Mattie ignored Reenie’s dismissal of her former fiancé’s name, and began to explain. ‘I met Asher when I was temping, trying to make enough money to set up my business. He pursued me like a terrier for six months before I agreed to go on a date with him – and we never looked back. I thought he was my soul mate, lame as that sounds. But Grandpa Joe hated Asher from the first time they met.’
‘That’s a grandparent’s prerogative, Mattie. Not that I’d know, but I imagine I’d be vicious.’
‘The thing is, he was never like that. Out of all of us, Grandpa Joe was the one to reserve judgement, to dole out second and third chances long after everyone else had given up on people. I couldn’t understand why he disliked my boyfriend so much. I mean, even my mother loved him, and she’s the least easily impressed person I know. I tried everything to get the two of them together – we’d “just happen” to meet up with Grandpa Joe and my sister Joanna on Saturday mornings and suggest having lunch together; my dad conspired to invite Grandpa Joe and Asher out to play golf for the day on more than one occasion; my uncle Seth even pretended his car had broken down so that the two of them could come to his rescue. Nothing worked.’
The memory of her family’s doomed attempts to reconcile Grandpa Joe with Asher chimed like a church bell in Mattie’s mind. She’d hated the look of disgust on her grandfather’s face whenever he saw her with Asher, as if he was ashamed of her. She’d never seen him like that: the alien, ugly frown, laying siege to a face usually so creased with laughter.
‘Did you love the lad?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you tell your grandfather that?’
Mattie had, over and over again, until the words themselves seemed to become meaningless, stripped of their power by her grandfather’s stony silence. ‘And then Asher proposed – and when I told Grandpa Joe, he gave me an ultimatum.’
Even now, after his death and six months since that awful conversation, Mattie could hardly believe it.
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘I wish I was. Grandpa Joe said I had to choose. He wouldn’t listen to me when I begged him not to make me.’ His words still haunted her: I won’t have it, Mattie. I won’t have you marry that man. It’s your choice: him or me. It’s up to you.
‘Bleedin’ Nora. That’s harsh.’
Emotion gripped Mattie’s throat like a vice as she fought tears. ‘What was I meant to do? I loved both of them – but Asher wanted to spend the rest of his life with me and I felt sure that if Grandpa Joe saw that in action, he’d come round eventually. So I chose Asher. And I walked away from my grandfather.’
Reenie’s eyes were wide as she bit into another violet crème. ‘And then he died?’
Mattie nodded, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘He was diagnosed with late-stage cancer and given six months. He died after five and a half. And he refused to speak to me, even when he knew he wasn’t going to survive.’
‘Stubborn old beggar! I bet your ma was livid.’
Oh, if only . . . ‘She thought we should have sorted everything out. I think she blamed me for how quickly the cancer spread. Which is crazy.’
‘And your pa? Did he agree?’
Mattie sighed. ‘Dad’s a man of few words. I think he just wanted to grieve for his father privately. He knew how devastated Mum was – I think it was easier not to intervene. I couldn’t reach either of them: what more could I have done?’
‘Not a fat lot, judging by what you’ve told me. So where was your chap while all this was goin’ on?’
Asher should have been by Mattie’s side, supporting her even if her grandfather didn’t. If he’d done that, it would have been easier. Instead, he’d said he wanted to renovate the house they’d recently bought together so that it would be ready in time for their wedding. He’d been so committed to making everything perfect, and Mattie had loved him for his practicality when everything else around them seemed to be descending into chaos.
Which is why she’d thought nothing of the unfamiliar car parked in the driveway of their soon-to-be home, knowing that Asher had called in the services of a small army of tradespeople to help him finish the job in time. And why she hadn’t been surprised when she heard noises coming from the newly installed bathroom, where she presumed Asher – ever the perfectionist – was making last-minute alterations to the slate tiling he’d insisted they buy.
It had all been so unimaginative.
