by Gil McNeil
Elsie’s finding her glasses while I pick Pearl up. She’s not very good at waiting patiently in her buggy while people chat.
“Come on, darling, let’s see the lovely pictures.”
“More.”
No and more are the top words at the moment. And it’s surprising how far you can get with just two such useful words.
“Do you want a drink, sweetheart?”
Please let me have remembered to put her juice cup in my bag.
“No.”
Excellent.
“Nice apple juice?”
She starts to wriggle.
“More.”
She wants to be down, running about, but I’m not that keen; I’d prefer to avoid the bit where she pulls balls of wool off the shelves and I try to stop her if I can possibly avoid it.
“Let’s have some juice first, love.”
She gives me one of her why-is-my-mother-such-an-idiot looks, which she’s learned from Archie, and is about to start yelling when Cinzia arrives, just in the nick of time. She’s looking even more like Sophia Loren than usual, a young Sophia, like she was in Houseboat, although I suppose that would make me Cary Grant, so possibly not. But she has that gorgeous sway about her, and wears the kinds of clothes that regularly make most of the male residents of Broadgate stand with their mouths slightly open.
She’s busy kissing Pearl, which Pearl is tolerating although she’s not usually that keen on too much fussing.
“So today we go to baby gymnastica, yes?”
“Thanks, Cinzia, she’ll love that.”
“See, I am wearing the trousers.”
It’s amazing how many more dads have suddenly found time to take their toddlers along to the baby gym sessions in the Village Hall since Cinzia arrived. She wore a tiny denim skirt and black footless tights a couple of weeks ago, and Lucy Meadows says Mr. Dawes was so busy watching her he tripped over a mat and banged his knee so badly he had to go home. Mrs. Dawes is still giving me rather pointed looks in the playground, particularly if Cinzia is with us.
“Brava.” I’m picking up a few more Italian words to add to the ones Connie’s taught me.
“Rock Around the Clock” comes on the radio, and Pearl and Cinzia start to dance, with Pearl bobbing up and down and Cinzia shaking her enviable hips. Christ. I think the baby gymnasticals might be in for another tricky session. She’s wearing skinny jeans, with a glimpse of a very flat brown tummy, and a minuscule pale blue T-shirt with a cashmere cardigan. It’s always cashmere with Cinzia.
“Are you still okay for tomorrow night, Cinzia?”
“Sure, and we will make pizzas I think, with ’am?”
Ham on pizzas is Archie’s favorite. And Cinzia’s learned not to call it prosciutto, which Archie refuses to eat.
“Great.”
“Say good-bye to Mamma, Principessa.”
Okay, so the Principessa thing isn’t ideal, but I put up with it because Pearl likes it, and she sometimes gives me a dismissive wave, like I have her permission to leave, which is so much nicer than the routine where they burst into tears at the slightest hint that you might be about to part.
I used to hate that with Jack; he went through a very clingy phase, which basically meant I didn’t go anywhere without him for ages. He even came to the dentist with me, which was particularly hideous, him sitting in his buggy looking at his baby books while I tried to avoid flinching when the dentist did that jabbing thing they do with the little prodder. Nick used to get really annoyed about it, and told me I was making Jack anxious. With hindsight I wish I’d told him to shut up, and if he spent a bit more time working on his relationship with his son, and less time on having an affair with bloody Mimi the French UN worker, he’d be in a better position to give me top parenting tips. Although I didn’t know about that at the time, of course, I just thought he was busy being an up-and-coming television news presenter, and I was the stay-at-home mum who wasn’t keeping up my end of the deal. Most of the time I remember feeling like I was somehow failing, not quite exciting or smart enough, not able to keep up with the pace. God, if only I’d known.
“Thanks Cinzia, and call me, if anything—”
“Yes, I will call, like every day; I will call if anything ’appens, but it will not. We will have a lovely day, and do our gymnastica, won’t we, Principessa?”
