Still Nina said nothing.
“If Laud Mayor shuts us down, it might happen while Miss Clapham is away.”
“Then she’d better come back.”
“We don’t know where she’s gone.”
“So you can’t hound her to come back,” Nina said. “Obviously it’s all beyond your control.”
“We need you to help us.”
“I don’t know where she is.”
“No. Not like that. We need you to work with me and Bryn so there’s more of us than there is of him.”
Nina raised an eyebrow.
“You know what I mean?” Clearly it was very important to Maudie.
“I know what you mean.”
“So you’ll help us?”
“No.”
Chapter 20
c. AD 250, INDIA: confectioners shape little figures of animals and people out of sugar.
Bryn lay in his bed and stared at the great white moon that shone through the net curtains. He never pulled the drapes at night, preferring to imagine Jen sitting on a star, twinkling at the world. He could not imagine her on a fluffy cloud playing a harp – she couldn’t even pick out a tune on the piano. Nor could he imagine her in purgatory or worse. Occasionally he wondered if she liked being an angel. He didn’t want her to be an angel; he wanted her to be his wife, mother to their children. He supposed she might gaze upon him, but he hoped she didn’t gaze too long. He was a miserable wreck, and he didn’t want her seeing his gloom.
Jen had fought to live. “We haven’t done anything we planned,” she said, over and over until the day she suddenly had enough and gave up, whispering how sorry she was to have let him down while he patted her arm and protested that she had made his life perfect.
Birth, death, and somehow, in between, a life to be lived. Bryn groaned aloud. If sleep wasn’t to come, he’d best get up and look at the beastly books. He flung the blankets back, but did not get up. After a minute, he hauled the blankets to his chin. “The numbers don’t change.”
*
If Nina walked beyond Mrs Potts’ home, away from the village and around a couple of corners, she would find a walkway heading up through the bracken, the manuka, and the kauri to the top of a hill where she could overlook not only the village but the sea; a vast expanse of sea in one direction, and a series of little bays with boat ramps in the other. Mrs Potts had given up the information reluctantly at dinner the previous evening – if dinner it could be called, a slop of mashed brussel sprouts wrapped in, she supposed, homemade pastry made from flour and water.
Nina had wrapped a couple of slices of bread stuck together with peanut butter in greaseproof paper and headed into the hills straight after breakfast. It had been a peaceful day. Few people made the climb and those that did seemed to want solitude as much as Nina herself did.
So it was a jarring return to reality when Bryn and Maudie both accosted her as she slipped down the street towards the beach where she hoped to end the day with her toes in the sand while watching the sun go down.
“Where have you been?” Maudie’s voice was shrill, made louder by the sudden silence that fell among her lingering diners. “Where?”
“You will be the ruin of us,” Bryn hissed, and he jabbed the air with an enraged finger. “Don’t you know it’s hard enough having Laud Mayor skulking around without you skiving off on the busiest day of the week. Where were you?”
Nina heaved her little backpack from one shoulder to the other. “I’ve been walking,” she said. “Had a picnic. It’s a nice day. And now I’m on my way to the beach for a little more peace and quiet, and then back to Mrs Potts’ to have a delicious dinner.”
“You’re meant to be at the shop,” Maudie said. “Miss Clapham never closed the shop.”
“I’m not Miss Clapham.” Nina was short.
“Miss Clapham opened the shop an hour later and closed at three-thirty on Saturdays,” Maudie said.
“I’m not Miss Clapham,” Nina said.
“And what about all the sweets you’ve still got to make?”
“Maudie,” Nina said. “Look at me. I’m not Miss Clapham. I’m Nina. I don’t work seven days a week. I only want to work five days, but while Miss Clapham’s gone, I’ll work six. I won’t work seven, and I won’t work on Saturday.”
“It’s our busiest day,” Maudie wailed. “Everyone passes through our village on Saturdays.”
“If you must take a day off, why not make it Wednesday? The village is dead then.” Bryn had his hands in his pockets, which was better by far than having him stabbing the air.
“Because I don’t work on Saturday. I will never work on Saturday.” Nina realised she sounded petulant, but she didn’t care.
“If you don’t come back, there’ll be an uproar.” Maudie looked to Bryn for support.
“Let there be an uproar then,” Nina said. “I’ll explain myself.”
“It will be too late.” Bryn was cold.
“Too late for what?” Nina said. “Actually, who do I have to explain myself to? Who will create the uproar?”
“The mayor.” Maudie looked thoroughly miserable, and for a moment Nina pictured what she’d do to the arrogant little man if he were ever fool enough to come in to Sweet Treats.
“He dictates,” Nina said.
“Yes.” Bryn’s lips were set in a thin line. “He dictates and if you’re not open for the whole weekend, he’ll push you right out of town.”