The cries of her fiancé and a vaguely familiar blonde quickly turning to shouts of indignation as Mattie had flung open the brand new shower door, sending their soap-covered, naked bodies sprawling across the expensive slate floor. The gut-twisting nausea when his blonde partner was revealed as the checkout woman from the DIY store where they’d spent a small fortune over the previous six months . . .
And worse than all of it – the realisation that Grandpa Joe had been right. Two days after his death. When nothing could ever be put right again.
‘The little knob.’ There was something to be said for Reenie’s bluntness, given the evidence she’d heard. ‘I hope you cut off his necessaries.’
Mattie laughed, despite the still-raw pain of her discovery. ‘Maybe I should have done.’
‘Probably couldn’t have found them if you’d looked for ’em,’ Reenie winked. ‘Men like that are generally lacking in the balls department.’ She patted Mattie’s hand with red-painted fingernails. ‘But now I know why you miss your grandpa so much. It’s like unrequited love, isn’t it?’
Mattie had never thought of it that way, but Reenie had nailed the aching, tearing sensation she’d been accosted by ever since. She was feeling the kind of pain usually reserved for a heart broken by love – only it wasn’t the loss of Asher that was causing it. ‘That’s exactly how it feels. I miss him, Reenie. And I wish with all my heart that I’d chosen him over Asher. I wish I could put it right.’
‘Ah, but the world would be built of stardust if wishes were bricks. Line from one of my songs from way back when, that. Load of old toss, most of it, but you know what I’m saying.’
Mattie nodded, feeling surprisingly lighter for her confession. ‘Thank you.’
‘What for?’
‘For listening.’
‘Love, I’m eighty-four years old. Listening is pretty much all I’m good for nowadays.’ She folded her hands in her lap and watched one of the Beauvale residents struggling with a tray of teacups. ‘Tsk. I see Trevor’s doin’ his Iron Man impression again. Trev! Love! You know what the doc said about carrying too much.’
The old man nearly dropped the tray in surprise, his face flushing when he turned towards Reenie. ‘I’m just fine, thank you,’ he called back in a voice so wobbly it was clear he wasn’t at all.
Reenie shook her head. ‘He’s doing it to impress me. Thinks if he can strain his poor old back carrying a tray of tea, I’ll think he’s Clark bleedin’ Gable. Trev! Put them down, kid! Gaynor’ll have your guts for garters if she sees you. Oi, Chardonnay,’ she yelled in the direction of a sullen-looking young orderly. ‘Stop pickin’ your nail varnish and help our Trev, will you? If he puts his back out, it’ll be your job on the block.’
Mattie watched this spectacle unfolding: the orderly slouching across to the teetering old man and catching the edge of the tray just as it started to droop at a dangerous angle; Trevor protesting at her intervention, while over in one corner Reenie’s Three Furies made encouraging noises in support of their idol’s actions. In the month that Mattie had been visiting Beauvale she had become accustomed to the unique soap opera playing out beneath the exposed barn beams – most of which, it had to be said, revolved around her elderly friend. From the comfort of her armchair, Reenie Silver was in the thick of it all, calling the shots when necessary, keeping a close eye on proceedings and controlling her comfortable, overheated kingdom often with no more than a raised eyebrow. It was impressive to watch, and made Mattie like her even more.
Chapter Eight
‘Miss Otis Regrets
(She’s Unable to Lunch Today)’ – Ella Fitzgerald – 1956 version
‘No, Jack, not like that. Tissue first, Bell Be-Bop stickers next and the card tucked into one of the flaps on top . . .’ Mattie reached across the pile of vintage items to rescue a badly wrapped package from her cousin’s hands. After a sudden rush of international orders on her shop’s eBay store she was glad of help – and the timing of Jack’s latest break between freelance copywriting jobs was fortuitous. But his self-professed expert packaging skills were proving to be less than impressive.
Sitting on the floor of the shop surrounded by mint-green tissue paper and bubble wrap, her cousin groaned. ‘Three months visiting Reenie Silver has turned you into a diva. Next thing we know, you’ll be demanding a star on the shop door.’
