Page 90 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
As I passed the turn to the Giddingses, it was almost too tempting to just go there instead, but I resolutely went on.
I’d bought a large-scale map of the area, so I knew that I needed to follow a tiny thread of a lane that turned off just before Henry’s restaurant.
It ended at Withen Bottom Farm, a low stone building sitting gloomily in a hollow, with the Oldstone hidden by the crowding hillside above.
The metal gate to the cobbled yard hung open, creaking slightly in the cold breeze, and a large tractor was about to come out.
We stopped nose to nose. The driver was a small, thin, dark, grim-looking man with a long beaky nose, who first gestured to me to go away – though there was nowhere to turn other than the yard behind him – then glowered at me and switched off his engine.
‘You’ve taken the wrong turn. Could you not see the signs for the fancy restaurant further along?’ he shouted.
‘I don’t want the restaurant,’ I called out of the side window. ‘I’m looking for Joe Godet.’
He climbed down from his tractor and trudged over. ‘What do you want with him?’ he asked with deep suspicion. ‘Are you from the income tax? You’re a bit late, if so: he’s been dead these last fifteen years.’
‘Oh, no!’ I cried, shaken, for I’d taken Henry’s words to mean he was alive.
‘Well, he is, then, and nowt to be done about it,’ the man said dourly.
‘I’m very sorry – and I’m not from the income tax.’
‘Who the hell are you, then?’
Clearly he was a graduate of the same charm school as Nell and Tilda.
‘I’m … I was an abandoned baby and Joe Godet rescued me. He found me on the moors,’ I blurted out, thrown off course by the news. ‘I’m Alice – Alice Oldstone.’
His expression didn’t change, but after another glowering scrutiny he said grudgingly, ‘Happen you’d best come into the house, then.’
I turned off my engine too and we left our vehicles standing like dogs sizing each other up. I followed him into the farmhouse, which showed signs of bachelor occupancy, though there was an elderly woman attacking the pine table with a large scrubbing brush and a lot of energy.
‘This is Val, who does,’ he said, by way of introduction.
‘And I’ve done for the day,’ she told him, tossing the brush back into the sink and peeling off her bright pink Marigolds.
She gave me a nod and a narrow, curious scrutiny, then said to him, ‘If you want more dog hair off the carpet, you’ll need to buy a better vac, because that one belongs in a museum. Like me.’
‘There’s nowt wrong with it.’
‘There’s nowtrightwith it,’ she said, and then, throwing on an old plaid coat, left without a goodbye, other than the slamming of the front door.
I wondered where she was going, because there’d been no vehicle in sight, other than the tractor.
‘Sit down, if you like,’ invited the man.
‘Are you by any chance Joe Godet’s son?’ I ventured.
‘I’m George Godet, right enough, and the place is mine now.’
It was hard to guess his age, since his complexion was leathery and his eyes creased round the corners. ‘You doknowhe found an abandoned baby up by the Oldstone?’
‘Oh, aye, Dad often talked about you. Since he was the one foundyou, he thought he should have had the raising of you, too. But then, my ma was dead and he was no spring chicken, so it weren’t ideal.’
‘We could have been brother and sister, then,’ I said, and he scowled even more.
‘If you were hoping to get round him, so he’d leave you some brass, then you’re years too late …’ he began.
‘No, of course I wasn’t,’ I assured him quickly. ‘I just wanted to thank him for saving my life.’
