Men!
VE
Day came and we all celebrated – there were tables and bunting and a brass band in the High Street – you’ve never seen such a grand sight! But of course, Violet’s husband was still fighting on in the Far East, because the war there didn’t end until a few months later. VJ Day, they called that one. My American friend had gone home by then and the new curate, who had been a chaplain on active service but invalided out, asked me to walk out with him …
Middlemoss Living Archive
Recordings: Nancy Bright.
Aunt Nan’s latest memoirs rambled back to her wartime admirers – and she had obviously not been short of them! But then, her pictures in the family albums show her to have been very pretty: slim and bright-eyed, with the same dark, curling hair that I had.
She started to put weight on in her twenties, like I did; must be a family trait! Or maybe it was just because we both loved baking so much? (And, of course, eating!)
I wondered if she did walk out with the curate. Because if so, it obviously never came to anything. I was looking forward to finding out.
When Bella arrived for work I told her about Justin’s visit and that I just couldn’t seem to get it into his thick head that he’d done something so unforgivable that I wouldn’t eventually give in and take him back.
‘He even suggested he get a job in a hospital up here and move north!’
‘Gosh, he must miss you!’ she said, impressed, because Justin had never made any secret of the fact that he thought Lancashire a cultural wilderness inhabited by escapees from the
Coronation Street
and
Cotton Common
TV soap series.
‘I think it was more due to having forgotten quite how smothering Mummy Dearest could be when I wasn’t there to stop her trying to monopolise his time. She’s been staying in the flat for weeks while her house was repainted and I got the feeling it was a big relief when she went home. She called him on his mobile several times while he was here, too.’
‘I am sure he
has
missed you …’ She looked at me. ‘You don’t think you ever
could
forgive him?’
‘No,’ I said, firmly but sadly. ‘There were moments yesterday when I remembered why I’d loved him – I mean, he’s so big, fair and
glowing
that he’s like a Viking invasion rolled into one person! But then an image of him with Rae would flash across my eyes and turn me to cold stone. And there’s always going to be Charlie as a reminder, isn’t there?’
‘Yes, and he’ll have to support him, until he’s eighteen, at least.’
‘He said Rae had had more than enough money out of him because she’d been blackmailing him! But I’m sure he’ll have to carry on paying her the minimum of maintenance for Charlie, or she could take him to court. Poor little Charlie! He’s the innocent victim in all this.’
‘Not your problem any more, though, is it? I wish I’d been savvier about money when I was living with Robert,’ she added. ‘If I’d paid towards the mortgage and bills when I moved in, I’d have had a claim to part of the house, at least, so his wife wouldn’t have got everything.’
‘It sounds like most of it went to settle his gambling debts anyway.’
‘True … and it just shows, however nice and trustworthy men seem to be, like Justin and Robert, they can still be secretly deceiving.’
‘“One may smile and smile, and be a villain”,’ I agreed. I must have caught Shakespeare-itis from Ivo.
‘And now there’s Neil, who seems very nice – but who knows, really?’ she said darkly.
‘Have you seen him again?’
‘No. He wanted to take me and Tia somewhere yesterday, but I put him off. I said I was doing something else … which I was, really, because I had lots of Ivo’s typing to catch up with.’
‘Is his book any good?’
‘Yes, brilliant! In fact, it’s really frustrating reading it in bits like this, but also quite exciting, wondering what’s going to happen next. This one’s called
Tempest in a Teacup
, so I think you can guess which Shakespeare play the plot is based around.’
‘I think I’ll have to read one of his books from sheer curiosity. He collects Flash every evening now and takes him out for a walk,’ I added. ‘I told you about that, didn’t I?’
‘No!’ she said, staring at me from large blue eyes. ‘How long has that been going on?’
I shrugged. ‘A few days, after he apologised for frightening Flash and made friends with him. Then he suggested that since he liked to walk in the early evenings, he might as well take Flash with him. I’m really glad, because it gives Flash lots more exercise than he was getting.’