Mattie threw a roll of parcel tape at him, but didn’t really mind his jibe. Visiting her new friend at Beauvale had become the highlight of her week, and behind it other areas of her life were quietly settling. Joanna and the children were fully moved in, their laughter and joyful noise filling the house with light and warmth, making going home a pleasure, not a battle. Slowly but surely Mattie was rebuilding the relationship with her mum, which felt like a significant step. Above all else, she felt happier than she had for a long time – as if a fair wind was steering her life.
‘Maybe I should have one,’ she replied. ‘Reenie has one on her bathroom door, you know.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘Nope. A genuine gold glitter star that she says she took from her dressing room when she was performing in Los Angeles. She also has a mirror with lights around it, like you see in old movies. I think it’s fabulous.’
Jack gave up trying to find the end of the tape on the roll. ‘I like it when you talk about Reenie. You light up. It’s almost as if you’ve fallen in love.’
It was a strange observation, but as Mattie considered it, she realised Jack was right. In a way, she had fallen for Reenie – for her vitality and the vivid pictures of the glamorous Fifties her memories drew. Befriending her had become so much more than just a link to Grandpa Joe: it was as if she welcomed Mattie into a bright, hopeful world.
The experience had certainly inspired Mattie in her shop. She had spent the past week building a new display, filled with objects from 1956: concert programmes from London, Birmingham and Glasgow from that year; vinyl records by Bill Haley & His Comets, The Dream Weavers, Pat Boone and Frankie Laine; a curvy maroon Bakelite Tesla ‘Talisman’ transistor radio; an original film poster for High Society and a Monte-Sano & Pruzan semi-fitted empire-line coat from New York, amongst other things. Grandpa Joe had talked about 1956 as his ‘London bachelor year’, and while he’d given few details of what he’d done during his year in the capital, it had retained an air of intrigue for Mattie since she was a teenager. She had been tempted to skip straight to his diary from this year, but had decided to read the diaries chronologically, for fear of missing an important detail in her search for the real Joe Bell. Certainly she’d learned much about him already: far from being the cautious, well-behaved man she had always known, in his childhood and teens he had been a dreamer and sometimes a rebel.
18 September 1951
Harvest is full upon us and the work is so hard. Somehow it feels worse this year than any other. Father is in his element, his eyes bright and his face red as he works, and I can see Mother casting admiring glances in his direction. It’s as though she only sees the man she married at this time of year. He laughs and jokes with the hired hands, charms the grain merchants and holds his own in debates around the bar at The Crescent and Owl.
I will never be like him.
I hate the early rising, the work that breaks my back from before sunup to after sunset. Each day it is harder to pull my body from my bed. I feel an old man, yet I am barely 16. How can I stand another fifty years of this?
I am not a farmer. I never will be. I want more. I want London.
The dream is still alive from my ninth year. I am good with numbers and calculations, not scythes and seed drills. Uncle Charles has an accountancy practice in London and I have often heard Father dismissing his younger brother’s profession. He thinks my uncle abandoned the Bell tradition when he chose it. But he doesn’t know I am more like his brother than like him.
I long to tell Father. But would it break his heart?
Working alone in the shop the next day, Mattie mulled over the diary entry she had read the previous night. All she knew of her great-grandfather was that he had been born with the countryside in his blood. A fifth-generation farmer, running White Tudor Farm had been all Joseph George Bell senior had known from the age of sixteen, when his father had died during the harvest at just forty-nine years of age. In his diaries, Grandpa Joe had made no attempt to hide his fear of his own father. Was this what he had meant about the diaries revealing the man he really was?
Mattie looked up from the time-yellowed pages, a stab of irritation hitting home. If he knew what it was like to want something so badly, why had he made her choose?
‘So, this is where you hide all day?’ The perfect red-lipped smile of Reenie Silver greeted her from the shop doorway, the brass bell above the door jingling a welcome fanfare.
Mattie stashed the 1951 diary beneath a stack of invoices. ‘How lovely to see you! What brings you here?’
‘I had a free morning so I thought I’d pop out to see this shop of yours.’ Reenie’s bright eyes surveyed the interior. ‘Blimey, this is a blast from the past. It’s a bit disconcerting to find out you’re vintage. Maybe you should stick me in a corner with a price tag round my neck.’
