Wish Upon a Star (21 page)

‘Don’t strain yourself with an effusive welcome,’ I told him, and Stella looked round.

‘Mummy!’

Ma hadn’t appeared to notice I was there before, but now she stepped back from her painting and laid down the palette and brush with a sigh. ‘That dog’s moved again,’ she complained.

‘They will do that,’ I agreed, looking at the painting, where Toto had been transformed into a kind of sleeping hairy cherub-creature with a black nose and round dark eyes.

‘You’re back,’ she added belatedly. Then her eye fell on Stella. ‘Where’s Hal? Didn’t he go to make tea?’

‘That was ages ago, Grandma and we drank it. He had to go to Ormskirk and get his medicine from the chemist. He told you.’

‘Did he?’ she said vaguely. ‘Did you have a nice time?’ she added to me.

‘No,’ I said shortly. ‘I went with Jago to the nursing home to see Miss Honey, if you remember, so he could persuade her to let him buy the shop?’

Ma’s blue eyes stopped looking vague and a wary expression came into them. ‘Oh, yes … didn’t it go too well?’

‘It was a
disaster
. It started out all right, with Miss Honey accepting that she wasn’t going to sell the shop as a going concern and seeming prepared to discuss Jago’s offer. But that was before she found her glasses and got a good look at
me
. Once she realised I was an Almond, the whole deal was off and she got so upset we had to leave.’

‘Ah,’ said Ma. ‘That’s a pity.’

‘And
that’s
an understatement,’ I snapped. ‘It’s cost Jago the property and he’s set his heart on it. Ma, don’t you think it’s time to tell me what this is all about? Did the Almonds and Honeys have some kind of giant fall-out in the dim and distant past?’

‘You could say that.’

‘If you’d warned me Miss Honey might take against me, I’d never have gone with him in the first place.’

‘I didn’t think she’d realise. Your name’s different, after all, and anyone can be fair and blue-eyed.’

‘But there’s obviously a family look that’s very distinctive, since everyone comments on it.’

‘Still, I don’t really see why Miss Honey should get upset about it anyway, because it’s Jago who’d be buying the place, not you. Didn’t you explain that?’

‘We tried, but she’d got the idea in her head that Jago and I were an item, and no matter what we said we couldn’t convince her otherwise.’

Ma sighed. ‘What happened was all such a long time ago, Cally. But then, to elderly people, the past is often clearer than the present, isn’t it?’

‘She’s a hundred and two and sharp as a tack:
everything
seems pretty clear to her,’ I said. ‘I only wish I could say the same, so I think it’s well and truly time for you to come clean and tell me what all the mystery is. What happened? What made the whole family emigrate to Australia? Is it something to do with that Esau Almond we’re not supposed to mention?’

Ma began to carefully clean her brushes. ‘It all happened during the war, long before I was born, when they thought differently about things. Esau was the middle son from the three at Badger’s Bolt, and he jilted a Honey girl. I think it must have been your Miss Honey’s younger sister.’

‘There has to be a bit more to it than that,’ I said shrewdly. ‘I mean, no one ever wants to talk about Esau, that’s why I guessed it was to do with him, but I thought perhaps he’d been an army deserter, or something like that.’

‘Look, I’ll tell you everything I know later,’ she said. ‘It’s not a very nice story.’

‘OK,’ I agreed, seeing that Stella was now listening in. ‘Little pitchers have big ears.’

‘Pictures don’t have ears, do they, Granny?’ Stella said. ‘Mummy, you are silly!’

‘That’s me,’ I agreed. ‘Come on – and Toto, too – let’s go back to the house.’

As soon as I had a minute, I wrote a letter to Miss Honey apologising for upsetting her and saying that I now realised there was some family history I hadn’t been aware of previously that would make the idea of my living in her former family home distasteful. Then I assured her that Jago and I were just friends, adding that in fact I’d only known him a couple of weeks and, in any case, my time was entirely occupied with my daughter, who had serious health problems. I ended by hoping she’d perhaps discuss the shop sale again with Jago on his own.

It was the best I could do, so I hoped it was enough. Stella and I popped down to the village green with Toto to post it and then feed the ducks, though today they were reluctant to get off their little island, so everyone else had probably had the same idea.

