There’s only one thing for it during an ongoing heartache situation: a trip to Bizzy Izz’s, another Wheaton institution holding on for dear life. It’s the sweetest tea room in the Cotswolds, and I’m not talking intentionally shabby chic, either. This is old-school, hangover-from-the-1970s stuff; all copper kettles on the walls and cabbage roses on the curtains, as thoughThe Country Diary of an Edwardian Ladyand Laura Ashley had a chintzy tea-room baby.
I wasn’t sure how Lucy would react to the suggestion of popping out to eat, but she followed me dutifully down the lane and into the village. I saw her tired red eyes light up when we let ourselves inside a moment ago and were immediately assaulted by retro (read: ‘so old they’ve become cool again’) decorations and a blast of Christmas FM on the cafe radio.
Now the hugs are out of the way – Izz has known Lucy since she was a baby – she asks if we want some tea.
‘Maybe a hot chocolate for me? Large, please,’ Lucy replies, and I get a flash of the little girl she used to be.
‘Righty-o,’ Izz calls, disappearing again, but I make sure she hears my order for two big breakfasts as well.
‘I’d have thought Izz would have retired by now,’ says Lucy, pulling up a chair by the cherrywood grandfather clock that hasn’t ticked in decades but is nonetheless shiny and gorgeous.
‘She should have done,’ I say, ‘years ago, but, between us, I’m not sure she can bring herself to sell the place.’
Lucy’s looking around like she’s seeing it for the first time. I’m not surprised, really. It’s been a while since she visited Wheaton, and she usually spends her trips out in the fresh air with her easel and paints.
‘It’s cute,’ she says, but her eyes fall back to her hands in her lap. She’s more exhausted than me, poor thing.
When she stumbled through my cottage door long before dawn, she cried, and I managed to get a few details out of her, but not many. Craig had upped and left at some point in the last twenty-four hours and their on-again, off-again relationship seems to be well and truly off for good this time. He even went to the trouble of taking the telly they had bought together, so I reckon he really isn’t coming back. I try not to feel too pleased she chose to come to me in her hour of need, but it’s nice to be wanted. I hope it doesn’t mean she didn’t have anyone else and I was her last resort.
Wheaton was never really her home. When my sister Lydia (a nurse) and Terry, her husband (he’s a pharmacist) left Wheaton for Birmingham to take jobs at the hospital, they of course took Lucy with them. She was only a toddler then. Later, when the prospect of a living wage and comfortable working conditions in shiny New Zealand hospitals and dispensaries proved too irresistible for either of them to turn down (and who can blame them?), Lucy was leaving for uni and didn’t want to go with her parents. It caused a lot of tears and guilt on both sides, but everybody’s fine about it now.
Lucy’s boyfriend at the time probably had a lot to do with the decision to stay. I can’t even remember his name. He was what Mum would call a ‘flash in the pan’ kind of fellow.
And, right on cue, there it is again. I have to push thoughts of Don, my own flash in the pan, to the back of my brain. He emerges at every opportunity to remind me I have no more relationship nous than a teenager.
Anyway, Lucy’s uni days are far behind her, and she’s been settled in Birmingham in her own place for a few years now, doing bits and bobs of substitute art teaching and tutoring, and every now and again we get days like this, me and her, catching up. They are a beacon of light for me. I adore this girl, and I am – even though I am her only auntie – still regarded by her as her ‘cool aunt’. Got the birthday mug to prove it and everything.
‘One hot chocolate.’ Izz puts the mug down between us. It’s peaked with cream and marshmallows. ‘And tea in a mug, strong and black. Breakfasts won’t be a minute,’ she says, but at the rate she shuffles off, I wonder if perhaps it’s going to take longer than usual.
‘Is your hip still bad, Izz?’ I ask, and she turns in a slow half-circle to face us again.
‘Bit creaky now it’s turned colder.’ She adjusts her stance in a pained way. ‘But I’ve got one of the farmers’ daughters coming in today to help out. Trial run.’
‘That’s good,’ I say, trying not to sound too enthusiastic, because I’ve been begging Izz to look for a helper for ages and she wouldn’t hear anything of it, she’s so protective of her little world, and I suppose, up until recently, she’s managed fine on her own.
Izz grimaces. ‘If she comes. She’s late.’
‘The roads were icy on the way here,’ puts in Lucy. ‘Maybe she’s having trouble getting into the village if she’s coming from one of the farms?’
‘Well, let’s hope she’s a dynamo when she does get here,’ Izz says as she hirples into the kitchen. We watch her go, Lucy’s expression mirroring my own.
‘Not good,’ Lucy says, as Izz disappears into the kitchen.
‘Izz likes her independence and to be kept busy, but’ – I lower my voice to a whisper – ‘it’s getting too much now.’
Izz’s voice rising in song with the kitchen radio makes us both smile. I’ll bet she knows we’re talking about her.
‘So, did you bring your art supplies?’ I venture, but Lucy only looks at me, a little surprised, and shakes her head, like the idea hadn’t occurred to her.
‘That’s a shame. You could have done some painting today.’
My den wall has, over the years, become a bit of a Lucy gallery. They’re all hanging there: from her first messy attempts with crayons and poster paints; through her teens when she was experimenting with portraiture in acrylics; to her more recent work, wonderful watercolours, mostly landscapes with a dreamy, unreal touch to them. Combined, they’d give the rather snooty Wheaton Gallery a run for its money. Only Lucy’s paintings are actually priceless in my opinion.
She just shrugs, and it strikes me I haven’t heard her mention anything to do with art in a very long time. She was forever entering her work into competitions or local exhibitions, but that’s all gone quiet now. Not for the first time, I hear alarm bells ringing about how she’s been living. I try to hide my concern with a smile.
‘How are you now? That was quite the overnight dash you made.’
She takes a drink of hot chocolate, considering this.