Pearl waves. I’m sure she’s going to have an Italian accent; she sounds very Italian when she’s babbling, and she goes in for a fair bit of Italian-style tutting, often accompanied by a slight shrug of the shoulders. And she calls me Mamma, but then so did the boys and we didn’t have an Italian au pair then. Or even the remotest hint of an au pair. Nick didn’t like the idea of anyone else in the house; he liked to come home and completely switch off. Sometimes he just slept, and hardly spoke to us at all. Which I also used to think was somehow my fault.
“See you later. Have a lovely day, sweetheart.”
Great. Finally, I can start work. It’s ten past ten and I’ve been up for hours. This working-mother lark is such a treat.
“I’m going up to the office, Elsie, and I’ll check the website orders.”
“Right you are, dear.”
I think I’ll make a list. That’s always calming. I’ll drink my tea and make a list. And then I need to sort out the window displays. I took out most of the Christmas things last week, but I still want to add in a few more hot-water-bottle covers, and the new tea cozies. And I should probably start thinking about a new display for February, with a Valentine’s Day theme again; it worked really well last year, and I’ve still got the strings of pink heart-shaped fairy lights in the stockroom. The café window display is fairly simple, with knitted tea cozies and teapots, and knitted cakes on the antique glass cake stands I found in Venice, and the blue willow pattern one I found in a junk shop; with fairy lights and frosted glass sundae dishes, it all looks very pretty. Gran and Betty loved knitting the scoops of ice cream for the dishes, in dark chocolate and raspberry, with a few pale pom-poms in vanilla and caramel, and mint. So all I need to do is update it, adding in knitted mince pies and holly leaves at Christmastime, or more knitted cakes. Gran found a pretty cup and saucer in the jumble sale at the Lifeboats last week, so I want to put that in too.
Which reminds me, I must ask Gran if she can babysit on Monday, so I can go to the bloody PTA meeting with Connie. I’ll ask her if she’s decided about her cruise as well; she’s been looking at brochures again with Reg, and there are some lovely looking ones that go round the Caribbean, but she says she doesn’t want to be that far away, in case I need her. So I need to persuade her it’ll be fine.
Right. List. Ring Gran. Get more details on the bloody bus thing. We’ll need to set up one of those telephone charts for the mornings when the light sea mist is more of a torrential downpour and walking to school would involve lots of soaked children arriving sopping wet and chilled to the bone. I should ring Mr. Prewitt too, and make sure he’s got everything he needs for the shop accounts; he’s been impressed with the impact of the café; our profits were up nearly 500 percent for the last quarter, even after I gave Connie and Mark their share, which sounds great until you know how low it was to start with.
I want to check with him about the insurance too; ever since the fire I’ve been fairly obsessive about it. Thank God our policy was up-to-date, or I would never have been able to afford to buy Mrs. Davis out. Even though her florist business wasn’t earning much, and the prices round here are still pretty low, it was a fair chunk of money, and being right next door might have made some people double the price. But she was so nice about it, and kept trying to lower it because her electrics started the fire in the first place. I sorted it out with Graham and Tina in the end, and he talked to his brothers. We saved a bit by not using an agent. But I thought I’d still need to take out a business loan, and I don’t think the bloody banks are that keen on wool shops run by single parents with three kids. Although they seem perfectly fine with multimillion-pound gamble
s run by the kind of men who you’d pay serious money not to sit next to at dinner parties. Not that I go to dinner parties, but if I did I bet I’d end up sitting next to a banker boasting about his bonus. Despite taking us to the brink of financial meltdown, they all still seem to be awarding themselves massive bonuses. Bastards. But with the insurance money and a bit of help from Gran and Reg, and dipping into my rainy day money, I managed to buy the café without having to go the bank. Not that things aren’t a bit tight, and I still can’t work out how I managed to paint most of the upstairs while Pearl was newborn. I went into a sort of magnolia daze I was so tired. But things have always been tight financially, so I’m used to it. Nick and I never reached the bit where things got a little easier; he was gone long before that. Not that I realized it at the time. I thought he was just working, not off having an affair and taking out a bloody second mortgage behind my back. It’s almost embarrassing how stupid I was back then. Still, you live and learn, as Gran would say. Although in Nick’s case of course, not so much.