‘That seems very kind,’ Bella commented, then looked at me closely. ‘Are you two getting
friendly
, then? I mean, he’s so not my type, but I can see he’s really attractive, though in a much more subtle way than Justin.’
I laughed. ‘No way! We hardly speak, except a few words when he collects Flash or brings him back.’ I didn’t tell her about my attempt to fatten him up by forcing food parcels onto him every time he returned the dog. He’d never said whether he ate them or not – but then, he hadn’t so far refused to take them, either.
Business began to pick up steadily in our second week of trading, as word spread about Cinderella’s Slippers. Bella could generally manage on her own in the mornings, while I got on with my illustrations. I was making a dummy book of
Slipper Monkeys’ Safari
now to see how it looked. This involved photocopying my illustrations and then literally sticking them into a little book in the right sequence. It wasn’t just the action in the pictures that had to flow from frame to frame, but the words, too.
I illustrated in line and wash, and there was no way I could create on the computer screen like some artists. I need the connection between hand, eye, brush, pen and paper. I admired those who could, it just wasn’t for me.
Anyway,
Slipper Monkeys’ Safari
was finally almost finished, despite everything else that had been happening, and part of my mind was already engaged with the next idea.
Justin texted me about some investigations he’d done about transferring to a post in a Manchester hospital, and I texted him right back and said plainly that it would be pointless if he thought that by moving up here I would ever get back with him.
After that, there was silence, so I assumed he was sulking.
I’d given the orchid he’d brought with him to Bella to take back for her mother: it looked the sort of thing she’d like.
When Ivo returned Flash after his walk on Tuesday evening, he actually said he’d liked the cheese and onion pie I’d given him the night before!
‘Good, because I don’t think you’re eating enough,’ I told him. ‘Especially now you’re working so hard in the garden.’
‘I seem to have lost the hunger mechanism,’ he said. ‘I just … forget to eat.’
‘I can’t imagine
ever
forgetting to eat,’ I admitted. ‘I suppose that’s why I’m so fat!’
‘“O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt”?’ he suggested. ‘But you’re not fat!’
‘I’m certainly not thin.’
‘You look just about right to me,’ he said to my surprise, giving me that rather mesmerising smile, then he vanished back into the darkness, though not before I’d thrust my latest food offering into his hands: there’s nothing as sustaining as a little hotpot pie with a shortcrust pastry top and a chunk of good, solid fruit cake to follow.
I found myself staring absently after his vanishing form until I gave myself a mental shake and shut the door. Then, since I’d forgotten to switch Aunt Nan’s CD off when I let Ivo in, I had to go back a bit. She’d seemed about to confide something interesting but instead, I discovered, she did her usual trick of diverging into describing some local custom or a recipe!
Curiosity got the better of me and next day I slipped off to Marked Pages in the High Street to see if Felix had any of Nicholas Marlowe’s novels, leaving Bella to hold the fort.
‘Nicholas Marlowe? Yes, there are one or two in the back room on the crime shelves,’ he said. ‘They’re very good. It’s so clever the way he weaves Elizabethan back stories in with the current plot, set in a contemporary Shakespearian company, and then uses a theme from one of the plays to hang the whole thing from! Genius!’
‘Someone told me they were a good read; I just hadn’t come across them. Anyway, you know me – I tend to stick to Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy Sayers.’
‘I’m sure it’s worth giving Nicholas Marlowe a go,’ Felix said.
I asked after Poppy’s health and he said she was fretting at the bit but they were both looking forward to the baby’s arrival. Then he asked me how business was doing and told me he does much of his via his website, both buying and selling.
‘I’m using my website more as a showcase and first point of contact, at the moment,’ I said, ‘though I do hope to buy and sell genuine vintage wedding shoes on there too. Bella’s just working on that page.’
‘Now we get so many more tourists in Sticklepond, there’s a lot more passing trade – though only from spring to autumn, of course, so the internet sales are still very important in winter.’
‘I think brides probably plan their dress and shoes months in advance, so winter might actually be a good time for me,’ I said thoughtfully.
I went to look at the crime novels and had just come back out into the front room of the shop carrying a stack of books with one of Nicholas Marlowe’s on top –
Midsummer Night’s Scream
– when damned if I didn’t come face to face with the author himself!
