The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper Read online

  He thought for a moment about phoning his children to see if they knew anything about a charm bracelet hidden in their mother’s wardrobe. It seemed a valid reason to make contact. But then he told himself to reconsider as they’d be too busy to bother with him. It had been a while since he had phoned Lucy with the excuse of asking how the cooker worked. With Dan, it had been two months since his son had last been in touch. He couldn’t believe that Dan was now forty and Lucy was thirty-six. Where had time gone?

  They had their own lives now. Where once Miriam was their sun and he their moon, Dan and Lucy were now distant stars in their own galaxies.

  The bracelet wouldn’t be from Dan, anyway. Definitely not. Each year before Miriam’s birthday, Arthur phoned his son to remind him of the date. Dan would insist that he hadn’t forgotten, that he was about to go to the postbox that day and post a little something. And it usually was a little something: a fridge magnet in the shape of the Sydney Opera House, a photo of the grandkids, Kyle and Marina, in a cardboard frame, a small koala bear with huggy arms that Miriam clipped to the curtain in Dan’s old bedroom.

  If she was disappointed with the gifts from her son, then Miriam never showed it. “How lovely,” she would exclaim, as if it was the best present she had ever received. Arthur wished that she could be honest, just once, and say that their son should make more effort. But then, even as a boy, he had never been aware of other people and their feelings. He was never happier than when he was dismantling car engines and covered in oil. Arthur was proud that his son owned three car body repair workshops in Sydney, but wished that he could treat people with as much attention as he paid his carburetors.

  Lucy was more thoughtful. She sent thank-you cards and never, ever forgot a birthday. She had been a quiet child to the point where Arthur and Miriam wondered if she had speech difficulties. But no—a doctor explained that she was just sensitive. She felt things more deeply than other people did. She liked to think a lot and explore her emotions. Arthur told himself that’s why she hadn’t attended her own mother’s funeral. Dan’s reason was that he was thousands of miles away. But although Arthur found excuses for them both, it hurt him more than they could ever imagine, that his children hadn’t been there to say goodbye to Miriam properly. And that’s why, when he spoke to them sporadically on the phone, it felt like there was a dam between them. Not only had he lost his wife, but he was losing his children, too.

  He squeezed his fingers into a triangle but the bracelet wouldn’t slip over his knuckles. He liked the elephant best. It had an upturned trunk and small ears—an Indian elephant. He gave a wry smile at its exoticness. He and Miriam had discussed going abroad for a holiday but then always settled upon Bridlington, at the same bed-and-breakfast on the seafront. If they ever bought a souvenir, it was a packet of tear-off postcards or a new tea towel, not a gold charm.

  On the elephant’s back was a howdah with a canopy, and inside that nestled a dark green faceted stone. It turned as he fingered it. An emerald? No, of course not, just glass or a pretend precious stone. He ran his finger along the trunk, then felt the elephant’s rounded hind before settling on its tiny tail. In places the metal was smooth, in others it felt indented. The closer he looked, though, the more blurred the charm became. He needed glasses for reading but could never find the things. He must have five pairs stashed in safe places around the house. Picking up his box of tricks he picked out his eyeglass: every year or so it came in handy. Scrunching it into his eye socket he peered at the elephant. As he moved his head closer, then farther away, to get the right focus, he saw that the indentations were in fact tiny engraved letters and numbers. He read and then read again.

  Ayah. 0091 832 221 897

  His heart began to beat faster. Ayah. What could that mean? And the numbers, too. Were they a map reference, a code? He took a small pencil and pad from his box and wrote them down. His eyeglass dropped onto the bed. He’d watched a quiz program on TV just last night. The wild-haired presenter had asked the dialing code for making calls from the UK to India—0091 was the answer.

  Arthur fastened the lid back onto the ice cream box and carried the charm bracelet downstairs. There he looked in his Oxford English Pocket Dictionary and the definition of the word ayah didn’t make any sense to him—a nursemaid or maid in East Asia or India.

