Chocolate Wishes (8 page)

‘It’s a pity there isn’t something like that at Badger’s Bolt. This Mr Drake told Conrad that he’d also bought the title of Lord of the Manor of Sticklepond when it came up for auction, and Hebe Winter thinks that is a sign that he will take a benevolent interest in the village generally.’

‘I would have thought the Winters were Lords of the Manor.’

‘No, some of these old titles don’t seem to go with local families, they get sort of detached and then sometimes they auction a whole load of them off. Miss Winter said she wanted her great-niece to buy it, but since it was just an empty title she thought the money could be better spent on the estate.’

‘She’s probably right. It sounds like something you would just buy for vanity, like a fancy numberplate.’ I folded the top of the box down and taped it shut, then wrote ‘Angels – sitting room’ on top with a big, black marker pen. ‘Let’s have some coffee, and then you can tell me why you’re clutching a copy of
The Times
.’

‘I’ve marked some men in the lonely hearts column and after that last disaster I want to know what you think before I contact them. You might be able to tell better than me if they sound weird.’

They
all
sounded weird to me, or desperate. But then Poppy is also getting slightly desperate (though she is not at all weird), since she would love to marry and have children before it is too late.

I’d
resigned myself to having neither, unless you counted mothering Jake, who hadn’t so much fulfilled my maternal yearnings as made them wither on the vine.

Eventually, just as even the heroic patience of Grumps’ buyers was wearing thin, the day of our removal to the Old Smithy dawned clear and bright.

The day before, Poppy had brought her big horsebox over, and we’d taken all my pots and tubs and the dismantled greenhouse across to the Old Smithy and put them in the walled courtyard. The pots of scented geraniums had to line all the windowsills, since it was too cold to put them outside yet.

When we’d done that, Poppy showed me the house-warming present she and Felix had bought me between them: fixed to the wall next to my new front door was a painted oval sign, decorated with red geranium flowers, which read, ‘Angel Cottage’.

‘Angel Cottage, 1 Angel Lane’ sounded wonderfully soft and downy and safe, a home I could nestle into, like a cygnet under its mother’s wing. But I wasn’t sure what Grumps would make of it – angels on one side, pagans on the other! Still, there was a good chance he would never even notice.

You know, Sticklepond was a very Angel sort of place, what with Angel Lane and the old church of All Angels, the graveyard of which seemed full of marble ones. Felix told me a nearby stonemason specialised in them, and I often admired them over the wall.

And now there was my Angel Cottage too. It had been immaculately cleaned by Dolly Mops and was now repainted a soft, warm cream throughout, with one deep, old-rose, purply-pink wall in the little living room, to match the old tiles around the hearth.

The only exception to the colour scheme was the dark purple wall in Jake’s room, of course, which actually didn’t look quite as bad as I’d thought it would, even after I had hung his retro red, black and purple curtains.

Poppy helped me to hang the rest of the curtains before she had to dash back to Stirrups. She’d spent so much time in the previous two weeks helping me to scour the local junk and charity shops for furniture and furnishings that Janey was starting to complain, even though she was quite capable of going off on a bender herself at a moment’s notice. (A bit like Mum, though at least Janey’s disappearances lasted only a few days and she
always
came back.)

But we had done as much as we could anyway and by the next day this would be my new home – and maybe a whole fresh new chapter in my life too, as a contentedly single and successful businesswoman.

The team of removal men swung into action at dawn next morning. They had already spent days packing up the house, with Zillah and Grumps increasingly marooned in the kitchen and study respectively, among the packing cases.

Jake and I were all ready to go, we just had to strip our
beds and pack up the last few things, like the kettle and coffee mugs. Then the contents of our flat were loaded into a small van and whisked away to Sticklepond, while the rest of the men were only just starting to fill a huge pantechnicon with Grumps’ worldly goods (
and
otherworldly ones), as though they were doing some challenging kind of three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.

Felix and Jake were to direct unloading operations at the cottage, so Jake drove Zillah over in my Fiat, with Tabitha complaining bitterly in a basket on the back seat.

When I rang his mobile later to see how they were getting on, he said he and Felix had just screwed our bed frames together (I made a note to check those out before sleeping on them) and put the mattresses back on, and Zillah had already got the Aga going in her new kitchen and was dispensing stewed tea and biscuits.

‘
And
she put butter on Tabitha’s feet before she let her out!’

