Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 20

She started off down the rutted path. The trees met overhead, making it dark and oddly quiet. She felt her shoes clomp on the muddy ground.
‘I don’t like this,’ she said, after she’d been walking for twenty minutes and could see nothing apart from trees and fields stretching away in every direction. However, she didn’t fancy stomping her way back through all the mud. She had just stopped, hot and thirsty, not sure whether to carry on, when she saw in the distance a very thin stream of smoke. Could that be it? She struck out towards it.
‘If he isn’t home, I’m going to be very irritated,’ she said crossly to Neil. ‘I don’t even WANT honey that much.’
But she was intrigued; she wanted to try baking a honey loaf, and the more local and natural ingredients that went into it, the better she suspected it was going to be.
Quite suddenly, the trees thinned out, and Polly gasped. She was in a clearing, in front of a tiny thatched cottage that looked like something out of a fairy tale. Smoke was coming from the stone chimney, and the walls were made of grey slate, as was the path that wound through an enchanting cottage garden to the little white-painted wooden front gate. The windows were small and mullioned, and a careless tangle of rosebuds clambered over the walls.
‘Ooh,’ said Polly involuntarily. It was absolutely lovely. ‘I hope there’s not a witch inside,’ she whispered to Neil. ‘I’m SURE there isn’t…’
‘Hello?’ she said tentatively. There was no sign of movement, but with the smoke… It couldn’t be a man; it had to be an old lady here, with grey hair and a long dress and a frenzied appetite for the bones of children… Polly told herself to stop being daft and go and ring the doorbell.
There was no bell, but there was a knocker in the shape of a bee, so at least she knew she’d come to the right place. She let it thud, the noise sounding ridiculously loud in the quiet murmur of the forest clearing, and stood back to avoid freaking out whoever came to the door.
But nobody did.
‘Hello?’ said Polly, louder this time. ‘HELLO?’
She really didn’t want to just turn round and head back again. In fact, she thought, slugging water, she was actually quite hungry now. Another half-hour tramp along such a boring track would be too much; maybe there was a way back to town through the trees.
‘HELLO?’
The slate path continued around the right-hand side of the cottage, so she followed it past a well and round the back.
There a sight met her eyes. The garden broadened massively behind the cottage, a long, wide green lawn, filled with heavily scented wild flowers, leading down to the bottom of a hill, where a stream ran through straight from the forest. On both sides of the stream she saw what at first glance looked like little blunt-nosed rockets waiting to take off. Closer examination, of course, revealed them to be beehives. There was a hum in the air, and she took an instinctive step back, then another, as one of the rockets moved and she realised that what she had taken for another hive was in fact a person clad in an astronaut’s outfit – or, rather, a beekeeper’s outfit. She had to stop being so jumpy.
She was about to retreat altogether – she was slightly at the limit of her capacity for bold exploits recently – when the figure straightened up and waved a hand at her. So it had seen her. Polly sighed, and reluctantly waved back, realising she felt nervous. This was completely stupid; of course it was all right to be nervous meeting people, but she wasn’t the one buried in the countryside talking to insects, right? And all she wanted was to buy a jar of honey; it wasn’t as if this was going to take very long or be a surprising thing to do.
The man – it had to be a man; he was tall and had very long legs – stepped over the stream with a practised hop and marched up to her with loping strides.
‘Wffgargh,’ he said, holding out a hand encased in a huge white gauntlet.
‘Um,’ said Polly. ‘Don’t you normally take your hat off?’
His huge white hat covered his entire head, except for his eyes, which were hidden by thick netting. He looked like a cross between a spaceman and an extremely coy bride.
The man brushed himself down quickly, checking his arms – Polly instinctively found herself checking her arms too – then apologetically removed his hat.
‘Yeah,’ he said slowly. ‘Yeah, I forgot. I get it in the wrong order. Not enough visitors.’
Now he was looking down sadly at his gloved hand, as if wondering whether to hold it out to be shaken again.
Polly glanced up at him. She was surprised; she’d been expecting a retired man, in his sixties probably, who’d decided to opt out of the rat race after reading a feature in an airline magazine, and who was rapidly regretting it.
This wasn’t the man standing in front of her at all; this man was young and tall and broadly built, with longish yellow hair pushed back out of blue eyes. He looked slightly alarming, in fact.
‘Shall we try that again?’ said Polly, putting out her hand formally. ‘Hello, I’m Polly.’
‘Huck.’
‘Excuse me?’ said Polly.
‘Huck.’
‘Oh, that’s your name.’ Polly felt herself go red. She’d thought he was coughing.
‘Well, my mom calls me Huckle.’
‘HUCKLE?’
The man spoke in a very low drawl. Polly had known he was American, but he was obviously from the South. She wanted to hear him talk some more.
‘What I really like’ – he pronounced it ‘rilly laack’ – ‘about Inglin’ – Polly realised he meant England – ‘is the way everyone is just so polite and welcoming all the time.’
‘Sorry,’ said Polly, putting her hand to her mouth. ‘I was just a bit surprised, that’s all. I haven’t heard the name before.’
‘If you don’t mind, ma’am, you’re the one named after a parrot.’
‘Ooh, I like being called ma’am. It makes me feel like the Queen.’
Huckle smiled a slow smile. He had amazing teeth. Polly wondered if America had some kind of tooth factory for everyone when they turned thirteen, the same way her mother’s class had all had their tonsils taken out at the same time.
‘Well then, ma’am, what can I do for you?’
‘I think I’d like some honey, obviously,’ said Polly. ‘But first, would you mind if I had a drink of water? I’m really hot.’