Damn, that’s something else to add to my list. I need to call Elizabeth and arrange a time for us to visit the grave. Another opportunity for her to tell us all how marvelous her Nicholas was, and treat me like his driving his car into a tree was somehow my fault. It’s been three years next weekend, but it feels so much longer than that. We’ve come a long way since those early days, when the police came round and everything fell apart. If Ellen hadn’t been there for me I don’t know how I’d have managed. The shock, the grief, the anger, all of it. Now it all feels much more distant. Maybe I’ve done that thing all the books say you’re meant to do, and I’m into the acceptance phase. Maybe forgiveness is on the horizon, although on second thought, maybe not. I don’t think I’ll ever really forgive him. Not for crashing the car, he couldn’t help that; although if he’d ever listened to me when I told him not to drive like a total nutter, well, who knows. But for planning to leave the boys, who idolized him. It was all so predictable, and unfair, and cheap, and he’s already missed so much. And I can’t help wishing he’d met Pearl, although if he was still around I probably wouldn’t have had her. I would never have gone to Venice for that first Christmas after he died, when I couldn’t face our first family Christmas without Nick. I’d never have sat drinking whiskey with Daniel in his hotel room, talking about lost loves. Still, I wish Nick could have seen my gorgeous girl, I know he’d have got a kick out of seeing how like Jack she was when she was born. He’d have recognized her in a heartbeat. She’s much more like Archie now, in temper and steeliness, which is probably a good thing. I think girls need a bit of steel, just in case.
Oh God, I’m feeling tearful now, and I really don’t have the time for this. Not now. I’ll check the order book, and if that doesn’t work I’ll do a mini–stock take. That always helps.
“Hello, pet.”
“Gran, I was just going to call you.”
“Reg has just dropped me off, he’s on his way to the Bowls Club, there’s a row on about who put the scoreboard away last time; silly fuss about nothing if you ask me. Did you want me for anything special?”
“No, just wanted to know if you’ve decided about your cruise.”
“Not yet, pet, I like to take my time, and Reg is getting some new brochures. There’s a lovely one goes round the fjords, and Russia.”
“Why would you go there when you could be in the Caribbean?”
“I don’t like it too hot, you know that, pet.”
“Well, that definitely won’t be a problem if you’re cruising round Siberia.”
She smiles.
“Gran, you’re not fooling me you know. Go on a proper cruise. We can manage for a few weeks. I really want you to have a proper break.”
“I know, pet, but I’m not even sure I want to go gallivanting off, spending all that money. I get lots of breaks now, and what I really like is being with you and the boys, and our Pearl. I never thought it would be so lovely you know, stuck in this shop for all those years with old Mrs. Butterworth making my life a misery, I never dreamed it would all turn out like this. I’m so glad I stuck it now. Reg was saying the same thing only the other day. And when you get to my age, if you haven’t worked out what makes you happy, then it’s too late. And for me, it’s stopping right here.”
“I know Gran, but—”
“I’ll think about it, pet, that’s all I’m saying. Anyway, it’s not like I haven’t been before, we had our lovely honeymoon cruise, which I still think is silly at our age, calling it a honeymoon. It was different with your grandad Tom, but we were so young we couldn’t afford a proper honeymoon, just a night in a hotel in Margate. Terrible place, got bombed flat later in the war, and a good thing too. No, my holiday with Reg was luxury compared to that. And he does look nice in his blazer; I’ll say that for him. So I’ll think about it, I promise. Now then, when do you need me this week? I’m happy to come in, you know, or sit with the children, whatever you need, just say. Shall we have a cup of tea, love? I’m parched.”
“Lovely.”
“And then we can run through the next few days. I’ve brought my diary, Reg got me one, did I show you? Lovely leather one.”
“Yes, you did, Gran.” About ten times actually.
“I’ll just put the kettle on then.”
