Remembering Rose (Mapleby Memories Book 1)

by Sheila Claydon

  Tom nodded. “Yes, not that I can tell you anything about it except that all this stuff was found in a cupboard by the person in charge of the renovations. He made a note about it on the plans, but if he did find out anything about who used to live here, he kept it to himself.”

  “Well, that’s a shame,” Jerry turned to me. “Add it to your research Rachel. It might turn out to be another member of our family.”

  I knew he was joking so I managed a smile. Behind me I could sense Rose shaking her head. She didn’t need to worry though because I had no intention of telling them anything, ever.

  “There’s one other thing,” said Tom, turning back to the table when he was almost at the point of walking away. “See that small wooden chest behind the bar? Well, we use it to store our menus but when I found it, it contained a set of old fashioned baby clothes, an ivory rattle, and that tiny pair of shoes you can see hanging above the mantle. It was wedged under a shelf at the back of the cellar which must be why the builder missed it.”

  We all turned to stare at the tiny shoes. They were blue and the ribbon that attached them to a nail driven into the wall was blue, too. They were about the size a child would wear when it took its first steps. I wanted to touch them and something in my expression must have conveyed that to Tom because he walked across to the fireplace and lifted them down while Rose watched him.

  I took them in my hands and as my fingers cupped the soft leather I had the swiftest flash of a little boy’s face laughing up at me. He had Robbie’s blue eyes and he wasn’t much older than Leah. As the vision faded I turned to look at Rose but the chair was empty.

  While the others exclaimed over the shoes and asked Tom about the other items in the box, I wondered why I had never noticed that the pub was full of old memorabilia, most of it shoe related. Also, the clue was in the name. The Cobbler’s Arms. I felt really stupid until I remembered that everything I had learned about Rose and Arthur was new to me. Until very recently I hadn’t known anything about them at all and it was this that allowed me to ask Tom a final question.

  “Do you think they lived here, the cobbler and his family, or was it just his place of work?”

  Tom smiled as he answered. “They almost certainly lived here. According to the plans this room was probably the family sitting room, and the storage area behind the bar was the kitchen and scullery before it was knocked into one. The actual cobbler’s shop was at the front of the house with a door directly onto the street.”

  Jerry nodded, wearing what was almost certainly his serious historian’s face. “There would have been a wooden counter too and the room was probably small and dark and not very comfortable. The poor man would have spent his days perched on a high stool making shoes for the whole village.”

  I maintained an expression of intelligent fascination with the whole subject while all the while telling myself that it was why Rose had looked so relaxed sitting by the empty hearth. This had been her home, the place where her children were born, and right now I was sitting in the room where I had last seen her and Arthur. I looked around but there was nothing I remembered, nothing to connect it to Rose except for the baby shoes that Marcie had just passed to Robbie.

  As he took them his eyes widened and I guessed that just for a moment he had caught a glimpse of his history. Then Leah began to cry, and by the time I’d soothed her and begun to spoon pureed mixed vegetables into her ever open mouth, the shoes were hanging above the mantle again.

  * * *

  “Coffee?” Jerry wasn’t ready to leave yet, which meant Robbie and I had to stay as well, Robbie because he was working for him, and me because I was without transport. Counting heads, he went over to the bar and placed the order. When he came back, he was smiling.

  “The landlord says he’ll bring our coffee outside so we can sit in the sunshine and the children can go back to their bug hunting.”

  The four little boys didn’t need a second invitation. They were out of the door before he finished talking. I called after them, reminding Liam and Connor not to go near the road or the car park.

  Robbie, released at last from the middle of the bench, said he’d go and keep and eye on them while I repacked Leah’s bag and took her to the bathroom to change her nappy yet again. Marcie came with me so she could reapply her lipstick and brush her hair, and by the time we joined the others in the garden we felt as if we were old friends, and I knew I was going to love having her as my next door neighbor.

  She laughed as we approached the table. “We seem to be collecting people.”

  She was right. A couple of the old timers, men who could remember what the building had been like before the extension was added, were talking to Jerry. He waved an apology. “Don’t mind me, I’m just getting another history fix.”

  Marcie shook her head in mock disgust. “He does this all the time. I’m going to ignore him while you tell me all about Mapleby.” I started to say something but when I saw who was sitting with Robbie, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

  “Hello. I hope you don’t mind me joining you but your husband insisted,” Ella told Marcie.

  “Of course not. You’re the friend Rachel hasn’t seen in ages, aren’t you, so how about I push this gorgeous baby over to the pond where we will look at the ducks while you catch up on your news.”

  We all protested and said she should at least drink her coffee first, but she just shrugged. “I’m not really into coffee. Give it to Jerry when he starts calling for a second cup.” Then she turned to me. “You don’t mind do you, Rachel? I won’t go any further, I promise.”

  I shook my head, only too glad that she wouldn’t be around to see what was coming to me, and when Liam and Connor asked me if they could go as well, I said yes with more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary. I watched them set off in silence, noting how, although the road was completely devoid of traffic, Marcie made all the children stop and look both ways before releasing them to rush across the grass to the pond on the village green.

