Page 92 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
‘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 Novemberand 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.