‘I think that’s supposed to make cats come back to the new house, though goodness knows why,’ I said. ‘Tell me when the phone landline starts working, won’t you? And I hope we can get broadband quickly, because I don’t want to have to conduct my business from the library or an internet café.’

‘OK, though Felix has broadband and I’m sure he would let you use his computer…and here comes
my
stuff, so I’ll have to go,’ he said, then rang off. I expected he would spend hours rearranging his new bedroom, ignoring the rest of the cottage, but at least Felix was there to make sure all the boxes and furniture went into the rooms they were labelled for.

Back at the old house, Grumps had written solidly in his
study while it was emptied around him, so that his tall, Gothic chair and matching desk were the last things to go into the van – and therefore would be the first items out at the other end, meaning there would be very little disruption to his work. Clearly, there was method in his madness.

Finally, I drove him to Sticklepond in the Saab, wrapped in a midnight-blue velvet cloak against the chill and with a sort of embroidered fez over his long, silver hair. I dropped him off at the door, then turned round and went right back to take a last look alone around the old house and say my goodbyes. It was just something I felt I needed to do, before I could move on.

All the rooms echoed hollowly under my feet and looked strangely forlorn, especially the kitchen without Zillah’s bright cushions, throws and curtains. I wandered through the house, remembering mainly the happy things, like Granny and the strangely pagan-crossed-with-Christian version of Christmas we celebrated every year, Jake’s face as a small child, unwrapping presents (the one from Mum I always bought for her, because she never had any idea what he really wanted) and the night Poppy and I saw the angel…

I tried not to let memories of the bad times seep in, the moments of heartbreak and despair, but it was still all a bit poignant. It was more than time to move on and, I wondered, maybe I could leave the past behind me, like an outgrown shell and slip into a more expansive future?

In fact, a fresh start in a new place was just what we
all
needed – the Angel cards this morning had more or less told me so. I was sure Zillah had got her last reading wrong and the only visitors from my past likely to bother me were the ghosts I had just laid to rest.

I placed a big glazed pot of tulips on the kitchen windowsill, with a note welcoming the new owners to their home. Then I left, dropping the keys off with Conrad on the way to Sticklepond.

In our cottage Jake was still upstairs, which was much as I had expected, but Felix had lit a fire in the sitting room and was unpacking kitchen stuff into the wrong drawers and cupboards, though it was a kind thought, as was his having plugged in the little freezer and fridge the moment they were brought in.

‘I thought I’d make a start,’ he explained, ‘but I’ll have to go in a minute. I’ve got someone coming for a complete set of leather-bound Dickens and I’m hoping to offload some Thackeray onto them too. Is there anything else you’d like me to help you with, first?’

‘No, you’ve done wonders, Felix, I’m really grateful. And I
love
the house sign that you and Poppy gave me!’ I said warmly, giving him a hug. ‘I’m going to make our beds up now and then everything else can wait until tomorrow.’

After he’d gone, I found a new little bookcase with a slanting top that fitted neatly under the steep staircase, with a card from Felix saying it was especially for my Georgette Heyer collection. He was so kind! In fact, he would make someone a wonderful husband, preferably Poppy. It certainly wasn’t going to be me, and any other woman would undoubtedly resent his close friendship with us, so Poppy was the only possible candidate, when I came to think about it.

Grumps’ removal men had gone into reverse, and were now unloading and unpacking everything, though it was such a mammoth task that they would have to come back next morning to finish.

Once I was sure everyone had a bed to sleep in that night, I suggested we went over to the Falling Star for a bar meal. We were all exhausted, with the possible exception of Grumps. Even Jake looked tired, though he didn’t seem to have done much more than drive Zillah across and then spend the rest of the day rearranging his bedroom and sticking posters – all featuring the blood red/funereal purple/dead black range of the spectrum with lots of skulls, dragons and swords – onto the freshly painted walls.

When we trooped into the snug, which was empty as usual, since the regulars preferred the music, dartboard and slot machine of the public bar, they all came and peered at us through the hatch as if the circus had come to town.

I certainly don’t usually merit this kind of attention, but I suppose as a group we did look a bit unusual, what with one near-Goth dressed head to foot in black and only needing a large axe in order to be a dead ringer for the Grim Reaper, an elderly Merlin in a rubbed velvet jacket and embroidered, tasselled fez, and a small, round gypsy clad in several brightly clashing layers and with a shocking-pink scarf wrapped around her head like a turban. But I expect they will quickly get used to seeing the family about the village and we will be a seven-day wonder.

