Starting Over

by Jack Sheffield

  The following week, on Monday afternoon, Joseph returned home to discover the television had gone and the arrangement of furniture was back to normal. ‘What’s happened, Vera? Where’s the television?’

  Vera didn’t look up from her cross-stitch. ‘It’s gone, Joseph.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Yes, back to the rental shop. They have just collected it. I thanked them for the opportunity of a trial period and said we would consider it again some time in the future.’

  Joseph paced the room searching for a suitable riposte. ‘But Vera, it says in the Bible, “Give freely and become generous.”’

  ‘Yes, Joseph.’ There was irritation in her voice. ‘I do know Proverbs, chapter eleven, verse twenty-four.’

  Not to be outdone, Joseph searched his memory bank and came up with the perfect response. ‘How about, “If you have two shirts, give one to the poor”? The same surely goes for television sets.’

  Again, Vera did not look up. ‘I am also familiar with Luke, chapter three, verse eleven. Perhaps you should have read on further in St Luke’s gospel, Joseph – it’s quite illuminating.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m referring to Luke, chapter six, verse thirty.’

  Joseph wracked his brains but couldn’t recall. His sister’s superiority in Bible studies had always been infuriating.

  ‘Go on, I give up,’ he said.

  ‘It says, “Give to anyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back”.’

  Joseph knew when he was beaten. He looked around the room. ‘I’ll switch on the radio, shall I?’

  He didn’t notice Vera’s smile of satisfaction.

  Chapter Ten

  Sweet Dreams

  It was the frozen dawn of Friday, 6 February when Lily sat in William Featherstone’s bus as it trundled along the back road to Ragley village. A pale sun had risen in the east and a line of golden light touched the distant hills. Lily stared out at the monochrome snowscape and thought about her life. Once again she opened the handbag on her lap and studied the old black-and-white photograph. Then she smiled and turned her attentions to the day ahead.

  As they passed Coe Farm, trails of wood smoke made drifting diagonal patterns in the sullen sky above a land scoured of life by the bitter winds blowing in from Siberia. A familiar police car stood on the forecourt of Pratt’s garage, where Tom Feather was in conversation with Victor beside the single pump. As the bus went by Tom turned to seek out Lily behind the misty windows and waved. She responded with a smile. Their romance had continued to blossom, even though they were both busy with their work, but even so a nagging doubt crossed Lily’s mind. Too fast … too soon, she thought as the bus turned into the High Street.

  It pulled up outside the General Stores where a crowd had gathered. A large painted sign outside the shop was causing great excitement and Lily stepped carefully over the frozen forecourt to read it for herself. She smiled. Perhaps this was really the beginning of the end of post-war austerity. The poster read:

  SWEET DREAMS

  Your dreams have come true!

  Sweet rationing has ended.

  Sweets will be on sale from 7.30 a.m.

  Saturday, 7th February

  Prudence Golightly

  Sweet rationing had ended officially on Thursday, 5 February, but the supply to small villages in North Yorkshire had taken a day or two longer. Also, Prudence thought that Saturday would be her best day for a bumper sale. Chocolate, nougat sticks and liquorice strips were on her list and she looked out of her shop window at the sea of eager faces. A busy day lay in store.

  Deirdre Coe was an early customer. She slapped a penny ha’penny on the counter and picked up a copy of the Daily Mirror with its headline ‘Sweet Buying Orgy Begins – night queues’.

  ‘Ah’ll be in t’morrow,’ said Deirdre. ‘My Stanley will be wantin’ a box o’ chocolates.’

  Before Prudence could reply, she walked out. The pig farmer’s sister didn’t feel like wasting her breath on the tiny shopkeeper.

  Betty Cuthbertson and Vera Evans were at the back of the shop and had seen Deirdre’s swift departure. ‘For two pins ah’d give ’er a piece o’ my mind,’ said Betty. She glanced in Vera’s direction. ‘But as ah’m a Christian ah’ll ’old m’tongue.’

  Vera gave an enigmatic smile and kept her feelings to herself.

  ‘Common as muck that one,’ added Betty for good measure. She picked up a copy of the Daily Mirror and pointed to a photograph of Derek Bentley, the nineteen-year-old burglar who had been hanged last week at Wandsworth Prison in London for his part in the murder of PC Sidney Miles.

