Page 82 of The Little Flower Shop By the Sea
‘Oi! Your dog!’
Shaking myself from my memories, I see Basil about to cock his leg against the side of a mobility scooter. ‘Gosh, I’m so sorry,’ I tell an elderly lady carrying a string bag full of shopping. ‘Basil!’ I pull him away from the wheels. ‘No!’
‘Oh, it’s Basil,’ the lady says, easing herself on to the seat of the scooter. ‘I haven’t got my glasses on, I didn’t recognise you, lad.’ She reaches in her handbag and pulls out a pair of spectacles. ‘There, that’s better,’ she says, putting them on. ‘Now,’ she bends down to stroke him, and Basil, as always, laps up the fuss. ‘I haven’t seen you in ages, boy. How are you?’
She looks up at me. ‘Poppy?’ she says. ‘Is that you? You were just a young girl the last time I saw you.’
I look more closely at her.
‘Babs!’ I exclaim. ‘I’m just on my way to your cottage.’
Babs nods. ‘That’s right, young Ash said you were coming over. I was just getting some cakes in.’ She rolls her eyes, ‘Can’t even make me own these days.’
‘Oh dear, how are you? Ash said you hadn’t been too well lately.’
‘I have to admit, I’ve seen better days,’ she says, gesturing to her buggy. ‘But you have to get on with it, don’t you? I heard you were back in town and looking after Rose’s shop. I’d have popped in, but I haven’t been out much lately; touch of bronchitis hit me real bad, it did. But I’ve escaped today and been allowed out on me own for a while.’
‘Well done.’ I haven’t seen Babs for so long I barely recognise her. She’s lost a lot of weight, and has got a lot greyer in the hair department. ‘I heard about Stan,’ I say, wondering if it’s too soon to mention this. ‘How he decided to sell the castle and move away. It’s a shame it had to come to that. He loved that place.’
‘Hmmph,’ Bab says. ‘Or so he let everyone believe.’
‘How do you mean?’
Babs looks furtively up and down the street, then she beckons for me to lean in so she can lower her voice.
‘Stan changed in the years after you stopped coming to Trecarlan, Poppy – and not for the better, either. He was getting on a bit, and I don’t think he was playing with a full deck a lot of the time.’
‘Oh, poor Stan. What happened?’
‘Well, I’m not one to gossip, as you know…’ She looks shiftily about her. ‘But Stan got in with a bad crowd. There was a lot of drinking went on up at the castle, and –’ she looks up and down the street, but the weather has done one of its U-turns and there are ominous rainclouds gathering overhead, so anyone who’d been out enjoying the sunshine first thing this morning has already taken shelter. ‘Gambling,’ she whispers, so quietly I can barely hear her.
‘Really?’ I can’t imagine Stan running the sort of debauched gambling ring Babs seemed to be implying.
Babs nods. ‘Regularly held parties up there, he did. He’d let all ’n’ sundry into the castle. He asked me to cater for his parties, but I said no. My job was to look after him, not a load of hoolie-billies with more money than sense. So,’ Babs puts her hand to her chest, ‘he got in outside caterers!’
Stan might as well have let in serial killers. This would have been the ultimate insult to Babs.
‘That’s awful, Babs. I can’t imagine Stan doing that – not to you. He loved you and Bertie.’
‘Hmmph.’ Babs folds her arms across her chest. ‘You’d think so, after all we did for him. But the way he treated us, we were obviously just servants to him – nothing more.’
‘What are you talking about – what did he do?’
This was all very odd. It didn’t sound like the Stan I remembered at all.
‘Well, one night Stan had another of his parties. Me and Bertie weren’t involved, of course. But we heard he had another load of these hoolies staying with him – fromLondon.’
Babs spits the word out as if it’s toxic. ‘They came up in their fancy cars, lording it up all over St Felix before they even went to the party. I reckon they pissed off half the town that day with their airy-fairy ways. Sorry for me language, dear.’
‘Don’t worry about it. What happened next?’
‘I don’t know exactly what happened when they went up to the castle that night, I can only surmise.’
‘Surmise away.’
‘Well, there was the usual carryings on: too much drink and goodness knows what else. But the outcome was, Stan lost all his money – in a card game.’
‘No!’