I’d heard the shop doorbell jingling out ‘Paperback Writer’ a couple of times, but hadn’t taken any notice. I mean, why would I expect to bump into Ivo, when to my knowledge he hadn’t been off his own property, except for his evening strolls?
‘Erk!’ I squawked, juggling the slipping pile of books and thinking it was just my luck he decided to make his debut in Marked Pages when
I
was there – caught in the act.
But then I noticed that the book Felix was slipping into a paper bag was
Slipper Monkeys Go Bananas
, my very first one, so evidently curiosity had got the better of him too.
‘Hi,’ he said, deadpan, though his grey eyes were fixed on the books I held and I was sure he’d spotted his own there. Then he turned back to Felix, picked up his purchase and said, ‘I’ll have that coffee another time, if you don’t mind: I’ve just thought of something I really should do.’
After he’d left, with a short ‘Paperback Writer’ serenade, Felix relieved me of my slipping stack of books and said, ‘So that’s your new neighbour? He introduced himself, but word has it he’s a quite renowned Shakespearian actor.’
‘Apparently so, but he’s resting at the moment. Resting as in
really
resting, not out of work,’ I explained.
‘He seemed pleasant enough, though he left very suddenly. I thought he was going to stay and have a cup of coffee.’
‘I think I scared him away. Was that one of my books he was buying?’
‘Yes, he asked for one specially and I was just about to ask him if he knew they were written by his neighbour when in you walked!’
‘He does know, because Bella told him, so I expect he was buying one from curiosity.’
As was I, too, about his! Though of course I couldn’t tell anyone that Ivo was Nicholas Marlowe …
I paid for my books and put them in my nice, eco-friendly orange silk shopping bag, then darted across the High Street and back down Salubrious Passage to the safety of Cinderella’s Slippers.
That evening Ivo didn’t mention buying my book and I certainly didn’t mention buying his.
Instead, he said he liked the look of my herb garden and thought he would create one just like it.
‘Seth Greenwood up at Winter’s End is the expert on knot gardens. He runs Greenwood’s Knots and he’s restored two lovely ones on the terraces behind the house, one in the form of a Lancashire rose and the other a love knot like mine, only more intricate. His are full of flowers rather than herbs, though.’
‘I’d like to see them.’
‘The house and gardens open this weekend – from Good Friday – for the season, so you could,’ I told him. ‘There’s a Shakespeare garden on the lower terrace, so that might give you some ideas.’
‘I saw one of those once in America,’ he said, interested. ‘That’s an idea!’
This was all quite chatty, for Ivo. And I might be deluding myself, but I don’t think he looked quite as hollow-cheeked and starved, even if his eyes were still haunted.
You know, it’s odd that I should have fallen in love with two such very different men. Justin’s attraction is blatantly obvious to everyone, and he draws the eye in any room, but Ivo has an attraction of his own that sneaks up on you: something to do with the elegant bone structure of his face, his resonant and beautiful voice and his translucent, merman-grey eyes …
Just before twelve on our half-day, when we had cashed up and were about to flip the sign over to ‘Closed’, we had a customer. She was a sharp-eyed redhead in her thirties, wearing the kind of thin, tightly fitted woollen skirt suit that looked as if it had been sewn onto the wearer, and I couldn’t place her.
She definitely wasn’t a tourist, she wasn’t local and she certainly wasn’t about to become a bride, for she was entirely lacking any of the expressions I had now come to associate with imminent wedlock. These ranged from dewy-eyed bliss to determined gold-digger (that had been a soon-to-be WAG), but all with an element of excitement.
She had a good look round and then began to ask Bella some very intrusive questions about when we’d opened and what our turnover was like.
‘I only work here, I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,’ Bella said.
The woman looked back at me. ‘So are you the owner, then?’
‘Yes, I’m Tansy Poole. Can I help you?’
‘Not really. It’s just that someone told me about the shop, so I thought I’d come and have a look. But I can see it’s no competition,’ she added, with a disparaging glance around.