Chapter Twenty-Two
Homesickness
The first flush of daffodils was spreading Down-along, lighting up the little gardens that lined the sloping path with a buttery yellow, made brighter still against the slender stems of white snowdrops. The village ravens, crows and rooks were busy repairing their nests and hungrily hunting for food all along the slope.
In the front garden of the Clove Lore Ice Cream Cottage, just a little way downhill from the turning into the Borrow-A-Bookshop, a single flame-red tulip streaked with vivid orange was opening its petals for the first time in the mild morning air.
It was a beautiful, bright, late-winter morning, but Mrs Crocombe wasn’t there to witness it. In fact, no one had laid eyes on the old matchmaker. The ice cream parlour was locked up, its shutters drawn, and the building as quiet as the grave.
Her absence was all anyone could talk about, excepting William Sabine who wasn’t remotely interested, up at the Big House ballroom where the developers were holding their first public consultation on their proposed plans for Clove Lore Castle.
‘Mr Bovis not here, neither?’ said Caroline Capstan, Samantha’s mum, and owner of the Clove Lore Laundry Company, leaning back in her seat to address the gossips in the row behind.
‘Strange,’ replied the village postie.
‘Nobody knows where she is,’ joined Minty, slipping into the row behind, making no pretence about her eavesdropping. ‘Her own daughter, Laura, the headteacher, hasn’t heard from her, can you believe? Doesn’t know where her own mother might be.’
‘An’ she made no mention of taking an ’oliday,’ threw in Jowan, settling beside his wife, Aldous trotting to a stop unhappily between the chair legs, wondering why his morning walk had been curtailed with a boring delay in his own ballroom.
‘Mrs Crocombe’s Ice Cream Cottage has been open every day for decades. That woman doesn’t know the meaning of a day off, let alone a holiday,’ added Mrs Capstan.
‘What are we talking about?’ said Estée Gold, getting in on the gossip in a magnificent white kimono with bright red flowers in her hair.
Minty gave her friend an appraising, surprised look but kept any comments to herself, instead letting her know that she was worried about Mrs Crocombe and Bovis. Missing a meeting on the fate of a local landmark wasn’t like them at all.
‘Ran off together, have they?’ Estée said salaciously, only to be tutted at by the lady of the manor. ‘What? It’s more than possible they’ve taken themselves away for a dirty… I mean a romantic break.’
‘If that’s all it is, why the secrecy?’ said Jowan. ‘There’s not one of us doesn’t know those two are paired up like doves in that shop. No, I reckon there’s more to it than that.’
‘Harri mentioned something about Bovis saying the brakes on his Land Rover were on the wonk,’ put in Samantha, artlessly, as she shuffled down the row, coming to join her mother. Jasper Gold, Sam’s boyfriend, wasn’t much interested in the planning meeting and had stayed away to prepare for his Valentine’s movie night, only three days away. He was outside on the lawns now, setting up his projectionist’s booth.
‘I hates to say it,’ began Jowan in a knowing tone, ‘but she has been prone to rash decisions in the recent past.’
Minty tutted. ‘The fling with the sea captain?’
Estée sat up all the straighter at this. ‘An affair?’
‘He was an old fraudster, turns out,’ Jowan added, stroking at Aldous’s beige head by his knee. ‘But he’s long gone, back to sea, and our Bovis has been a steady companion to her ever since. I’d say they are good influences on one another.’
‘I’d say they are as thick as thieves,’ Minty put in.
‘An accident, then?’ Estée began, spreading her hands before her, painting the scene. ‘It’s easy enough to picture. Night-time, a country lane. A rickety old Land Rover trundles through the sleet and snow.’
‘Hasn’t snowed in Clove Lore these fourteen months, Estée,’ attempted Jowan, only to be cut off.
Estée was still caught up in the drama in her imagination. ‘An owl hoots, the driver, an elderly, red-faced and very silly man, is momentarily distracted. A tyre hits a patch of ice, they skid, he brakes, the brakes fail, his passenger screams, they hit a wall, stones and metal crunch horribly, a whimper…’
‘Thank you, Estée! That’s very… vivid,’ put in Minty, a hand to her temple as if to soothe a headache. ‘I’m sure we’d have heard about any accidents in these parts.’
‘That is, if they haven’t skidded into a flooded quarry, or a reservoir?’ Estée enthused. ‘My character in Destiny’s Peak lost her second husband in just such an accident when his Porsche went to the bottom of Lake Tahoe with him trapped inside… or so we thought!’
