Twenty-eight Verbascum – Take Courage
Twenty-eight
Verbascum – Take Courage
After our encounter with Caroline, I speak to Ash about the possibility of visiting Babs at her cottage, and he arranges for me to visit his granny the next day.
Ash and I are getting on just fine. He’s lovely to spend time with – always super chilled and relaxed. Sometimes I take Basil to the beach to watch Ash and his mates surf the waves that wash up on to St Felix’s long stretch of sand, and afterwards, if the weather’s good, Ash and I picnic on the beach together, snuggled up on, or under, a blanket with Basil contentedly nibbling on a cheese sandwich at our side.
Ash tries on more than one occasion to get me to mount a board with him. But I insist my surfing days are over, and I’m happy to watch him ride the waves while I enjoy being out in the fresh air.
I surfed with Will. I don’t surf any more.
I hadn’t realised how much I missed the taste, smell and feel of sea air until I returned to St Felix. Living in London and the various other cities I’ve inhabited over the years, I’d got used to the tight, smoggy air. I’d forgotten how clean, fresh and invigorating sea air was, and now I couldn’t get enough of it.
‘I’m just going to see Babs!’ I call to Amber as Basil and I get ready to leave the shop. ‘Are you sure you’ll be OK on your own?’
‘Yes, I’ll be fine. Good luck, Poppy,’ she replies, reappearing from the back room where she’s currently creating a bouquet for a young man to give to his girlfriend when he proposes. Word of Amber’s magical bouquets has begun to spread, and we’ve been getting requests from all over Cornwall from people wanting our help. ‘I really hope Babs can tell you something about this Stan,’ Amber says. ‘And not just for the sake of the wedding. It sounds to me like you really need to see him again.’
Before I can answer, the shop door opens and our fifth customer of the day walks in. And it’s only 10 a.m.! We’ll have to take on someone else to help us if this continues; Amber can’t possibly look after the shop and arrange all the flowers, and it’s inevitable there are going to be times when it’s impossible for us both to be there.
‘I’ve heard you do special bouquets?’ the woman says to Amber as Basil and I head out the door. ‘My mother has been ill recently, and…’
Basil and I leave Amber to it – this is most definitely her department.
We’ve got to the point we can always tell when a customer’s going to ask for one of Amber’s special bouquets. Often they’ll hover outside the shop window for a while, looking shifty, then they’ll come in and pretend to browse for a bit. Once they finally get up the courage to ask if we could make them up a ‘special’ bouquet, I hand them over to Amber, who very discreetly asks what their issue is, then disappears out back to consult her books before creating the perfect bouquet for them, always tied with a white ribbon.
As Basil and I walk down the street, waving to Ant and Dec as we pass – the bakery also seems exceptionally busy today – I think about Stan.
Amber’s right, of course. I should have tried to locate Stan as soon as I arrived in St Felix, but what with the shop and then Basil to look after…
No, I couldn’t kid myself; these were simply excuses. I hadn’t gone in search of Stan because I knew that seeing him again would remind me of past times here in St Felix with Will. Even though I’d managed to talk to Ash about Will, I knew Stan would want to reminisce even more, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that yet.
But I had to do this. It was important, not only for Katie and Jonathan, but for me too.
So as we walk towards Babs’s cottage, pausing occasionally so Basil can do his thing, my mind is very definitely on the past.
‘Oi! Your dog!’
Shaking myself from my memories, I see Basil about to cock his leg against the side of a mobility scooter. ‘Gosh, I’m so sorry,’ I tell an elderly lady carrying a string bag full of shopping. ‘Basil!’ I pull him away from the wheels. ‘No!’
‘Oh, it’s Basil,’ the lady says, easing herself on to the seat of the scooter. ‘I haven’t got my glasses on, I didn’t recognise you, lad.’ She reaches in her handbag and pulls out a pair of spectacles. ‘There, that’s better,’ she says, putting them on. ‘Now,’ she bends down to stroke him, and Basil, as always, laps up the fuss. ‘I haven’t seen you in ages, boy. How are you?’
She looks up at me. ‘Poppy?’ she says. ‘Is that you? You were just a young girl the last time I saw you.’
I look more closely at her.
‘Babs!’ I exclaim. ‘I’m just on my way to your cottage.’