Stella was more than half asleep and we were on the way home when we met Raffy with his little white dog, which could have been Toto’s sibling, they were so similar, except for Toto’s legs being about a foot longer.

They skirmished round each other while I found myself telling Raffy about the Miss Honey fiasco and what Ma had said.

‘I knew there was some old mystery about Esau Almond; I’ve heard enough hints since I moved here,’ he said. ‘But none of my parishioners would tell me what it was. I’m pretty sure he didn’t come back here after the war, so perhaps he didn’t survive, though he’s not on the war memorial.’

‘Unless his name was the one chipped out in the As?’ I suggested. ‘A name’s been hacked out of the Almond memorial plaque in the church, too.’

‘Yes, and no grave for him in the churchyard, so he may have been killed and buried abroad,’ he agreed.

‘I expect they were very strait-laced, but Esau jilting Miss Honey’s sister doesn’t seem crime enough for them to erase all memory of him, does it? It seems a bit harsh … unless perhaps Miss Honey’s father did it?’

‘I suppose that’s a possibility.’

I sighed. ‘If I find out any more, I’ll tell you. I’ve just written to Miss Honey explaining my situation with Stella and stressing that Jago and I are only friends – and
recent
friends at that, though I must say it feels as if I’ve known him for ever.’

‘I expect you’ve a lot in common and he seems a genuinely nice man.’

‘Yes, he is,’ I agreed, and I don’t know why that should have made tears rise to my eyes, but it did. I blinked them back. ‘Well, we’ll see what revelations are to come, but for now we’d better get back and put the dinner on.’

When Stella was asleep that evening I went into the garden room where Ma was sitting sketching and eating Jaffa Cakes straight from the packet with a fuzzy Miss Marple video on in the background. Hal must have given the biscuits to her, because they hadn’t been on any of my shopping lists.

As I expected, she’d entirely forgotten she’d promised to explain the Honey Mystery, but when pressed said she didn’t know all the ins and outs of it anyway, only the little her own mother had told her, before warning her never to mention her uncle Esau again.

‘Not that he was really an uncle,’ she added.

‘Then just tell me what you
do
know,’ I persisted, and she sighed and laid the Jaffa Cakes aside.

‘My father was a cousin to the three boys at the farm,’ she said. ‘The oldest, Saul, stayed there during the war, because farming was a reserved occupation so one of them had to. They got land girls on to help later. That’s how my mother came here and met my father, when he was home on leave, and Saul married one of them, too. Anyway, the two younger brothers, Esau and Amos and my father were all called up and went off to war.’

‘I know that,’ I interrupted, ‘it’s what happened to Esau I want to know.’

‘I’m getting to it, I just need to set the scene a bit first,’ she said. ‘The three brothers were all tall, handsome men with fair, curly hair and blue eyes, so despite them being typical taciturn Almonds, the local girls were mad for them. The boys did sometimes go to dances in the village and church socials, that kind of thing.’

‘So, the middle one met the younger Miss Honey?’

Ma wrinkled her brow. ‘You know, I have a feeling Mum said she was called Gladys. And they must have met
somewhere
, because they were engaged when he went off to war. He got back after Dunkirk, but that was the last time he came home. After D-Day he was reported missing, presumed killed in action.’

‘Right … and they never found him?’

‘Not then, they didn’t. After a bit, his name was put on the war memorial with everyone else’s and the family memorial plaque in the church. The vicar held a service, too. But then Esau turned up a few years later.’

‘You mean … his body did?’

‘No, he was alive and kicking. His father and older brother had gone over to France on a kind of pilgrimage to the battlefields, with a few others from Middlemoss who’d lost relatives over there, and by a sheer fluke they spotted him sitting outside a village café, dressed like a local and obviously very much at home.’

‘Good heavens! That must have given them a bit of a shock.’

‘I think it gave Esau a shock too. He’d been wounded and taken in by a local farmer, and when he came round, he seized the chance to begin a new life under another name. He married the farmer’s daughter, started a family and had been living there ever since.’

‘Wow! Sounds like some kind of novel, or a film,’ I said. ‘But didn’t they all wear dog tags with their names and details on?’

‘I think he’d lost his when he was wounded.’

