She picked it up and breathed in the smell of old.
Old paper, old ink, old lives. It was exactly the kind of history she loved best: the kind you could touch, just on the edges of living memory. Inside the album’s back cover was written in a childish cursive script:Mary Brownlee, The Rise, Eastingdean, East Sussex.Was Mary Brownlee still around? Probably not, she realised, sadly, if her precious collection had ended up in this hushed, musty shop.
Each postcard had its own embroidered message:Happy Christmas.Happy Birthday. To My Darling Wife. To My Little Girl. Don’t Forget Me.Honor turned each thick page gently, reverently,Souvenir de France,Right is Might, until shereached the final one,RFA 1917, my heart it wings to thee.The colours were muted by the years but every stitch was beautiful and precise, just as it had been set almost a century before.
‘Lovely, aren’t they?’
The quiet voice came from right beside her and Honor jumped so hard she almost dropped the precious album. A woman in her sixties twinkled at her, eyes almost disappearing in her smile, cheeks as round as red apples. If her ears had been pointed, Honor would have suspected her of being a hobbit. ‘Sorry, did I startle you? You’re looking at First World War silks. They were embroidered for the servicemen. What you’re holding is a collection of cards a staff sergeant in the Royal Field Artillery sent home to his wife and daughter.’
‘They’re gorgeous.’ Honor stroked a page. ‘How much would you charge for the book?’
Hobbit woman crinkled up her face again. ‘I’m afraid it’s expensive. The collection will soon be a hundred years old, which is rather a magic figure, in antiques. And all together like that in the album, they sort of tell a story, don’t they?’
Honor waited.
The screwed-up face screwed up even more. ‘I couldn’t take less than two hundred pounds.’
‘Wow. I’d have to think about that.’ Regretfully, Honor closed the album and slid it back on to the shelf by a framed photo of girls in drum majorette uniforms, hems well below their knees.
The lady nodded, sadly. ‘I know. Expensive.’ Then her face scrunched up again with a pained smile, as if she were gently disappointed in Honor but was too gracious to make it plain. ‘Do enjoy browsing.’
Honor did. By the time she finally tore herself away from the shelves of beads, bobbins, boxes and brassware, she felt dazed. Holding bits of history in her hands had made her covet somany that, like a child confused by the largesse of a toyshop, she hadn’t bought a thing, just allowed herself a last loving flick through the postcards in their creased old hide binding. Maybe, just maybe, if she could get herself a job, she could justify buying that fabulous collection.
Outside, the sunlight made her blink as she crossed the street to return down the other side. In a recess almost opposite Pretty Old stood a wooden community hall. She was fascinated to learn from the glassed-in notice board that the hall was home to a whole bunch of groups and events: a visit to Rottingdean’s windmill — she’d seen it, big and black on a ridge above Rottingdean village, but hadn’t figured out how to get to it. A talk by a local author. Tai Chi for the over fifties. How to make dough animals for the under tens. And Zumba! The Zumba classes back in Hamilton had taken place in an air-conditioned dance studio with a polished floor and a wall of mirrors, rather than in something that looked like a large shed, but she couldn’t see how it could be too different. She’d loved the combination of aerobics and Latin music and, forgetting that her muscles were already stiffening from her run, she shifted her weight right as she went up on the ball of her left foot.Yeahhh . . . Zumbahhh!Ow . . . butt cheeks!
Maybe Zumba would have to wait.
She turned towards the Eastingdean Teapot. OK, it was giving in to curiosity but, after hearing Martyn’s stories about Robina, she just had to walk through the troughs of many-coloured petunias and the green chairs and tables. Menus were sandwiched in sturdy acrylic holders and parasols flapped their white fringes in the breeze like big crazy spiders.
The tearoom, set behind the teagarden, was like a parlour, furnished with mismatched wooden furniture and smelling as sweet as fruitcake. On the walls hung cookie tin lids and pretty plates. Pickles and conserves in hexagonal jars with lace capswaited for buyers on a counter that divided the tearoom from the kitchen and behind it a teenaged boy washed glasses and a blonde woman in a hairnet rushed around.
In the middle of the kitchen stood the woman from the park, Robina, in jeans and a richly embroidered green velvet top, a black apron slung around her hips, recognisable from the bubble of black curls held back from her face by a black bandana. She didn’t look much of a stalker, icing chocolate flowers on to greaseproof paper.
Honor watched, fascinated by the fluid swoop-twist movements that created the petals and the dab that joined them in the middle. After a few clusters of swoop-twist petals, Robina glanced up. ‘Would you like to sit down? We’ll take your order at the table.’ She smiled and Honor thought she had never seen such huge brown eyes, nor amazingly bee-stung lips.
After everything she’d been told she’d half-expected horns and cloven hooves, so it took her a moment to respond to being not only in conversation with Robina but it being quite normal and friendly. ‘Sure. Thanks.’ She settled on a wheel-back chair with a rose pink cushion at the last free table, glancing around at a lone man taking up the whole of a table meant for four by spreading out his broadsheet newspaper; two young mums talking earnestly as they shovelled food into their toddlers; and three tables seemingly populated by one party, judging by the way that they talked across the divides as they ate.
The teenager emerged from the kitchen with a pad and pen. ‘’Lo. What can I getcha?’ He had the same big brown eyes as Robina, but his hair was flat and sandy and he didn’t have her lips. Honor found herself being glad — lips like that were for girls.
She glanced at the menu. ‘A pot of hot tea, please, and maybe some cake or pie.’
He indicated a table beside the wall, tiered with cakes under clear plastic covers. ‘We got carrot cake, lemon drizzle, pineapple upside down, date and walnut, and chocolate cupcakes, apple pie and cherry with almond tart. You can have cream, custard or ice-cream.’
‘They all look delicious.’
‘Yeah.’ He wiggled his pen, glancing sympathetically at a toddler who was crying at being trapped in his highchair.
‘Are all these cakes made right here?’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded vaguely at the kitchen. ‘Or there’s desserts on the menu. No more cream teas, the last of the scones have just gone.’ He wiggled his pen again.
‘I’ll have cherry and almond pie, with cream.’
‘OK.’ He scribbled, then disappeared back through the flap in the counter into the steam of the kitchen, sliding his feet along the floor as if too weary to pick them up.
Honor waited, gazing around at the lace at the window and the stack of white crockery on the counter, the survivors of many sets, judging by the mix. Robina was still intent on her task, giant icing bag twisted in her hands. The woman in the hairnet kept up a steady stream of conversation and sometimes Robina answered. The lone man folded up his newspaper and left his empty cup but no tip. Three middle-aged women took the table.
Then the door shot open. ‘Rufus! I’ve got fifteen minutes, be a love and get me a big fat mug of black coffee and one of your mother’s enormously risen scones, quick as you can, good boy.’ Clarissa. Martyn’s sister-mother. Well, now. Wasn’t that interesting?