  ‘Word ’as it ’e didn’t shoot ’im,’ said Betty. ‘Alfie the milkman said it were the young lad what did it and ’im only sixteen. Anyway, good riddance I say.’

  She continued to flick through the pages.

  ‘Did you want the newspaper, Betty?’ asked Prudence, concerned that in its dishevelled state it was no longer fit for selling.

  ‘No thanks, Prudence, jus’ m’usual ciggies.’

  Prudence shook her head after Betty had gone. ‘She doesn’t change, does she?’

  Vera gave her familiar non-committal smile.

  ‘So how can I help, Vera?’

  ‘I should like to surprise Joseph with a box of chocolates tomorrow. It will be a special treat for him.’

  ‘That’s fine. I’ve got six boxes arriving this evening along with a whole host of sweets. It promises to be quite a day. I’ll put a box on one side for you.’

  In her bedroom over the Hardware Emporium, Nora Pratt was getting ready for school with her own version of sweet dreams.

  She had been reading her Picturegoer magazine carefully and studying the etiquette of table manners. If she was to succeed as an actress she would have to be confident when dining with important people. In an article by Madame Sokolova of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Nora had read that an actor could reveal the character of someone in a play through their behaviour at the dinner table. For example, a bread roll should be broken, not cut with a knife, and a napkin should be opened to its full extent and spread over the knees. As she packed her satchel she was determined she would carry this new knowledge into her Saturday job in Doris Clutterbuck’s Tea Rooms.

  Nora stared at her reflection in the mirror. ‘A bwead woll should be bwoken,’ she said out loud.

  When Lily walked across the village green she saw that Tom Feather’s police car had pulled up outside the school gate. The tall policeman was wearing a heavy greatcoat and his breath steamed as he blew into his frozen hands.

  ‘Hello, Lily. There’s a good film on tonight at the Odeon. Shall we go?’

  Lily smiled at his eagerness. ‘What’s the film?’

  ‘Ronald Reagan and Virginia Mayo in She’s Working Her Way Through College and it’s had a good write-up. Apparently Reagan plays the part of a professor … and it’s definitely not a war film,’ he added with a grin.

  She stared up at Tom’s friendly appealing face. ‘Yes, that sounds like fun.’

  ‘So I’ll pick you up at seven.’

  Lily had a spring in her step as she walked up the school drive.

  The sight that greeted her in the children’s cloakroom was a familiar one now. Straggling lines of snow-covered wellington boots filled the corridor outside the classroom and on the pegs were hand-me-down coats of all sizes, knitted woollen scarves and damp balaclavas. Meanwhile, coughs and sneezes echoed in the Victorian rafters and the bitter wind rattled the wooden casements of the tall windows. Few children owned a handkerchief and many used the sleeve of their thick jumper to wipe their runny noses. In spite of all this, there was a smile on Lily’s face as she walked into the school office where Vera was checking registers with John.

  ‘Hello, Lily,’ said Vera. ‘I saw you talking to Tom Feather.’

  Lily smiled. ‘Yes, he’s invited me to the cinema.’

  ‘That’s lovely,’ said Vera
.

  John said nothing, but gave a polite if slightly forced smile.

  ‘It’s a Ronald Reagan film.’

  ‘Oh yes, a very handsome man,’ approved Vera.

  ‘To be honest, I prefer Richard Burton. It said in Picturegoer that he was the hottest thing in Hollywood,’ said Lily.

  John picked up his registers disconsolately. ‘I heard he could have been a Welsh miner,’ he said as he set off for his classroom.

  ‘John doesn’t sound happy,’ remarked Lily.

  ‘It will be his sister,’ explained Vera. ‘She’s staying with him and insists upon tidying everything. It takes him a week to get it back to how he likes it.’

  At ten o’clock Lily was working with Sam Grundy, a keen little six-year-old who was progressing rapidly with his reading. Sam had opened his Janet and John reader and staring at Book Four, page 3, ‘Little Fisher Duckling’.

  Lily was using a ‘look and say’ reading scheme to help Sam with an introduction to less regular key words. There were over three hundred of them in Book Four, a challenge for the curly-haired farmer’s son, but he was word-perfect as he read ‘wave, gave, flake, lane, snake, like, five, bite, slide and white’.

