Page 104 of Kate and Clara's Curious Cornish Craft Shop
‘Let’s just say Jack and I have moved our relationship up a gear,’ I reply, beaming at Anita.
Anita to her credit simply nods contentedly, and doesn’t ask me anything further.
‘Morning, campers!’ Sebastian calls, as he comes through the door a few minutes later. We had our large delivery coming in this morning so I had both my staff in with me in order to process it quickly with as little disruption to the shop as possible. ‘Now then, boss, what have you been up to?’ Sebastian asks with a wicked grin. ‘You’re the talk of the town!’
‘Don’t tell me, you went into the chemist and Janice asked how I was?’ I reply wearily.
Sebastian looks puzzled. ‘No, I called in at the bakery, and Ant asked me what was going on with Jack and you. When I said I didn’t know what he meant, he told me you’d been spotted up on the hill last night at sunset, kissing and canoodling!’
I roll my eyes.This town.
‘You know we’re the talk of the town?’ Jack asks me later when I’ve gone over to his shop with the latest embroidered felt pieces. They were really coming thick and fast at the moment, and now so many people seemed to know that Jack and I were an item – including my own friends and family – it suddenly wasn’t as difficult for us to sneak off and pretend we were having some ‘us time’.
‘Yes, I’ve heard all the gossip,’ I tell him, as I lift the easel into Jack’s sitting room. ‘Apparently we were seen last night.’
‘Do you mind?’ Jack asks as I pull up a chair next to him.
‘Do I look as if I do?’ I bypass my chair and instead straddle Jack’s so I can kiss him. Jack’s response to this spontaneous movement is equally as fervent, pulling me back on to his lap like last night.
‘Jack,’ I eventually say, trying to pull away from him a little, ‘we really need to look at the pictures. We don’t have long today.’
‘I can think of some much better things we could fill that short time with,’ Jack murmurs, not letting me go.
‘I don’t want ashorttime with you,’ I whisper. ‘I want a reallylongtime.’
‘I can’t guarantee that,’ Jack says, grinning at me, ‘but I’ll do my very best.’
‘Right then, the pictures!’ I wriggle from his embrace and begin to line up the first of the paintings and embroidery. ‘We have two different ones to watch today … I wonder why these have suddenly appeared together?’
‘Heaven knows,’ Jack says, ‘Maybe it’s a two-part episode of our fifties’ soap opera? I long ago stopped questioning it, I just let it happen now.’
‘I have to say I’m a bit worried about this first one,’ I say as I sit down on my chair next to Jack. ‘It looks a bit bleak, doesn’t it?’
‘That’s what I thought. It’s a church though, isn’t it? Perhaps we’re going to see Clara and Arty’s wedding?’
‘If we are, it doesn’t look like a very happy day,’ I say, warily regarding the artwork in front of us. Jack is right – his picture is definitely a painting of a church, but it’s in drab shades of grey and dark blue, not how an artist would usually depict a joyous wedding day. My matching felt is of the gravestones in front of the church. ‘I really hope nothing has gone wrong for them.’
Jack takes hold of my hand, I move the embroidered felt across so it’s in exactly the right place, and then we wait anxiously as we travel back to St Felix once more.
St Felix ~ December 1958
Clara, Arty and Maggie stand in a windswept graveyard looking down at a newly filled-in grave. There is no headstone yet, just loose earth denoting that the incumbent of the plot hasn’t been there all that long.
They are all wearing sombre colours. Arty, very unusually, is wearing a suit, and Clara and Maggie black formal-looking dresses. Clara has the addition of a tiny black hat, and Maggie’s long hair is tied up with a black ribbon.
‘You’d have thought that more people would have turned up to the funeral,’ Clara says, looking down at the grave. ‘There were only us three and a few others. It’s very sad.’
‘He kept himself to himself,’ Arty says, standing next to her. ‘He wasn’t one for the social side of life really. It was just him and his painting. He said after his wife Irene died he didn’t have any other family left.’
‘Still, I would have expected more people to pay their respects. It’s simply good manners.’
Arty squeezes Clara’s gloved hand.
‘Are you all right, Maggie?’ he asks, putting his arm around her shoulder.
Maggie just nods. She’d been very quiet since Freddie had died. He’d gone peacefully in his sleep, the doctor had said, and had been discovered by a neighbour who wondered why he hadn’t opened up the top of his stable door, as he always did every morning come rain or shine to ‘let the St Felix air in’.
‘What will happen to all his paintings now he’s gone?’ Maggie asks, voicing a very good question that no one else had even considered yet. ‘What if they get thrown out when someone clears his house. Freddie wouldn’t like that.’
