The story so far: Plucky young Sandra and her prizewinning pony Mr Bubbles have survived the mostly unspeakable horrors of the winter solstice with the help of her cousin Mary (and his dog Bottles). But the shadow of Whateley Wood still lies over the area, and ancient folk customs now threaten the village’s stability in…

The St Valentine’s Day Mascarpone

PART ONE

(Posted for the Bad Love/Bloody Valentine fb Event)

Sandra was nervous. February already, and soon it would be… That Day.

In the weak morning sunshine, she toiled alone in the barn, cleaning out after Mr Bubbles. Her beloved pony had been put out to pasture on Frenchman’s Meadow, where the grass was too lazy to grow straight and even the corncrakes sat around looking exhausted. A few hours up there usually calmed Mr Bubbles down.

Dutifully she shovelled straw, dung and other things into a heap by the barn door. Attempts to sell the pony’s droppings for garden manure had been disappointing. Daisy Frobisher had bought a bag last August, and now her front garden was overgrown with a particularly vicious type of ground-elder which bit back when you took the secateurs to it. Sandra kicked a couple of bleached penguin beaks into the corner.

February the fourteenth tomorrow, then. She always made Valentine cards, of course. One for Mr Bubbles, and one for her mother, which was supposedly from Father. He never remembered, and besides, he was currently exploring the Great Western Desert in Australia. The Whimereroo Mound People had invited him to go walkabout with them, partly in the hope that he could find out where they left their mounds. The Whimereroo were notoriously bad trackers. Their full aboriginal name meant “Where the hell are we now, and didn’t we just come this way?” in seventeen different languages.

This wasn’t about her, though. It was about the impact of St Valentine’s Day on the village. The day when passions rose, lovers did things which Sandra didn’t quite understand, and a lot of people got sick eating too much chocolate. The day when things got, well, a bit messy.

She put down her shovel and went into the farmhouse to clean herself up. Her mother, who was scrubbing a lamb in the kitchen sink, smiled at her.

“Hello, dear. Look, this one has four legs.”

The lamb coughed up soap bubbles and gave a malevolent bleat.

“Super. Mother, is it true, about Mr Pickman?”

Sandra’s mother wrapped the lamb in an old newpaper and put it on the floor next to the others, who eyed it suspiciously. Four legs and all your own ears in the right place was just showing off, as far as they were concerned.

“Ah. Yes, he and Agnes Peaslee are going head-to-head again.” She took a swig from the bottle by the sink, realised that it was milk for the lambs, and spat it out. Sandra handed her the Old Suzy, which was half-empty anyway.

“Thank you, darling. Oh, that’s better.”

“Do you think it will get… nasty?”

“I imagine so, dear.” Her mother threw a Wellington boot at a passing rat, but gin and exhaustion saved the rat for another day. “They say that Mr Pickman’s determined to win with his special tiramisu recipe this year.”

“I suppose I’ll have to be prepared.”

“Yes, dear. Very wise.”

Sandra sighed. It was time to check the gun cabinet. Again.

####

That afternoon she went down to the village green to watch the erection of the trestle tables and marquees. Mr Bubbles clopped along behind her, looking fine in his ribbons. His coat gleamed after an hour of brushing, and the psychotic look had gone from his big dark eyes. For now, anyway.

“Feeling better?” asked Sandra.

The pony had been involved in a fracas above the moor, fighting something tenuous and vile which moved among the crags there. The Tenuous Vile Thing in the Crags, the villagers called it, having run out of interesting adjectives around the time that it appeared.

“Wasn’t as tenuous as it thought.” said Mr Bubbles. “If it had balls once, it doesn’t now.”

Sandra laughed. Mr Bubbles was such fun, even though he did get a touch aggressive at times.

“It’ll be the usual disaster, you know.” He glanced at two members of the Women’s Institute, who had tangled themselves up in a folding chair.

“Probably.”

No-one quite knew when the Valentine’s Day baking competition had begun. The oldest person in the area, Mrs Pettifer (who claimed to have thrown a tomato at Disraeli), said that it went back into the mists of time, possibly even as far back as the early nineteen seventies. This observation always drew hooded glances, and a general muttering in the background. The villagers did not like to think of the seventies.