  He didn’t usually phone anyone on a whim; he preferred not to use the phone at all. Calls to Dan and Lucy only brought disappointment. But even so, he picked up the receiver.

  He sat on the one chair he always used at the kitchen table and carefully dialed the number, just to see. This was just silly, but there was something about the curious little elephant that made him want to know more.

  It took a long time for the dialing tone to kick in and even longer for someone to answer the call.

  “Mehra residence. How may I help you?”

  The polite lady had an Indian accent. She sounded very young. Arthur’s voice wavered when he spoke. Wasn’t this preposterous? “I’m phoning about my wife,” he said. “Her name was Miriam Pepper, well, it was Miriam Kempster before we married. I’ve found an elephant charm with this number on it. It was in her wardrobe. I was clearing it out...” He trailed off, wondering what on earth he was doing, what he was saying.

  The lady was quiet for a moment. He was sure she was about to hang up or tell him off for making a crank call. But then she spoke. “Yes. I have heard stories of Miss Miriam Kempster. I’ll just find Mr. Mehra for you now, sir. He will almost certainly be able to assist you.”

  Arthur’s mouth fell open.

  The Elephant

  ARTHUR GRIPPED THE receiver tightly. A voice in his head told him to put it down, to forget about this. Firstly, there was the cost. He was on the phone to India. That couldn’t be cheap. Miriam was always so careful about the phone bill, especially with the cost of phoning Dan in Australia.

  And then there was the gnawing feeling that he was prying on his wife. Trust had always formed a great part in their marriage. When he traveled around the country selling locks and safes, Miriam had voiced her concerns that on overnight stays he might succumb to the charms of a comely landlady. He assured her that he would never do anything to jeopardize his marriage or family life. Besides, he wasn’t the type that women would find attractive. An ex-girlfriend had compared him to a mole. She said that he was timid and a bit twitchy. But, surprisingly, he had been propositioned a few times. Though it was probably because of loneliness or opportunism of the ladies (and once a man), rather than his own appeal.

  Sometimes his working days had been long. He traveled around the country a lot. He especially enjoyed showing off new mortise locks, explaining the latches, snibs and levers to his clients. There was something about locks that intrigued him. They were solid and reliable. They protected you and kept you safe. He loved how his car always smelled of oil and he enjoyed chatting to his customers in their shops. But then along came the internet and online ordering. Locksmiths didn’t need salesmen any longer. The shops that remained open started to order their stock by computer and Arthur found himself confined to a desk job. He used the phone to talk to his clients rather than talking face-to-face. He had never liked the phone. You couldn’t see people smiling or their eyes when they asked questions.

  It was hard being away from the kids, too, sometimes getting home when they were already in bed. Lucy understood, delighted to see him the next morning. She would fling her arms around his neck and tell him she missed him. Dan was trickier. On the rare occasion that Arthur finished work early, Dan seemed to resent it. “I like my time with Mum better,” he once said. Miriam told Arthur not to take it to heart. Some kids were closer to one parent than the other. It didn’t stop Arthur from feeling guilty about working so hard to provide for his family.

  Miriam had vowed that she would always be faithful, no matter what hours he worked, and he trusted that she had been. She nev
er gave him doubt to think otherwise. He never saw her flirt with other men or found any evidence that she might ever have strayed. Not that he was looking for it. But sometimes when he got home after working away, he wondered if she’d had company. It must have been hard being alone with the two kids. Not that she’d ever complained. She was a real trouper was Miriam.

  Swallowing a lump that formed in his throat as he thought about his family, he began to move his ear away from the receiver. His hand trembled. Best just to leave this be. Hang up. But then he heard a tinny voice calling out to him. “Hello. Mr. Mehra speaking. I understand that you are phoning about Miriam Kempster, yes?”

  Arthur swallowed. His mouth had gone dry. “Yes, that’s right. My name is Arthur Pepper. Miriam is my wife.” It felt wrong to say that Miriam was my wife, because although she was no longer here they were still married, weren’t they?

