by Jenny Colgan
Lilian’s expression turned mutinous.
‘You retire,’ she said.
Rosie bit her lip, hard.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Can I have the keys?’
With some difficulty Lilian picked up the large set of ancient brass keys from the mantelpiece.
‘Come on then,’ said Rosie. ‘Let’s go and have a look.’
The key twisted reluctantly in the old lock on the red-painted wooden door with nine panels of bevelled glass. With a horrible squeak Rosie managed to click it round.
‘There’s a knack to it,’ murmured Lilian.
‘Oh yes?’ said Rosie. ‘What’s that then?’
‘You get Rob the butcher to do it.’
Rosie shook her head in disbelief, pushing over stacked mail on the mat. ‘I can’t believe this has been going on for so long,’ she said. She moved into the middle of the tiny shop and turned round 360 degrees. The afternoon sun was struggling to penetrate the tiny windows.
‘Wow,’ was all she could say.
First off, there was no denying it, the place was filthy. There were cobwebs in the corners. The windows were covered in grime. Things were toppled over, grey and crumpled. The antique till still had shillings and pence on its ancient keys. The scales, burnished and at an awkward angle, stood there as if the last seven decades had hardly touched them. It was a museum.
And there, too, inside, every square inch of the little shop was covered – in sweets, in posters, in things Rosie hadn’t seen for years. There were little tins of travel sweets and jujubes, neatly piled up in pyramids; great glass bowls full of striped candy canes tied with bows; huge slabs of dark red Bournville chocolate and neatly stacked alternating boxes of Dairy Milk and Black Magic. On the very highest shelves were the most enormous, elaborate boxes of chocolates, in red velvet heart-shaped boxes with huge ribbons, completely covered in dust. An old ladder was attached to sliding rails, as at a library, to allow the higher sweets to be removed from the shelves. Then, like an old apothecary’s shop, the back three walls were lined with shelves that held great bulbous glass jars filled with every imaginable sweet: neat pastel chunks of Edinburgh rock; haphazard slabs of peanut brittle; bright green gobstoppers and sharp little wrapped packets of Hubba Bubba; chocolate frogs and ladybirds; dolly mixtures and rainbow drops and cough sweets and bouncing fat pastel marshmallows and four different flavours of sticky, icing-sugar-coated Turkish delight. And tucked neatly by the old-fashioned black pop-up till, the classics, in neat and tidy rows: Mars Bar. Kit Kat. Aero. Fry’s Chocolate Cream. Crunchie. Twix. Oddly, the smell wasn’t too terrible; a sweet mustiness rather than a horrible decay.
‘Are there mice?’ said Rosie first off. ‘I bet there are mice.’ She looked around. ‘Wow,’ she said again. ‘I can’t believe you don’t get burgled all the time. I mean, how long …’
‘None of it’s worth much,’ said Lilian. But Rosie, taking in a deep breath, below the layers of dust and atmosphere of neglect, begged to disagree. In the few available bits of space between the displays hung old posters: a little girl in a purple furred coat for Fry’s, suggesting boys drink more milk by eating chocolate; a very smartly turned-out little boy playing cricket for Cadbury’s and a beautiful wartime dolly bird suggesting a Mars Bar was a meal in itself – the great triumvirate of British chocolate-making.
The floor, old black and white linoleum, had been worn smooth by generations of children beating a path with their farthings, their sixpences, their ten pences, their pound coins, clutched stickily in excited paws, eyes darting everywhere to decide what would be best; terrified of making the wrong choice.
‘But this is – I mean, it’s obviously once been absolutely amazing in here,’ said Rosie. ‘It’s fantastic.’
‘Shows what you know,’ said Lilian. ‘It’s all finished now. Anyway, it’s not what kids want these days. They don’t want gobstoppers any more. They want great big bars of Dairy Milk that you buy in six-packs from the supermarket. They want family packs and supersharers and litres of cola and hot dogs and nachos, whatever they are. Sweets are boring, and old-fashioned. No one is interested any more.’
Rosie looked around. ‘I can’t believe that’s true.’ Her eyes caught something at the back of the shop. Her face lit up.
