The rest of the afternoon and early evening are spent packing and cleaning. Jo is just hanging a notice in the shop window telling her customers she has had to go away, when a large figure appears in the alcove leading to the front door. She turns quickly, searching the gloom for a shaggy blond headand an arm decorated with tattoos. It is the young police officer. He nods towards her notice and shakes his head. Jo unlocks the door and the young man instead gives her very good advice about keeping thieves out while she is away.
After this he helps her take the large sheets of paper that are stored in the drawers of the oak cabinet and stick these across the window. Rummaging in what remains of the hardware products, he finds a plug that works on a timer and sets this up in the hallway to Uncle Wilbur’s flat, along with a lamp, so it will look like someone is still living there. Next he carefully words a notice that states the shop is closed, but also implies someone is still around. After this he produces his trump card by telling her he will get the lads at the station to keep an eye on the shop. It is then Jo discovers he is twenty-eight (not twelve) and an inspector, called Kendrick.
Following Kendrick’s visit, Jo wanders off down Highgate High Street, hoping to find some gifts for Christmas. She doesn’t know how much time she will have for shopping once she gets home. Many of the shops are still open, and the streets are busy with late-night shoppers. The air is crisp and cold with occasional wafts of spices and coffee. The windows of the shops shine rosy against the darkness of the buildings above. Jo has to step around a crowd gathered outside a flower shop, couples choosing Christmas wreaths bursting with clumps of pine cones, berries, roses and glistening ribbons. These are glorious, sophisticated confections. A far cry from the wreath her mum will hang on their door; foliage cut from hedgerows and the garden.
Jo escapes into the open doorway of the shop next door, stepping away from thoughts of her mum’s grief and wanting to distance herself from the companionable couples. It is a greengrocer’s, and she decides to buy some clementines for the train journey home.
It is when the girl who is serving her hands over a brown paper bag bulging with oranges that she starts to cry. She leaves the shop without the fruit, unable to explain to the young girl that she has just realized she will never see Uncle Wilbur again.
Jo retraces her steps back up the High Street, only pausing once to visit a bookshop. She heads straight to the ‘Classics’ section and draws a George Eliot novel from the shelves. With the substance of the book in her hands, she feels her breathing ease.
In the end she returns to Uncle Wilbur’s shop carrying a parcel of three books. One of these,Middlemarchby George Eliot, she puts into her suitcase along with a selection of fountain pens and stationery from the shop (she will sort out who will get what for Christmas later), then she gift-wraps the other two books. The first of these is about the artist, Banksy. She posts it through Lando’s shop door with a Christmas card explaining about Uncle Wilbur. She signs off saying she hopes to see him in the New Year when she will be down to help sort out the shop. The second book, a slim volume of Louis MacNeice’s poetry, she puts through Eric’s door, along with her spare key (Kendrick having said it was best to leave one with a neighbour). Her note to Eric the Viking is short and to the point. Her desire to write more robbing her of words. Before wrapping the poetry book, she finds the poem shetalked to Malcolm about and places the ribbon bookmark next to it.
Wrapping Christmas gifts makes her think of Malcolm and Ruth. She has nothing to give them, and no way to contact them, apart from texts – their replies spasmodic and short. Malcolm has admitted he doesn’t like texting and has taken her parents’ address, telling her he will write to her soon.
It is just before the cold in the shop drives her upstairs to spend her last night in Uncle Wilbur’s flat that inspiration comes to her. She knows what she would like to give Malcolm and she plucks a large green notebook from the shelves in preparation. Ruth? Well, Ruth will take more thinking about.
Jo has everything packed ready and it is time to leave for the station. She is sitting on the stool by the counter, her wheelie suitcase at her feet. How many hours has she sat here watching the world go by? It feels right that the window is now blank, shrouded in white paper, giving no indication of what is outside – or clue to what the future brings.
Jo studies the floor tiles that mark the entrance to Uncle Wilbur’s shop. On sunnier days, when shafts of light penetrate the front half of the shop, casting ripples over these indigo and bronze floor tiles, Jo could believe she is looking at mosaics stolen from an Indian palace. At other times, when the sky outside is grey or, like now, when the light is muted, the colours of the tiles merge together and she cannot see where the tiles end and the wooden floorboards begin. As her uncle’s life faded, so she feels the life she has led here is now receding. Yet the memory of the people she has met over the past months still remain in sharp focus.
As Jo is closing the door of the shop, she catches sight of the noticeboard, now completely covered in a record of her past few months. She wonders when she will see it again.
44
The gods
Her dad is waiting for her at the station. He carries her bags to the car, disdaining the use of the wheels on her cases. He is a small man, with trousers bagging at the knees, giving the impression of a loose softness at odds with the strong, taut arm that hurls her bags effortlessly into the car boot.
It is as he is reversing out of the parking space, fists gripping the wheel, that Jo focuses on the liver spots on his hands. She looks at her dad’s profile, his eyes concentrating on the rear-view mirror, and she thinks it won’t be long before it is her brother, Chris, who is the Sorsby running the farm, and her dad will be driving her back to the cottage rather than the farmhouse. It is the way of things. Things are moving on.
Then why can’t she?
‘How was London?’ her dad asks.
‘Fine. How are things on the farm?’
‘Fine.’
It is not that they aren’t interested in each other’s lives. But this stuff isn’t the substance of what they hold between them. The precious stuff. That is contained in a dozen small actions: the cups of tea that Jo makes; the things she finds for him online; the World War II videos she rescues from her mum’s charity box, knowing her dad still has an old video player in the farm office. In turn, he has given her old horse a retirement other OAPs would envy, he makes sure she has a car that will never break down, and when she comes to sit with him in the farm office, he pours her sherry from the supply he keeps for himself and his ancient secretary, Miss Jennings.
They wind their way through the familiar roads, heading away from Northallerton towards the North York Moors. Her parents’ farm is set on the edge of these moors.
‘How’s Mum doing?’
‘Oh, you know,’ he says, and Jo thinks she does. Her mum will be upset but coping.
‘She’ll be glad to see you.’ Then, squinting into the low winter sunshine, her father adds, ‘being the last one left in her family is tough. And she was very fond of Wilbur. It’s hit her hard. Still, she’s been better today, knowing you’re on your way.’
This is a long speech for her dad. Maybe her mum isn’t coping so well, after all. The car falls silent again.
‘Dad, do you believe in God?’
‘Nope.’
Her father is back to his normal self.
‘What is it that you do when you go out and thank the gods, then?’
