Chapter 2
They entered straight into the kitchen. It was big and old-fashioned with an ancient range oven of indeterminate make along the left-hand wall. In the centre was an old wooden table scrubbed almost white with use over many years. On the wall to her right was a big, butler sink with a large window above it, with more of the tiny panes. On the same wall was a doorway leading outside and there was a solid wood dresser further along. In the far corner was a small round table with two chairs and, above it, another smaller window overlooking the back of the house.
Immediately, Flora’s mind started whirring into action. She spoke her thoughts out loud.
‘I wonder if I’d be allowed to put French doors in or even a sliding door, straight out from that table and onto a patio? If there isn’t a patio, I’ll make one. I’ll spend a lot of time in that corner then.’
She whipped her head round to look at Peggy, expecting disapproval at new ideas. What she got was a beaming smile which completely threw her. The smile lit up Peggy’s face, making her cheeks look like rosy apples and making her hooded eyes almost disappear with happiness. What a transformation! Flora could hardly believe it.
‘I’m sorry’ she went on in her original frame of mind, ‘it must seem as though I’m coming into your friend’s house and immediately taking it over.’
Peggy shook her head.
‘What it seems as though you’re doing, is making plans to live here. Is that right? We thought you might be going to sell it.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of selling it.’ Flora looked horrified. ‘I’m so looking forward to living here and making it my own. I’m going to get the shop restored too.’
The older woman nodded her head slowly, still looking very pleased. Flora saw a thought flutter across her face, animating it again. She pointed through a door next to the range which led to a short hallway.
‘Let me show you the shop. It’s in a worse state than the house because your…Sybil lived in the house till her death but stopped using the shop at least five years ago. I don’t think it will take much to get it going again.’
She followed her down the passage, through a door on her left and into the shop. There wasn’t anything there to speak of. They had emerged through the door and straight behind a lovely old wooden counter, similar to the one in the bookshop. Beyond that, there were a few empty shelves, a tiled floor with a sweeping brush abandoned across it and a deep windowsill at this side of the newspaper-covered windows. All of this was littered with the bodies of dead insects and, more worryingly, what looked like a decomposed mouse in the corner.
There were a couple of random plastic chairs at the other side of the counter, looking incongruous in a shop that could otherwise have come out of Dickens. There was a door in the left-hand wall which she thought was a cupboard but upon investigation was a small room with a frosted window, which must have been the small window looking out over the driveway, just before the kitchen door. She thought it had been a scullery as there were a couple of stone shelves in it with a rickety wooden table at the far end. Back in the shop, a door to the left of the window led straight out onto the street. Perfect.
‘It’s not too bad. It’s all I’ll really want inside fitment-wise apart from more shelves and perhaps a glass front to the counter. I can make a great display on the windowsill. A lick of paint to brighten it up – and I’ll need to scrub the terracotta tiles and mend the window frames before I paint them. I’m not going to paint the wood of the counter…’
She looked at Peggy in case she thought she was going to destroy the character,
‘Only the walls and window frames. This wood I’ll polish up with beeswax. It will look beautiful.’
She was treated to another of Peggy’s smiles and again got the impression that they were only reserved for special occasions.
‘I’d like to know more about Sybil when you have the time if that’s alright with you?’
This was Sybil’s oldest friend and she reasoned that she would know more about her elusive benefactress than anyone else. The solicitor didn’t even know much about her – or wasn’t saying – and her parents couldn’t have known much as they never mentioned her.
‘I’d like that. Sometime after you’re settled in, maybe?’
Peggy spoke with a Yorkshire ‘burr’ but with slightly different inflections from any other Yorkshire dialect she had heard before. She had heard about insular, isolated villages like this would have been until less than a century ago, where the speech sounded almost like a foreign language. This was recognisable – but with a hint of ‘difference’. She turned to Flora now.
‘What were you going to sell in the shop?’
She asked this in a hesitant manner as though dreading the answer would be ‘Farstone souvenir key rings and postcards’ or even ‘blow-up rubber dolls’.
‘Natural Healing’ she replied, putting Peggy out of her misery, although Peggy’s face animated itself for a few seconds to a shocked expression. Flora attempted to explain.
‘It’s alright, I have a degree in Herbal medicine, approved by the National Institute of Medical Herbalists. I didn’t want to do this as I feel that healing with herbs should be instinctive but you need one to be able to practice legally. In case you poison someone accidentally I suppose, so I can see their point.’
No reaction from Peggy who just stared at her. She felt a need to qualify her decision.
‘It would only be for mild illnesses, I wouldn’t interfere with more serious things where I knew I wouldn’t be able to help, I’d send them to a doctor. Doctor’s appointments are so difficult to get nowadays that I could alleviate some of the suffering while they waited.’
Still no reaction but the stare was more intense.
‘I can see now I’ve arrived here that I wouldn’t get passing trade’ she stammered, feeling sweat breaking out on her forehead under the woman’s gaze, ‘but you get walkers here – and it’s a pretty place to make a special journey to. And then there’s the local people who are just as important to me. And I intend to do an online version of my shop with dried ingredients like culinary herbs to promote health - and herbal teas for wellbeing and promoting sleep – and, and…herb sachets and pillows -because I can’t sell medicine online…’
Flora was aware she was babbling now. She looked at Peggy as a mouse would at a hovering kestrel. She seemed to be on the verge of speaking.
‘Did you know what this shop was before?’ she eventually asked Flora.
‘N – no. Only that it was a shop some years previously. Sweetshop?’ she tried, thinking of the bull’s eye windows.
‘I will tell you the whole story when you are settled in and know our ways but, Sybil was a healer. This wasn’t as much a shop as a consulting room.’
Flora’s eyes opened wide in amazement. Her parents had never mentioned this and neither had Sybil on the one occasion that she had met her in her parents’ garden. She remembered her parents being annoyed at Sybil asking her questions but Flora had been quite happy to answer them. She had quite liked the old woman, even if she dressed a little strangely.
‘I had no idea’ Flora spoke in a reverent whisper as though respecting her memory. ‘That could be why I felt an affinity with her when I was a child. It’s very strange. Almost like a message being passed down through the ages’ Flora lifted her eyes to look at Peggy, whose own eyes glistened.
‘A twist of fate?’ Peggy muttered to herself before addressing Flora.
‘Will you buy the things in that you need? The herbs? In plastic packets and plastic bottles?’ she spat dismissively. Flora smiled.
‘No, I want to grow them myself. I mean, I might have to buy some in from other natural sources until I get the plants established. The solicitor says there’s a garden with the house and I’m hoping it will be big enough to grow what I need.’
There was a sound from Peggy, somewhere between a wheeze and a laugh. Then she sighed and her eyes crinkled in what Flora was beginning to recognise as quiet humour.
‘Follow me’ was all she said.
So Flora followed her out of the shop, back down the passage and through to the kitchen. Picking the keys up from the kitchen table, she unlocked the back door and threw it open.
At first, Flora couldn’t take in what she was seeing. There was a profusion of colour, as though a large Monet print had been spread out before her.
Slowly, she stepped out onto the patio and focused on the land beyond it. Not just a garden. Not just a small patch of land to grow herbs - but a whole meadow. Yet she didn’t have to grow healing herbs now because the meadow in front of her was full of them. Every conceivable kind of wildflower waved their heads around in the gentle breeze. A riot of colour with bees and other insects flying from bloom to bloom. Her own, her very own, wildflower meadow.
A laugh burst from Flora and she couldn’t be sure but it sounded like Peggy had joined in. Flora clapped her hands and then immediately put them to her eyes as she could feel the happy tears starting to flow.