The young, pink-haired barmaid, Molly, was the exception, since she showed no sign of surprise or interest at our appearance, apart from eyeing Jake in a slightly speculative manner. There was no sign of Mrs Snowball, who kept early hours, and that was perhaps a good thing.

Grumps, who rarely enters pubs, was very gracious about scampi in a basket and plastic sachets of tartare sauce – more gracious than Zillah, actually, who was
affronted by the modest prices and said she could have cooked the meal at home for a fraction of the cost, and much better too. But she said it without her usual gusto, so she was definitely tired. I tend to forget she must be nearly as old as Grumps, because her face has been seamed, lined and folded like an old brown linen tablecloth for as long as I’ve known her.

We went back to the Old Smithy and had what Grumps called a libation of good single malt in honour of our new home, then we all went to bed. It had been a
very
long day.

Grumps, needing little sleep, had already knocked out a chapter of
Satan’s Child
and was in the museum by the time I’d seen Jake off to college next morning (in Grumps’ Saab, with huge warnings about being careful and not driving too fast).

Although I’d managed to find the toaster and the Pop-Tarts, Jake’s current breakfast of choice, the whereabouts of the porridge oats and jar of honey was still a complete mystery to me. I think my box packing and labelling must have been getting a bit random by the time I got to the kitchen, because I kept finding the most unlikely combinations, but I sincerely hoped I’d screwed the lid on the honey tightly and it was the right way up, wherever it was.

I slipped silently through the door leading from the cottage into the museum. Grumps had his back turned to me, but even so he immediately said, ‘The removal men are here again already, Chloe, unpacking in the house.’

It’s always unnerving that he can tell who is behind him
without looking – but equally unnerving that when he is completely absorbed in something he can be so totally
unaware
that even a herd of elephants stampeding through the room wouldn’t penetrate his consciousness.

‘Well, that’s good, Grumps and, going by yesterday, unpacking is much, much quicker than packing, so they should be done very soon and then you can get back to normal.’

Whatever normal is, in Grumps’ case.

‘Zillah is directing their activities.’

Zillah was more likely to be in the kitchen with Tabitha, smoking a roll-up fag, drinking tea and studying the cards, so I said, ‘Do you want me to go and help? I can tell them where to put things.’

‘Thank you, but I do not think that is necessary, for they seem to know what they are doing. But they are currently in the study, so I thought I would come in here for a time. They should not be long, since they need not unpack my books. Jake will help me arrange them tomorrow, it being the weekend, since he tells me he is eager to earn enough money to purchase a pair of firesticks. Interesting – he must demonstrate these weapons when he has them.’

‘Actually, I don’t think they are weapons, Grumps, just a form of entertainment, like juggling. One of his friends has been letting him use his, but he wants his own.’

‘Everything is a weapon when used the right way, Chloe. Do not underestimate the power of light or fire.’

I thought that was a bit of a sweeping statement, but let it pass because Grumps can be really weasely in arguments, so I often found I’d switched to his side without realising it and was arguing against my own original point. Jake was getting to be good at this too. Perhaps he could become the first Goth politician in the House of Commons? Or the
post of Black Rod could become that of Black Firestick? That would liven things up a bit.

‘Those cleaners Felix recommended were extremely thorough,’ Grumps was saying approvingly, and it was true, because both the cottage and house sparkled, and here in the museum the glass display cases had been cleaned and polished inside and out, and the mahogany desk by the door shone like oiled silk.

‘Oak floors,’ Grumps pointed out, ‘very fortuitous for our meetings.’

‘Yes, I suppose if you can’t meet in an ancient oak glade, at least here you will have the equivalent under your feet.’

‘True.’

I would be able to stop worrying about him catching a chill, too. Performing magical rites totally starkers might sound kinky, but actually Grumps’ love of nudity harks back to a more innocent age of healthy naturism and has nothing to do with any Five-fold Kiss or Great Rite goings-on. In fact, when Granny was alive, she used to go and sit on the sidelines as a sort of indulgent chaperone, knitting, with flasks of hot tea to thaw everyone out afterwards. Zillah took over the role, but she told me these days she usually stayed in the car instead, smoking and reading magazines by torchlight, till the coven came back.

‘Well, if you don’t need me, I’ll go and start sorting out the unpacking in the cottage—’ I began.

‘Ah, but before you go, there
is s
omething I need your assistance with, Chloe. Here, take this compass and box of chalks and I will bring the maps and yardstick.’