That was the decade when you could be put in the stocks for using Fablon or listening to Joni Mitchell. An extensive witch-hunt, organised with enthusiasm by the local witches, had finally purged the village of tangerine patterned wall-paper, and anything else deemed culturally unacceptable, but many families had lost loved ones. Sandra’s grandfather himself had avoided being staked out on Grimspike Moor only by surrendering his flared trousers before trial.

Every year since then, the Women’s Institute and the Esoteric Order of Dagon had competed to win Best Scones and Best Fancy Dessert on Valentine’s Day. Throughout the village and the scattered hamlets around Whateley Wood, the sound of Jerusalem sung in a minor chord competed with the pre-human chanting of the Esoteric Order.

It had originally been a friendly bit of rivalry, but the current hierarch of the Dagonites and the chairwoman of the WI hated each other. Sandra could see Mrs Peaslee over by the duck pond, warning the ducks about their behaviour.

“You take one cake, one scone, and you’re pate.” she hissed, pointing at one of the more aggressive members of the flock. The duck in question shuffled his feet, and decided that he would explore the far side of the pond. Mrs Peaslee, though small and round, was just a bit too much for him.

“Daft old cow.” said Mr Bubbles.

Sandra had to agree. There, a few yards behind Mrs Peaslee, was Celandine, the village bake-off mascot. Celandine was to other cattle what watered-down cordial was to an aged burgundy. Far too thin and not quite right, that is.

“She is forty seven.” Sandra pointed out. “Jolly good age for a cow.”
Mr Bubbles snorted and wandered off, muttering “corned beef” to himself.

Sandra decided to face up to tomorrow’s problems. She walked across the green and stood next to the hierarch, who was arranging plastic plates on a table. It was a mild, sunny day and she could see his scalp through a rather unsuccessful comb-over.

“Mr Pickman?”

Tall, austere, and with no hint whatsoever of forbidden inbreeding or sunken reefs, Arthur Pickman glanced around and smiled.

“Ah, Sandra, my dear. Looking forward to tomorrow?”

She bit at her lower lip. “Will it be… like last year?”

His smile faded. “If That Woman seeks to outdo my Italian desserts, then…”

Other Dagonites, clad in an assortment of outfits stolen from the church vestry, edged closer. Some of them had patches sewn on their robes, displaying various abominations of the Esoteric Order, though it was hard to ignore the fact that Ernest Willis’s largest patch was actually a cub scout badge for home-shopping. Mr Willis had drawn tentacles coming out of the cross-stitched carrier-bag, but it still didn’t work. She shook her head sadly.

“I can’t let it get out of hand, Mr Pickman. Not this time.”

“You’re too young to understand. Making tiramisu is an art, and…” The hierarch paused as a blast of hay-heavy breath rustled his robes.

“Bored now.” said Mr Bubbles from behind him. The Dagonites instinctively moved back a few paces. Sandra herself could be quite a handful, but she was still a teenage girl. Mr Bubbles, however, was an unpredictable force of nature. Or ab-nature. None of them were sure.

Mr Pickman tried to look taller and more austere, which was difficult.

“I, for my part, shall endeavour to be a model citizen, young lady. If That Woman starts something, however…”

After further exchanges of a similar nature, and a quiet talk with some of the less dedicated Dagonites, Sandra could see that this was the best she was going to get. Despondent, she and Mr Bubbles watched the rest of the tables and stalls being prepared.

What was she going to do?

####

Preliminary discussions with Mrs Peaslee during the afternoon proved just as fruitless as the discussion with the hierarch.  The WI were as determined as the Esoteric Order to pursue their feud . Desperate times called for somewhat unsavoury measures. After a hurried tea at home, when her mother gave one of the lambs a steak pie and Sandra was left with milk-formula in a grubby bottle, she went out again.

With Mr Bubbles out on his nightly rounds, patrolling the borders of Whateley Wood, Sandra took a lantern and made her way to the other side of the village, where the Girl Guides had their meeting hut. Although they were an odd lot, it would not be the first time she had sought an alliance with them. More than one cthonian horror had altered the route of its burrow away from the village as a result of the guides’ playful experiments with steam-hammers, steel rods and battery acid.

Sandra entered the large wooden hut quietly and stood by the door. Emily Pethwick, almost nine years old, stood in the circle of guides, reciting her good deeds for the day.

