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Chapter Twenty-Two
The Eye of the Storm
There is a point in the swell of a storm when all life holds its breath and hides its head. An innate animal instinct for self-preservation kicks in and while the wind and rain rage on, each creature settles itself, seeking comfort.
This moment befell all the inhabitants of Clove Lore at precisely two-fifteen on the afternoon of December the twenty-third, as the low-sinking sun in the west became obscured entirely by the thickest, darkest band of cloud to collect over the fragile, beautiful Devonshire coast in ten decades.
The clouds roiled and turned in upon themselves like black fire. Furious winds forced underneath the cloud formed a fierce corridor of air that blasted against the land and whipped up the waves.
When the lights went out, Clove Lore had been plunged into darkness, save for the Big House where the lights in the attics and kitchen, powered by their own noisy generator, glowed on.
After lunch, Minty and Jowan had drunk black coffees huddled by the old Aga. Aldous had lazily licked his lips and curled up asleep at his master’s feet. They sat in companionable silence listening to the radio telling of the safe delivery of twelve Chinese sailors taken from the container ship now at anchor off the coast.
‘Here’s to them.’ Jowan raised his mug, and Minty followed.
‘Safe harbour,’ she said, and both drank, sinking into silence again, waiting for the storm to pass.
Three floors up in the attics, Leonid read in his calmest voice to Izaak from his book about camellia cultivation, stroking Izaak’s brow as he listened, both crushed together on the big armchair.
They’d carefully unpacked the poppy seed cake – a Christmas gift from Izaak’s mother in Krasnik, with a note signed in defiance of the prejudices that had driven him to England in the first place: ‘For my two sons, from your loving Matka’.
They were trying hard to ignore the storm outside and the inevitable thoughts of Leonid’s parents’ abject silence this winter. They had remained unmoved by Leonid’s many messages asking them to try to be happy for their son and his groom.
Leonid kissed Izaak’s temple and they each took bites of the cake as Leonid turned another page, both of them visualising camellias coming into fat green bud in the spring sunshine and red poppies bobbing their heads in peaceful summer fields.
Out in his little house on the main road that led away from Clove Lore, Bovis did not yet know the electricity had shorted. In a bubble bath neck-deep, by candlelight, he feverishly turned the pages of a book he’d meant as a gift, now desperate to discover which of the Miss Bennets’ stories would end happily and which in regret. This is how readers are born.
A little farther along the main road, when thrown into sudden darkness, Elliot and Jude had scrabbled for the torch from Elliot’s vet bag. At least their gas stove still worked in the power cut, so they cooked together in the dim kitchen, their LED star lights shining in the steamy windows.
Elliot found himself wishing he’d remembered to buy candles as he thumbed the small velvet box in his pocket, deciding to defer the question he’d been meaning to ask Jude this evening until some other peaceful night in front of the TV. Jude couldn’t help glancing at him in concern. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked gently.
‘I…’ he hesitated. ‘I’m just thinking of the animals at the practice. They’ll be frightened by the sounds of the storm.’
Jude smiled at her soft-hearted Elliot, turned off the heat and abandoned the stir fry, reaching for him.
‘They’ll be all right, they’re safe. Anjali’s there with them, right?’ Seeing that this might not in fact be the thing making Elliot fret, she added, ‘And we’re safe here. All is well, OK?’
He nodded with a smile and let her kiss him.
Gently, he lifted her and set her onto the kitchen counter so they could be closer, and she laughed at this, like she always did.
‘You’re right,’ he told her, before taking a deep breath and slowly lowering himself to kneel at her feet. He presented her with his gift.
‘Jude Crawley.’ He gazed up at her with soft eyes as she brought her hands to her face. He opened the box to reveal the fiery orange stone in its silver setting. ‘Will you have me, forever, as your husband?’
His face fell when Jude hopped down from the counter telling him to wait there. He stood again, unsure what to do. Was it too soon? Had he blown it?
She was back a moment later with a wrapped box from under the Christmas tree. ‘Only if you’ll have me as your wife,’ she told him, and his amazement turned to happy tears as he tore the paper away to reveal a gleaming band of his own.
The rest of their evening slipped away by torchlight beneath the covers as easily as those rings had slipped onto their fingers.
Down in the village, not all of Clove Lore’s inhabitants were quite so comfortable.
Mrs Crocombe sat alone in her ice-cream parlour weeping, not so much at the thought of the freezers losing power but more because, in rare moments like this, she felt very much alone in the world.
She pulled the notebook from her pocket and leafed through the names of old pals and people who’d passed through; those she thought would stick around, and those who’d left for good. She was one woman trying to build a village on love. Not an easy task.
She knew what some of the locals called her. She was a busybody, a gossip, a pain in the neck. But she’d seen the village in its prime, when there was no such thing as holiday houses left vacant all winter then rented out all summer to people who brought in their own food and left nothing but litter.