  He explained how he found a charm bracelet and the elephant charm with the engraved number. He had not expected anyone to answer his call. Then he told Mr. Mehra that his wife was now dead.

  Mr. Mehra fell silent. It was over a minute before he spoke again. “Oh, my dear sir. I am so sorry. She looked after me so well when I was a boy. But that was many years ago now. I still live in the same house! There is little movement in our family. We have the same phone number. I am a doctor and my father and grandfather were doctors before me. I have never forgotten Miriam’s kindness. I hoped that one day I might find her again. I should have tried harder.”

  “She looked after you?”

  “Yes. She was my ayah. She looked after me and my younger sisters.”

  “Your child-minder? Here in England?”

  “No, sir. In India. I live in Goa.”

  Arthur couldn’t speak. His mind went numb. He knew nothing of this. Miriam had never mentioned living in India. How could this be? He stared at the potpourri-stuffed leaf in the hallway twirling and hanging by a thread.

  “May I tell you a little about her, sir?”

  “Yes. Please do,” he murmured. Anything to fill in some gaps, tell him that this must be some other Miriam Kempster they were talking about.

  Mr. Mehra’s voice was soothing and authoritative. Arthur didn’t think about his phone bill. More than anything he wanted to hear from someone else who might have known and loved Miriam, even if this man was a stranger to him. Sometimes not talking about her made it feel like her memory was fading away.

  “We had many ayahs before Miriam joined us. I was a naughty child. I played tricks on them. I put newts in their shoes and chili flakes in their soup. They didn’t last long. But Miriam was different. She ate the hot food and didn’t say a word. She picked the newts out of her shoes and put them back in the garden. I studied her face but she was a fine actress. She never gave anything away and I didn’t know if she was annoyed with me, or amused. Slowly I gave up teasing her. There was no point. She knew all my tricks! I remember that she had a bag of wonderful marbles. They were as shiny as the moon and one was like a real tiger’s eye. She didn’t care if she knelt in the dust.” He gave a throaty laugh. “I was a little in love with her.”

  “How long did she stay with your family?”

  “For a few months, in India. I was very brokenhearted when she left. It was my entire fault. That is something I have never told anyone before. But you, Mr. Pepper, deserve to know. It is a shame I have carried with me for all these years.”

  Arthur shifted nervously in his seat.

  “Do you mind if I tell you? It would mean a great deal to me. It is like a secret burning a hole in my stomach.” Mr. Mehra didn’t wait for a response before he carried on his story. “I was only eleven but I loved Miriam. It was the first time I had noticed a girl. She was so pretty and always wore such classy clothes. Her laughter, well, it sounded like tiny bells. When I woke up in the morning she was the first thing I thought about and when I went to bed I looked forward to the next day. I know now that this was not true love like when I met my wife, Priya, but for a young boy it was very real. She was very different to the girls I went to school with. She was exotic, with her alabaster skin and hair the color of walnuts. Her eyes were like aquamarines. I probably followed her around a little too much, but she never made me feel foolish. My mother had died when I was very young and I used to ask Miriam to sit with me in her room. We would look through my mother’s jewelry box together. She loved the elephant charm. We used to look through the emerald and see the world in green.”

  So, it is a real emerald, Arthur thought.

  “But then Miriam began to go out on her own twice a week. We spent a little less time together. I was old enough not to need an ayah but my two sisters did. She was there for them but not so much for me. I followed her one day and she met with a man. He was a teacher at my school. An Englishman. He came around to the house and he and Miriam took afternoon tea. I saw that he liked her. He picked a hibiscus flower from the garden to give to her.

  “Mr. Pepper. I was a young boy. I was growing and had hormones roaring around my body. I felt very angry. I told my father that I had seen Miriam and the man kissing. My father was a very old-fashioned man and he had already lost one ayah because of similar circumstances. So there and then he went to find Miriam and told her to leave. She was so surprised but she acted with dignity and packed her suitcase.

