Page 49 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
Slowly I became conscious of the sound of the Hoover zooming about downstairs and realized that it had been going on for some time: it was Friday and Tilda Capstick’s day to clean.
I went down to say hello and Tilda said she’d called up the stairs and there had been no reply, so she’d just got on with it.
‘But I packed all the white china into boxes and put it in the cupboard where the willow pattern was, first.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ I said. ‘I meant to put it on one of the free recycling websites, because it isn’t really worth selling, but I haven’t got round to it yet.’
‘It was cluttering up the place, but now it’ll be out of the way till you do,’ she said, then added slightly accusingly, ‘Nothing much seems to have changed in the café yet?’
‘No, but it soon will,’ I assured her. ‘I had to get the flat ready first. Come up and see it.’
‘You’ve moved in, then?’ she asked, following me upstairs.
‘Not yet. I’ve been staying at a guesthouse on the moors – Nile Giddings’ family home. I’ll move in officially on Monday, though I will be here tonight because I’ve got to wait in for the cooker, washing machine and fridge to be delivered. I’ve got a four-till-ten time slot.’
‘Eh, the world’s gone mad, delivering orders in the middle of the night!’ she exclaimed, then took a look round the flat and said approvingly, ‘Well, this all looks grand now, doesn’t it? So … are you still going ahead with the teashop, flower?’
‘I certainly am,’ I assured her and then asked if she and her aunt Nell would come for tea on Monday, when we could discuss it all.
As she turned to go she spotted Lola’s gift hanging on the back of the door. ‘Yon Christmas wreath’s gone up a bit early.’
‘It’s not a Christmas one, just an all-year-round kind of decoration,’ I explained.
‘I wondered why there was no holly,’ she said, then remarkeddisparagingly that dried flowers were bad for collecting the dust and she herself wouldn’t give them houseroom. I suspect she’s not a reader ofCountry Livingmagazine.
My white goods arrived just after six, but the delivery man refused to take them up to the flat, instead leaving them in a forlorn row at the bottom of the stairs.
It would still have been early enough to go out to Oldstone Farm for the night, but I had something planned for next morning: Nile had drawn me a map showing the route over Blackdog Moor to the parking area near the Oldstone, and I intended setting out on my first visit there at a very unsociable hour, when I would be sure of having the place to myself.
In fact, dawn had only just begun to rim the blackberry sky with silvered steel as I took the by-now-familiar road up on to the moors, though this time I carried on past the turn to the house, where the Giddingses would probably all be fast asleep … unless baby Casper, who was teething, had woken his parents up early, or Sheila had been struck by inspiration and wandered down to her studio.
Thoughts of Casper, so wanted and beloved by the whole family, contrasted sharply with the baby that had been me, though somehow I didn’t feel connected to that abandoned, sickly and malformed little thing. Perhaps I would, once I was up by the Oldstone.
I’d written Nile’s instructions on a series of Post-it notes and stuck them along the dashboard. They started off clearly enough: ‘Carry on along the main (!) road until you pass a sign on the right for Mr Rochester’s Restaurant and the Hikers’ Café’.
That was where Eleri Groves lived, having married her Mr Rochester. I hoped for her sake there were no madwomen in his attic, and also that he was not quite as irascible as the original.
The road dipped up and down, and the Oldstone on its rocky outcrop seemed to advance and retreat in a tantalizing dance. Then there was a level, straight bit of road and I spotted the sign on the right for the restaurant and paused briefly to peer up the track. Unfortunately, ittook a bend and you couldn’t see any sign of the house, apart from a hazy plume of wood smoke rising in the air.
On the sign it said the restaurant was open only in the evenings but the Hikers’ Café proclaimed itself ‘Now open all year!’ though I wouldn’t have thought many walkers would want to take advantage of that in autumn and winter.
I started off again, keeping my eyes peeled for a very narrow lane immediately before a crossroads, but I somehow missed it and had to turn in the car park of the Standing Stones Motel and go back.
I wasn’t surprised I hadn’t spotted it first time: stone walls bordered a thin ribbon of tarmac that meandered off in a series of twists and turns until eventually, just as it seemed to be deteriorating into a track with a grassy ridge growing up the middle and a hedge of blasted hawthorn guarding it like barbed wire, there was a gap and a weathered sign to the Oldstone.
When I turned in, it wasn’t even a track, just twin grooves worn by the passage of many wheels through the turf. I bumped my way along this to where it ended in a half-circle of short turf and a couple of battered, lichen-spotted picnic tables, on one of which a large black crow was sitting, like the last diner reluctant to leave long after closing time.
It eyed me without hope, made a harsh and mocking noise and then flapped slowly and heavily off.
The wind was keen when I got out and the moors bleakly beautiful now that weak sunshine was gilding the picture. It didn’t have any warmth in it, though: if anywhere else in the country was enjoying an Indian summer, it wasn’t Blackdog Moor. The words ‘blasted heath’ were never more apt.
And if it was chillynow, what would it have been like right at the start of March, when I was found? You’d think only a Heathcliffian baby, an indestructible force of nature, would have survived such exposure, not the mewling little weak puny thing I’d been.
The finger of rock was now very near and stuck up like a rudely defiant gesture as I followed a well-trodden path that slowly ascended the ridge. It ended at a flattish plateau littered with the fallen remains of whathad once been a small circle of stones around the natural monolith. One, flat and grooved, looked distinctly sacrificial …
My twisted-fairy-tale imagination stirred, but I shoved it firmly back into its box, for today it was time for a reality check.
The Oldstone had been carved with ancient cup-and-ball markings and, standing next to it, you could see for miles. The Giddingses’ house was so far away it looked like a toy, but there was a farmhouse a lot nearer – perhaps even the one Joe Godet had come from.
