The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper Read online

  What he had discovered were things about himself. He hadn’t expected to act so bravely while being mauled by a tiger. He had taken it in his stride. Really, he thought he would have screamed and freaked out. And he had survived a night in the strange manor, without his own toothpaste and pajamas. The day before that, the thought that his routine might have gone out of sync was enough to bring beads of perspiration to his forehead.

  He offered relationship advice to a stranger in a café, and when he spoke he hadn’t sounded like the silly old man he told himself he was. He confronted a past love rival, when he could have walked away, and he tried to help Sebastian. His openness and acceptance of a young man with a drug problem and his dog had surprised him. These were qualities that he didn’t know he possessed. He was stronger and had more depth than he knew and he liked these new discoveries about himself.

  What these people and events had stirred in him was desire. Not in the sense of lust or longing, but a reaction to others. When they had shown a need, he found a desire to help. When the tiger attacked he felt a desire to live. As the orange beast stood above him, he thought of the future and not the past.

  This was at odds with all that he had felt over the months since Miriam died, when he wanted to go to bed at night and not wake up. When he planned to send his letter to Terry across the road to come and find him dead in his bed.

  He had never paused to consider how other people lived their lives. To him, the whole nation might live in houses identical to his own, with the same layout. They would all rise at the same time in the morning and carry out their daily routines, as he did. He was forever reading in the newspaper about reality TV, following people in their everyday lives. How boring, he would think, not realizing that people’s lives varied wildly to his own.

  Now he had uncovered difference and variety. People had their own gilded cages, like Sebastian waiting hand and foot on a man he had loved for mere months and who then became a stranger. He thought about Lord and Lady Graystock summoning each other by bell. They made his own life seem as gray as the cardigans in Miriam’s wardrobe.

  Once he had looked back and viewed everything in Technicolor—the sky, the sand, his wife’s clothes. With each discovery the color of his memories was fading to a murky mingling together of hues. He wanted to stop, to turn back the clock, to put Miriam’s brown suede boots into the charity bag without first slipping his hand inside. Then he would be oblivious. He could be a widower in peace, looking back at his life with his wife through rose-tinted spectacles. Thinking that everything had been perfect.

  Except it hadn’t been. He knew that really. He had two children who had drifted away from him. He heard the worry and love in Lucy’s voice when they spoke, but she kept her distance a lot. He hadn’t felt able to tell her about the charm bracelet yet. She was keeping things from him, too; he could sense it. When he sporadically called Dan there was always noise and the busyness of family life. They hadn’t managed to find the rhythm of being a family without Miriam.

  He needed to bring back some control. Just as he was taking charge of the charm bracelet, of not letting its mysteries remain hidden, he had to do the same with his family. He had to find out the roots of the reason they were no longer tight-knit and pull them back together again.

  He felt as though he was a seed that had been thrown away into a field onto fallow land. But against all odds there was a root emerging, pushing into the hard soil. A green shoot was peeping through. He wanted to carry on growing. Frederica’s leaves had once been withered and tinged with brown. He had nurtured her with water and attention and he was doing the same for himself.

  He felt brave.

  He decided that he should thank Mike for his troubles and found himself nearing the post office. He would risk going behind enemy lines to purchase a thank-you card.

  When he arrived at the little red post office the sign said Closed for Lunch. It would reopen at one thirty. He knew that Vera stood by the door and took great relish in turning over the closed sign at precisely 12:25 p.m. Latecomers might rattle the handle, but they were not coming in.

  With fifteen minutes to go, Arthur paced up and down on the uneven pavement outside. Many a pensioner had gone sprawling on the flagstones.

  He looked down the road with its identical tiny stone cottages. Miriam used to live in the one with the red door. There was a young family who lived there now—two women and their children. Rumor had it (as he had overheard from Vera) that they had left their husbands for each other.

  Miriam had been an only child. Her mother had been very protective. Arthur had tried to win Mrs. Kempster around by making sure his shoes were highly polished, by bringing cake and listening for hours about the story of how she got her finger trapped in the machinery at the cotton mill. He and Miriam stole knowing smiles whenever she chirped up, “Did I ever tell you about my accident...?”

  Their wedding photos showed the smiling newlyweds, faces pressed cheek to cheek and grinning about what their future held. Mrs. Kempster looked as if she belonged in a different photo. She clutched her giant brown leather handbag to her chest and her lips were pursed as if she had eaten sour sherbet.

  When they cleared her house, her belongings had fit into the back of a small transit van. She had been most frugal. He wondered if the charm had been passed on to Miriam at this time, though again he couldn’t remember his wife telling him about it.

  He paced some more and found himself standing outside Number 48 when the door opened. One of the women came outside. “All right, there?” she asked cheerily. She wore a purple scarf tied around her hair and a green vest top with no bra. Her hair was coiled in black springs and her skin was the color of coffee. She wrung out a dishcloth onto the front step, then shook it out.

  “Yes. Righto.” Arthur raised his hand.

  “Are you looking for something?”

  “Nope. Well, kind of. My wife used to live in this house, you see, when she was young. I always have a little think when I walk past.”

  “Ah, right. When did she leave?”

