Bunch of Grapes pub

The Bunch of Grapes pub is a village lodging house and working bar in Cudsey that becomes the operational setting for Paul Carpenter and Sophie Pettingell’s assignment. Its quiet, agreeable character contrasts with the magical scheme conducted inside it: the pub is not merely somewhere to stay, but a temporary stage whose rooms, bar, and timetable are built into the job.

Setting and Arrival

The goblin briefing directs Paul and Sophie to take the 10:17 train from Euston to Manchester Piccadilly, change to a local service for Ventcaster, and continue by taxi to Cudsey. Two rooms have been reserved for them at the Bunch of Grapes, described in the instructions as an Egon Ronay one-star establishment. The journey places the assignment in a specific, ordinary chain of travel before the supernatural briefing resumes at their destination.

Cudsey is a grey-stone village, picturesque beneath a haze of almost-rain. The pub seems precisely the sort of place Paul would have liked to stay in under different circumstances. That qualification marks the gap between its welcoming appearance and the work awaiting them there: the building offers an appealing pause from travel, but the couple have come to carry out a manipulation rather than enjoy a visit.

Rooms and Briefing

After arriving, Paul and Sophie leave their exceptionally large and heavy suitcase in Sophie’s room. They then take the file to the deserted games room behind the public bar and set it on the pool table. The goblin emerges from the file’s flap, making the room the place where the journey’s initial instructions turn into a detailed plan.

The pub’s back-room setting lends the briefing a practical, makeshift quality. The goblin nibbles a piece of cue chalk before explaining the assignment, while the file itself serves as its hiding place and means of appearing. Although the games room is empty when Paul and Sophie enter, the plan depends on the public bar just beyond it, where the intended customer and client are to meet.

The Bar as an Assignment Site

The operation is timed around the pub’s staff and customers. At a quarter to six, the landlord and his wife are expected to fall asleep. Sophie is then to wear the supplied outfit and take the landlord’s place behind the bar. At five to six, a man is due to ask for a pint; Sophie must serve it after adding the required dose of JWW Valentine Express Love Philtre, then leave the bar so Paul can take her place.

The customer is expected to sleep for twenty minutes as a side effect of the philtre. At a quarter past six, the client is to arrive in time for the customer’s awakening. While he sleeps, Paul must prevent any woman other than the client from entering the bar, so that the meeting proceeds as intended. The pub’s ordinary service routine—staffing the bar, ordering a pint, and allowing customers into the room—is thus repurposed as the mechanism of the magical scheme.

Narrative Significance

The Bunch of Grapes binds the assignment’s separate practical needs together: it supplies the pair’s rooms, conceals the briefing in a games room, and provides the public bar where the philtre is to be administered. The movement from the pool table to the bar also shifts the job from explanation to execution. Against the village’s picturesque calm and the pub’s appeal as a place to stay, the carefully scheduled deception turns familiar hospitality into an instrument of coercion.