  “I was devastated. I had not meant this to happen. I took the elephant from the jewelry box and ran to the village to have it engraved. I pushed it into the front pocket of her suitcase as it stood by the door. I was too much of a coward to say goodbye, but she found me hiding and gave me a kiss. She said, ‘Goodbye, dearest Rajesh.’ And I never saw her again.

  “From that day, Mr. Pepper, I swear I have tried never to tell a lie. I only tell the truth. It is the only way. I prayed that she could forgive me. Did she say that to you?”

  Arthur knew nothing about this part of his wife’s life. But he knew this was the same woman that they had both loved. Miriam’s laughter did sound like tiny bells. She did have a bag of marbles, which she gave to Dan. He was still reeling from astonishment, but he could hear the longing in Mr. Mehra’s voice. He cleared his throat. “Yes, she forgave you long ago. She spoke of you kindly.” Mr. Mehra laughed out loud. A short ha, ha! “Mr. Pepper! You have no idea how happy your words make me feel. For years this has felt like a huge weight for me. Thank you for taking the trouble to ring me. I am so sorry to hear that Miriam is no longer with you.”

  Arthur felt a glow in his stomach. It was something that he hadn’t felt for a long time. He felt useful.

  “You were a lucky man to be married for so long, yes? To have a wife such as Miriam. Did she have a happy life, sir?”

  “Yes. Yes, I think she did. It was a quiet life. We have two lovely children.”

  “Then you must try to be happy. Would she want you to be sad?”

  “No. But it’s hard not to be.”

  “I know this. But there is much to celebrate about her.”

  “Yes.”

  Both men fell silent.

  Arthur turned the bracelet around in his hand. He now knew about the elephant. But what about the other charms? If he didn’t know about Miriam’s life in India, what stories did the other charms hold? He asked Mr. Mehra if he knew anything about the bracelet.

  “I only gave her the elephant. She did write to me once, a few months after she left, to say thank you. I’m a sentimental fool and I still have the letter. I always told myself that I would get in touch, but I felt too ashamed about my lie. I can see what address is on the letter if you like?”

  Arthur swallowed. “That would be most kind.”

  He waited for five minutes until Mr. Mehra returned to the call. He reached out to stop the potpourri leaf from twirling. He flicked through the leaflets Bernadette had posted through the door.

  “Ah, yes, here it is—Gra
ystock Manor in Bath, England, 1963. I hope this helps with your search. She talks in the letter about staying with friends there. There’s something about tigers in the grounds.”

  “There is a tiger charm on the bracelet,” Arthur said.

  “Aha. Then that might be your next port of call. You will find out the stories of the charms one by one, yes?”

  “Oh, this isn’t a search,” Arthur started. “I was just curious...”

  “Well, if you are ever in India, Mr. Pepper, you must look me up. I will show you the places that Miriam loved. And her old room. It hasn’t changed much over the years. You would like to see it?”

  “That’s very decent of you. Though I’m afraid I’ve never left the UK before. I can’t see myself traveling to India anytime soon.”

  “There is always a first time, Mr. Pepper. You bear my offer in mind, sir.”

  Arthur said goodbye and thank you for the invitation. As he placed the receiver down, Mr. Mehra’s words rolled over and over in his head: next port of call...find out the stories of the charms one by one...

  And he began to wonder.

  The Great Escape

  IT WAS STILL dark the next morning when Arthur woke. The digits on his alarm clock flicked to 5:32 a.m. and he lay for a while staring at the ceiling. Outside a car drove past and he watched the reflection of the headlights sweep over the ceiling like the rays of a lighthouse across water. He let his fingers creep across the mattress, reaching out for Miriam’s hand knowing it wasn’t there and feeling only cool cotton sheet.

  Each night when he went to bed, it struck him how chilly it was without her. When she was next to him he always slept through the night, gently drifting off, then waking to the sound of thrushes singing outside. She would shake her head and ask did he not hear the thunderstorm or next door’s house alarm going off? But he never did.