  “We got married in ’69. But it would have been ’70 or ’71 when her mother died.”

  The women jerked her head. “Come in and have a little look, if you want.”

  “Oh, no. There’s no need. I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

  “Not at all. Feel free to have a nosy. You’ll have to clamber over the kids’ stuff, mind you.”

  He had been about to protest again, but then reconsidered. Why the heck not? It might spark a memory. “Thank you,” he said. “That is most kind.”

  The house was unrecognizable. It was colorful and bright and cluttered. It felt happy. He pictured himself and Miriam, sitting primly in chairs at opposite sides of the fireplace. Mrs. Kempster sat in the middle, clicking her knitting needles and proudly displaying her gnarly finger. The walls had been brown, the carpet frayed. He could still smell the coal fire and the dog that sat so close to the flames that its fur smoked.

  “Does it look familiar?” the woman asked.

  “Not really. I mean, it’s the same layout, but everything is different. It seems happier now. Modern.”

  “Well, we’re trying our best on not much money. The view’s not bad, though the woman at the post office disapproves. I live with my partner, you see. Even worse, in her eyes, that we’re both mixed race.”

  “Vera isn’t very diverse. She likes to gossip.”

  “Tell me about it. What that woman doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing.”

  Arthur walked into the kitchen. It had shiny white units and a yellow dining table. Mrs. Kempster’s kitchen had been dark and unwelcoming, with a creaky floor and an arctic-like draft that whistled through the back door. Nothing looked familiar.

  He then went upstairs. Standing on the landing he peered through the door into the bedroom that was once his wife’s. T
he walls were painted bright red. There were bunk beds, lots of teddies and a brightly colored map on the wall. He stared at it for a moment, then his eyes widened. A memory began to creep back.

  Mrs. Kempster had only allowed him upstairs once, to fix the leg on her bed. She liked to keep him and Miriam in her sights, to make sure they didn’t get up to anything untoward. Whenever Arthur needed the bathroom he had to use the one in the backyard.

  He had carried up a screwdriver, screws and can of oil to carry out the repair. At the top of the stairs he hadn’t been able to resist taking a quick peek inside Miriam’s room. Her bed was covered with a patchwork quilt. There was a doll that sat on a wooden chair. On her wall was a map of the world, in a similar position to the one here now. It was smaller, faded, and the edges curled.

  At the time Arthur thought that the presence of the map was strange. Miriam had never talked of traveling or wanting to explore. He remembered that there were three red-topped pins stuck in the map. He had walked into the room for a closer look. The color of the pins had stood out against the pale green of the continents. As he reached out to touch them, he assumed that his wife had an interest in geography or that the map wasn’t hers. There was a pin in the UK, one in India and one in France.

  He screwed the leg of the bed firmly in place and sat on it to test it wasn’t going to collapse with Mrs. Kempster in it. When he was satisfied, he gathered up his tools and went downstairs.

  He never mentioned the map to his wife, not wanting to appear as if he had been prying. It was something of insignificance that he had buried in his mind, until now.

  Arthur knew Miriam had been to London and had lived in India. And now he began to wonder if she had been to France, too.

  As he took a quick look into the master bedroom, he thought a voice might pop in his head, to tell him that Miriam’s mother had definitely been called Pearl. But it didn’t come. When Miriam had sorted through her mother’s belongings there had been no birth certificate and only a few family photos.

  There was only one person who might be able to help him with the name. A person who knew about everyone and everything in Thornapple: Post Office Vera.

  He went downstairs and thanked the lady, then walked back over to the post office.

  The door was heavy. He heard Vera’s sharp intake of breath as he entered. He hadn’t stepped foot inside since he had snapped at her for asking him about Bernadette.

  Walking around, he built up his nerve. He picked up a miniroll of Sellotape, then a tube of Polo mints, a pack of luggage tags and a thank-you card with a dog wearing a party hat on it for Mike, and one with a cat on for the Graystocks. He could sense Vera’s eyes boring into his back. Soon his hands were full and he couldn’t fit anything else into his grasp. He tipped the items onto the counter. Vera flipped up the glass partition. She took each of the items in turn and made a great show of finding the price and tapping her calculator.

  “It’s, er, a lovely day,” Arthur said to kick-start the conversation.

  Vera grunted. She gave a slow blink to show that she was not impressed.

  He swallowed. “I popped into my wife’s old house. Number 48. The lady there was saying how knowledgeable you are about local people.”

  Vera tapped some more.

  “Yes. I didn’t recognize the place. Years have flown since Miriam was a young girl, living there.”

  He could see Vera’s lips twitch, as if they wanted to join in the conversation. However, she marched off to check the price of the Sellotape on the shelf. She brought back an orange sticky label and pressed it to her desk.

  “You must have seen some comings and goings over the years. It must be a privilege to own the post office and be an important part of the community. I’m afraid that I was rather snappy when I was last here. I’m still at sixes and sevens trying to get back on my feet, after Miriam, you know...” He looked at his feet. This was hopeless. Vera didn’t want to speak to him. He had blown it.

  “She was a lovely woman, your wife.”

  He lifted his head. Vera’s lips were still set in a straight line. “Yes, she was.”

