‘I expect he’s had some kind of nervous breakdown because he did say he couldn’t take any more noisy and intrusive days like today,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s OK, because it should be quieter from now on, with just a steady stream of brides beating a path to our door – I hope.’
We reopened the shop and Neil turned up and adjusted the volume on the bell as low as it would go, which I hoped would be audible without being intrusive. I was positive
that Ivo couldn’t hear it now, anyway.
Neil lingered for a while afterwards trying to chat up Bella between customers, but she wasn’t being very encouraging, even though I’m sure she liked him. He did seem very nice.
I made a note to find out from Felix if Neil was married, because you can’t be too careful when it’s your best friend’s possible future happiness at stake, especially if she already has a bruised heart.
The afternoon was much quieter than the morning, though we still had a steady stream of the curious, friends of Aunt Nan and people just after a free glass of bubbly and a fairy cake (we had put the last of both on a small white Lloyd Loom table near the counter). But there was also a confetti-sprinkling of brides-to-be, who tried on shoes, and an enquiry from a mother-of-the-bride about booking a private opening session, so I was hopeful things would snowball from there.
At five I swung the sign to ‘Closed’ with a sigh of relief, and then we just stood and looked at each other in exhausted triumph.
‘I’m shattered, but I think you could say that was a pretty successful opening,’ Bella said.
‘I hope so. It’s certainly been a long day.’
But of course we still had to cash up and print out a till reading. Bella was so much better at these things than I, but I expected I’d get the hang of it eventually. The float for Monday was put in little plastic coin bags and stored in a locked tin box in the kitchen, just like Aunt Nan had always done. A little safe might be a better idea, if I started selling more of the small goods and my cash takings increased, I decided.
Bella went home with the last of the fairy cakes for Tia and a bottle of Meddyg for her mother, which I thought might sweeten her up a bit. Aunt Nan always said that Meddyg could cure anything except old age, so I hoped it took a little of the acid out of Bella’s mother.
Bella had generously offered to come in next day, Sunday, to help clean up, though she’d have to bring Tia with her. But I thought she’d done enough and said I would manage and I’d see her on Monday.
A huge wave of tiredness hit me once she’d gone, so poor Flash didn’t get a decent walk that night, just up the lane and back. The cat was sitting on top of his usual gatepost staring down at Flash when we were on our way home, but Flash only gave a token bark and lunge, before trotting up towards the house. He seemed to be losing interest, unless it was all a cunning plan in his devious little Border collie brain to lull the cat into a false sense of security …
I continued listening to Aunt Nan’s voice telling me her life story that evening, while preparing and eating an easy supper of cheese on toast, followed by half a packet of Jaffa Cakes, which had just happened to jump into my wire basket in the Spar the other day.
Cheryl Noakes’ technique seemed to involve asking Aunt Nan a direct question at the start of each session and letting her ramble on, only prodding her occasionally if she lost the thread of the story.
There was a lot about food, but that wasn’t surprising since, like me, Aunt Nan took a keen interest in all aspects of cooking and eating, right up to the moment when she made up her mind to pop her clogs.
In the recordings she became a time traveller, moving effortlessly between the past and the present, and sometimes speculating on the future (usually mine), though she seemed to see herself as still being here in some form.
And it
did
feel as if she was still nearby – in another room, perhaps, but ready to pop in and comfort and console, if necessary. My guardian angel …
Although I was physically so very weary, my mind was still running round in circles like a hamster in a wheel when I went to bed, and I just couldn’t go to sleep. So, despite all my good intentions about rationing Aunt Nan’s archive, I ended up fetching the CD player and listening to a bit more in bed.
She’d done one of her sudden time-shifts right after where I left off listening, and was now telling Cheryl all about my books and how proud she’d been when the first one was published and she could hold it in her hands.
That was certainly different from Justin, who’d always referred to them with indulgent dismissal as ‘your little children’s books’ even after they proved so very successful.
‘
My great-niece, Tansy, that I keep mentioning, she’s very talented,
’
Aunt Nan’s voice, with the familiar flat Lancashire vowels, told Cheryl.
