Page 16 of A Sky Full of Stars
‘I will.’ Annabelle rolled her eyes. She met Charlotte’s gaze with an apologetic smile. ‘I, for one, am glad the observatory’s going.’ She paused and Charlotte felt that she wanted to add more. ‘If you ask me, it’s about time. Then maybe a few people around here can move on with their lives.’
As she paid for her shopping, and arranged with Annabelle to have what she couldn’t carry delivered later that afternoon, Charlotte realised that the tragic history of the observatory really was ingrained. Annabelle wasn’t old enough to have had many memories of it, but it had obviously still left its mark. She wondered how many other people would be glad to see the back of the place when it eventually came down.
17
Charlotte returned to Nightshade Cottage and put the purchases in her backpack away. She wasn’t sure what time Nick Saint would be arriving with the rest, but, peckish, she made a couple of rounds of toast and a cuppa, and took them through to the garden to eat, Comet following behind her. However tired the dog was, he was always her devoted shadow, and he flopped out onto the warm flagstones of the patio while she munched on her toast and enjoyed the sunshine.
‘Good walk, dear?’ Lorelai asked as she emerged from her kitchen. She was wearing a battered waxed Stetson and wielding a pair of secateurs.
‘Lovely, thanks,’ Charlotte replied. She briefly explained where she’d been.
‘Ah, yes, the Saints are one of the oldest farming families round here,’ Lorelai replied. ‘They used to own a lot more land, of course, but most of it got sold about fifty years back. Now it’s just thirty or so acres and the farm shop, but they’re doing all right out of it. Tristan and Thea were at school with Nick and Annabelle. At one point I thought Nick and Thea might… well, things don’t always turn out the way you’d expect, do they?’
‘Did the Saints own Observatory Field, then?’ Charlotte asked, still curious about the cryptic nature of her conversation with the family at the shop.
‘Oh, no,’ Lorelai replied. ‘They owned all the land that surrounds it, but Observatory Field wasn’t theirs.’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘Old Robert Saint has a right old case of sour grapes now it’s being developed. His was one of the strongest voices against the whole idea. There was quite a lot of opposition to it in the early days when permission first went in, but gradually the village came around.’
‘So, who did own the site, then?’ Charlotte asked.
Lorelai quirked an eyebrow. ‘You mean you weren’t told when you took the job? I’d have thought someone would have spilled the beans by now.’
Charlotte shook her head. ‘Nope. I got the brief from Flowerdew, but apart from that, I only know what you and Brian have told me about its history.’
‘Well,’ Lorelai said, setting her secateurs down on the patio table and sitting herself down, with a long sigh, ‘perhaps you ought to know a few more details. You already know about my son and daughter-in-law and their connections to the observatory, but there is a little more to tell. Why don’t you go and get another cuppa? Make it in my kitchen if you like, and while you’re in there, you can grab the coconut macaroons out of the biscuit tin. You might need a sugar treat to help this rather bitter tale go down.’
Charlotte gave Lorelai a reassuring smile. ‘It can’t be that bad, can it?’ Certainly not as awful as the parts she already knew, she thought to herself.
Lorelai shook her head. ‘Bad? In parts. Sad, definitely. And now, with everything coming to an end and a new era beginning for that land, it’s probably time to tell it all.’
Senses and curiosity on the alert now, Charlotte hurried to get the tea and the biscuits. When she returned, Comet had cosied up to Lorelai on the garden bench.
‘Comet, get down!’ Charlotte ordered the spaniel.
‘Oh, he’ll be all right,’ Lorelai replied. ‘And to be honest, I’m glad of the moral support.’
Comet stayed firmly put next to Lorelai as Charlotte sat down on the wooden chair next to the patio table. She watched for a few moments as Lorelai stroked Comet’s long, silky black ears. As she did so, it was clear that Lorelai was summoning the will to begin.
Eventually, the older woman spoke. ‘The Lower Brambleton Observatory has a rather tangled history. From Eleanor Winslow to the early twenty-first century is a long time for a building like that to be in operation. And as you know, it’s now time to make sure that the past few decades of research are taken care of and preserved. I’m glad that Flowerdew Homes took up my stipulation that the contemporary history of the place be looked after, just as much as the more, some would say, academically worthy history of the previous century.’
‘It was you who campaigned to have the rest of it archived, then?’ Charlotte replied. She was somewhat surprised, given that Lorelai was so keen to see the housing development go forward.
Lorelai nodded. ‘I couldn’t not. I owed it to too many people, alive and dead, to ensure that the work of the past thirty or so years wasn’t lost or bulldozed when the building is demolished.’
‘So, I have you to thank for my job this summer,’ Charlotte smiled.
‘Yes, I suppose, to a point,’ Lorelai agreed. ‘But to be truthful, until now the development was just a pipe dream. A lot of water needed to have passed under the bridge to allow it to happen.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, as you know, developers started sniffing around the site back in the late 1980s. Up until now, though, no one’s been able to strike the right terms with the landowner.’
‘So, what changed?’ Charlotte asked, unable to resist the lure of the coconut macaroons she’d hurriedly tipped onto a serving plate and brought outside with the tea. ‘How did Flowerdew finally manage to get it through?’ Comet lifted a hopeful head in search of a macaroon, but Charlotte merely bopped him on the end of his shiny black nose, so he snuffled back down against Lorelai with a martyred sigh.
‘One of the landowners died about two years ago,’ Lorelai replied. ‘Up until that point, the site was owned by a pair of siblings, a brother and his older sister, having been left it in the 1970s by their father. For years, since their inheritance, they couldn’t agree about what to do with the land. The brother was a bitter old soul. He watched the observatory begin to fall into rack and ruin at the start of the 1990s, and he was fully prepared to take the deeds for the place to his grave. He had no children, and his only beneficiary was his older sister. They argued for decades. Initially she wanted to develop the site herself, to create some homes for her family, but the cost of the project was too high for an amateur to bear. It would have meant selling everything she owned, and more, and there was no guarantee that the project would be viable. The cost of clearing the land was high enough, and without the contacts, the project would have been too risky. The second route was to sell the land to a developer, and at least then, there would be money in the bank to help support them, and their family.’
‘But the brother didn’t go for it?’ Charlotte guessed.
Lorelai nodded, her face clouding over. ‘He was a mean old bugger. Always had been. He was suspicious of everyone and everything, including his sister. It didn’t matter that she’d looked after him as they’d both got older, that she’d invited him to live with her as his health declined. He was ten years younger than her, but hadn’t really taken care of himself over the years, so he seemed much older. He couldn’t see any benefit to himself in her ideas, and in the end, as his health was failing, he accused her of nothing but cheap self-interest, of trying to fleece him out of what was rightfully his. Even when he died, he refused to acknowledge anything she’d done to make the last years of his life bearable. He went out as he lived life: alone, embittered and believing everyone was out for something.’