Nina stared out over the sparkling ocean. Seagulls soared in a clear blue sky. If she listened hard, she could hear their cry. Could a mayor truly push a law-abiding citizen out of town?
A sigh escaped her. She turned to Maudie. “I will help, if you mean I need to keep the shop open,” she said. “But I will only have it open six days a week. Saturday – the seventh day – is my day of rest, my Sabbath.”
Chapter 21
c. AD 300, PERU: the first popcorn popper is a shallow pot with one handle carved in the figure of a cat; ITALY: Roman doctors coat the rims of their patients’ cups with honey to help the medicine go down.
“Your what?” Maudie shrieked. “Are you Jewish or something?”
“No.” Nina smiled. “Well, yes actually. I’m not Jewish. But I am something. Don’t you go to church?”
“No time for that,” Maudie said.
Bryn scowled at Nina. “When does this Sabbath of yours end?”
“Sunset,” Nina said.
He took a hand from his pocket and wagged his finger in her face again. Nina was sorely tempted to waggle her finger back at him, but thought better of it. “We’ll be around, Maudie and I, to talk about this with you after sunset. Don’t go anywhere.”
“Right you are,” Nina said, hitching her backpack to her other shoulder once again. “If you want me sooner, I’ll be down on the beach.”
She could feel their appraising gaze boring into her back as she walked away. She would not look back, she wouldn’t. But how on earth was she to explain that she kept the Sabbath not to be difficult but because that was the way she honoured God? They already found her difficult enough because she simply wasn’t Miss Clapham.
She scraped sand into a hillock, pressing it down hard, and stacking more on top. She and Greg had never made a decent sandcastle but they were very, very good at making mounds in the sand and shaping them into animals – tortoises, elephants, dolphins, and even a giraffe. Today, just because she felt like it, she sculpted Greg, lying flat in the sand, eyes, nose, fingers, toes, a pair of togs and a tiny indentation of a tummy button. He’d been a part of her body once, a part of her life; he might be buried in a grave but she would always be his mother, he would always be her son.
She decided to sculpt a little bucket and spade beside the sand-Greg, and as she did, she wondered why there was no word for a once-mother. If Greg had been her husband, she would be a widow. If Greg had been her father, she would be an orphan. But Greg had been her son, and there was no word for her unwanted position in life.
There were days, Nina thought as she picked up her pack and trudged to Mrs Potts’, where she felt very, very old.
Chapter 22
c. AD 400, ITALY: wealthy Romans gorge on honeyed almonds.
When Maudie and Bryn rapped at Mrs Potts’ door, Mrs Potts met them with a glare and sent them on their way with a flea in their ears. “She’s not well, you fools. And if she was I wouldn’t let you in. A girl’s got to rest.”
They turned away, looking distrustfully at the windows, expecting to see Nina peering through a pane with a golden halo of light surrounding her head, but there was no sign of her. “And keep your problems away from my house,” Mrs Potts screeched. “I’ve had enough problems in my life. I don’t want yours too.”
*
They came again, together, the next morning. Nina let them into Sweet Treats and continued to blow a tiny spark into a flame. She let them talk, and eventually they went on their way back to Staceys and the café. Neither of them were sure that Nina had actually heard a word they’d said. They looked at each other, and they looked back at Sweet Treats, and just for once, Maudie had absolutely nothing to say.
*
She needed something to read and she didn’t want to buy a magazine, so Nina shut Sweet Treats briefly and went to see Maudie. “Is the library ever open?”
Maudie, still unsure of where she stood with Nina, spoke with great calm. “The mayor closed it. He said there weren’t enough people borrowing books. He thought it was an unnecessary cost for the community to carry.”
“Are there still books inside?”
“Yes.” Maudie recovered some of her aplomb. “What Laud Mayor doesn’t know is that the library is still accessible for those who know.” She tapped the side of her nose and winked. “There’s a loophole.”
Nina had no idea what Maudie could mean. “A mistake in the paperwork?” she said.
“There was no paperwork,” Maudie said. “That horrid old mayor just got it into his head one day that nobody needed a … - oh, you’re talking about something legal? Nah, a loophole in these old buildings is a gap in the wall. In olden times, if you were inside your house and a man approached, you could see who it was through the loophole which was also large enough to rest the tip of a rifle. Could pick off the enemy before he could pick off you.”
“I don’t understand,” Nina said. Were they still talking about the library?
“The library has a loophole. It is big enough to manoeuvre a wire and unlock the door from the inside. We still use the library – all of us – but not a word is said to anybody we don’t trust.”
“You can trust me,” Nina said. “I know no-one, I know nothing. And I can keep my mouth shut. Could I borrow a book?”
