Welcome To Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop Of Dreams (29 page)

‘No,’ came the clipped tones. ‘Obviously I took some time off to test-drive my new rocket. Then there was the Wimbledon eventing. And I spent a pretty wild weekend in Ibiza.’

‘You’re becoming one of those shut-ins,’ said Rosie. ‘Next time I come here you’ll have sixty-seven cats.’

‘Next time,’ said Stephen. ‘Be still, my overexcited heart.’

But she could see him eyeing her bag.

‘What’s in there?’ he said.

‘Nothing,’ said Rosie, unpacking pork chops, half-roasted potatoes, homemade apple sauce and red cabbage on the table between them, as well as half a pound of butter fudge and a large packet of dolly mixtures. They regarded each other.

‘The NHS is a lot more caring than I remember it,’ said Stephen.

‘This isn’t about the NHS,’ said Rosie. ‘This is about me trying to bribe people to come to my sweetshop.’

Stephen looked completely bemused as Rosie turned on the oven.

‘Oh yes?’

‘I thought you got all the gossip from Mrs Laird?’ said Rosie.

‘Well, she talks, I’m not saying I listen.’

‘My lovely sweetshop … I mean, Great-aunt Lilian’s lovely sweetshop is having its grand reopening ceremony … tomorrow.’ She showed Stephen her leaflets. ‘Why don’t you come?’

Stephen grimaced.

‘Thanks for that. Afterwards, maybe I could do some basket weaving and art therapy?’

Rosie gave him a look.

‘No. You could eat a lolly, like normal people.’

‘Thank you for lumping me in with the normal people,’ said Stephen.

‘Ha, you’d
hate
that,’ said Rosie. ‘You’d hate being one of the normal people.’

‘That’s not fair,’ said Stephen mildly, but with real hurt in his voice. Rosie loaded up the surprisingly clean grill pan, and set the potatoes in the oven to finish cooking. Already they smelled wonderful.

‘To what do I owe this munificence?’ said Stephen. ‘Is Moray trying to poison me?’

‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘Maybe yes. No, I don’t think so. But there is a snag.’

‘I thought there might be.’

‘You have to let me change the dressing.’

The light went straight out of Stephen’s eyes.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I do that myself.’

‘God,’ said Rosie, ‘I’m surprised you’re not dead of blood poisoning.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Stephen.

‘If it were fine,’ said Rosie, ‘you’d be out in the garden, or climbing the stairs, or going to the gym, or seeing your friends or chatting up some girl or boy or going back to work … Stephen, where’s your
family
?’

Stephen scowled. ‘Can’t you just keep the fuck out of my business?’

‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘I’m involved now. If I just wander off I’ll
have to live with the hideous image of you still sitting at your kitchen table, or being eaten by ladybirds or something.’

‘Ladybirds?’

‘The amount you move about, it could happen.’

‘Seriously, ladybirds?’

‘I’ve herbed the pork chops,’ said Rosie, as a heavenly aroma started to fill the kitchen.

Stephen looked torn, and so sad Rosie suddenly felt overwhelmed. What on earth had he gone through to make him like this? A young, handsome, obviously otherwise fit guy … What had happened to him? She looked under the grill and turned it down.

‘You know, if we start now, the food will be ready by the time we’re finished.’

‘Rosie,’ said Stephen. ‘It’s horrible, you know. Horrible.’

‘I’ve seen worse,’ said Rosie stoically. ‘Honestly, until you’ve seen someone present at Casualty with a cockroach up their arse, you haven’t lived.’

‘A
what
?’

‘Exactly. And yet
you’re
the one who’s depressed. Come on.’

It was time for action. Gently yet firmly, Rosie took his elbow and steered him into what she guessed, correctly, was the bathroom, old-fashioned but clean.

‘Take your trousers off,’ she said, turning to scrub her hands. ‘I’m not looking. Let me know if you need me to help you.’

He insisted he didn’t, but she could tell by his careful movements that it wasn’t easy for him.

‘Are you looking in the mirror?’

‘Yes,’ said Rosie. ‘Looking, and giving you marks out of ten. Get on with it please.’

When she turned round, he was perched anxiously on the side of the bath, running his hands through his hair, which was now in obvious need of a cut.

He wore white boxers, and his right leg was extremely long, muscled, still brown and firm. His left, though, looked like it didn’t belong to a matching set. It was white and hairless, and almost wasted away. Rosie knelt down and, without speaking, because she knew it would hurt, quickly and expertly unravelled the bandage. Although he didn’t make a sound, Rosie could tell by the tensing of his muscles how painful it was, and his fingers gripped the side of the bath.

Ready for something much worse, she looked carefully at the wound; a great jagged rent down the inside of his thigh. It did not look particularly nice – it still gaped – but it was, most importantly, clean; it didn’t smell and there was no sign of degradation in the wound. Rosie looked up at him.

‘This is clean,’ she said, her face furrowing.

‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘I’m not a complete idiot.’

‘Well, apart from the fact that you are,’ said Rosie, who could see clearly where the stitches had dissolved before they’d done their job properly, ‘you’ve been cleaning this. Or someone has.’

‘No,’ said Stephen. ‘Mrs Laird is nifty, but she’s not a nurse.’

Rosie followed his eyes to the medicine cabinet above the sink. On top of it was a huge, half-empty brown bottle of surgical spirit.

‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘That must hurt like crazy.’

‘The whisky helps,’ said Stephen. ‘I like to feel I’m doing the job from inside and out.’

‘But can’t you see it doesn’t matter?’ said Rosie. ‘It doesn’t matter how much of that stuff you pour in; if you don’t get it restitched it’s never going to get better. It can’t.’

Stephen didn’t say anything as she set about cleaning the area – gently, using an anaesthetic cream. Then he said, softly, ‘Could you do it? The stitches?’

‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘I shouldn’t even be doing this really. Just don’t slip on the bathroom floor and knock yourself out, or else we’ll really be in trouble.’

‘You mean I’m going to have to go and see that supercilious prick Moray?’

‘What’s your problem with Moray?’

Stephen shrugged. ‘Thinks he knows it all. Likes to stick his nose in everyone’s business. Goes to all the trouble of getting a medical degree, then spunks it sitting on his bum looking up old ladies’ arses.’

Rosie thought privately, he’s about the same age as you, but wisely kept it to herself.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘What about going to the nearest hospital? A&E could stitch that right up for you.’

Stephen looked down at his leg as she bandaged it up. There was a long pause. Rosie sighed.

‘Have you just been sitting up here like a poky old man, crossing your fingers and hoping it would get better on its own?’ she said, with a note of tenderness in her voice. There was a silence. ‘You must know it never, ever can.’

There was another pause. Rosie could tell what he wanted her to say. He was so funny, like a child in some ways.

‘I could probably drive you there,’ she went on. ‘On your bicycle?’ ‘I’ll figure something out.’

Stephen said nothing, just sat and sighed. Then finally he looked up.

‘Can you get out while I put my trousers on?’

Rosie packed up her bag and turned to leave the room.

‘I’m taking that as a yes!’ she yelled cheerily.

1943

Life returned to normal; or as normal as wartime life could be. Although it seemed impossible, although it seemed that no one could ever behave normally again; although every child laughing in the street, every old man saying good evening in the roadway had at first seemed like an affront to the awful destruction of the world. Pure unrelenting grief, Lilian found, was too heavy and tiresome to keep up. Little by little the real world returned; she would find her attention distracted by a programme on the radio, or a pretty cuckoo in the hedgerow, or the touch of the warm sun on her skin would make her feel happy, for a moment, before she would remember all over again. And although it seemed that her father’s jaunty, energetic sense of humour might have gone for good, he could still make a comment, over supper, about how good the soup was, or how takings were up, or down, in the shop. And after the lamb, which they’d christened Daisy, was on to grass, bounding about happily in the field (Lilian pretended she always knew which lamb was hers), she and Henry had more time to chat, and found they wanted to talk about almost everything, not just her loss; about his sister, who’d died of scarlatina when he was nine, or how he wanted to go to technical college in Chester; he didn’t want to do farmwork for much longer, but it depended on whether he could get enough money together, and anyway, he was bound to be called up before long so he wasn’t sure if it mattered
.

And Lilian found she enjoyed talking about his life, his plans and dreams; they took her away from thinking about Ned, from the sweetshop, from the stifling little parlour that held what was left of her family. So they would sit, sometimes sharing a bag of damaged rock candy, and talk about what he would do, and gradually, little by little over those stolen hours, sometimes with Henry practically falling asleep after a long hot day in the fields, sometimes sharing a bottle of cider as Lilian stared at his sunburned neck and curly, tangled hair, and wondered how for the life of her she could ever have found him annoying; how she could ever, for a second, have found him anything but the most wonderful, kind, amazing man she had ever known, she gradually, growing more and more bold, laid her head on his shoulder; let him, gently, take her hand as they lay and talked in the meadow and, slowly, their plans, their ideas for life, started to include both of them; started to twist together like two plants growing side by side
.

Before the war, Lilian reflected, as they walked home late, the heavy blood-orange moon rising over their heads, this would have been absolutely disallowed; the scandal could have affected everything. Now, it seemed, the rules had changed; so many young men had gone, or left the village, or been killed – one thing Lilian had learned, horribly, was the amount of tragedy masked in other people’s lives. From feeling herself to be the only person mistreated by the universe, she had realised that in fact, until now, she had been innocent and protected; that to lose a brother or a son was a common experience; had been as long as there had been wars. She felt as if she had joined a new group of people, those who knew how cruel the world could be and could never unlearn that fact
.

They were crossing the cobbled main street when, biting her lip, she reached out her hand and without even breaking stride, Henry reached out his strong, calloused fingers to meet it as they walked entwined together down the darkening road
.

Despite the fact that she knew deep down it was only a matter of time before he got his call-up papers; that Henry must leave shortly; despite the loss of Ned, and the fact that her two brothers were still at war; despite all of this, she would look back on this for ever as one of the happiest moments of her life
.

Chapter Eleven

The trick to getting bits of peanut brittle out from between your teeth requires some skill. I did at one stage suggest to the manufacturers that they include a toothpick with every packet, but they were extremely rude and made remarks about having children’s eyes out and so on, which in my opinion is why peanut brittle is much in decline today. But who am I to talk? After all, why would any confectionery manufacturer listen to someone who has been selling sweets directly to the general public for the last fifty years? Oh silly me, how dare I get ideas above my station like sending helpful information about a product which causes a clear and obvious problem, as well as making your breath smell like a diabetic monkey.