‘Right … and perhaps he’d had a blow to the head, or something, and really didn’t know who he was?’

‘Oh, apparently he knew all right, because he tried to run off when he saw his father and brother. They had a huge row, and then when they came home the first thing they did was chisel his name out of the memorials and ban any mention of him.’

‘So how did the Honeys know what had happened?’ I asked.

‘The other local people in the party had witnessed it all and rumours got out, but the family felt in honour bound to tell the Honeys anyway.’

‘I expect it made a bit of a stink,’ I said thoughtfully.

‘Yes, and being Strange Baptists seemed to make the Almonds feel the shame and humiliation very keenly, which is why they all emigrated to Australia. But my parents couldn’t take it – my father was a cattle man and he hated sheep, so they came back. I don’t really remember Australia.’

‘I know it must have been pretty scandalous at the time, but surely mass emigration was taking things a bit too far,’ I commented.

‘I don’t think they could face the Honeys. Gladys was away working for relatives up north when Esau was reported missing, but Mum said she came back for the memorial service and was heartbroken. It must have been even more devastating to learn he’d been alive the whole time.’

‘Poor thing,’ I said sympathetically. ‘What happened to her?’

‘You know, I’ve no idea, except that she moved away and presumably eventually married someone else. Of course, when we returned from Australia we never went near the Honeys’ shop – in fact, my parents barely went into the village. I was taught never to talk about it and to keep to myself.’

‘That accounts for a lot,’ I said.

‘Of course, it wasn’t anything to do with my parents in the first place, really,’ Ma said, ‘they just happened to be related, so most local people would have been OK with them. But that’s the Almonds for you. They did their shopping in Ormskirk or Middlemoss, and I had to trail all the way to the grammar school in Merchester, so I never got much chance to make local friends, apart from Ottie. Still, I always liked my own company best anyway.’

‘You still do.’

‘You’ve turned out differently, Cally. Apart from the curly hair and the colour of your eyes, there’s nothing Almond about you.’

‘Where did you get the arty stuff from?’ I asked curiously.

‘My mother liked to draw flowers and animals; she was quite good. But of course she was never trained; it was just a hobby and one she was generally too busy for.’

‘Well,’ I said, sitting back. ‘You knew quite a bit about the great family scandal, after all!’

‘I’ve surprised myself, actually. Some of it I only pieced together from Mum’s ramblings right at the end, when she was confused and going back over the past. It all seemed much ado about nothing.’

‘I can see now why seeing a distinctive Almond face was such a shock to Miss Honey, though,’ I said. ‘It must have brought everything back. I can only hope that now she’s had a bit more time, she’ll accept that Jago and I are just friends and not moving in to her old home together.’

‘Depends how acute her faculties are,’ Ma said, absently reaching for her discarded sketchbook and a stick of charcoal. Her fingers were already black with it and there was a smudge across her nose. I expect she’d ingested some with the Jaffa Cakes too, but it would probably do her digestion good.

‘Yes, you may manage to pull the wool over her eyes, who knows?’ she murmured ambiguously, but her mind was on her drawing and I’m sure she didn’t realise what she’d just said.

I hadn’t heard a thing from Jago after we’d got back from Pinker’s End, which made me suddenly realise quite how often we were usually in contact. Next morning, I tried first his mobile and then the shop number, which rang through to the message machine, so I supposed he and David were baking.

A little later I texted Jago’s mobile again and this time got a brief reply, saying he was out but would get back to me as soon as he could. When he didn’t, I thought perhaps now he’d had time to think about it, he might be cross with me for scuppering his chances of buying the shop, so finally I emailed him, saying that I’d written to Miss Honey explaining we weren’t in a relationship. Then I added that Ma had now told me all she knew about the family mystery, so I understood exactly why Miss Honey was upset. I thought that might pique his interest …

Then, belatedly, it occurred to me that perhaps the Abominable Aimee was visiting again and
that
was why he’d gone quiet. Maybe by now he no longer cared whether Miss Honey forgave him and let him buy the shop or not!

Stella went up to the studio with Ma for a bit and I tried out an idea I’d had while making brandy snaps, when it occurred to me that you could bend Parmesan crisps round a wooden spoon just as easily and they’d make rather sophisticated snacks or hors d’oeuvres.