Page 13 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
The first Wednesday in September found me travelling down to Yorkshire by train, which wasnotthe way I’d envisaged embarking on my new life.
My car had been in the local garage since dying on the drive the day I arrived. The owner’s son, Rory, happened to be a vintage Beetle enthusiast, so had been carefully and slowly restoring it in his spare time. It had become such a labour of love that it seemed as if he’d never stop tinkering and get it back on the road. Now, apparently, he wanted to put the finishing touches to it before driving it down to Haworth himself, to see how it ran.
I strongly suspected he’d been put up to this by Edie, who didn’t think I was yet ready for the long drive, but since she’d insisted on paying the garage bill as a leaving present, I didn’t feel I could really argue.
I took one wheeled suitcase and an overnight bag with me and Edie assured me that she and Rory would pack my worldly goods back into the Beetle and he’d follow me down on Sunday. I couldn’t even wait and travel with him, since there simply wouldn’t be room. I’d only managed to get all my possessions into it when I’d arrived at Edie’s by utilizing every inch of space except the driver’s seat.
Anyway, the second I’d exchanged contracts on the café, it was as if every restraint that had held me back from going to Haworth before had suddenly snapped, so that now I couldn’t wait another single moment to get there.
It was a long journey and I arrived late and had to spend the night ina small hotel in Keighley near the station, waking to a rain-washed morning with a faint rainbow in the sky. I hoped that was a good sign.
The solicitor’s office was only a short walk away and I got there as soon as they opened, eager to collect the keys. They handed over a bundle of papers relating to the property too, but though I asked if I could have Mrs Muswell’s contact details in case I had any queries regarding the café, they wouldn’t divulge them. I didn’t even see an actual solicitor, just a secretary, and she was so close-lipped she strongly resembled a bearded clam.
I collected my suitcase, which had the small overnight bag strapped to the top of it, and set off for Haworth in a taxi. At the very moment that I closed the taxi door the weather reneged on its earlier half-hearted promise. The sky glowered blackly and cascades of water fell on to the roof of the car, a frantic drumming that echoed my thoughts.
Reality had finally and belatedly set in and I wondered what on earth I’d done.Was this sudden Stygian gloom an omen? Was the churning in my stomach panic, fear, excitement, anticipation or an indigestible mixture of all four?
The heavenly carwash was still in action when the taxi driver halted with a sudden jerk that set the eye-watering pine air freshener attached to the rear-view mirror swinging. I knew exactly where I was, because Haworth was so familiar from books and documentaries: we were near the bottom of the cobbled road that led up towards the church and Brontë Parsonage.
‘Why have you stopped here?’ I asked the driver. ‘I want Doorknocker’s Row, not the main street.’
‘Aye, I know,’ he said, then pointed to the entrance of an alleyway so narrow that I hadn’t noticed it until that moment.
‘It’s a few steps up t’ ginnel,’ he said, laconically.
‘But I thought you could drive right up to it? I know it’s got parking.’
‘Not at the front, it hasn’t,’ he said. ‘See for yourself – nowt but a motorbike would fit down there.’
He didn’t offer to get out and help me with my luggage, but stayed snug and dry while I struggled to extricate my suitcase and overnightbag, which was now weighed down with the bundle of documents as well as my laptop. I paid him, but without a tip, and he gave me a look that was even blacker than the sky and drove off in a cloud of spray.
There didn’t seem to be anyone else about, which was hardly surprising. I scuttled into the shelter of the passageway, a sliver of slippery cobbles between the steep sides of two substantial buildings.
I’d have been certain the taxi driver had brought me to the wrong address, had it not been for the street sign on the wall above my head, so I dragged my suitcase along and discovered that beyond the narrow entrance, Doorknocker’s Row opened up into a bottle shape.
Through the curtain of rain I could just make out a forlornly flapping café sign to my left, but if this was the Branwell Café, then the photos I’d seen must have been taken using trick photography! Either that, or they’d been of an entirely different place, for there was no wide expanse of cobbles fronting it and the tubs of bright flowers had turned into two rotting half-barrels bursting their metal hoops and containing no hint of life.
It appeared that some bad fairy had cast a blight over the place – and my dreams. Story of my life in a nutshell, really.
Still, there was no going back, so I fished out my keys, one of which was helpfully labelled ‘Café door’, before trundling my baggage across at a run. I fumbled the key into the lock, huddled under the inadequate shelter of a trellis-sided wooden porch. The gutters, unable to cope with the sheer volume of water, overflowed in cascades on either side.
Maybe I should have bought an ark, instead of a café?
The key turned easily once my wet fingers managed to insert it and the door swung inwards so suddenly that I stumbled forward down an unexpected step into the gloomy interior. Recovering my balance with an effort, I pulled my case inside and shut the door. The deafening waterfall noise abruptly quietened to a murmur. That was a mercy.
I fished out the torch I kept in the bottom of my handbag and took a good look around me. There was a light switch, which didn’t work, but by then I wasn’t altogether surprised to find the power had been cut off.
I shone the torch beam around the long, narrow room, which had a counter at the furthest end, backed by a mirror in which my pale face floated like an apparition. There was a door to the left, which presumably led to the kitchen premises, and steps to the customer conveniences vanishing down into the darkness on the other side.
Apart from having a wooden floor, the room bore little resemblance to the old-fashioned pine, chintz and polished brass cosiness of the pictures sent to me by Mrs Muswell, for it was instead furnished with speckled Formica tabletops and tubular chairs with pale blue plastic seats, some ripped and leaking grey stuffing.
There was the gleam of a glass cake display cabinet on the counter and the outline of a hatch through to the kitchen behind it … unless the rear premises had magically vanished into one of the sink holes that Edie had been so worried about.
I’d have said the café had been abandoned years ago, except that even by torchlight I could see that it was as clean as a whistle, for every surface, however cheap and shoddy, shone.
I supposed that was something … and when I went through the swinging door into the kitchen,thatwas spick and span, too. It was outdated, the work surfaces and flooring worn, and I spotted immediately that there were spaces where equipment had been taken out. Now I was getting Mrs Muswell’s full measure, I was fairly positive they would be items she’d included in the sale, though I’d have to unpack the list of what she said she’d leave to be sure.
I hung my wet raincoat on the back of a chair, dumped my bag on the wooden table and went to explore further.