‘Ooh, are we talking about Destiny’s Peak ?’ said Izaak enthusiastically, as he took one of the last available seats, right next to Estée. He had remained her biggest fan, next to his husband Leonid, even while becoming one of her only friends, now that she was a skint ex-celebrity long since abandoned by her A-list mates. ‘How did the scriptwriters get him out of that one in time for season five?’
‘Amnesia, of course,’ said Estée very seriously.
Pained, Minty shook her head.
The developers were taking the stage. Three white men, all in dark suits, were tapping lapel mics and fiddling with a laptop and projector before spreading into a line before the assembly.
‘Picture this,’ said one, the mic boom in the speakers drawing the room’s attention.
‘Castle Lore like you’ve never seen it before,’ said another.
‘None of uz have seen it,’ shouted one of the old timers from the front row.
William Sabine, seated next to him, didn’t respond to any of this, only clasping his hands on his lap and listening.
Undeterred, the third man took over. ‘Picture our castle ruin, a magnificent historical backdrop to a modern, fully accessible holiday resort, open year-round, bringing visitors to Clove Lore and employing people from across the region.’
The first speaker took over again as the Happy Holiday Park logo onscreen behind him melted into an artist’s vision for the resort. ‘Complete with step-free splash park and pool, snack bar, restaurant, tennis courts…’
On they went, painting a picture of a holiday heaven on earth. William sat still and unreadable. At the end, when some of the villagers were longingly eyeing the complimentary pastries and biscuits on the table by the fireplace and others were completing their handwritten notes like there was going to be a test, the presentation leader brought his hands together in a satisfied clasp.
‘If we’re successful in our acquisition, that is what you can expect from Devon’s next big family holiday destination. Now, I think we have time for a few questions. Anyone?’
He only staggered a little when nearly every hand in the place shot up.
Knowing the whole village would be up at the Big House, Harri and Annie had taken the consultation as an opportunity to sleep in late and they’d emerged from their separate rooms all the brighter for it. While Annie showered, Harri worked on a new coffee.
‘Ta-dah!’ He proudly presented his creation as Annie appeared downstairs at ten. ‘This is my all-new smooth peanut butter and Kenyan espresso mix with almond milk over ice, topped with a whipped Devonshire double cream swirl with a dusting of cinnamon. Go on, try it.’
He didn’t look away as she drank.
‘I’d pay seven bucks for this, easy,’ she said.
Satisfied, Harri tried his drink. ‘I came up with the idea overnight.’
‘You dreamt about making coffee?’
Not quite. He’d dreamt about making coffee for Annie . He knew that would sound weird if he told her, so he gave a laugh instead and rummaged for his tasting notes app, typing some words. ‘If the Port Talbot coffee shop wasn’t a chain with a set menu, I’d suggest this to my manager.’
‘This,’ Annie took another sip, ‘with an almond croissant would be…’ She made a chef’s kiss with her fingertips.
‘I was thinking a crumbed almond shortbread finger,’ said Harri.
Annie observed him as she drank, before saying, ‘You got a whole dream coffee shop going on in your head.’
Harri pulled a contemplative face. ‘Maybe I do.’
His manager had told him loads of times he should apply for his own franchise, run his own branch. He’d won all those barista competitions, hadn’t he? He showed up day after day for work and the novelty of improving his skills still hadn’t worn off. He hadn’t applied for so much as one other job since his Master’s graduation. He’d put it down to laziness. Or at least, that’s what his dad put it down to. Paisley hadn’t understood it at all.
‘Maybe I just like making coffees?’ he said, as though to himself.
He’d never considered his manager’s suggestion seriously, but the last few days had shown him he could make a go of it, in theory.
‘I’ve enjoyed running my own little bookshop cafe,’ he said, louder now, making Annie smile. He didn’t add that he’d loved it precisely because Annie was right next door behind the till, and he’d been driven to experimenting with his drinks menu so he could offer Annie something new to make her happy. Plus, he’d liked the freedom to serve whatever he wanted. The cafe had kept its own hours, nothing about it was dictated from a faceless team from head office like his role at the chain coffee shop. If he wanted to experiment here, he could. If he wanted to rustle up a quick batch of Welsh cakes, he’d done it. They went especially well with the single cream caffè breve he’d been convincing customers to try instead of their habitual latte. It had all felt like one long, fun game of playing shop.
‘I guess it’s easy when you don’t have to worry about overheads,’ he admitted.
All the money going through the till went straight into the Borrow-A-Bookshop Charity Trust, and his baking ingredients were subsidised by petty cash (and the occasional donated cake, like the one Jude Crawley had brought). It would be a different matter altogether if the shop’s livelihood was reliant on sales, and his salary was earned cup by cup.