“An’ then I did not shooted Mr Bulstrode’s cat. An’ then I did not tell thems police officers about what is under my brother’s bed.”

Flushed and pleased with herself, she ended her recital. The seated guides clapped unenthusiastically and went back to playing dice, cutting out letters from newspapers (usually for ransom demands) and heating up enamel mugs full of Old Suzy gin. Sandra coughed. Thirteen pairs of eyes, most of them set firmly in little heads, turned to stare at her.

“About tomorrow.” she said.

The guides looked uncomfortable.

“We doesn’t mess with the WI. Them’s mean.” said a small girl with camouflage paint across her face.

“All I want you to do is to come out tonight and cut down on the cheating.”

Murmurs of interest met this suggestion. Adelaide Cleggins, the oldest guide, stood up. She was a big girl, with three badges for unarmed combat and one for advanced police driving, which was unusual for a twelve year old.

“We could manage that.” she said, a note of caution in her voice. “What’s in it for us?”

Sandra thought of her mother’s secret stash of Old Suzy. Gin was always a reliable currency in the area. It was also good for shining uniform buttons.

“Two full bottles…”

“Three.” said Adelaide.

Sandra nodded. There was no way she could cover the whole village on her own, after all.

When all the guides had been equipped with torches, flareguns or lanterns, Sandra despatched her patrols into the darkness. One to keep an eye on the main east road, others to watch the alleys for illicit cake-swopping, and one to guard the doors of the Gayamurthi All-Night Wholefoods store. Mrs Gayamurthi was notorious for profiteering at this time of year. Some of those lentils had never seen the Punjab, Sandra was sure about that.

She and Adelaide shared a ginger beer in the doorway of the hut. Adelaide’s ginger beer smelled slightly of Brasso, but Sandra was not a snob. The guides were a cut-throat organisation, and everyone had their own way of relaxing.

Emily was the first back, with news that a Tesco delivery van had been halted by caltrops on the east road. The driver was being held for questioning by the Murphy twins.

“An’ he had them delucks range scones, what is s’pposed to be like an farmhouseses is. An’ he were going to go to Mr Mildrew’s place.”

Sandra doubted that the supermarket buyers had ever tasted her mother’s scones. They were ‘farmhouse’ only in the sense that there was quite a lot of whitewash, straw and plaster in them. So, a prominent Dagonite was trying to introduce bought-in baking. That would have to be held back in case she needed to use it later in court.

“Thanks, Emily. Good show.”

Not long after that, Mary-Sue Perkins arrived breathlessly to say that two of the WI members had been trying to exchange stuffed cannoli across their garden fences. Mary-Sue, who had been brought up to believe she was American, drawled out a list of suspect ingredients, including the use of tinned custard for the fillings. Sandra wrote it all down in the back of her Pony Club diary. The bloodier the confrontation at the bake-off, the more evidence she would need for threatening the combatants.

At half-past eleven, she decided they had done what they could, and let the guides wander off. She would have to go home herself. Mr Bubbles would be back around midnight, and usually needed a good brush down after his encounters in the woods. You didn’t win second prize at the Knaresborough Spring Pony Show by having bits of dismembered monstrosity in your mane.

And she would have to throw a blanket over her mother and pick up the empty gin bottles. Lambing was a difficult time, particularly when you weren’t actually sheep farmers. With the moors being rather hostile this winter, the animals would keep collecting at the farmhouse for protection. That last ewe really was too large for the coal shed…

Sandra finished her ginger beer, said goodnight to a semi-conscious Adelaide and headed back to the farmhouse.

It was a clear, sharp night, and the stars shone down coldly like specks of vodka-infused frosting. Almost absent-mindedly she walked by the southern edge of Whateley Wood and renewed some of the warding signs there. There would enough trouble in the village soon without something trying out its non-Euclidean geometry on the locals.

A few whip-poor-wills called out, hopeful that some innocent soul was about to enter the woods and be dragged screaming from this plane of existence. They shut up when they saw it was Sandra. No point in asking for it.

Somewhere in the darkness a badger threw up noisily. As usual.

At least all was normal here. She had done her best.

Tomorrow would no doubt do its worst.

Next Time: The St Valentine’s Day Mascarpone Part Two!