  “And her mother before her.”

  “So, you knew her?”

  “She was a friend of my mother’s.”

  “You can probably help me, then. I’m trying to remember Mrs. Kempster’s first name. Was it Pearl?”

  “Aye, it was. I remember my mother sitting me down when I was a girl and telling me that two important things had happened. One, that Marilyn Monroe had been found dead, and two, that Pearl Kempster had moved her fancy man into the house when her divorce hadn’t yet come through.”

  “So, Marilyn Monroe died in 1962?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “You have a good memory.”

  “Thank you, Arthur. I like to keep the old gray matter busy. Pearl’s new man, though, eeh, he was a bad ’un, but she couldn’t see it. No wonder poor Miriam took off like she did.”

  “You know about that?”

  “Well, yes. A young woman sees her parents split up, and then her mother gets a rough new boyfriend. I presume that’s why Miriam followed that doctor chap she worked for when he moved back to India. Why else would you go somewhere so very foreign?”

  Arthur blinked. Understanding washed over him. No wonder Mrs. Kempster had been so sour-faced with him. She’d gone through a divorce, her daughter flitting abroad and an errant lover. She was a survivor.

  “Thank you, Vera. That is most helpful.”

  “That’s fine. Anytime.” She pushed her tortoiseshell glasses up her nose. “I suppose you think I stand here gossiping all day?”

  “I, er...”

  “Well, that’s not true. I talk to people about what they know, what they’re familiar with. The post office is a community hub. It’s important to village life.”

  “I understand. Thanks again.” He felt a bit humbled at how obliging she had been.

  Turning to leave he found a small semicircle of pensioners around him. They had their heads cocked at various angles as they listened in to the conversation. For a moment he remembered a zombie film he had watched late one night on TV where the undead honed in on their victims, ready to eat their brains. But he was being unkind. They were probably just lonely, like him. “Hello.” He raised his hand. “Nice to see you all. I was just having a lovely chat to Vera. Can I just squeeze through? Thank you. Thanks.”

  He walked back outside and the sun had come out. He had solved another charm. There was nothing untoward about this one. Perhaps the others might be the same, throwing up no other lovers, or questions, or unease. Yes, he felt better now.

  “Oh, hello, Arthur.” Across the road Bernadette spotted him and waved. She ushered Nathan across. “Well, just look at you. You go to Graystock and then there’s no stopping you on your travels again. You’re like Michael Palin all of a sudden.”

  Arthur smiled.

  “I called ’round today with a pie for you. That nice man opposite with the lawn mower said that you’d gone out. I gave the pie to Mrs. Monton instead.”

  “Sorry about that. I should have told you.”

  “You don’t need to explain to me, Arthur. I’m not your keeper. It’s nice to see you out and about, that’s all.”

  “How is the university search going?” Arthur said to Nathan.

  The young man shrugged. “S’okay.”

  “The uni in Manchester looked interesting,” Bernadette said. “Very contemporary.”

  “Good.”

  “You have a rucksack,” she said.

  “Yes. And sandals.”

  “You do look like a real traveler.”

  “I’ve been to London.”

  Nathan looked up, his face full of anticipation. Arthur didn’t elaborate. He didn’t want to talk about De Cha
uffant.

  “Are you doing anything tomorrow?” Bernadette asked. “I’m doing rag puddings. I cook them in white cotton handkerchiefs.”

  Arthur’s mouth began to water, but he had already thought of a plan. “I’ve decided that I’m going to visit my daughter,” he said. “It’s been too long since we saw each other.” He didn’t want to risk Lucy disappearing out of his life as Miriam had moved away from Pearl.

  “Lovely. Well, it was nice to see you. Perhaps another time?”

  “Yes, definitely. Cheerio, then.”

  Arthur took out his mobile phone and rang his daughter. When she didn’t answer, he hung up. But then he dialed again and left a message. “Lucy. It’s Dad. I’ve been in London. I’m just phoning to see if we can start over. I, er, I miss you and think we should be a family again. I need to talk to you about something to do with your mother. I’m going to call ’round to yours at ten-thirty tomorrow morning. I hope to see you then.”

  He then stuffed his post office purchases into his rucksack and walked back toward his house. Now he knew why Miriam had set off on her travels. But why hadn’t she told him anything about them?

  Green Shoots

  SOMETHING HAD CHANGED when Arthur woke up the next morning. For one thing, he had overslept. His alarm clock had stopped, the digits frozen at three in the morning. He knew it wasn’t that early because outside the sky was tissue white and he could hear Terry’s lawn mower. His watch showed it was nine o’clock. Usually this would have thrown him into a state of panic. He was already an hour late for breakfast. But now he lay back on his pillow and thought of nothing except going to Lucy’s house.

  When he got up, he didn’t lay his clothes out on the bed. He went downstairs in his pajamas. He decided that he would eat breakfast with his cereal bowl on his knee in front of the TV rather than sit alone at the too-big kitchen table. He enjoyed ignoring his routine.

  He left his house at nine forty-five, giving himself plenty of time to walk. Terry gave him a wave as he went past. “Arthur. You’re back. Your daughter was looking for you the other day.”