It appeared that he wanted me to help mark out a huge
pentagram on the floor at the far end of the museum, which he obviously deemed to be of much more importance and urgency than my unpacking.

But there was never any point in trying to deflect him from a course he was truly determined on, so I meekly took the chalk and did what he told me. Naturally, this involved a lot of measurements and constant references to a largescale map, on which he had drawn the conjunction of the two important ley lines.

Well, that was fiddly, but eventually it was done to his satisfaction and I promised to buy a huge roll of masking tape and some hard-wearing paint later that morning and make the pentagram permanent.

The windows, which were fortunately mostly at the back of the building, were to be hung with dark blue velvet, and a curtain of the same material would frame the pentagram end of the room, a bit like a stage, so that area could be shut off when the museum was closed.

‘The curtains are delayed. They should have been delivered today, but they have promised they will be finished by the end of the week – in good time for the full moon, you know.’

‘Oh? Well, I hope they do, because it’s a big job to complete so quickly, isn’t it?’

‘They
will
finish in time,’ he stated positively, then cast a satisfied eye around the room. ‘It will all work very well: the visitors will think the pentagram is part of the exhibition, since there will be an illustrated history of the Old Religion hung around the walls at that end.’

‘They have something similar in the hall at Winter’s End, Grumps – but mostly about Alys Blezzard, the family witch.’

‘She was little more than a herbalist, like Hebe Winter,’
he said dismissively. ‘But my history will be comprehensive and all-embracing.’

‘Do you know Hebe Winter, Grumps? I haven’t met her, though I have seen her about.’

‘Our paths have crossed once or twice in the past.’ He delved randomly into the nearest packing case and came up with a particularly scary-looking Balinese mask. ‘Now, why would that be in the Fetish box?’

My reply was drowned out by a thunderous knocking at the museum door, which proved to be two workmen with the freshly repainted museum sign.

We went out to see the board fixed into place over the entrance door, standing at the edge of the pavement out of the way of the ladders.

Across the road old Mrs Snowball, who had evidently just finished her daily paving stone purge, called ‘Coo-ee!’ and flapped a hand at Grumps.

He bowed in her direction, gracefully doffing his fez, before turning back to admire his sign:

GREGORY WARLOCK’S MUSEUM OF WITCHCRAFT A CELEBRATION OF ALL THINGS PAGAN

There was also a folding wooden billboard that would stand on the pavement outside the door when the museum was open, enticingly listing the delights to be obtained inside and also the charges for entry.

I hadn’t had any hand in this, so I read with interest that the museum would open from two until four on five days a week, from Easter to September, and weekends only off-season.

ADMISSION: FOUR POUNDS NO CONCESSIONS NO CHILDREN UNDER 12 YEARS OF AGE PARKING AT REAR OF BUILDING

‘We have plenty of time to get it ready if you mean to open in early April, Grumps.’

‘Yes, though all the exhibits need arranging, and a guidebook and perhaps some pamphlets must be produced. But I am sure it can be done in time, and then Zillah says she will be happy to take charge of the desk when I am otherwise engaged.’

‘I don’t suppose it’s that much different from reading fortunes at the end of a pier, so she will probably enjoy it. And I can help out too, of course, if you need me,’ I offered.

‘You have your own little business to run,’ he said graciously.

‘Yes, but I can still give you a hand if things are really busy in peak tourist season. I’ll set up the Chocolate Wishes equipment this afternoon and then Jake’s going to see if he can reconnect us to broadband when he gets back, so I can print off my new orders.’

That had to be the first priority, and then getting the cottage sorted out. But after that, finally, I could get at my potentially lovely walled garden!

‘Jake will work at the museum in his university vacations, I have spoken to him about it. For one day,’ Grumps added, with a magnificently sweeping gesture at the Old Smithy, ‘all this will be his. Except the little cottage, of course – I am arranging to have that transferred into your name.’

Stunned, I turned to stare at him. ‘In
my
name? You mean…I’ll
own
it? But Grumps—’

‘But me no buts,’ he said grandly.

‘It’s so kind of you, Grumps!’ I stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, which he suffered me to do rather in Jake’s manner, though I know they both quite like it, really. Then an unwelcome and probably unworthy thought struck me. ‘But what if Mum comes back? Won’t she expect—’

‘Your mother has chosen her own path and deserves nothing more from any of us. If she returns after I’m gone, then I would strongly advise you to send her on her way again. Any share of my inheritance she might
think
she deserves has already gone to pay off her debts.’