Mattie smiled. ‘Nobody could afford you.’
‘Smooth, Mattie Bell, very smooth. Keep talkin’ like that and we’ll be the best of chums. So, are you going to give me the guided tour?’
‘Certainly.’ Mattie moved from behind the Thunderbird counter and offered Reenie her arm. ‘Step this way.’
As she escorted her friend around the carefully curated displays, Mattie couldn’t help stealing glances to see her reaction. Reenie wore an odd smile, a faraway wistfulness that hinted at a whole world beyond the objects she was seeing.
Finally, they arrived at the 1956 display and Reenie stopped as if a hand had been pressed to her chest.
‘1956. The year that changed everything.’ She chuckled, but her eyes didn’t smile. ‘Hark at me, eh? I sound like a Channel Five documentary.’ She shook her head, pristine lilac curls swaying gently. ‘The year that made me and nearly broke me. I made my biggest leap and my biggest mistake in ’56.’
‘You did?’
‘Year I left the group, wasn’t it? Set out on my own, Miss Reenie Silver off to conquer the world. Ma used to say to watch out for holes when you walked on clouds. She was right. ’56 was the year I got everything I ever wanted, but it cost me more than I could afford to pay. Still, you live and learn, eh?’
‘So, did she say what her biggest mistake was?’ Joanna had been listening to Mattie’s account of Reenie’s visit with ever-increasing wonder as they sat at her dining table that evening.
‘Only that she regretted how it ended with The Silver Five. I suppose it’s normal to regret a break-up in some way.’
‘Like you and Asher?’
Mattie glared at her sister. ‘No. I don’t regret that at all. I only wish I’d never got involved with him in the first place.’
‘No second thoughts? Not even now the dust has settled?’
‘Absolutely not. I lost more than I ever found with Asher Jenkins.’ She pushed the stab of hurt away and gazed out of the open French doors to where Ethan and Ava were playing a giggling game of tag in the back garden. ‘I’m going to find out what Reenie’s regret is, though. I think she wanted to tell me today.’
‘Double helpings of violet crèmes this Sunday morning, then?’ Joanna’s eyes sparkled with mischief.
‘I think it might take more than that . . .’ Mattie’s mind whirred with possibility. If 1956 was a year th
at had altered Reenie’s life, as it had Grandpa Joe’s, surely that wasn’t a coincidence? Maybe Mattie could solve both mysteries and find – what, exactly? Redemption? Closure? Whatever it was, she felt a strong compulsion to uncover the truth Reenie had so deliciously dangled in Bell Be-Bop.
7 January 1955
My secret is out.
I have never seen Father so downcast. I fear I may have broken him. But when he talked this evening of my taking the farm when he retires, I couldn’t hold my silence any longer. He said he knows what’s best for me. I said he was wrong.
Mother has said nothing since my revelation. She is knitting in her chair by the hearth, her eyes set firm on me. But I did the right thing.
I will say it again, I DID THE RIGHT THING. I will die if I stay here. There is a world beyond the farm boundary, and Joe Bell is destined to explore it. I am not a farmer. I don’t have the love of the land coursing through my veins like Father does. I have tried so hard to please everyone, to make it happen. But I am almost twenty years old and if I don’t break free now, I may as well be buried alive to rot here.
I’m scared, though. There was no resolution tonight and I can’t tell what my father is thinking. I will lay low until he talks to me again . . .
8 February 1955
A month! It has been an entire month since I told Father I didn’t want the farm and still nothing! Every day I think, This will be the day! – but it’s as though he has forgotten I ever said it.
Today I asked Mother and she didn’t answer. She thinks me selfish, and maybe I am. What if I have lost their respect but am still to remain here? I can’t stand not knowing what my fate will be.
I have thought of little else since that night. Without my parents’ blessing I must take matters into my own hands. I am going to leave. There’s no other solution. It breaks my heart, but what choice do I have?
Searching for a Silver Lining Page 7