, he thought he was dreaming – or maybe having a nightmare, because you looked a bit of a mess and he didn’t think you were alive.’

  ‘I had a harelip,’ I said. ‘I expect it added to the shock of the moment.’

  ‘They’ve made a good job of patching you up,’ he said, looking at my face with a curious gaze that was somehow not offensive.

  I touched the thin silvery thread of scar. ‘I think I must have had a very good surgeon, though my dad – my adoptive dad – said they’d told him that as harelips went, they’d seen a lot worse.’

  ‘Yes, Dad said one of his cousins was born with a cleft lip and a palate the same, but even back then they mended it well enough so you didn’t much notice it.’

  ‘What did your dad do after he picked me up?’ I prompted, keen to get George back on track.

  ‘Once he’d got over the first shock and had a closer look, he realized you weren’t dead because you made a little cry. The sheepskin must have kept you warm enough to survive, but you couldn’t have been there long.’

  ‘How amazingly lucky I was that he came along just at that moment,’ I said.

  ‘Dad said it was meant to be, and someone up there was determined you’d be found, because if he hadn’t come across you, that Upvale woman probably would.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’ve read the newspaper accounts and they said this Emily Rhymer was on the scene right after he found me.’

  ‘Gave him another shock, she did,’ he said. ‘He hadn’t spotted anyone about, though he thought he’d seen car lights earlier on the road towards Upvale. But then his dog barked and another answered from up top – and there was one of the Upvale witches staring down at him.’

  ‘Emily Rhymer, aged twenty-two, according to the newspaper reports,’ I said. ‘What made your dad think she was a witch?’

  ‘What else would a young woman be doing up by the Oldstone on her lonesome in the dark?’ he asked. ‘Wouldn’t she be fearful, if she hadn’t got the Dark Powers to protect her?’

  ‘I wondered about that, because it seemed very strange. And suspicious, too, though the police must have investigated and ruled her out?’

  ‘If she wasn’t a witch then, she’s known for one now. It’s rife down there in Upvale. But it wasn’t her who’d had the baby,’ he grudgingly agreed. ‘She’d only just got there, wanting to see the sun rise over the Oldstone, or some daft idea like that. Her friend – an older woman that my dad said was another of the coven – drove up only a few minutes later and parked below, on the grass.’

  ‘I know the place, but it sounds a surprisingly popular spot considering it was just before dawn on a cold early March night,’ I said. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘They all got in this woman’s car and came here to call the police and an ambulance. Dad had you stuffed down inside his vest, shirt and jumper by then, like he would a weakly lamb, to keep you warm with his body heat. It works a treat, that does.’

  ‘He was very kind.’

  ‘He said what with the girl, the woman driving, the two dogs and him with the baby, the car soon warmed up on the way back. I’d got up by then, so I saw them all come in,’ he added. ‘I was just a lad and we’d lost me ma a year before, so it was my job to get the fire going and the breakfast on, because though we had a woman come in – Val, the one you just saw – she had her own husband to see to first.’

  I suddenly found myself feeling sorry for George, or at least the isolated, motherless boy he’d been. Mind you, he looked like someone who’d been born crabby and worked on honing it ever since, so my rush of sympathy might have been misplaced.

  ‘So you live here alone now?’ I asked.

  ‘I had a wife, but I lost her,’ he said tersely.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry!’

  ‘Good riddance. I lost her to the man from the agricultural insurance. Took me a while to figure out why he always seemed to turn up when I was out.’

  ‘Oh. . . how awful!’

  ‘I’m right enough, what with the dogs for company and the bar at the Standing Stones for a game of darts on a Friday night, for all it’s turned itself into a fancy motel,’ he said. ‘So, where did you get to, then? You don’t sound Yorkshire. You don’t sound anything, come to that, except a bit posh.’

  ‘My adoptive mother didn’t have any accent – she came from the south. My father was from Yorkshire, though, and we lived over near Knaresborough for the first few years. Then we moved to a village just outside Shrewsbury.’