  ‘Well done, Sam,’ said Lily. ‘A gold star for you,’ and Sam smiled as if he had won the football pools.

  However, Lily was still concerned at the quality and content of the reading scheme. It presented to her pupils a simple, middle-class world, a long way from that experienced by the children at Ragley. It was clear that the tale of ‘Little Peachling’ meant nothing to Frank Shepherd. The incongruous story concerned a baby inside a peach who grows up and leaves home to seek his fortune. He decides to give spiced buns to various animals, including a monkey.

  Lily considered asking John for some new reading books, but remembered his manner earlier and decided to wait until another day. It was time for morning milk and as usual the children enjoyed their daily third of a pint. The fact that it was often frozen in winter, with coal tits pecking at the foil tops, and curdled in summer mattered little. In an age of austerity, most of these children were grateful for any sustenance that came their way.

  In the distance Lily could hear the church bells making a melancholy, muted sound. It was the funeral of seventy-five-year-old George Icklethwaite, who had served in the army in the First World War and lived the rest of his life in the village. The bellringers had muffled their bells and Ragley folk stopped what they were doing to count out the number of times the bells tolled, one for each year of George’s life.

  It was well known that the ‘killing cold’, as it was called by the locals, took away the sick and the weak, and Lily looked thoughtfully at the children in her care, who seemed unconcerned about the freezing weather and couldn’t wait to run in the snow and slide on the ice.

  Across the road Ruby Smith walked into the General Stores holding an old handkerchief over her mouth. She was coughing.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Golightly,’ she mumbled. ‘Just some porridge oats, please.’ She knew her son needed a hot and filling breakfast on this bitterly cold day. There was no heating in the house and ice had formed on the inside of the windows. Ronnie was still in bed, snoring loudly. He had spent another evening supping Tetley’s bitter in The Royal Oak and it was time to sleep it off.

  Prudence put a two-pound box of Scott’s Porage Oats on the counter.

  Ruby, now heavily pregnant, counted the coins carefully from her purse and coughed again.

  Prudence looked concerned. ‘Whatever is the matter, Ruby?’

  ‘Ah’ve gorra tickly cough an’ a sore throat an’ ah’m worried ah’ll pass it on to our Andy.’

  Prudence pointed to the sign on the wall that read ‘VICTORY V gums and lozenges for cold journeys’. Then she opened a packet from behind the counter. ‘Have one of these,’ she said, ‘and take a few with you.’ She scattered some of the small brown tablets into Ruby’s open palm. ‘These will help you through the morning,’ she added with a gentle smile.

  ‘Thank you kindly, Miss Golightly,’ said Ruby, popping one into her mouth. The bell above the door rang forlornly as she tightened her headscarf and hurried out.

  Oh dear, thought Prudence, whatever will become of that dear young girl?

  It was lunchtime and Lily wrinkled her nose at the nauseating smell of boiled cabbage that permeated every corridor and her classroom. She handed in her late-dinner-money tin to Vera in the school office.

  Vera looked up from the admissions register. ‘I hope you enjoy your evening with Tom.’

  ‘Thank you, Vera. I’m sure I shall,’ replied Lily a little defensively.

  Vera sensed the troubled mood. ‘He is a good man and I’m sure he cares for you.’ She stared out of the window at the skeletal trees etched in frozen snow. ‘Have you noticed that he always thinks before he speaks … remarkable in a man. His words are often measured.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Lily quietly.

  ‘He brings to mind Proverbs, chapter sixteen, verse twenty-four.’

  Lily shook her head and waited patiently for the wisdom of Vera.

  ‘Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones,’ she quoted.

  ‘Wise thoughts, Vera.’

  A tired Ruby was followed by Ronnie into the village Pharmacy. ‘Ah’ve come t’collect m’mother’s description, Mr Grinchley,’ she said.

  ‘Fine lady, is Agnes,’ said Herbert. ‘Ah ’ope she’s not badly.’

  ‘No, jus’ summat t’do wi’ ’er tubes,’ said Ronnie, ‘or so she told Nellie next door.’

  Ruby frowned at Ronnie. ‘We need t’look after m’mam.’

  ‘Rudyard Kipling said God could not be everywhere so that is why he made mothers.’ Herbert was proud of his literary knowledge.