Over the last few years, he’d grown used to his wages depositing in his bank account, the same amount every week. He’d chat with the customers, knew his regulars’ orders by heart, petted their dogs, learned all about their jobs and their kids. It was a nicely contained way of remaining sociable and connected, all while making money. He even liked going on the training days, up at the corporate HQ training kitchen. It was his job to learn and then demonstrate the new menus for the other staff back in branch. He looked forward to those days, now he came to think about it.
His manager, on the other hand, didn’t have nearly so much fun. He was forever grumbling about sales targets and losses and visits from Regional checking up on him. None of that appealed, but that, he figured, was the reality of running a business. Here he was only playing, risk free.
His heart fell a little now that the thought of returning to work in a few days had lodged itself in his brain, though that had just as much to do with Annie going home too.
Annie didn’t seem to be thinking about home, right this second. She had her eyes closed dreamily and was taking another approving sip, slow and smiling. An intrusive thought said he wished he could watch her like that all day.
That’s when the locked door rattled.
Jowan was behind the glass, holding up Aldous so he could look inside. William lurked behind them.
‘The workers have arrived,’ said Harri, snapping out of his caffeine dreams and letting them inside.
The day stayed dry and bright. The good weather brought the day-trippers out, so the shop was busy all morning.
William was more animated than the Borrowers had seen him yet. Right this second, he had his nose buried in the Chaucer from the display table.
‘Has anyone partaken of this little wonder?’ he asked the room. The tourists browsing the shelves ignored him, not knowing what to think.
Annie was closest and peered at the cover. ‘ Parliament of Fowles? Nope. I did wonder what it has to do with Valentine’s Day.’
William very kindly suppressed the little impulse within him to call them all philistines. ‘This, in my opinion, is Chaucer’s finest work. A poem celebrating the time of year when birds typically choose their mate.’
‘Valentine’s Day?’ asked Harri from the cafe door where he was drying off washed baking rings. That morning he’d attempted a coffee cake frosted with buttercream, with moderate success.
‘Chaucer exercises some poetic licence, but yes, the feast of Saint Valentine was typically associated in the fourteenth century with the beginning of avian life cycles. Chaucer perhaps popularised the notion.’
‘Doesn’t sound super romantic,’ observed Annie.
‘If you don’t read it, you’ll never find out.’ William tapped the book to the side of his nose and put it back on its riser. ‘Valentine’s traditions are rather curious,’ he went on. ‘Especially in this region.’
‘Devonshire?’ Jowan asked from the middle of the floor where he was sweeping up sandy footprints with a long brush.
‘Hmm,’ the antiquarian agreed. ‘Valentine’s Day is deeply rooted here, more than many other places. Nicholas and I made the ritual our especial study for a period in the early nineteen-nineties.’
Annie and Harri exchanged a smiling glance. The more they learned about those two curious old bookworms, the more they loved them.
‘Did you know the Valentine’s greeting has its roots here in South Devon? In the nineteenth century, letters containing a love device of some kind or another were sent in vast numbers in this region, paving the way for these…’ he touched his fingertips to the Valentine’s cards in the rack, ‘…commercial Valentine’s.’ He evidently did not understand the need for them at all.
‘I’ve long said we are a more romantic sort round these parts than those ’uns up country,’ joined Jowan, resting on his brush.
‘It may well be attributable to the longer, lighter days in the South West,’ explained William dryly. ‘Spring arrives earlier here than other places. It is lusher and wetter, brighter, more clement. Thrushes, finches and woodpeckers were all conspicuous in their mating at this time of year, back when our bird populations were healthy. As a consequence, nests were feathered earlier, chicks hatched sooner; the first bees were flying by February some years.’
‘The lovers out-of-doors all the earlier, meeting in hedgerow trysts?’ Jowan said, throwing an irreverent wink to Harri who rolled his eyes.
Annie’s laughter fluttered through the shop.
‘It is true, we can only attribute the survival of Valentine’s rituals to certain… impulses of nature awakened by the springtime abundance,’ William said primly. ‘Especially given the attempts to ban the feast of St Valentine altogether.’
‘What?’ This caught Annie’s interest.
‘Edward and Elizabeth both abolished the holy day,’ tolled William, steepling his fingers in front of his tummy like a minister ending the sermon. ‘But it seems,’ he cleared his throat, ‘…amorousness continues regardless.’
‘Lovers will find one another.’ Jowan clicked his lips and rushed his sweepings right out into the courtyard. They promptly blew back inside again before he had a chance to swing the door shut.
Annie remained fixed on William’s words. ‘Seems to me there’s always someone set on banning all the good stuff just ’cus they don’t like it for themselves?’