  ‘That would account for it, then. And you haven’t been back here since, in what – thirty-odd years?’

  I shook my head. ‘I was found thirty-six years ago and though I knew I was born round here somewhere, I never really wanted to see it till now. I – sort of thought I might come face to face with my birth mother, someone who looked exactly like me.’

  It was my worst nightmare: that we recognized each other instantly, yet she rejected me again.

  He eyed me thoughtfully. ‘I don’t remember that many redheads round here, especially with green eyes,’ he said. ‘And your hair’s a real copper, too. Maybe your mother wasn’t local?’

  ‘I know. If I’d been driven to the Oldstone, I could have come from anywhere, couldn’t I?’

  ‘You could if whoever brought you knew the way round to the Oldstone by road.’

  ‘Or someone local could have walked there, like Emily Rhymer did.’

  ‘Not if they’d just given birth,’ he said practically. ‘They said you were only a few hours old, at most.’

  I pressed him a little, but he couldn’t add much more to the story and began asking me about the café and where I’d got the money from to buy it, so I told him.

  ‘The official opening of the tearoom will be at the start of November and you’ll always be welcome to come in for a cup of tea and some cake if you’re in Haworth.’

  ‘I’m not much of a one for poncy teashops, though I like a good slab of cake with a slice of cheese on the side,’ he said.

  ‘Then I’ll make you one and drop it off next time I’m over in this direction,’ I promised. ‘What’s your favourite?’

  ‘Fruitcake, of course,’ he said, as if I was stupid. ‘Proper fruitcake, with cherries and almonds and stuff in it.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, ‘fruitcake it is.’

  ‘If there’s no one here, put it in the milk churn on the slab in the wall outside,’ he directed.

  ‘What if there’s milk in it?’

  ‘There’s never milk in it,’ he said, and got up. ‘I’d best move the tractor, so you can turn.’

  Clearly, the audience was over.

  I took a walk around Haworth after surgery one day and found the entrance to Doorknocker’s Row, which I can’t say I’d ever noticed before, since it was the merest slit of a narrow alleyway.

  I stopped and then, taking out my phone and putting it to my ear, I stepped into the passageway as if I’d had a call and wanted a quiet spot to take it in. It’s the sort of thing people do all the time and I was sure would look quite natural, should anyone have noticed me.

  But there was no one to see me for the small courtyard beyond the entrance was entirely deserted. I could see the front of what must be the café to my left, and there seemed to be a shop window opposite, for a sign was hanging there, but I did not explore further.

  Father is partial to a type of old-fashioned sweet called Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls and I procured a tin of these on my return to the car, as a reason for my late arrival home.

  33

  Dogged Footsteps

  Outside, two identical wall-eyed sheepdogs had appeared and began to herd me out of the courtyard with sharp nips at my ankles, while George reversed the tractor.

  I jumped into the safety of my car
with relief and the dogs gave me a look of disgust and then ran off after their master, who was already on his way back into the farmhouse. The door slammed and he was gone, much as the cleaner, Val, had taken her leave: it must be a particularly Yorkshire form of farewell.

  I did a clumsy three-point turn and then headed back up the farm track, more than happy to reach the road again. As I paused to check for traffic, the sign for Mr Rochester’s Restaurant and the Hikers’ Café flapped in the stiff breeze to my right and, without conscious decision, I turned towards it like a homing pigeon.

  Hot tea was what I urgently needed, and luckily the café was open, the windows steamed up from the warmth within. Inside I found two hardy-looking hikers and Val. She must have walked there, though perhaps there was a short cut?

  She gave me a look of deep suspicion when I greeted her and encircled her tea and buttered teacake with both arms, as if I might snatch them away.

  ‘Is he taking you on, to replace me?’ she demanded belligerently.

  ‘What?’ I said, nonplussed.

  ‘That George. Just because I’m knocking on a bit, it doesn’t mean I can’t clean like I always did.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said, suddenly enlightened. ‘No, I didn’t come about that at all. It was something totally different. In fact, I was looking for his father, but I didn’t know he’d died.’ Seeing she still looked unconvinced, I added, ‘And I’ve just bought my own business in Haworth, so I’m not looking for work at all.’