‘Are those … sweetie cigarettes?’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen these for years. You’re not allowed to sell them any more. Lilian, why didn’t you throw away all this stock?’
Her aunt looked cross but stoic.
‘Sweets keep for a long time. I’m coming back to the shop.’
‘Mmm,’ said Rosie. She hadn’t realised things were quite so bad. This wasn’t just from Lilian’s operation. The shop had obviously been like this for a long, long time, and Lilian had been unable or unwilling to tell anyone that she could no longer cope.
‘These aren’t even legal any more!’ said Rosie. But she couldn’t help opening the cigarette packet and inhaling the sticky candied scent of the little white sticks with the pink ends.
‘I used to love these,’ she confessed.
‘You’ll pay for those’ said Lilian.
‘I will,’ said Rosie. ‘What are they, nine pence?’
‘I was still getting some tourist trade,’ Lilian was saying, looking round her as if confused as to whether she was still open or not. ‘Some chocolates round Valentine’s day. But the children have moved on.’
‘But this could be … I mean the fact that it’s all unchanged …’
‘Well, nothing much good happens in the world of sweets. Everything they invent now actually tastes worse than the old stuff. It’s the children I feel sorry for,’ grumped Lilian. ‘So I saw no reason to change.’
Rosie looked at the ancient cash register.
‘How did you use this?’
‘Well, you just got used to it,’ said Lilian. ‘Decimalisation was terrible for the children though. It made their sweets more expensive. It was an awful thing. I definitely think they should go back. Idiot politicians.’
‘I’m not sure that’s going to happen,’ said Rosie. ‘But on the plus side, keeping the till may have been a smart move. You know, this kind of thing is really fashionable.’
Lilian looked almost flattered. ‘Well, good things never go out of style,’ she said.
‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘They never do. You know, adults like sweets too.’
‘You don’t say,’ observed Lilian dryly, as Rosie realised that, without thinking about it, she had stuck a sweetie cigarette in her mouth.
‘Ha! I don’t even smoke,’ said Rosie.
Suddenly there was a ting, as the little brass bell above the shop rang. Both the women turned round, Rosie slightly guiltily.
It was the woman with the dog. Or rather, Rosie supposed, Lady Lipton.
‘Coo-eee! Lils, darling. You have to hear about this extraordinary new girl in the village, you won’t believe what she did with Bran …’
She sounded like a different woman.
‘Oh, who is it?’ said Lilian eagerly. ‘Is she awful?’
Rosie rolled her eyes.
‘Hard to say,’ said Lady Lipton, then finally realised who else was in the room. Completely unperturbed, she held out her hand.
‘And here she is. Hello. Have you bought a proper coat yet? We’re predicted four days of rain by the way. Which either means nine, or none at all. Lils, I stuck the groceries in your kitchen. Don’t tell Malik, I got Mrs Cosgrove to pick me up some bits at Asda. Man cannot live by Spar alone. Now, let me tell you the whole story.’
So Rosie had to stand by as Lady Lipton recounted the entire event to Lilian, leaving out the parts where she’d been hysterically upset about her dog and had to leave the room, but laying it on quite thickly about Rosie careering around in the rain wearing a bikini.
‘And that terribly smart young doctor managed to take out all the wire, wasn’t that wonderful?’
Not wanting to point out that she’d helped, Rosie busied herself by exami
ning the rest of the shop. Not that there was much more to it; but the storeroom revealed itself to be a knocked-about treasure trove of gold bars, Wham Bars, caramels and chocolate eclairs, sherbet lemons and, to Rosie’s overwhelming excitement, an enormous jar of chocolate limes. Chocolate limes were her absolute, absolute favourite thing, yet she probably hadn’t thought of them for years. Now, all she wanted to do was scoff a dozen of them. And if that was how she felt, she wondered, surely other people would feel the same … would want to taste something again, something that had made them feel happy and loved and cared for as a child.
