Christmas at Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Read online

  Then he’d grabbed a jacket, left a terse note, jumped in the Land Rover and headed for London.

  ROSIE HAD READ the note in pain and confusion. What did “London” mean? His horrible posh society friends and gruesome blondes and all sorts . . . well, she thought grimly. Clearly they’d both been thinking about their lives.

  Now, the following morning, she was at the hospital, trying to get Lilian into Henry’s room. He had a private one because he needed the warming bath and electric anti-­hypothermia blankets, plus there was a lot of media interest in his story—­he was something of a hospital celebrity. It was just as well: he needed the space. Crowded into the little room, painted that odd shade of yellow-­y beige of hospitals everywhere, were Moray, Rosie and Lilian; a whey-­faced Edward with his wife and their son, Ian; Ida Delia, insisting on a seat and prominently flaunting her wedding ring on her left hand, rather than on the right where it had resided for the past sixty years, and a thin-­lipped Dorothy Isitt, Peter as ever a silent and reassuring presence at her side. There were also several interested medical personnel. A psychiatrist, trying not to look too gleeful, had set up a tape recorder by the side of Henry’s bed.

  Moray looked grave; he’d had a word with the consultant, and nobody liked the noise Henry’s lungs were making. He seemed, though, mentally, to have made the most tremendous breakthrough.

  “I was born in Lipton on the ninth of August 1922. My mother’s name was Peggy and my father was Henry too and we lived on Isitt’s farm and I worked in the fields. And I knew a girl called Lilian Hopkins.”

  There was total silence across the room. The old man sounded completely clear and unclouded, his vision fixed on something far, far away. The psychiatrist double-­checked that the little machine was taping properly.

  “And I liked it sometimes when she would wear the little green-­sprigged dress and sit on the front of my bicycle. My dog was called—­”

  “Penn,” said Lilian and Henry together. “Penn,” said Henry again, wonderingly. “He was a beautiful dog.”

  “He was,” said Lilian.

  “This isn’t happening,” said Edward.

  “What about his . . . James’ parents?” said Rosie to Edward

  “They died . . . he was an orphan. He met my mother after the war, and he would never talk about it. We knew he’d suffered head injuries, that was all. What if . . .”

  “What if they got the wrong man?”

  Henry looked at Edward.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Edward, Dad. Your son.”

  “I don’t have a son. I have a daughter called Dorothy. She’s very noisy.”

  Rosie looked at Ida Delia. She couldn’t even imagine what she was going through. Dorothy was sitting very still, tears running down her face, one hand twisting a handkerchief in her lap. Ida Delia was huffing and fluffing and trying to draw as much attention to herself as possible.

  Dorothy and Edward turned to look at each other in some surprise and suddenly they appeared a lot alike, same eyes, same expression.

  “That means . . .”

  Rosie steeled herself. Edward seemed so thoughtful and kind, and Dorothy could be very hard work indeed.

  But to her astonishment, Dorothy was rising up, biting her lip. She looked at Edward.

  “I always . . . I always wanted a brother,” she said. Then, Peter’s hand drifting off her shoulder, she moved to the bed.

  “Daddy?” she said quaveringly, trying out a word she had never had cause to use since the day she’d learned to speak.

  Henry struggled to focus. He seemed tired.

  “Dorothy?” he said. “You . . . you are very big.”

  Tears were streaming down her face

  “We thought you were dead,” she said. “They told Mum you were dead.”

  Henry took her large curly head in his hands and to Rosie’s astonishment, she gently laid it down on his chest, as though she had been longing to do that her entire life. Peter’s kind face twitched into a smile.

  “But . . .” Edward’s face was a mess of tears and confusion; his entire, well-­ordered life was coming apart. He turned to Doreen.

  “He . . . he knows all these ­people.”

  Doreen could see it on his face.

  “Ssh,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

  She knew what he was afraid of.

  Henry turned toward him again.

  “Edward,” he said. “Thank God you’re here. I’m freezing.”