This was very true…and already I was feeling possessive about my little cottage! I was happy for it to be Jake’s home for as long as he needed it, but there was no way I could share living space with my mother ever again.

Having finished their job the workmen packed up their tools and departed and Grumps fell back a bit, so that he could admire the sign again. The weak late February sunshine gilded his long, silver hair under the fez and shone off the bald patches on the seat and elbows of his quilted velvet robe. For the first time I noticed he had only thin, red leather Moroccan slippers on his feet and I was about to urge him to go back in, since the cold from the pavement would be striking upwards, when there was a screeching noise from the road behind us. A small white Mini had jarred to an abrupt stop and was quivering by the pavement.

A tall, silver-haired, imposing woman unfolded herself from it and confronted Grumps: Hebe Winter, soon to be not the only witch in the village. Though actually, going by the way old Mrs Snowball had been carrying on, Hebe may have had company all along without realising it. Perhaps she was the only
solitary
witch in the village.

‘Hello, Hebe,’ Grumps said, doffing his fez again, as he had done to Mrs Snowball.

‘
You?
’

‘Yes, me,’ he agreed, quite mildly for him. ‘How are you, my dear? Still dabbling in the shallows of alchemy, turning herbs into money?’

She didn’t appear to register what he had said, for she’d now spotted the museum sign and an expression of outrage appeared on her patrician features. ‘Can it be possible that it is
you
who have bought the Old Smithy – that you intend to
live
in Sticklepond?’

‘It can and it is. We moved in yesterday.’

‘
We?
’ She acknowledged my presence for the first time by favouring me with an unimpressed stare, but of course I was wearing old jeans and a fleece for unpacking and moving things, not dressed to receive august and slightly scary visitors.

‘With my family,’ Grumps explained. ‘This is my granddaughter, Chloe.’

That didn’t even merit another glance – she had weightier matters to get off her narrow chest now she had spotted the new sign. ‘You cannot seriously expect to open such an ungodly museum in Sticklepond, nor introduce your dubious ways into my parish, and think that I would do nothing to prevent it?’ she demanded. ‘I felt the threat coming, yet I thought it concerned our lack of a permanent vicar to guide and protect us, not the establishment of a Mecca to the Dark Arts in our midst!’

‘Oh, come off your high horse, Hebe,’ Grumps said testily. ‘You know I am not a threat to anyone, even if I am opening a museum of witchcraft. Does it not seem a good idea to you? I had thought you would approve.’

‘Approve of you bringing your dubious practices to Sticklepond? I think not!’

‘Then you may be pleased to learn that some of what you would prudishly consider to be my more
dubious
practices have, unfortunately, currently been curtailed by cold weather and old age.’

This was all very interesting and there was obviously some history between them. In an unusually expansive moment Grumps once let drop that when he first moved to Merchester and started his coven, one or two local witches he had invited to join him had taken exception to the nudity aspect of his rites. I expect it was an innovation too far, even though they must have seen that he was a scholarly, rather than an any-excuse-to-have-an-orgy type of warlock.

‘Be that as it may, I cannot approve of your ungodly ways,’ Hebe said firmly. ‘And there is
nothing
to celebrate in paganism!’

‘It would have been far worse if Digby Mann-Drake had bought the place. He wanted it, you know – only I clinched the deal with the Frintons while he was unable to act, due to a septic appendix. Dear girls, the Frinton sisters – we sorely miss them at our meetings.’

Her bright blue eyes widened. ‘The
Frintons
? You mean they were…?’

‘If you will practise in solitude, it is hardly surprising that you don’t know these things, Hebe,’ Grumps chided, but she didn’t seem to hear him, because another thought seemed to have struck her.

‘What was that you said about Mann-Drake?’ she asked sharply.

‘You have heard of him, then?’

‘Of course. He’s an even bigger charlatan than you!’ she said rudely.

‘You must not underestimate him, my dear Hebe – nor me. He is not just a harmless exhibitionist, but uses what powers he has for unworthy ends, corrupting and debasing impressionable young people.’

Hebe was now looking worried. ‘A Mr Drake snapped up the title of Lord of the Manor when it came up for auction – for a hugely inflated price, even though it confers no benefits whatsoever –
and
he has purchased an isolated house at the edge of the village, Badger’s Bolt. Drake is not an unusual name and I thought nothing of it, but now I wonder if it could be Mann-Drake?’