  She relaxed slightly. ‘I thought he was going to replace me; he’s threatened enough.’

  ‘I keep telling you he won’t, you daft bat,’ said the woman behind the counter, whom I recognized by her long grey plait of hair as one of the helpers at Eleri’s book launch. ‘Who else would work for a miserable little snirp like that, so penny-pinching he only turns the heating on if there’s ice on the inside of the windows?’

  Val demolished the last bite of her teacake and got up. ‘Well, it’s what I’m used to, Martha. Now I’d best get on to my next job.’

  She looked at me. ‘And if you see George again, don’t you go telling him you saw me here.’

  ‘OK … though I don’t see why you shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘He and his cousin Henry don’t get on too well.’

  ‘He must know you leave your car here, by now,’ the woman behind the counter said. ‘And you clean for Eleri one afternoon a week, too.’

  ‘Yes, Martha, but if we don’t mention it, then it doesn’t matter, does it?’ Val said with an air of logic and left, dragging on her plaid coat as she went.

  ‘You were at the book launch, weren’t you?’ Martha said, taking my order, but seeming to lose interest in me once I’d agreed that yes, I had been there.

  The tea was excellent and I studied the photos on the walls, which seemed to be of the first book launch. I knew it had been held in the café, since the restaurant hadn’t been opened then.

  There was a replica of the precious diary with the reference to Charlotte Brontë in it, too, with postcards and souvenirs next to it for sale, along with signed copies of some of Eleri’s books, and I wandered across for a look until Martha brought my order out.

  I was just eating an excellent warm cheese scone, so light it almost floated off the plate – but then, so did mine – when Eleri came in with Henry. His harsh-featured but attractive face looked just as gloomily intense as always, and although he saw me he didn’t say anything, just nodded and headed straight for the kitchen.

  ‘The lass has just et the last cheese scone,’ Martha called after him. ‘Henry?’

  There was the clashing of pots and pans and some muttering.

  ‘Eh, our very own Mr Rochester,’ Martha said to Eleri drily.

  ‘I heard that,’ said Henry’s voice through the serving hatch.

  Martha nodded in my direction: ‘She was at the book launch.’

  ‘Not only at the book launch, but she’s a novelist and she’s been taken on by my agent, Senga,’ Eleri told her. ‘Hi, Alice – this is a nice surprise. Can I join you?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘What brings you all the way out here?’ she asked, sitting opposite and smiling at me. Smiling up at me, in fact, since she is very petite. I felt a bit like a giraffe. ‘Unless you’re sizing up Henry’s baking? We know you’re going to open a tearoom in Haworth.’

  ‘The scone was delicious, but actually I came here on impulse, after visiting George Godet,’ I said, and then when Martha had, quite unbidden, put foaming mugs of hot chocolate and slices of sticky ginger cake in front of us, somehow I found myself confiding to her the whole story of my abandonment on the moors and subsequent discovery by Joe Godet.

  ‘I was so disappointed to find he’d died years ago, though George told me everything he’d said about finding me. I’ve still got the other eyewitness, Emily Rhymer, though, if I can find her.’

  ‘I’m not local, so I’d never heard the story,’ Eleri said, a glint that I recognized as that of a novelist scenting an interesting plot idea in her eyes. ‘No one’s even mentioned it.’

  Martha, who’d been hovering nearby on the pretext of wiping down a table, said, ‘It were a long time ago, that’s why.’

  Then some hikers demanded more hot water for their teapot and a second round of cheese toasties and she had to tear herself away.

  ‘I’m absolutely amazed,’ Eleri said. ‘But I do feel for you and understand why you need to try to find your birth mother.’

  Then she leaned forward and added, ‘But I’ll tell you what: I know where Emily Rhymer lives, because her sister married a well-known actor and playwright and they often come to Henry’s restaurant for dinner – sometimes they even bring the whole clan!’