William inhaled as though ready to begin a lecture on the topic, but Jowan made the very good point that not one of them had had a cuppa this past hour, and Harri took his cue and refilled the kettle, but Annie stayed silent for a long while, thinking hard, interrupted only by a customer wanting to pay for a 1977 Blue Peter annual and a book about collecting Tonka vehicles. The woman explained in a shifty whisper they were a birthday present for her husband, and asked Annie to wrap them quickly before he emerged from the stacks and saw what she was up to.
When the couple left, the shop fell quiet and a warm three o’clock stillness set in. In contrast to the bright, blue-sky morning, the afternoon felt deeply dark. Venus was already shining brightly overhead by the time Harri emerged with the teas. Annie switched on the lamps one by one around the shop and now the Borrow-A-Bookshop basked in a honeyed glow. Harri had also baked millionaire’s shortbread before the lunchtime rush and the sweet vanilla caramel aroma hung in the air.
When William spotted the glossy chocolatey triangles on the tray in Harri’s hands, he confessed to feeling a little peckish and rushed to his armchair by the fire. Annie put another log on the fire to keep the flames roaring, and all four drew closer to the heat, lifting their steaming mugs appreciatively.
Aldous paid particularly close attention to William, who always dropped crumbs down his front. It was a waiting game, but he’d be snuffling those up as soon as the old man nodded off. Then the pair would have a glorious afternoon nap in peace, so long as no kiddies came in to disturb them. Aldous was not alone in observing that this newest villager had very much become a fixture of the place.
‘How was the consultation?’ asked Harri, leaning on the side of the shop counter nearest the fireplace. Annie slumped in a beanbag, a big bite of chocolate caramel shortbread already in her mouth.
William gave a dismissive grunt, so Jowan had to answer.
‘Seems they’ve a strong vision for Castle Lore as a sort of…’ he glanced at William from his spot by the fireplace, ‘…a sort of picturesque centrepiece for their holiday park.’ He took a long drink while everyone panicked about what to say next.
‘It is my home no longer,’ William said, with no particular intonation in his voice.
Annie and Harri exchanged glances in the silence that fell. Annie knew he must miss the only home he’d known for decades. She knew he must miss his friend even more. Rather desperately she said, ‘We’re lucky to have you here, William. Our very own antiquarian expert.’
Now Harri and Jowan looked at one another. Harri seemed to be trying to communicate something, but Annie didn’t know what.
‘Uh,’ Harri managed, ‘home is wherever we happen to be.’
‘ Pft! ’ objected William before drinking his tea.
Annie watched as Harri’s shoulders slumped. ‘Okay, I don’t really think that. I have the worst case of hiraeth whenever I’m away from Wales.’
This made Annie lift her eyes from her cup. The Welsh word had been a familiar one back in Aber. She hadn’t heard it in years. ‘Homesickness?’
Harri nodded. ‘Only, I haven’t felt it quite so much since I came here.’
‘That’s the Clove Lore magic,’ said Jowan, dunking his shortbread before taking a sopping, melty bite. ‘ Mmm ,’ he chewed. ‘Though I’ve never left home to feel homesick, but I did feel something very much like it, I reckon, for my Isolde. Still do, and yet here I am, at home.’ He looked around his bookshop. ‘An’ I wouldn’t be nowhere else on this great globe.’
To Annie’s surprise the usually reticent William nodded at this, as though homesickness for Nicholas and not the old castle explained precisely how he felt.
This set Annie thinking. There was a strong tug within her to get back home, but it wasn’t driven by the wish to see her family as such, but to get to work. It had been building ever since Cassidy told her about the changes at the library and the growing resistance to the book bans.
She realised Harri was watching her now, something questing in his eyes. ‘First thing I’m gonna do is hit Buc-ee’s for a brisket sandwich and their glazed pecans,’ she blurted, knowing he was expecting something on the topic of her impending homeward journey. ‘With Cassidy, of course,’ she added.
Harri smiled thinly, and she thought, a little sadly. She wished she hadn’t spoken so glibly. Leaving here, leaving Harri was going to be far tougher than the first time she left him, back at uni. She let her eyes drop to the mug in her hands. ‘I wish I could stay here and go home,’ she said, before realising that was stupid and she laughed at herself.
‘I hear you,’ Harri said quickly.
After that there didn’t seem to be anything pressing to say or do, and everyone fell to watching the fire and letting the warmth and sweetness of a dark afternoon in their bookshop seep inside of them. Annie closed her eyes, trying to absorb it, willing the comfort of being here with Harri and her new friends and all these wonderful books to stay locked within her. She’d need the strength of it when she was alone again, jetting across the Atlantic, steeling herself to face her community – and her adversaries.