“Back already?” Liam give her a gentle smile.
“Cook?” she addressed the other woman. “Why did you tell me I should think about leaving the island earlier?
“You’re leaving?” Liam looked up from his food.
“I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s just everyone seems to be telling me…”
“What are you on about?” He took another bite of his breakfast then put his fork down.
She liked Liam. He’d joined the house a year before her. He was usually in Lord M’s room every day but so quiet, most of the time you didn’t notice he was there. People talked in front of him.
“You would tell me if you heard anything? About my job, I mean.”
He chewed thoughtfully. Then nodded. “Okay.”
That was all she was getting out of him. She pushed the garden door open and headed towards the village.
Six
She passed the aviary on her way, a walled garden with peacocks and other birds whose names she didn’t know. Emmet wasn’t there, but everyone else seemed to have seen him. The post office mistress, standing outside to stick a poster on her window, waved her over for a quick gossip. After the obligatory small talk and weather report, she asked, “Who’s the new cameraman, Emmet?”
“I haven’t met him yet.”
“No?” Mrs Parker raised her eyebrows suggestively. “I thought you might; he’s a good-looking fella.”
Pierre ignored the implication. Mrs Parker – everyone called her Young Parker despite being close to fifty because her predecessor, her mother-in-law, had been known as Old Mrs Parker – she meant well but loved to be the first on the gossip trail. She was always on the look-out for any hint of change in anyone’s life. Maybe she could tell Pierre if she was going to lose her job. Any large envelopes with applications for her job would come through the post office first. Last year it was Young Parker who’d broken the news about Millie and George’s impending nuptials when a stack of wedding magazines had arrived for Millie.
“Says he’s here to film the wedding,” she went on when Pierre didn’t comment. “But he’s a bit early, isn’t he? The wedding isn’t for another month.”
Probably because his girlfriend was the wedding planner and couldn’t live without him a moment longer. Pierre kept that thought to herself.
“I’d better hurry.” She scanned the village square behind her. “Lord M needs me to do some work at the library.”
The library was rarely used for reading. Mostly it was the lecture hall which doubled as a concert venue where obscure musicians and folk singers did their best to entertain the islanders. It also held talks from visiting experts and other boring geeks who talked about the birds in the Channel and the micro-climate that made these islands warmer than the continent. Very occasionally, Lord M invited someone to lecture about history, religion, or politics which Pierre found infinitely more interesting. The reading room was a large, quiet space, well-stocked with a collection of history books, most of them donated by Lord M himself.
She walked around the maze of bookshelves. Wedding traditions? Where did she even begin?
The librarian saw her and came over to chat. “I met your new photographer. He came asking for information about the –”
Birds by any chance?
“St Emmanuel Cliff.”
Bingo! Everyone knew about St Emmanuel, a sheer cliff which attracted wildlife enthusiasts. Every spring, the high granite cliff was transformed into nurseries for seabirds.
She shrugged. “I’m looking for anything about old marriage traditions on the island.”
The librarian didn’t know about those. He was much more interested in the flora and fauna of the island. He just pointed her in the direction of the indexing computer and left her to it.
She searched through the booklists on the computer. There was nothing about weddings. Then she tried another route. Medieval marriage ceremonies. Nothing. No wonder Lord M wanted her to catalogue them. The library’s reference lists were a mess.
Perhaps the way to begin was through her own knowledge; after all, that was why Lord M had chosen her for this project. Okay, what did she know? Back at university, she’d done a paper on early medieval art and the professor – what was his name? He’d talked a lot about jewellery used as marriage gifts. Was it Professor Godsend? Steve Godsend? How long ago? Five or maybe six years?
A quick google search of Nottingham University produced a list of faculty members and sure enough, Dr Stephen Goodson had his own page and even a YouTube channel. Thank God the man moved with the times.