  * * *

  “You’re going to have to look at us eventually, Rachel,” I was so surprised by the hint of laughter in Robbie’s voice that I spilled my coffee.

  “I’ll fetch a cloth,” Ella jumped up, ever the landlord’s daughter. Robbie caught her hand.

  “Promise you’ll come back.”

  She nodded as she gently disengaged herself. He watched her walk across the garden and then he turned back to me. “We’ve a lot of talking to do but I think it’s going to be okay, thanks to you.”

  I stared at him in total disbelief. “What happened while Marcie and I were in the bathroom, and I won’t take anything less than a miracle as an explanation?”

  He gave a wry smile. “Ella brought out the coffee. I don’t think she realized it was for us. Anyway, when he saw her Jerry remembered she was an old friend of yours so he insisted she join us, and before she could say no, he had ordered another cup of coffee from one of the waitresses.”

  “So she had to sit down?”

  “Yes, although if she had sat any closer to the edge of her seat she’d have fallen off.”

  “And she talked to you?”

  “Actually, no. She listened, and then she pretended she had something in her eye so I wouldn’t know she was crying.”

  “You did though?”

  “Yes, and when I asked her why, she said it was too complicated to explain, so I said ‘try me’ and that’s where we were when you came back with Marcie.”

  So you don’t know yet?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I intend to find out if it takes me all day.”

  “Would you like me to go so you can talk in private?”

  He shook his head again. “I don’t think so. Whatever the problem is, it affects all of us, Tom, you, me, her other friends in the village, so you have every right to want answers as well.”

  I saw Ella coming towards us with a cloth in her hand, and frowned. “She might not like being outnumbered.”

  �
��Actually it will be a relief,” I hadn’t meant for Ella to hear what I said but she waved my apology away.

  “If I don’t tell you both now, I’ll never tell anyone,” she said, blotting up the spilt coffee with more concentration than it warranted.

  We waited, and eventually she folded up the cloth and squared it to the corner of the table. Then she fiddled with her rings. Eventually Robbie took hold of her hands and forced her to look at him. “Sitting here thinking about it is only making it worse. Talk to us Ella?”

  At first she was hesitant, picking and choosing her words and talking in a monotone, but once we started asking questions she relaxed just enough for me to recognize the old Ella, and my heart bled for her.

  * * *

  “So let me get this right, when you first met this guy, this so called celebrity, he was all over you, so much so that you had an affair. It was only later you found out he had taken a video of you having sex?” Robbie’s fury wasn’t directed at Ella but at the man she was telling us about.

  She nodded bitterly. “I was so naive, and I was in love…well that’s what I told myself… so it never occurred to me he would do something like that, let alone blackmail me afterwards. “

  “And he’s been threatening to put the pictures on the Internet for how long?”

  “I don’t know but it seems like forever,” she lowered her head to hide her distress but we still saw the tears that plopped onto the table in front of her.

  “So you do everything you can to keep him sweet because it’s the only way you know to stop him carrying out his threat?” Robbie tilted her chin to make her look at him.

  “Not like that, no! I just fly out to do his make up and hair when he asks me to,” she shook her head, horrified that we had got the wrong idea.

  Although I can’t speak for Robbie, I’m ashamed to say the thought did cross my mind for just a second or two until I saw her face, then I knew she was telling the truth. Her brief affair with this dreadful man had been over long before she met Robbie. All that was left was a video of something so private that only a complete villain would use it to retain power over a girl he had once professed to love.

  “It’s okay,” I told her, patting her arm. “We believe you. But what I don’t understand is why. What does he expect to get out of it?”

  Robbie’s laugh was devoid of even a trace of amusement as he explained. “I don’t know how good you are on celebrities, Rachel, but I’ve worked on enough film sets with Ella to know exactly who she’s talking about. This man is a fading star. A very long time ago he could and probably did have any woman he wanted, but then he got older and his hair went gray, so when Ella fell for his charm, a girl whose make-up and hair dye kept him looking young, he took advantage. It was only afterwards he remembered she knew all about his gray hair and the Botox and the secret visits to his plastic surgeon, and he panicked until he found a way to keep her silent. He showed her the video and told her he would post it on the Internet if she ever breathed a single word about the work he’s had done.

  “Then, to make sure she took him seriously, he also told her what would happen if the Press got hold of it, and once she realized that photographers would turn up at The Cobbler’s Arms hoping to get an up-to-date picture, and that they would talk to the customers about her, she stopped coming to Mapleby. You weren’t prepared to put your father through that, were you?” He turned to Ella.

  She shook her head miserably.

  Swearing under his breath, he got up. “Look after her, Rachel. My guess is that Ella isn’t the first girl he’s done this to, but she’s certainly going to be the last.”

  “Don’t Robbie, please, you don’t know what he might do to you,” Ella grabbed at his hand but she was too late. In a moment he had gone, just stopping beside Jerry’s table long enough to excuse himself, saying a sudden emergency had arisen.