Babs nods. ‘That’s right, young Ash said you were coming over. I was just getting some cakes in.’ She rolls her eyes, ‘Can’t even make me own these days.’
‘Oh dear, how are you? Ash said you hadn’t been too well lately.’
‘I have to admit, I’ve seen better days,’ she says, gesturing to her buggy. ‘But you have to get on with it, don’t you? I heard you were back in town and looking after Rose’s shop. I’d have popped in, but I haven’t been out much lately; touch of bronchitis hit me real bad, it did. But I’ve escaped today and been allowed out on me own for a while.’
‘Well done.’ I haven’t seen Babs for so long I barely recognise her. She’s lost a lot of weight, and has got a lot greyer in the hair department. ‘I heard about Stan,’ I say, wondering if it’s too soon to mention this. ‘How he decided to sell the castle and move away. It’s a shame it had to come to that. He loved that place.’
‘Hmmph,’ Bab says. ‘Or so he let everyone believe.’
‘How do you mean?’
Babs looks furtively up and down the street, then she beckons for me to lean in so she can lower her voice.
‘Stan changed in the years after you stopped coming to Trecarlan, Poppy – and not for the better, either. He was getting on a bit, and I don’t think he was playing with a full deck a lot of the time.’
‘Oh, poor Stan. What happened?’
‘Well, I’m not one to gossip, as you know…’ She looks shiftily about her. ‘But Stan got in with a bad crowd. There was a lot of drinking went on up at the castle, and –’ she looks up and down the street, but the weather has done one of its U-turns and there are ominous rainclouds gathering overhead, so anyone who’d been out enjoying the sunshine first thing this morning has already taken shelter. ‘Gambling,’ she whispers, so quietly I can barely hear her.
‘Really?’ I can’t imagine Stan running the sort of debauched gambling ring Babs seemed to be implying.
Babs nods. ‘Regularly held parties up there, he did. He’d let all ’n’ sundry into the castle. He asked me to cater for his parties, but I said no. My job was to look after him, not a load of hoolie-billies with more money than sense. So,’ Babs puts her hand to her chest, ‘he got in outside caterers!’
Stan might as well have let in serial killers. This would have been the ultimate insult to Babs.
‘That’s awful, Babs. I can’t imagine Stan doing that – not to you. He loved you and Bertie.’
‘Hmmph.’ Babs folds her arms across her chest. ‘You’d think so, after all we did for him. But the way he treated us, we were obviously just servants to him – nothing more.’
‘What are you talking about – what did he do?’
This was all very odd. It didn’t sound like the Stan I remembered at all.
‘Well, one night Stan had another of his parties. Me and Bertie weren’t involved, of course. But we heard he had another load of these hoolies staying with him – from London .’
Babs spits the word out as if it’s toxic. ‘They came up in their fancy cars, lording it up all over St Felix before they even went to the party. I reckon they pissed off half the town that day with their airy-fairy ways. Sorry for me language, dear.’
‘Don’t worry about it. What happened next?’
‘I don’t know exactly what happened when they went up to the castle that night, I can only surmise.’
‘Surmise away.’
‘Well, there was the usual carryings on: too much drink and goodness knows what else. But the outcome was, Stan lost all his money – in a card game.’
‘No!’
‘Sadly ’tis true. It wasn’t long after that Stan moved out, and we lost our jobs.’ She purses her lips. ‘Me and Bertie had given that man our lives, and then he turns around and does that to us.’
‘B-but it doesn’t make sense,’ I say, trying to piece all this together. ‘Stan would never have risked his home and your livelihood on a card game.’
Stan may not have had any family, and few friends, but I know he cared about his ‘helpers’. This just doesn’t fit with the man I remember.
‘Them’s the facts, Poppy. I’ve told you all I know, and some what I heard on the quiet.’ She sighs. ‘My Bertie took ill shortly after all this went on, so maybe we were best out of there as it turns out. When he died, they said it was a stroke caused by heart irregularities. I still say he died of a broken heart from being evicted from the place he loved. He’d worked at Trecarlan since he was a nipper. But you know Bertie: he vowed he was going to carry on looking after the gardens, even though we wasn’t being paid no more. Bless his soul.’
‘I was so sorry when I heard about Bertie,’ I say. ‘Ash told me.’
She smiles a toothy grin. ‘I hear you and my grandson have been seen stepping out together. I may have been banished to my cottage for the past few weeks, but I still keep my ear to the ground.’
