The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper (15 page)

The Flower

ARTHUR GOT THE
bus and traveled to King's Cross, following Mike's instructions. He boarded the train and slept all the way back home. He was awoken by a bony hand gripping his shoulder. “We've arrived in York,” an old man with eyebrows like white feathers said. “Do you need to get off here?”

Arthur nodded thanks. At the station he bought a bottle of water from a vending machine. Squirting it into his palms he splashed his face. Although he was still tired, there was a yearning sensation in his stomach.

He left the station and stood on the forecourt watching the taxis and people running for trains and those greeting relatives, loved ones and friends. He was glad to be back on home turf and recognized all the accents around him.

There was part of him that wanted to return to his house, to see Frederica and make a nice cup of tea. Yet there was also a part that wasn't ready to settle back home. Not just yet. He wanted to find out more about Miriam's mother.

As he walked, he took a bit of a detour, through the center of Thornapple. There was a more direct route home but he needed a bit of thinking space. The events of the past few days jumbled around in his mind and he wanted to reflect on them.

He had found out where Miriam had lived during her adventures, who she had known. But he didn't know why she had left. It was unusual for anyone from Thornapple to do anything other than marry, have kids and stay in the village.

Had she been excited to live in a manor with tigers, or was it an inconvenience until she found something else? Did she know that François De Chauffant was gay, or had he been the love of her life? Had her cold mother smiled when she handed over the little flower pendant? Had mother and daughter shared a tender moment? He supposed he would never find out.

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. The 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.”