TRANQUILLITY
by Jan
Summer in Honeypot Cottage was always a lovely experience. The sun shone through the small bottle glass windows and created prisms of light that played and jumped around the timber-ceilinged room, dancing on the old oak refectory table and bouncing off the jardinieres full of fine, large leafed greenery which were lovingly wiped down with milk each day by old Mrs Haslemere.
Old Mrs Haslemere had lived in Honeypot Cottage all her life. She had been born there and knew every nook and cranny, every creak in the old floorboards and every loose board on the steep winding stairs which took her up to her bedroom each night. Her cottage was as old fashioned as she was; lace doilies on all the tables and on the mats under the plants, long hand-made runners along the oak sideboard, antimacassars on the chintz couch and fIreside chairs. The whole cottage gave a sense of stepping into the past, of a living piece of history in the middle of Bunting Mill Village.
No-one knew what age old Mrs Hazlemere really was, she had just always been there. In her younger and, to be honest, fitter days she had presided over the village fetes and been a stalwart at the Church bazaars. Everyone knew that if they came to her for advice or information they would be welcomed into Honeypot Cottage, sat down and given tea in a delicate bone china cup, with a saucer and a delicate, real silver teaspoon - none of your coarse mugs here! A real linen napkin would be placed on your lap and small dainty sandwiches with the crusts cut off, little cheese scones and a piece of ginger cake or shortbread would be offered from a three tier cake stand. Old fashioned niceties were certainly the order of the day for old Mrs Hazlemere in Honeypot Cottage.
That's why it was so strange when a gentleman caller was seen to visit one afternoon a week. Oh how the tongues wagged in Bunting Mill. "Who is he", "what can he want", "she has all those antiques you know, she might be taken advantage of." It was quite a talking point in Mrs Kennedy's dairy and Mr Kitterman's village post office. Even Mrs Dale at the library broke the silence by asking everyone with a library ticket if they knew about old Mrs Hazlemere's mysterious rendezvous each week with a stranger. Of course, nobody knew anything so the whispering and the guessing grew. Old Mrs Hazlemere became the talk of the village and she knew it and chuckled to herself as she polished her piano and stoked up her fire in Honeypot Cottage.
About 6 weeks after the first visit of the mysterious stranger old Mrs Hazlemere decided to have a tea party on her lawn. She invited the vicar and his plump little wife, Rev & Mrs Dawlish, the Mayor at the big house by the river, a large ruddy complexioned old colonial type who much preferred a drop of scotch to tea any day. She invited the ladies on the flower committee from the Church; it was guaranteed that anything told to them would be through the village by that same evening. The day was perfect, summers always seemed to be perfect at Honeypot Cottage. The birds sang and the sweet smell of lilac pervaded the air. And there he was - the mysterious stranger. "May I have your attention ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to welcome you all here today to
Stunned silence of course, no-one could ever remember a Mr Hazlemere. They had just assumed that as an unmarried spinster she had been addressed as Mrs as was the custom many years ago. "My fiance was killed in Ypres in 1917, I was a nurse in France at the time, I stayed on to have Gerald and left him in the good hands of the Sisters of Mercy Convent where he was brought up. We are now reunited and I want everyone to be as happy as I am."
Everyone stood up, clapping and talking at once. They all wanted to be the first to shake hands with old Mrs Hazlemere's son.
That was 3 years ago and as the whole village stand by old Mrs Hazlemere' s grave in the peaceful Churchyard, we remember that lovely day, with her face as radiant as the sunshine, her happiness complete now her son had come home.
I know this story to be true - I am Geraldene, old Mrs Hazlemere's granddaughter.
_____________________________________________________________________________