I feel my cheeks turning red.
‘He’s a good lad, is my Ash,’ Babs says. ‘He’s a looker for sure, a bit like his granddad was when he was younger. But his heart is in the right place. He’ll watch out for you.’
‘Thank you,’ I tell her, but I want to ask more about Stan. Something doesn’t sound right about all this. ‘So did you ever see Stan again after that?’
Babs shakes her head. ‘No, he went to a home Up North somewhere. What with that and Bertie, I just never got around to visiting him.’ She leans in towards me. ‘Tell the truth, there was bad feeling, you know, after we lost our jobs, and then I lost Bertie. So I didn’t really want to go. Then after a while it seemed too late to try and make amends.’
‘Of course, I quite understand in the circumstances. I don’t suppose you know which home it was, do you?’ I ask hopefully. Maybe I could phone them.
‘No, dear, sorry. Lou might know though. I think she visits him occasionally.’
That’s good of Lou to travel so far to visit Stan, I think; they must have been close.
‘Thanks, I’ll ask the next time I see her.’
‘You were always a good girl, Poppy,’ Babs says, looking up at me from her scooter. ‘Mischievous, but good at heart. I was sorry to hear about your brother – terrible business.’
‘Yes… well… you know.’ I look down at Basil, who’s having a rest on the floor beside us. ‘Looks like Basil wants to get going,’ I say, tugging on his lead to wake him up.
Basil yawns and grudgingly looks up at me.
‘It’s nice seeing you again, Babs. Now you’re up and about, you’ll have to call in and see us at the shop sometime.’
‘Oh yes, I’d like that. You must pop in and have a cup of tea with me, too.’ She nudges me. ‘And you look after that grandson of mine, you hear? He’s a good boy, that one. Don’t worry too much about that Stan, he was always a bit of a rascal, even when he was young. It was going to catch up with him one day.’
I wave to Babs as she heads off on her scooter, bobbing along the cobbled street.
‘Right, Basil,’ I say, making a U-turn in the street. ‘Looks like we’re off to see your old mate, Lou.’
‘Hi, Poppy, Hi, Basil,’ Lou says, opening the door to greet us. Lou is wearing painting overalls, has her hair tied up in a scarf and is holding a paintbrush.
‘Oh, have I caught you at a bad time?’ I ask as she stands back to let me in.
Lou’s hall, which was full of trinkets and pictures the last time I was here, is stripped bare, and half the walls are painted blue.
‘No, I could do with a break, and it’s always a joy to see Basil.’ She rests the brush on an open tin of emulsion and bends down to fuss him. ‘The puppies are in the kitchen, if you want to go and see them? Basil will be fine with them now.’
We head into Lou’s kitchen to find a riot of activity, as five puppies bound around, chewing on brushes, rolling in blankets, and generally getting up to mischief.
I let Basil off his lead, and he goes over to investigate.
‘Tea?’ Lou asks, filling the kettle.
‘No, I can’t stay long. I have to get back to the shop. Amber’s got a lot on at the moment.’
‘It’s all going well then?’ Lou asks.
‘Yes, it’s definitely picking up.’
‘Good, I’m glad to hear it,’ Lou says, putting the kettle on to boil and turning to face me. ‘I had a feeling things would improve. Now, what can I do for you? I’m sensing this isn’t simply a social call.’
‘Do you know where Stan is?’ I ask without any preamble.
‘Yes, of course I do. Why, would you like to visit him?’
I nod.
Lou goes to a drawer and pulls out a white business card. ‘Here,’ she says, handing it to me. ‘Camberley House, it’s a lovely residential home up in Bude.’
‘Bude! But I thought Stan was a long way away – Babs said “Up North”.’
Lou smiles. ‘Well, it is North Cornwall.’
‘If I’d known he was so close, I’d have gone before,’ I say, staring at the card.
‘Would you, though?’ Lou asks gently. ‘Maybe you’ve waited until it’s the right time to go, for you and for him?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Poppy, you’ve had a lot to deal with since you arrived here in St Felix, and I’m not just talking about the shop and dear old Basil. Perhaps you weren’t ready to see Stan before.’
I look across the kitchen at her.
‘But now, Poppy,’ she says deliberately. ‘Now I know you are.’