‘
She writes children’s books about little pipe-cleaner animals called Slipper Monkeys – have you heard of them, dear? She paints all the pictures for them, too. That’s what she did at college, she learned how to do book pictures. I’ve got the first one here to show you – in fact, I’ll read you the start of it.
’
‘
That would be lovely
,’ Cheryl’s voice said.
‘
Right, here goes
,’ said Aunt Nan, clearing her throat and then reading, ‘“
There was a little boy called Freddie who lived in a big square house with so many rooms no one had ever managed to count them all. One Christmas he got a packet of brightly coloured pipe cleaners in his stocking, with pictures showing how to make a fuzzy monkey. Freddie made a blue monkey before he got bored and went off to play with something else.
His mother thought the little monkey looked sad, so she gave it a nose and a pair of eyes made from tiny beads as black as berries …
”’
There was a snap as Aunt Nan closed the book. ‘
When she was a little girl I used to make things with her out of pipe cleaners. My father smoked a pipe, so there were always packets of those white ones in the house when I was growing up, but later you could get bigger ones in bright colours and I always put packets of them in Tansy’s Christmas stocking. I expect that’s what gave her the idea in the first place. In fact, I still do make her a Christmas stocking up. You can’t get a proper tangerine wrapped in tissue paper for love nor money any more, though
.’
I turned off the CD player. Aunt Nan and I had fashioned all sorts of things from the pipe cleaners, from bouquets of flowers to long-tailed birds, but making monkeys became a passion with me, I don’t know why. And then I started to weave stories around them, as only children often do …
So then, when I’d started my graphic design course, the skill and the words sort of came together suddenly in my head and I was off.
Slipper Monkeys
for ever!
I was never that close to my sister Violet, but blood is thicker than water, so I went down South to nurse her when she had pneumonia, though if you ask me she caught it gallivanting about at night with her so-called friends. A fast lot she seemed to have fallen in with while her husband was away, with plummy accents and posh clothes – but the type we used to call ‘all fur coat and no knickers’, dear; it was all show. Vi sounded right posh, too – but then, she’d worked to get rid of her good Lancashire accent since she was a little girl.
Middlemoss Living Archive
Recordings: Nancy Bright.
I spent Sunday morning vacuuming and cleaning up the shop: fairy-cake crumbs were
everywhere
, but luckily no bubbly had been spilled. I polished the glass cabinets, already marked by fingerprints and, while I was at it, gave Cinderella’s slipper on its cushion in the window a polish, too, so it would sparkle when the spotlight hit it.
Then I washed all the borrowed champagne flutes and put them on tea towels to drain, before repacking them in the boxes to be returned to the Falling Star.
I had a large freshly-baked bara brith loaf (bread-making machines make life so easy), so I buttered some of that for lunch, while I made a note of what had sold well on the first day, and also which shoes had attracted most attention: I hoped to email another order off to RubyTrueShuze before long.
Buying shoe stock was a bit different from in Aunt Nan’s day. When I was very small she still went to Manchester on the train every Thursday afternoon, her half-day, to tour the shoe warehouses and make her selections, or drop off satin bridesmaids’ shoes to be dyed to match their dresses. In the school holidays she’d taken me with her, which was a big, exciting treat, and the lovely Jewish family who owned her favourite warehouse always gave me sweets and, once, a little pink handbag with a clear plastic handle, which I still had, packed away in tissue paper among my treasures.
I’d have to go down to London some time soon to the RubyTrueShuze showroom, but I didn’t suppose Ruby will be handing out sweets and handbags …
After lunch I dragged Flash out for a good long walk, to boldly go where he had never gone before, to quote
Star Trek
. Although improved, he was still difficult on the lead, frightened of everything and everyone, and nervous of new places, so I had to stop and unclamp the paw holding the lead to his chest every few minutes.
However, once we were across the green and had started to walk up the path through the fields that led to the Winter’s End visitors’ car park, he became a lot perkier. He stopped slinking along looking beaten, and up went his ears and the tail with its jaunty white tip.