  Jerry nodded amiably and then returned to the elderly men who were still talking about the past, and for the first time it what seemed forever, Ella and I were alone.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked her.

  “Because I didn’t think you would understand.” She found a tissue in her pocket and blew her nose.

  I frowned, more than a little hurt. “Even if I didn’t, I’d still have been there for you.”

  “I know you would, but it got so I couldn’t bear to be with you and Daniel. Seeing the two of you so happy together just about killed me. It made me feel so ashamed too.”

  I sighed. “If only you knew. Daniel and I are fine now but I’ve been so mean to him ever since Leah was born that I’m surprised he’s still with me.”

  She was silent for a long moment, then she slowly shook her head. “It’s not the same, Rachel. Whatever you’ve done to Daniel, you still love him and he loves you, and I’ll never believe otherwise whatever you tell me. I, on the other hand, allowed myself to be so dazzled by fame and money that I didn’t see my … him…for who he really is.” She couldn’t even bring herself to say his name.

  “And you ran away from Robbie because you felt ashamed?”

  “Yes, but I did it to protect him as well. What if I had married him and then, a few years later, that video had appeared on the Internet? I wasn’t prepared to risk what it would do to him, what it would do to our relationship.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Ella drove over to the cottage later that afternoon and made a fresh cake for Millie’s party while I mashed potatoes and put the finishing touches to the casserole.

  “All done,” I said, as I packed the final dish into the large cardboard box Daniel had brought home from the shop the previous evening. Ella added the tin containing the cake and we gave one another a look of mutual satisfaction.

  “You were so right,” she told me. “Spending the afternoon with you and the children has taken me out of myself. I haven’t had so much fun for ages.”

  Remembering the expression on her face when the little boys had insisted on showing her their bug farm, I grinned. “If you call this afternoon fun then you really do have a sad life.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes. “Don’t joke about it, Rachel. I can’t bear to think what’s happening to Robbie right now, and anyway, even if he does manage to sort things out, he won’t want to marry me, will he?”

  “Why ever not? From where I was sitting at lunchtime, he’s head over heels in love with you. Why else was he prepared to wait it out in Mapleby? Given his experience of building film sets, he could have been working anywhere in the world, instead of which he’s been here for weeks just waiting and hoping you’ll turn up.”

  “But that was before he knew. Now I’ve told him everything he won’t want anything more to do with me.”

  I had far more faith in Robbie than that but I could see it wasn’t worth arguing. Instead, searching around for something else to take her mind off her problems, I invited her to join us at Millie’s.”

  “But won’t she mind?” she asked. “It’s not as if we’ve ever been friends.”

  “Believe me, she’ll be pleased to see you, and she needs all the friends she can get.” I gave her a potted version of Millie’s life to date, including how she was going to look after Leah for me each afternoon so I could dip my toe back into the working world.

  “She sounds so strong,” Ella said and I heard the envy in her voice. I bit back the jokey remark I had been about to make and thought about it. She was right. Millie was strong, stronger than me and stronger than Ella. Was it just part of her character or had life forced it on her? There was no way of telling, but what I did know was that my last vestige of resentment had fallen away. I was glad Daniel had offered her a job, glad he had insisted about the rooms above the shop, glad that he had talked to her about me.

  I nodded. “She is,” I said.

  * * *

  The house party was a great success. As well as Ella, there was Daniel, Leah and me, Millie and her two boys, and her grandfather was there, too. He was very old and bent and he u
sed two walking sticks, but he was sharp as a tack.

  “You’ve done a good job here,” he told Daniel, hobbling from room to room and poking at the walls with the end of one of his sticks. “I can rest easy now I know my granddaughter is somewhere safe.”

  Millie flushed slightly when she heard him. “I’m fine, Granddad. You never needed to worry about me.”

  He snorted. “I most certainly did, especially once that waste of space you called a husband left you, not that he was ever much use when he was here.” He turned to me. “I can’t understand why he wanted to leave anyone as beautiful as my Millie, can you? And to leave her with two little boys as well, it’s beyond wicked.”

  I agreed with him and then, to save Millie from further embarrassment, changed the subject by asking him about himself. When he told me he lived in a nursing home I asked if it was the one in the village. He nodded. “So you know it, do you? Not where I wanted to end up really but I couldn’t cope after my wife died. Gammy legs you see,”

  I nodded understandingly. “My Grandma lives there, too.”

  He stared at me from under beetling brows. “Are you one of those Pavalak girls?”

  “I was. I’m Rachel Ryan now.”

  “Yes, yes, I know that, but it’s the past I’m talking about. There was a big house where the nursing home is now. It used to belong to your relatives. They weren’t Pavalaks but they were your family. I forget the name though.”

  “Trayner.” I told him, and after that the conversation flowed as I regaled all that had happened that day including the lunch with Marcie and Jerry Trayner. Liam and Connor, not to be outdone, told everyone about their new American friends too, and how they were going to play together every other Saturday when I looked after them.

  “It doesn’t sound like we’re going to take it slowly after all,” I said to Millie, laughing.