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My question makes her laugh and laugh. “No dear, theCock-A-Doodle-Doo.”
I don’t get the joke until she pulls out a tabloid newspaper to show me. TheCock-A-Doodle-Dooturns out to be the island’s weekly paper. On one of the inside pages, a box advert informs everyone.
NEW LOCATION FOR THE HONEY SHOP
For those of us who have missed Hedge in the village since his accident, there is good news. His granddaughter Elodie will be reopening the honey shop from a new location on Catcher Lane. Any help welcome. She will need:
Shelves, storage racks or containers to display stock
Shop counter
Lamps and light fittings
Emulsion paint for walls
Wax and polish for the wood
Bags or cloth for packaging
Curtains
Other shop accessories
It seems the Municipalité print the paper and anyone needing help posts a request in it. Which is what Myles de la Cour must have meant by getting the ball rolling.
The stampede of volunteers and donors hits its stride later that day, and by the end of the week, I have a lot more left-over paint. Tins and tins of different colours. They also bring me furniture polish, a stack of wooden crates, one dining-room table with broken legs, a couple of wicker baskets, a baby pram, a church pew, ten empty shoe boxes, and a broken bicycle. No shelves, though.
Trevor selected the best of the emulsion, an off-white, to paint my walls. “It’ll splatter all over your carpets,” he says.
“Splatter away,” I tell him, laughing. “It’s old and smelly, it’ll have to come out.”
“You know you can use some of them broken floorboards from next door,” Terrence tells me one evening. He usually comes over after finishing his work there.
“Aren’t they rotten?” The memory of the foul black dust from next door still stings the back of my throat.
“Not all,” he says. “They’re no good for floors, but a few might make short shelves and you could use some of the stones to hold them up.” He points to the pile of grey stones that must have come off some of the walls being knocked down.
My cold, hostile neighbour seems to be going like the clappers on his building project. Terence tells me they’re tearing down half of the old structure first and then will rebuild four separate cottages. They are working there every day.
“I really hope by the time my shop opens, the noise of destruction will have come to an end and the lane will be clean.”
“Oh, it will, don’t worry. We’re almost done with the demolition. He’s got prefab panels and new timber shipping in from Jersey. And we should start building in a couple of weeks.”
And it’s true. A man in a tractor drives up to deliver huge crates of stuff that must have arrived by ferry.
“You’d better go home, Terrence,” I say, noticing the time. “I feel terrible making you work after you’ve already done a full day. You must need your supper.”
“Is Hedge inside? Mind if I say a quick hello?”
Terrence comes with me into the kitchen, and I make him a tea while he sits with Grandad. “If it weren’t for ’im I never would’a met my wife,” he says, accepting the steaming mug from me.
Whatever it was my grandfather did in those night-time festivals, it’s made him very popular. Not for the first time, I am touched by how much loyalty and love there is on this island.
“Biscuit?” I offer him the box of spicy gingerbreads that the seigneur’s wife sent us from her own café.
It’s not only DIY donations I get; there are frequent food baskets. This must be how Grandad has survived with no income since his accident. This entire island feels like a family.
I go to bed happy that night, nothing can go wrong.