Maudie showed Nina the way in, then left her to browse. “Just pull the door to when you leave,” she said. “The lock will snitch by itself.”
Nina chose three books, and put her head in at the café on her way back to Sweet Treats.
“One day the library will re-open.” Maudie seemed very certain.
Nina nodded. It made little difference to her, either way.
“You don’t believe me,” Maudie said, “but I’m dead serious. First we’ll get the campground running again, then we’ll work on re-opening the library.”
Chapter 23
c. AD 450, CENTRAL AMERICA: Mayans chew chicle from the sapodilla tree to help digest food and quench thirst; IRAN: Persians boil sugarcane with limewater and bullock’s blood to make hard cone-shaped loaves of white sugar crystals.
She’d picked the worst story in the world, Nina realised. Someone was sentenced to die because of a crime. She hoped, by turns, it would not be the confident boy, or the slightly-insecure boy, or the young girl who made up the threesome of friends. Each character was so extraordinarily real that it was preposterous to think any one of them would go off the rails.
None of them committed the crime which brought the death penalty. But the confident one was killed, suddenly, brutally at the hands of a mass murderer in a high school shooting. Nina was so shocked, caught off guard so thoroughly that she could not stop wishing the story had ended some other way.
“It’s fiction, for crying out loud,” she said, as she read the closing pages. “No need to be so traumatised.”
She woke again when the cat yowled at the window. She stubbed her toe on the concrete doorstep as she entered Sweet Treats, then banged her head on the mantle above the fire. She pinched her finger in the handle of the pot, and burnt her hand as she beat the fudge.
As she held her hand in the bucket of water, her thoughts returned to the story. They moved on to Greg, and then to John. Then, unbidden, thoughts of her parents came to mind. When Mrs Potts came in and made a comment about the pictures on the wall being crooked, Nina bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood.
Mrs Potts had looked at Nina. “Cat got your tongue?” she said, in her acerbic way.
Nina’s shoulders sagged. She felt she couldn’t hold herself up any longer. To her dismay yet another avalanche of tears rained down her cheeks. Mrs Potts looked at her with distaste. A customer rang the little bell at the counter.
“I’ll fix them,” Mrs Potts said, and Nina left her to it, fleeing to the backyard privy where she sat on the porcelain seat and willed herself to smile.
Chapter 24
c. AD 500, CENTRAL AMERICA: Mayans sip a chocolate drink made from cocoa powder for energy; MIDDLE EAST: herdsmen crunch on honey and sesame-seed brittle; SPAIN: the taste for licorice is so popular, farmers grow the plant as a crop as well as gathering wild roots; CHINA: tart loquat, pear, and plum syrups are made from unripe fruit; SIBERIA: neither sugarcane nor honeybees reach the Far North, but kids can enjoy birch sap in spring, flower nectar and wild berries in summer.
What she’d like to do, Miss Clapham said to her reflection in the mirror, was return to Sweet Treats and do a little hard work. She wondered briefly how Nina was bearing up, but her thoughts were more with herself than with anyone else, so Nina remained in them only briefly.
She was bored silly. There was only so much tea one could drink. There was only so much time one could spend in a library trawling through microfiche files looking for an elusive piece of information which she’d thought a certain fact but which was increasingly looking like a figment of her imagination.
There was an enormous bookshop in the centre of town. She’d take the train and then the bus, and spend a couple of hours browsing. Now that was not something she could do back home. Not enough time, and certainly nowhere to buy books. There had, several years ago, been a unique little bookshop with an incredible range of stationery. Travellers had been entranced with the bookshop as much as they’d been entranced with Sweet Treats and the toilets, often spending their holiday savings on stationery and at least one book which they’d never have bought in a regular bookstore back home. That shop, Miss Clapham remembered, had character.
Not like this one she’d ended up in. A librarian would be proud of the arrangement, the neatness, the orderliness. Tables were stacked high with bargain books, most of which were utter rubbish. An escalator clanked its way to the upper level, from which the sound of radio music disrupted the calm. She could see tables pressed against the glass surround, with men and women crowded together like so many monkeys in a cage, drinking coffee and eating food. Confusion etched her br
ow. Since when did food and drink and books and music meld together in a book shop? She was either becoming too prim or lagging too far behind the times. Either one did not impress her. Perhaps she would join the diners and contemplate the future.
She looked at the sandwiches pressed into tight plastic packaging, and the cakes which looked so enticing but were sure to taste like papier mache. The scones could be reliable, so long as they’d been made with buttermilk, but when she asked, the girl behind the counter had shrugged and picked at her nose ring. Miss Clapham smiled and left the shop.
She’d love to go home, she really would, but she couldn’t. She had to stay here.
Sweet Treats Page 5