The car park was deserted, of course, since the house wouldn’t reopen for the tourist season until Easter, so I let Flash off the lead to see if he would come back to me. He did, too … eventually, after he’d jumped into a small stream and covered himself in mud and a streak of green slime.
I think we both felt better for the fresh air and exercise. The walk had also given me time to think about Ivo – to feel both sorry for him and guilty for my lack of sympathy. He was obviously not himself and couldn’t help his bad temper, and
I
could have been a little more understanding. After all, yesterday must have sounded like the circus had come to town, poor man!
And every time I saw him, I felt this huge urge to feed him up, which I’d probably inherited from Aunt Nan, so if I didn’t watch myself, I thought I’d be posting bits of buttered bara brith wrapped in clingfilm through his door.
Not long after I’d got home and had finished cleaning up Flash with a handful of those invaluable aloe vera doggy wipes, Bella rang to say Neil had asked her out for a drink again.
‘What, Bell de Jour, Pour la Door
Neil?’
‘The very same. He called me just now.’
‘How did he get your number?’ I asked, surprised.
‘I gave him the one for my mobile yesterday,’ she confessed. ‘He wouldn’t go away until I had.’
‘You kept that quiet! But I
thought
you liked him.’
‘He seems nice,’ she admitted, ‘but I really don’t want to get involved with anyone and complicate my life all over again.’
‘A drink and a chat isn’t
involved
,’ I encouraged her, because there was no need for us to turn into twin Miss Havishams if there were better alternatives. ‘When does he want to meet?’
‘He suggested tonight, early evening, because of Tia, but Mum and Dad are going out. Bridge night,’ she added, as though they indulged in some kind of satanic ritual on a regular basis.
‘I didn’t think people had bridge parties any more.’
‘Oh, trust my parents to be still in with a set that does!’
‘No problem anyway, because
I’ll
baby-sit,’ I offered.
‘It’s OK, Neil’s going to pick us both up this afternoon and take us to Martin Mere instead. You know Tia’s mad about swans. I hope she isn’t getting some kind of Leda complex.’
‘Perhaps she’ll turn into a ballerina and dance in Swan Lake.’
‘I don’t think so, because I’m sure she’ll be very tall, like me. In fact, I’m going to try to steer her away from ballet and towards riding instead, because she loves horses. I was talking to Poppy about riding lessons yesterday. She has a small class for beginners, which Tia could join.’
‘Is it very expensive?’
‘Not more than ballet, and she can borrow a riding hat to start off with, until I see if she likes it.’
‘I expect she will,’ I said, then told her I’d been thinking things over about Ivo.
‘We’ll have to get along together a bit better if he’s going to be living here for a while. I’ve been rather mean to him, just because he stood me up years ago, when he was little more than a teenager and I should have been more understanding.’
‘He hasn’t exactly made that easy, has he?’ Bella observed. ‘But I suppose his dodgy temper is all part of the grieving process. How are you going to approach him?’
‘Probably with caution, much like I did with Flash, holding out a sticky bun and making encouraging noises,’ I told her.
While the spirit of conciliation still filled me, I packed a bottle of Meddyg and several slices of buttered bara brith, and went to beard the lion in his den.
I had to take a deep breath before knocking at the door and for five long minutes I thought Ivo wasn’t going to answer it, which would have been a relief, actually, because then I could have left my offerings on the step.
But just as I was thinking that, the door was suddenly flung open.
‘What?’ he demanded shortly, evidently under the impression that I’d come to complain about something, though so far the complaints had all been from
his
side. He had a pen in one hand and his hair was attractively ruffled, though the three-day stubble wasn’t doing the line of his jaw any favours.
Then his eyes fell on the basket, which I thrust towards him. ‘Look, I’ve been thinking and I’m terribly sorry that I’ve been disturbing your peace when you’re convalescing, so I’ve brought you a bottle of the honey liqueur that my aunt Nan taught me to make. It’s good for bad nerves.’