  By the time I left the Hikers’ Café a good hour had whizzed by and since I’d already skived off work for so long, I thought I might as well compound the offence by calling in to see if any of the Giddingses were at home on the way back. I was dying to tell someone all about my visit to George.

  Bel was out but Sheila, in her usual clay-spattered corduroy trousers, was in the kitchen stirring soup.

  I poured the whole tale out to her, George’s curmudgeonliness seeming quite funny in retrospect.

  ‘And then I had tea afterwards with Eleri Groves at the Hikers’ Café,’ I continued. ‘And guess what – she gave me the address of Emily Rhymer in Upvale.’

  ‘So you’re going to see her, too?’

  ‘Yes – in fact, I think I’ll go tomorrow morning because I’d sort of like to get it over with. She’s now the only eyewitness left to what happened, you see.’

  ‘I think it might be more upsetting than you realize to hear a first-hand account, so perhaps you should take Bel or Nile with you,’ Sheila suggested.

  ‘Oh, I’m OK on my own,’ I said. ‘I mean, I managed fine with George Godet, and he wasn’t the friendliest man to talk to. I expect Emily Rhymer’s much nicer and she won’t mind describing what happened in the least.’

  She looked doubtful. ‘Well, you’ll come back here right after you’ve seen her to tell us about it, won’t you? And then do stay over on Saturday night. Bel said you were working till late on your book every day, but I’m sure a rest over the weekend would do you good.’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ I agreed, though I wasn’t sure Senga would feel the same way …

  ‘Nile was here earlier,’ she said, with a change of subject. ‘He visited that friend of his with the antiques barn and ended up staying the night. I expect you wondered where he’d got to?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said, which was a downright lie. ‘He comes and goes and there’s no reason at all why he would tell me.’

  Sheila beamed at me and handed me a steaming mug. ‘Chicken soup for the soul,’ she said. ‘Bread?’

  I hadn’t sworn Sheila to secrecy, but even so, I was amazed to discover when I got back to my flat that she’d already rung Nile and told him all about George Godet and my intention to track down E
mily Rhymer next morning. He appeared barely five minutes after I got in and said he’d drive me over to Upvale himself on Saturday.

  ‘No – there’s no need,’ I said firmly. ‘I mean, it’ll just be another version of what George told me, but from a different angle, as it were, and not second-hand.’

  ‘Sheila thought you might be upset afterwards. I needn’t come in with you, I can drop you there and then visit Angel Delights.’

  ‘Angel Delights?’

  ‘It’s a shop in Upvale,’ he explained. ‘A weird mix of antiques, junk and New Age tat, but I’ve found the occasional interesting piece there.’

  I hoped the interesting piece wasn’t serving behind the counter … and I really didn’t know why I kept having these jealous thoughts about Nile, when his discarded girlfriends littered the countryside as an awful warning of what might happen if I weakened.

  Once he’d gone, I had the urge to kill something in my novel – so cathartic.

  There was a sudden rattling noise behind them and a huge spider came out of the bower in a staggering, slightly dazed rush. Without a second’s hesitation, Beauty swung the scimitar and the arachnid fell in a sprawling heap.

  ‘That’s the end of him, then,’ said the mouse, who had followed the spider out. ‘Not that I’m sorry, because he tried to eat me.’

  ‘That mouse is talking,’ Shaz whispered to Prince S’Hallow.

  ‘I know – you just can’t stop rodents nattering on, can you?’ he replied, looking at her in a dazzled kind of way, while Beauty was winding her arms around Kev’s neck and puckering up her lips invitingly.

  The mouse contemplated the two mismatched couples and said, ‘You do realize that you can’t change things once you’ve made your decisions, don’t you? Beauty will have to stay for ever in the Here- and-now with Kev, and the prince and Shazza in the Once-upon- a-time.’

  Then he sighed, because none of them was listening to him.

  Next morning, it being Friday, Tilda came to clean and brought Nell with her. She liked to pop in occasionally, to check how things were going, offer sometimes forthright advice to the workmen, and ply them with cups of treacly tea.