For her and Pip, it was Friday mornings, and their mum would give them twenty pence so they could choose what they wanted for school breaks. Rosie had a hazy idea you weren’t allowed to take in sweets for school breaks any more. That seemed a shame. She and her best friend Daniela would plan Fridays all week. One would get one thing and the other would get another, then they would solemnly split the bags exactly between them. If there was an odd number, they would offer the sweet to their teacher, Mrs Gilford, who had bright yellow hair and wore lots of blue eyeshadow and was, Daniela and Rosie were convinced, actually a princess in disguise. Mrs Gilford would smile politely and, when they explained that they were trying to be fair, would always take the sweet with heartfelt thanks and a bright pink-lipsticked smile. Rosie, now she came to think of it, didn’t remember ever seeing Mrs Gilford eat one.
She did remember, though, how the feeling of being nice to their teacher and being praised for their generosity would stay with her all day, long after the fizzle of the sherbet bombs mixed with the heavy fondant of the orange creams had faded from her tongue.
She poked her head out of the storeroom. She wanted to know what that woman was nattering to her aunt about. Plus, she couldn’t help it. She was fascinated. She’d never met anyone with a title before.
‘Do you live in a big house?’ she asked, not realising how rude it sounded till it had come out of her mouth; almost like an accusation. Lilian laughed in a way that sounded as if she was trying to excuse her gauche London scruff of a niece, which made Rosie feel a bit hot and prickly.
‘Well, that very much depends what you think of as big,’ said Lady Lipton, busying herself with something on the counter. Rosie correctly interpreted this to mean ‘yes, ginormous’.
‘Doesn’t it get freezing?’
Both women stared for a moment. Then Lilian burst out laughing.
‘It certainly does,’ she said. ‘That’s why Hets is down here all the time.’
‘It most certainly is not,’ said Lady Lipton. ‘I’m being charitable.’
Lilian snorted. ‘You’re being cosy. Look at her,’ she ordered Rosie, and lifted the edge of the woman’s Barbour jacket with her stick. Underneath was a gigantic man’s pullover, patently ancient, and the holes in the wool showed evidence of another underneath.
‘And it’s still summer,’ cackled Lilian. ‘You wait till November, she’ll be camping out in her front room.’
‘You overheat your house dreadfully,’ said Lady Lipton. ‘It’s not good for you.’
‘She’s strong as an ox,’ interjected Rosie, who’d witnessed Lilian hurling logs on to the fire already that afternoon.
‘Apparently I’m as strong as an ox,’ said Lilian. ‘And she’s a nurse, she ought to know.’
‘Auxiliary nurse,’ said Lady Lipton and Rosie made a quick note not to underestimate her. ‘And what exactly is an ox?’ she added.
‘It’s a gigantic cow. A boy cow,’ Rosie said, flushing, with a sudden stab of panic in case it was the one where you cross a donkey and a horse.
The two women laughed.
‘Well, enjoy your stay,’ said Lady Lipton, sweeping out.
Rosie watched her go. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘After I saved her dog and everything.’
Lilian chuckled. ‘Oh, that’s just Hetty’s way.’
‘Ugh,’ said Rosie. ‘I hate it when people say, “Oh, they’re just like that.” If someone is rude and not very nice, they shouldn’t be like that. Everyone else shouldn’t have to make allowances just because they’re Lady Snot-a-Lot. Anyway, she needn’t worry. I won’t be going near her stupid road again.’
Chapter Six
Dolly mixtures, like chocolate buttons, are often considered a training sweet, to be discarded when the adult teeth arrive. This is a shame; taken together, or separately, dolly mixtures are a fiendishly clever mix of jelly, pastes and the highly covered, and coveted, cube sweet, coming in purple, reddish pink or green (green being the least popular, naturally). The natural resilience of the cube, when taken with the softer fondant of the layered rectangle, the inner tube, and of course the sugared jelly, combines to form an entirely satisfactory trinity, together or separately. Although the advent of the ‘giant’ packet (and the encroaching hegemony of those filthy all future reference to which has been removed on legal advice) has mostly been a bad thing, producing both sweet exhaustion and obesity, a cudlike, bovine chewing without tasting in front of forty-two-inch televisions pumping out garbage twenty-four hours a day, ruining our children and all future generations, here an exception can be made.
In the case of dolly mixtures, the move to the larger packets, or indeed anything which reminds the more mature sweet buyer of their delicate, balanced triangle of excellence, can only be commended.