  “Dad,” said Edward, bursting into sobs and running to his other side. “Dad. You know it’s me.”

  “Of course it’s you,” croaked Henry, smiling. “My darling Edward Bear. Of course it’s you.”

  FINALLY EVERYONE WAS ushered out—­including the local press photographer—­except for Lilian, whom Henry had requested stay behind. Rosie stayed too, partly in case they needed anything and partly from sheer nosiness. Lilian wanted to sit up on the bed, and Rosie helped her—­she was so tiny, she took up hardly any space. And then she nestled into him as if she was molded that way. Then Rosie decided she probably ought to leave and went off to find some tea.

  “YOU DIED IN the war,” whispered Lilian.

  “So many ­people died in the war,” said Henry slowly. “All the time. I woke up in hospital. I remember. I remember. I remember you. You’re Lilian. You are REALLY old.”

  “I know,” said Lilian. “So are you. Ssh. Tell me what happened. Do you remember?”

  “It’s so strange,” said Henry. “I feel like I’ve been on a foggy road where everything is wrong. And then I got used to being on the foggy road, even though it was wrong, and I just ignored its being wrong, and then it was all right. But I know . . . after the thing, the blast, after . . . I woke up, and they said, “What’s your name?” and I suppose I meant to say “Henry Carr.”

  He said it again, rolling it around his mouth as if it were a strange wine.

  “But I . . . I couldn’t say that.”

  “Didn’t you have dog tags?” asked Lilian. “Didn’t you wear something around your neck?”

  “I lost mine,” said Henry, musing at how easily it was coming back to him. “I lost mine in the mess. I think I bet it at poker.” He wheezed. “Ha, Lilian, listen to this, someone put up a bag of strawberry boilers.”

  “You love those,” said Lilian, marveling.

  “I know, I couldn’t resist. I said, I’ll stake my whole person on it and everybody laughed, and I took it off and I really meant it. And I got a three of spades and a five of hearts.”

  He was holding up his knotted hands as if he were playing the game again.

  “And Private Boyd, he was a portly little fellow, I don’t know where he even got those sweets, not in the hell hole we were in, I tell you. I wanted them so much and I got a bloody five and a three. And he took my dog tag and was just messing about with it, then he went to offer me a sweet, and . . .”

  His hand started to shake.

  “And then we heard the sirens. The sirens. There were sirens. Where am I? Is this the army hospital?”

  “No, it’s another hospital,” said Lilian patiently, patting him.

  “Has there been another bomb?”

  “No, darling. You’re safe”

  “I’m bloody freezing. I can’t wait to get back to my Lilian . . . Are you the nurse? You look a lot like her.”

  “Yes,” said Lilian.

  “Except I lost her, you know. Like I lost my dog tag. By being an idiot. Such an idiot.”

  His old shoulders started to shake. Lilian rang the bell for the nurse.

  ROSIE CAUGHT UP with Moray and flung her arms around him.

  “It’s amazing! I mean it’s just amazing!”

  Moray didn’t look as delighted as she did.

  “I mean, to go through your whole life.”<
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  “Mmm” said Moray. “I don’t want to . . . I don’t want to be a total downer, Rosie, but his . . . I mean, his lungs. They aren’t good.”

  “But he’s talking! He sounds so clear! He knows where he is! It’s all come back to him!”

  “Yes,” said Moray. “You know there are lots of documented cases of this happening . . . just before . . . I mean . . . I don’t know, there may be another miracle in there for him. But . . . I wouldn’t count on it.”

  Rosie stopped suddenly, hearing the tone of his voice.

  “Really?”

  “I don’t know if you want to share it with Lilian or not but . . . there’s a lot of fluid on his lungs. His body can’t really fight the infection . . . the consultant thinks that it’s only a matter of time.”

  Rosie clasped her hand to her mouth. Then she shook her head.

  “Well, everything’s a matter of time” said Rosie, cross at the euphemism. “How much time?”

  “Short of a second miracle . . . days,” said Moray, then, as she gasped again, drew her into his arms to hold her tight.