  ‘’E’s right,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Does ’e come in ’ere?’

  ‘Who?’ asked Herbert.

  ‘This Rudyard bloke,’ said Ronnie.

  Herbert shook his head. ‘’Ere’s y’prescription, Ruby, an’ when’s y’baby due?’

  ‘Nex’ month, God willin’.’

  ‘Mek sure y’look after ’er, Ronnie.’

  Ronnie scanned the shelf behind Herbert’s head. ‘An’ ah need some Brylcreem.’

  ‘Tubs are one an’ eight an’ a tube is ’alf a crown.’

  ‘Can y’lend us some money, Ruby luv?’ asked a plaintive Ronnie, but Ruby was already heading for the door.

  On Friday evening, while Prudence Golightly was making a tray of oatmeal biscuits, Lily and Tom were enjoying a relaxing evening in York at the cinema. The end of the evening followed a familiar pattern, with a fish and chips supper and a goodnight kiss in the car outside Laurel Cottage. It was clear Tom wanted Lily to stay longer, but he was gentle and patient.

  ‘You must know I care about you,’ he said quietly as he held her hand and looked into her eyes.

  ‘Yes, I know, Tom … and I care about you.’

  ‘So what’s stopping us going steady?’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ sighed Lily.

  Tom leaned back in his seat. ‘I haven’t felt this way before.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Tom.’

  ‘Do you need more time?’

  Lily stared out at the frozen world. Her heart said no and her head said yes.

  ‘What is it, Lily?’

  ‘I can’t … not yet.’

  ‘Then I’ll wait. I’m a patient man.’

  He walked her to the door and kissed her softly on her cheek. ‘Goodnight, Lily, and thanks for a lovely evening.’

  Lily watched him drive away and shivered. There was so much she wanted to share with Tom, but it could never be.

  On Saturday morning Lily caught the bus with Freddie to buy him a toffee apple and a bag of liquorice laces in Prudence Golightly’s General Stores. The road into Ragley was quiet, but in spite of the bitter cold there was hope for the days ahead. Hazel catkins shivered in the hedgerows and winter aconites brightened
the dark patches of the woodland. The icy blasts did not deter the hardy folk of Ragley village and a queue stretched out to the forecourt of the shop and past the bus stop.

  Freddie was thrilled with his sweets, and as an extra treat Lily called in to the Tea Rooms to buy him a cake and a cup of tea. As they were leaving, she held the door open for a lady she hadn’t seen before.

  Agatha Makepiece was frail and elderly, with porcelain skin and hair of winter-grey, and she wore a shabby fur coat and a neat hat with a feather in it. She walked in, upright and elegant like a prima ballerina, and sat alone at a corner table. She lived nearby in a thatched cottage that was now in urgent need of repair and it was a rare occurrence for her to step out and meet the world.

  Doris Clutterbuck looked up from the counter, a hint of concern on her face. ‘Go and serve Miss Makepiece, please, Nora, and be careful what you say.’ Doris lowered her voice. ‘Her mind wanders a bit these days.’

  ‘What can I get for you, Madam?’ asked Nora, notebook in hand. Doris had insisted she must always be polite.

  ‘A pot of tea, please,’ said Agatha.

  ‘Anything to eat? We have some nice cakes and some sausage wolls fwesh fwom the oven.’

  ‘That sounds lovely, my dear.’ There was a pause as the elderly lady looked around her. ‘I don’t carry money because I can’t remember what to do with it.’

  Nora was puzzled. She had never come across a customer without any money. ‘’Scuse me a moment.’

  Doris sighed when Nora reported back to her. ‘Don’t worry, she’s a lovely lady who has fallen on hard times. Give her a pot of tea and a crumpet. That’s what she had last time … and, by the way, Nora, Miss Makepiece used to be an actress.’

  Nora served the tea and crumpet, excited at the opportunity to meet such a lady. ‘Mrs Clutterbuck says you used to be an actwess.’

  Suddenly the vacant look in Agatha’s blue eyes faded and she became alert. ‘Yes, I was at RADA.’

  ‘Wada?’

  ‘Yes, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. I was there in 1923 with John Gielgud and in 1931 when the Duchess of York opened the new building. I remember those days so well.’