1942
Lilian’s father looked at her with a quizzical expression on his face. ‘So, just a night out with your friend, is it?’ he asked, poking at his bacon and eggs. They kept a few layers out the back still, like most people, supplementing their rations, and the vegetable garden had been there as long as the cottage itself.
Lilian looked again at the little pot of rouge Margaret had given her. She wasn’t exactly sure what to do with it. Sometimes she thought life had dealt her an unfair hand, not just in losing her mother – there were plenty of motherless and fatherless children among her aquaintance – but in having three big brothers and no big sisters, meaning there was no one to give her the merest hint of feminine insight. She could talk to Neddy about just about anything, but not boys. Terence was far too strait-laced, and Gordon was a grub, that much was obvious.
Her friend Margaret tried to help, but Margaret was daft as a brush and boy-mad and only wanted to get married and do winching, and Lilian was never quite sure whether to follow her advice or not. She dabbed a little rouge on her cheeks.
‘Ah, now you look like you’ve been hauling in the fields all day,’ said her father, realising as he did so that it was exactly the wrong thing to say to his only daughter, sharp, clever Lilian, whom he loved dearly but didn’t even pretend to understand.
Lilian sniffed, and pulled down last year’s sprigged cotton dress. Its sleeves now looked dated, and the waist was dropped too low to show off her pretty figure; she looked like a stick, she thought, all up and down. Still, at least Margaret could do her hair. And sure enough, here came Margaret now, clattering along on her bicycle, her hair tightly lacquered and her bright eyeshadow and dress as tight as modesty allowed, almost disguising the slight cast of her eye. Margaret never mentioned her eye, but hated her front snaggletooth and would often spend the entire evening with her hand positioned directly in front of it. Despite this, she was funny and loyal and daft and Lilian loved her.
‘Come on, you,’ said Margaret. ‘Let’s be having you.’
‘Well, you look like you’re going to kill them fellas tonight,’ said Lilian’s father, who found Margaret much more the type of straightforward girl he could get a handle on.
Margaret giggled and squeaked at him and told him to hold his tongue, heating up the rollers by the fire and ordering Lilian to sit still, even when the smell of singed hair was rising up through the little kitchen.
Lilian tried to sit still, but she couldn’t deny the truth: that since last week, she had thought of little else but Henry Carr. Suddenly, everything she had found irritating about him – the teasing, the cheek, the hanging arou
nd the shop – now it had stopped, she found she missed it beyond reason. The idea of him walking out with Ida filled her with horror. Gerda had not, in the end, been sacked, but she had been demoted and was keeping her head low in the village. But tonight, maybe tonight, with her new hair … maybe Henry would look at her again the way he’d looked when they’d patched up Hetty. And this time she would hold his gaze, and toss her lovely black hair, and—
‘Darn it,’ said Margaret, who loved American movies to distraction.
‘What?’
‘Never mind.’
‘What?’
‘It smells like that farrier fire we had last spring in here, do you remember?’ said her father. ‘Those horses screamed like the very devil.’
‘What are you doing?’ said Lilian, scrambling to her feet and trying to see her whole head in the very small mirror that hung in the hallway.
Margaret unsuccessfully tried to hide a small ringlet of burned-off curls behind her mauve dress.
‘Margaret!’
‘I’m sorry!’
‘You’ve ruined it!’
‘I didn’t mean to!’
‘There, there, girls,’ said her dad, laughing heartily, and suddenly, as if on a whim, took out the bottle of Johnson the butcher’s homemade rhubarb wine he kept for special occasions.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a glass. Celebrate two lovely girls going out to have a good time.’
‘One of them half-bald,’ said Lilian crossly. This was a disaster.
‘And no messing about, you understand? If you have to dance with a chap, I want it to be someone nice, local, good family. None of that seasonal Derby mob.’
The girls blushed bright red, and Margaret let out a haw-haw peal of laughter. A large group of young men were down for the harvest, hence the dance. Margaret giggled, her hand in front of her mouth. Lilian rolled her eyes as if to indicate that all that was beneath her; trying her best not to betray that she did, indeed, have her heart set on finding a nice young man. A very specific one, that was all.