  EDWARD WAS ON the phone with a journalist who was pinning him down to dates.

  “You mean to say, he had a freak-­out going through the village? When he remembered it?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a freak-­out exactly,” said Edward stiffly. “Well, yes, a freak-­out, I suppose. He grabbed the steering wheel.”

  “When was this?” said the journalist, then glanced idly at his computer. “Oh, that’s the same day Lipton school got hit by that lorry.”

  The color drained out of Edward’s face.

  “The what?” he said.

  “Oh, you didn’t hear? A lorry knocked the school down.”

  “Oh my God, was anyone hurt?”

  “Yes, one little boy broke his neck”

  Edward couldn’t say anything else; he just put the phone down in silence. Everything had suddenly become too much.

  “Doreen,” he moaned. “Oh Doreen, something really bad has happened.”

  SEEING AS SHE was here, thought Rosie, in Carningford with its vast twenty-­four-­hour supermarket, she might as well do her Christmas food shopping, get it over with. She took Pip with her.

  “Well, I thought you lived a quiet life here, sis,” he said.

  “Me too,” said Rosie, hauling out the trolley. “Get those for me, will you?”

  Pip jumped to help.

  “Ha,” she said. “You’re well trained. When we were little, you’d never do anything I asked.”

  Pip smiled. “I like a quiet life. Unlike you.”

  “True,” said Rosie.

  It was very odd, she found, traveling among the laden aisles, stocking up with all sorts of things—­dates, brandy butter, marzipan—­that she couldn’t really imagine eating any other time of year, how normally everybody else was behaving, having arguments in the wine aisle, bickering about crackers, exhausted-­looking mothers hurling lollipops at children to keep them quiet while they got the damn thing done. She and Pip chose a large turkey, some stuffing, plenty of chipolatas for the children, fizzy wine, cola, lots of potatoes for roasting . . .

  It was good to have her brother there. She couldn’t allow herself to think whether or not Stephen was coming back. They would have Christmas lunch up at Peak House and she’d make up some kind of excuse about him for everyone and then straight after Christmas, she supposed . . . well, she supposed everyone would go. But for now she wanted to chat about his children, especially Meridian, and he liked to talk about them. It was odd, she thought, that her little brother was the grown-­up now, with the well-­paid job and the family and everything . . . everything she might have liked. She wondered if Lilian had felt the same about her little brother Gordon.

  “You are . . . you are happy, aren’t you, Pip?” she asked as they queued. Pip looked at her.

  “Honestly, R?” he weighed up what he was about to say, as if unsure.

  “Yes?”

  “I wouldn’t . . . I mean, even for a bloke like Stephen, right? I wouldn’t . . . I wouldn’t miss out on having a family for anything, okay?”

  Rosie fell silent.

  “Not for the world, R. Even when Desleigh is shouting at me and Shane won’t put his bloody DS down and everyone’s shrieking and stuff gets left everywhere and spilled everywhere . . . I wouldn’t change a bit of it. Don’t let it pass you by. And you know, we would love you to come out there . . . Mum especially.”

  ROSIE WAS SILENT all the way back. Either way, she couldn’t see the right way forward. The future was not an appealing prospect.

  The pain of not seeing Stephen, not being with him, felt unbearable. She had always feared this; she had spent years in a relationship where she was not “the one,” and she couldn’t go through it again if nothing she could do and nothing she could change about herself would change the immutable facts. He was the one for her, but if it wasn’t returned, she would live a life as full of disappointment as her great-­aunt had. And she didn’t think she could bear it.

  A fresh start, in a warm, sunny land full of friendly ­people and spectacular food and beaches and swimming pools and barbecues and well-­paid nursing jobs . . . that, on the other hand, made a ton of sense. To be close to her mum, and watch the little ones grow up. . . .

  It was a hard solution, but it was almost certainly the right one.