It’s like a military exercise, keeping track of our week. Cinzia has her English classes in Canterbury, so Gran has Pearl on Monday mornings, and they go to baby music, which Pearl enjoys, particularly the drums apparently. Reg sits cross-legged on the floor with her because his knees are better than Gran’s, while she catches up on the gossip with Mrs. Nesbit, who makes the tea. But all in all, despite the tricky timetabling, we seem to manage, unless anyone is ill, or the kids are on holiday, when it all goes pear-shaped and I have to make it up day by day. But Elsie is always happy to do extra shifts in the shop, and Gran’s friend Betty helps out too, so we usually get there. And it’s not quite as overwhelming as I thought it would be in those first few weeks after Pearl was born. Although there was one morning when I’d finally got her off to sleep, and I was sitting by the till, with her Moses basket by my feet, looking at the order book, and then I woke up nearly an hour later to find Elsie had draped a blanket over my shoulders and was making the customers tiptoe past while I was facedown on the counter, still holding the order book. Which wasn’t a perfect example of entrepreneurship, but people seemed to like it.
“Right then, pet, you’ve got me for half an hour or so, what needs doing?”
“You could help me with the windows.”
Gran loves doing the window displays with me. “Lovely.”
We rearrange the hot-water-bottle covers, and adjust the little wooden figures that are meant to look like they are skiing down the cotton wool slopes, while I drape hats and scarves over the partition along with a couple of mohair shawls in dark forest green and apple green, with white fairy lights in the cotton wool snow. I’m knitting another shawl in soft cotton, in a dark orange marmalade color, but I haven’t quite finished it yet.
By the time Reg has collected Gran, and we’ve talked about cruises again, and whether they do or do not want a balcony, and I’ve talked to Mr. Prewitt and put in orders for more cotton and the chunky tweed, it’s nearly half past one and I’m knackered. The café’s busy, so I sit upstairs in the workroom and light the fire. People often bring a drink and a slice of cake up with them from the café while they look through the pattern books; Elsie’s convinced we’ll end up with sticky balls of wool from people browsing while they’re eating; she keeps a packet of wipes behind the till specially, but so far she hasn’t had to swoop in and demand anyone wipe their hands.
It’s so lovely watching the flames on the kindling wood, with no customers, and no small people needing any attention. It’s hard to believe you could see the sky through the holes in the roof after the fire, when everything was black and soaking wet. But with the new plaster and paint, you’d never know it happened. Downstairs is sti
ll pretty much how it was, only brighter and warmer, but upstairs is where there’s been the biggest transformation. The whole of the space above the shop is now the workroom, with the fireplace and the big table, and lots more shelves, and a new sofa and armchairs by the window where the old kitchen used to be. Above the café we’ve made a small office in the front and a large kitchen with the café dishwasher and huge fridge. We’ve managed to fit in a storeroom too, with floor-to-ceiling shelves for extra stock, which means we can order larger quantities and get better discounts. But almost best of all, we’ve actually got a parking space now, in the lane behind the café; the wool shop never had a back door because we’re right on the corner, but the café does, so now there’s somewhere for delivery vans, and I can leave the door open and nip into the shop for five minutes if Pearl is asleep in her car seat. Elsie keeps an eye on her, or Laura, so it’s not as dodgy as it sounds, and it made a real difference when she was tiny and waking her up led to so much squawking.
I’m in serious danger of falling asleep when Mrs. Bullen comes up wanting to look at patterns for Fair Isle cardigans for her granddaughter. We’re back downstairs choosing colors when Mark arrives.
“Afternoon, Jo. Connie said you were getting low on chocolate, and the pistachio, so I thought I’d bring some more stock over.”
“Thanks, Mark.”
He unloads the tubs of ice cream and puts them into the big glass-fronted display fridge in the café while Mrs. Bullen finally decides on purples and pinks to contrast with the grays and whites. The pattern has a lovely pale blue which we haven’t actually got in stock, but apparently it doesn’t matter, because her granddaughter is now insisting on pink and more pink since her new baby brother arrived. I find a pretty rose pink as a substitute, and a ball of pale lilac, which I let her have at half price since it’s the last one on the shelf.
“I can’t wait to get home and get started.”
