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Shay shook her head. She didn’t want to bring Birtwell into the conversation.
‘Ah, well, we’re just building a visitor’s centre like they’ve got. It’ll perk up the local economy I hope, that’s what I’ve promised a load of councillors, anyway.’ He raised two sets of crossed fingers.
‘It’s huge,’ said Shay. ‘It was just a tiny place when you got the summer job, wasn’t it?’
‘You remember?’ He seemed nicely surprised by that.
‘Of course I do. And Denny was going to work with Mr Roseberry the landscape gardener.’
‘And you at the ice-cream parlour. We were both looking forward to the freebies.’ Jonah smiled, but it closed up quickly. ‘I thought I’d got the worst deal out of the three of us, but Mr Watson was such a lovely man. Working here kept me going, to be frank. He held the job open for me until I was ready and then gave me a weekend job when I went to college. After my A-levels, he asked me if I wanted a full-time position here.’ They walked across to the largest building on the site and he opened the door for her, ushered her in. ‘He said he’d train me up to run the place and so I said yes. It was the best decision I ever made. I was the son he never had, I think. He taught me everything he knew and he knew a lot. And then when he retired, he asked me if I wanted to buy the factory for a ridiculously cheap price that I couldn’t afford to pass up. Mum and Dad helped me finance it. They also helped Amanda and Terri set up the bee farm. You’ll probably get an invite soon to go and see that. She’s been asking me when you’re going to pop into the café.’
‘How did they get into the bees?’ asked Shay.
‘Amanda became a research student studying them after uni. One thing led to another, it’s as simple as that. I thought she was mad, if I’m honest; she took a hell of a wage drop for a lot of years but money doesn’t necessarily make you happiest,’ replied Jonah and Shay wondered if it was making her husband happy.
Jonah chuckled. ‘I remember them producing their first jar of honey and bringing it round to my parents’ house, putting it down in the middle of the table as if it was an Oscar. Fast-forward a decade and the Wells family somehowended up being Bees n Cheese. Can you get a more cheesy name than that, excuse the pun?’
‘I don’t think you can,’ Shay said with a smile.
‘Then the tea room came up for rent and Terri leapt in. She’s training Chloe to run that.’
They walked along a corridor with glass windows.
‘So the milk comes in from local farms and it’s pasteurised in there,’ explained Jonah, pointing to some giant silver tanks in the factory beyond the glass. They moved on until they were looking at another part of the process. ‘Then it’s cooled and poured into these milk vats. One of those will make half a ton of cheese. We add bacteria, sour the milk, stir it, add rennet which is a sort of fungus—’
‘I think I’m going off cheese,’ said Shay with a little laugh and a pretend gag.
‘Ha. Sometimes it’s best not to know too much. It starts to turn to a sort of jelly that we call junket. Then the solids get separated from the liquids – the curds and the whey – and all the liquid gets drained away.’ He shook his head regretfully. ‘How did I think you’d find this interesting?’
‘It is,’ she affirmed heartily.
‘Wait till I show you the cheese mill then, it’ll blow your mind.’
‘Can’t wait,’ said Shay and followed Jonah onwards to the mill where the cheese was chopped into small pieces before being pushed by hand into round moulds of varying sizes.
‘It’s as if they’re making sandcastles,’ Shay observed.
‘You aren’t the first to say that,’ Jonah replied. ‘Then all these rounds are pressed to remove any moisture that’s been hiding. That takes about three days. Then we come to the grand finale. Drum roll, please.’
At the end of the factory, workers were taking the cheeseout of the moulds, wrapping it in muslin bandages and then transferring it to the storage area to mature.
‘The good thing, thereallygood thing about our cheese is that it’s safe to freeze and it freezes better than any other cheese around which makes it ideal for export. And we do flavoured cheeses as well. We’re just about to launch chocolate and coconut cheeses as a trial. It shouldn’t work, but it does.’
‘That sounds… interesting.’
‘I’ll drop some off for you to try if you like.’
‘What happened to Mr Watson?’ Shay asked.
‘Couldn’t keep him away from the damned place,’ said Jonah with a fond shake of the head. ‘He was here more after than before he retired. I ended up asking him ifhewanted a job. Then he discovered the joys of cruising. Went on a ship, met a young lady of eighty and they live in wedded bliss in Sandbanks. We talk every couple of weeks on the phone, he’s still as sharp as a cheese knife.’
‘That’s a nice happy story,’ said Shay. She’d forgotten what they were.
They walked out of the door at the end. There was digging work going on in the near distance.
‘That’s the birth of the visitor’s centre. There’ll be a café and a shop and a bee section for Amanda and Terri to flaunt their wares. We’ll have to get on top of all the internet stuff of course, which is the next step, so my niece tells me. That age group know so much more about it than us dinosaurs.’
‘Yes, it’s an essential these days. My daughter can’t blow her nose without it appearing on Instagram. What she doesn’t know about social media isn’t worth talking about.’