  UP AT PEAK House she relayed the news about Henry to a breathless Angie and Desleigh, who were rapt. “Never a dull moment around here,” as Angie pointed out. “Where are the children?” she asked. Normally Meridian was stuck to her side like a limpet.

  “It’s amazing,” said Desleigh. “Seriously, they’re changed kids.”

  Rosie went to the window. All three were in the garden, building an igloo together. The girls weren’t squabbling, and Rosie wouldn’t put money on it, but she thought Kelly had lost a little weight. Shane’s DS was nowhere to be seen. Instead, they were chatting, laughing, co-­operating.

  “It’s a good place here,” said Desleigh.

  Rosie swallowed. She couldn’t answer.

  BACK WORKING AT the sweetshop, she smiled at every child who came in, all of them bursting with secrets for her about what Santa was bringing them; all enraptured by the tiny train in the window; little cheeks rosy, eyes bright and round; parents tired but happy. She knew everyone now, and they knew her, Miss Rosie, up at the sweetshop. She would miss them too, terribly, as she wrapped boxes of chocolates, marzipan fruit and Turkish delight for the big day.

  Chapter 20

  IT WAS OBVIOUS to everyone at the hospital now that things were slipping. And slipping quickly. Not even Lilian could continue in denial now. So it was all about spending as much time with Henry as possible without wearing him out. He relied very heavily on the oxygen mask, so he couldn’t speak very well or very quickly, but it was very rare that he phased out or didn’t appear to be following what went on. Of course they had to share him. Ida Delia liked to talk about him a lot, and swank about the man who was, after all, her husband, but alone in the room with him—­his papery skin bordering on translucent; the smells and the plastic tubes and the dryness of the once luxuriant hair—­she found it unpleasant and creepy and a reminder of what was coming for all of them in the end. She also found, as ever, that she had nothing much to say to him.

  Dorothy, on the other hand, didn’t want to say anything. She wanted to hold his hand and wanted him to cuddle her and basically bestow upon her all the masculine affection she had felt so desperately lacking from her cold childhood. Edward, in contrast, had to talk; had to rush to assure himself that Henry’s other life as James Boyd hadn’t been a waste, or something to be forgotten. He wanted to talk about seaside trips, about building a model railway, and days out and even about arguments they had had during Edward’s very brief flirtation with punk in adolescence. This
was important to him, and Henry did his best to oblige.

  But it was Lilian he really looked forward to seeing every day. She looked as pretty and quirky to him as she ever had. And she liked to talk to him, and he just liked to listen, and he enjoyed it all. Anyone overhearing it who was not in love would think it insane nonsense; the nattering on of two very old ­people. Anyone who was in love would recognize it straightaway as the kind of castles-­in-­the-­air building of two ­people mad about one another. The only difference was that it wasn’t about the future. They played a little game—­safer than the shifting sands of their real memories—­of let’s pretend, making up a past they had never had.

  “I think probably about 1955, we moved into one of the large houses on the high street,” Lilian would say, and Henry would nod.

  “The children used to get scared of the outside loo, do you remember?”

  “Yes!” Lilian would say. “Little Henry thought there was a bat, do you remember? And we thought he was just being funny and then Batman came along and we thought we’d have made a lot of money if we’d just written it down.”

  “I liked our twenty-­fifth wedding anniversary party,” Henry would say. “Hetty let us have it up at the house, do you remember? And I wreathed your hair with flowers.”

  “And I was so cross because it ruined my new hairdo!” said Lilian. “Ha, and we had that big fight in front of everyone.”

  Henry smiled.

  “I could never stay cross with you for long.”

  “That,” said Lilian, “was just as well.”

  ON THE MORNING of Christmas Eve, Moray brought Lilian down to the village early. Rosie looked up, surprised. Lilian was wearing a very old, faded dress with green sprigs. She had gotten so thin again, Rosie noticed. Excitement and no sleep, no doubt. She didn’t guess for a second that Lilian had been doing it on purpose so she could get into her oldest dress again, the one he had loved her in, the one that had been nestling at the bottom of the wardrobe all these years.